Correct. Given that these recently released documents provide no support to the allegation that the administration lied, what were they trying to cover up by withholding them?
The email released shows that the Administration prepared talking points that pointed, explicitly, to the “Internet video” as the cause of the incident, not a planned terrorist action. Other documents/testimony, uncovered in Congressional investigations so far, show that at the time of the email, the Administration knew that it was a planned terrorist action.
The Administration lied that they didn’t make those talking points. The email shows that lie.
But the above is irrelevant to the current brouhaha. As the well-known saying goes, it’s not the original scandal that gets people in the most trouble - it’s the attempted cover-up. Hiding the email in question from the Congressional subpoena, even though it was directly relevant to it, is a criminal offense.
By the way, can we get back to the question I laid out in the OP?
What conceivable piece of evidence, were it to surface, would get people who believe there was a cover-up to change their minds?
As far as I can tell there is no such thing, which qualifies the Benghazi controversy as a conspiracy theory and all of us on the “con” side are wasting our time discussing it.
I don’t think you’re reading the documents carefully. If you scroll up the pdf (starting on page 5), it’s clear from the suggested script that the administration expected these Sunday shows to be on the topic of the protests roiling the Middle East generally, which (except in the case of Benghazi) were uncontroversially recognized to have been prompted by this stupid video. Among questions they expected to be asked:
“What are you doing to monitor the situation in the Middle East?”
“Can you explain the President’s comment that Egypt is not an ally?”
Discussion of the video generally
Ordered departures of embassies generally
War Powers Resolution
and, the attack on Benghazi
The context is clearly the unrest that was roiling the Middle East generally. So the smoking-gun line in question–“To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy”–is not about Benghazi specifically, but about the broader situation unfolding in multiple countries. His point that the situation broadly speaking was ignited by a video rather than any particular American military or administration policy strikes me as pretty unassailable.
Should Ben Rhodes’ line have read: “To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video–with the notable exception of Benghazi, where we believe the evidence suggests a pre-planned attack that coincidentally fell on the same day as protests targeting other diplomatic facilities–and not a broader failure of policy?” Maybe, but that’s not what their intelligence *said *at the time (see CIA talking points), so why would they say that?
From the email in question:“The demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the US Consulate and subsequently its annex”.
And, once again, hiding the email in question from the Congressional subpoena, even though it was directly relevant to it, is a criminal offense.
That statement accurately reflected the intelligence provided to the administration in the CIA talking points. I don’t understand what point you’re making here.
I’ll grant that the administration shouldn’t have withheld documents. There’s all kinds of reasons they might have done that. It does not constitute ipso facto evidence of a cover-up, particularly when the contents of said document contribute nothing to the case being built.
How about: that the White House had evidence that the attack in Benghazi was a consequence of the Internet video.
By the way, if you keep insisting that the Administration, at the time of producing those talking points, didn’t know that it was a planned terrorist attack:
From the Armed Services subcommittee hearings:
WENSTRUP: “As a military person, I am concerned that someone in the military would be advising that this was a demonstration. I would hope that our military leadership would be advising that this was a terrorist attack.”
HAM: “Again, sir, I think, you know, there was some preliminary discussion about, you know, maybe there was a demonstration. But I think at the command, I personally and I think the command very quickly got to the point that this was not a demonstration, this was a terrorist attack.”
WENSTRUP: “And you would have advised as such if asked. Would that be correct?”
HAM: “Well, and with General Dempsey and Secretary Panetta, that is the nature of the conversation we had, yes, sir.”
When Panetta was questioned about it in the same committee:
Inhofe: “Secretary Panetta, [when you informed the President] do you believe that unequivocally at that time we knew that this was a terrorist attack?”
Panetta: “There was no question in my mind that this was a terrorist attack”
and when reporters asked two of Hillary Clinton’s top aides:
Reporter: “What in all of these events that you’ve described led officials to believe for the first several days that this was prompted by protests against the video?”
Aide: “That is a question that you would have to ask others. That was not our conclusion.”
If the subpoenas had been promptly complied with, and had produced documents that showed that the administration honestly believed that this was a spontaneous protest caused by a video, then this issue would already be dead.
Of course, if they had such documents, they would have complied with the subpoenas. They didn’t, which led to increased suspicion that they were not being forthcoming.
As for the ‘what difference does it make?’ argument - you have to be kidding. The Obama administration had a narrative going that Obama was very good on terrorism. Bin Laden was dead, al-Qaida on the run, drone strikes made the leadership of al-Qaida ineffective, yada yada. This was a narrative they very much wanted to take into the election. Benghazi was a real thumb in their eye - they refused to beef up security, they ignored warnings of renewed terrorist activity in the region - warnings so strong that it caused other countries to completely shut down their embassies. The result was a dead ambassador and a terrorist flag flying over a U.S. embassy. You can see why they’d want to cover that up.
