Is this the Benghazi “bombshell” Republicans have been waiting for to make the case that the Obama administration was both negligent and untruthful on Bengazhi? ABC News’ report is starting to gain traction:
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.
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.
Go the link to read the rest.
The documents raising these questions will likely dominate the news cycle until more questions are answered. Republican overreach could overshadow finding out what went on and if there was a specific attempt to downplay what really occurred. Already we see some of that with Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) suggesting now that President Obama could be impeached over what he alleged was a White House cover-up after last year’s attack in Benghazi, Libya.
What will likely happen now is that Democrats will defend the White House to the hilt.
Republicans will keep pressing it not just to find out what happened but it’s clear some GOPers now want to use it against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton since polls show she’s a shoo in for the Democratic Party’s 2016 (at this early date and that often proves meaningless) and could be formidable in the national election because of her high approval ratings. It’s chance to raise her negatives and a kind of pre-emeptive political strike. Expect GOPers now to continue a long tradition dating back to 1992: going after Hillary Clinton. Don’t expect to hear any warm fuzzy comments about her.
So it’ll now shift to the GOP against Clinton (or the Clintons) once again.
Is it warranted? Did Hillary Clinton fail her late morning call?
Only serious investigation — and perhaps serious reporting done by journalists not involved in the ideological left or right media — will tell.
But this report now raises the issue’s visibility, raises more questions — and shoves it more than ever into the political realm.
It’s almost predictable now what they’ll say on Fox News and MSNBC. (Do you really need to bother to watch?)
GO HERE to read a variety of blog reaction.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.