White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told a reporter Wednesday that emails showing direct White House involvement in framing the Benghazi incident as being about “an Internet video” were not about Benghazi.
The Washington Free Beacon reported Tuesday on previously unreleased communications from White House advisor Ben Rhodes that said the administration’s messaging “goals” should be to “underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy,” and “to show that we will be resolute in bringing people who harm Americans to justice.” The contents of that particular email, which concerned UN Ambassador Susan Rice’s upcoming appearances on the Sunday news, were sent to the likes of Carney and other White House officials. Their context makes it clear that they pertained to the Benghazi attacks.
Carney, who was being challenged by ABC News’ Jon Karl, said otherwise.
“If you look at that document, that document that we’re talking about today was about the overall environment in the Muslim world — the protests outside of Khartoum, the embassy in Khartoum; outside of the embassy in Tunis; the protests outside of the embassy in Cairo. These were big stories. These were — this was a big problem. And this was an ongoing story through that weekend when Ambassador Rice appeared on the Sunday shows,” Carney said.
After Karl continued to press during the 8-minute exchange, Carney eventually told him flatly, “This document was not about Benghazi.”
The emails, released by Judicial Watch, are viewable here.
At the conclusion of the exchange, Karl asked Carney to “clear the record” based on past statements he had made in the White House briefing room regarding the respective roles of the White House and the intelligence community in preparing Rice’s talking points for the Sunday shows.
“You said at the podium last year that the talking points that Susan Rice used for those Sunday show appearances were a product of the intelligence community — that the White House and the State Department only changed one word. We now know — obviously we’ve known for some time that that is not true,” Karl said.
Carney wouldn’t budge.
“Jon, you know, when it comes to correcting records, you know, we could get into that. And the fact is those talking points were, as the deputy director of the CIA testified before Congress, as he has talked to the press about on Benghazi, were created by the CIA.”
