Marc Thiessen, a former presidential speechwriter, understands how the White House operates, and he has pointed out where the House Select Committee can go to answer the mystery of where Barack Obama was as four Americans, including an ambassador, were slaughtered in Benghazi. Only recently did we learn that he was not in the Situation  Room, courtesy of Tommy “Dude” Vietor. THiessen writes in the Washington Post:

…there is another document that meticulously records all the president’s activities, public and private, every second of every day. It is called the “President’s Daily Diary.”

Just outside the Oval Office is a room called the Outer Oval, where the president’s secretary and personal aide sit and through which all visitors coming to see the president pass. Staff members in the Outer Oval keep track of the president’s location at all times. They carefully record the names of all individuals who walk into the Oval Office — when they entered, how long they stayed, what the topic of discussion was. They keep a record of all calls made and received by the president, including the topic, participants and duration. They even record the president’s bathroom breaks (they write “evacuating” into the log).

This and other data on the presidents’ whereabouts are collected by a career National Archives employee whose title is White House diarist. This individual preserves them as a minute-by-minute historical record of the presidency for future use by presidential scholars.

What this means is that there exists a minute-by-minute record of where the president was and what he was doing for all eight hours of the Benghazi attack.

So how is it that the White House has failed to give a full account of the president’s whereabouts during that eight-hour period? The White House knows precisely where he was and what he was doing, yet it is refusing to share that information with Congress and the American people. This is unacceptable.

It may be to Obama’s benefit to have this information released, because there is nothing like a mystery to spark public interest. Let the subpoenas be issued.