GOP’s Benghazi Conspiracy Falls Apart: White House Didn’t Change Susan Rice’s Talking Points

By Hamed Aleaziz/Think Progress

Intelligence officials told CNN that the intelligence community, not the White House, changed the now infamous Benghazi talking points given to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice before her appearance on several morning news shows in September. CNN quoted both the spokesperson for the Director of National Intelligence and an anonymous official “familiar with the drafting of the talking points.” The DNI spokesperson said that the only “substantive changes” came from the intelligence community and not the White House.

Former CIA Director David Petraeus told lawmakers in a closed door hearing last week that the CIA’s original assessment on the Sept. 11 Benghazi attack was that it was carried out by al Qaeda affiliated groups. But he reportedly said that analysis was later taken out after an interagency review in favor of a more general assessment that “extremists” carried out the attack to broaden the scope and not tip off terrorists to U.S. knowledge on the matter. And despite the fact that Petraeus said the CIA approved the change, Republicans, led by Republican senators John McCain (AZ), Lindsey Graham (SC) and Kelly Ayotte (NH), have accused the White House of stripping the language for political reasons.

But Shawn Turner, the spokesman for the Director of National Intelligence, told CNN that it wasn’t the White House’s decision:

“The intelligence community made substantive, analytical changes before the talking points were sent to government agency partners for their feedback.There were no substantive changes made to the talking points after they left the intelligence community.”

Another anonymous intelligence official echoed Turner, saying that the changes were made based on legitimate intelligence and for legal purposes:

“First, the information about individuals linked to al Qaeda was derived from classified sources. Second, when links were so tenuous – as they still are – itmakes sense to be cautious before pointing fingers so you don’t set off a chain of circular and self-reinforcing assumptions. Third, it is important to be careful not to prejudice a criminal investigation in its early stages.”

Indeed, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) told the New York Times last week that in his closed door briefing, Petraeus “was adamant there was no politicization of the process, no White House interference or political agenda.”

The fight over the talking points will most likely continue; it has even become a campaign cause for Republican senators like Lindsey Graham. Others like John McCain have vowed to do “everything” to block the potential nomination of Susan Rice for Secretary of State. But Democrats in Congress and media commentators are beginning to wonder why Republicans are picking a substance-free fight with Rice, a woman and an African-American, after the drubbing they took in last month’s elections among those demographics.

GOP Rep Admits CIA Approved U.N. Ambassador’s Talking Points On Libya

By Hayes Brown/Think Progress

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) has admitted that the CIA and intelligence community approved U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice’s talking points before she made her much-derided Sept. 16 appearance on several Sunday news shows to discuss the attacks in Benghazi. King, one of the most outspoken critics of the Obama administration’s response to the attack, came to his conclusion following testimony from former CIA Director David Petraeus.

After leaving the closed-door hearing, King spoke with reporters for several minutes about Petraeus’ statements. Rice’s television appearances were among the topics discussed, leading King to indicate that while Petraeus did not personally write Rice’s talking points, the CIA did approve them:

Q: Did he say why it was taken out of the talking points that [the attack] was Al Qaeda affiliated?

KING: He didn’t know.

Q: He didn’t know? What do you mean he didn’t know?

KING: They were not involved — it was done, the process was completed and they said, “Ok go with those talking points.” Again it’s interagency — I got the impression that 7, 8, 9 different agencies.

Q: Did he give you the impression that he was upset it was taken out?

KING: No.

Q: You said the CIA said “OK” to the revised report –

KING: No, well, they said in that, after it goes through the process, they OK’d it to go. Yeah, they said “Okay for it to go.”

Watch King’s statements here:

Rice has been hit by Republicans for weeks for indicating that the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi stemmed from a spontaneous protest related to an anti-Islamic video. However, as Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) has pointed out, the talking points used by Rice were the same unclassified points given to both the administration and Congress by the intelligence community.

Contrary to the current GOP narrative, Petraeus’ testimony made clear that various intelligence sources at of the time of his initial briefing to Congress indicated that a protest arising in response to a similar one in Cairo was the impetus for the attack in Libya. While those initial assessments were later disproved, the Wall Street Journal has previously reported that this change in thinking began too late to alter Rice’s talking points.

Today’s comments by King towards the intelligence community’s assessments also mark a sharp departure from his previous accusations that Rice should have known sooner that the intelligence that was presented to her was incorrect. Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have both also recently said that Rice should “have known better” than to make the statements she did during her interviews.

CIA documents supported Susan Rice’s description of Benghazi attacks

By David Ignatius/The Washington Post

The Romney campaign may have misfired with its suggestion that statements by President Obama and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice about the Benghazi attack last month weren’t supported by intelligence, according to documents provided by a senior U.S. intelligence official.

“Talking points” prepared by the CIA on Sept. 15, the same day that Rice taped three television appearances, support her description of the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate as a reaction to Arab anger about an anti-Muslim video prepared in the United States. According to the CIA account, “The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. Consulate and subsequently its annex. There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.”

The CIA document went on: “This assessment may change as additional information is collected and analyzed and as currently available information continues to be evaluated.” This may sound like self-protective boilerplate, but it reflects the analysts’ genuine problem interpreting fragments of intercepted conversation, video surveillance and source reports.

The senior intelligence official said the analysts’ judgment was based in part on monitoring of some of the Benghazi attackers, which showed they had been watching the Cairo protests live on television and talking about them before they assaulted the consulate.

“We believe the timing of the attack was influenced by events in Cairo,” the senior official said, reaffirming the Cairo-Benghazi link. He said that judgment is repeated in a new report prepared this week for the House intelligence committee.

