While this is not surprising news, it’s the first time we’ve had confirmation of this!
Via Judicial Watch:
Judicial Watch announced today that on
April 18, 2014, it 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” a possible
kidnap attempt.
The documents were released Friday as
result of a June 21, 2013, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit
filed against the Department of State (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department
of State (No. 1:13-cv-00951)) 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. Judicial Watch had been seeking these documents since October
18, 2012.
The Rhodes email was sent on 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 and Internet video, and not
a broader failure or 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 Davie 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 documents Judicial Watch obtained
also include a September 12, 2012, email from former DeputySpokesman at
U.S. Mission to the United Nations Payton Knopf to Susan Rice, noting
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.
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