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Phydeaux -> Ben Ghazi.. the scandal continues (4/29/2014 11:21:46 PM)
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So, the email trove continues from the FOI request...
Ben Rhodes
The email lists the following two goals, among others:
"To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy."
Ben Rhodes, you know Deputy National Security Adviser, brother to the president of CBS news... The only problem of course is .. it was a blatant failure of policy. And so the last peg of what I alleged at the start of this whole mess comes home. As predicted, the obama administration knowingly lied in an attempt to avoid the obvious conclusions.
This was AFTER they had been briefed by the missions deputy chief of staff that there was no protest; after having seen the actual attack.
Flat. out. lie.
As reported in American Thinker:
When State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland requested changes to the original CIA talking points to eliminate reports regarding warnings of the upcoming attacks who responded positively to her wishes? Ben Rhodes.
Stephen Hayes writes at the Weekly Standard (The Benghazi Scandal Grows:
The CIA's talking points, the ones that went out that Friday evening, were distributed via email to a group of top Obama administration officials. Forty-five minutes after receiving them, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland expressed concerns about their contents, particularly the likelihood that members of Congress would criticize the State Department for "not paying attention to Agency warnings." CIA officials responded with a new draft, stripped of all references to Ansar al Sharia.
In an email a short time later, Nuland wrote that the changes did not "resolve all my issues or those of my building leadership." She did not specify whom she meant by State Department "building leadership." Ben Rhodes, a top Obama foreign policy and national security adviser, responded to the group, explaining that Nuland had raised valid concerns and advising that the issues would be resolved at a meeting of the National Security Council's Deputies Committee the following morning.
As Charles Krauthammer noted, Rhodes had written in an email he wanted the revisions to reflect all the "equities" of the various departments involved in the Benghazi story -- not reflect the truth but the "equities" (a Washington euphemism for reputations). Truth ended up on the cutting room floor.
This report was backed up by other journalists.
As Kevin Robillard wrote at Politico,"Terror References removed from Benghazi talking points":
Nuland was backed up by Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes.
"We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don't want to undermine the FBI investigation," Rhodes wrote. "We thus will work through the talking points tomorrow morning at the Deputies Committee meeting."
After the meeting Rhodes mentioned, all references to Al Qaeda were deleted.
Hayes outlines what happened next:
Mike Morell, deputy director of the CIA, agreed to work with Jake Sullivan and Rhodes to edit the talking points. At the time, Sullivan was deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the State Department's director of policy planning; he is now the top national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden.
It is highly doubtful that Morell, the deputy director of the CIA, a career official (not an Obama appointee), found this work comfortable or rewarding.
After all, he was being "asked" to distort the CIA's original report -- to eliminate references to Islamic terrorism, to delete warnings of an organized attack to come, to shield the Obama administration and cover-up the Benghazi disaster, a problem that would have plagued Barack Obama in the run-up to the election.
Then CIA-director David Petraeus was reportedly appalled at the revisions forced upon them by Team Obama (recall the constant references during the Bush era about the "politicizing of intelligence"?). He was particularly frustrated over the deleted references to terrorism.
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