The Video?

For John, BLUF:  Ms H Clinton making promises no one should keep.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

Reporter Stephen F Hayes, writing in The Weekly Standard, asks my question, "What About the Video?".

This has to do with the Benghazi Imbroglio and how the Obama Administration explained it and continues to explain it.  With the release of 100 pages of EMails by the Administration we still don't see how the "Vile Video", produced by Nakoula Basseley Nakoula (aka Mark Basseley Youssef), got introduced into the explanation, particularly as articulated by US UN Ambassador Susan Rice on five Sunday TV News Shows in one day.

Let us be clear with one another.  Talking points, like all papers inside Government, are subject to multiple edits as they progress from the lowly Action Officer to the Principal, who is going to finally sign off.  When I was on the Joint Staff, in the Pentagon, the Action Officer worked for one of my three Section Chiefs.  I passed the Paper to the Deputy Director for Policy and Strategy, where first a Navy Captain and then a One Star reviewed it.  From there to a two star and then a three star in the Directorate of Strategic Plans and Policy.  That is 6 different reviewers, and if the paper stopped there, that was it.  But, if the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was going to sign off, there was the Deputy Director of the Joint Staff, and the Director, the Chairmans Staff Group, the Vice Chairman and then the Chairman.  That adds five.  Not counting the substantive changes, there were the happy to glads.  One wag developed a table for word changes, depending upon whose office the paper had left and whose it was going to.  Of course the Talking Points were vetted and received numerous edits.  It is how a bureaucracy works.

The question is, who made the video a big deal?  CNN Reporter Candy Crowley notwithstanding, the video became a big deal.  Per Reporter Hayes

Hillary Clinton mentioned it in her remarks at the ceremony to receive the caskets of the four dead Americans on September 14, regretting the violence “over an awful Internet video we had nothing to do with.”  According to Charles Woods, the father of one of the officials killed in the attack, former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods, Clinton told him at the same ceremony that the U.S. government would make sure the filmmaker was “arrested and prosecuted.”  Pat Smith, the mother of communications specialist Sean Smith, reported that Clinton told her the same thing, “nose to nose.”

OK, lets sort through this.  The fact that four Americans died in Benghazi is unfortunate.  They died because our government, at several levels, from Ambassador Stevens to the Secretary of State to the CIA to the President to the US Congress took risks.  If we had shifted money to security in Benghazi there might have been a problem elsewhere, or levees along the Mississippi might have been lower, or Head Start might have been cut more.  The choices made were wrong, but not obvious at the time.

Aside from the question of why the military didn't saddle up, in case this had gone on for several more hours, the question I am interested in is why the weight of the Federal Government was brought done on the videographer, Mr Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, who is still in jail for his parole violation.  If the Federal Government hadn't made a big deal about his video he still might be walking free.♠  But, the idea that the Secretary of State would promise the Father of one of the victims that the full weight of the Federal Government would be used to "arrest and prosecute" someone exercising their First Amendment Rights is not just wrong but scary.

So, how does the video fit into the story about the talking points and beyond? Hat tip to the Blog Hot Air.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  Given that Parole Officers are busy people, he might not have come to their attention without the attention of the Federal Government.