New Emails Revive Old Benghazi Arguments
A new set of emails is reviving the old partisan arguments about the attack in Benghazi.
A new set of emails from the White House that were released pursuant to a Federal Judge’s order in a Freedom of Information Case is opening up arguments regarding the attack on the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, including the argument many on the right have made that the White House engaged in a cover-up when it initially pushed the idea that the attack was related to or inspired by the protests elsewhere in the Arab world over the web video “Innocence Of Muslims”:
New documents obtained by conservative watchdog Judicial Watch reinforce that the White House strongly argued that an anti-Muslim video was the reason for the deadly 2012 terror attacks on U.S. compounds in Benghazi.
This was done even though intelligence and diplomatic sources on the ground were more convinced the attacks that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in eastern Libya were carried out by terrorists and not the spontaneous work of an angry mob.
The new documents can be seen here.
The documents were not included in the initial set of e-mails the White House released last May which show the interagency debate over talking points to go to lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
These newly released documents include “TOPLINE POINTS” in question and answer form, prepared by the national security staff, apparently part of the briefing for Susan Rice, then the U.N. ambassador, in preparation for her appearance on Sunday interview shows.
During the debate over the talking points for Capitol Hill from 2013, Republicans argued that the administration removed specific terror references and stuck to an explanation – later proved untrue – that the attack was result of a spontaneous demonstration over an anti-Muslim film that was produced in the United States. There had been such a demonstration in Cairo.
These newly released documents clearly outline that the talking points for Rice emphasize blaming the video. An email from Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communication, from 8:09 p.m. ET, September 14, 2012, states that among the “Goals” for the prep session with Rice: “To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.”
The context of Rhodes’ emails is, of course, that President Barack Obama was in the midst of a heated re-election campaign where one of his talking points was that he had brought a steady hand in fighting terrorists, indeed that “al Qaeda is on the run.”
The White House, of course, quickly sought to downplay the significant of the new emails:
The Obama administration Wednesday said recently released emails on the 2012 Benghazi attacks reflected what officials “understood to be the facts at the time.”
“In the email Ben Rhodes makes clear that our primary goals included making sure our people in the field were protected and bringing those responsible for the attacks to justice,” Bernadette Meehan, National Security Council spokeswoman, said in a statement. “The content reflects what the administration was saying at the time and what we understood to be the facts at the time.”
“Unlike those who insist on politicizing the events in Benghazi, our focus remains on ensuring that a tragedy like this isn’t repeated in Libya or anywhere else in the world,” the statement continued. “In our view, these documents only serve to reinforce what we have long been saying: that in the days after September 11, 2012, we were concerned by unrest occurring across the region and that we provided our best assessment of what was happening at the time.”
Meehan’s statement also noted that the email stated that then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice was not on the Sunday shows “to talk politics.”
Obviously, many on the right are seizing on these new emails as support for their assertion that, with the 2012 election less than two months away, the Administration acted to push the idea that the attack in Benghazi was related to an internet video in order to avoid the political damage that would occur if it came out that the attack was somehow linked to al Qaeda. After all, they argue, the President and his campaign had spent the better part of year touting the fact that they had done serious damage to al Qaeda and made it a big part of the re-election campaign, Joe Biden’s “Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive” was perhaps the most prominent way that idea was stated. Allowing the attack in Benghazi to be viewed as a revival of al Qaeda would potentially blunt that message and provide an opportunity to the Romney campaign in the crucial closing weeks of the campaign.
Take, for example, this from Victor Davis Hanson:
Even with the heavily censored and redacted recent releases of White House e-mails, one of the many messaging “goals” of Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes (“To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy”) is the evidence that proves exactly what the White House so far has denied: the highest White House officials were in a pre-election frenzy to pressure almost everyone from the White House staffers to the CIA to massage the truth of how four Americans died in Benghazi in order to keep up a campaign-driven facade of a spontaneous video-driven riot, one that trumped the truth of a pre-planned terrorist attack, the possibility of which intelligence officers had on prior occasions warned about and were ignored.
