When a liar starts lying, it becomes impossible to remember what the first lies were and how they changed over time. So it is with Benghazi. The more we find, the more it is clear that the White House and CIA did not want Al Qaeda linked to Benghazi and preferred to referring to the "video" as the rationale behind the attack. Why could they not just tell us the truth instead of fabricating and massaging the message?
They (the Administration and CIA) messed up the story, tried to play fast and loose with the facts and got four people killed. This is a major tragedy!
No one died at the Watergate, yet it was the downfall of President Nixon. Here we have four deaths and no one in the Administration will step up to tell the truth, except the State Department employees who were told not to talk or lose their jobs. This is a chicken-shit way of treating your employees and the more we learn, the higher those in the Administration should hang.
Yes, we are upset and all Americans should also feel the same angst. We have people telling us lies and refusing to tell us the truth. That is not what we expect our leaders.
Benghazi was an organized and coordinated attack by Al Qaeda Sources knew it was coming and when help was requested, it was denied by someone. We need to find out who that was and why he/she made that decision. That is manslaughter at best. Additionally, we need to when Hillary and Obama knew the attack was going on and why they did not respond. If we do not get these answers, the four deaths will be meaningless collateral damage.
Conservative Tom
ABC RELEASES BIG BENGHAZI REPORT: TALKING POINTS CHANGED 12 TIMES, ‘DRAMATICALLY EDITED BY ADMINISTRATION,’ AND SCRUBBED OF TERROR REFERENCES
US ambassador for United nations Susan Rice and Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota (out of frame) during a Press conference at Itamaraty Palace in Brasilia, on April 17, 2013. Rice is on a three-day visit to Brazil. Credit: AFP/Getty Images
The talking points used by Amb. Susan Rice on the Sunday shows on the weekend after the 9/11/12 terror attack in Benghazi underwent at least 12 edits – including revisions by the Obama administration’s State Department — new emails obtained by ABC News show. Those revisions included scrubbing all references to an Al Qaeda-affiliated group and all references to previous CIA warnings about a terror threat.
From ABC:
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 showsthe 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.
ABC’s Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl said on Friday morning that the talking points were “dramatically edited by the administration” and that State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland played a major role in them.
From the report:
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 …”
Karl explained the new information:
In a addition, a new report by the Weekly Standard says then-CIA director David Petraeus “was surprised when he read the freshly rewritten talking points an aide had emailed him in the early afternoon of Saturday, September 15″:
Before circulating the talking points to administration policymakers in the early evening of Friday, September 14, CIA officials changed “Islamic extremists with ties to al Qaeda” to simply “Islamic extremists.” But elsewhere, they added new contextual references to radical Islamists. They noted that initial press reports pointed to Ansar al Sharia involvement and added a bullet point highlighting the fact that the agency had warned about another potential attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in the region. “On 10 September we warned of social media reports calling for a demonstration in front of the [Cairo] Embassy and that jihadists were threatening to break into the Embassy.”All told, the draft of the CIA talking points that was sent to top Obama administration officials that Friday evening included more than a half-dozen references to the enemy—al Qaeda, Ansar al Sharia, jihadists, Islamic extremists, and so on.The version Petraeus received in his inbox Saturday, however, had none. The only remaining allusion to the bad guys noted that “extremists” might have participated in “violent demonstrations.”In an email at 2:44 p.m. to Chip Walter, head of the CIA’s legislative affairs office, Petraeus expressed frustration at the new, scrubbed talking points, noting that they had been stripped of much of the content his agency had provided. Petraeus noted with evident disappointment that the policymakers had even taken out the line about the CIA’s warning on Cairo. The CIA director, long regarded as a team player, declined to pick a fight with the White House and seemed resigned to the propagation of the administration’s preferred narrative. The final decisions about what to tell the American people rest with the national security staff, he reminded Walter, and not with the CIA. [Emphasis added]
All of the information doesn’t seem to bode well for Press Secretary Jay Carney, who said back in November that only a “single adjustment” had been made.
“Those talking points originated from the intelligence community. They reflect the IC’s best assessments of what they thought had happened,” Carney said 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 spokesperson Victoria Nuland listens to US Secretary of State John Kerry and Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida speak to the press prior to a meeting at the State Department in Washington on February 22, 2013. Credit: AFP/Getty Images
Still, Carney is standing by the remarks, and now seems to be carefully clarifying the difference between the White House and the “administration” and noting the CIA still signed off on them.
“The CIA drafted these talking points and redrafted these talking points,” Carney told ABC. “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.”
This is a breaking story. Updates will be added.
"They (the Administration and CIA) messed up the story, tried to play fast and loose with the facts and got four people killed."
ReplyDeleteThe four people were already dead before the CIA wrote its first draft of the talking points. So, whatever else you want to say about the talking points, they certainly did not get anybody killed!
"State Department employees who were told not to talk or lose their jobs."
They all testified to Congress, and nobody lost his job.
"Sources knew it was coming and when help was requested, it was denied by someone."
The CIA had no foreknowledge of this attack, and there was not enough time to get planes to Benghazi to stop the attack. Everybody in the Pentagon from top down has affirmed this.
"Additionally, we need to when Hillary and Obama knew the attack was going on and why they did not respond."
They knew soon after the attack began. There was no time to respond militarily. They both responded verbally the next morning.
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I have now read all 12 versions of the talking points. What you need to know is that the initial CIA talking points document (before anybody at the White House or State Dept. saw it) says the attack was "spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the US diplomatic post in Benghazi and subsequently its annex." That NEVER changed from the first draft to the last. As I told you, the CIA was lying to cover up their own incompetence in this incident.
In my opinion (you may disagree), much of the edits were the result of the CIA trying to cover their asses with statements about how great of job they have been doing to alert the administration of the extremist threats in Libya prior to the attack, and the administration taking those references out to cover themselves so as not to give the impression that they ignored the CIA warnings (such as they were).
--David
If I say green you say blue. Do you just like to argue?
ReplyDeleteThe Obama Administration lied and people died!
"The Obama Administration lied and people died!"
ReplyDeleteYou have the temporal order of events reversed. People died and the CIA lied.
I like to keep the facts straight. The CIA lied. Obama did not lie, Clinton did not lie. I keep asking you to show me a quote from either of them that is a lie.
Still waiting...
--David