WASHINGTON – The FBI, CIA and other intelligence agencies — but
not the White House — made major changes in talking points that led to the
Obama administration's confusing explanations of the attack on U.S. diplomatic
facilities in Benghazi, Libya, a Senate report concluded Monday.
The Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs Committee report said the White House was only responsible
for a minor change. Some Republicans had questioned whether the presidential
staff rewrote the talking points for political reasons.
The committee, headed by
independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Republican Sen. Susan Collins
of Maine, also said the director of national intelligence has been stonewalling
the panel in holding back a promised timeline of the talking point changes.
U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris
Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the Sept. 11 attack. The U.S.
ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, said she used the talking points
to say in television interviews on Sept. 16 that it may have been a protest
that got out of hand.
Rice's incorrect explanation
may have cost her a chance to be nominated as the next secretary of state, as
Senate Republicans publicly said they would not vote to confirm her. President
Barack Obama instead nominated Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., chairman of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, who is expected to win easy confirmation.
The State Department this month
acknowledged major weaknesses in security and errors in judgment exposed in a
scathing independent report on the assault. Two top State officials appealed to
Congress to fully fund requests to ensure diplomats and embassies are safe.
Testifying before two
congressional committees, senior State Department officials acknowledged that
serious management and leadership failures left the diplomatic mission in
Benghazi woefully unprepared for the terrorist attack. The State Department
review board's report led four department officials to resign.
The Senate report said that on
Sept. 19, eight days after the attack, National Counterterrorism Center
Director Matthew Olsen told the Homeland committee that the four Americans died
"in the course of a terrorist attack."
The same day, State Department
spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the department stood by the intelligence
community's assessment. The next day, Sept. 20, presidential spokesman Jay
Carney said, "It is, I think, self-evident that what happened in Benghazi
was a terrorist attack." Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton also
used the words "terrorist attack" on Sept. 21.
Olsen's acknowledgement was
important, the report said, because talking points prepared by intelligence
officials the previous week had undergone major changes.
A line saying "we
know" that individuals associated with al-Qaida or its affiliates participated
in the attacks was changed to say, "There are indications that extremists
participated."
The talking points dropped the
reference to al-Qaida and its affiliates altogether. In addition, a reference
to "attacks" was changed to "demonstrations."
The committee said the director of national intelligence, James Clapper,
and representatives from the CIA, State Department, National Counterterrorism
Center and the FBI told the panel that the changes were made within the CIA and
the intelligence community. The change from "we know" there was an
al-Qaida connection to "indications" of connections to
"extremists" was requested by the FBI.
The report said the only White
House change substituted a reference of "consulate" to
"mission."
Intelligence officials differed over whether the al-Qaida reference
should remain classified, the report said. It added, however, that the analyst
who drafted the original talking points was a veteran career analyst in the
intelligence community who believed it was appropriate to include a reference
to al-Qaida in the unclassified version.
The analyst came to that
conclusion because of claims of responsibility by a militant group, Ansar
al-Sharia.
The committee said Clapper
offered to provide the committee a detailed timeline on the development of the
talking points. Despite repeated requests, the committee said the information
has not been provided.
"According to a senior IC
(intelligence community) official, the timeline has not been delivered as
promised because the administration has spent weeks debating internally whether
or not it should turn over information considered 'deliberative' to the
Congress," the report said.
The report added that if the
administration had described the attack as a terrorist assault from the outset,
"there would have been much less confusion and division in the public
response to what happened there on Sept. 11, 2012."
"The unnecessary confusion
... should have ended much earlier than it did," the committee said.
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