Frank Gaffney and Jerry Boykin Speculate Wildly about Benghazi and Petraeus' Resignation

Kevin Drum of Mother Jones today wonders how the right-wing speculation of a Benghazi cover-up makes even “a lick of sense,” and so he may want to hear what conspiracy theorists and conservative activists Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy and Jerry Boykin of the Family Research Council have to say. The two were leading authors of the 2010 “Team B II Report: Sharia: the Threat to America” [PDF], about how the implementation of Sharia law in the U.S. due to high-level Islamist infiltration is imminent, if not already occurring, and are now pushing claims that the Benghazi incident was all part of a pro-Sharia scheme to limit free speech in the U.S. and even aid terrorists.

Gaffney argued in the Washington Times that the initial reaction to the Benghazi attack proves that the State Department is “committed to the Shariah blasphemy agenda” and in an interview with Sandy Rios of the American Family Association, he maintained that the Obama administration wanted to cover up “secret arm shipments” to Al Qaeda. Of course he began his inflammatory remarks by stating, “I don’t know the truth just yet.”

I don’t know the truth just yet but I will tell you this, I believe what Chris Stevens was doing there was known to be an exceedingly dangerous thing to do and that he did so without adequate regard for the safety of either himself or the people with him. And he did it I think for a compelling reason, and that is that they were trying to figure out how to do damage-limitation on the cover being blown on secret arms shipments that he was facilitating to the so-called opposition in Syria which includes we know, Al Qaeda.

Meanwhile, Boykin told Lee Webb of Christian Broadcasting Network’s NewsWatch, who asked if David Petraeus was “actually blackmailed” by the Obama administration, that Petraeus was “held hostage” by the administration and resigned as the head of the CIA because “he reached a point where he was unwilling to continue spouting the party line [on Benghazi] to the American public and continuing to breach his own integrity.”

Does Boykin know this for sure? Nope. Like Gaffney, Boykin preceded his wild speculation by noting, “I certainly don’t have any insider information” about the scandal surrounding Petraeus, who while speaking to CNN said that “this has nothing to do with Benghazi.”

Boykin also alleged that the government was “trying to cover up” a scheme in Benghazi to “funnel weapons and material to Syrian rebels”…before adding, “now, I don’t know that that’s the case.”