The New Propaganda, ABC News and The Weekly Standard Shill For Republicans, Put Out False Benghazi Email

The New Propaganda, ABC News and The Weekly Standard Shill For Republicans, Put Out False Benghazi Email

CNN is challenging the accuracy of reporting on a supposed email from a White House aide that seemed to suggest an effort to provide political cover for the administration following the September attacks in Benghazi, Libya. The new revelations regarding the email comes after the allegedly flawed reporting has spread through the media.

CNN host Jake Tapper reported today that a newly obtained email from White House aide Ben Rhodes about Benghazi "differs from how sources inaccurately quoted and paraphrased it in previous accounts to different media organizations." Tapper writes that the email shows that someone provided outlets like ABC News and The Weekly Standard with "inaccurate information" to make it appear that the White House was "more interested in the State Department's desire to remove mentions of specific terrorist groups and warnings about these groups so as to not bring criticism to the State Department than Rhodes' email actually stated."

From Tapper's report:

    In the email sent on Friday, September 14, 2012, at 9:34 p.m., obtained by CNN from a U.S. government source, Rhodes wrote:

    "All -

    "Sorry to be late to this discussion. We need to resolve this in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, particularly the investigation.

    "There is a ton of wrong information getting out into the public domain from Congress and people who are not particularly informed. Insofar as we have firmed up assessments that don't compromise intel or the investigation, we need to have the capability to correct the record, as there are significant policy and messaging ramifications that would flow from a hardened mis-impression.

    "We can take this up tomorrow morning at deputies."

    You can read the email HERE.

    ABC News reported that Rhodes wrote: "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." The Weekly Standard reported that Rhodes "responded to the group, explaining that Nuland had raised valid concerns and advising that the issues would be resolved at a meeting of the National Security Council's Deputies Committee the following morning."

    Whoever provided those quotes seemingly invented the notion that Rhodes wanted the concerns of the State Department specifically addressed. While Nuland, particularly, had expressed a desire to remove mentions of specific terrorist groups and CIA warnings about the increasingly dangerous assignment, Rhodes put no emphasis at all in his email on the State Department's concerns.

The allegedly inaccurate characterizations of the Rhodes email by ABC News and The Weekly Standard were repeated in numerous media outlets, and a Republican research document. 

ABC News' alleged misquote of the Rhodes email -- filed by Jonathan Karl -- was cited and repeated in numerous outlets, including USA Today, Politico, The Daily Mail, National Review Online, and Fox News. During Special Report's panel discussion on May 10, contributor Charles Krauthammer cited the email to claim the White House was more interested in "political cover for all the agencies and not about the truth."

    KRAUTHAMMER: There is in one of the memos that you mentioned the deputy national security advisor, Ben Rhodes. So he is writing in the heat of this when they're trying to get revisions and redactions. He writes, "We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities." Not reflect the truth, but reflect -- an "agency equity" is a way of saying, bureaucratese, reflects the interests and the political cover of all of the agencies. The point of the exercise is what he is saying, it has to reflect stuff that will be political cover for all the agencies and not about the truth. And we know now that it was a document completely rammed through by the White House and the State Department reflecting all their objections. And the bottom line is in the end they redacted the truth.

ABC News' report about the email was also cited in a Republican National Committee research document about "Obama's Bungled Benghazi Response":

The Weekly Standard's alleged mischaracterization, filed by Stephen Hayes, was cited and repeated in conservative outlets like Townhall.com, The American Thinker, Hot Air, and Breitbart.com.

Media Matters has previously noted numerous problems with the media's Benghazi reporting.

UPDATE: NBC News' Chuck Todd is also reporting that he obtained Rhodes' email and it paints a "different picture" than previously reported and "contradicts" ABC News' Benghazi report.

