White House Denies Editing Benghazi Talking Points

[Kathianne]

Any takers on how long it will take before they start walking this back?

http://www.mediaite.com/online/white-house-denies-editing-terrorism-reference-out-of-cias-benghazi-talking-points/


White House Denies Editing Terrorism Reference Out Of CIA’s Benghazi Talking Points

by Meenal Vamburkar (http://www.mediaite.com/author/meenal-vamburkar/) | 10:02 am, November 18th, 2012
On Saturday, the White House said the only changes the administration made to the CIA’s talking points on the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi were minor ones. The response comes after some lawmakers’ reports that, in his testimony, David Petraeus said the talking points included reference to terrorism/al Qaeda, which was later edited (http://www.mediaite.com/online/petraeus-testifies-on-benghazi-reference-to-terrorism-was-edited-out-of-cia-talking-points/) out.

“The only edit that was made by the White House and also by the State Department was to change the word ‘consulate’ to the word ‘diplomatic facility,’ since the facility in Benghazi was not formally a consulate,” Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communication Ben Rhodes said. “Other than that we were guided by the points that were provided by the intelligence community. So I can’t speak to any other edits that may have been made.”


Rep. Peter King has been one of the lawmakers present at the closed-door hearings, who’s said the testimony mentioned edited talking points. Asked who may have made those changes, King said, “It could be anywhere in the Defense Department, the State Department, the Justice Department, the White House.” It’s important to find out who and why, he said.


“I have my own beliefs, that for whatever reasons, the administration honestly believes that the war against al Qaeda is pretty much over and that’s the message that they wanted to present,” he added.


“I’m saying we were provided with points by the intelligence community that represented their assessment; the only edit made by the White House was the factual edit about how to refer to the facility,” Rhodes said. He added:
“The focus of this has often been on public statements that were made by Susan Rice and other administration officials in that first week after the attack, those were informed by unclassified talking points that were provided to the Congress and the other agencies in the rest of the administration by the intelligence community. So that’s what informed our public statements. Now if there were adjustments to them made by the intelligence community, that’s common and that’s something they would have done themselves.”

[aboutime]

Kathianne. After more than FOUR years of endless lies from the Obama admin, and his Lips. How in the World will anyone ever figure out where the Lies started, or ended?

And who will be able to tell the difference between Known Lies, Made-up Lies, or Liberally sanctioned Lies???

I am no longer convinced Obama even knows the difference between his lies, and his lies. There are so many of them.

It would be a LIE to say you can Identify any specific Lie...Honestly.

[Kathianne]

Kathianne. After more than FOUR years of endless lies from the Obama admin, and his Lips. How in the World will anyone ever figure out where the Lies started, or ended?

And who will be able to tell the difference between Known Lies, Made-up Lies, or Liberally sanctioned Lies???

I am no longer convinced Obama even knows the difference between his lies, and his lies. There are so many of them.

It would be a LIE to say you can Identify any specific Lie...Honestly.

I'm focused on the time since 9/11/12, to today. You?

[jimnyc]

I'm sure they do deny it, no surprise there. But if the report went from the CIA to the White House administration, whom would they have us believe did the editing? They take the American public for idiots, and half of them prove it to be true. And now they'll just continue a character assault on Petraeus in order to cover up their mess. Petraeus deserves everything he gets regarding his affair, but I see no evidence whatsoever that it had anything at all to do with Benghazi and I believe what he states 100%. Obama has been dodging this story from day one, and now many liberals are trying to make the republicans out to be racists for calling out Susan Rice.

[Kathianne]

I'm sure they do deny it, no surprise there. But if the report went from the CIA to the White House administration, whom would they have us believe did the editing? They take the American public for idiots, and half of them prove it to be true. And now they'll just continue a character assault on Petraeus in order to cover up their mess. Petraeus deserves everything he gets regarding his affair, but I see no evidence whatsoever that it had anything at all to do with Benghazi and I believe what he states 100%. Obama has been dodging this story from day one, and now many liberals are trying to make the republicans out to be racists for calling out Susan Rice.

