The Dam Bursts On Benghazi

By Paul Brandus | The Week

Thanks to a bombshell report from ABC News, GOP accusations that the White House politicized a tragedy no longer seem so unsubstantiated

ABC News reports that the documents were heavily edited by the State Department. And not just edited, but censored: State requested that references to Ansar al-Sharia — tied to al Qaeda — be deleted. It also requested that references to CIA warnings about terror threats in Benghazi in the months preceding the attack be deleted as well. (Read the whole ABC story here.)

Rewind to November 28. Here’s what White House press secretary Jay Carney told us at that day’s press briefing:

Those talking points originated from the intelligence community (IC). They reflect the IC’s best assessments of what they thought had happened. The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment (emphasis added) 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.

And Carney just two days ago stuck to this story, telling us: 

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.

Carney’s phrase “here at the White House” may be accurate in the physical sense, but in the broader context there’s no question he was referring to the Obama administration at large. And as Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard — which first published some of the email traffic between the White House and State Department on this — charged, “senior Obama administration officials knowingly misled the country about what happened.”

So who at the State Department was involved in changing — and censoring — the talking points? According to one email, spokesperson Victoria Nuland — who reported to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — expressed specific concern about this particular CIA talking point:

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. [Via ABC News]

Is there a White House connection? ABC notes that in a Sept. 14 email — two days before Rice went on TV — Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes said 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,” Rhodes noted.
The final talking points eventually given to Rice reflected State’s concerns, but Carney told us that it’s all on the up-and-up because the changes were signed off on by the CIA.

There’s a meatpacking-like quality to all this. You don’t really want to know how your hamburger is processed, do you? The administration’s defense — and it’s looking thinner than ice on a late spring pond — is that government bureaucracy is messy and multi-layered and that’s a big part of why Rice said what she did.
Benghazi occurred seven weeks before election day. The administration’s strategy was simple: Downplay the terror attack, change the narrative, and run out the clock. And that’s what it did.

But now the dam has burst. Carney’s “here at the White House” comment has essentially thrown Clinton under the bus. Republicans, who leaked the edited emails to Karl and Hayes, have succeeded on two fronts: They’ve got the administration on the defensive over Benghazi, and they’ve weakened the Democrat’s most formidable 2016 candidate.

It seems that after all that digging, Republicans have found their pony at last.

Related articles

• Carney Claims on Changing #Benghazi Talking Points at Odds With the Facts (speaker.gov)
• White House slams ‘attempts to politicize’ Benghazi (politico.com)
• Obama administration e-mails raise new questions on Benghazi (cnn.com)
• Benghazi Talking Points Changed 12 Times (restart.typepad.com)
• ABC Exclusive: Benghazi Talking Points Underwent 12 Revisions, Scrubbed of Terror Reference (rubinoworld.com)
• ABC: Benghazi talking points went through 12 revisions, scrubbed of terror reference (hotair.com)
• Benghazi Talking Points Changed 12 Times By Obama Regime, Scrubbed Of Terror References (thedaleygator.wordpress.com)
• ABC Finds Benghazi Talking Points Extensively Edited by State Dept. (nationalreview.com)

Filed under: barack obama, ISLAM, Joe Biden, Obama Care, obama fraud, U.S. Congress, U.S. Government, U.S. Senate Tagged: ABC News, abc story, al-Qaeda, ansar al, Benghazi, Central Intelligence Agency, horse manure, Jay Carney, Libya, Obama Administration, politics, State Department, United States Department of State, White House