“Insiders with ties to the Obama administration tell The Cable that U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice has become the heir apparent to National Security Advisor Tom Donilon — a post at the epicenter of foreign-policy decision making and arguably more influential than secretary of state, a job for which she withdrew her candidacy last fall amid severe political pressure.”

Said one source: “It’s definitely happening.”

The Week highlights five things we learned from last night’s White House email dump.

More than 100 pages of e-mails released by the White House “reveal intensive jostling between the C.I.A. and the State Department over the government’s official ‘talking points‘ in the aftermath of last September’s attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans,” the New York Times reports.

“The White House released the e-mails to reporters after Republicans seized on snippets of the correspondence that became public last Friday to suggest that President Obama’s staff had been complicit in trying to alter the talking points used by Susan E. Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, in the days after the attacks.”

CNN has obtained an email sent by a top aide of President Obama, “in which the aide discusses the Obama administration reaction to the attack on the U.S. posts in Benghazi, Libya. The actual email differs from how sources were inaccurately quoted and paraphrased in previous media accounts.”

“The significance of the email seems to be that whomever leaked the inaccurate information earlier this month did so in a way that made it appear that the White House…was more interested in the State Department’s desire to remove mentions of specific terrorist groups and warnings about these groups so as to not bring criticism to the State Department than the email actually stated.”

A new Public Policy Polling survey finds that Republicans aren’t getting much traction with their focus on Benghazi over the last week. Voters trust Hillary Clinton over House Republicans on the issue of Benghazi by a 49% to 39% margin and Clinton’s 52% to 44% favorability rating is identical to what it was in late March.

Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates forcefully defended the Obama administration against charges that it did not do enough to prevent the tragedy in Benghazi, telling CBS News that some critics of the administration have a “cartoonish impression of military capabilities and military forces.”

Said Gates: “Frankly, had I been in the job at the time, I think my decisions would have been just as theirs were.”

“When it became clear last fall that the CIA’s now discredited Benghazi talking points were flawed, the White House said repeatedly the documents were put together almost entirely by the intelligence community, but White House documents reviewed by Congress suggest a different story,” ABC News reports.

“Twelve different versions of the talking points that show they were extensively edited as they evolved from the drafts first written entirely by the CIA to the final version distributed to Congress and to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice before she appeared on five talk shows the Sunday after that attack.”

The Week: The dam bursts on Benghazi.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) demanded the release of an e-mail that he said showed that State Department officials believed from the start that “Islamic terrorists” were linked to the Benghazi attack but have declined to say so publicly, the New York Times reports.

But a copy of the e-mail indicates that the senior State Department official who wrote it, referred to “Islamic extremists,” not terrorists.

“The distinction is important, administration officials said, because while the White House did not initially characterize the attack as terrorism, senior officials, including Ambassador Susan E. Rice, acknowledged the possibility that extremists had been involved in the assault.”

“The Pentagon has redesigned its biggest ‘bunker buster’ bomb with more advanced features intended to enable it to destroy Iran’s most heavily fortified and defended nuclear site,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

A new Time/CNN poll finds that when given a choice, 61% of Americans say they are more concerned about the government enacting new anti-terrorism policies that restrict civil liberties, compared to 31% who say they are more concerned about the government failing to enact strong new anti-terrorism policies.

President Obama “is preparing to send lethal weaponry to the Syrian opposition and has taken steps to assert more aggressive U.S. leadership among allies and partners seeking the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad,” the Washington Post reports.

“The officials said they are moving toward the shipment of arms but emphasized that they are still pursuing political negotiation. To that end, the administration has launched an effort to convince Russian President Vladimir Putin that the probable use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government — and the more direct outside intervention that could provoke — should lead him to reconsider his support of Assad.”

Major Garrett: “President Obama did not start the Syrian crisis, and the blood-soaked
civil war has never lent itself to easy choices. In fact, the choices
have always been among the hardest any U.S. president has faced in the
region.”

President Obama vowed to make “a new push to close the Guantanamo detention center, where about 100 inmates are on hunger strike, saying it was damaging to U.S. interests to keep holding prisoners there in legal limbo,” Reuters reports.

“Obama, who repeatedly vowed to close the camp, which now holds 166 detainees, when he was campaigning for a first term and when he first took office in 2009, said he would re-engage with lawmakers to find a way to shut the facility and make good on an unkept promise. However, he offered no new path to overcoming congressional, political and legal obstacles that blocked his earlier efforts to close Guantanamo, where many of the prisoners have been held for more than a decade without being tried or charged.”

A new CBS News/New York Times poll finds 62% of Americans say that the U.S. does not have a responsibility to intervene in Syria and 56% think that North Korea is a threat that can be contained for now.

“The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city. This unprecedented move should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself.”

— Former Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), quoted by Politico.

Vice President Joe Biden said that he “supports
making a classified Senate Intelligence Committee report on torture and
enhanced interrogation more available to the public,” Roll Call writes.

“This administration has so many Muslim brotherhood members that have influence that they just are making wrong decisions for America.”

— Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), in an interview with WND Radio, explaining what he sees as President Obama’s downplaying of the threat of radical Islam.

The White House said that U.S. intelligence agencies now assess, with “varying degrees of confidence,” that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons, the New York Times reports.

Foreign Policy:
“Ron Paul’s vibrant fan base is in open rebellion today over Rand
Paul’s perceived reversal on domestic drone strikes. The Kentucky
senator, whose famous 13-hour Senate floor filibuster did much to
strengthen his ties with his father’s hardcore following, told Fox
Business Network on Tuesday he’s OK with drone strikes on American
citizens who, for instance, rob a liquor store. ‘I’ve never argued
against any technology being used when you have an imminent threat, an
active crime going on,’ Paul said. ‘If someone comes out of a liquor
store with a weapon and fifty dollars in cash. I don’t care if a drone
kills him or a policeman kills him.'”

Paul later released a statement: “My comments last night left the mistaken impression that my position on drones had changed. Let me be clear: it has not.