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Showing posts with label Carl Bernstein. Show all posts

Monday, May 5, 2014

We Disagree With Bernstein--Benghazi Is Worse Than Watergate. No One Died At Watergate!

Bernstein: Benghazi Not Watergate, But It Is a Story

Sunday, 04 May 2014 05:04 PM

By Greg Richter

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Legendary Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein says the recently released Benghazi email doesn't rise to the level of Watergate as some on the right claim, but neither is it a non-story, as some on the left say.

"Watergate was a massive criminal conspiracy led by a criminal president of the United States for almost the whole of his administration," Bernstein said on CNN's "Reliable Sources" Sunday."We're talking total apples and oranges here."

Still, Bernstein said, "That does not obviate the fact that this particular memo should have been turned over by the State Department to those who called for it."

Story continues below video.

The memo in question is an email from White House Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes instructing then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to focus on an anti-Muslim YouTube video as the cause of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. diplomatic facility that left four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, dead.

The email was not turned over to Congress when it requested communications involving the Benghazi attack and aftermath. Republicans say it was withheld because it would have hurt President Barack Obama's re-election chances because it would have shown the attack was terrorist-related.

Democrats, on the other hand, have called Republican and right-leaning media efforts to find a cover-up on Benghazi a political witch hunt.

But Bernstein said Benghazi is about an "ideological scorched-earth politics" that prevails in Washington by the media, and goes beyond Fox News.

"It goes to the web. It goes to MSNBC. To some extent it also goes to general coverage," Bernstein said. "Benghazi is a story that ought to be examined in a fact-based way. Lower the temperature. It's not about criminal presidencies or anything of the kind. It's about finding out about what happened. And it's not that difficult to do in a sane atmosphere. We don't have a sane atmosphere."

Hillary Clinton was secretary of state at the time, and Bernstein admitted that the story is also partly about her.

Fox News, the GOP, and others want to derail Clinton's presidential hopes in 2016, he said. But while there may be hatred for Clinton at right-leaning news organizations, Bernstein said, that doesn't mean there is no story there.

He said it would be great if there were a bipartisan effort that could establish all the facts once and for all, but, he added, that will never happen in the current political climate.

Bernstein, who along with fellow Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, tied the Watergate break-in to President Richard Nixon, eventually leading to Nixon's resignation, said he doesn't believe Rice was trying to deliberately mislead with her appearances on the Sunday morning shows after the fatal attack.

But, he added, all documents should have been turned over to Congress, which has a right to see them, when they were first requested.

"And the White House ought to have a much better explanation than [White House spokesman] Jay Carney's double talk has shown so far," he said.

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Tuesday, May 14, 2013

AP Story Is Nuclear: Bernstein

Carl Bernstein: AP Phone Scandal a 'Nuclear Event'

Tuesday, 14 May 2013 10:11 AM

By By David Yonkman, Washington Correspondent

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Investigative reporter Carl Bernstein on Tuesday called the scandal involving the Department of Justice securing telephone records of Associated Press reporters and editors a "nuclear event."

"This is outrageous," Bernstein said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "It is totally inexcusable. This administration has been terrible on this subject from the beginning.

"The object of it is to intimidate people who talk to reporters," he said. "This was an accident waiting to become a nuclear event, and now it's happened."

The AP reported late Monday afternoon that the "Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press."

The organization was not told the reason for the seizure. But the timing and the specific journalistic targets strongly suggest they are related to a continuing government investigation into the leaking of information a year ago about the CIA's disruption of a Yemen-based terrorist plot to bomb an airliner, The New York Times reported.

The development represents the latest collision of news organizations and federal investigators over government efforts to prevent the disclosure of national security information, and it comes against a backdrop of an aggressive policy by the Obama administration to rein in leaks, according to The New York Times.

Under President Barack Obama, six current and former government officials have been indicted in leak-related cases, twice the number brought under all previous administrations combined.

"The numerical thing doesn't matter," said Bernstein, a former Washington Post reporter who, along with Bob Woodward, broke the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon. "What matters is, this is a matter of policy. It is known to the president of the United States that this is the policy. To say that there was no knowledge, in quotes, specifically about this in the White House is nonsense."

"This is a policy matter, and this does go to the president and the people around him," he said. "The idea is to try and make an example of those people who talk to reporters, especially on national security matters. National security is always the false claim of administrations trying to hide things that people ought to know."

That the Justice Department sought records of phone calls made over congressional phone lines could also raise a separation of powers issue between the administration and legislative branches of government.

"The First Amendment is first for a reason," House Speaker John Boehner spokesman Michael Steel tells Newsmax. "If the Obama administration is going after reporters' phone records, they better have a damned good explanation."

© 2013 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

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