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 Benghazi whistle-blower Hicks: Internal review 
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Post Benghazi whistle-blower Hicks: Internal review
Quote:
Benghazi whistle-blower Hicks: Internal review 'let people off the hook'

Greg Hicks, former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, Libya, told congressional investigators that the State Department internal review of the catastrophe at the mission in Benghazi "let people off the hook," CNN has learned.

The Accountability Review Board "report itself doesn’t really ascribe blame to any individual at all. The public report anyway," Hicks told investigators, according to transcript excerpts obtained by CNN. "It does let people off the hook."

The board's report on the Benghazi attack, in which Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed in September, is being reviewed by the State Department's Office of Inspector General.

Rep. Darrell Issa, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said Sunday on CBS that Hicks will testify Wednesday in a congressional hearing on the deadly attack in Benghazi.

"In our system, people who make decisions have been confirmed by the Senate to make decisions," Hicks told investigators."The three people in the State Department who are on administrative leave pending disciplinary action are below Senate confirmation level. Now, the DS (Diplomatic Security) assistant secretary resigned, and he is at Senate confirmation level. Yet the paper trail is pretty clear that decisions were being made above his level.

Whom might Hicks be referring to? He specifically mentions Under Secretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy.

"Certainly the fact that Under Secretary Kennedy required a daily report of the personnel in country and who personally approved every official American who went to Tripoli or Benghazi, either on assignment or TDY (temporary duty), would suggest some responsibility about security levels within the country lies on his desk," Hicks said.


snip

Read more here: http://thelead.blogs.cnn.com/2013/05/05/benghazi-whistle-blower-hicks-internal-review-let-people-off-the-hook/

And just who is Under Secretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy? From Wikipedia:

Quote:
Patrick F. Kennedy is a career foreign service officer, currently U.S. State Department's Under Secretary of State for Management. He was Director of the Office of Management Policy, Rightsizing and Innovation. He has been Deputy Director for Management at the cabinet level Office of the Director of National Intelligence; he returned to the Department of State on May 7, 2007.

Kennedy was U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations for Management and Reform and previously served as Chief of Staff for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. He was the Assistant Secretary of State for the Clinton Administration from 1993 to 2001.

Kennedy holds a B.S.F.S. degree from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University.

During the U.S. Presidential election, 2008 Patrick F. Kennedy ordered State Department employees in Europe be barred from attending Sen. Barack Obama's speech in Berlin on July 24, 2008 to ensure they displayed political neutrality. Kennedy labeled Obama's visit as a partisan political activity and he forbade employees from attending.

Career

Under Secretary of State for Management, U.S. Department of State, Washington, November 6, 2007 to present
Director, Office of Management Policy, Rightsizing, and Innovation, U.S. Department of State, Washington, May 2007 to November 2007
Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Management, Office of the Director for National Intelligence, Washington, April 2005 to May 2007
Chief of Staff, Transition Unit, Baghdad, Iraq, May 2004 to August 2004
Chief of Staff, Coalition Provisional Authority, Baghdad, Iraq, May 2003 to November 2003

U.S. Representative to the United Nations for Management and Reform (with the Rank of Ambassador), United Nations, September 2001 to May 2005
Coordinator for Reorganization of the Foreign Affairs Agencies, U.S. Department of State, Washington, 1997–2001
Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security, U.S. Department of State, Washington, 1998
Acting Under Secretary of State for Management, U.S. Department of State, Washington, 1996–1997
Assistant Secretary of State for Administration, U.S. Department of State, Washington, 1993–2001
Administrate Counselor, U.S. Embassy, Cairo, 1991–93
Executive Director and Deputy Executive Secretary, U.S. Department of State, Washington, 1985–90
Supervisory General Services Officer, U.S. Embassy, Paris, 1981–1985
Special Assistant to the Under Secretary for Management, U.S. Department of State, Washington, 1977–81
Personnel Officer, Bureau of African Affairs, U.S. Department of State, 1975–76
Regional Administrative Officer, Foreign Service, 1973–74
Member, Foreign Service, 1973.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_F._Kennedy

Quote:
State Dept. Finds Breaches of Obama’s File

By HELENE COOPER
Published: March 21, 2008

WASHINGTON — The State Department has fired two employees and reprimanded a third for improperly opening electronic information from the passport file of Senator Barack Obama, State Department officials said Thursday.

On three separate occasions in January, February and March, three employees looked through Mr. Obama’s file in the department’s consular affairs section, violating department’s privacy rules, the State Department spokesman, Sean D. McCormack, said. Mr. McCormack said the department’s internal controls flagged the breach, which he attributed to “imprudent curiosity.”

State Department officials said that they had no idea why the employees broke into Mr. Obama’s files. The department is continuing to investigate, Mr. McCormack said.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was told of the security breach, which was first reported in The Washington Times on Thursday evening. Mr. McCormack said security measures used to monitor records of high-profile people like Mr. Obama worked properly in the three instances to alert department officials of the breaches.

“This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years,” said Bill Burton, an Obama campaign spokesman.

Patrick F. Kennedy, the under secretary of state for management, said that he and other top officials at the State Department found out about the breach Thursday afternoon, after Mr. McCormack received a telephone query from a reporter.

“I will fully acknowledge that this information should have been passed up the line,” Mr. Kennedy told reporters Thursday night in a hastily called teleconference. “We have a sophisticated computer tracking system that looks at this when it sees anything that’s inappropriate. But, I will admit, they failed to pass the information up the chain to a sufficiently high level.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/21/us/politics/21passport.html?fta=y&_r=0

Did this man, again, "fail to pass the information up the chain to a sufficiently high level" and, thus, cost an ambassador his life and embarrass a President? A President with whom he obviously had issues in the past?

Am I just jumping to conclusions here?
:hmm

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Sun May 05, 2013 12:46 pm
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