Gingrich: The White House is playing games with us

Former presidential candidate on Benghazi Consulate attack

This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," October 31, 2012. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

SEAN HANNITY, HOST OF "HANNITY": Welcome back to "Hannity"; Now in a moment, I will be joined by former speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, who says that he may have information on secret White House e-mails about the Benghazi cover-up.

But first the administration in a desperate attempt to make Obama appear presidential released a photo of him in the situation room during Hurricane Sandy.

Now you may recall they did the very same thing in the aftermath of the raid that got Usama bin Laden. But here's my question, where is the picture of the president sitting in the situation room during the Benghazi terror attack.

Now you want to know why the White House has not released that photo. Well, probably because it looks like this, empty, they don't want us to know what the president was up to as this assault was taking place. In other words, like everything else, they've been trying to cover it up.

Because as we now know the night of the attack, the president was not focused on Libya, he was getting ready for this, a campaign trip to good old Las Vegas instead of staying in Washington and getting to the bottom of the terrorist attack.

And we are also learning tonight courtesy of our own Catherine Herridge that according to our classified cable reviewed by Fox News, the U.S. mission in Benghazi warned the State Department back in mid-August less than a month before the assault that killed Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans that Al Qaeda had training camps in Benghazi and the consulate could not defend against a coordinated attack.

Joining me now with reaction, former speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich. So let's see they spiked the football again and again with bin Laden. They are out there, photo op galore today as the president goes out there with Hurricane Sandy. I'm fine with it.

But where is the picture of the situation room when they had literally real-time video of our consulate being attacked and Americans being murdered? Where is that video?

NEWT GINGRICH (R), FORMER SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: Well, this whole thing gets stranger and stranger. You know, we're not asking what was Al Qaeda doing, we're not asking what the various gangs in Benghazi doing. We're asking about the American government what it was doing.

Now you would think they have pretty good records about where the president was, where the national security advisor was, where the secretary of defense was, where the chairman of the Joint Chiefs was.

I mean, none of these things ought to be very hard to put together. And yet seven weeks after Americans were murdered in Benghazi we cannot get the truth out this administration.

Their answer today to the suggestion, which I’d been given by a United States senator that there may will be some e-mails from the security advisors office that closed down an effort to help. Their answer was very narrowly worded.

HANNITY: I have it. I can put it up on the screen as long as you're talking about it and what it specifically says. Neither the president nor anyone in the White House denied any request for assistance in Benghazi during the attack.

GINGRICH: Right. Now first of all, clearly people in Benghazi asking for assistance so what does that mean? Does it mean it was cut of somewhere? That the president although he is commander in chief did not know that they were asking for assistance?

It's very clear if you look at the reports we now have that the SEALs, the former SEALs who stayed to defend the ambassador and defend consulate, they fought until they were killed at 4:00 in the morning that there was going to be C-130 gunship overhead.

Because they were using a laser designator to target the mortars and they apparently thought there was going to be an airplane overhead to take out those mortars. So they thought help was on the way.

And in fact, from Tripoli -- it’s almost -- I don’t know what the right word. It is so sad, Sean. The people in Tripoli on their own put together six American contractors, 16 Libyan contractors, they fly in to Benghazi trying desperately to bring help.

Meanwhile, right across the Mediterranean, there is a Marine combat unit. There are C-130s. There are F-18 fighter airplanes. A little further to the east, in Turkey, there is fighter aircraft available. None of this is mobilized.

And the White House is playing games with us. Who was in charge? Who did the president say should take care of this? Did they want to in fact rescue the ambassador and the people who were being killed with him? Why wasn't anything done for seven hours.

I mean, we now have seven weeks of refusal to explain seven hours. I find it very mystifying.

HANNITY: Well, there are three aspects to this from my perspective, before during and after the ambassador requested extra security. He was denied. They reduced the force at one point so who made that decision?

Then it's during this entire episode, we know that according to Charlene Lamb, our government, our State Department was watching this in real-time. Where was president? The intelligence community knew within hours this was a terror attack.

We have audio that actually caused a Navy SEAL, Ty Woods, to disobey an order to stand down, risk his military career and his life and gave his life seven hours later fighting. He did rescue people.

So during this whole thing, they're all requesting, there is an audiotape of the consulate begging for help that caused this Navy SEAL to act after being told to stand down. Now, apparently these tapes exist according to my sources. Does the White House have an obligation to release them?

GINGRICH: Look, I think the president owes every American on Friday or Saturday at the latest a press conference where they lay out their case. Tell us the truth. They -- we're not asking you to say everything worked perfectly.

We're not going to blame you if some things that were terrible happened, but the American people deserve to know the truth. You may remember that in testimony, the man who was in charge of security in the region actually said at one point speaking at a congressional hearing that he felt Al Qaeda was in the building, meaning the State Department.

He felt that his enemies -- he had greater problems getting help out of the State Department that he felt like he had a threat from Al Qaeda. He could not get the people -- he cited one phone conversation that must have been horrific where he and this guy were arguing about whether or not Americans ought to be protected. The guy said to him don't even make the request. It's not going to be honored. That by the way on the record by somebody who is employed by the U.S. government.

HANNITY: What did the president know? When did he know it? Did he leave to Vegas on that night of knowing that the country had just been a victim of a terror attack considering this is American -- considered American sovereignty here?

All right, we got to take a break. We will talk more with Newt Gingrich right after this.

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