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Benghazi Talking Points Underwent 12 Revisions, Scrubbed of Terror Reference

Photo Credit: GettyBy Jonathan Karl. When it became clear last fall that the CIA’s now discredited Benghazi talking points were flawed, the White House said repeatedly the documents were put together almost entirely by the intelligence community, but White House documents reviewed by Congress suggest a different story.

ABC News has obtained 12 different versions of the talking points that show they were extensively edited as they evolved from the drafts first written entirely by the CIA to the final version distributed to Congress and to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice before she appeared on five talk shows the Sunday after that attack.

White House emails reviewed by ABC News suggest the edits were made with extensive input from the State Department. The edits included requests from the State Department that references to the Al Qaeda-affiliated group Ansar al-Sharia be deleted as well references to CIA warnings about terrorist threats in Benghazi in the months preceding the attack.

That would appear to directly contradict what White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said about the talking points in November.

“Those talking points originated from the intelligence community. They reflect the IC’s best assessments of what they thought had happened,” Carney told reporters at the White House press briefing on November 28, 2012. “The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two institutions were changing the word ‘consulate’ to ‘diplomatic facility’ because ‘consulate’ was inaccurate.” Read more from this story HERE.

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Benghazi e-mails show clash between State Department, CIA

By Scott Wilson and Karen DeYoung. New details from administration e-mails about last year’s attacks on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, demonstrate that an intense bureaucratic clash took place between the State Department and the CIA over which agency would get to tell the story of how the tragedy unfolded.

That clash played out in the development of administration talking points that have been at the center of the controversy over the handling of the incident, according to the e-mails that came to light Friday.

Over the five days between the attacks and the now-infamous Sunday show appearance by U.N. Ambassador Susan E. Rice, senior officials from the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department argued over how much information to disclose about the assault in which four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, were killed.

That internal debate and the changes it produced in the Obama administration’s immediate account of the attack have revived Benghazi as a political issue in Washington six months after the presidential election in which it played a prominent role. Friday’s revelations — ABC News published 12 versions of the talking points — produced the latest round of Benghazi post-mortems in the eight months since the attacks. Senior administration officials said in a briefing for reporters that none of Obama’s political advisers were involved in discussions around the original talking points, only national security staff officials.

According to various drafts of the talking points, shaped before the final editing by the White House and other agencies, State Department officials raised concerns that the CIA-drafted version could be used by members of Congress to criticize diplomatic security preparedness in Benghazi. Read more from this story HERE.

Whistle-Blower Attorney: I Have More Benghazi Witnesses Who Want to Testify

Photo Credit: APThe attorney for one of the Benghazi whistleblowers told TheBlaze Radio that he has more people who want to come forward to testify.

Joseph diGenova, attorney for acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Counterterrorism Mark Thompson, did not specify how many new witnesses there were, but said they had been “on the ground” and “in the fight” during the September assault that left four Americans dead. Thompson was one of three whistleblowers who went before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday.

“We’ve been contacted by some people on the ground who were there, who were in the fight, who want to come forward but who fear if they do they will never get contract work with the agency again,” diGenova told TheBlaze Radio host Jay Severin on Thursday. “We are going to test the director of central intelligence’s word [that those who testify will not be penalized]. If these people decide they want to come forward, the first thing we’re going to do is go to the director’s office and say here they are, how are you going to protect them?”

Read more from this story HERE.

The Benghazi Lie

Photo Credit: National Review Shortly before last November’s election I took part in a Fox News documentary on Benghazi, whose other participants included the former governor of New Hampshire John Sununu. Making chit-chat while the camera crew were setting up, Governor Sununu said to me that in his view Benghazi mattered because it was “a question of character.” That’s correct. On a question of foreign policy or counterterrorism strategy, men of good faith can make the wrong decisions. But a failure of character corrodes the integrity of the state.

That’s why career diplomat Gregory Hicks’s testimony was so damning — not so much for the new facts as for what those facts revealed about the leaders of this republic. In this space in January, I noted that Hillary Clinton had denied ever seeing Ambassador Stevens’s warnings about deteriorating security in Libya on the grounds that “1.43 million cables come to my office” — and she can’t be expected to see all of them, or any. Once Ambassador Stevens was in his flag-draped coffin listening to her eulogy for him at Andrews Air Force Base, he was her bestest friend in the world — it was all “Chris this” and “Chris that,” as if they’d known each other since third grade. But up till that point he was just one of 1.43 million close personal friends of Hillary trying in vain to get her ear.

