… Hillary Clinton and a key aide effectively tried to cut the department’s own counterterrorism bureau out of the chain of reporting and decision-making, according to … Mark I. Thompson, a former Marine and now the deputy coordinator for operations in the agency’s counterterrorism bureau.

[A]nother official from the counterterrorism bureau — independently of Thompson — voiced the same complaint about Clinton and Under Secretary for Management Patrick [F.] Kennedy to trusted national security colleagues back in October. …

Thompson considers himself a whistle-blower whose account was suppressed by the official investigative panel that Clinton convened to review the episode, the Accountability Review Board (ARB). Thompson’s lawyer, Joseph diGenova, a former U.S. attorney, has further alleged that his client has been subjected to threats and intimidation by as-yet-unnamed superiors at State, in advance of his cooperation with Congress. …

Documents from the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council … showed that senior officials from those agencies decided within days of the attacks to delete all references to Al Qaeda’s known involvement in them from “talking points” being prepared for those administration officers being sent out to discuss the attacks publicly.  …

[T]he statements of all senior Obama administration officials who commented publicly on Benghazi during the early days after the attacks — sought instead to depict the Americans’ deaths as the result of a spontaneous protest that went awry. The administration later acknowledged that there had been no such protest … 

[T]he conduct of the ARB is itself now under review by the State Department’s Office of Inspector General.