Yep from day 1. Truth is now leaking out. Drip, by painful drip.

[jimnyc]

Yep from day 1. Truth is now leaking out. Drip, by painful drip.

The problem is that with each drip, the White House tries to ramp up the scandal about Petraeus that much more, leaving the actual story to the bottom of the fold. And try popping on MSNBC or any other liberal station, or paper - they are ALL over Petraeus and don't seem to give a crap about Benghazi. They choose politics over dead Americans in a scandal - which shouldn't be surprising to us after fast and furious.

[Kathianne]

The problem is that with each drip, the White House tries to ramp up the scandal about Petraeus that much more, leaving the actual story to the bottom of the fold. And try popping on MSNBC or any other liberal station, or paper - they are ALL over Petraeus and don't seem to give a crap about Benghazi. They choose politics over dead Americans in a scandal - which shouldn't be surprising to us after fast and furious.

I don't have cable or actually any telly. Just me and the internet. Cozy, no? It will come out, truth does.

[red states rule]

Seems to me Obama expressed more outrage over the criticism of Susan Rice then the murder of four US citizens. I have not heard any sound bite where Obama even raised his voice over their murders. yet he gets very angry over anyone asking questions about Rice, her comments, and where the info she gave came from

[Marcus Aurelius]

Actually, they don't seem to have denied anything fully. Read this part again...


“The only edit that was made by the White House and also by the State Department was to change the word ‘consulate’ to the word ‘diplomatic facility,’ since the facility in Benghazi was not formally a consulate,” Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communication Ben Rhodes said. “Other than that we were guided by the points that were provided by the intelligence community. So I can’t speak to any other edits that may have been made.”

Doesn't say definitively that 'no other edits were made'. It says the made some edits, and essentially don't know what other edits may have been made.

The only way other edits could have been made without the White House knowing, would be if they were made prior to the White house receiving the reports.

Sounds to me like they just took someone from the chain of events prior to the White House & threw them under a bus.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Seems to me Obama expressed more outrage over the criticism of Susan Rice then the murder of four US citizens. I have not heard any sound bite where Obama even raised his voice over their murders. yet he gets very angry over anyone asking questions about Rice, her comments, and where the info she gave came from

He was just expressing the 'optimal' amount of outrage over a staffer being questioned.

[red states rule]

http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/mrz112012dAPR20121120124555.jpg

[Kathianne]

Some inconvenient questions and observations:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323852904578129362645269992.html


When David Petraeus (http://topics.wsj.com/person/p/david-petraeus/6164) told Congress on Friday that he knew almost from the get-go that Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed in a terror attack in Libya, the former CIA director was contradicting information put out by two prominent Obama appointees.

The first is United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice. The Sunday after the attack, Ms. Rice took to the talk shows to blame everything, falsely, on an Islamic mob outraged by a blasphemous YouTube video. Mr. Petraeus says the CIA's original talking points mentioned al Qaeda. If this was edited out, we ought to know who did it—and why.

The other person whom Mr. Petraeus contradicted on Friday was the Mr. Petraeus who briefed the intel committees in the first days after the killings in Benghazi...

What do these discrepancies mean? In the narrowest sense, they explain why Mr. Petraeus was so compromised. Even if his initial testimony supporting the Obama administration's version of events wasn't affected by the FBI investigation into his extramarital affair, reasonable people might conclude otherwise. At the time he was leaving Rep. King and Sen. Feinstein with the impression Benghazi had been a spontaneous event, others—including the CIA station chief in Libya—were saying otherwise.


As bad as this may be for Mr. Petraeus, it pales next to what it says about how this White House handles security. Start with President Obama. We saw his flash of anger over the contention by Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) that Ms. Rice is unfit to be secretary of state. Why no presidential outrage for his own team, who (supposedly) kept him in the dark about an investigation into his CIA director and later put his administration's name on a patently false account of the Benghazi killings?