Now we know that at 8 p.m. Eastern time on the last night of Stevens’s life, his deputy in Libya spoke to Secretary Clinton and informed her of the attack in Benghazi and the fact that the ambassador was now missing. An hour later, Gregory Hicks received a call from the then–Libyan prime minister, Abdurrahim el-Keib, informing him that Stevens was dead. Hicks immediately called Washington. It was 9 p.m. Eastern time, or 3 a.m. in Libya. Remember the Clinton presidential team’s most famous campaign ad? About how Hillary would be ready to take that 3 a.m. call? Four years later, the phone rings, and Secretary Clinton’s not there. She doesn’t call Hicks back that evening. Or the following day.

Read more from this story HERE.

Rush Limbaugh Says Obama Has Gotten Away With Benghazi (+video)

On Rush Limbaugh’s program Thursday, he shocked listeners with his take on Benghazi:

“Those of you who listen to this program know exactly what happened in Benghazi, and you know exactly why the White House didn’t want anyone to know about it,” Limbaugh said. “There’s just one remaining question that I have been asking for weeks; no, I’ve been asking this question for months. Where was Obama during all of it? That’s the one thing that nobody knows. Where was Obama when four Americans were under assault and ultimately being killed? And there doesn’t seem to be any curiosity inside official Washington.”

He also said that the media has already dismissed the news as nothing more than a “political effort,” despite widespread coverage in the top newspapers.

“The media is treating it today as a non-event or as a Republican political effort to embarrass our delightful president and our future president, Hillary Clinton,” he said.

Perhaps one of the more surprising elements of Limbaugh’s analysis was his suggestion that the Obama administration has gotten away with a cover-up.

After watching this Steven Crowder video, featuring Andrew Klavan, you might end up agreeing with Rush:

Did Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lie to Congress?

Photo Credit: APSen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., issued a sharp and unusual challenge to the truthfulness of the nation’s top uniformed military commander on Thursday, demanding that U.S. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, return to Capitol Hill to provide fresh testimony on the Benghazi attacks.

The point of contention involved whether any military officers issued an order to U.S. armed forces personnel on the night of Sept. 11, when the U.S. consulate and a nearby annex came under terrorist attack, to “stand down” from providing assistance.

“I asked [Gen. Dempsey] directly,” Graham said in an exclusive interview with Fox News. “Were there any military assets in motion, to help folks in Benghazi, [that were] told to stand down? And what did [State Department whistleblower] Greg Hicks say? That Lt. Col. [Steve] Gibson — a DOD employee, a member of the Army — was in Tripoli, ready and willing to go to Benghazi, preparing to go to Benghazi, and was told to stand down.”

“Clearly,” Graham added, “our chairman of the Joint Chiefs’ rendition that no one was told to stand down is now in question.”

What’s more, Graham lumped the chairman into a group of prominent Democrats whom the Senate Republican said he would like to see summoned, or recalled, to the witness chair to testify on Benghazi. These included former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s former chief of staff.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Admin. Denies Retaliating Against Benghazi Whistle-Blower

Photo Credit: Andrew GeraciThe State Department on Thursday dismissed accusations that it retaliated against one of the key witnesses at this week’s Benghazi hearings by demoting him after he questioned the Obama administration’s account of the terrorist attack.

Foreign Service officer Gregory N. Hicks, who was the No. 2 U.S. diplomat in Libya during the Benghazi terrorist attacks last September, told lawmakers at an explosive House hearing on Wednesday that he was chastised and “effectively demoted” after he questioned the decision to blame the military-style assault on a spontaneous demonstration against an anti-Islam video.

The State Department “has not and will not retaliate against Mr. Hicks,” spokesman Patrick H. Ventrell said.

“As Mr. Hicks testified yesterday … he has followed ‘standard’ employment processes,” Mr. Ventrell added, quoting Mr. Hicks‘ testimony Wednesday.

During that testimony, Mr. Hicks said that his jaw “hit the floor” when, five days after the deadly assault, he heard U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan E. Rice directly contradict the president of Libya by saying the attack appeared to have grown out of a demonstration against the video and that there was no evidence it might have been preplanned.

Read more from this story HERE.

Powerful Testimony from Benghazi Hearing (+videos)

At today’s hearing, whistle-blower Eric Nordstrom choked up during his testimony:

Whistle-blower Gregory Hicks also described the “saddest phone call I’ve ever had in my life.” Later, he stated he was “stunned” and “embarrassed” by Ambassador Susan Rice’s ridiculous statements about the YouTube video being the cause of the Benghazi attacks:

Congressman Jim Jordan did a phenomenal job during his interview of the whistle-blowers, taking particular care to inquire with Mr. Hicks about the efforts made to shut him up:

In a radio interview, Congresswoman Ann Wagner, a former ambassador, also directly implicated Obama in the mess, stating that any stand down order had to have come directly from the President of the United States:

Finally, true to form, at least one liberal Democrat couldn’t help but reflect his utter disregard for human decency:

Explosive: Special Ops Team Ready to Go, Furious at Order to Stand Down

Photo Credit: APThe dramatic and personal stories of State Department staffers — one of whom was in Libya at the time of attacks on the U.S. Consulate — injected real emotion into a very political hearing on Benghazi on Wednesday.

