One thing is certain after looking through 100 emails of the interagency process to come up with Benghazi talking points for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Susan Rice got screwed. Totally screwed. I think John Kerry was going to get nominated to State anyway, but Rice had her name dragged through the mud for absolutely no reason.
There was a process with the CIA, the White House, the State Department, the FBI and DOJ, the NIA, all trying to come to some agreement on what could be said publicly about the attacks. No one once questioned that there had been a demonstration inspired by the protests in Cairo. No one really knew for certain who was behind the attacks. The State Department was angry that the CIA was making it sound like they’d had a bunch of warning and they were concerned that the talking points were going beyond what they actually knew and could compromise the prosecution of the case. They worked to get the DOJ more in the loop. The White House barely had any edits at all.
They went around and around and around until they finally gave up and decided to resolve it the next morning at the Deputies meeting. And then someone on Susan Rice’s staff noticed that talking points were being prepared for the Hill and wanted a copy because Rice would be appearing on the Sunday morning shows. Coincidentally, this inquiry came right about same time that the talking points were being finalized. So, Ambassador Rice and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence probably got the talking points about the same time.
Anyone who reads these emails cannot honestly believe that everyone involved was part of a conspiracy to concoct a story about a demonstration. At worst, the State Department was doing a little ass-covering, but even that appears to have been at least partially justified.
The truth is that the people responsible for getting the talking points put together did not know what happened or have time to coordinate what information had been gathered into a formal theory of the case.
Ambassador Rice was using talking points developed originally for the co-chairmen of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD). And somehow she got smeared for lying.
What a disgrace.
