Thread: WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE???

Bill Clinton to Fundraise for Center for American Progress






BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff
April 28, 2014 9:24 am
Former President Bill Clinton will be headlining the Center for American Progress’ annual fundraiser next month, according to Politico.
The event will be an opportunity for Clinton to speak in front of progressive leaders, elected officials, and the progressive movement’s largest political donors.

Clinton is speaking on May 14, just months after his wife, Hillary Clinton, addressed an event honoring the group’s tenth year in existence.
“We’re very honored to have him,” said CAP President Neera Tandem, who worked in the Clinton White House before joining Hillary Clinton’s U.S. Senate campaign in 2000 and her presidential effort in 2008. The group has been host at past events to speakers such as President Barack Obama, and has held events with Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

The May event typically is made up of progressive leaders, elected officials and donors.

http://freebeacon.com/politics/bill-...ican-progress/


The Secret Donors Behind the Center for American Progress and Other Think Tanks [Updated on 5/24]


Washington institutions esteemed for their independent scholarship don’t disclose donations from corporations and foreign governments.

Ken Silverstein
May 21, 2013 | This article appeared in the June 10-17, 2013 edition of The Nation.

• Shar
  

Editor’s Note: We received a letter from the Center for American Progress on May 24, 2013 objecting to aspects of Ken Silverstein’s article. In the interest of debate, we publish that letter at the end of this article, along with Silverstein’s response.

Reuters Pictures
 
The Center for American Progress, Washington’s leading liberal think tank, has been a big backer of the Energy Department’s $25 billion loan guarantee program for renewable energy projects. CAP has specifically praised First Solar, a firm that received $3.73 billion under the program, and its Antelope Valley project in California.
Last year, when First Solar was taking a beating from congressional Republicans and in the press over job layoffs and alleged political cronyism, CAP’s Richard Caperton praised Antelope Valley in his testimony to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, saying it headed up his list of “innovative projects” receiving loan guarantees. Earlier, Caperton and Steve Spinner—
a top Obama fundraiser who left his job at the Energy Department monitoring the issuance of loan guarantees and became a CAP senior fellow—had written an article cross-posted on CAP’s website and its Think Progress blog, stating that Antelope Valley represented “the cutting edge of the clean energy economy.”
Though the think tank didn’t disclose it, First Solar belonged to CAP’s Business Alliance, a secret group of corporate donors, according to internal lists obtained by The Nation. Meanwhile, José Villarreal—a consultant at the power-
house law and lobbying firm Akin Gump, who “provides strategic counseling on a range of legal and policy issues” for 
corporations—was on First Solar’s board until April 2012 while also sitting on the board of CAP, where he remains a member, according to the group’s latest tax filing.
CAP is a strong proponent of alternative energy, so there’s no reason to doubt the sincerity of its advocacy. But the fact that CAP has received financial support from First Solar while touting its virtues to Washington policy-makers points to a conflict of interest that, critics argue, ought to be disclosed to the public. CAP’s promotion of the company’s interests has supplemented First Solar’s aggressive Washington lobbying efforts, on which it spent more than $800,000 during 2011 and 2012.
“The only thing more damaging than disclosing your donors and having questions raised about the independence of your work is not disclosing them and have the information come to light and undermine your work,” says Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics. “The best practice, whether required by the IRS or not, is to disclose contributions.”
Nowadays, many Washington think tanks effectively serve as unregistered lobbyists for corporate donors, and companies strategically contribute to them just as they hire a <acronym title="Google Page Ranking">PR</acronym> or lobby shop or make campaign donations. And unlike lobbyists and elected officials, think tanks are not subject to financial disclosure requirements, so they reveal their donors only if they choose to. That makes it impossible for the public and lawmakers to know if a think tank is putting out an impartial study or one that’s been shaped by a donor’s political agenda. “If you’re a lobbyist, whatever you say is heavily discounted,” says Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University and an expert on political ethics. “If a think tank is saying it, it obviously sounds a lot better. Maybe think tanks aren’t aware of how useful that makes them to private interests. On the other hand, maybe it’s part of their revenue model.”

