BENGHAZI EXCLUSIVE: CIA’s Intelligence Pegged Al-Qaeda for Embassy Attack

State Department  Scrubbed Talking Points over Twelve Revisions; Removed CIA’s Facts

Washington, D.C.—Congressman Steve Stockman (R, TX) criticized the blatant political maneuvering of the Atete Department following the September 11, 2011, attacks on the American Consulate in Benghazi. Newly uncovered emails sent from The Department of State detail explicit requests that the CIA remove warnings about terrorist threats in Benghazi in the months leading up to the attack.

ABC News reports this morning that the talking points Susan Rice took to the air on the Sunday morning talk show circuit did not originate with the CIA as the State Department claimed, but rather were edited over a series of 12 revisions intended to excise any CIA references to Al-Qaeda’s involvement in the attack or the threat posed to the Embassy by the terrorist group.

“The Department of State and the Obama administration are clearly engaged in a cover-up that may well reach to the highest levels of Washington, D.C.,” said Stockman. “President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Susan Rice blatantly lied to the American people repeatedly in order to protect the Democrat Party in the midst of campaign season. Those who lost their lives at Benghazi deserve far better than to have their story brushed under the rug of Presidential politics, and America deserves to know the truth about who knew what and when, and why more was not done to protect the lives of our civil servants in Libya.”

Ambassador Rice, senior United States representative to the United Nations, made the Sunday Talk show rounds during the week following the attack of the, claiming it was spontaneous, caused directly by the release of an obscure video on YouTube. It began as a protest reacting to events hours earlier in Cairo, she claimed, which was also a spontaneous reaction to the video.

“We do not have information at present that lead us to conclude the was premeditated or pre-planned,” Ambassador Rice told Bob Sheiffer on CBS’s Face the Nation on September 16th, 2011.

President Obama even parroted the same talking points as a guest on The Late Show with David Letterman on September 18th, 2011.

For months, the White House persisted in denying allegations it scrubbed any CIA mention of a terror threat in that agency’s account of the attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi.

During a White House press briefing in late November, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney insisted the talking points “originated from the intelligence community,” and that “they reflect the [intelligence community’s] best assessments of what they thought had happened,” reports Politico reporter Kevin Robillard.

Unfortunately for President Obama, the Department of State, and Ambassador Rice, ABC News obtained every version of the talking points disseminated by various administration mouthpieces in the weeks following the attack on the consulate.

Thanks to the reporting of Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard, on whose reporting Jonathan Karl’s exclusive is based, the Obama administrations lies are finally coming to light. The Congressional investigation into the administrations arrant lies is vital to ensuring our public officials are held to account.