Whistle-blower: Botched talking points hurt FBI probe of Benghazi attack

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A key Benghazi whistle-blower testified Wednesday that his team knew the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. compound was terrorism, revealing that it appeared some were trying to lure even more U.S. personnel into a separate "ambush" while the attack was still being carried out. 

Greg Hicks, the deputy chief of mission in Libya who became the top U.S. diplomat in the country after Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed, revealed new details as he and other whistle-blowers delivered emotional testimony on Capitol Hill. 

He described how, as diplomatic officials were trying to find out what happened to Stevens, they were receiving phone calls from supposed tipsters saying they knew where the ambassador was and urging Americans to come get him. 

"We suspected that we were being baited into a trap," Hicks said, adding that he did not want to send anybody into what he suspected was an "ambush." 

Getting choked up, Hicks described how the Libyan prime minister later called him to tell him Stevens was in fact dead. "I think it's the saddest phone call I've ever had in my life," he said. 

At the very beginning of the attack, before Stevens went missing and was later found dead, Hicks said his team believed it was terrorism. He said a regional security officer rushed into his villa yelling, "Greg, Greg, the consulate's under attack." 

He then spoke by phone with Stevens who told him the same: "Greg, we're under attack." 

After enduring a night of attacks on the U.S. consulate, Hicks said the team departed at dawn for the nearby annex -- shortly after they arrived, "the mortars came."

The testimony of Hicks and others is poised to challenge key elements of the Obama administration's narrative, including their initial statements that the attack was triggered by protests over a film. 

Hicks said that, despite U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice's repeated claims the Sunday after the attack that the film was the impetus, Stevens never mentioned a demonstration before his death. 

"I was stunned," Hicks said of Rice's comments. "My jaw dropped, and I was embarrassed." 

He said Rice never talked to him before those appearances. 

Another whistle-blower questioned Wednesday why more military assets were not deployed sooner during the Benghazi terror attack. Mark Thompson, a former Marine and official with the State Department's Counterterrorism Bureau, said he was rebuffed by the White House when he asked for a specialized team -- known as a FEST team -- to be deployed. This is a unit made of special operations personnel, diplomatic security, intelligence and other officers. 

Suggesting that some were hesitant to deploy because they were unsure what was happening, "One definition of a crisis is you do not know what's going to happen in two hours," he said. 

Further, Hicks explained how a separate team of special forces personnel were not given the authorization to fly from Tripoli to Benghazi. "They were furious," he said. 

Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the oversight committee holding the hearing, defended the witnesses, calling them "actual experts on what really happened before, during and after the Benghazi attacks," who "deserve to be heard." 

The three witnesses are Hicks, deputy chief of mission in Libya who became top U.S. diplomat in the country after Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed in the terror attack; Eric Nordstrom, a diplomatic security officer who was formerly the regional security officer in Libya; and Thompson. 

"I am a career public servant," Hicks said. "Until the aftermath of Benghazi, I loved every day of my job." 

Nordstrom choked up as he began to testify Wednesday.  

The administration has parried Republican allegations lately by arguing that the attack is old news, that the State Department already has investigated it and that Republicans are engaged in a political witch hunt. 

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., top Democrat on the oversight committee, also said Wednesday that Republicans are using the witnesses' statements for "political purposes." He said he's glad the whistle-blowers are testifying and would ensure they are protected, but pre-emptively challenged some of their claims -- including the claim that U.S. military could have responded sooner to the site of the attack. 

But a series of carefully timed leaks on the whistle-blowers' testimony indicates House Republicans could have the goods to at least merit a second look at the administration narrative. 

"The question is, where's the accountability for lying to the American people?" Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told Fox News. "The American people were lied to." 

The witnesses are expected to cover a breadth of material in their testimony Wednesday. Lawmakers have questioned to what extent security requests were ignored before the attack, whether the military could have done more to respond the night of the attack and whether talking points were intentionally changed for political reasons after the attack to downplay terrorism. The witnesses could address all three areas on Wednesday. 

The Obama administration has adamantly denied several of the latest charges, including a claim that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a key aide tried to cut the department's own counterterrorism bureau out of the chain of reporting and decision-making on Sept. 11. The administration also denied that the whistle-blowers in question were intimidated -- while behind the scenes questioning the credibility of the witnesses. 

A "fact sheet" released by the department ahead of the hearing reiterated its denials. The statement also said the department has "demonstrated an unprecedented degree of cooperation with the Congress" on Libya, and rejected claims that the military was in a position to help that night but was told to stand down. Citing its internal review, the statement noted the review "found no evidence of any undue delays in decision making or denial of support from Washington or from the military combatant commanders."

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Google unveils talking shoes that 'motivate' you to move

Because inventing Google Glass wasn't impressive enough, the tech giant unveiled a pair of talking shoes at SXSW.

Calm down, Google Shoes are not going to be a thing. The experiment was designed to highlight its new advertising platform called Art, Copy and Code.

Google hacked a pair of Adidas sneakers to show "how you can use objects to tell stories on the web today," Aman Govil, head of the advertising team told ABC.

The shoes can tell the person wearing them what they are doing (or aren't doing) and can relay that information to their smartphone via a speaker in the tongue of the shoe.

The sneakers also house a small computer, accelerometer, pressure sensor, a gyroscope and Bluetooth.

The experiment is meant to work the way many other fitness gadgets do, relaying information about your activity and berating you when you're not being active enough.