These heavily redacted talking points reveal three truths that won’t go away: 1) the administration has lied about the reasons they promulgated false information that they knew at the time to be false; 2) the false, campaign-driven narrative that it was not a terrorist attack reflected prior laxity that they knew at the time increased risk, (and hampered proper focus on the true perpetrators, whose prompt arrest and capture might have negated their false narratives); and 3) they jailed a minor parole violator while falsely alleging that a video he had made had led to the deaths of Americans from an impromptu riot.
Charles Krauthammer said much the same thing last night on Fox News Channel:
One of Hanson’s colleagues at National Review pushes back on this idea, however:
Krauthammer’s right that what we have here was obvious all along: On the totality of the evidence, the White House took the intelligence community and diplomatic community’s estimate, which was relatively uncertain, bereft of much detail, and turned out days later to be quite wrong, and played up certain parts of it to avoid questions about their counterterror strategy and the situation in Libya. That isn’t being as straightforward with the American public as they could or probably should have been; it’s also not a lie or a cover-up. Whether what we have adds up to the “serious offense” Krauthammer calls it is a subjective judgment — what’s not subjective is the facts we have.
This strikes me as a largely correct interpretation of not just the new emails but the entire Benghazi “scandal” itself. As I noted myself during the initial week or so after the attack and the months afterward, the White House certainly did bungle the initial public statements regarding the attack. Instead of saying, for example, that investigations were ongoing and that it was too early to say what or who inspired the attack, which seems like the logical course of action, the Administration decided to emphasize a video that nobody in the United States had ever heard of prior to September 11, 2012. As more information came out, that initial assessment seemed to be incomplete to say the least. These new emails suggest that the Administration chose to emphasize the video over other evidence that was available to it, and as the author of the piece linked above says, that was probably not as straightforward as they should have been under the circumstances. However, to jump from that to the argument that there was a cover-up here simply isn’t supported by the evidence.
More importantly, as David Weigel notes in his piece on the new emails, the White House based its talking points, which emphasized the role of protests over the video in the lead-up to the attack, on talking points prepared by the CIA:
Read that USA Today lede again. It reports that “a White House official urged that the assault on the U.S. consulate be blamed on a protest that never happened.” And he did—hours after the CIA and State Department were urging that the assault on the U.S. consulate be blamed on a protest. Can we chastise Rhodes, in retrospect, for not being more skeptical of what was known? Ten years after George “slam dunk” Tenet’s advice for a prior administration, yes, I think we can. But it’s just lazy journalism or lazy politicking to blame Rhodes for a talking point that was fed from the CIA. The White House’s shifty-sounding excuse, that the “demonstration” story line came not from its spin factory but from the CIA, remains surprisingly accurate. (And I meanreally lazy. It does not take very much time to compare the new Rhodes email to the previously known timeline of emails.)
It seems difficult to credibly accuse the Administration of a politically motivated cover-up when the talking points that they gave to Susan Rice before her now infamous appearance on the Sunday morning talk shows were essentially the same information that the CIA had provided. Again, one can make a good argument that the Administration should have been more straightforward in its initial comments in the wake of the attack, or that they should have just refused detailed comment until further intelligence was received, but that’s a far cry from a political scandal.
It was Charles Krauthammer himself you said earlier this month that Benghazi was dead as a scandal, so his comments now, along with those of others on the rights just reek of desperation at this point. At I noted at the time of that initial Krauthammer comment, there were indeed legitimate questions that could have been asked in the wake of the attack in Benghazi regarding embassy security, CIA activity in Benghazi, and the overall U.S. policy toward Libya. However, instead of pursuing those questions the GOP went off on a witch hunt for a scandal that quite obviously does not exist. Now, with these new emails, they undoubtedly believe that they’ve got something that they can use not only against the Obama Administration but also against Hillary Clinton when she runs for President. If the way that they’ve handled this story over the past two years is any indication, it’s likely that they will fail miserably in that attempt as well.
