Posted March 10, 2019 06:27:10The FBI is investigating whether Clinton’s senior aides knew about the September 11 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, before the U.S. Ambassador to Libya was killed and the U,S.
ambassador to Libya left in protest, according to three people familiar with the matter.
The bureau is examining the security and logistics of the attack, which killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.
The investigation, which was first reported by The Washington Post, is one of the bureau’s most high-profile investigations since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The bureau has been criticized for failing to take a firmer stance against Clinton.
In one of those conversations, which were shared with the Post, the State Department’s chief of staff, Bryan Pagliano, discussed whether the agency had information about the Benghazi attack before it occurred, according the three people.
One of those people, a former State Department official, said the discussion came after Paglio asked why the U of M had not asked about the attack and how long it would take to investigate it.
In another conversation, a senior State Department security official, David Plouffe, raised the possibility of asking the UMC for assistance and asked if the attack could be covered by a “national security waiver” that allows a terrorist attack to be covered if it involves a U.M. employee, according one of two people familiar at the time.
Both Plouffes conversations with Pagliani and Plouffer have since been reviewed by the FBI.
In both cases, the discussions were later shared with investigators.
The FBI, which has been investigating the attack for months, declined to comment.
Ploufe said in a statement to The Post that his conversation with Pagliiani was about a request for assistance, and he said it was “never intended to be a threat.”
Pagliano and PlOUffes discussions, first reported in the Washington Post on Friday, came after a report by The New York Times in March that revealed how Clinton’s team was planning a public relations campaign to downplay the Benghazi attacks.
In a draft of her Benghazi speech in March, Clinton said that she “was not aware of a specific attack” before the attack occurred.
In the same speech, Clinton also claimed she was unaware that a UMC employee, Tyrone Woods, had been “harassing” protesters during the protest.
Woods was sentenced in 2015 to 20 years in prison for violating a federal law that bars Americans from using the UMSF for political purposes.
The two people said the conversations between Paglios staff and Ploufses about the attacks occurred in early January, before news of the Benghazi investigations broke.
In a follow-up email to The New Yorker, a State Department spokesman, Matt Lloyd, confirmed the conversations with reporters and said, “There is no evidence that any specific request for information was made.”
The conversations, in which Paglials staffers discussed the Benghazi investigation with their colleagues at the State and Defense Departments, were among the first reports of a potential investigation by the bureau into the matter that was never confirmed.
The Post reported in March 2016 that the FBI was investigating whether State Department officials knew about Clinton’s plan to use the State-run U.N. Mission in Benghazi to pressure the UMI to allow a demonstration of the Muslim Brotherhood to take place.
That investigation has since been broadened to include all the people involved in the planning and execution of the assault, including Clinton, who was Secretary of State at the same time.FBI Director Christopher Wray, who has led the bureau for nearly two years, was appointed by President Donald Trump in January to lead the bureau, but he has not publicly responded to the Clinton-related probes.