* * *

When Newt Gingrich was running for president, The Washington Post ran a story about the Center for Health Transformation, which it described as his “hybrid” single-issue think tank. The center, which subsequently went bankrupt and was bought by WellStar, published reports and advocated on behalf of donors—including lobbyists and industry groups that donated millions to support its work—in addition to offering perks like “direct Newt interaction.” While the center did disclose some of its donors, it didn’t reveal how much money they had contributed.
It was an interesting story, but it obscured a key point: Newt’s “hybrid” was a particularly straightforward form of pay-to-play, but its basic features are common at Washington think tanks. Like Newt’s Center for Health Transformation, many lure big donors with a package of benefits, including personalized policy briefings, the right to directly underwrite and shape research projects, and general support for the donor’s political needs.
Most think tanks are nonprofit organizations, so a donor can even get a nice tax break for contributing. But it’s their reputation for impartiality and their web of contacts that makes them especially useful as policy advocates. “Think tanks can always draw a big audience to your event, including government folks,” a Washington lobbyist who has worked with several told me. “And people generally don’t think they would twist anything, or wonder about where they get their money.”
While think tanks portray themselves as altruistic scholarly institutions, they emphasize their political influence when courting donors. “If you have a particular area of policy interest, you can support a specific research effort under way,” the Brookings Institution says in one pitch for cash. Those interested in 
”a deeper engagement”—read: ready to fork over especially large sums of money—get personal briefings from resident experts and can work directly with senior Brookings officials to draw up a research agenda that will “maximize impact on policymaking.”
The Center for Strategic and International Studies advertises itself as being “in the unique position to bring together leaders of both the public and private sectors in small, often off-the-record meetings to build consensus around important policy issues.” It allows top-tier donors to directly sponsor reports, events and speaker series.
Because most think tanks don’t fully disclose their donors, it’s not always easy to see what sort of benefits money can buy. But during Chuck Hagel’s confirmation hearings, the Atlantic Council, where he’d been chairman before moving to the Pentagon, released a list of its foreign donors. One of them turned out to be the oil-rich government of Kazakhstan, headed by dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev. Last year, the council hosted a conference on Kazakhstan that was paid for by the Nazarbayev regime and Chevron, which has vast oil interests in the country and is also a major donor to the 
council. Keynote speakers included Kazakhstan’s former ambassador to the United States and Kenneth Derr, a former Chevron CEO and now Kazakhstan’s honorary consul in San Francisco.

* * *

John Podesta, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and the head of Obama’s first transition team, founded the Center for American Progress in 2003. Last year, Podesta stepped down as CAP’s president—he remains its chair and counselor—and was replaced by Neera Tanden, who served in both the Obama and Clinton administrations. Former Virginia Congressman Tom Perriello heads the CAP Action Fund, an advocacy unit, which operates out of the same offices and shares personnel.
CAP has emerged as perhaps the most influential of all think tanks during the Obama era, and there’s been a rapidly revolving door between it and the administration. CAP is also among the most secretive of all think tanks concerning its donors. Most major think tanks prepare an annual report containing at least some financial and donor information and make it available on their websites. According to CAP spokeswoman Andrea Purse, the center doesn’t even publish one.
Purse told me that CAP “follows all financial disclosure requirements with regard to donors…. We don’t use corporate funds to pay for research or reports.” But she flatly refused to discuss specific donors or to provide an on-the-record explanation for why CAP won’t disclose them.
After growing rapidly in its first few years, tax records show, CAP’s total assets fell in 2006 for the first time, from $23.6 million to $20.4 million. Assets started growing again in 2007 when CAP founded the Business Alliance, a membership rewards program for corporate contributors, and then exploded when Obama was elected in 2008. According to its most recent nonprofit tax filing, CAP’s total assets now top $44 million, and its Action Fund treasury holds $6 million more.
A confidential CAP donor pitch I obtained describes the Business Alliance as “a channel for engagement with the corporate community” that provides “the opportunity to…collaborate on common interests.” It offers three membership levels, with the perks to top donors ($100,000 and up) including private meetings with CAP experts and executives, round-table discussions with “Hill and national leaders,” and briefings on CAP reports “relevant to your unique interests.”