"If you put what the shoe knows through an algorithmic logic engine, it can translate it into copy," Govil said. "Now if you give that copy to an interesting copy writer, you could give the shoe personality. One shoe could be the trash-talking shoe."

It's a novel idea but given that it needs a phone to function, there's probably no need for your shoes to be the gadgets that do the talking. All Google really demonstrated was that the sneakers could do what a smartphone is already capable of.
 

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Boston woman has gym membership revoked for talking on cell phone

A Boston woman says her gym membership was revoked after the facility's "aggressive" manager caught her taking a phone call while on the elliptical. 

The Boston Herald reports Tina Santoro Asmar claims she received an unexpected call from her doctor while on the machine at the Planet Fitness where she is a member, and answered the call without stepping off. 

She says while she was talking, she was approached by the "very threatening" manager, who told her to get off the phone or risk losing her membership. Asmar tells MyFoxBoston.com she was taken aback by the manager's "very threatening behavior."

"The Planet Fitness manager's reaction was extremely aggressive and threatening," she said in a statement. "It scared me. No one deserves to be spoken to in this manner. I spent two days trying to get in touch with corporate with no response."

She added that she did not want to leave the workout area to take the call because her iPad was hooked up to the elliptical.

However, club co-owner Brian Kablik claims Asmar was the one acting belligerent. 

“This is a member that’s had repeated issues and incidents with cell phone use,” Kablik told The Boston Herald. “I can assure you that our manager would not be treating a member poorly. Her reaction, when she was approached in a professional way, was extremely unprofessional and rude and dismissive.”

Planet Fitness is known for having a strict no cell phone rule in their workout areas, MyFoxBoston.com reports. 

Click for more from MyFoxBoston.com.

Click for more from The Boston Herald.

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Senators complain after getting 'worthless' redacted version of Benghazi talking points

Senators investigating the attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya and the administration's version of events in the aftermath were livid when the White House initially sent them documents so heavily redacted they were "worthless," a source told Fox News.

The so-called Benghazi talking points were requested by the Senate Intelligence Committee, but were so heavily redacted lawmakers sent them back and demanded another set, a source told Fox News. Lawmakers sought the papers in order to find out why the administration repeatedly claimed the attack, which killed Ambassador Chris Stevens, a State Department employee and two former Navy SEALs, was sparked by a spontaneous protest over an anti-Islam video.

But the first batch of documents contained hundreds of pages that were of no use, the source said.

“It was so redacted that there was no information whatsoever,” said the source, who spoke to Fox on the condition they not be identified. “There were some documents that were 100 pages with every word on the page redacted. They were worthless.”

A second set of documents were delivered to Capitol Hill Thursday night which had only minimal redactions.  

The source speculated that the administration had two sets of documents ready to go: one that was redacted and another that didn’t. Senators have asked to see the documents as a part of their inquiry into the attack on Benghazi. Senators also wanted the documents before they were willing to vote on John Brennan to be Director of Central Intelligence.

A committee vote on Brennan’s nomination is set for Tuesday.

The documents reveal various email traffic about the “talking points” which were passed through a litany of Washington power centers: The White House, the FBI, the CIA, and the Justice Department. The source questions why it took the Obama administration months to deliver the information when all of these agencies had dealt with the email traffic.

Sources said the emails revealed heavy editing by then-CIA Director David Petraeus. The talking points evolved as they were passed around various intelligence and security hubs, and scrubbed of language referring to “al Qa’ida.” They also seemed to indicate an effort to paint the Sept. 11 attack as a demonstration and not a planned attack, the source said.

“The word ‘attacks’ was changed to ‘demonstration,’” the source said.

In the wake of the attack, the White House sent UN Ambassador Susan Rice on several Sunday news shows to explain the incident as a spontaneous event spurred by a 13-minute trailer for the low-budget film "The Innocence of Muslims" which had been posted online.

Fox News' Chad Pergram contributed to this report. 

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Obama administration to provide emails on CIA’s Libya talking points to Senate panel

The Obama administration has agreed to provide emails pertaining to the controversial CIA talking points which critics say pushed an inaccurate picture of what happened during the terror attack last September in Benghazi, a congressional source tells Fox News.

“We expect that will be done early next week,” the source said, adding the administration has agreed to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s request to review the emails.

The source did not immediately make clear whether members of the committee would go into a room and read the emails, or whether hard copies would be permanently supplied to the committee.

The source noted that the committee has already seen details on how the controversial talking points were changed from their original drafting. Terms like Al Qaeda were stripped out, which led Republican lawmakers to charge the talking points were deliberately watered down -- it’s unclear which versions of the talking points members of the Senate committee might see.

The intelligence community’s talking points were provided to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice and formed the basis of her controversial comments on all the major Sunday talk shows five days after the attack. During those shows, she asserted that the attack was a “spontaneous” reaction to protests elsewhere in the region and was a demonstration that spun out of control.

Fox News first reported there was no demonstration at the consulate. Rice and others have since acknowledged there was no protest in Benghazi before the attack on the U.S. consulate and CIA annex.

The latest effort appears to be aimed at trying to appease Republicans and ease the pressure on White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan’s nomination for CIA director.

At his confirmation hearing earlier this month, Brennan faced a barrage of questions from both sides of the aisle – some about Benghazi, but many about the administration’s drone program. Some have sought additional legal documents to back up the targeted killing of Americans overseas, an issue that still could leave Brennan vulnerable to Democratic resistance on the committee.

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