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June 28, 2020
Judicial Watch uncovers emails showing Ben Rhodes and aides joking about Benghazi lies
By Thomas Lifson
Judicial Watch once again has proven to be invaluable (donate here) in uncovering official perfidy. This time, its Freedom of Information Act lawsuit has uncovered utterly appalling levity among top Obama foreign policy aides over their lies to the public about the September 11, 2012 attack on the Benghazi Consular Annex that took the lives of Ambassador Chris Stevens, Information Officer Sean Smith, and two CIA operatives, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, both former Navy SEALs. Readers will recall that UN Ambassador Susan Rice, now touted as a vice presidential nominee for front man Joe Biden, went on five Sunday morning talk shows to lie about the attack and blame it on a YouTube video seen by a handful of people. Nine days later, the-Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes yucked it up with his crew.
Ben Rhodes with his boss aborard Air Force One
Offical White House photo by Pete Souza
Here is what Judicial Watch discloses about the emails (read them here) it brought to light:
It’s hard to keep your story straight if you’re making it up as you go along, which was the modus operandi of Obama fabricator Ben Rhodes.
The Justice Department released 80 pages of records showing top Obama White House officials scrambling to “evolve” its false claims that the September 11, 2012, terrorist attacks on U.S. Government facilities in Benghazi, Libya, began “spontaneously” in response to an anti-Muslim video on the Internet.
The emails reveal top Obama White House official Ben Rhodes and Clinton State Department Deputy Chief of Staff Jake Sullivan joking about being called “liars” and “leakers.”
The records were produced in response to our 2016 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:16-cv-02046)). We filed the lawsuit after the Justice Department failed to comply with a July 7, 2016, FOIA request for records of the FBI’s investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during her tenure.
On September 16, 2012, then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice appeared on five Sunday television talk shows claiming the Benghazi attack was incited spontaneously by an anti-Muslim Internet video. The newly released records show a redacted official’s email from September 27 to then-Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes and then-NSC spokesman Tommy Vietor, copying then-Deputy Chief of Staff Jake Sullivan, saying, “What’s the plan here?” Rhodes responds:
Broader plan is IC [intelligence community] acknowledgement of an evolving assessment of what took place, which happens to be true (unlike just about everything else we’ve seen reported on Benghazi.)
Further along in the email thread, an official whose name is redacted, says, “Everyone know [sic] Susan [in her TV appearances] was using not just IC approved guidance, but IC created.”
Additionally, Rhodes says to Sullivan and other redacted officials:
At least you’re only a liar. Could be worse – we’re liars and also allegedly leakers. So you’ve got that going for you, which is something.
Sullivan replies: “We’re only lying footsoldiers [sic]. You’re lying masterminds. That’s cooler.”
A redacted official replies to Sullivan: “I prefer that we go by henchmen. Has more of a Marvel comic sinisterness to it. There should be a cable show where all the guests, and the anchor, have to wear polygraphs. Or, when there’s a dispute between source, the aggrieved parties take a poly, with some neutral third party rendering judgment. The Biggest Liar.”
Rhodes says to Sullivan: “I’d like to go on television and tell everybody what I think…. Look at it this way. I[t] could be worse. You could be a career bureaucrat whose greatest thrill in life is leaking half-truths, self-justifications and outright lies to the likes of Eli Lake, Kim Dozier, and whoever picks up the phone at Fox News.”