Sources: James Clapper's Office Made The Controversial Edits To Susan Rice's Talking Points

We've suspected this for months. Now people are saying it was indeed Clapper. Actually they're saying it was his office -- the Director of National Intelligence -- and any of several people might have made the changes.

But I will stick with Clapper. He's proven himself to be a perfect Obama appointee, by which I mean incompetent and eminently malleable in his claims according to Obama's political needs. Furthermore, we are speaking here of the deaths of four Americans, including an ambassador. We are talking about talking points prepared by the CIA to be given to the US Ambassador for wide dissemination on television. And the US Ambassador was appearing on TV at the order of the White House (which I imagine means the President).

As very senior people are involved on all ends of this, I doubt very much the edit job was done by a convenient subordinate. I would imagine another principal-- Clapper himself -- made the edits. Either way, Clapper is confirmed to have reviewed the edits, at the very least.

As I've been saying, these talking points are negotiated. It is not the case that the CIA just hands out talking points and the Administration accepts them without challenge. Everything Bush wanted to say about Iraq or Al Qaeda was subject to a discussion between his people and the CIA about what the CIA would be willing to disclose and also what they would be willing to sign their names to, as the official intelligence finding of the United States.

The White House wanted the terrorism angle all but written out of the report, and Clapper was the man who did the editing, and then the CIA, to its great dishonor, signed off on this lie.

CBS News has learned that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) cut specific references to "al Qaeda" and "terrorism" from the unclassified talking points given to Ambassador Susan Rice on the Benghazi consulate attack - with the agreement of the CIA and FBI. The White House or State Department did not make those changes.

There has been considerable discussion about who made the changes to the talking points that Rice stuck to in her television appearances on Sept. 16 (video), five days after the attack that killed American Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, and three other U.S. nationals.

...

However, an intelligence source tells CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan the links to al Qaeda were deemed too "tenuous" to make public, because there was not strong confidence in the person providing the intelligence. CIA Director David Petraeus, however, told Congress he agreed to release the information -- the reference to al Qaeda -- in an early draft of the talking points, which were also distributed to select lawmakers.

...

An intelligence source says the talking points were passed from the CIA to the DNI, where the substantive edits were made, and then to FBI, which made more edits as part of "standard procedure."

The head of the DNI is James Clapper, an Obama appointee. He ultimately did review the points, before they were given to Ambassador Rice and members of the House intelligence committee on Sept. 14. They were compiled the day before.

Brennan says her source wouldn't confirm who in the agency suggested the final edits which were signed off on by all intelligence agencies.

If you can follow this: The DNI says it struck the references to Al Qaeda from the talking points because that connection was "too tenuous," but then stuffed it full of references to the YouTube video and a spontaneous protest, for which there was no evidence at all and in fact for which there was strongly debunking evidence. Such as the fact that no one at the consulate reported a protest all day long before the attack. What the reported was cops/security agents snapping pictures of the place, like they were casing it, and then a large coordinated attack, out of nowhere.

Sources: James Clapper's Office Made The Controversial Edits To Susan Rice's Talking Points&bodytext=We've suspected this for months. Now people are saying it was indeed Clapper. Actually they're saying it was his office -- the Director of National Intelligence -- and any of several people might have made the changes. But I will...&topic=world_news"> posted by Ace at 11:26 AM

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