Special Report took on the explosive Judicial Watch document release on Benghazi Tuesday night.
Former Bush Press Sec. Dana Perino and Charles Lane of the Washington Post had far too much sympathy for Benjamin Rhodes, who they suggested was only acting on the orders of a superior. (Valerie Jarrett, one supposes.) I have no doubt that Rhodes, the entire communications team, and Susan Rice knew that they were disseminating lies. None of it was ever believable, but they got the media to pass it along to the masses with a degree of credibility it didn’t deserve – while attacking Mitt Romney for questioning it.
Pay special attention to the Jay Carney clip at the beginning of the segment. He was knowingly peddling lies about Benghazi and attacking Fox for spreading false information from day one. We now know he was in on the deception because the Rhodes email went to the entire WH communications team.
“It has been repeatedly said by some of the critics on this issue on the Hill that the White House provided talking points. That has been categorically refuted not just by us but by the intelligence community, and yet it’s still periodically said on the air. And it’s just wrong,” Carney lied in November of 2012.
In May of 2013, Carney lied, “the White House involvement in any changes that were made to the so-called talking points were extremely minimal and non-substantive.”
This man has earned – more than any other WH Press Secretary in American history – the moniker given to him by Darrell Issa – Obama’s “Paid Liar.” I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I don’t know how the man can stand looking at himself in the mirror every day.
But he’s only following the lead of the Liar-In Chief: “The whole issue of talking points throughout this whole process has frankly been a sideshow,” Obama lied in May of 2013. Liars like Obama use the word “frankly” to mean – “I’m not even be remotely transparent, here.”
The documents released by Judicial Watch are smoking gun proof that these public servants knowingly lied to the American people about a national security issue to cover their own corrupt behinds. If this isn’t an impeachable offense – I don’t know what is.
Charles Krauthammer said, “I find the most scandalous element of this – from purely just a human point of view, is the fact that the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – with the bodies of the dead lying in front of her, and with the families there, brought up the video – a video in which we had nothing to do…. and then according to one of the family members, when she went over to console that family member and said, that we were going to get the guy who made the video. Now that to me – if she knew that was a phony story – and I’m not sure I understand how it could be otherwise – is a form of deception that I think is truly scandalous.”
Bryan Preston has a better handle on Rhodes than Pirino and Lane:
…It’s well to remember at this point who Ben Rhodes is. According to the White House, he is assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for strategic communications and speechwriting. That sounds nice, but he has no career in the military or intelligence. Rhodes is a career partisan Democrat and Obama loyalist who was put on the National Security Council because he is a loyalist to the man. Not the nation. Or the facts on the ground in Libya or anywhere else. Rhodes’ loyalty belongs to Barack Obama.
He needs to be compelled to testify under oath about all this.
Yes, and contrary to popular belief *cough* Charles Krauthammer *cough* – the Benghazi issue is not dead. The clock is still ticking… and Hillary’s 2016 run for the White House is in grave peril. Democrats may have to make due with Elizabeth “Fauxcahontas” Warren.
Via Doug Ross, this latest revelation is, in Roger L. Simon’s opinion, the lynchpin for an impeachment trial.
The levels of criminality involved in this are mind-boggling. Everyone from Ben Rhodes to Hillary Clinton to Jay Carney to Susan Rice to Mike Morell to Barack Obama and on and on must explain themselves minute-by-minute. American “liberals” and their media consorts should search their souls. People died here…
…Anyone who now considers Benghazi a “fake scandal” is a either a complete liar or a moron. This new release of emails thanks to Judicial Watch is literally a call to arms. We will now see if there is even a figment of honesty in our mainstream media and if our elected representatives are to be trusted in any way.
It is our duty as citizens to put as pressure on those representatives as possible to carry through this investigation to its natural conclusion — impeachment.
In light of this discovery, will the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, finally name a Select Committee on Benghazi?
