Dianne Feinstein Fingers
DNI Clapper For False Talking Points; Concedes It Was "Possibly" A Mistake to Claim A YouTube Video Caused a Spontaneous Attack

Possibly?

Possibly?

Possibly, she says.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on Wednesday told the local CBS station in San Francisco that Obama initially called the attack that killed the U.S. ambassador and three Americans an “act of terror” in the days after the Sept. 11 assault on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. She suggested the administration initially linked the attack to an anti-Islam video based on the assessment of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

Clapper — a “very good individual” according to Feinstein — “put out some speaking points on the initial intelligence assessment,” she said. “I think that was possibly a mistake.”

Megyn Kelly was all over this an hour ago.

I think someone needs to report on precisely how such Talking Points get crafted. It is my strong impression that they are negotiated with the President, or the President's top aides.

I believe that because Bush used to have to fight to get things he wanted to say approved by the CIA. All of his speeches were vetted by the CIA, and there were arguments about what he could and could not say.

If a President says something the CIA doesn't approve of, the threat is always that they will leak against the President. Same sort of tactic they use against foreign governments.

And ultimately, when the CIA showed its liberal stripes, they claimed, notoriously, in the 2007 NIE that Iran was not pursuing an atomic bomb, an assessment even Mohammad El-Baradei disagreed with.

They did this because they wanted to check Bush from any strike on Iran. With the CIA dishonestly claiming Iran had no nuke problem, they blocked him from even discussing the matter.

These points get negotiated, and the negotiations involve politics and political favors.

Clapper has already exposed himself as a malleable hack willing to say absurd things Obama wishes him to say.

I want to know precisely on what grounds he approved the claim -- almost certainly pushed by Obama's close aides in the negotiations -- that there had been a riot and a spontaneous protest and that it seemed likely it was linked to the YouTube video.

There was no intelligence supporting this -- yet Clapper gave the go-ahead anyway.

Why?

I think I know the reason -- as a political favor to a flailingly desperate Obama -- but that's just a belief. Let's have some sharp questions, let's have some reportage.

There's an idea.

posted by Ace at 02:45 PM

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