The sham ARB investigation and Ben Rhodes' role

Victoria Toensing is a highly regarded former Justice Department lawyer currently representing the whistleblowers testifying about Benghazi before congressional committees. It is painfully clear that the ARB investigating commission established by Hillary Clinton to report of the "failures" in security that occurred in Benghazi was a whitewashing body designed to clear her of all culpability in the fiasco.  Republicans must expose this sham and continue to highlight her responsibility for this matter, otherwise this harridan could become the next POTUS after the loser currently occupying that office.

Administration Relying on Shoddy Benghazi Report to Absolve Itself of Blame

The White House has touted the Accountability Review Board (ARB) investigation of the Benghazi massacre as a review “led by two men of unimpeachable expertise and credibility that oversaw a process that was rigorous and unsparing.” In fact, the report was purposefully incomplete and willfully misleading.

The two men in charge of the ARB, Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Admiral Michael Mullen, a diplomat and military man respectively, have no meaningful investigative experience. Instead of letting the facts lead the direction of the investigation, the report appears designed to protect the interests of Hillary Clinton, the State Department higher ups, and the president.
A most obvious question is: why was Secretary Clinton never interviewed for the investigation?  She is mentioned only once in the report, as the person who convened the Board. If, as Clinton herself has said, she took full responsibility for what happened in Benghazi, her decisions and decision-making process are materially relevant for investigating what happened before and during the night of September 11, 2012, and preventing what went wrong from ever happening again.
Other relevant questions the report does not answer are: How often did Clinton and President Obama speak during the attack? What decisions did the president make, and what orders did he give? What was the hour by hour participation of the president during the attack?

My husband, Joseph diGenova, and I represented two State Department whistleblowers for the House Oversight and Reform Committee hearings held last week, on May 8.  Mark Thompson, my husband’s client, testified that he asked twice to be interviewed by the ARB and was not.  Mr. Thompson was the deputy assistant secretary in charge of coordinating the deployment of a multi-agency team for hostage taking and terrorism attacks.  Yet, he was excluded from all decisions, communications, and meetings on September 11 and 12, 2012. Why? Others asked to be interviewed and were not. Until they see how my client, Gregory Hicks, former chargé and deputy chief of mission (DCM) in Libya, and Mr. Thompson fare after their testimony, they will not step forward.
In addition, the ARB used procedures no seasoned investigator would ever follow. More significantly, the process was unfair to the witnesses. For example, no stenographer was present. So there is no verbatim transcript of testimony from each witness. The ARB used note takers. Mr. Hicks was not allowed to review the note taker’s document that supposedly reflects what he said, but is limited to what the note taker thought he heard and decided to record. Mr. Hicks was not permitted to review the draft ARB report to suggest corrections or point out any omissions. He has never been allowed to read the classified report.
The unfair process, in fact, has become even more troubling since I received calls from reporters after last week’s hearing telling me that unnamed State Department persons are whispering that Mr. Hicks’s statements to the ARB are “inconsistent” with his congressional testimony. The congressional testimony is more expansive because both Democratic and Republican staff interviewed Mr. Hicks, and others, for nearly five hours. By contrast, the ARB questioned Mr. Hicks for only two hours, despite the fact that he was the highest-ranking State Department official in Tripoli the night of the attack. Inconsistent? No! And how would anyone disprove that false claim without a transcript?
The ARB report has at least one significant discrepancy, inconsistent with what Mr. Hicks told the Board. He specifically stated, with Pickering present, that the reason Ambassador Christopher Stevens went to Benghazi was to establish a permanent constituent post, an assignment received directly from Clinton in May 2012 when he was sworn in as ambassador. Soon after, Stevens told Mr. Hicks about this assignment over lunch when they discussed the procedures for getting the task done. When Mr. Hicks arrived in Tripoli in July 2012 they revisited the needs related to making Benghazi a permanent post.  At the time, Stevens had out of country commitments and could not go to Benghazi until September. The trip was scheduled for mid-September because the report about building structures and security had to be submitted before the end of the fiscal year: September 30.
When Mr. Hicks told the ARB the reason for the trip, Pickering visibly flinched and said: “Does the 7^th floor know about this?” (The office of the Secretary of State is on the 7^th floor.)

