As I sit here watching Jay Carney take a beating from ALL kinds of TV news outlets, and his hopping around like a frog on a hot stove, I kinda chuckle because he is trying to hold to the talking points given to him by the White House, that there was only one stylistic change made to the talking points given to Susan Rice following the Benghazi terrorist attack. He also slipped and said that Obama immediately said that it was a terrorist attack. Everyone knows that it was a while before anyone from the State Department said that this was a terrorist attack. We were all waiting for that to happen. What is great about this is that it just builds on the issues that are already surrounding Benghazi and the whistleblowers coming forward.
Exclusive: Benghazi Talking Points Underwent 12 Revisions, Scrubbed of Terror Reference
White House Benghazi Attack Talking Points Edited
May 10, 2013 6:33am
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 has obtained 12 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.
AFP/Getty Images
White House emails reviewed by ABC News suggest the edits were made with extensive input from the State Department. The edits included requests from the State Department that references to the Al Qaeda-affiliated group Ansar al-Sharia be deleted as well references to CIA warnings about terrorist threats in Benghazi in the months preceding the attack.
“Those talking points originated from the intelligence community. They reflect the IC’s best assessments of what they thought had happened,” Carney told reporters at the White House press briefing on November 28, 2012. “The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two institutions were changing the word ‘consulate’ to ‘diplomatic facility’ because ‘consulate’ was inaccurate.”
State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland raised specific objections to this paragraph drafted by the CIA in its earlier versions of the talking points:
“The Agency has produced numerous pieces on the threat of extremists linked to al-Qa’ida in Benghazi and eastern Libya. These noted that, since April, there have been at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi by unidentified assailants, including the June attack against the British Ambassador’s convoy. We cannot rule out the individuals has previously surveilled the U.S. facilities, also contributing to the efficacy of the attacks.”
In an email to officials at the White House and the intelligence agencies, State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland took issue with including that information because it “could be abused by members [of Congress] to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so why would we want to feed that either? Concerned …”
The paragraph was entirely deleted.
Like the final version used by Ambassador Rice on the Sunday shows, the CIA’s first drafts said the attack appeared to have been “spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo” but the CIA version went on to say, “That being said, we do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al-Qa’ida participated in the attack.” The draft went on to specifically name the al Qaeda-affiliated group named Ansar al-Sharia.
Once again, Nuland objected to naming the terrorist groups because “we don’t want to prejudice the investigation.”
In response, an NSC staffer coordinating the review of the talking points wrote back to Nuland, “The FBI did not have major concerns with the points and offered only a couple minor suggestions.”
After the talking points were edited slightly to address Nuland’s concerns, she responded that changes did not go far enough.
“These changes don’t resolve all of my issues or those of my buildings leadership,” Nuland wrote.
In an email dated 9/14/12 at 9:34 p.m. — three days after the attack and two days before Ambassador Rice appeared on the Sunday shows – Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes wrote an email saying the State Department’s concerns needed to be addressed.
“We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don’t want to undermine the FBI investigation. We thus will work through the talking points tomorrow morning at the Deputies Committee meeting.”
After that meeting, which took place Saturday morning at the White House, the CIA drafted the final version of the talking points – deleting all references to al Qaeda and to the security warnings in Benghazi prior to the attack.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said none of this contradicts what he said about the talking points because ultimately all versions were actually written and signed-off by the CIA.
“The CIA drafted these talking points and redrafted these talking points,” Carney said. “The fact that there are inputs is always the case in a process like this, but the only edits made by anyone here at the White House were stylistic and nonsubstantive. They corrected the description of the building or the facility in Benghazi from consulate to diplomatic facility and the like. And ultimately, this all has been discussed and reviewed and provided in enormous levels of detail by the administration to Congressional investigators, and the attempt to politicize the talking points, again, is part of an effort to, you know, chase after what isn’t the substance here.”
UPDATE: A source familiar with the White House emails on the Benghazi talking point revisions say that State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland was raising two concerns about the CIA’s first version of talking points, which were going to be sent to Congress: 1) The talking points went further than what she was allowed to say about the attack during her state department briefings; and, 2) she believed the CIA was attempting to exonerate itself at the State Department’s expense by suggesting CIA warnings about the security situation were ignored.
In one email, Nuland asked, why are we suggest Congress “start making assertions to the media [about the al Qaeda connection] that we ourselves are not making because we don’t want to prejudice the investigation?”
One other point: The significant edits – deleting references to al Qaeda and the CIA’s warnings – came after a White House meeting on the Saturday before Ambassador Susan Rice appeared on five Sunday shows. Nuland, a 30-year foreign service veteran who has served under Democratic and Republican Secretaries of State, was not at that meeting and played no direct role in preparing Rice for her interviews.
Officials removed terror reference from Benghazi memo - report
10 May 2013 12:09 ET
Republicans such as Congressman Darrell Issa have suggested the Obama administration engaged in a cover-up following the Benghazi attack
Official talking points about an attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya were edited by the state department to remove references to terrorism, a US television network has reported.
The revelation by ABC News contradicts earlier White House comments that the memo was mostly developed by the CIA.
Four Americans, including the US envoy, died in the raid on 11 September 2012.
Republicans suggest the Obama administration wanted to downplay terrorism ahead of the November vote.
Ambassador Christopher Stevens died of smoke inhalation when he was trapped in the burning consulate building, after armed men stormed the compound.
State department employee Sean Smith and former Navy Seals Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty also died in the attack.
The controversy stems in large part from an appearance on Sunday chat shows soon after the attacks by US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice, who said the attack had grown out of an anti-US protest.
Other officials have said they knew at the time it was an organised, armed assault, possibly by an Islamist militant group.
'Beat up state department'
According to ABC News, as the dust settled in Libya the state department offered input on the talking points memo to be distributed to Congress and to Ms Rice.
