An anonymous source has been driving much of the Fox News narrative on Benghazi, contradicting the accounts of both the Obama Administration and independent findings about the attack. Recently, two experts in the online magazine Foreign Policy have slammed the Fox source as being unreliable.
The Fox show Special Report has run numerous stories highlighting the anonymous source who claims to have firsthand knowledge of the attacks, with one segment quoting the source as saying that the Obama administration had the ability to send aid to the victims, but chose to hold them back — which was refuted not only by the State Department, but by the independent Accountability Review Board.
Posting in Foreign Policy magazine, national security journalist Tom Ricks pointed to experts who strongly questioned Fox’s Benghazi source, and quoted Retired Special Forces Col. David Maxwell as saying, “Whistle-blower my a**. If this guy is a real special operator (and I have my doubts), I wonder if he realizes what an embarrassment he is to the community. What he offers is pure speculation and not based on any real facts as I have heard and appears to be coming from his fourth point of contact. He comes across as just another conspiracy theorist who is taking Fox News for a ride.”
In a separate piece in Foreign Policy, U.S. Marine Corps officer and special operations team leader Billy Birdzell refers to Fox’s anonymous source as “a clown” and slammed the media for “not using Google” before featuring him. Birdzell went on to explained how forces in the area could not have reached the victims of the attack in time to save them.
In November of last year, Ricks made some waves with an appearance on Fox News where he said that Fox was acting as a “wing of the Republican party” with their over-hyped reporting on the Benghazi attacks.
Watch the Fox News segment from November 2012 in the video below.
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