{"id":7272,"date":"2014-05-01T10:11:44","date_gmt":"2014-05-01T17:11:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=7272"},"modified":"2014-05-01T10:11:44","modified_gmt":"2014-05-01T17:11:44","slug":"the-truth-drips-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-truth-drips-out\/","title":{"rendered":"The Truth Drips Out"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ NRO’s The Corner<\/a>\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

\"Deputy_National_Security_Advisor_Rhodes_Addresses_Reporters_(12222740226)\"
Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For over a year and a half the White House successfully withheld communications between public servants, apparently in hopes that the death of four Americans in Benghazi would not become an issue in the 2012 election (at the eleventh hour CNN\u2019s Candy Crowley did her best to ensure that goal by unethically becoming both moderator and advocate of Barack Obama in the second debate).<\/p>\n

Even with the heavily censored and redacted recent releases of\u00a0White House e-mails<\/a>, one of the many messaging \u201cgoals\u201d of Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes (\u201cTo underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy\u201d) is the evidence that proves exactly what the White House so far has denied: the highest White House officials were in a pre-election frenzy to pressure almost everyone from the White House staffers to the CIA to massage the truth of how four Americans died in Benghazi in order to keep up a campaign-driven facade of a spontaneous video-driven riot, one that trumped the truth of a pre-planned terrorist attack, the possibility of which intelligence officers had on prior occasions warned about and were ignored.<\/p>\n

These heavily redacted talking points reveal three truths that won\u2019t go away: 1) the administration has lied about the reasons they promulgated false information that they knew at the time to be false; 2) the false, campaign-driven narrative that it was not a terrorist attack reflected prior laxity that they knew at the time increased risk, (and hampered proper focus on the true perpetrators, whose prompt arrest and capture might have negated their false narratives); and 3) they jailed a minor parole violator while falsely alleging that a video he had made had led to the deaths of Americans from an impromptu riot.<\/p>\n

Rhodes\u2019s now-released memo also went out to some of those who have denied that there was any effort to peddle a false narrative, including press secretary Jay Carney. There is a creepy incestuousness to the entire debacle (Rhodes is a brother to the CBS president, the CBS that later hired Mike Morell, the CIA appointee who earlier \u201cwent over\u201d the talking points with the White House staff, the CBS that pressured CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson on the content and choice of her reporting on Benghazi; Mr. Morell was later hired both by CBS and by a security firm, Beacon Global Strategies, involved with officials closely connected with Hillary Clinton, who was knee-deep in the Benghazi mess, and on and on).<\/p>\n

Because untruth was at the heart of not just the cover-up, but also of the lax security and response that led to the deaths of the four Americans, this scandal, despite the collusion of the\u00a0 White House, the CIA, and CBS, won\u2019t go away.<\/p>\n

At the very least, Mr. Rhodes should step down; he has been not been truthful and his immediate reaction to the disaster in Benghazi did not reflect his responsibilities to ensure national security, but rather a role as a political operative to suppress the truth. He was the coordinator of the White House messaging effort to prep official spokespeople\u2014Jay Carney especially\u2014and institutionalized a lie.<\/p>\n

How in current and future crises, could he ever be trusted to coordinate a national-security response based on unpleasant realities on the ground rather than domestic political calculations?<\/p>\n

Even with stonewalling, groupthink, legal maneuvering, media collusion, and lack of an independent prosecutor, more of the truth will drip out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ NRO’s The Corner\u00a0 For over a year and a half the White House successfully withheld communications between public servants, apparently in hopes that the death of four Americans in Benghazi would not become an issue in the 2012 election (at the eleventh hour CNN\u2019s Candy Crowley did her best to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[150],"tags":[1045,1026,1044,1065,1021,162],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1Ti","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5944,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-tainted-campaign\/","url_meta":{"origin":7272,"position":0},"title":"A Tainted Campaign?","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 14, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner If it is proven that the IRS\u00a0thwarted some groups from obtaining tax-exempt status in fear that their traditional or\u00a0conservative messages might hurt the 2012 Obama campaign (especially if it did so under pressure from White House-affiliated operatives),\u00a0and if it is\u00a0proven that the Obama administration\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Retrospective"","block_context":{"text":"Retrospective","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/retrospective\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6331,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-mother-of-all-scandals\/","url_meta":{"origin":7272,"position":1},"title":"The Mother of All Scandals","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 13, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0PJ Media IRS? 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Yet also, in Machiavellian fashion, the Obama group successfully peddled useful fictions, effectively deluded\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The World"","block_context":{"text":"The World","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5926,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/is-benghazi-becoming-a-watergate-or-iran-contra-or-both\/","url_meta":{"origin":7272,"position":3},"title":"Is Benghazi Becoming a Watergate, or Iran-Contra, or Both?","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 6, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner Benghazi cannot be dismissed with \u201clong ago\u201d or \u201cwhat difference does it make\u201d exasperation, given it may have the cover-up and civil-liberties aspects of Watergate and the weapon-transfers and foreign-policy implications of Iran-Contra. 1. 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Bush, etc.) wins re-election, but then his presidency implodes over the next four years \u2014 mired in scandals or disasters such as Watergate, Iran-Contra, Monica Lewinsky,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Middle East"","block_context":{"text":"The Middle East","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7272"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7272"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7275,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7272\/revisions\/7275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}