Sen. John McCain finally stepped up to the plate on  Sunday’s “Meet the Press” and tore into the Obama Administration for its “massive cover-up” in the September 11 attack on a U.S. mission in Benghazi,  Libya.

“We’ve had two movies about getting bin Laden,” McCain said, “and we don’t  even know who the people were who were evacuated from the consulate the day  after the attack. So there are many, many questions. So we’ve had a massive  cover-up on the part of the administration.”

Host David Gregory was flabbergasted, asking the senator what ever could he  mean by “massive cover-up”?

McCain, clearly annoyed, gave voice to a couple of questions for the liberal  media that have been on the minds of most conservatives since Benghazi happened. “I’m asking you, do you care whether four Americans died?” he said. “And  shouldn’t people be held accountable for the fact that four Americans died?”

But Gregory opted to be infuriatingly obtuse: “Well, what you said was the  cover-up — a cover-up of what?”

And that just opened the floodgates. McCain laid it all out for Gregory and  the viewers:

“Of the information concerning the deaths of four brave Americans. The  information has not been forthcoming. You obviously believe that it has. I know  that it hasn’t. And I’ll be glad to send you a list of the questions that have  not been answered, including ‘What did the president do and who did he talk to  the night of the attack on Benghazi?’ Why did the president for two weeks, for  two weeks during the heat of the campaign continue to say he didn’t know whether  it was a terrorist attack or not? Is it because it interfered with the line ‘Al  Qaeda has [been] decimated’? And ‘everything’s fine in that in that part of the  world’? Maybe. We don’t know. But we need the answers. Then we’ll reach  conclusions. But we have not received the answers. And that’s a fact.”

It’s been clear since the day of the attack in Benghazi that the  Administration was keeping information from the public, starting with the fact  that the U.S. mission there was not a “consulate” but a CIA operation.

The ridiculous cover story that the attack was part of a spontaneous  demonstration caused by a YouTube video should have been a starting gun for  journalists everywhere to start calling their contacts to get the real scoop.  Instead, the media has sat on its thumbs since September, hoping each successive  lie from the Administration will be the one that puts the scandal to rest.

Despite the bumbling attempts to hide what really happened, there have been  enough leaks to be able to piece together the broad outlines of what really  happened.

What appears to be the basic facts are that the U.S. mission was a CIA cover  for running guns and Islamist fighters to Turkey for smuggling into Syria in  that country’s “civil” war. The U.S. ambassador’s last visitor before the attack  was a Turkish representative. The State Department had ignored multiple requests  for more security, probably because it didn’t want to draw attention to the  operation, and the military was ordered to stand down and not intervene in the  attack.

Every official who was in a position to know what really happened, from  admirals to former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, has been reassigned or has  resigned. Some 30 eyewitnesses to the attack have “disappeared.” What  information has been doled out by the administration has been evasive and  incomplete. The president himself publicly lied during a debate with Mitt Romney  about acknowledging that it was a terrorist attack.

That there’s more to the story is almost certain.

What’s most shocking from the “Meet the Press” interview isn’t that McCain  finally gave an airing to what half of the country already knows, it’s Gregory’s  feigned “what do you mean?” attitude. After all these months, the media still  haven’t realized that the public has seen through the lies.

Of course, if McCain and other leaders of Congress all along had shown the  same fire the senator finally did on Sunday, we might have some answers by  now.