Here’s how the senior official described the jumble of events in Benghazi that day: “The attackers were disorganized; some seemed more interested in looting. Some who claimed to have participated joined the attack as it began or after it was under way. There is no evidence of rehearsals, they never got into the safe room . . . never took any hostages, didn’t bring explosives to blow the safe room door, and didn’t use a car bomb to blow the gates.”

The Benghazi flap is the sort of situation that intelligence officers dread: when politicians are demanding hard “yes” or “no” answers but evidence is fragmentary and conflicting. The political debate has focused on whether the attack was spontaneous or planned, but the official said there’s evidence of both, and that different attackers may have had different motives. There’s no dispute, however, that it was “an act of terror,” as Obama described it the next day.

“It was a flash mob with weapons,” is how the senior official described the attackers. The mob included members of the Ansar al-Sharia militia, about four members of al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, and members of the Egypt-based Muhammad Jamal network, along with other unarmed looters.

The official said the only major change he would make now in the CIA’s Sept. 15 talking points would be to drop the word “spontaneous” and substitute “opportunistic.” He explained that there apparently was “some pre-coordination but minimal planning.”

The intelligence community obviously feels burned by having its tentative assessments become a political football in this campaign and, in truth, one obvious lesson is that the United States could use much better real-time intelligence from places such as Libya.

The Benghazi attack produced a swirl of intelligence reporting, some of it contradictory. The Associated Press reported Friday that within 24 hours of the assault, the CIA station chief in Libya cabled headquarters that eyewitnesses said the attack had been carried out by militants. But the analysts evidently didn’t feel that they had any single report that allowed them to make a definitive determination about the nature of the attack.

A memo prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center on Sept. 14 illustrates the fragmentary nature of the evidence: “As time progresses, we are learning more, but we still don’t have a complete picture of what happened,” noted the analysts. “At this point, we are not aware of any actionable intelligence that this attack was planned or imminent. . . .We are very cautious about drawing any firm conclusions at this point with regard to identification and motivation of the attackers.”

The analysts seem confident that al-Qaeda’s new leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, played no direct role in the Benghazi events, even though he called on Sept. 10 for revenge attacks against the United States. “He’s not a manager, he’s not a planner, he’s not an operator. He’s a theologian, and that doesn’t have much resonance now. He’s almost irrelevant, he’s so concerned about his security, so hunkered down,” said the senior official.

Ironically, the Sept. 15 talking points that were the basis for Rice’s televised comments were requested by the House intelligence committee. Ideally, the congressional oversight committees would provide bipartisan support for intelligence officials who are probing the attack. But in the heat of the final pre-election weeks, the murky details of what happened in Libya have instead become political assault weapons.

VF exclusive: Blackwater’s Erik Prince to step down, reveals CIA role

By Raw Story 'Power struggle' inside Blackwater over Prince's successor

Blackwater's Erik Prince was recruited as a CIA agent in the years after the 9/11 attacks, says an exclusive report at Vanity Fair that also reveals the billionaire ex-Navy SEAL plans to step down from Blackwater to teach high school.

For the past six years, Prince "appears to have led an astonishing double life," writes Adam Ciralsky. "Publicly, he has served as Blackwater’s CEO and chairman. Privately, and secretly, he has been doing the CIA’s bidding, helping to craft, fund, and execute operations ranging from inserting personnel into 'denied areas'—places US intelligence has trouble penetrating—to assembling hit teams targeting al-Qaeda members and their allies."

Ciralsky reports that Prince became a CIA "asset," or spy, who became a "Mr. Fix-It" in the war on terror.

"Prince wasn’t merely a contractor; he was, insiders say, a full-blown asset," Ciralsky reports. "Three sources with direct knowledge of the relationship say that the CIA’s National Resources Division recruited Prince in 2004 to join a secret network of American citizens with special skills or unusual access to targets of interest. As assets go, Prince would have been quite a catch. He had more cash, transport, matériel, and personnel at his disposal than almost anyone Langley would have run in its 62-year history

Prince also told Vanity Fair he believes that people inside the US government sold him out when news of Blackwater's involvement in the CIA's secret assassination program went public. Last summer, CIA director Leon Panetta informed congressional intelligence committees that the CIA had kept secret an on-and-off assassination program that many people believe was run during the Bush administration by Vice President Dick Cheney.

Later, news reports emerged alleging that Blackwater, which recently renamed itself Xe Services, was involved in the program which sought to assassinate high-value terrorist targets.

Prince "confesses to feeling betrayed," Vanity Fair reports.

“I don’t understand how a program this sensitive leaks,” he says. “And to ‘out’ me on top of it?”

Ciralsky reports:

Prince blames Democrats in Congress for the leaks and maintains that there is a double standard at play. “The left complained about how [CIA operative] Valerie Plame’s identity was compromised for political reasons. A special prosecutor [was even] appointed. Well, what happened to me was worse. People acting for political reasons disclosed not only the existence of a very sensitive program but my name along with it.” As in the Plame case, though, the leaks prompted CIA attorneys to send a referral to the Justice Department, requesting that a criminal investigation be undertaken to identify those responsible for providing highly classified information to the media.

Prince told Ciralsky that he was engaged in work for the CIA "up until two months ago—when Prince says the Obama administration pulled the plug." That would seem to confirm recent news reports that the Obama administration was using Blackwater for assassinations in Pakistan.

Prince also told Ciralsky he plans to step down as chairman and CEO of Blackwater -- a move Ciralsky reports has started a "power struggle" within the company over who will succeed its founder.

“I’m through,” Prince told Vanity Fair. “I’m going to teach high school. ... History and economics. I may even coach wrestling. Hey, Indiana Jones taught school, too.”

Read the full Vanity Fair report here.