In his first full public accounting, Gregory Hicks, a Foreign Service officer and ex-deputy chief of mission in Libya, recounted in vivid detail what happened the night of the attacks. Republicans insist that the Obama administration and the State Department didn’t do nearly enough to aid U.S. personnel under attack in September 2012.

Sure to be trumpeted by Republicans, Hicks’s most explosive revelation centered on an assertion that a four-man special operations team based in Tripoli was allegedly told not to make the flight to Benghazi on the night of the attacks.

State and Pentagon officials countered that the team wouldn’t have arrived in Benghazi in time and that it was instead needed in Tripoli.

“They were furious,” Hicks said when asked how the special forces troops responded to orders not to leave Tripoli.

See the videos of the testimony HERE.

Read more from this story HERE.

7 Things We Learned from the Benghazi Whistleblowers’ Hearing

Photo Credit: شبكة برق | B.R.QThe Republicans mishandled the Benghazi whistleblowers’ hearing. What should have been stretched across several days to give the nation time to digest it all, was instead packed into a single day filled with an overwhelming amount of information. The media’s attention span is not that long. The verdict in the Jodi Arias trial came along in the afternoon and blew Benghazi off the networks, most of which didn’t want to cover it at all. Even Fox joined the drive-by media, taking Benghazi off the air in favor of the irrelevant Arias trial. Following the announcement of the Arias verdict, charges were read in the Cleveland kidnapping case. Those were aired live as well, relegating Benghazi again.

Nevertheless, for those who slogged through the entire day of hearings and ignored local crime stories, new information was there to be learned.

1. There were multiple stand-down orders, not just one. Special operations forces were told, twice, by their chain of command not to board aircraft to Benghazi to rescue the Americans then under attack. The U.S. deputy diplomat, Greg Hicks, testified that the military commander, Lt. Col. Gibson, had his team ready to go twice. They were on the runway about to board a flight to Benghazi in the middle of the attack. They were ordered to stand down and remain in Tripoli to receive wounded who would be coming out of Benghazi. One of the orders came in the middle of the attack, the other came toward the end after Hicks’ team had traveled from Tripoli to Benghazi. The fact that Hicks’ team was able get to Benghazi before the end of the assault strongly suggests that the special operations team could have made a real difference.

At the same time, the State Department’s commander on the scene, Hicks, ordered his personnel into Benghazi and went there himself. Hicks testified that Gibson never told him who issued the stand-down orders. He commented that Gibson told him that the military stand-down was a shock: “This is the first time in my career that a diplomat has more balls than someone in the military.”

Hicks also testified that the U.S. government never even requested military overflight to support the Americans in Benghazi. The U.S. had an unarmed drone overhead and could have gotten permission to fly fighters over the scene, at least, but never asked.

Read more from this story HERE including discussion of these additional six points:

2. Ambassador SteveDemocrats were uninterested in getting at most of the facts, but were very interested in destroying Mark Thompsons’ reason for going to Benghazi has been cleared up.

3. Clinton was briefed at 2 am on the night of the attack, was never told that a movie had anything to do with the attack by those on the ground in Libya, yet blamed the movie anyway.

4. Whistleblowers were intimidated into silence.

5. “The YouTube movie was a non-event in Libya.”

6. Democrats were uninterested in getting at most of the facts, but were very interested in destroying Mark Thompson.

7. House hearings are a poor way to determine who did what and why during and after the attack.

Video Maker Blamed for Benghazi Remains Jailed

Photo Credit: abardwellSo what about that filmmaker, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula?

He’s been in jail since the controversy erupted, officially for reasons unrelated to his “offense” against Islam.

A lawyer for the filmmaker told WND his client was serving time for a probation violation and is scheduled to be released this fall from a prison in Latoona, Texas.

The issue was all over Twitter, where one person commented, “It’s crystal clear that the terrorists who killed four Americans in Benghazi weren’t spurred on by an anti-Islam video, despite what administration officials wanted the public to believe. But nearly eight months after the attacks, ‘Innocence of Muslims’ filmmaker Makoula Basseley Nakoula still languishes in prison.”

Read more from this story HERE.