Benghazi's back, baby! Not only that, it's the big story on the front page of FoxNews.com as I write this. But don't expect any serious reporting beyond Catherine Herridge's dutiful transcription of accusations and opinions from guys with an axe to grind.

Herridge’s “assignment editor” on this latest bit of Benghazi propaganda seems to have been Breitbart. Either that, or it’s quite a coincidence that Steve Bannon’s latest home came up with a similar story shortly before Fox did.

The gist of both stories is that The Obama/Clinton State Department awarded the Benghazi security contract to a small, incompetent firm, Blue Mountain Group, rather than to the larger, more experienced Torres Advanced Enterprise Solutions. Shortly before the attacks on Benghazi, the State Department moved to replace Blue Mountain with Torres but the attack occurred before that could be effectuated.

Herridge displayed a shocking lack of curiosity about why Torres lost out to Blue Mountain on Behghazi

Fox was correct in questioning the State Department’s award of the contract to Blue Mountain Group.

But instead of investigating why that happened, Herridge, touted as an “award-winning Chief Intelligence correspondent" and the lead reporter on this “exclusive,” seems to have confined her reporting to transcribing Jerry Torres’ side of the story and attempting to contact Blue Mountain and the State Department for a response.

From Herridge’s report:

In the chaotic days following that attack, the Obama White House blamed the attacks on an anti-Islam video and demonstration which was not accurate. As a former Green Beret, Torres was stunned: “Coming from a military background, I would expect the administration to tell the truth. So I bought into it for a minute. But I didn’t believe it in the back of my mind.” He said they later figured out the video was not the culprit. The attack was a coordinated terrorist assault which included a precision mortar strike on the CIA post in Benghazi.

That, alone, ought to raise suspicions about both Torres and Herridge. They deliberately suggested the Obama administration lied about the video causing the attack. In reality, early intelligence reports said the video inspired and later reports found the video played a significant role.

But while Herridge thought it important to tell us the Obama administration had misspoken about the anti-Islamic video’s role in the Benghazi attacks, she seemed happy to present Torres’ accusations about State Department officer Jan Visintainer as probable truth, without question:

“[Visintainer] said that I and people from Torres should not speak to the media, should not speak to any officials with respect to the Benghazi program,” [Torres] said.

Torres said he was afraid for his company – and hasn’t spoken publicly until now.

[…]

Another part of that conversation stuck out to Torres. He said Visintainer told him “in her opinion, that guards should not be armed at U.S. embassies. She just made that blanket statement. … And she said that they weren’t required in Benghazi. So I was kind of confused about that. And she said that she would like my support in saying that if that came up. And I looked at her. I just didn’t respond.”

Herridge also dutifully noted (also without fact checking) that Torres said his company has suffered “repercussions” of being denied jobs.

A simple Google search would have provided Herridge with some context. For one thing, in October, 2016, HuffPost reported that at the time Blue Mountain got the contract, “a 1990 law required the State Department to award the contract to the bidder with the “lowest-priced technically acceptable” proposal. Blue Mountain bid around $30,000 less than Torres — about 4.5 percent ― according to contracting documents obtained by HuffPost.”

HuffPost also noted that the 1990 law was still in effect. But, “Partially in response to the 2012 attack, Congress included language in the past two annual spending bills that temporarily authorized the State Department to award local-guard contracts based on ‘best value’ rather than lowest price.”

Yet Herridge helped Torres blame the State Department by unquestioningly recording his criticism that “the same State Department employees responsible for the Benghazi contract remain in place.”

Far into the report, Herridge noted that Brad Owens, another Torres person Herridge interviewed, had fingered the low-bid contracting requirement as the reason for Blue Mountain's contract. But that was after she had reported Torres’ claim that “the State Department had the ‘latitude to apply’ that preference or not.” She never bothered to highlight the discrepancy, much less explain it.

Now, I am not impugning the character of either Torres or Owens nor am I accusing either of them of relaying falsehoods. But it is clear, even though Herridge didn’t seem to think it worth noting, that they want to ingratiate themselves with the Trump administration.

“Let’s just say there’s been a change at management at Department of State,” Owens said. “I feel now that, given that the politics has been taken out of the Benghazi situation, now that there’s no longer a candidate or anything related to it, a change of administrations, that actually, we have an opportunity here to fix the problems that made it happen.”

They're certainly off to a good start. With this FoxNews.com front page during last night's prime time, they ought to send Herridge a bottle of champagne.

Heckuva job, Herridge.

(Updated 9/13/17)