The state department wanted to remove a reference to earlier CIA warnings about terror threats in Benghazi and excise the mention of Ansar al-Sharia, a group linked to al-Qaeda, ABC News reported.
State department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in an email to intelligence and White House officials obtained by the ABC that the reference should be dropped because it "could be abused by members [of Congress] to beat up the state department for not paying attention to warnings", the network reports.
In November, White House press secretary Jay Carney said the information given to the public in the wake of the attack had been supplied by the intelligence community.
He said at the time: "The White House and the state department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two institutions were changing the word 'consulate' to 'diplomatic facility' because 'consulate' was inaccurate."
On Wednesday, a US diplomat in Libya during the attacks gave the first public account of the incident, in a Congressional hearing.
Gregory Hicks, deputy chief of mission in Tripoli, expressed frustration with the lack of military response to the incident, telling lawmakers he believed a second attack would have been deterred by a swift reaction.
'Systemic failures'
On Capitol Hill in January, Hillary Clinton angrily defended her handling of Benghazi
The Pentagon has said it could not have done anything to assist the besieged Americans.
And Mr Hicks criticised an official review of the attack, saying it focused too much on low-ranking officials.
That probe, led by former Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Pickering and Adm Mike Mullen, singled out the diplomatic security and near eastern affairs bureaus for criticism.
It said "systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels" in those teams led to a "security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place".
In congressional hearings in January, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took responsibility for the security failures at the compound.
Some analysts say that Mrs Clinton, who has been cited as a possible Democratic presidential candidate in 2016, could be haunted by the incident if she chooses to run.
Benghazi Talking Points Revisions Pushed By State Department
BENGHAZI TALKING POINTS, VERSION 12.0
By: John Hayward
Game, set, and match…
if the rest of the media keeps running with this story, now that
ABC News has broken it.
As ABC duly acknowledges, it’s not entirely brand-new information, as it builds from the landmark Weekly Standard report on smoking-gun emails related to the politicized editing of the Benghazi talking points, posted online last week. But ABC News enhanced the story by getting its hands on even more documentation, and the result is a story that can no longer be kept under quarantine in the conservative media “ghetto,” where the rest of the media dismisses accurate, well-documented stories by sneering that only the likes of Fox News care about them. (bold and italics added)
What ABC News brings us is a version history of the Benghazi talking points, in which they passed through 12 versions that began with reasonably accurate and complete information from the intelligence community… and ended with the malarkey peddled by the Administration:
ABC News has obtained 12 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.
White House emails reviewed by ABC News suggest the edits were made with extensive input from the State Department. The edits included requests from the State Department that references to the Al Qaeda-affiliated group Ansar al-Sharia be deleted as well references to CIA warnings about terrorist threats in Benghazi in the months preceding the attack.
That would appear to directly contradict what White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said about the talking points in November.
“Those talking points originated from the intelligence community. They reflect the IC’s best assessments of what they thought had happened,” Carney told reporters at the White House press briefing on November 28, 2012. “The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two institutions were changing the word ‘consulate’ to ‘diplomatic facility’ because ‘consulate’ was inaccurate.”
Carney has said the revisions to the talking points were merely “stylistic.” Yes, I believe that style is called “lying.”
For the benefit of liberal forum trolls, and a few mainstream media reporters, who can’t figure out why the Administration would orchestrate a cover-up when they supposedly had nothing to hide, the material uncovered by ABC News makes it crystal clear:
State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland raised specific objections to this paragraph drafted by the CIA in its earlier versions of the talking points:
“The Agency has produced numerous pieces on the threat of extremists linked to al-Qa’ida in Benghazi and eastern Libya. These noted that, since April, there have been at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi by unidentified assailants, including the June attack against the British Ambassador’s convoy. We cannot rule out the individuals has previously surveilled the U.S. facilities, also contributing to the efficacy of the attacks.”
In an email to officials at the White House and the intelligence agencies, State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland took issue with including that information because it “could be abused by members [of Congress] to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so why would we want to feed that either? Concerned …”
The paragraph was entirely deleted.
The genesis of the “spontaneous video protest” fraud is also revealed in these emails, as the CIA’s first draft incorrectly suggested the Benghazi attack was apparently “spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo,” an idea whose origin remains unclear, because in reality there was never any reason for anyone knowledgeable about the attack to believe that. It should also be noted that the Cairo protests themselves only incorporated the infamous YouTube video as an after-the-fact justification; they were originally organized for the purpose of
demanding the extradition of the Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel-Rahman, on the anniversary of 9/11. At any rate, the CIA analysts continued, “That being said, we do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al-Qaeda participated in the attack,” and they named the al-Qaeda affiliate called Ansar al-Sharia.
As Wednesday’s testimony made clear, a five-minute phone call to Deputy Chief of Mission Gregory Hicks in Tripoli could have cleared up the “protest” nonsense… but instead, at the urging of Victoria Nuland, the Administration went in the opposite direction, scrubbing everything except the nonsense. Everything about al-Qaeda and the deteriorating security situation in Benghazi leading up to the attack was purged from the talking points.
Obama’s political operatives were right to be concerned. Can you imagine what the public response would have been, if U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice hit the Sunday talk shows to dispense honest, accurate, complete information? ”Yes, it’s clear there were mounting security issues in Benghazi, and a disturbing level of terrorist activity, culminating in an organized attack involving crew-served weapons and precision mortar fire that killed our Ambassador and his heroic, outnumbered defenders. But we made no effort to rescue him, took absolutely no precautions to send special-ops teams or air power to his rescue on the anniversary of 9/11, and in fact we reduced his security over his protests, because… oh, darn, look at the time, I’ve got to go. Have a great day, everybody!”