Will Darrell “Inspector Clouseau” Issa explain why a watchdog group like Judicial Watch — and not his unfocused and possibly incompetent Oversight Committee — is doing all of the heavy lifting in this investigation?
Will the media finally admit that they are co-conspirators in the cover-up?
What they were covering up via AIM’s Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi Releases Interim Report:
Accuracy in Media and the CCB held a press briefing on Tuesday, April 22nd at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. to release and discuss the Interim Report. Attendees included CNN, The Daily Mail, Fox News, The Washington Free Beacon, World Magazine, WorldNetDaily, and The Daily Caller.
The key findings in the report include that
- Muammar Qaddafi expressed his willingness to abdicate shortly after the beginning of the 2011 Libyan revolt, but the U.S. ignored his calls for a truce, which led to extensive loss of life (including four Americans), chaos, and detrimental outcomes for U.S. national security objectives across the region.
- The U.S. facilitated the delivery of weapons and military support to al Qa’eda-linked rebels in Libya.
- On the day of the attacks in Benghazi, whether or not there was an official order to stand down, the result was the same. There were military assets, for example, at the U.S. base in Sigonella, in Sicily, Italy that could have been brought to bear, and perhaps could have saved the lives of the two men killed at the CIA Annex, the scene of the second attack that night. The failure to attempt to rescue these Americans amounts to a dereliction of duty.
- Previous investigations have been ineffective as the cover-up of Benghazi continues at all levels of government, prompting the need for a Select Committee with the power of subpoena to investigate this tragedy and compel testimony under oath outside the five-minute rule imposed on Congressional members by the current investigative structure.
- America needs Congress to form a Select Committee to uncover the facts about Benghazi that remain unavailable to the public, and are obscured by the five-minute rule imposed upon Members of Congress.
MORE:
Sharyl Attkisson reports:
Changed classification?
Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) told me today that the government apparently tried to keep the Rhodes email out of Congress and the public’s hands by classifying it after-the-fact.
“They retroactively changed the classification,” Chaffetz says. “That was an unclassified document and they changed it to classified.”
In the past month, the government has supplied 3,200 new Benghazi-related documents under Congressional subpoena. In some instances, Congressional members and their staff are only permitted to see the documents during certain time periods in a review room, and cannot remove them or make copies.
Chaffetz says that the State Department redacted more material on the copies provided to Congress than on those that it was forced to provide to JudicialWatch.
One of the most heavily-redacted email exchanges is entitled, “FOX News: US officials knew Libya attack was terrorism within 24 hours, sources confirm.” The Fox News article was circulated among dozens of officials including Rhodes and then-Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough but the content of their email discussion is hidden.
“Topline Points”
An internal document provided by the State Department dated Sept. 14, 2012 is titled, “Topline Points” and poses answers to a series of questions apparently in preparation for the briefing to be provided to Ambassador Rice prior to her talk show appearances. The document fails to mention terrorism, although it had been repeated throughout the early versions of the talking points, and many government officials have said that they had already concluded by that time that terrorism was to blame.
“What’s your response to the Independent story that says we have intelligence 48 hours in advance of the Benghazi attack that was ignored?” is one question posed in the briefing memo. The suggested answer: “This story is absolutely wrong. We are not aware of any actionable intelligence indicating that an attack on the U.S. mission was planned or imminent. We also see indications that this action was related to the video that has sparked protests in other countries.”
But the final sentence to the answer is expanded and developed in the “PREP CALL with Susan” email from Rhodes at 8:09pm on Friday, September 14, 2012. It adds the phrase “spontaneously inspired” and also refers to the attack as “demonstrations” that “evolved.”
“The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. Consulate and subsequently its annex,” reads the Friday night email from Rhodes to White House press officials.
Obama administration officials have insisted they were acting on “the best intelligence available at the time” and that they clarified the story as they got more information.
But taken as a whole, the documents and testimony revealed since the attacks support the idea that the administration’s avoidance of the word “terrorism” was a strategy rather than an accident or mistake.
Nice Deb 