Video: State Dept. Withholding 7 Page Email Exchange Between Top WH Officials Re Fox News/Benghazi Media Strategy

Breaking Monday night on the Kelly File was a report about an internal debate in the White House two weeks after the 9/11/12 attack in Benghazi.

Fox News Intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge reported that “a 7 page email circulated at the highest levels of the White house apparently to come up with a media strategy to deal with the Fox News report is being withheld by the State Department citing executive branch deliberations.”

The Regime was concerned about a Fox News report from September 27, 2012 that concluded, “the intelligence community knew Benghazi was terrorism within 24 hours.”

The list of names on the email exchange are a rogues gallery Obama Regime miscreants.

On the email chain, among others, Denis McDonough, the president’s deputy national security adviser during Benghazi, John Brennan former White House counterterrorism adviser and now CIA Director, then deputy director of the CIA Michael Morell, and presidential aide Ben Rhodes who sent the email September 14th 2012, critics say, attempted to shape the public discussion of Benghazi.

You’ll notice that pictured next to John Brennan and Ben Rhodes in the Fox News report (below), was former National Security Advisor, Tom Donilon – presumably one of the other names that was in on the exchange.

Chris Farrell of Judicial Watch which is suing for those documents which he says, demonstrate “an alarm bell situation where they are reacting to and trying to shape a response or commentary to react to or to shut down reporting.”

CBS investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson has called the strategy the White House engages in on Benghazi and other scandals – an effort to controversialize” the story. I think she has put her finger on it, and the Regime has had monumental success using this strategy – not only with the MSM – but with the right, as well.

Megyn Kelly had on frequent guest, former Bush White House Speechwriter, Marc Thiessen, to discuss his latest column at the Washington Post:

President Obama claims he was only repeating what the intelligence community told him when his administration asserted that the attack in Benghazi began with a spontaneous protest inspired by an Internet video. If that’s the case, there is a simple way to prove it: Give the new congressional select committee investigating Benghazi his daily intelligence briefings that show exactly what he was told.

There is precedent for doing so. In 2004, at the request of the 9/11 Commission, President George W. Bush declassified and publicly released the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) delivered to him before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. No sitting president had ever declassified a PDB while still in office. But Bush did it anyway, releasing the report titled “Bin Laden determined to attack inside the U.S.” It warned that the FBI had detected “patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings” but contained no actionable intelligence that could have stopped the 9/11 attacks from happening.

What’s good enough for Bush should be good enough for Obama. Congress should ask the president to follow precedent and release the PDBs he received in the days after the Benghazi attack.

There is no good reason for Obama to refuse such a request. If Obama is right that the intelligence community told him the attack was the result of a protest over the Internet video, releasing the PDBs will demonstrate that he is telling the truth — and put the Benghazi debate to rest once and for all.