Admittedly, this does look pretty bad for the Democrats when you read the whole, uneditted email:
Oh for fvck’s sake – here’s Rice on the Sunday shows:
MS. RICE: Well, Jake, first of all, it’s important to know that there’s an FBI investigation that has begun and will take some time to be completed. That will tell us with certainty what transpired.
But our current best assessment, based on the information that we have at present,
I’m sure had Rice gone on the Sunday shows and said we don’t know what happened and we’re not going to make any statements until we do that would have been just fine with the folks on the right.
Let’s save some time and energy for everyone:
An AtlasYield Signsthe DodgersCloudsWombatsRevive Benghazi ArgumentsJust when will this investigation be finished ? Is there another agency that could get involved and get this thing wrapped up? The president needs to take stronger action, hold people accountable, and make sure that the criminals who are responsible for these murders are punished.
That photo – now right there is one of the thugs responsible. Certainly they could find that guy.
The state dept handled this very poorly but there’s no smoking gun here. Incompetence doesn’t equal Cover up. The GOP needs to move on.
Why do the Republicans think they can get any mileage whatsoever out of such a penny-ante scandal?
All I see is Darrell Issa putting on a Halloween mask and yelling, “I’m Obama, and I was somewhat evasive about talking points!!!!!“
Like everyone else with a life, I haven’t followed this very closely, but a couple of points:
– The NYT did an extensive investigation in Libya and concluded the video was, if not the sole motivator, still a motivator for the attack.
– Even if the video had nothing to do with Benghazi, it was an inevitable assumption as there were more or less simultaneous protests elsewhere explicitly motivated by the video.
– There’s al Qaeda and there’s al Qaeda. Anybody can call themselves al Qaeda and. How tightly this bunch was tied to the late Mr. Bin Laden’s organization, I have no idea.
– Politicians may have spun things. Unheard of.
– I still have not heard of a culpable act by anyone except the attackers.
Doug:
That “argument many on the right have made” has always been complete baloney, since there is plenty of evidence that the attackers were indeed motivated by “the web video.” Link:
And there is more evidence here: link.
The video was seen by millions on Egypt TV on 9/8. Nice job disingenuously implying that this didn’t happen.
Doug citing Jake Tapper:
The question of the protest is separate from the question of the video. A lot of people have a hard time grasping this simple fact. The presence or absence of a protest has nothing to do with the video. Consider these two statements:
A) It was a protest that spontaneously became violent
B) The attackers were motivated by the video
We understand that A is false, but this does not demonstrate that B is false. There is plenty of evidence that B is true.
The entire right-wing narrative is based on the idea that A and B are somehow inseparable, and that if A is false then B must also be false. Trouble is, that’s nonsense, because A and B are quite separate. This fallacy that is at the heart of the right-wing narrative is also a major feature of mainstream coverage of this story. That darn liberal media.
Tapper’s statement that Doug cited is an excellent example of how mainstream coverage advances the phony GOP narrative. It has never been “proved untrue” that the attackers were motivated by the video. Tapper’s statement embodies the fallacy I explained: he assumes that B must be false if A is false.
It does not fwcking matter.
The only actual “charge” the critics had was that Ms. Clinton ordered the military to stand down when they could have helped. The military itself has repeatedly put the lie to this charge.
So now the charge is that the State Department spun the story.
Well, let’s lock everyone involved up in Leavenworth. Politicians putting a favorable gloss on a story? Why, I never. Shocking accusation, just shocking.
The one great thing about this is that it demonstrates the utter lack of genuine scandal after six years of the Obama administration. This has been a clean administration. The Right tried the IRS – nothing. They trie Benghazi – nothing. And this from the same morons who thought it was perfectly swell for a US president to send a cake and a side order of weapons to a terrorist regime in Iran, and then use the profits from selling weapons to terrorists to illegally finance thugs in Central America.
Yup (link):
Conservatives will love the source.
