The mother of one of the victims of the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Wednesday that she is still waiting for an official explanation from the Obama White House on how her son died.
“Officially, yes,” Patricia Smith told Cooper on his “360” program in response to a question on if she is still waiting for an explanation of how her son, Sean Smith, an information manager at the consulate, died in the attacks.
U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and two other Americans also were killed in the assault.
“I ask them: ‘Please don’t give me any baloney that comes through with this political stuff. I don’t want the political stuff. You can keep the political stuff. Just tell me the truth. What happened?' And I still don’t know,” Patricia Smith said.
Sean Smith was a 10-year veteran of the Foreign Service who also had served in Iraq, South Africa, Canada and the Netherlands. He also was an Air Force veteran with a wife, a son and a daughter.
On the program, Patricia Smith said Sean, her only child, had gone into the Air Force at 17.
Throughout the interview, Smith appeared frustrated, exasperated and furious that she has heard nothing from the Obama administration about her son’s death since what she was told at a reception after a memorial service for the victims of the Benghazi attacks.
She said White House officials promised at the event that they would keep her informed on her son’s death.
“They all came up and talked to me,” Smith told Cooper. “I cried on Obama’s shoulder. He just looked off in the distance. That was worthless to me.
“Leon Panetta took my face in his hands and told me, 'We're going to get to the bottom of this,'" referring to the Secretary of Defense.
“That Susan Rice, she talked to me personally, and she said: ‘This is the way it was. It was because of this film that came out,’ ” Smith told Cooper.
In the days immediately following the attacks, Rice, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, told all of the Sunday talk shows that the attacks stemmed from the video of a film that was made by a California real estate developer that Muslims found offensive.
The administration has since said that the assault was a terrorist attack carried out by al-Qaida-linked militants.
“And, today,” Smith told Cooper, “I just heard that he died of smoke inhalation. I don’t know if that’s true or not.”
“You don’t know the cause of death?” Cooper asked.
“No, I don’t,” Patricia Smith responded.
She added: “I look at TV, and I see bloody handprints on walls thinking, ‘My God. Is that my son’s? I don’t know if he’s been shot. I don’t know. I don’t know. They haven’t told me anything,” she continued. “They’re still studying it – and the things they are telling me are just outright lies.”
She said she told Obama at the reception that the attack was his fault.
“I told him: ‘You screwed up. You didn’t do a good job. I lost my son.’”
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Read more on Newsmax.com: Libya Victim's Mother to Obama: 'You Didn't Do Your Job'
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