Having an embassy be overthrown and an ambassador killed by a planned terrorist attack was clearly very damaging to an important narrrative the administration was trying to carry into the election. So, it appears they just made up a story about a ‘spontaneous’ attack by a mob, and tried to pass it off on the American people. It’s entirely possible that had the public known the real facts of what happened before, during, and after Benghazi that Obama would not have been re-elected. That makes it a pretty big deal indeed.
And this doesn’t even touch on what happened that night. Why was no rescue operation mounted? Why did the CIA people in the annex have to violate orders to go to the aid of the embassy? Why was a rescue mission being prepared told to stand down? It’s possible that this coverup wasn’t just about changing the narrative afterwards, but also may have involved decisions to keep the U.S. response minimal to prevent it from blowing up into a bigger story. If so, that’s criminal behavior. That’s the kind of thing a real investigation would uncover.
You’re saying the CIA’s intelligence about the Benghazi attack pointed at the video?
Re Xema: But the White House (via Susan Rice) never made that claim. They said they believed–believed–that the Benghazi demonstrators were inspired by the Cairo protesters, who themselves were motivated by the video. There’s a distinction.
Moreover, the WH didn’t blame the attack on the demonstrators, but on armed extremists who hijacked the demonstration. In my book, extremist is an accurate characterization of the attackers and consistent with them being Ansar al-Sharia, Al-Qaeda, whatever, which was not known with certainty at the time.
In making these claims, the WH relied on an intelligence assessment from the CIA. So where’s the issue?
Hijacked what demonstration? There never was one. There never was a report of one. The first message out was from Stevens back to the embassy saying that they were under attack. This is a link to CNN’s timeline of events: http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/06/politics/benghazi-attack-timeline/index.html It is clear that it was an attack from the outset. The very mention of a protest that got hijacked was made up out of whole cloth, with plausible deniability due to the Cairo protest. But just because it was a plausible lie doesn’t make it to be anything but a lie.
And to actually answer the OP, I would like to see 1 shred of evidence that there ever was a protest.
So you are claiming that the recently revealed email is proof that the White House altered the CIA’s talking points?
There’s one problem with that:
Here are the Benghazi talking point emails. It shows that at 11:15 am, the talking points indicated that the attacks were a spontaneous response to the protests in Cairo.
Here is the “smoking gun” email. It was sent at 8:09 pm the same day.
Explain to me in clear English how an email that is sent 9 hours after the draft talking points is evidence that the later email modified the earlier talking points. It’s pure fucking nonsense. It’s partisan extremists pointing at two sets of talking points saying basically the same thing and screaming, “SEE?!?!? CONSPIRACY!!! THESE TALKING POINTS SAY THE SAME THING!1!”
I laugh at the implication that the White House had a plan to criminally subvert a congressional subpoena, but could find no legal way to get around a FOIA request. I mean, get a grip.
The problem with this theory is that the administration clearly looks worse (or at least as bad) if a mob, inspired by the video. attacks and kills than if a terrorist attack. inspired by the video or something else, does the same thing. No one in or outside the administration was pretending that we no longer had anything to fear from Al-Qaida. A terrorist attack, if anything, would be more understandable and excusable than letting a mob of angry locals take over the consulate. President approval ratings seem to go up after a terrorist attack, I know Bush II enjoyed quite a 9/11 bump in the polls.
You refuse to read what Susan Rice actually said.
"But our current best assessment, based on the information that we have at present, is that, in fact, what this began as, it was a spontaneous – not a premeditated – response to what had transpired in Cairo. In Cairo, as you know, a few hours earlier, there was a violent protest that was undertaken in reaction to this very offensive video that was disseminated.
We believe that folks in Benghazi, a small number of people came to the embassy to – or to the consulate, rather, to replicate the sort of challenge that was posed in Cairo. And then as that unfolded, it seems to have been hijacked, let us say, by some individual clusters of extremists who came with heavier weapons, weapons that as you know in – in the wake of the revolution in Libya are – are quite common and accessible. And it then evolved from there."
Where does she say that there was a protest in Benghazi? She characterized it as there being “folks who came to the embassy to replicate a challenge” to America. That’s too mendacious for you?
By the way, Susan Rice explicitly points out that heavy weaponry got into the hands of extremists precisely thanks to the revolution that OBAMA ENCOURAGED. If they were trying to deflect blame here, they sure weren’t doing a good job.
Moreover, her statement is 100% consistent with the original CIA talking point, namely,
“We believe based on currently available information that the attacks in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. Consulate and subsequently its annex.”
If you have evidence that the CIA talking points were the product of political pressure from the White House, I’ll consider that there was a scandal.
Please, Sam, it was not an embassy. You may think that a trifling matter, but it makes the whole thing sound worse. No need to mix fiction with fact if you have a strong case.
The fact that you believe this nonsense which has been thoroughly debunked by Republicans in the House who are not Darrell Issa is proof that you aren’t interested in the real facts.
Indeed. Shades of the train wreck referred to by Kobal2 way up at the beginning of this thread.
People keep using words like “hidden” and “withheld” for this supposedly revealing email. Do we have any evidence that someone a) even looked at it, b) thought it was relevant, and c) deliberately kept it away from congress?