26 thoughts on “The Latest Hillary Emails”

  1. Even if this isn’t illegal, it’s a made to order political ad for the GOP.
    This would take the Hillary Clinton Candidacy out behind the shed and shoot it like Old Yeller.

    So much so that I think they need to wait a while to release it so the dems don’t have time to replace her with Biden.

  2. So, Hillary helped father the Benghazi video smear/cover up. She tells so many lies… wouldn’t it be far easier (and vastly shorter) to list the very few times when she’s actually told the truth about anything?

    Hrmm. Father of Lies. Yep, that fits her rather well, I think.

  3. Was this narrative concocted that morning when Clinton and Rice met?

    Barring time travel, no. Rice and Clinton met on September 14. That was a day after Rice was briefed and given the assessment she repeated in her talk show appearances:

    According to interviews with a half-dozen American officials, including policy makers and intelligence officials, here is a rough chronology of what happened, some details of which The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

    On Sept. 13, Ms. Rice and other cabinet-level officials were told about the assessment that there had been protests at the diplomatic mission in Benghazi.

    “The first briefing was exactly as one would expect in the early aftermath of a crisis,” an American intelligence official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the continuing F.B.I. investigation of the assault. “It carefully laid out the full range of sparsely available information, relying on the best analysis available at the time.” Briefers said extremists were involved in attacks that appeared spontaneous.

    1. So, you are saying the effort to scapegoat a man who made a movie actually began earlier than the linked article claims?

      Your quote makes no mention of a video. Rice didn’t go out and give talking points related to that quote. So sometime between that meeting and her Sunday appearances, someone told Rice to blame a video.

      1. Your quote makes no mention of a video.

        There were protests against the video at U.S. diplomatic facilities in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Sudan, Greece, Pakistan, India, and Indonesia that week. As the quote indicates, the U.S. intelligence assessment as of the briefing was that the Benghazi attack began as yet another one of those protests.

        2. As the quote indicates, the U.S. intelligence assessment as of the briefing was that the Benghazi attack began as yet another one of those protests.

          “Started”. It didn’t take many minutes to figure out that it wasn’t just another YouTube protest and instead a planned attack on US personnel in Banghazi. Why was Rice who was briefed to emphasize the YouTube video the day before, spinning a false story on September 16, four days after the attacks?

          “We can’t predict with any certainty, but let’s remember what has transpired over the last several days. This is a response to a hateful and offensive video that was widely disseminated throughout the Arab and Muslim world. …

          “Let me tell you the best information we have at present. First of all, there is an FBI investigation, which is ongoing, and we look to that investigation to give us the definitive word as to what transpired. But putting together the best information that we have available to us today — our current assessment is that what happened in Benghazi was, in fact, initially a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired hours before in Cairo — almost a copycat of the demonstrations against our facility in Cairo, which were prompted, of course, by the video.

          “What we think then transpired in Benghazi is that opportunistic extremist elements came to the consulate as this was unfolding. They came with heavy weapons, which, unfortunately, are readily available in post-revolutionary Libya, and that escalated into a much more violent episode. Obviously, that’s our best judgment now. We’ll await the results of the investigation.”

          1. I still remember watching CBS Sunday Morning after the attach. The Libyan President was interviews before Susan Rice came on. He said at the time this was not a protest. Susan contradicted the Libyan President and the host pointed it out, and she maintained the video talking points. The video BS doesn’t explain why the British pulled their Ambassador out of Libya weeks earlier due to security concerns. The video wasn’t British made nor mentioned as the rational for protecting the life of their diplomatic counsel. But the video is a convenient way of hiding the State Departments failings.

          2. Why was Rice who was briefed to emphasize the YouTube video the day before, spinning a false story on September 16, four days after the attacks?

            The “story” she told was straight out of the CIA-written talking points. Anyone in her shoes would have been briefed with those same talking points, and presented the same story.

            So your question really is: why did the CIA talking points describe the attack as the outgrowth of a protest, when there actually wasn’t a protest? The GOP House intelligence committee looked into that question, and their conclusion was:

            Fourth, the Committee concludes that after the attacks, the early intelligence assessments and the Administration’s initial public narrative on the causes and motivations for the attacks were not fully accurate. There was a stream of contradictory and conflicting intelligence that came in after the attacks. The Committee found intelligence to support CIA’s initial assessment that the attacks had evolved out of a protest in Benghazi; but it also found contrary intelligence, which ultimately proved to be the correct intelligence. There was no protest. The CIA only changed its initial assessment about a protest on September 24, 2012, when closed caption television footage became available on September 18, 2012 (two days after Ambassador Susan Rice spoke), and after the FBI began publishing its interviews with U.S. officials on the ground on September 22, 2012.