UPDATE 2: The Washington Post's Erik Wemple reports that a "spokesman for ABC News says, 'Assuming the email cited by Jake Tapper is accurate, it is consistent with the summary quoted by Jon Karl.'" While ABC News has reportedly suggested that Karl's reporting on the email simply provided a "summary," Karl's ABCNews.com piece actually purported to present a direct quote from the Rhodes email -- a quote which does not appear in the email posted by CNN

The Daily Mail, National Review Online, Fox News Townhall.com, The American Thinker, Hot Air, and Breitbart.com are all anti-American neo-fascist "news' outlets. They'll say anything to make the USA weaker and look more like 1852 than 2013.

Conservative Media ABC's Exclusive Benghazi Report Shows Nothing New

Conservative Media ABC's "Exclusive" Benghazi Report Shows Nothing New

ABC News is buying into right-wing scandal mongering over the tragic September 2012 attacks on a U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, with an "exclusive" report that doesn't stand up to minimal scrutiny, with flaws that are being used by the right to call for a major investigation.

The so-called "exclusive" report, posted at ABCNews.com, purports to uncover dramatic new developments in the right wing's Benghazi witch hunt, but in reality it is little more than a rehash of previously covered debates over whose input was given to the early draft of intelligence talking points put together in the early days of the investigation into the attacks. None of this largely rehashed debate disproves what Gen. David Petraeus, former head of the Central Intelligence Agency, testified in November: that the intelligence community signed off on the final draft of the talking points, and that references to terrorist groups in Libya were removed in order to avoid tipping off those groups.

ABC has been in the bag for radical far Right conservatives since the early days of the G.W. Bush administration. They helped sell Bush's lies about Iraq to the public so what is a few lies and exaggerations about Benghazi.

Conservative Sleazebags at Fox Finds New Way To Twist Panetta's Benghazi Testimony

Conservative Sleazebags at Fox Finds New Way To Twist Panetta's Benghazi Testimony

Fox News contributor Byron York suggested that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's congressional testimony on Benghazi indicated that President Obama failed to order the military to protect Americans under attack. However, Panetta testified that Obama explicitly directed him to take military action to protect American lives.

On Fox's America's Newsroom on Friday, guest host Rick Folbaum aired clips of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) questioning Panetta during Thursday's hearing about the attack on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya. York described Panetta's testimony as confirming that "[a]fter having a prescheduled meeting in the afternoon on that day, Secretary Panetta spoke to [President Obama] no more." York then said, "I think what became clear with Lindsey Graham's questioning about possible military activity is that nobody in the Pentagon would have ordered military action without a specific order from the president. And the president wasn't around."

But Panetta's very testimony refutes York's accusation: Panetta made it clear that Obama ordered Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey and himself to take all necessary action to protect Americans under attack.

During the hearing, when Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) asked Panetta about conversations he had had with the president during the attack, Panetta testified, "We had just picked up the information that something was happening, that there was an apparent attack going on in Benghazi. And I informed the president of that fact, and he at that point directed both myself and General Dempsey to do everything we needed to do to try to protect lives there." Panetta later reiterated, "[Obama] basically said, 'Do whatever you need to do to be able to protect our people there.' "

As the Associated Press reported, "Panetta said he and Dempsey were meeting with Obama when they first learned of the Libya assault. He said the president told them to deploy forces as quickly as possible."
Indeed, Panetta did deploy forces. The AP stated: "Between midnight and 2 a.m. on the night of the attack, Panetta issued orders, telling two Marine anti-terrorism teams based in Rota, Spain, to prepare to deploy to Libya, and he ordered a team of special operations forces in Central Europe and another team of special operations forces in the U.S. to prepare to deploy to a staging base in Europe."

While a six-member quick reaction team already in Benghazi and reinforcements from the U.S embassy in Tripoli did help defend the Benghazi consulate, the AP article went on to note that unfortunately "[d]efense officials have repeatedly said that even if the military had been able to get units there a bit faster, there was no way they could have gotten there in time to make any difference in the deaths of the four Americans."

