Alexander Higgins
New documents show the CIA was ordered to change Benghazi Talking Points 12 times and the White House is being accused of issuing a stand-down order to protect the consulate from the attack.
After ABC News dropped a bombshell earlier proving the Obama administration was directly involved in editing the CIA’s talking points which were then distributed throughout the government and the parroted by the corporate media as if they were absolute fact.
Shortly after the September 11th terror attacks the alternative media cried foul and pointed out numerous discrepancies in the official narrative.
Conservative media outlets seized upon the reports in the alternative media as a major opportunity to attack the Obama administration.
Meanwhile moderate and left-leaning media outlets continued to echo the official narrative despite mounting overwhelming evidence to contrary.
They have continued to do so even though the administration’s story has completely fallen apart.
That is now starting to change as non-conservative media outlets are realizing there is irrefutable evidence they have been duped by the government.
Today Mark Mardell, the BBC’s North American editor, issued an apology for continuing to believe Obama’s lies and went on to state heads will roll.
Perhaps even more damning is the media is now being forced to admit that they do in fact parrot talking points handed to them by the government and acting nothing more than stenographer’s echoing the same talking points given to them while refusing to go off script.
From the BBC:
After Benghazi revelations, heads will roll
Republicans such as Congressman Darrell Issa have held repeated hearings on the Benghazi attacksThere’s new evidence, obtained by ABC, that the Obama administration did deliberately purge references to “terrorism” from accounts of the attack on the Benghazi diplomatic mission, which killed four people including the US ambassador to Libya.
Conservatives have long maintained that the administration deliberately suppressed the truth about the attacks.
This is the first hard evidence that the state department did ask for changes to the CIA’s original assessment.
Specifically, they wanted references to previous warnings deleted and this sentence removed: “We do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al-Qa’ida participated in the attack.”
[…]
State department spokesperson Victoria Nuland is directly implicated, and the fingerprints of senior White House aides Ben Rhodes and Jay Carney are there as well.
Black and white
Republicans are certain to use the Benghazi affair against Clinton should she run in 2016In the interests of full disclosure I have to say I have not in the past been persuaded that allegations of a cover-up were a big deal. It seemed to me a partisan attack based on very little.
I remember listening to reports from the BBC and others at the time that did suggest the attack in Benghazi was a spontaneous reaction to a rather puerile anti-Islamic video.
[…]
But the evidence is there in black and white, unless we doubt the documents obtained by ABC, which I don’t.
[…]
Butt-guarding
The new documents contain two rationales for the changes in language. The first is that it would prejudice the FBI investigation.
Perhaps, but I am not at all persuaded.
The other reason given, old-fashioned butt-guarding, is more credible.
As Ms Nuland puts it, such a report “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?”
However you read the motives, the state department and apparently the White House did get the CIA to change its story.
This is now very serious, and I suspect heads will roll. The White House will be on the defensive for a while.
Source: BBC
From ABC:
Exclusive: Benghazi Talking Points Underwent 12 Revisions, Scrubbed of Terror Reference
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.
Related: Read the Full Benghazi Talking Point Revisions
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.
That would appear to directly contradict what White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said about the talking points in November.
“Those talking points originated from the intelligence community. They reflect the IC’s best assessments of what they thought had happened,” Carney told reporters at the White House press briefing 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.”
Summaries of White House and State Department emails — some of which were first published by Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard — show that the State Department had extensive input into the editing of the talking points.
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 …”
The paragraph was entirely deleted.
[…]
Source: ABC News
And this: Diplomat Says Requests For Benghazi Rescue Were Rejected
Diplomat: Ambassador in Benghazi Said, ‘We’re Under Attack’
Gregory Hicks, who became the top diplomat in Libya after Ambassador Christopher Stevens was killed during an attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, Sept. 11, 2012, told a congressional committee today that the attack left him scrambling for help that failed to arrive in time.
“Is anything coming?” Hicks said he asked a defense attache as he worked to coordinate a response from Tripoli, Libya, during the attack. “Will they be sending us any help? Is there something out there?”
Hicks said requests for military help were denied and later that State Department officials tried to keep him from cooperating with a House investigation.
[…]
Source: ABC News
I hope that whole washington DC bunch go down in flames. As for who is responsable for the Bengauzi event, it goes right to the top. The HNIC would NEVER do anything to his muslim buddies. He has stated: “If push comes to shove, I will stand with the muslims”…..
I hope they bring that mother down .. to early to tell …