One more thing about Tapper’s awful reporting. Doug citing Jake Tapper:
“The administration removed specific terror references” is pretty funny, since the original CIA memo used the word ‘terror,’ in any form, this many times: zero. And Tapper is implying that CIA didn’t say “spontaneous” even though they did. The original CIA memo said this:
When Rice said “spontaneous” she got that word from CIA. And “the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo” is an obvious reference to the video, because those protests were undoubtedly about the video. And the recent Senate report said essentially the same thing:
Rush and Sean and Bill like to repeat the mantra ‘planned attack,’ but both CIA (at the time) and the Senate (recently) both said there was hardly any planning. They also both connected Benghazi to the video. What Rice et al said at the time is consistent with what we have heard from both CIA and the Senate.
Tapper’s formulation (“that the attack was result of a spontaneous demonstration over an anti-Muslim film”) ties together three questions that need to be addressed separately:
A) How much planning was behind the attack?
B) Was there a demonstration?
C) Were the attackers motivated by the video?
These questions are quite separate, but treating them as inseparable is essential to the GOP narrative. Mainstream coverage typically treats these questions as inseparable. That darn liberal media.
The deaths do not appear to be the result of “a spontaneous demonstration over an anti-Muslim film,” but there’s plenty of evidence (including statements by both CIA and Senate) that the deaths were indeed the result of “a spontaneous [terrorist attack] over an anti-Muslim film.”
This is one of those scandals that never made sense except as a desperate fumble for alleging equivalency between Bush and Obama.
Even if you stipulate the worst alleged facts, it does not add up to a scandal, just some bad policy decisions and a fumbled response. But it is supposed to prove something -god knows what. The mind of a partisan republican is a strange, unknowable thing. Inscrutable, really.
@michael reynolds:
“four people died and then Obama lied” is somehow supposed to be equivalent to “Bush lied and caused 100,000 people to die.”
More of that fuzzy math, you know.
Oh for the Good Old Days. Remember them, when Republicans went around complaining that (A) FDR had deliberately provoked the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and (B) evii liberals refused to listen to conservatives and dumped aspersions on them as “unpatriotic” and “disloyal” for simply mentioning the evidence that FDR had deliberated provoked the Japanese attack. This would have been about 1960-65.
A while back, but some things never go out of style, do they?
Most importantly, if you look at what Rhodes sent out (it’s page 14 of the attached document), it’s perfectly clear that “these protests” refers broadly to all of the protests in various largely Muslim countries, and not specifically to Benghazi. And the people at most protests were perfectly clear that they were protesting because of the video.
Somewhere Jenos is touching himself inappropriately.
Earlier I mentioned how the GOP narrative is built on the fallacy of treating the protest question and the video question as inseparable. There are zillions of examples, but I notice that an especially clear and timely example was provided yesterday by Power Line:
This is called the fallacy of bifurcation: pretending that one must choose between mutually exclusive possibilities when in fact the possibilities that were presented are not mutually exclusive. This is what it was: “a planned attack by terrorists” who were motivated by “an internet video.” And “planned” is a stretch; I already explained how both CIA and Senate have indicated there wasn’t much planning.
@beth: well, what you’re missing with this is the FBI is part of the executive branch… which is kinda like Nixon investigating himself, in this case.
@ Florack
So what you are saying is that Obama, who is, according to you, an utter weakling, is actually strong enough to subvert the FBI.
How many different iterations of Obama live in your head anyway? For you, he’s kind of like G.I. Joe. You can dress him up and equip him for pretty much any mission you dream up.
One thing you can count on like the sun risining in the East is the Dem POS accolytes following in the footsteps of their leaders motto:
‘Lie, lie, lie, deny, deny, deny’
muchy,
Easy it was a planned attack by terrorists. The only reason the video was mentioned was because of the cover up. I know you would be out from under your rock in force today, in light of the new evidence. No the new emails revealed that the attack was “complex” and not spontaneous
“In the weeks before September 11, 2012, these jihadists plotted to attack the U.S. embassy in Cairo. In fact, the Blind Sheikh’s son threatened a 1979 Iran-style raid on the embassy: Americans would be taken hostage to ransom for the Blind Sheikh’s release from American prison (he is serving a life sentence). Other jihadists threatened to burn the embassy to the ground — a threat that was reported in the Egyptian press the day before the September 11 “protests.””
so no protest in Cairo either…just plain planned rioting on sept. 11 go figure.
