So why in the world is Panetta so freely disassociating Obama from the night of Sept 11? It seems quite damaging to the President and the story he’s presented so far on his involvement with Benghazi. Glenn’s theory is that another hammer is about to drop - something even worse - that the President needs cover from. What news is coming?
"Let's just play this out. At first nobody knew anything. We were getting information as quickly as we can, right?" Glenn said.
"And I said at the time: Why are there no pictures like there was with Bin Laden? Why are there no pictures of the situation room? The Secretary of Defense, while it's going on, we have drones up in the sky. It's easy to deploy a drone. You know we had drones up in the sky of Libya at this time. It goes ‑‑ it's beyond reason to think we didn't."
"So the State Department originally said 'I'm watching on a monitor realtime.' It is beyond reason to think that this nation on September 11th in the greatest hot spot in the world, that we don't have ‑‑ especially after all the threats that we now know came in, that we don't have a drone somewhere in the area. We know we have open lines of communication for realtime information. We know that former Navy SEALs were in the area and they were told to stand down, but they heard about it. They went and joined the fight. They lost their lives. But they went on their own accord are. So we know that people knew what was going on, and we were told that the president was engaged and the president, you know, just didn't have the information fast enough."
"Then we're told, when we say ask ‑ where was (Obama)? Where was he? Can we find out, what was the timetable? Can we give ‑‑ you know where the president is at all times."
"There is a record of where the president is at all times. Can I tell you something? When I am ‑‑ when I am driving, I have a security detail. And when I'm driving ‑‑ I'm not the president of the United States. When I'm driving, there are certain checkpoints, and the guys look down at their cellphone and they push a button and it says, checkpoint 1, checkpoint 2. So I think there's like five of them between here and my house. That is communicated to the other security detail that's not with me and to the security headquarters in Los Angeles. And so they are caught ‑‑ they know when I leave and they know if you don't hit that checkpoint from this time to this time, call. Because there's a problem. Okay. That's my security detail. So you know the president of the United States, you know exactly where he is within six feet at any given time, and there's record of it."
"Well, they don't know where he is. They don't know where the president is."
"Then they send out pictures to show that he's engaged, having meetings: This is where the president was on September 11th. Remember the pictures that came out, make him look very presidential? He's meeting with the generals and Panetta and everything else. Okay. To make us feel like he was engaged and watching everything."
"Now Panetta comes out and says, 'Oh, well, that's just from a meeting. We met with him for just a few minutes and we told him and he said, well, you guys handle it.' I don't even believe that's constitutional. Do you? Do you have a ‑‑ I don't even know if that's constitutional. 'You guys handle it.' He didn't even ask what assets we have. Nothing. 'You guys do it.' And then they left him alone from 5:30 for the rest of the night. And he doesn't check in."
"Why would they now make the president look like he wasn't engaged at all, that he wasn't a part of this?"
"Remember the president wants to be viewed as a guy who killed Osama Bin Laden. So why would you do that? Why would you make it look like he doesn't ‑‑ had nothing to do with it?"
"Okay. Here's why: Because as bad as that is, we'll play some audio for you here in a minute from Rand Paul. Rand Paul is the first guy that I have heard in the public eye that has said, yes, they were running drugs ‑‑ or guns. I told you that Week 1 when this happened: They're running guns. Those guns that had just suddenly disappeared and all those weapons of mass destruction, they suddenly disappeared, we were running guns. Later the New York Times reports that, yes, and they found a captain of a ship that was running those guns, and we were part of it."
"So here's what happened. This is why this testimony came out yesterday. What is on the horizon about what that ambassador was doing and what our response was is so much worse than the president being involved. So they know that the president is going to get heat and people are going to say, 'You weren't involved at all' So when the real story comes out, he can say, 'Oh, my gosh.'"
"'I should have been involved. That's why they kept me at arm's‑length. That's why they told me that they could take care of it and they wanted me out of it. I had nothing to do with this at all.'"
"This is to protect the president from some ‑‑ from another shoe that's going to fall, and that shoe is going to be bad. And hear me now: This president was involved. He knew. And they are protecting him right now. Do not believe the cover. Because that's all Panetta's was yesterday was a coverup, to distance the president from what is going to be exposed in the future."