Correction on Benghazi: "Spontaneously Inspired" and Cairo "Demonstrations" Were Mentioned in First Drafts of Talking Points, Before Official/Acknowledged White House Input

This is from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. It's a Democratic-written document, but in terms of the actual emails, I assume it's reliable enough-- they can't fake emails.

Point is, I keep saying, incorrectly, that the White House and/or Ben Rhodes created the "spontaneously evolving protests" lie.

This idea -- for which I have never seen a single drop of evidence -- is alluded to, in a way, in these talking points, from the unnamed Director of the CIA Office of Terrorism.

Read carefully-- it doesn't say what you expect it to say, as you've been conditioned to expect the fiction that would be spontaneously inspired from this first attempt at a cover story.

1) Fri., Sept. 14th 2012,_11:15 a.m.-· ·written by Director, CIA Office of Terrorism Analysis

• We believe based on currently available information that the attacks in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the US Consulate and subsequently its annex.

See what they did there?

Note that this does not claim there were protests at Benghazi -- rather, this seems to be some kind of compromise language which drags this fiction of the protests into the matter, without saying there were actually protests at Benghazi.

Read it closely -- it claims the "attacks" in Benghazi were "spontaneously inspired" by protests not occurring in Benghazi, but rather in Cairo.

No actual claim of demonstrations in Benghazi -- rather that the "attacks" were "spontaneously inspired by" (and what the f*** does that mean) demonstrations in Cairo.

While all the elements for the ultimate fiction are present -- "spontaneously" evolving and "demonstrations" -- the Talking Points do not yet claim that demonstrations in Benghazi got out of hand and spontaneously evolved into a highly coordinated pre-planned attack.

They will, oh they will. But it will take some further edits.

This reads to me like someone was trying to get the idea of "protests spontaneously evolving into attacks" into the talking points early, and the writer was agreeing to meet that individual half-way, without fully blessing this fictitious claim.

Only after a series of edits -- with various State, White House, and CIA officials massaging the talking points -- do the talking points themselves "spontaneously evolve" to include a direct claim that there were demonstrations in Benghazi:

9) Saturdav, Sept. 15th 9:45 a.m.-edits made by CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell

• The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the US Consulate and subsequently its annex

The Talking Points began by speaking of "attacks" with no prior "demonstrations" occurring in Benghazi, to ultimately claiming there were in fact "demonstrations."

While that the earlier draft said the "attacks" had been "spontaneous inspired" by demonstrations occurring elsewhere, this new edit -- even as more information comes in, further disproving the idea of "protests" in Benghazi -- the talking points actually move towards the fictitious notion of protests evolving into an attack.

As the evidence moves away from the "demonstrations" story, the talking points actually move closer to that story.

Later, the Senate report, in reviewing the record, claims:

We now know that the CIA's September 15, 2012, talking points were inaccurate in that they wrongly attributed the genesis of the Benghazi attacks to protests that became violent. However, as stated in the report, this characterization reflected the assessment by the IC of the information available at that time, which lacked sufficient intelligence and eyewitness statements to conclude that there were no protests.

Note that it was Mike Morrel who rejected efforts to get this "spontaneous protest" fiction out of the talking points, claiming there was insufficient evidence to disprove it.

This whole episode has an Alice in Wonderland quality.

I have never seen Tweets from jihadis about a protest in Benghazi.

I have never seen pictures of a protest in Benghazi.

I have never heard eyewitness accounts of a protest in Benghazi.

In fact I've heard the opposite. For example, one of the men killed that day reported that the annex was being cased by men who looked like they were plotting an attack.

He did not report a "protest." He reported men alone or in pairs looking the place over.

Eyewitnesses present at Benghazi, and military leaders getting information in real time, fail to report any "protests" going on.

In fact, they report the attack came out of the blue, rather than "evolving." Like a planned, coordinated attack.

I have never seen a single bit of evidence suggesting there was even a single protester near the Annex on September 11, 2012, and yet this "factoid" was inserted into the talking points and resisted all efforts at dislodgement.

Furthermore, when military and intelligence analysts as well as on-site, first-hand witnesses attempted to get this fiction removed from the talking points, it was claimed that there was not enough evidence to disprove the "protests" took place.

Not enough evidence to disprove they took place?

What evidence ever existed in favor of their existence? The convenient factoid just shows up in the talking points, without any evidence for it having ever been presented by anyone at any time, and all challenges to this utterly-lacking-in-evidence factoid are rejected on the grounds that first-hand accounts of no protest occurring in Benghazi are not enough to disprove the "protests" which the talking points, and no one else on earth, claim to have "spontaneously evolved" into an attack.

The White House, and State, and the CIA are all fond of saying that the "currently available intelligence" they had at that time suggested there was a "protest."

They admit this was wrong, now, but they claim, at the time, that was their best "currently available intelligence."

Has anyone ever seen any intelligence from that time showing evidence of a protest?

If so, let me know.

Serendipity: On FoxNews, Bret Baier interviewed Tommy Vietor (a White House flack who was involved in the editing of the talking points).

He specifically asked him about the "attacks" to "demonstrations" edit.

I only discovered this change thirty minutes ago myself.

Here was Tommy Vietor's answer to whether he was responsible for the change in wording. He claimed he couldn't remember, shrugged, and then chided Baier:

"Dude, this was like two years ago."

Bret Baier exploded at him, "Dude, it's what everyone's talking about today."

More: From that interview, which I missed:

Jim Hoft ‏@gatewaypundit 2m HUGE!!! Tommy Vietor – Former NSA Spox – Admits Obama Never Made it to Situation Room During Benghazi Attack! (Video) http://shar.es/SgwvS

Tommy Vietor: I was in the Situation Room that night. Ok. And we didn’t know where the ambassador was. Definitively.

Bret Baier: Was the president in the Situation Room?

Vietor: No…

Baier: Where was the president.

Vietor: In the White House.

Baier: He wasn’t in the Situation Room.

Vietor: Uhh. At what point in the evening. He was constantly… It’s well known that when the attack was first briefed to him it was in the Oval Office. And he was updated constantly…

Baier: Sp then when Hillary Clinton talks to him by phone at 10 PM, he’s where?

Vietor: I don’t know. I don’t have a tracking device on him in the residence.

Baier: But you were in the Situation Room and he wasn’t there.

Vietor: Yes.

Thanks to Costanza Defense.

Video: "Attacks" evolve into "demonstrations" in the Talking Points, and hence "demonstrations" evolve into "attacks" in the historical record.

"That's what bureaucrats do all day long," Vietor reassures us.

He says that Michael Morell testified that Morell made that change -- which is in fact the information we had.

But did Morell make this change on his own initiative?

Or was someone else really pushing this idea of "demonstrations becoming attacks"?

Full Interview: At JWF.

posted by Ace at 06:30 PM

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