At the top of that team would be Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The president says it is deeply unfair to blame Ms. Rice for her misleading information because she "had nothing to do with Benghazi." So why was she picked to speak? Might it be that Mrs. Clinton prudently decided she didn't want to go on the record knowing what she did about the real story?


Then there's Attorney General Eric Holder. The idea that the Tampa office of the FBI was investigating the CIA director without direction from Mr. Holder's Department of Justice is ridiculous. Then again, even the ridiculous can serve a purpose.


Take the now-infamous "shirtless FBI agent." For days America was given the impression that this was a man who had the hots for Jill Kelley, the Florida socialite whose complaint about emails sparked the investigation. She came to him with those emails, and he came on to her with an Anthony Weiner-like photo of his shirtless self.


Now we have learned that this photo was sent in 2010; that it was an obvious joke with no sexual overtures; and that the agent in question is a little more competent and complicated than he has been made out to be. Not only did Fred Humphries foil an al Qaeda plot to blow up the Los Angeles airport, he shared Mr. Obama's criticism of harsh interrogation techniques and made his views well known.


Still, the "shirtless FBI agent" made for a nice media distraction. Otherwise the press corps might have been asking Mr. Holder whether he ordered FBI Director Robert Mueller not to tell the president about the Petraeus investigation, at least until after the election. Or asking how Justice officials could conclude so quickly that there were no criminal violations, especially since prosecutors didn't see documents from Paula Broadwell's home until the FBI had searched it—days after the affair became public.

In the end, all we know is this. Four Americans were killed in an al Qaeda assault on our consulate. A filmmaker falsely accused of inciting that attack is now in prison. A member of Mr. Obama's cabinet peddled a false account of how they died when the president's intelligence team knew better. And no one, including Mr. Obama, can tell us what was done to follow his order to "do whatever we need to do" to help those Americans in Benghazi when they were still alive.

It's a baffling sequence of events and evasions—one that makes sense only in a place where the No. 1 priority is not so much securing American lives in danger but sustaining the political narrative.

[aboutime]

Seems to me Obama expressed more outrage over the criticism of Susan Rice then the murder of four US citizens. I have not heard any sound bite where Obama even raised his voice over their murders. yet he gets very angry over anyone asking questions about Rice, her comments, and where the info she gave came from


red states rule. What Obama did in his 'expression" of outrage over the Rice accusations was nothing more than more of the same PRETENDER games used by street hoods who stand there, their pistol still smoking, over a dead body. And Insisting...IT WENT OFF BY ACCIDENT.

[DragonStryk72]

Actually, they don't seem to have denied anything fully. Read this part again...



Doesn't say definitively that 'no other edits were made'. It says the made some edits, and essentially don't know what other edits may have been made.

The only way other edits could have been made without the White House knowing, would be if they were made prior to the White house receiving the reports.

Sounds to me like they just took someone from the chain of events prior to the White House & threw them under a bus.

Actually, further correction to that, they said "I can't speak to", not "I don't know". For Instance, the person saying "I can't speak to" can say that truthfully, if they were given direct order that they couldn't speak about it.

[aboutime]

The WHITE HOUSE, and anyone connected with this Benghazi incident across the board, are just playing Rhetorical, and Semantic games with the MSM, and the American people.

Anything they can do to conceal the reasons for any, or all of their lies...as the threats continued to grow PRIOR to the Election.

And now. With Obama out of the country. He hopes nobody will TALK BAD, OR DIRTY about him. Unlike his fellow Democrats who took great pride in Going against American traditions by BAD MOUTHING Bush...no matter where he was.

THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION IS LED BY THE MASTER OF LIES AND THE LIARS IN THE DEMOCRAT PARTY EAT LIES FOR BREAKFAST.

[Kathianne]

With any other administration, this level of cover up would have the press howling. Not with this president, not with this press.

It's dangerous, no doubt about it.