The Latest Benghazi Freak-Out in 10 Sentences

Reps. Louie Gohmert and Michele Bachmann sit in the audience during a hearing on Benghazi on Capitol Hill. This was May…of last year.Cliff Owen/AP

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Last week, in response to a Freedom of Information request filed by Judicial Watch, the White House released a memo related to Benghazi that was authored by Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communication. The four-page memo, written a few days after the attacks, was designed to prep Susan Rice for her upcoming appearances on several Sunday talk shows. Among other things, it addressed the anti-American protests that had first sprung up in Egypt and then spread throughout the Middle East, including this line as one of the goals of her appearances:

To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.

Republicans say this is a “smoking gun” of a White House cover-up on Benghazi. But is it? Here are 10 things you should know:

  1. First things first: this memo should have been released earlier, and conservatives are fully justified in asking why it took a FOIA request to finally shake it loose.
  2. That said, as an adviser for “strategic communication”—what the rest of us call spin—Ben Rhodes’ job is explicitly political, providing guidance on how to put the administration’s foreign policy actions in the best light.
  3. Nine hours before Rhodes sent his email, the CIA had provided its assessment of what caused the attacks in Benghazi: “We believe based on currently available information that the attacks 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.”
  4. The Cairo protests, in turn, were inspired by the YouTube video “Innocence of Muslims,” which is why Rhodes mentioned the video in his memo.
  5. As it happens, it turned out that there were no protests earlier in the day in Benghazi—but at the time, that was what the CIA believed.
  6. However, multiple sources—including McClatchy, Al Jazeera, the New York Times, and then deputy CIA director Michael Morell—have confirmed that anger toward the YouTube video did play a role in motivating the initial attacks.
  7. Multiple sources also confirm that that the Benghazi attacks were opportunistic—organized hastily to take advantage of the Cairo protests, not planned days or weeks ahead of time.
  8. Susan Rice, in all her Sunday show appearances, was properly cautious about the role of the video, the nature of the attacks, and the fact that everything she said was tentative and based on “the best information we have to date.”
  9. Like any administration, the Obama White House wanted to put the best face on its Middle East policy, and there’s no question that their public statements were designed to do just that.
  10. Nevertheless, the Republican theory that Obama was afraid to blame Benghazi on terrorism has never really made any sense; there’s simply never been any evidence of anything more than a fairly routine amount of spin in the aftermath of the attacks.

So: A “smoking gun”? “Cold, hard evidence” of an Obama cover-up? Just like Watergate? Hardly. Even George Will doesn’t believe that. The video really did play a role in the Cairo protests and then the Benghazi attacks, and there was never anything wrong with saying so. It’s inexplicable that Republicans think this memo proves anything more damning than that.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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