Recently, we at Judicial Watch released explosive new Benghazi scandal documents which immediately precipitated a Washington firestorm that placed the Obama White House on the defensive and may even lead to criminal charges.
And what’s the big discovery that had every news outlet in the country headlining Judicial Watch’s work?
On April 18, 2014, Judicial Watch obtained 41 new Benghazi-related State Department documents. They include a newly declassified email showing then-White House Deputy Strategic Communications Adviser Ben Rhodes and other Obama administration public relations officials attempting to orchestrate a campaign to “reinforce” President Obama and to portray the Benghazi consulate terrorist attack as being “rooted in an Internet video, and not a failure of policy.” Other documents show that State Department officials initially described the incident as an “attack” and a possible kidnap attempt.
Am I shocked to find the Obama White House behind this egregious lie? Not at all. The facts of the Benghazi attack, aftermath, and cover-up suggested as much. But owing largely to Obama secrecy and stonewalling, evidence has been elusive – until Judicial Watch investigators and attorneys worked their magic and got hold of these records.
This has been a long battle. We filed our first Freedom of Information (FOIA) request on October 12, 2012, to gain access to documents about the controversial talking points used by then-UN Ambassador Susan Rice for a series of appearances on television Sunday news programs on September 16, 2012. Ultimately, we had to sue to get them. But it was well worth the effort.
The discovery was of high interest to a press long frustrated by the Obama administration’s misdirection and obfuscation over Benghazi. Here are just a few of the headlines:
- Fox News: Benghazi Emails Suggest White House Aide Involved in Prepping Rice for ‘Video’ Explanation
- The Washington Times: Email ensuring ‘Obama looked good’ was post-Benghazi priority
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The Daily Beast: Crucial Benghazi Email Finally Revealed
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The Washington Post: Benghazi scandal tied to White House
Let’s get to the meat of this find.
The Rhodes email was sent on Friday, September 14, 2012, at 8:09 p.m. with the subject line: “RE: PREP CALL with Susan, Saturday at 4:00 pm ET.” The documents show that the “prep” was for Amb. Rice’s Sunday news show appearances to discuss the Benghazi attack.
The document lists as a “Goal”: “To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.”
Rhodes returns to the “Internet video” scenario later in the email, the first point in a section labeled “Top-lines”:
[W]e’ve made our views on this video crystal clear. The United States government had nothing to do with it. We reject its message and its contents. We find it disgusting and reprehensible. But there is absolutely no justification at all for responding to this movie with violence. And we are working to make sure that people around the globe hear that message.
Among the top administration PR personnel who received the Rhodes memo were White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, Deputy Press Secretary Joshua Earnest, then-White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer, then-White House Deputy Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri, then-National Security Council Director of Communications Erin Pelton, Special Assistant to the Press Secretary Howli Ledbetter, and then-White House Senior Advisor and political strategist David Plouffe.
The Rhodes communications strategy email also instructs recipients to portray Obama as “steady and statesmanlike” throughout the crisis. Another of the “Goals” of the PR offensive, Rhodes says, is “[T]o reinforce the President and Administration’s strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges.” He later includes as a PR “Top-line” talking point:
I think that people have come to trust that President Obama provides leadership that is steady and statesmanlike. There are always going to be challenges that emerge around the world, and time and again, he has shown that we can meet them.
The September 12, 2012 email from former Deputy Spokesman at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations Payton Knopf to Susan Rice noted that, at a press briefing earlier that day, State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland explicitly stated that the attack on the consulate had been well planned. The email sent by Knopf to Rice at 5:42 pm said:
“Responding to a question about whether it was an organized terror attack, Toria said that she couldn’t speak to the identity of the perpetrators but that it was clearly a complex attack.”
In the days following the Knopf email, Rice appeared on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News and CNN still claiming the assaults occurred “spontaneously” in response to the “hateful video.” On Sunday, September 16 Rice told CBS’s “Face the Nation:”
But based on the best information we have to date, what our assessment is as of the present is in fact what began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our embassy–sparked by this hateful video.
The Judicial Watch documents confirm that CIA talking points, that were prepared for Congress and may have been used by Rice on “Face the Nation” and four additional Sunday talk shows on September 16, had been heavily edited by then-CIA deputy director Mike Morell. According to one email:
The first draft apparently seemed unsuitable….because they seemed to encourage the reader to infer incorrectly that the CIA had warned about a specific attack on our embassy. On the SVTS, Morell noted that these points were not good and he had taken a heavy hand to editing them. He noted that he would be happy to work with [then deputy chief of staff to Hillary Clinton] Jake Sullivan and Rhodes to develop appropriate talking points.
The documents also contain numerous emails sent during the assault on the Benghazi diplomatic facility. The contemporaneous and dramatic emails describe the assault as an “attack”:
- September 11, 2012, 6:41 PM – Senior Advisor Eric Pelofsky, to Susan Rice:
As reported, the Benghazi compound came under attack and it took a bit of time for the ‘Annex’ colleagues and Libyan February 17 brigade to secure it. One of our colleagues was killed – IMO Sean Smith. Amb Chris Stevens, who was visiting Benghazi this week is missing. U.S. and Libyan colleagues are looking for him…
At 8:51 pm, Pelofsky tells Rice and others that “Post received a call from a person using an [sic] RSO phone that Chris was given saying the caller was with a person matching Chris’s description at a hospital and that he was alive and well. Of course, if the he were alive and well, one could ask why he didn’t make the call himself.”
Later that evening, Pelofsky emailed Rice that he was “very, very worried. In particular that he [Stevens] is either dead or this was a concerted effort to kidnap him.” Rice replied, “God forbid.”
- September 11, 2012, 4:49 PM – State Department press officer John Fogarty reporting on “Libya update from Beth Jones”:
Beth Jones [Acting Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs] just spoke with DCM Tripoli Greg Hicks, who advised a Libyan militia (we now know this is the 17th Feb brigade, as requested by Emb office) is responding to the attack on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi.
Material is blacked out (or redacted) in many emails.
And what was the Obama White House response to Judicial Watch? What would you expect the Obama White House to do when caught – without a shadow of a doubt – lying and misleading the American people? Attack, attack, attack! Bernadette Meehan, National Security Council spokeswoman, accused JW of “politicizing” the Benghazi scandal.
Fox News Channel’s Charles Krauthammer had a different reaction: “We now have the smoking document, which is the White House saying, ‘We’re pushing the video because we don’t want to blame it on the failure of our policies.’”
That’s as spot-on as it gets. As Krauthammer notes, it was the Obama gang who politicized Benghazi, lying and stonewalling and covering up in order to protect the president in an election season.
The Obama White House’s chief concern about the Benghazi attack was making sure that President Obama looked good.
These documents undermine the Obama administration’s narrative that it thought the Benghazi attack had something to do with protests or an Internet video. Given the explosive material in these documents, it is no surprise that we had to go to federal court to pry them loose from the Obama State Department.
White House spokesman Jay Carney, who is implicated in this scandal (he received the smoking gun email) went so far as to say that the email was not about Benghazi! This is a ludicrous lie, as this document was forced out of the State Department by JW in a lawsuit about Benghazi! The media is slamming Carney for his spin, but I see his lie as more of a criminal defense.
The Rhodes email was responsive to a congressional subpoena on Benghazi. Thwarting a subpoena and congressional investigation can put you in jail. So that is why I would argue Carney is saying the document is not about Benghazi – to admit otherwise could lead to criminal charges for whoever covered this White House document up!
John Kerry has been subpoenaed and Speaker John Boehner is forming a committee to investigate Benghazi – finally!
