Giuliani: Benghazi smelled like a cover-up from day one

This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," May 9, 2013. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

SEAN HANNITY, HOST: Tonight, the shock wave from Wednesday's Benghazi whistle-blower hearing are still reverberating through the Obama administration, thanks to the testimony of three brave state carrier department officials. Now, we are finally beginning to learn the truth about what happened that tragic day that four Americans were brutally murdered in Libya.

Now, in addition, it's becoming more and more obvious that following the attack, the president and his aides deliberately ignored the facts and instead chose to write their own narrative about that deadly night. And after reviewing what was said on Capitol Hill yesterday, it's clear that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton played a very key role in what I believe was an administration-wide national security cover-up.

Now remember, according to the whistle-blowers, she is to blame for not only sending Ambassador Stevens to the unsafe city of Benghazi, but also for the poor security conditions at the consulate. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JAMES PAUL LANKFORD, R-OLKA.: Mr. Nordstrom, who has the authority to place personnel on the facility that does not meet the minimum OSPB standards?

ERIC NORDSTROM, WHISTLE-BLOWER: It's my understanding that since we were the sole occupants of both of those facilities, Benghazi and Tripoli, the only person who could grant waivers or exceptions to those was the secretary of state.

LANKFORD: Mr. Hicks, why was ambassador Stevens headed to Benghazi? There were a lot of concerns about him. There were lots of security issues that Mr. Nordstrom has listed in numerous reports leading up to his trip there. Why was the ambassador headed there?

GREGORY HICKS, FORMER DEPUTY CHIEF OF MISSION IN LIBYA: According to Chris, Secretary Clinton wanted Benghazi converted into a permanent constituent post.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: Now, you just heard about two of the very costly missteps made by Secretary Clinton before Benghazi. But her actions following the assault are also very troubling. Now you may recall that she repeatedly blamed a YouTube trailer for the attack and even authorized the release of a taxpayer-funded PSA apologizing for the video, and that was in Pakistan.

Now, sadly all of this is merely the tip of a very large iceberg when it comes to Hillary Clinton's culpability. In other words, Benghazi is her new whitewater. It is the scandal that threatens her political future. And what happens when the Clintons' backs are against the wall? Will they come out swinging and they throw whoever they have to throw under the bus so that they survive. And that includes Barack Obama.

And with 2016, fast approaching and Benghazi quickly becoming her biggest liability, now the president may just want to keep his guard up, just a thought.

Here with more on that, reaction to yesterday's explosive testimony, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Mr. Mayor, how are you?

RUDY GIULIANI, FORMER NEW YORK CITY MAYOR: How are you, Sean? Good to see you.

HANNITY: All right. Let me start with what's missing here. And then we'll get to the politics of it all. We don't know who denied the requested security before. We don't know who gave two stand-down orders while the attack was going on. We don't know who altered the talking points after that were correct into what was a big lie.

So this, to me, this opened up a can of worms yesterday more than anything else.

GIULIANI: Well, I mean, basically what you are saying is, we don't know what happened before, during or after.

HANNITY: Right.

GIULIANI: It's all completely shrouded in a lot of misstatements, a lot of confusion, a lot of obfuscation, a lot of back and forth. And the reality is completely, and I said this I think on your show three days after, four days after, I think it smelled to me like a cover-up from day one. I mean, the minute Susan Rice did that, it was spontaneous when we are talking about rocket launches and hand-held grenades. And gosh almighty, this wasn't even to the eye of an outside observer spontaneous. Now it's obvious that on the inside --

HANNITY: That's unrealistic. You mean, you don't think a spontaneous rally that they just happened to have a rocket propelled grenade in their back pocket back then?

GIULIANI: It sounded weird to me and you back then, it sound like they're covering something up. Now we know that were covering it up. They knew from day one, minute one it was a terrorist attack.

I do not understand how they didn't supply more security for a place that already had been bombed. I would like to know when that -- when that mission was bombed and a hole was drilled right through the wall, was she notified? Was the president notified? And if they were notified, we still don't know if they were or weren't, what did they do about it? And if they weren't notified, we still know if they were or weren't, what did they do about it? And if they weren't notified, what are we paying them for? I mean, what the heck are they doing if they don't find out that a critical country, one of our missions, there's a hole drilled right through the wall. This is three months before the attack. So, we don't have the answer to that.

Here's the thing that bothers me about the so-called rescue effort, the protestations, they didn't have enough time to get assets there. You tell me how they knew how long that hostage situation was going to take.

HANNITY: It didn't.