The independent Accountability Review Board, which was set up by the State Department to investigate the Benghazi attack, determined there was "no evidence of any undue delays in decision making or denial of support from Washington or from the military combatant commanders," and continued, "Quite the contrary: the safe evacuation of all U.S. government personnel from Benghazi twelve hours after the initial attack ... was the result of exceptional U.S. government coordination and military response and helped save the lives of two severely wounded Americans."

There is reality and then there is the projections of the sick demented fantasies of plastic patriot conservatives.

Anti-American Republicans Congratulate Themselves Over Benghazi Report That Undermines The Lies They Told

Anti-American Republicans Congratulate Themselves Over Benghazi Report That Undermines The Lies They Told

Fox News figures have tried to use an investigative panel's recent report on the Benghazi attack to congratulate their network on its coverage of the attack. But the report actually debunks several incorrect and misleading narratives Fox pushed about Benghazi.

On December 18, the independent Accountability Review Board, which was set up by the State Department to investigate the Benghazi attack, released their findings in a report that "sharply criticized the State Department" for oversights that led to insufficient security at the U.S. compound in Benghazi, as The New York Times reported.

During the December 19 broadcast of On The Record, host Greta Van Susteren asked Fox News contributor Sarah Palin for her thoughts on the report, and Palin answered, in part, "Kudos to Fox News for being the news outlet that stayed on top of this story. Americans deserve these answers." Van Susteren responded that she felt "some level of pride" for Fox's Benghazi coverage, because of "all the sort of heat we took from people, saying that it wasn't a story." She added, "[T]here's been a lot of resistance to my national security colleagues getting this information. So, I do take some pride with them."

Similarly, Fox contributor Kirsten Powers suggested on Special Report that the Benghazi report wasn't even necessary because of the program's coverage of the attack, saying, "Well, it's interesting that that report -- you could have known all that if you'd just watched this show. So, it's sort of funny that they had to do an investigation to figure all of that out."

In fact, the review board's report actually discredits Fox's coverage of the attack.

Fox figures spent ample time, for example, alleging that the Obama administration refused to send reinforcements to Benghazi during the attack, even going so far as to claim the administration made "a political decision not to rescue" Americans at the compound.

But the report determined there was "no evidence of any undue delays in decision making or denial of support from Washington or from the military combatant commanders," and continued, "Quite the contrary: the safe evacuation of all U.S. government personnel from Benghazi twelve hours after the initial attack ... was the result of exceptional U.S. government coordination and military response and helped save the lives of two severely wounded Americans."

Fox also hyped its "exclusive" report that requests for military back-up during the attack were twice denied "by the CIA chain of command" -- even though the CIA called Fox's claims "inaccurate" at the time. But as The Huffington Post pointed out, the Benghazi report debunks that claim. Quoting from the report, Huffington Post wrote, "[A] 'team leader' at the annex had 'decided on his own' to delay leaving the facility briefly to see if local security elements would arrive with reinforcements. After 'a brief delay,' and determining that they would not, the team leader made the decision to move some units toward the compound, the report said."

As the Washington Post's Erik Wemple noted, Fox's subsequent attempt to rebut the CIA's denial of their "exclusive" is also debunked by the report. While a FoxNews.com article claimed that "[t]rouble had been gathering for quite some time" near the compound in an attempt to cast doubt on the CIA's denial, the Benghazi report clearly showed that "[f]olks were winding down and things were quiet on the night of Sept. 11 just before the attackers descended," as Wemple wrote.

Even before the review board's report was released, Fox had been under fire for their false and misleading reporting of the events in Benghazi. Given the report's findings, Fox has no cause to take a victory lap.

One true American ideal is to be big enough, to have enough humility to admit when you're wrong. Fox news and other anti-American conservative news outlets and their gang og radical pundits, has no such values. They are moral nihilists who only believe in the conservative movement, not American values and ideals.