          3. Keep telling the same lie Jim. And no, Politifact is not an unbias source to be trusted. It is a propaganda tool, just like you, Jim. Especially when Politifact is using Susan Rice talking point quotes to suggest that her lying is fact.

            It was Victoria Nuland with State Department that struck the mention of Al Qaida (did you not see the Al Qaida flag flying over the US embassy in Egypt the day before Jim?). She also introduced the FBI investigation BS into the story. The FBI knew nothing at the time, and wasn’t even investigating in Libya at the time. After Nuland made her edits, Ben Rhodes of the White House came into pressure everyone to accept Nuland’s comments, and the talking points were watered down further. The only truth you have Jim is that the CIA did mention the protests in Egypt, but other points mentioned by the CIA were dismissed by State and the White House. When it got back to the CIA, Petraeus called the revised talking points memos “useless” and recommended not using them.

          4. The “story” she told was straight out of the CIA-written talking points. Anyone in her shoes would have been briefed with those same talking points, and presented the same story.

            I don’t buy it, Jim. Everyone including the CIA knew right away what really happened. Why did Rice use the alleged “CIA-written talking points” rather than truer answers that were known at the time? I think that answer is pretty obvious. Because an election was coming up and an actual Al Qaeda-affiliated attack which successfully killed an ambassador and other US citizens ran counter to the foreign policy narrative that they ran at the time.

            The real question is why do you buy it?

          6. Everyone including the CIA knew right away what really happen

            Go read the conclusions of the House Intelligence committee report. This is a report written by House Republicans who have no reason to carry water for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. They “found intelligence to support CIA’s initial assessment that the attacks had evolved out of a protest in Benghazi”. The CIA did not know right away what really happened; sources were telling conflicting stories, everyone was guessing which ones to believe, and some guesses turned out to be right while others turned out to be wrong.

            alleged “CIA-written talking points”

            You’re alleging that the CIA didn’t write the talking points? And that the GOP House Intelligence committee is in on the cover-up? That’s tinfoil hat territory.

            Because an election was coming up and an actual Al Qaeda-affiliated attack which successfully killed an ambassador and other US citizens ran counter to the foreign policy narrative that they ran at the time.

            Within weeks, long before election day, the administration was stating that it had been a pre-planned Al Qaeda-affiliated attack. That had no apparent effect on “the foreign policy narrative”, or the election results.

          7. Within weeks, long before election day, the administration was stating that it had been a pre-planned Al Qaeda-affiliated attack. That had no apparent effect on “the foreign policy narrative”, or the election results.

            With Romney improving in the polls, the democrats managed to get Candy Crowley to throw out any ethics she had left and come to Obama’s defense. If not for that act, which even Crowley admitted days later and way too late was wrong (because by then she had seen the CBS interview that proved Romney was right); then the election results might have changed as a result of Benghazi. And yes, some started backtracking the lie, which is what the latest emails suggest. Thanks for finally getting to the news of the day. The thing that is important now is that Hillary lied to the American people, and oh yeah, she looks to have unlawfully handled classified data.

          8. ThGo read the conclusions of the House Intelligence committee report.

            I did. You have stuff like:

            There was a stream of contradictory and conflicting intelligence that came in after the attacks. The Committee found intelligence to support CIA’s initial assessment that the attacks had evolved out of a protest in Benghazi; but it also found contrary intelligence, which ultimately proved to be the correct intelligence.

            Once again, you evade the issues here. The Committee is saying nothing of the relative weight of the “evidence”. It is only your assumption that weight supporting your convenient interpretation was true.

            And you still have to explain why Rice made such firm claims given the contradictory and conflicting evidence? Even if your narrative is true, we have this issue of a murky situation transformed into a black and white story where Obama and Clinton were not at fault.

  4. The article Jim points us to has phrases such as:

    “sparsely available information”

    and

    ” relying on the best analysis available at the time.”

    and

    “here is a rough chronology of what happened,”

    …one wonders how rough…….

    and

    “with the caveat that that information is incomplete and may be flat wrong.”

    and

    “could change as more information became available.”

    So when the information is sparse, relying on the best analysis at the time but everyone knows it could be flat out wrong and change at a moment’s notice, you DO NOT go on 5 tv shows in one day and stat categorically and undeniably that:

    ” “What this began as was a spontaneous, not a premeditated, response to what happened, transpired in Cairo,” where protesters angered by the video invaded the grounds of the American Embassy.”

    Unless, of course, you were told to do so by Hillary in the meeting referred to, in email, as:

    “…email that White House aide Ben Rhodes sent to several high-ranking administration staffers had the subject line: “RE: PREP Call with Susan: Saturday at 4:00 p.m. ET.”