Page 2 of 2

This relevant information was omitted in the ARB’s unclassified report. Worse, it was concealed by a false statement: “The Board found that Ambassador Stevens made the decision to travel to Benghazi independently of Washington, per standard practice.  Timing for his trip was driven in part by commitments in Tripoli, as well as a staffing gap … in Benghazi.” Mr. Hicks testified in the hearing that Washington was well aware prior to the trip that Stevens was going to Benghazi.
Many observers have deplored the ARB's conclusion assigning responsibility to lower-level career officials at State for all mistakes, while clearing the political appointees above the assistant secretary of any missteps. It is a convenient finding—at least, for the State Department higher-ups. But the ARB's shoddy report is an insult to the memory of four dead Americans. The truth, even or especially at this point, does make a difference.
Victoria Toensing, former chief counsel for the Senate Intelligence Committee and deputy assistant attorney general, is founding partner of diGenova & Toensing, a Washington, D.C. law firm.

Ben Rhodes: Obama's Fixer behind the Benghazi Cover-Up

By Ed Lasky

Barack Obama's "Tower of Fabrications," as Peter Wehner describes the Benghazi scandal, is beginning to crack. And that crack will soon reveal a central figure behind the cover-up, a man close to Barack Obama for years but generally unknown to the public: Ben Rhodes.

Rhodes has risen from being an obscure and failed fiction writer to formulating foreign and national security policy for Obama precisely because he is willing to his superiors' bidding regardless of facts. He has a history of using whatever talents he has with the pen to do so.

A few years ago he had drafted the Iraq Study Group report on the causes and mishaps of the Iraq War to focus on Israel -- despite the fact that Israel was not part of the scope of the mission the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group was given. Witnesses and experts called by the Committee were appalled.  Why did Rhodes distort the record? He seemingly was doing the bidding of his masters who have a history of animus towards Israel.  Rhodes had attended Rice University, where the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy is housed; it was headed by Edward Djerejian. Both Baker and his friend Djerejian (a former Ambassador to Syria) have pro-Arab records; criticism of and pressure towards Israel have been hallmarks of their careers.  Both Baker and Djerejian played key roles in choosing whom to hire for the Iraq Study Group and how the work was done.

Rhodes may also just be indulging his own pro-Muslim sympathies. He wrote Obama's infamous Cairo Speech. That paean to the Muslim world was filled with fulsome praise of Islam that were factually incorrect (Rhodes' post-graduate education, after all, was in fiction-writing and under Obama he seems to have finally found someone who will pay him for writing fiction).  The speech avoided references to radical Islam and was filled with platitudes about Islam. The speech highlighted a tougher line towards Israel and "credited" that nation's founding as due to European guilt over the Holocaust (ignoring 5000 years of history).

Rhodes has gone from writing reports and drafting speeches to playing a key role in formulating foreign and national security policy, according to the New York Times. His closeness to Obama -- a man known for his aloofness ("he doesn't like people" says a former aide) has become well-known.

There is a reason Rhodes is close to Obama.

Everyone in power needs a fixer and, according to the latest revelations, Ben Rhodes is Obama's fixer.

Rhodes seems to be proud of his role. Patrick Howley of the Daily Caller notes that Rhodes "identifies himself first and foremost as a strategist and mouthpiece for the president's agenda" whose, quoting Rhodes, "main job, which has always been my job, is to be the person who represents the president's view on these issues"

When State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland requested changes to the original CIA talking points to eliminate reports regarding warnings of the upcoming attacks who responded positively to her wishes? Ben Rhodes.