click to enlarge
CAP doesn’t publicly disclose the members of its Business Alliance, but I obtained multiple internal lists from 2011 showing that dozens of major corporations had joined. The lists were prepared by Chris Belisle, who at the time served as the alliance’s senior manager after having been recruited from his prior position as manager of corporate relations at the US Chamber of Commerce. According to these lists, CAP’s donors included Comcast, Walmart, General Motors, Pacific Gas and Electric, General Electric, Boeing and Lockheed. Though it doesn’t appear on the lists, the University of Phoenix was also a donor.
Incidentally, Scott Lilly, a Hill veteran who joined CAP in 2004 as a senior fellow covering national security, simultaneously served as a registered lobbyist for Lockheed between 2005 and 2011. Rudy deLeon, CAP’s senior vice president for national security and international policy, was a Boeing executive and directed the company’s lobbying operations between 2001 and 2006, before joining the think tank the following year.
Of the CAP donors mentioned in this story, I contacted Lockheed, which refused to confirm or deny its membership in the Business Alliance, and First Solar and Boeing, both of which confirmed that they had been members but wouldn’t say how much they gave or when. “Our work with think tanks is not political, but is more educational in nature,” Tim Neale of Boeing told me. “We want to learn from and share ideas with scholars across the political spectrum, and we like to get a wide range of viewpoints and ideas rather than focus solely on a particular political bent.”
Several CAP insiders, who asked to speak off the record, told me that when Podesta left, there was a fear that contributions would dry up. Raising money had always been important, they said, but Tanden ratcheted up the efforts to openly court donors, which has impacted CAP’s work. Staffers were very clearly instructed to check with the think tank’s development team before writing anything that might upset contributors, I was told.
I obtained a March 2012 e-mail from Belisle to Podesta and CAP’s communications and legal teams, which was also copied to Tanden. The e-mail noted a Think Progress item featuring a New York Times op-ed by former Goldman Sachs executive Greg Smith, who called the company’s environment “toxic and destructive.” At the time, the firm was under heavy fire for deceiving investors and for its larger role in driving the speculation in toxic securities that unwound the economy. Belisle said he was “flagging” the item for Tanden since she had recently met with Michael Paese, director of Goldman’s Washington lobbying office. Two sources told me that Goldman Sachs subsequently became a donor. Purse and Paese declined comment.

* * *

Foreign governments and business entities can also join the Business Alliance, whose membership list includes the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office—which functions as Taiwan’s embassy in Washington and retains many lobbyists, including former Oklahoma Republican Senator Don Nickles and former Missouri Democratic Representative Richard Gephardt—and the Confederation of Businessmen and Industrialists of Turkey (TUSKON).
In 2010, CAP issued a report, “Ties That Bind: U.S.-Taiwan Relations and Peace and Prosperity in East Asia,” which warned that the partnership between the two countries had stagnated and suggested that the United States maintain arms sales to Taiwan, increase economic and diplomatic cooperation, and otherwise “seek ways to deepen their relationship.” That same year, CAP’s Scott Lilly gave an address at the American Institute in Taiwan, in which he hailed the ties between the two nations as “one of the more important bilateral relationships in the world” before calling for additional arms sales to Taiwan. Lockheed, whom Lilly lobbied for at the time, is a leading arms merchant to Taiwan.
With help from TUSKON, CAP also makes an annual fact-finding trip to Turkey, the most recent being in February of this year. The CAP delegation met with US Ambassador Francis Ricciardone and senior Turkish government officials. A former CAP staffer told me that TUSKON had “amazing access” and “could call anyone in the government and get us a meeting or interview.” As a result of the Turkish group’s support, CAP was “totally in the tank for them,” this source said.

