What’s the difference between a cover up and a crackdown on leaks?

Last week, CNN came out with a “blockbuster exclusive" about Benghazi. In a highly speculative report, the network guesses that the CIA may have been running guns into Syria out of the Libya and that this was the cause of the attack on the diplomatic compound there. Of course, the right is pleased as punch with this story, despite the fact that it has nothing to do with their original conspiracy theory that the administration had blamed the attacks on an anti-Islamic video to hide the fact that it was a terrorist attack.

The thing is, the CNN story is based on one simple and somewhat shaky bit of evidence — i.e., it sure looks like something is being covered up. The the linchpin bit of evidence is that:

Since January, some CIA operatives involved in the agency’s missions in Libya, have been subjected to frequent, even monthly polygraph examinations, according to a source with deep inside knowledge of the agency’s workings.

The goal of the questioning, according to sources, is to find out if anyone is talking to the media or Congress.

It is being described as pure intimidation, with the threat that any unauthorized CIA employee who leaks information could face the end of his or her career.

Described by who as “pure intimidation?" Well, the CNN report doesn’t say. Could be a CIA operative who had to take a polygraph or it could be someone with an ax to grind who has nothing at all to do with the testing, the CIA, or Benghazi (i.e., the always untrustworthy “top congressional aide" sourcing).

Taking the weekend shift at Political Animal, Max Ehrenfreund tackled this report and found it not very convincing.

I am not persuaded that there was anything happening at the Benghazi annex significantly different from, well, whatever it is the CIA is doing in any of the place around the world where its personnel are stationed.

A much simpler explanation for the frequency of the polygraphs is that this administration is panicky. They have gone to absurd lengths to keep personnel from talking. As McClatchy reported, the administration’s “Insider Threat” program, launched in response to Pfc. Bradley Manning’s leaks, requires all federal employees, not just those working with sensitive information, to keep a careful eye on one another. Personnel are encouraged to report not just unauthorized disclosures, but any signs of psychological stress, including divorce, debt, or frustrations with colleagues. The logic is that these conditions can be what pushes a person like Manning to take information outside of an agency.

I’ve argued elsewhere that this program might the most disturbing of all the administration’s secret programs to be revealed in the past few months, because it shows how far intelligence agencies would go in examining the details of our personal lives if they had the authority.

So basically, if there’s a crackdown on leakers, it’s going to look pretty much exactly like this. And guess what? We know there’s a war on leaks. The problem with amping up secrecy to eleven — perception-wise, anyway — is that everything looks like a cover up. And that’s because everything is being covered up, regardless of whether it’s damning or trivial. You could probably look into any diplomatic mission in the world and find the same thing, but that doesn’t mean that there’s some huge conspiracy going on in Belgium or Sydney or Hong Kong. It just means that the administration is driving themselves to distraction with leak-plugging — ironically, the result of an attempt to avoid embarrassing distractions caused by leaks.

"The Obama administration seems to have inherited from the Obama campaign the same obsession with avoiding political controversy and carefully controlling the information that the public receives…" Ehrenfreund writes, “The frequent polygraphs CNN report are nothing out of the ordinary, not for a president whose staff has an unreasonable attachment to secrecy for its own sake."

[photo via Wikimedia Commons]

Another ‘Obama scandal’ quietly dies

Politico: After months of fiery hearings and vows to get to the bottom of Benghazi, House Republicans are now barely making a peep when it comes to an issue they once couldn’t stop talking about.

Democrats say Republicans are lacking damaging evidence against the Obama administration in the aftermath of the attacks on U.S. diplomatic outposts in Libya. They argue the House GOP is in retreat over the investigation that some conservatives believed could bring down the White House or tar a 2016 presidential candidate.

“I know our leadership in general does not want to look at that at all,” Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.) said. “They’ve said they have very little interest.”

An aide to one House leader dismissed the notion that leadership is uninterested saying, “That claim is ridiculous, just totally, out-to-lunch, La-La Land absurd.”

Of course leadership isn’t interested in further pursuing Benghazi — it didn’t go anywhere. It just wandered around in circles until it finally died. It doesn’t matter how much of a frenzy you whip up over something, you can’t make your baseless outrage create its own foundation. Reality does not bend to the conservative will, no matter how much they insist the opposite.

