Ben Rhodes’s brother, day after Benghazi: government thinks this could be a coordinated attack, not video protest

Hot Air:

Ben Rhodes’s brother is of course David Rhodes, the president of CBS News — although, if you’re a CBS viewer, maybe I shouldn’t assume that you know that. Anyway, a nifty catch here by John Sexton of Breitbart. The key bit comes 50 seconds in. Quote:

“Our government thinks that, you know, there’s a really good chance this was not just a spontaneous mob reaction to what some thought was an offensive film but actually a coordinated effort timed to the 9/11 anniversary.”

Two days later, Sexton reminds us, Ben Rhodes sent out an e-mail ahead of Susan Rice’s Sunday show appearances urging her “to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.” What changed between the time his brother said this on September 12th and the time he sent that e-mail on September 14th? Sharyl Attkisson asked a similar question last week, noting that an e-mail chain at the State Department shows that the feds’ earliest suspicions after the attack had focused on Ansar al-Sharia, the jihadi group that had claimed responsibility for it online, rather than a mob driven to fury by the Mohammed video. Somehow the conventional wisdom shifted from the “planned attack” to the “spontaneous protest” theory in 48 hours. And since, it seems fair to assume, David Rhodes’s knowledge of what “our government” thinks was relayed to him at least in part by his brother Ben, it’s more accurate to say that Ben Rhodes’s thinking in particular shifted during those 48 hours. Why?

Depending upon how closely you want to parse David Rhodes’s language here (specifically the word “just” in the quote above, and hedging with “there’s a really good chance”), you can argue that he’s not ruling out the protest theory, just stressing that there may have been more than one group outside the consulate that night. I don’t read it that way; the “just” sounds like a synonym for “merely,” as if he was dismissing the protest theory and offering the attack theory as a substitute. Maybe Trey Gowdy should ask him. Would CBS cover that or would it be blackout time again?

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