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CAP also presses for closer ties between the US and Turkish governments, just as Ankara’s lobbyists do. Last year, CAP hosted an event featuring Commerce Secretary John Bryson, who spoke on his “vision for deepening even further the US-Turkish commercial relationship.” Two years earlier, Podesta gave the keynote address at a TUSKON conference in Istanbul. In his speech—titled “The Unique Importance of the Turkish-American Relationship”—he praised CAP senior fellow Michael Werz for his work on “strengthening the US-Turkey relationship.” He also pointedly noted that Werz’s predecessor as CAP’s Turkey expert, Spencer Boyer, had left the think tank to become the Obama administration’s deputy assistant secretary for European affairs.
“Our policy work is independent and driven by solutions that we believe will create a more equitable and just country,” Purse told me. It would be easier to believe that statement, let alone evaluate it, if CAP was more transparent about its funding. The same holds true for think tanks in general—which, unlike other powerful Washington institutions, have the luxury of telling the public and policy-makers only what they choose about their funders.

* * *

Editor’s Note: We received a letter from the Center for American Progress on May 24, 2013, objecting to aspects of Ken Silverstein’s article. In the interest of debate, we publish that letter below, along with Silverstein’s response.

From the Center for American Progress
Core to liberal thought is the idea that evidence should come first and conclusions should follow. Ken Silverstein’s recent article, The Secret Donors Behind the Center for American Progress and Other Think Tanks, insinuates a lot but the facts tell a different story.
The inference at the heart of the author’s story is that corporate donations shape or drive the content of CAP and CAP Action. That assertion is baseless and completely false.
The most central case to the author’s argument relies on a junior staffer “flagging” a hard-hitting piece we did on Goldman Sachs. The author then fails to cite the fact that the leadership of the organization raised no concerns—indeed the leadership of the organization pushed for additional coverage—and the original draft appeared verbatim and remains publicly available; along with more than two dozen other pieces of our reporting that are highly critical of Goldman Sachs. All that was required was a simple search on ThinkProgress.
The author also argues that CAP takes funds from Turkish interests, including a quote from an anonymous source that “As a result of the Turkish group’s support, CAP was “totally in the tank for them.” Again, the author’s insinuation is refuted by CAP’s body of work. In fact, just days before the Turkish Prime Minister recently visited Washington, CAP published a piece critical of the Turkish government, Freedom of the Press and Expression in Turkey.
The author goes even further insinuating that CAP’s growth over the year is attributable to our creation of our Business Alliance in 2007 and corporate donations. As Huffington Post wrote in March, philanthropic giving is what is responsible for our growth. The fact of the matter is only 6 percent of our funding in 2012 came from corporate donors, and it has never reached double digits.
These are the facts. Facts that undermine the preconceived conclusion drawn by the author. We are fiercely and proudly independent in our work and strongly refute any inference to the contrary.
We expect more from The Nation, and we eagerly encourage any reader to look directly at the substance of our work on corporate accountability and financial sector reform, clean energy, campaign finance reform, defense cuts, and progressive tax reform to judge for themselves.
Andrea Purse, Vice President for Communications, Center for American Progress

Silverstein Replies
CAP was given plenty of time to reply before the story was published and chose not to. Now it has sent a letter that misrepresents what I wrote and hence shoots down arguments I didn’t make.
There is evidence that CAP’s agenda has been influenced by its decision to take corporate money, but that is not the central “inference at the heart of the story.” The main point of the story is that CAP takes money from corporate donors without disclosing it, which is not an inference but a fact.
Another fact is that in doing so, CAP sometimes acts as an undisclosed lobbyist for its donors. As described in the story, First Solar gave money to CAP and CAP’s staff advocated for First Solar before Congress and in articles on CAP’s website without disclosing that pertinent piece of information.
Maybe the 6 percent figure for corporate contributions is true and maybe it’s not, we have only CAP’s word to take for it. It should publish and make available an annual report or otherwise disclose at least some basic financial information, like most major think tanks do. Furthermore if CAP is only receiving 6 percent of its budget from corporations, it’s purely a function of its failure to close the deal, not a lack of trying. (See the wonderful perks it offers to big corporate donors, as described in my story.)
It’s nice that CAP sometimes criticizes its donors, but I found numerous instances where it praised them as well. But really, that is not the point. Wall Street companies gave a lot of money to President Obama not because they expected to get his support all the time, but to get it more than they would if they didn’t give him money at all. (And I’d say they got a pretty good return on their investment.) I expect that’s the same impulse that prompts companies to give CAP money, unless you believe Boeing’s explanation to me, that its contributions to the think tank are purely “educational in nature.”
People should read my story and decide for themselves who is telling the truth.
Ken Silverstein

Ken Silverstein
May 21, 2013 | This article appeared in the June 10-17, 2013 edition of The Nation.


http://www.thenation.com/article/174...s-updated-524#

Breaking: White House Benghazi Cover-up

Posted by Joe For America on Apr 29, 2014

Bombshell from Washington Free Beacon:

Enter to win the Family Gun Package Giveaway!

