(Washington, DC) – 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” and 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. According to one
email:
The first draft apparently seemed
unsuitable….because they seemed to encourage the reader to infer
incorrectly that the CIA had warned about a specific attack on our
embassy. On the SVTS, Morell noted that these points were not good and
he had taken a heavy hand to editing them. He noted that he would be
happy to work with [then deputy chief of staff to Hillary Clinton]] Jake
Sullivan and Rhodes to develop appropriate talking points.
The documents obtained by Judicial Watch also contain numerous emails
sent during the assault on the Benghazi diplomatic facility. The
contemporaneous and dramatic emails describe the assault as an “attack”:
As reported, the Benghazi compound came
under attack and it took a bit of time for the ‘Annex’ colleagues and
Libyan February 17 brigade to secure it. One of our colleagues was
killed – IMO Sean Smith. Amb Chris Stevens, who was visiting Benghazi
this week is missing. U.S. and Libyan colleagues are looking for him…
At 8:51 pm,
Pelofsky tells Rice
and others that “Post received a call from a person using an [sic] RSO
phone that Chris was given saying the caller was with a person matching
Chris’s description at a hospital and that he was alive and well. Of
course, if the he were alive and well, one could ask why he didn’t make
the call himself.”
Later that evening,
Pelofsky emailed Rice
that he was “very, very worried. In particular that he [Stevens] is
either dead or this was a concerted effort to kidnap him.” Rice
replied, “God forbid.”
- September 11, 2012, 4:49 PM – State Department press officer John Fogarty reporting on “Libya update from Beth Jones”:
Beth Jones [Acting Assistant Secretary,
Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs] just spoke with DCM Tripoli Greg Hicks,
who advised a Libyan militia (we now know this is the 17th Feb brigade, as requested by Emb office) is responding to the attackon the diplomatic mission in Benghazi.”
Material is blacked out (or redacted) in many emails.
“Now we know the Obama White House’s chief concern about the Benghazi
attack was making sure that President Obama looked good,” said Judicial
Watch President Tom Fitton. “And these documents undermine the Obama
administration’s narrative that it thought the Benghazi attack had
something to do with protests or an Internet video. Given the explosive
material in these documents, it is no surprise that we had to go to
federal court to pry them loose from the Obama State Department.”
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