Columns

Crowley owes an apology

Angel Castillo Jr.
Published: October 19, 2012

It is not often that you can demonstrate factually that a pro-Obama member of the national media has publicly shown bias while trying to help the president get re-elected. Tuesday night's presidential debate provided such an opportunity.

I am referring to CNN's Washington-based chief political correspondent, Candy Crowley, the moderator for the second nationally televised debate between President Barack Obama and his GOP rival Mitt Romney.

Crowley, 63, pre-emptorily supported Obama's blatant lie that he had labeled the brutal attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, as a terrorist attack the very next day. While doing so, she "corrected" Romney, who had stated — truthfully — that Obama had waited a long time before acknowledging the true terrorist nature of the attack.

As everyone knows by now, last month, on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, a heavily armed group of terrorists attacked the under-protected U.S. diplomatic building in Benghazi. The American ambassador to Libya, Christopher J. Stevens, and three other Americans were killed.

The Obama Administration, which had refused repeated requests to beef up security in Benghazi, immediately tried to contend that the attack was a "spontaneous protest" related to the infamous anti-Islam video "Innocence of Muslims."

The reason for the administration's knowingly false statements was political. Admitting that a successful terrorist attack against a U.S. facility had taken place in Benghazi would contradict the Obama re-election campaign's false narrative that the president has successfully decimated Al-Qaida and its affiliates.

Romney said of the Benghazi attack that "It was a terrorist attack and it took a long time for that to be told to the American people."

Crowley, who interrupted Romney 28 times and Obama 9, interrupted Romney at that time and asked Obama to respond.

The president then said, "The day after the attack … I stood in the Rose Garden and I told the American people … that this was an act of terror."

CROWLEY: It — it — it — he did in fact, sir. So let me — let me call it an act of terror …

OBAMA: Can you say that a little louder, Candy?

CROWLEY: He — he did call it an act of terror.

Obama's five-and-a-half minute Rose Garden statement on Sept. 12 is available online at whitehouse.gov.

The only time the president used the word "terror" that day was when he was discussing the commemoration of the events of Sept. 11, 2001. "No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for," he said.

In short, Obama flat out lied during the debate. Romney was 100 percent right, and Crowley told the millions of viewers watching that it was the other way around.

Of course, whether Crowley was an honest and impartial moderator may depend on what the meaning of "terror" is. Or of "truth."

Angel Castillo, Jr., a former reporter and editor for the New York Times and The Miami Herald, practices employment law in Miami. He can be reached at acastillo@floridavoices.com.