Benghazi Revelations Hit Obama with a Cream Pie

by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright May 10, 2013
All Rights Reserved.                                         

                When the Benghazi debacle, killing Amb. Chris Stevens and three other Americans, hit the headlines Sept. 11, 2012, panic struck the White House less than two months before the Nov. 6 presidential election.  Explaining the tragedy on Sunday- morning TV talk shows Sept. 16, 47-year-old U.N. Amb. Susan Rice didn’t consider the repercussions to her career reporting a carefully sanitized version of the events, blaming the rocket-propelled grenade attack on “spontaneous rioting” in response to a U.S.-homespun video defaming the Prophet Mohammed.  Instead of saying “no way,” Rice allowed herself to pitch the administration’s far-flung explanation of “spontaneous rioting” that destroyed the Benghazi U.S. consulate.  Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) smelled a rat, exposing Rice’s deception as a White House cover-up.

             Because of the waning days of a long election campaign, the public neither blamed Obama nor Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton for leaving the U.S. Benghazi consulate unprotected, blaming the GOP for trying to score cheap political shots before the Nov. 6 election.  While Rice dismissed her role a merely reporting the best intelligence at the time, she paid a draconic price, forced to withdraw her nomination to replace Hillary Rodham Clinton as Secretary of State.  Newly released e-nails show that whatever talking points about the Behghazi attack came from the CIA, they were carefully doctored by the State Department.  State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland objected to the CIA’s inelegant wording suggesting that Libya’s al-Qaeda affiliate Ansar al-Sharia staged the attack, apparently because it prejudiced an ongoing investigation into the incident.

              Rice told national audiences on five different talk shows Sept. 16 that the attacks were “spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.”  CIA’s memo conceded, “that being said, we do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al-Qaeda participated in the attack.”   “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.  We thus will work through the talking points tomorrow morning at the Deputies Committee meeting,” said National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes,  practically admitting that White House statements about Benghazi were doctored to avoid political fallout.  “These changes don’t resolve all my issues or those of my buildings’ leadership,” said Nuland, referring to changes made up the chain of command, perhaps to Clinton. 

            White House officials now find themselves scrambling to justify all doctoring done of CIA memos about the Benghazi attack.  “The CIA drafted these talking points and redrafted these talking points,” said White House press secretary Jay Carney, remaining technically correct but not admitting the White House role.  “The fact that there are inputs is always the case in a process like this, but the only edits made by anyone at the White House were stylistic and non-substantive.  They corrected the description of the building or the facility in Benghazi from consulate to diplomatic facility and the like . . . “ said Carney, specifically referring to the attempt to politicize Benghazi.  Carney’s reference to the “attempt to politicize” Benghazi was precisely why the administration went to great pains to remove “al-Qaeda” or “terrorist attack” from Rice’s talking points.

              Parroting the White House party line was precisely why Rice had to remove herself from consideration for Hillary’s job.  Whether the talking points were written by the CIA or edited by State Department, Rice knew they wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny.  “And ultimately, this all has been discussed and reviewed and provided in enormous levels of detail by the administration to Congressional investigators, and the attempt to politicize the talking points, again, is part of an effort to, you know, to chase after what isn’t the substance here,” said Carney, giving away the true White House motives:  To avoid political damage before the election.  Calls for the White House to come clean were not only, as Carney suggests, “gotcha politics,” but a legitimate attempt to get out the facts about the worst attack terrorist attack against the homeland since Sept. 11, less than two months before Election Day.

             McCain and Graham correctly saw the political implications of a cover-up by the White House of the Benghazi affair.  Now that the details are finally out, it’s an hour late and dollar short.  Fed up with Washington’s endless food fight, the public hasn’t shown much patience for the Benghazi affair where the GOP sought to pin the blame on Hillary Clinton and the White House.  Whether or not a Cabinet official can be held accountable for terrorist attacks in dangerous parts of the world is anyone’s guess—but doubtful.  White House officials should be held accountable for doctoring the facts to protect Obama from political fallout before the November election.  With executive privilege looming and Hillary long gone, it’s going to be difficult to pinpoint who actually censored the talking points.  It’s now clear that the White House panicked less than two months before the election.

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news.  He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com.and author of Dodging the Bullet and Operation Charisma.