How many pages of secret strategizing did one sobering, contrary report on the Benghazi terror slayings generate in the Obama White House?
Seven.
And the administration is now fighting to keep each one of those pages secret.
Fox News reported on Sept. 27, 2012, that intelligence officials knew within a day that the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks in Libya that left U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans dead were deliberate and calculated terrorism and not spontaneous reactions to an anti-Muslim video on the Internet.
The report spurred a flurry of back-and-forth missives at the White House.
Among those on the now-redacted chain of emails,
Fox reports, were Deputy National Security Adviser Dennis McDonough; John Brennan, a former counterterrorism adviser; and Ben Rhodes, the presidential communications adviser who pinned it all on the video.
"A seven-page dialogue concerning one Fox News report to me demonstrates an alarm bell situation where they are reacting to and trying to shape a response…. There was a contrarian news report that didn't align with their position, and they were clearly reacting to it in a way that would help reinforce their position," Judicial Watch’s Chris Farrell told Fox News.
The White House
blamed the intelligence community for the delay.
"As the intelligence community learned more information, they updated Congress and the American people on it," White House spokesman Jay Carney said at the time.
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