Coming soon to a theater near you: the movie Hillary Clinton wishes didn’t exist.
The trailer has just dropped for Michael Bay’s “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi,” based on the book by Mitchell Zuckoff, which in turn is based on the eyewitness reports of five of the six CIA contractors present that night. The sixth, Tyrone Woods, perished in the battle.
Due Jan. 15, “13 Hours” seeks to continue the winning streak of fact-based military movies released in January: Two years ago “Lone Survivor” attracted a huge audience, and this winter “American Sniper” ruled the box office.
“13 Hours,” the book, trained its eye entirely on events on the ground in Benghazi, Libya, on the night of Sept. 11, 2012, when two CIA outposts were attacked by Islamofascist terrorists. It isn’t a political indictment of officials in Washington, and the movie appears to stick close to the style of the book. Unlike other films based on recent history that admit to fudging details for cinematic convenience, “13 Hours” boldly states — at least in its trailer — “this is a true story.”
That story is that four Americans, including a US ambassador, died in an all-night terror attack, receiving no help from anyone in Washington. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton isn’t expected to be a character in the film — but just as she is heading into the first primaries of the 2016 campaign, the nation will be reminded that she was in charge, that the administration in which she served tried to deflect blame onto an offensive anti-Muslim video that supposedly angered the militants, and that during congressional inquiries into the matter, she angrily tried to dismiss the whole thing out of hand, shouting, “What difference, at this point, does it make?”
Attempts to sort out what happened during the confusing and secrecy-shrouded moving firefight in Benghazi are frequently derided as nutty “conspiracy theories,” but there’s no need to dream up any conspiracy — because the plain facts are horrifying enough. Brave Americans died, and Hillary Clinton — who in her 2008 campaign bragged of being the candidate with the wisdom and experience to take a dire 3 a.m. phone call — stayed out of it.
The book, a note explains, “is not about what officials in the United States government knew, said or did after the attack, or about the ongoing controversy over talking points, electoral politics, and alleged conspiracies and coverups.”
But Hillary Clinton wants everyone to shut up about the basic intelligence and security failure that was Benghazi, and that it was all, ultimately, her responsibility. “13 Hours” means Benghazi isn’t going to go away.