"White House: Obama and Biden were never aware of requests for more Benghazi security."

Josh Rogin at Foreign Policy reports (after his earlier post "Biden contradicts State Department on Benghazi security," which I discussed at length earlier this morning). Rogin interviewed Deputy National Security Advisor for Communications Ben Rhodes, asking him "whether Biden was speaking for the entire Obama administration, including the State Department." What Biden said was: "We weren't told they wanted more security. We did not know they wanted more security there."

Rhodes said that Biden speaks only for himself and the president and neither of them knew about the requests at the time.

The State Department security officials who testified before House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa's panel Wednesday never said they had made their requests to the president, Rhodes pointed out. That would be natural because the State Department is responsible for diplomatic security, not the White House, he said. Rhodes also pointed out that the officials were requesting more security in Tripoli, not Benghazi.

So here's the harmonization that is supposed to save Biden from the charge of lying. When Biden said there would be an investigation into the security lapses and Raddatz (the moderator) interjected "And they wanted more security there," Biden said:

Well, we weren’t told they wanted more security there. We did not know they wanted more security again. And by the way, at the time we were told exactly — we said exactly what the intelligence community told us that they knew. That was the assessment. And as the intelligence community changed their view, we made it clear they changed their view.

That's not a lie because Biden was only talking about himself and President Obama. "We" means just Obama and Biden, per Rhodes. But then what do we make of the line "we were told exactly — we said exactly what the intelligence community told us that they knew"? And "That was the assessment"? If Biden knows now that wasn't the assessment and he and the President were not told what the intelligence community knew, he can't truthfully assert that "we were told exactly — we said exactly what the intelligence community told us that they knew"... unless you lay a whole lot of weight on the words I just boldfaced. That is, he was cleverly refraining from saying that the intelligence community told us what they knew. We heard what they told us they knew... and they were not telling the truth. They knew other things, but they didn't tell us. But what they told us, they told us they knew.

NOTE: There's another out: the scope of the term "intelligence community."

AND: Another out stresses the word "there" in Biden's "Well, we weren’t told they wanted more security there." As Rhodes points out: the requests were for more security in Tripoli and the attack occured in Benghazi.

IN THE COMMENTS: Shouting Thomas said:

Uh... yeah... But, how does that explain the prompt production of the "offensive" video as the reason for the attacks?

Here's my theory. It was 9/11, the last 9/11 before the election, and Obama wanted to do something 9/11-y. His people dug up this offensive video on YouTube for Obama to talk about in some eloquent mishmash that would somehow make him sound like a leader who has made a wonderful connection to the Muslim world. Then the al Qaeda attack occurred in Libya, taking over the 9/11 spotlight, interfering with Obama's planned message, and even tainting his legend as The Man Who Shot Bin Laden. A decision was made to absorb the Libya attack into the planned 9/11 story. It was a bad decision, but they doubled down on it anyway. The election was so close, and the truth could be sorted out later.