Posted on 04/30/2014 4:44:23 AM PDT by Kaslin
The smoking gun:
Previously unreleased internal Obama administration emails show that a coordinated effort was made in the days following the Benghazi terror attacks to portray the incident as rooted in [an] Internet video, and not [in] a broader failure or policy. Emails sent by senior White House adviser Ben Rhodes to other top administration officials reveal an effort to insulate President Barack Obama from the attacks that killed four Americans. Rhodes sent this email to top White House officials such as David Plouffe and Jay Carney just a day before National Security Adviser Susan Rice made her infamous Sunday news show appearances to discuss the attack. The goal, according to these emails, was to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure or policy. Rice came under fierce criticism following her appearances on television after she adhered to these talking points and blamed the attack on a little-watched Internet video. The newly released internal White House e-mails show that Rices orders came from top Obama administration communications officials.
Here's a screenshot of that email, followed by another important discovery:
Also contained in the 41 pages of documents obtained by Judicial Watch is a Sep. 12, 2012 email from Payton Knopf, the former deputy spokesman at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. In this communication, Knopf informs Rice that senior officials had already dubbed the Benghazi attack as complex and planned in advance. Despite this information, Rice still insisted that attacks were spontaneous.
Q&A provided to Susan Rice 9/12/2012: "it was clearly a complex attack." pic.twitter.com/I7NeExv1Do Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) April 29, 2014
Let's unpack this new information. First, two political process points: (1) As we've recently seen with the IRS scandal, the Benghazi outrage continues to produce previously unseen evidence -- destroying Democrats' disgraceful "phony scandals" talking point. The White House began aggressively dismissing both stories last year. (2) Ed Morrissey reminds us that the White House claimed to have released "all" of its emails on Benghazi nearly a year ago. Gabe Malor asks the right question: Why are we just seeing these ones now? Now, on substance, the first email embedded above reveals a White House in intense spin mode after a preventable terrorist attack that claimed the lives of four Americans, including a sitting Ambassador. We knew that Hillary Clinton's State Department and the CIA were involved in the administration's historical revisionism surrounding this attack. We now know for certain that top White House officials were in the loop, too. Ben Rhodes outlines four bullet points in his memorandum, the first three of which are misleading and/or false:
(a) The United States was not doing everything in its power to protect its people and facilities abroad. Not in Benghazi, and not elsewhere.
(b) The 9/11 attacks were not rooted in an "internet video." The clip he's referencing made something of a splash in the Middle East, but the State Department's second in command on the ground in Libya called it a "non event" vis-a-vis the Benghazi raid. The US government, including Sec. Clinton and CIA Director Petraeus, knew the attack was a coordinated terrorist action almost immediately.
(c) The administration has not been "resolute" in bringing the perpetrators to justice. More than a year-and-a-half has passed since the lethal event. Zero people have been held responsible, neither in Washington nor Northern Africa.
The memo also makes clear the White House was determined to deflect any criticism involving a "failure of [administration] policy." What sort of failure? Take your pick. How about fueling a war in Libya with no apparent strategy to handle the resulting power vacuum? Or rejecting repeated requests for an enhanced security presence in a city from which much of the West had withdrawn, due to growing jihadi dominance? Or renewing a lease on our compound with a waiver for substandard security after it had faced several attempted attacks? Perhaps it was the lack of preparation for the contingency of a terrorist attack on the anniversary of 9/11, which resulted in hours of paralysis while American lives hung in the balance. Rhodes and company wanted to insulate the president from those glaring policy failures, so they doctored up some deceptive talking points. As for the Susan Rice email, her staff obviously understood the true nature of the attack, which she would later tell the American people was "spontaneous." It wasn't. It was a deliberate, orchestrated, al Qaeda-linked act of terrorism. It's always seemed inconceivable that Rice wouldn't have been privy to those facts prior to her public statements. The newly-disclosed emails appear to confirm those suspicions. There can now be no remaining doubt: The administration's public response to the Benghazi attack was tainted by political considerations and deprived the American people of the truth.
Why are we reading this from Townhall and not the NY Times or the Washington Post?
"We are entitled to lie to the (helpless) American people
and the (lame, hated, EXEMPT) Congress
in order to arm (al Qaeda) Syrian rebels."
Why are we reading this from Townhall and not the NY Times or the Washington Post?
Perhaps we the people should start robo calling non-stop & ask them that question. Just a thought.
So, who’s Ben Rhodes’ boss?
Shirley you jest?...
Because the NY Times and Washington Post are part of the reason we have the current administration in power. It is the same reason liberals in general don't want to talk about fatalities of our service men and women in Afghanistan. They don't feel any guilt or remorse per se, but they know deep down inside they are largely responsible for this current disaster of an administration by blindly voting for these incompetent clowns like the sheep they are.
Townhall.com got the smoking gun report from The Washington Beacon, which is an excellent Newspaper
Townhall.com got the smoking gun report from The Washington Beacon, which is an excellent Newspaper
We knew that. We also know that the media will lie, cheat and steal to protect the man they put in the white house.
Talking points be damned.
I don’t care that they lied to us about this.
I wanna know where obama was when AmbassadorStevens was being killed.
I want to know if we had the resources close enough to save them.
I wanna know why the security for the Ambassador was denief
I wanna know about what weapons were imported into Lybia
CNN’s Jake Tapper has it on their website. You’d have to be looking for it to find it.
Unless they do this loudly, boldly and persistently ... this is a dud, no boom. Same old, same old. I'm not optimistic.
Obstruction of justice, accomplice to murder.
You are spot on. Complicity or accommodation to protect or enrich all involved. Disgusting.
“Obstruction of justice, accomplice to murder”.
“Obstruction of justice, accomplice to murder”.
“Obstruction of justice, accomplice to murder”.
B.o’s legacy
PS “Yeah, sure. And I’m a Chinese jet pilot!” Ash
That's the state of the media world we live in. Rush isn't kidding when he talks about the State Controlled Media.
RE: CNNs Jake Tapper has it on their website. Youd have to be looking for it to find it.
Shouldn’t this be on the FRONT of their website? For me, this is BIG.
Apparently for them, they’re simply putting it there on a obscure corner hoping people will ignore or miss it so that it will eventually go away (and of course, give themselves the excuse to say: “Hey, we did our job in reporting the news...”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.