A big effort is underway to let former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (in particular, we surmise, since Democrats want her to be their 2016 presidential candidate), and President Obama, and former US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice off the hook for lying about the Obama terrorist attack that killed the US Ambassador to Libya and three other Americans on 9/11/12.

The New York Times has done its bit with an “in depth” investigation. It tries, first, to make critics of the Banghazi fiasco seem to have lied by suggesting that they blamed al-Qaeda, and the NYT finding is that “al-Qaeda was not involved”. But al-Qaeda affiliates were involved. And in any case the involvement of al-Qaeda was not the most vital point in the case against the administration, above all the State Department, for their mishandling of the whole tragic affair.

More urgently the NYT claims that no lie was told by Hillary Clinton, Obama and Rice because the obscure video they blamed for provoking a “spontaneous” attack by sadly hurt Libyans was the cause of the onslaught. If the attackers are suddenly telling that story now to the NYT, which clearly wanted to elicit that answer, how likely is it they are telling the truth?

Here is a discussion of the issue on NBC news.