So whatever happened to Benghazi? The same thing that happened to Solyndra and “Fast and Furious" and the idiotic birther crap and etc. — Republicans went on a fishing expedition where there were no fish. And now they want everyone to forget they ever went at all.

Did Benghazi just become a Republican scandal?

That email release from the White House is proving to be a real problem for Republicans. Earlier reports showed that versions of emails leaked by the GOP had been selectively edited, smearing the State Department and the administration with incomplete information that left an inaccurate impression of the email conversations.

Now it turns out that it’s much worse than lies of omission. The Republican version contain outright lies.

CBS News: …On Friday, Republicans leaked what they said was a quote from 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.”

But it turns out that in the actual email, Rhodes did not mention the State Department.

It read: “We need to resolve this in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, particularly the investigation.”

Republicans also provided what they said was a quote from an email written by State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland.

The Republican version quotes Nuland discussing, “The penultimate point is a paragraph talking about all the previous warnings provided by the Agency (CIA) about al-Qaeda’s presence and activities of al-Qaeda.”

The actual email from Nuland says: “The penultimate point could be abused by members to beat the State Department for not paying attention to Agency warnings.”

As I pointed out earlier, Benghazi is rapidly spinning out of Republican control. The ever escalating hype has finally inflated their Benghazi conspiracy theory to the point that the facts can’t possibly support it, so the facts must be abandoned that now the whole thing is propped up almost entirely by fiction.

The question is what are they going to do now? You don’t make shit like this up if you have anything concrete. By leaking these phony emails (and there is no doubt the GOP leaked them) , they practically admit that the whole thing is frosting — there’s no cake here. If anyone has an “editing the talking points” scandal brewing here, it’s the elephant party.

And Darrell Issa’s going to stretch this thing out until 2014? That ought to go well. The whole thing’s in a tailspin now. Keeping it up in the air that long would be a good trick in itself. Keeping from crashing directly into Republican Party HQ and leveling the place would be an even better one.

Benghazi spinning out of control for GOP

Politico: Republicans are worried one thing could screw up the political gift of three Obama administration controversies at once: fellow Republicans.

Top GOP leaders are privately warning members to put a sock in it when it comes to silly calls for impeachment or over-the-top comparisons to Watergate. They want members to focus on months of fact-finding investigations — not rhetorical fury.

[…]

“We have to be persistent but patient,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus told us. “I think where there’s smoke, there’s fire. If we present ourselves to the American people as intelligent, we’re going to be in a great place as far as showing that this administration is not transparent, is obsessed with power and hates dissent. But you don’t call for impeachment until you have evidence.”

A GOP aide explains the problem. “When one committee is leading something and some members feel left out, they’ll step out there and make an accusation to get attention,” the aide said. And rightwing media is most definitely not helping. The base is convinced that Benghazi is literally the worst thing ever! because rightwing media hacks keep telling them what they want to hear to boost their ratings. Fox host Mike Huckabee, for example, told his audience, “I believe that before it’s all over, this president will not fill out his full term.”

Of course the base is the base because they’re chumps who believe whatever BS people like Huckabee throws at them, so elected Republicans must keep getting letters asking when they’re going to stop dicking around and get to the impeachment already. It’s like a hyperbolic feedback loop; some Republican says something over the top, someone like Huckabee picks up on it and amps it up further, forcing Republicans to match the hysterical fervor of the hacks audiences. Lather, rinse, repeat. They’re spinning closer and closer to overreach and it’s beginning to look pretty inevitable — their Benghazi hype has taken on a life of its own.
And Darrell Issa isn’t helping either. Sooner or later, he’s going to have to produce something other than teasers and that means calling Hillary Clinton\back to testify. According to Politico:

A Democratic strategist, knowledgeable about administration thinking, maintains that calling Clinton back would be seen as an “extreme and unprecedented stunt” and “quite a risky proposition” for House Republicans. “Congress had her an entire day in January, and she kicked their ass,” the strategist said. “If she performed that well a second time, they could lose the issue permanently. They are better off waiting until her numbers soften with time and as she comes back down to earth — in the meantime, beating the drum as a midterm issue that she is ducking and hiding.”

“One aide said there are plans to stretch this probe into 2014,” the report tells us. That would seem to give Americans plenty of time to tire of watching them beat this particular dead horse.
[photo via Wikimedia Commons]

Poll: attention given to current ‘scandals’ historically low

Politico: A majority of Americans are following both the controversy over the attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi and the brewing IRS scandal - but at levels below historic averages, according to a new poll.