Previously unreleased internal Obama administration emails show that a coordinated effort was made in the days following the Benghazi terror attacks to portray the incident as “rooted in [an] Internet video, and not [in] a broader failure or policy.”

Emails sent by senior White House adviser Ben Rhodes to other top administration officials reveal an effort to insulate President Barack Obama from the attacks that killed four Americans.

Rhodes sent this email to top White House officials such as David Plouffe and Jay Carney just a day before National Security Adviser Susan Rice made her infamous Sunday news show appearances to discuss the attack.

The “goal,” according to these emails, was “to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure or policy.”

Rice came under fierce criticism following her appearances on television after she adhered to these talking points and blamed the attack on a little-watched Internet video.

The newly released internal White House e-mails show that Rice’s orders came from top Obama administration communications officials.

This is a huge deal. This is basically stealing the election. Obama couldn’t have won the election if he was held accountable for what happened in Benghazi. If he didn’t have Candy Crowley saving him in the debate, and if didn’t have a YouTube video as a scapegoat, it’s very easy to imagine 2012 going a different way.

“[W]e’ve made our views on this video crystal clear. The United States government had nothing to do with it,” Rhodes wrote in the email, which was released on Tuesday by the advocacy group Judicial Watch.

“We reject its message and its contents,” he wrote. “We find it disgusting and reprehensible. But there is absolutely no justification at all for responding to this movie with violence. And we are working to make sure that people around the globe hear that message.”

Rhodes also suggested that Rice tout Obama’s reputation as “steady and statesmanlike.”

“I think that people have come to trust that President Obama provides leadership that is steady and statesmanlike,” he wrote. “There are always going to be challenges that emerge around the world, and time and again, he has shown that we can meet them.”

Also contained in the 41 pages of documents obtained by Judicial Watch is a Sep. 12, 2012 email from Payton Knopf, the former deputy spokesman at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations.

In this communication, Knopf informs Rice that senior officials had already dubbed the Benghazi attack as “complex” and planned in advance. Despite this information, Rice still insisted that attacks were “spontaneous.”

The newly released cache of emails also appear to confirm that the CIA altered its original talking points on the attacks in the following days.

Then-CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell is identified as the person who heavily edited the critical fact sheet.

Continue reading…


Read more at http://joeforamerica.com/2014/04/bre...ao3kJY0scIV.99

Hillary Claims Jesus Was A Socialist Whose Lessons Were Meant To Teach Liberal Politics

Posted on 29 April, 2014 by clyde


If Hillary Clinton says it, I can be pretty certain it’s a lie.

The level of integrity the woman has for the truth is simply not there, and it doesn’t appear she’s itching to disclose the truth about any situation—especially about religion.

Heaven forbid she offend her blustering liberal loyalists.

So when Hillary tells you that the Jesus’ wisdom about caring for others was really his method of teaching liberal politics, you should ignore her.
Last week, the typically religion-quiet politician met with women from the United Methodist Church. Hillary told them that she loved church as a child and that Jesus taught her about compassion.

And so why doesn’t she attend church anymore? Hmm, interesting.

“The disciples come to Jesus and suggest they send away the people to find food to fend for themselves. But Jesus said, ‘No. You feed them,’” Clinton said. “He was teaching a lesson about the responsibility we all share.”

Clinton’s spin of the Bible is insulting. The fact that she would misrepresent Biblical passages to further her career as a liberal politician should be an affront to all Christians.

Hillary loves power. She does not love Jesus.

