Shazam! The night before Rand Paul’s filibuster of CIA director nominee John Brennan got under way, and days after the unlovely conclusion of the Chuck Hagel Defense Secretary drama, the Obama Administration suddenly decided to cough up some of the documents congressional investigators (and Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News) have been trying to see for five months. Attkisson took a look through these “voluminous” documents and found some interesting stuff:
Documents provided include emails regarding “who changed the Benghazi talking points” and many communications between officials in Libya and Washington, D.C., leading up to and during the attack.
Regarding the talking points: one source who reviewed the documents said removal of the word “al Qaeda” from the talking points was initiated, at least in part, by one of the “press shops.” The source said press officers from the Defense Intelligence agency, the White House and the FBI were “looped in” from the start and that some of them expressed concerns in writing that the media would ask follow up questions if certain words or phrases were used. The source added that the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and then-Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell were included in these emails.
When asked whether Clapper and Morell misled Congress when they didn’t disclose who changed the talking points (because they knew), one source said “the exact right question wasn’t asked.”
Wonderful. These incompetent clowns think this is some kind of party game. You don’t have to say anything that would jeopardize Obama’s re-election unless the exact right questions are asked, probably in iambic pentameter.
The documents indicated numerous other changes were made to the talking points, including removal of certain references to an “attack.”
The source who reviewed the documents also flagged several emails prior to the Benghazi attacks from officials in Libya to Washington, D.C., that supposedly specifically warned of an imminent attack within days of the Benghazi consulate.
Additionally, the source says “most if not all contact” between officials in Libya and Washington, D.C., once the attacks began reference al Qaeda, al Qaeda-affiliated cells or both as being the suspected instigator from the very start. The few references to demonstrations were by people who hadn’t directly observed any.
“It’s amazing that anyone would question who was behind the attack and keep the idea of the demonstration going for weeks,” said the source.
Wow. Do you suppose it might have affected the election outcome a bit, if voters had been chewing over the sharp contrast between these long-secret messages and the Administration’s public statements? Wouldn’t the American people have been interested in those specific warnings of an imminent attack? At the very least, these communications reinforce the image of the Obama Administration as a bumbling circus in which no one takes responsibility for anything, and the table of organization runs up to that fabled Empty Chair. And we still don’t know exactly who doctored the talking points, or why. We just know the trail of bloody footprints leads into one of many Administration “press shops.” Everybody else in this deadly farce of a White House was “looped in,” but nobody was in charge.
But trust them: they’ll keep the killer drones on a tight leash, lock the border down tighter than a Ziploc bag, extract full and accurate back taxes from amnestied illegal aliens, and spring into action the micro-second Iran gets ready to field a nuclear weapon.
