Republican Benghazi Report Alleges State Department Coverup

[DonViejo]

Source: The Daily Beast

Apr 23, 2013 7:09 PM EDT

A new report keys in on the space between what the White House knew, and what it chose to publicly say. Eli Lake reports.

Internal emails in the week following the 9-11 anniversary assault on the U.S. facility in Benghazi show the White House and State Department removed references to al Qaeda and the mention of other recent attacks in Benghazi from widely distributed talking points used to explain the incident to the public, according to a new report from five House Republican committee chairmen released Tuesday afternoon.

Citing administration emails provided to the House committees, the 46-page report claims that “to protect the State Department, the Administration deliberately removed references to al-Qaeda-linked groups and previous attacks in Benghazi in the talking points used by Ambassador Rice.”

While the report does not disclose in full the still-classified emails or the officials who wrote them, it does give the clearest account to date of how the official public statements in the days after September 11, 2012 from the Obama administration departed from the classified assessments of the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

The story begins on Friday, September 14, when then-CIA director David Petraeus briefed the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence about the Benghazi attack three days earlier. The CIA’s notes for that briefing included information about five previous attacks on foreign interests in Benghazi since April 2012; potential links to the al Qaeda connected Libyan militia, Ansar al-Sharia; previous CIA assessments of groups linked to al Qaeda in eastern Libya; and information suggesting Islamic extremists participated in the attack, according to the report.



Read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/23/republican-benghazi-report-alleges-state-department-coverup.html

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[SleeplessinSoCal]

1. They just can't get enough war over there in the GOP. And care nothing about natl security.

[sakabatou]

2. *facepalm*

[DURHAM D]

3. Just more Chicken Little nonsense.

The five ranking Democratic members of the committees who drafted the report sent a letter Tuesday to House Speaker John Boehner urging him to withdraw what they called a “partisan report.”

[Iliyah]

4. I want ot know about 911

pronto!

[LonePirate]

5. The Repubs will use this report as a stepping stone to impeach Obama

They will stop at nothing to delegitimize or scar his presidency.

[Beacool]

6. It's a twofer for the Republicans.

They want to discredit Obama and damage Hillary I case she runs in 2016.

[The Wizard]

7. No one cares what Republicans have to say

unless it's under oath, and even then, no one believes them.

[marshall]

8. How do they know why the emails were altered?

It's pretty simple to show that the emails were changed, information redacted, and the focus shifted to a now forgotten YouTube video. But how on earth can they guess why? It could be to cover asses at the State Department, but it could also have been for myriad other reasons.

[JDPriestly]

9. This suggests rivalry between the CIA and the State Department.

Was Petraeus fully informing the State Department about what was going on in Libya?

It seemed very odd to me that our ambassador was meeting with the Turkish ambassador in the American consulate in Benghazi when both Turkey and the U.S. most likely have embassies in Tripoli.

I think that the Republicans are missing something, but I don't know what it is.

What Susan Rice was instructed to say is simply unimportant. Why should she tell the truth on TV when the situation in Benghazi had not yet been resolved. Why should she tip off Al Qaeda about the information that the CIA had on them. Republicans are foolish if they think this report is going to embarrass the State Department or the Obama administration.

[Comrade Grumpy]

11. The CIA had a big presence in Benghazi. What were they up to?

This partisan hatchet job of a report doesnt get into that.

Although the administration did kind of fuck things up, both by ignoring security requests before the fact and then having Susan Rice make those stupid statements after the fact. I remember watching her that Sunday and thinking, "What the fuck?" But that stuff is just institutional ineptitude, not the great scandal the Republicans are slavering for.

[Hekate]

10. Are they gunning to hire Ken Starr again?

The GOP just can't let go of those heady days when they were hounding the Big Dog... I guess they just have nothing better to do with their time than smear and lie.

[sofa king]

12. Let's just put that at the bottom of the stack...

... Behind the Florida coverup, the 9/11 coverup, the anthrax coverup, the DeLay coverup, the Plame coverup, the WMDs coverup, the Edmonds coverup, the Blackwater coverup, the torture coverup, the Ohio coverup, the Connell coverup, and the housing bubble coverup. Among many others.

Call me when you get to the bottom of those first, Republicans.

[marshall]

13. Don't forget the Boston bombing

There's fodder for new cover ups everyday.

[kelliekat44]

14. They are really after Hillary in this. Notice how the MSM reports on this glossing over fact this

is a GOP report.

[sinkingfeeling]

15. There's probably more reports and paper for this than for 9/11.

[liberal N proud]

16. They have to have something to hang around Hillary's neck when she runs in 2016.

And truth is not important in these matters.

[brett_jv]

17. "We did not disclose everything we knew publicly at the time ...

Because it was an ongoing investigation, and we decided it could endanger both the investigation AND national security to do so. It was in NO way a cover-up to protect anyone's reputation or anything of that nature, and to suggest otherwise is tantamount to giving aid and comfort to our enemies"

~ President Obama

Get out in front of this Mr. President. Play your pimp-hand strong. Put the GOPigs on the defensive. That's EXACTLY what a Rethug would do.

[underpants]

18. Because the CIA requested it...oh the report says the White House requested the CIA do that

It all goes back to Obama. He is all powerful and yet completely the product of the teleprompter in their sad demented eyes.