Rep. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.) said the Benghazi talking points were "watered down" for a number of motivations by the Obama administration Tuesday on "OutFront" but said most of the blame was on the intelligence agencies for initially calling the attack the result of a protest.
Schiff's portrayal of the edits as a watering-down seems generous given reports that the talking points were drastically edited to remove mentions of al-Qaeda, with one State Department official citing concerns that Congress would use the attack as fuel to attack the administration for not heeding warnings about embassy security.
ERIN BURNETT: How can you defend the administration for such substantial edits to those talking points?
SCHIFF: Well, the key thing on the talking points is the most fundamental error in them stayed in throughout the editing process, and that was the error saying this began as a protest. That error was solely an error of the intelligence agencies. They thought it began as a protest and they got that wrong. There's never been any indication that the State Department or White House was responsible for that error. There were other changes made basically that watered down the talking points. I think there were a number of motivations there, some to protect classified sources, others, you know, in an effort to fight over turf between State and CIA. But none of that indicates that there was some crime that's been covered up here. To compare it to Watergate, I think is just preposterous.
The Weekly Standard reported intelligence officials concluded even before the assaults had ended that al-Qaeda terrorists were involved, and senior administration officials tried to obscure the attack and downplay its significance during a "frantic" re-write that involved officials from the areas of the Obama administration Schiff insisted were never at any fault:
The frantic process that produced the changes to the talking points took place over a 24-hour period just one day before Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, made her now-famous appearances on the Sunday television talk shows. The discussions involved senior officials from the State Department, the National Security Council, the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the White House.
The exchange of emails is laid out in a 43-page report from the chairmen of five committees in the House of Representatives. Although the investigation was conducted by Republicans, leading some reporters and commentators to dismiss it, the report quotes directly from emails between top administration and intelligence officials, and it includes footnotes indicating the times the messages were sent. In some cases, the report did not provide the names of the senders, but The Weekly Standard has confirmed the identities of the authors of two critical emails—one indicating the main reason for the changes and the other announcing that the talking points would receive their final substantive rewrite at a meeting of top administration officials on Saturday, September 15.
The White House provided the emails to members of the House and Senate intelligence committees for a limited time and with the stipulation that the documents were available for review only and would not be turned over to the committees. The White House and committee leadership agreed to that arrangement as part of a deal that would keep Republican senators from blocking the confirmation of John Brennan, the president’s choice to run the CIA. If the House report provides an accurate and complete depiction of the emails, it is clear that senior administration officials engaged in a wholesale rewriting of intelligence assessments about Benghazi in order to mislead the public.