Another day, another breathtaking
revelation about the the BenghaziWhiteWaterGate™ Coverup:
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.
You can read
all 12 versions here, but here are some highlights:
- Both the initial draft created by the CIA and the final draft said the Benghazi attacks were "spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo."
- The initial draft described the attackers as "Islamic extremists" while the final draft described them as "extremists."
- The initial draft said press reports had linked Ansar al-Sharia to the attack, but added that the group had denied ordering it in a statement. The initial draft nonetheless did not rule out that some of its members may have participated. The final draft didn't include any mention of Ansar al-Sharia.
- The initial draft referred to previous incidents of violence in Benghazi conducted by unidentified attackers. The final draft excluded this.
When you review the documents, the changes are numerous, but they are nonetheless consistent with what we already knew. ABC's report does reveal some new specifics about the feedback The White House and State Department gave to the CIA in developing the talking points, but those specifics don't support the GOP's coverup allegations.
First and foremost, the evolution of the talking points shows that the CIA's belief that attacks were "spontaneously inspired" was consistent from start to finish. That turned out to be a bad analysis, but as the administration has said all along, it was the CIA's analysis from the beginning.
Second, changing "Islamic extremist" to "extremist" reflected a longstanding Obama administration strategy of avoiding rhetoric that would unintentionally antagonize the Muslim world. Republicans may disagree with that strategy, but there's nothing secret about it. (Also, is anyone really worried about the possibility that not saying "Islamic extremists" will confuse some folks into thinking they were actually talking about "Baptist extremists" or some such?)
Third, the information about Ansar al-Sharia was publicly available. Moreover, the CIA has already explained why it was removed from the initial talking points: It did not want to alert specific groups or individuals that they were under suspicion. Even if you disagree with that reasoning, it's still a fact that we've known for more than six months why these groups were scrubbed. There's nothing new here.
Republicans will probably zero in on the fourth change, removing the information about previous attacks in Benghazi, because in subsequent revisions the CIA changed the talking points to say that they had warned the State Department about al-Qaeda extremists in Benghazi. The State Department's spokeswoman pushed back on that talking point, saying that she worried it would fuel politically motivated attacks from Congress and that it sounded like an attempt by the CIA to cover its ass. It's hard to argue with her assessment, given how things have played out. That being said, nothing in the talking points indicated that the CIA had offered any sort of specific warning about the Benghazi attack in particular. Given the lack of a specific connection to the attack, the talking point really wasn't germane.
Again, there are definitely some new details here, but they are consistent with what we've already known. Republicans will certainly latch onto the "new" factor to try and score political points, but at the end of the day, the information here makes it even tougher for them to make their case. Of course, they're so deluded about Benghazi there's basically no chance of them coming to grips with that fact.