Stephen Hayes writes at the Weekly Standard (The Benghazi Scandal Grows:

The CIA's talking points, the ones that went out that Friday evening, were distributed via email to a group of top Obama administration officials. Forty-five minutes after receiving them, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland expressed concerns about their contents, particularly the likelihood that members of Congress would criticize the State Department for "not paying attention to Agency warnings." CIA officials responded with a new draft, stripped of all references to Ansar al Sharia.

In an email a short time later, Nuland wrote that the changes did not "resolve all my issues or those of my building leadership." She did not specify whom she meant by State Department "building leadership." Ben Rhodes, a top Obama foreign policy and national security adviser, 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.

As Charles Krauthammer noted, Rhodes had written in an email he wanted the revisions to reflect all the "equities" of the various departments involved in the Benghazi story -- not reflect the truth but the "equities" (a Washington euphemism for reputations). Truth ended up on the cutting room floor.

This report was backed up by other journalists.

As Kevin Robillard wrote at Politico,"Terror References removed from Benghazi talking points":

Nuland was backed up by Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes.

"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," Rhodes wrote. "We thus will work through the talking points tomorrow morning at the Deputies Committee meeting."

After the meeting Rhodes mentioned, all references to Al Qaeda were deleted.

Hayes outlines what happened next:

Mike Morell, deputy director of the CIA, agreed to work with Jake Sullivan and Rhodes to edit the talking points. At the time, Sullivan was deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the State Department's director of policy planning; he is now the top national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden.

It is highly doubtful that Morell, the deputy director of the CIA, a career official (not an Obama appointee), found this work comfortable or rewarding.  

After all, he was being "asked" to distort the CIA's original report -- to eliminate references to Islamic terrorism, to delete warnings of an organized attack to come, to shield the Obama administration and cover-up the Benghazi disaster, a problem that would have plagued Barack Obama in the run-up to the election.

Then CIA-director David Petraeus was reportedly appalled at the revisions forced upon them by Team Obama (recall the constant references during the Bush era about the "politicizing of intelligence"?). He was particularly frustrated over the deleted references to terrorism.

So who pushed for such a radical alteration of the CIA talking points, who has a history of writing reports, drafting speeches, doing his bosses bidding regardless of ethics and fealty to facts, and who has a record of indulging in pro-Islam messaging? None other than Ben Rhodes.

Journalists have just begun to focus on his role.

James Rosen, the Fox News Washington correspondent, reported Friday night on the Bret Baier show, that the Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes at the White House was an early participant in the process of rewriting the CIA talking points and he lined up with State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland in a "way that served to accelerate the scrubbing of the talking points".

Coincidentally (or not) Ben Rhodes's brother, David Rhodes, is the head of CBS News. One of the most dogged journalists trying to peel away the covers behind the Benghazi scandal has been CBS journalist Sharyl Atkinson. She has had to endure pressure from liberal journalistic colleagues to stop digging. Politico reports that "network sources" say that she "can't get some of her stories on the air."

The coercion may be going into overdrive as the investigations gets closer to fingering Ben Rhodes as the key player behind the Benghazi cover-up.  According to Patrick Howley of the Daily Caller, CBS News may be on the verge of firing Atkinson.

Furthermore, Ben Rhodes is married to Ann Norris, senior foreign and defense advisor to Senator Barbara Boxer (D-California). One might with some justification expect Sen. Boxer to run interference for Ben Rhodes should investigations begin to focus on his role in the Benghazi scandal.

Congress, or rather the Republican-held House since Harry Reid would never permit any truth-finding by the Democrat Senate, needs to step up the pace of their investigations, issue subpoenas, and call witnesses. America (and the wounded and dead victims and the family and friends who survive them) deserves to know the truth behind Benghazi.

And among those witnesses should be Ben Rhodes. Perhaps being forced to swear he will tell the truth will finally cause him to abandon fiction.