New Benghazi Email Explaining How "Movie Protest" Talking Points Came About Released; Most Redacted

While much of last week's news was about the smoking gun that linked the White House to the false talking points about the attack in Benghazi, another email that would have shed light on how those talking points came about was nearly completely redacted by the government.

The email has as its subject, "SBU/CLOSEHOLD: 0800 SVTS on Movie Protests/Violence." SBU stands for "Sensitive But Unclassified" and SVTS most likely refers to "Secure Video Teleconference System." Ironically, though labeled unclassified, nearly the entirety of the email was redacted before it was given to Judicial Watch.

[caption id="attachment_25979" align="alignnone" width="766"] A Redacted Section[/caption]

It was written by Eric Pelofsky, a Democratic Obama donor who would later be appointed by Obama to be a Director of National Intelligence. It was sent on September 15, 2012, one day before Rice went on national television and spread the White House's cover-up.

While the majority of the email is redacted, the subject and some of the content of it is blatant. Pelofsky is clearly writing a recap of how the talking points about Benghazi came about. This can be irrefutably seen in the lengthy, unredacted paragraph that explains in precise detail how and why the Benghazi talking points were edited to be what they were when Pelofsky wrote the email.

Under a section labelled "Libya," with a bullet point labelled "HPSCI Request," (HPSCI stands for House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence) Pelofsky wrote: "Late this week, CIA Director Petraeus... was asked for unclassified talking points that its members could use about incident in Benghazi." The small, unredacted section continues later, "The first draft apparently seemed unsuitable because they seemed to encourage the reader to infer incorrectly that the CIA had warned about a specific attack on our embassy." Notice how blame for the Obama Administration is gotten rid of by saying that the CIA had no information that the attack could happen, and thus the White House could do nothing about it.

The rest of the section shows a precise account of how these talking points came to be: "On the SVTS, Morell (Deputy CIA Director) noted that these points were not good and he had taken a heavy editing hand to them. He noted that he would be happy to work with Jake Sullivan (current adviser to VP Biden) and Rhodes (assistant to the President) to develop appropriate talking points." Here, the government can clearly be seen trying to blame the CIA for the change in talking points with the reference to Morell.

The paragraph before this one is redacted. The one after it is redacted. This redacted email, without a doubt, goes into more detail as to where the erroneous talking points came from. But we cannot see what because the government is not showing it.

[caption id="attachment_25980" align="aligncenter" width="699"] The Only Unredacted Section[/caption]

The next morning, Pelofsky emailed Susan Rice directly. But the entire email is redacted once again. But this time the document states on top that it will eventually be declassified: in 2037.

Thus, the question is: what does the redacted portion say in the first email? Why was this formerly unclassified email suddenly redacted? And what did Pelofsky tell Rice?