Do you think Hillary is a hypocrite? Share your thoughts below.


http://americanoverlook.com/hillary-claims-jesus-was-a-socialist-whose-lessons-were-meant-to-teach-liberal-politics/15996?utm_source=gopthedailydose

April 29, 2014

Four Dead in Benghazi Video

Lloyd Marcus


I made this music video because I want low-info voters to get it – to understand that four Americans unnecessarily died at the hands of al-Qaeda terrorists who overtook our U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Please do not be offended by my use of the term “low-info." I am merely referring to Americans like my brother. He works hard, coaches youth football, and gets his news from the mainstream media. He does not listen to talk radio, watch Fox News, or surf the internet. Thus, he is a low-info voter.

The MSM has refused to seriously investigate the Benghazi terrorist attack. Why did Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Obama refuse to answer the cries for help of those trapped in our consulate? U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens was brutally humiliated, tortured, and murdered.
Before being killed, Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty killed 60 of the consulate attackers. Diplomat Sean Smith was also killed during the attack.

The attack was before the 2012 presidential election. Obama was on the campaign trail, pounding his chest like Tarzan, proclaiming that Osama bin Laden was dead, that al-Qaeda was on the run, and that terrorism was no longer a threat.

With the anniversary of 9/11 coming up, Ambassador Stevens requested more security at our consulate. Strengthening security at our consulate would imply that terrorism was alive and well. So the Obama administration (Hillary Clinton) denied Stevens's request.

In essence, Obama and Clinton decided that the lives of Americans at our consulate in Benghazi were acceptable collateral damage to protect Obama's narrative. The Obama administration’s decision was unprecedented because we never leave Americans behind.

Special thanks to the true patriots at Kurt Howland Enterprises for donating their time producing this video.

My fellow Americans, please watch this brief music video, “Four Dead in Benghazi.”

http://www.reverbnation.com/artist/a...&autoplay=true

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/...m_medium=email

Sine Larva (Without Mask) originally shared to At Wit's End (Lies / Cover-ups / Scandals):

New documents prove the WH lied about Benghazi. Quite certain this story won't get the same coverage as Sterling. Media won't give up one of their own http://allenbwest.com/2014/04/new-be...te-house-lies/

New Benghazi documents prove tangled web of White House lies

Written by Allen West on April 30, 2014

Read more at http://allenbwest.com/2014/04/new-be...zTqghceuOoj.99

When I was growing up I remember a little saying that went like this: “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.”
Well, it seems the chickens – or perhaps I should say the spiders — are coming home to roost for the Obama administration regarding Benghazi. The question is, does the American public care more about four dead Americans than they do about disgusting private comments from an NBA owner?
Let’s play connect the dots on this tangled web.
David Rhodes is the President at CBS News. Ben Rhodes is the White House Deputy National Security advisor. David and Ben are brothers. Sharyl Attkisson worked at CBS. As a highly respected and acclaimed investigative reporter, Sharyl wanted to report the truth about Benghazi. Sharyl does not work at CBS News anymore.
However, she has a website, and there she reports that sharylattkisson.com, “Newly-released documents reveal direct White House involvement in steering the public narrative about the September 11, 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya, toward that of a spontaneous protest that never happened.
As if we had any doubt.
According to Attkisson, one of the key documents, which the government had withheld from Congress and reporters for a year and a half, is an internal September 14, 2012 email to White House press officials from Ben Rhodes, President Obama’s Assistant and Deputy National Security Advisor.
In the email, Ben Rhodes lists as a “goal” the desire of the White House “To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure or policy.” The email is entitled, “RE:PREP CALL with Susan, Saturday at 4:00 pm ET” and refers to White House involvement in preparing then-U.S.Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice for her upcoming appearance on Sunday television network political talk shows. The Rhodes email states that another “goal” is “To reinforce the President and Administration’s strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges.”
Ben Rhodes is hardly the “mastermind” behind this episode, but the email he sent out to a who’s who list of recipients is damning. Attkisson says, “White House officials copied on the Rhodes “goal” email include Press Secretary Jay Carney, then-Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer, then-White House Senior Advisor David Plouffe, then-White House Deputy Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri and Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest.
Therefore, we definitively know it was the Obama White House that developed the scheme of blaming an anti-Islam video. Funny, the only person who has been punished in this whole charade was the video producer.
The most transparent administration is US history? Hardly. Attkisson says “Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) told her the government apparently tried to keep the Rhodes email out of Congress and the public’s hands by changing its classification it after-the-fact. In the past month, the government has supplied 3,200 new Benghazi-related documents under Congressional subpoena. In some instances, Congressional members and their staff are only permitted to see the documents during certain time periods in a review room, and cannot remove them or make copies. Chaffetz says that the State Department redacted more material on the copies provided to Congress than on those that it was forced to provide to JudicialWatch.”
What a tangled web of lies, deceit, and obfuscation hangs around the neck of this Administration — and the presidential hopes of Hillary Clinton. Attkisson is free to pursue this travesty, and combined with Catherine Herridge at Fox News and Tom Fitton’s Judicial Watch, they form a formidable phalanx for the truth. The days of information suppression and manipulation by fellas like David Rhodes ad David Brock are waning, as their complicit actions entangle them as well.
I can’t wait to hear White House mouthpiece Jay Carney — who just happens to be married to ABC reporter Claire Shipman — ramble and attempt further obfuscation about these new Benghazi documents.



