WASHINGTON DC – The State Department contributed to heavily editing talking points surrounding the attacks that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Libya, leading to the removal of references to terror groups and CIA warnings about threats in the region, according to emails and documents obtained by ABC News.
The ABC News report says that the White House and State Department were informed by intelligence officials that the CIA was aware of potential threats to the Libyan consulate from terror groups before the attacks. But the report said references to those threats were removed from the final version of the talking points used by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice because of pressure from the State Department.
According to the network, “12 different versions of the talking points” indicate extensive editing was done after they were first drafted by the CIA.
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Rice appeared on Sunday news shows following the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks and argued they were a spontaneous reaction to a video deemed offensive to Islam. The administration later admitted Rice’s claim was made with insufficient intelligence, and labeled the event an act of terror.
One of the emails obtained by ABC shows State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland objecting to a paragraph in the talking points that referenced specific terrorist threats in the region because it “could be abused by members [of Congress] to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings.”
The CIA had written that “(t)he Agency has produced numerous pieces on the threat of extremists linked to al-Qa’ida in Benghazi and eastern Libya.”
“These noted that, since April, there have been at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi by unidentified assailants, including the June attack against the British Ambassador’s convoy. We cannot rule out the individuals has previously surveilled the U.S. facilities, also contributing to the efficacy of the attacks.”
According to the ABC News report, that paragraph was deleted entirely after Nuland’s email. (read more)
Yet on Monday Sept. 17th this is how Nuland represented the State Dept:
QUESTION: Victoria, in Friday’s briefing, Friday evening, you essentially stated that all questions concerning any aspect of the Benghazi attack – the circumstances surrounding it, the outcome of it, et cetera – would henceforth be directed by you to the FBI since it’s their investigation.
And yet, on five Sunday shows yesterday, Ambassador Rice, who works for the same agency as you, was giving the latest U.S. assessment of how this event unfolded, specifically by saying we don’t believe it was premeditated or preplanned, and by saying that those with heavy arms and so forth showed up, in essence, as she put it, to hijack an ongoing demonstration.
So my first question for you is: Given that Ambassador Rice is out there talking publicly about it and not referring Bob Schieffer and Chris Wallace and the rest to the FBI, may we consider that we can again begin asking you questions at this podium about the circumstances of the attack? If it’s fair for the Ambassador to discuss it, it should be fair in this room, correct?
MS. NULAND: Well, let me start by reminding you that Ambassador Rice outranks me, as does my own boss, so she is often at liberty to say more than I am. And I guess that’s going to continue to be the case. What I will say, though, is that Ambassador Rice, in her comments on every network over the weekend, was very clear, very precise, about what our initial assessment of what happened is. And this was not just her assessment. It was also an assessment that you’ve heard in comments coming from the intelligence community, in comments coming from the White House. I don’t have anything to give you beyond that.
She also made clear, as I had on Friday, that there is an ongoing FBI investigation. So frankly, I’m not sure that it’s useful to go beyond that. I’m not capable of going beyond that, and we’ll have to just see what the FBI investigation brings us.
QUESTION: You would acknowledge, however, that the account of the events, the preliminary account of the events that Ambassador Rice offered, diverges starkly from the account offered by the Libyan President, correct?
MS. NULAND: Well, we’ve heard a number of different things from Libya. I would simply say that what – the comments that Ambassador Rice made accurately reflect our government’s initial assessment.