Obama's Message Keeps Changing

E-Mails Show Jostling Over Talking Points on Libya Attack

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and MARK LANDLER

Published: May 15, 2013

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WASHINGTON — More than 100 pages of e-mails released by the White House on Wednesday 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.

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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.

White House aides have said the excerpts used by Republicans — and heavily reported by the news media — were an inaccurate representation of their involvement. On Tuesday, CNN obtained one of the e-mails in question that appeared to minimize the White House involvement.

But Democrats — including some of Mr. Obama’s former top aides — said Wednesday morning that the administration would have to release all of the e-mails in an effort to prove that the president had nothing to hide.

“I think they would benefit from getting all these e-mails out in public,” David Axelrod, a former senior adviser, said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program on Wednesday morning.

During a brief news conference on Monday, Mr. Obama dismissed the Republican inquiry into the Benghazi aftermath as a “sideshow” and said there was nothing to the accusations of a cover-up.

“Suddenly, three days ago,” the president told reporters, “this gets spun up as if there’s something new to the story. There’s no ‘there’ there.”