@anjin-san:
Again… weak abroad, tyrant at home.
An American version of Kim JuIl.Ill, in that respect.
Let’s review the content of the memoes, where we find…
The email enumerates the top priorities of these media appearances as being:
“To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.”
and
“To reinforce the President and Administration’s strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges.”
Just before an election.
And after they knew full well, that vid that nobody saw, was not the problem.
So, do we trust Carney and Obama, or our own lying’ eyes, huh?
Again, 4 American staff tragically died at Benghazi, and we’ve now had over 2 years of investigation, all in the hopes of :
(1) it could bring Obama down in 2012
(2) Issa hopes that it can have a beneficial affect for Republicans in 2014, and
(3) it will help to derail Hillary’s possible 2016 campaign.
In an interesting and related aside – I do not recall that there was this much congressional investigation when, while Reagan was president, back in 1983, in Beirut 240 Marines died in a terror attack when the Marine Barracks were bombed.
@Eric Florack:
Carney and Obama? Some problems.
Those “lying’ eyes? Yeah, I’ve got problems with Darrell Issa, who doesn’t?
MUNCHBOXDYKE:
I love it when people like you paste in text without including any clue regarding where you found it. You are citing Andrew McCarthy (link), in a column where he is repeating a bunch of the same lies I proved to be lies a long time ago.
Notice the article by Andrew McCarthy in National Review with this headline:
The “Fraud” is McCarthy, because his own sources prove that his claim is false. Link, link.
@al-Ameda:
Keeping Benghazxi alive is all about this. Its going to be a thing in conservatuive media all the way to 2016.
@ Florack
Clearly, “tyrant” does not mean what you think it means. What it does not mean is “someone I don’t like who is in power.”
I guess you also don’t see that bringing Kim Jong Un into the discussion confirms that you are delusional for anyone who has any doubts.
The idea of a protest in Benghazi is often attributed to protests in Cairo about the same YOUTUBE video, but CNN did an interview of the brother of Omar Abdel-Rahman, “The Blind Sheikh,” the day before the Behghazi attack. In the CNN report (only seen on CNN International), the brother said he was organizing the protests in an attempt to get the Obama Administration to release Omar Abdel-Rahman as a precurser to talks that the Administration was trying to start with the Taliban. At no time did the brother talk about any YOUTUBE video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPszLCEyu-I
No, it was not “the day before the Behghazi attack.” That interview took place on 9/11, not 9/10. The interview took place while the Cairo protest was already underway, and all it shows is that the brother was trying to use the event to call attention to his cause.
@bandit:
Obama’s motto? Actually it is, “Repatriate Republicans to North Korea”
One point, Doug: these aren’t “new” e-mails. They’re e-mails that were withheld for over a year. The only thing “new” is that the Obama administration finally lost their fight to keep them covered up.
And once again, Ace of Spades has the best summary of the developments:
Once Again, the Democrat Partisans of the Media Pivot Their Defense From “It’s Not True and You’re Crazy to Believe It’s True” to “Of Course It’s True, and You’re Crazy to Make Such a Big Deal About It”
There will also be very few mentions of how one of the key figures here, Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, just happens to have a brother named David Rhodes, who just happens to be the president of CBS News. And White House Spokesliar Jay Carney, former Washington Bureau Chief for Time Magazine, just happens to be married to one Claire Shipman, who just happens to be a senior national correspondent for ABC News.
There’s some disagreement over whether the term “revolving door” or “incestuous” better describes the relationship between the Obama administration and the mainstream press. I think both fit quite nicely
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Oh my! That just happens to mean right about nothing. Seriously man, do you really think anyone will find that convincing? Does anyone other than a pathetic conspiracy loon think that a random senior correspondent is running the show for the president at ABC and that insulates the White House from criticism?
Two people in the WH related to news people one of whom was in news before the worked press for the president. My, that is a deep conspiracy you have managed to uncover. Kudos. You did not come back with your A game. Maybe you need another vacation to freshen up.