    “prep call…..”

    There is nothing in the article Jim links to that exonerates Clinton. We already know she knew better before Rice went on tv because that was exposed by her other emails. We already know she was lying when she told the parents of the deceased she was going to get that video maker.

    If Hillary’s henchmen did the prepping it’s no different than if Hillary did it herself.

    1. you DO NOT go on 5 tv shows in one day and stat categorically and undeniably that

      Rice did not state anything categorically or undeniably, she presented it as the best information they had to date, information that was subject to change as the investigation progressed. And sure enough, the intelligence community’s assessment (about whether there’d been a protest) did change within weeks.

      2. Let’s look at what she said 5 times:

        ABC’s “This Week”:

        “Well, Jake, first of all, it’s important to know that there’s an FBI investigation …”

        Not CIA.

        But our current best assessment, based on the information that we have at present, is that, iIN FACT, what this began as, it was a spontaneous — not a premeditated — response to what had transpired in Cairo.”

        IN FACT Jim. Her words.

        CBS’s “Face the Nation”:

        “But based on the best information we have to date, what our assessment is as of the present is IN FACT what began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our embassy– –sparked by this hateful video.”

        IN FACT Jim.

        “Fox News Sunday”:

        “. The information, the best information and the best assessment we have today is that IN FACT this was not a preplanned, premeditated attack. ”

        IN FACT Jim.

        NBC’s “Meet the Press”:

        ” But putting together the best information that we have available to us today our current assessment is that what happened in Benghazi was IN FACT initially a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired hours before in Cairo, almost a copycat of– of the demonstrations against our facility in Cairo, which were prompted, of course, by the video. ”

        IN FACT, Jim.

        Her preamble of “best assessment” is canceled out by her repeated IN FACT.

        You don’t say IN FACT if you do not know it s a fact. She IN FACT contradicted herself. She said she will wait for the investigation to be complete but IN FACT it was all caused by the video.

        She is playing word games and she hopes everyone is as clueless as you are.

        She also said after her IN FACT:

        “Obviously, we will wait for the results of the investigation and we don’t want to jump to conclusions before then. ”

        But then she, IN FACT, didn’t wait……

        did she?

        1. Thanks for providing those quotes; they completely undermine your argument that Rice’s statements were categorical. Rice qualifies her statements every time: “our current best assessment, based on the information that we have at present”, “based on the best information we have to date”, “putting together the best information that we have available to us today our current assessment is”, “the best information and the best assessment we have today is”, “putting together the best information that we have available to us today our current assessment is”.

          Her preamble of “best assessment” is canceled out by her repeated IN FACT.

          That isn’t how English works. If I say that “based on an old fable, the moon is in fact made of green cheese”, the “in fact” does not “cancel out” the “based on an old fable.”

          1. Except her qualifications were false statements. As I noted above, she came on Face the Nation after the Libyan President, and “her best information” contradicted his. And if her best information was that faulty, why mention it at all? Why not mention the potential Al Qaida connection, since AQ was involved in Egypt? Oh yeah, Victoria Nuland and Ben Rhodes didn’t want Congress looking into that connection, so they altered the talking points until the CIA recommended not using them, because it was no longer the best information.

            She lied Jim. We all know that, because her statements have not held true over time and emails showed they didn’t tell everything they knew, and they didn’t provide Congress the intelligence the CIA gave them.

          2. Jim, don’t forget that the CIA is not independent, it is controlled by Obama and has political appointees in the chain of command that had influence over the talking points.

            Also, Hillary’s own emails show this is all a lie. She told her family and foreign heads of state that the attack was a planned terrorist attack the night of the attacks or the very next day.

            What Hillary told people in private contradicted what she, Obama, and Rice said publicly. Those emails are direct evidence that Rice knowingly lied. Meanwhile, you have no evidence to back up your claims.

          3. So, we have a conflicting set of data that needed erudite analysis to come to a prudent solution. The administration’s foreign policy who at the time touted their mantra of, “Don’t do stupid shit (aka Smart Power!)”, proceed to put a triple play bet on every ‘fact’ that ended up being completely wrong. As they say, it’s difficult to differentiate between malice and incompetence; either way you’re a failure.

  5. We also already know that this administration – which includes Clinton – told intelligence officers to tone down the reports on ISIS because it would reveal just how hollow the administrations assurances are.

    So they have NO problem doctoring information…proven fact.

  6. “Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” while discussing the uncovered email showing Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had told the Egyptian prime minister that “we know the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film,” prior to telling them it was a YouTube video that caused the terror attack, Clinton said she did not lie to them but instead was caught up in “the fog of war.” ”

    hoho yeah riiiiiiight

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