GIULIANI: I mean, how would you know? I've dealt with hostage situations. You ask me to put assets there, how do I know if it's going to be one hour, five hours, 10 hours, or five days? The last big hostage situation we had lasted for 400 days.

HANNITY: Well, let me ask you this because some have said that the best, instead of having five separate committees, why not a special investigative committee that John Boehner can form into this where they have subpoenaed power, witnesses under oath, interrogatories by the president?

GIULIANI: I think if this were a Republican president, you now would have Republican support along with the Democrats to do a select committee. The problem with this is the Democrats are the ones who have made this partisan.

These are answers we need not for political reasons, these are answers we need in order to prevent something like this happening again in the future. If we can't find out why this happened -- I think one of the things Secretary Clinton said when she testified was, you know, it happened a while ago and why are we so concerned about it? One of the reasons we are so concerned about it is to prevent this from happening in the future.

HANNITY: You are a prosecutor, is there any doubt what the motivation is, why they altered these talking points when --

(TALKING OVER EACH OTHER)

GIULIANI: It was clear. Absolutely. The whole scenario was Barack Obama had defeated Al Qaeda, that's how he played the killing of Bin Laden. He had destroyed Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda was on the run, he made the right decisions, he would argue, in Egypt, in Libya. All of a sudden, this proves that maybe that was wrong, and maybe it was wrong big time. And they weren't going to allow that scenario to come out before the election. I think it was crystal clear that's what was going on. You would have to be a fool not to figure that out.

HANNITY: You know, the RNC out of Benghazi had it created but never run during the 2012 campaign. Let's run this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GRAPHIC: Remember this ad?

ANNOUNCER: It's 3:00 a.m. and your children are safe in the city. But there's a phone in the White House and it's ringing. Something is happening in the world.

(PHONE RINGING)

GRAPHIC: The call came on September 11, 2012. Security requests denied. Four Americans dead. An administration whose story is still changing.

(BUSY SIGNAL)

GRAPHIC: The call came. Americans deserve answers.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: All right. Now, some people will say on the left that, well, we just had the hearings. That's not true. All we know now is security was denied that was requested.

GIULIANI: Right.

HANNITY: We don't know who gave the stand-down orders. We don't know why they altered the talking points from the truth to a lie.

GIULIANI: Absolutely right.

HANNITY: And we don't know why the president wasn't even curious. He went to bed and got up when campaigning --

GIULIANI: We really don't know what the president did. And that's also clouded in mystery. And two few questions actually, both of these hearings and the prior ones about the president. He's the commander-in- chief.

HANNITY: Yes.

GIULIANI: If I were in that position or somebody else would be on that position, you would be on top of this and you wouldn't go to sleep.

HANNITY: Let me ask you this, does this divide potentially in the end a little finger pointing? Let me go back. The relationship with the Clintons and Barack Obama was not perfect. Let me just remind you two instances and ask you if this could potentially explode. Because we had Hillary shouting, if you remember, shame on you Barack Obama, and then Bill Clinton was very angry when they said that they had played the race card on him.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

THEN-SENATOR HILLARY CLINTON, FEB. 23, 2008: So, shame on you, Barack Obama. It is time you ran a campaign consistent with your messages in public. That's what I expect from you, meet me in Ohio, let's have a debate about your tactics and your behavior in this campaign.

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

FORMER PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON, JUNE 21, 2008: I think that they played the race card on me. And we now know from memos from the campaign and everything, that they planned to do it all along.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: I never felt that they were really ever friendly. I think they coexisted. I think that this was the team of rivals that Obama set up to kind of prevent maybe a challenge in 2012.

GIULIANI: I mean, there's a conflict here. Right?

HANNITY: Yes.

GIULIANI: There were numerous requests for more security for that mission. Denied. In fact, some of the security was reduced. Now, did she make that decision? If she did, she's going to have to live with it and that's going to be a real liability. Or did she make recommendations to the president for more security and the president turned it down?

HANNITY: Yes.

GIULIANI: Now, I don't know what the answer to that is but there is an answer to it and the answer will determine who is more culpable for this. So, ultimately I think this sets up a conflict between the two of them.

HANNITY: I think you are right. That's why I played it. Mr. Mayor, thanks for your insight.

GIULIANI: Thank you.

HANNITY: We need answers to this because, you know, what? The families deserve answers.

GIULIANI: Somebody made the ultimate decision here and we have a right to know which one it was.

HANNITY: And who lied, too. Every American was lied to. I want to know who made that decision.

GIULIANI: Absolutely right.

HANNITY: Good to see you. Thank you for being with us.

GIULIANI: Take care.

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