Fifty-four percent said they are closely following the story of how the IRS unfairly targeted conservative groups, according to the Gallup survey on Thursday, and 53 percent are closely following Benghazi. For both stories, 22 percent were following “not too closely” and 24 weren’t following at all.

“The level of attention being paid to each is below the average 60 percent of Americans who have closely followed more than 200 news stories Gallup has measured over the past several decades,” Gallup editor-in-chief Frank Newport wrote in an analysis of the poll.

Yes, majorities are following these two stories, but if they were TV shows, they’d be flirting with cancellation. I’d like to see a survey done where respondents are asked to explain what they big scandal was with Benghazi. I’d be willing to bet that the average person’s answer would be, “I don’t know. They covered stuff up or something.” After all, Republicans have been failing to answer that question for months.

Ed Kilgore looks at the numbers and concludes that these are especially bad numbers for backers of a Benghazi scandal.

“Interestingly enough, the IRS story was drawing just as much interest as Benghazi!, even though it’s spanking new while Benghazi! has been huffing and puffing along for many months,” he writes. “This reinforces the impression that Benghazi! was pretty much a spent bullet until the other ‘scandals’ were linked to it to produce a ‘crisis,’ at least within the Beltway. With the latest deflating evidence that Republican ‘news sources’ deliberately mischaracterized the internal emails leading up to the famous ‘talking points’ on Benghazi!, you have to wonder that if the torches being carried for this particular witch-hunt will again start to flicker and even expire when summer arrives and public interest in noise from Washington inevitably flag.”

[photo by cervus]

Republicans hope to make Pres. Obama into Nixon; they may wind up with Bill Clinton

The Fix, Washington Post: You could forgive Republicans for thinking they had happened upon an electoral golden goose over the past five days.

The twin investigations into the IRS’s flagging of tax-exempt status applications for conservative groups and the secret seizure of reporters’ phone records by the Justice Department, as well as the ongoing GOP drumbeat regarding the terrorist attack last fall in Benghazi, Libya, have thrust the Obama administration (and the Democratic party) into a defensive crouch. It’s a rare moment since President Obama’s reelection last fall when the GOP can play offense.

And yet, there are real concerns within the Republican establishment that members of their party won’t look before they leap when it comes to the right strategic path forward, taking a major political opportunity and blowing it, à la the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s.

“Republicans need only remember 1998 when they overplayed Monica Lewinsky and turned a promising midterm into almost losing the House,” said former Virginia congressman Tom Davis (R). “The Republicans have a political buffet in front of them. No need to gorge themselves…. [They] need to pace themselves.”

There is already some evidence that Republicans in Congress aren’t heeding Davis’s advice. “Of all the great cover-ups in history — the Pentagon papers, the Iran-Contra, Watergate and all the rest of them — this … is going to go down as the most serious, the most egregious cover-up in American history,” Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) said during an appearance on a radio show regarding Benghazi. “People may be starting to use the I-word before too long,” Inhofe added.  Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) also has raised the possibility of impeachment on Benghazi but has insisted that’s not his goal.

The problem is that Republicans have invested so much hope and hype in Benghazi that it’s really hard to drop it like the dead thing that it is. Even if Washington Republicans accepted reality and tried to let their Benghazi conspiracy theory die quietly, the wingnut media would take up the cause and continue to make it an issue. Republicans will have to keep beating this dead horse for a while, in order to stave off accusations from the base of “caving” on the Greatest Scandal in American History(tm).

But the rest of the public doesn’t feel the same way that Republican voters do — which isn’t really much of a surprise, they never do. And while the base is howling for blood, the average voter just wishes this circus would end. The result: political grandstanding that’s painfully obvious to everyone other than the very people who would keep it going. Having started this bandwagon in order to help Mitt Romney get elected, they’re finding that — in their rush to get it on the road — they forgot to include brakes. Benghazi hysteria is like a runaway train, hurtling toward disaster, with the Obama administration waving farewell from the station.

Every nutjob who wants to win a GOP primary will be wall-to-wall Benghazi, 24/7. Meanwhile, general election voters see it as a blatantly political timewaster. Benghazi will win them primaries, but voters in the general will be a lot less enthused with candidates who promise to make Benghazi the central focus of their time in Washington.

[photo by D.B. Blas]