Read more at http://allenbwest.com/2014/04/new-be...zTqghceuOoj.99

Conflict of Interest Inherent Between CBS News President, White House Adviser Involved in Benghazi Talking Points

BY: Larry O'Connor // May 1, 2014 11:41 am

Benghazi consulate / AP


CBS News President David Rhodes never proactively addressed the conflict of interest inherent in the connection between he and his brother, Ben Rhodes, the Senior White House adviser who finds himself in the center of the controversy over the White House talking points issued to emphasize the false narrative over the origins of the Benghazi terror attacks in 2012. Furthermore, people in management positions within CBS News argued that it was not necessary to disclose the relationship to viewers or readers “because it wasn’t relevant.”
These revelations were disclosed by former CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson, one of the most knowledgeable journalists covering the Benghazi terror attack story over the past year, who appeared Thursday morning on “Mornings on the Mall” on Washington D.C.’s WMAL.
Co-host Brian Wilson asked Attkisson if David Rhodes was responsible for spiking her Benghazi stories:

I don’t deal directly with David Rhodes on stories so, what happens with me when I’m working in Washington is I, or the Washington bureau, will push a story to New York or offer a story and the New York broadcast for Evening News is the broadcast that decides not to take it for example, Scott Pelley is the Managing Editor, Pat Shevlin is Executive Producer. All I know is, we all come to learn in Washington on a particular story of mine for example is that they don’t want them. I can’t really say what happens or what the reasoning is.

I probed the issue further and asked if David Rhodes was proactive in directing the staff, reporters, anchors, and producers to not let his relationship with his brother in the White House infringe on any of their efforts in pursuing any story that might involve Ben Rhodes.

That did not happen, to my knowledge. But, in a couple of stories when Ben Rhodes’ name appeared or began to surface a long time ago, I argued that we needed to disclose the relationship because that’s what we should to do. Not because there’s any guilt or guilt by association or that we had done anything wrong, but disclosure is your friend. It protects you. And as journalists, if we disclose that off the top of a story then people won’t look back later and say that we hid it. So I did argue the case and was told by a manager it was not necessary because it wasn’t relevant. Which I disagreed with. In another case I wrote a story on the web and I did make the disclosure and Rhodes had no problem with it as far as I know, I didn’t hear from him.

Attkisson also pointed out that lost in the discussion over Ben Rhodes and the White House’s involvement in the re-writing of history in September 2012 is the fact that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton didn’t need to wait for marching orders from the White House to spin the narrative of the terror attacks. She pushed the bogus “YouTube video” narrative on Sept. 12, the day after the murderous attacks.

September 12th, Secretary (Hillary) Clinton used the video story at the ceremonial return of the bodies, Stevens and the three other victims, and personally did not call it a terrorist attack and allegedly told the family members ‘we’re going to find who made that awful video’ so by September 12th, someone had already decided as Obama Administration officials used the video … prior to the September 14th email to Susan Rice, I believe there seems to have been discussions and a decision already.

Listen to the full interview here: (Exchange regarding CBS News begins at 6:00 mark.)


http://freebeacon.com/blog/conflict-...alking-points/