This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/16/us/politics/e-mails-show-jostling-over-benghazi-talking-points.html

The article has changed 7 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 2 Version 3
Release of E-Mails Shows Jostling on Libya Talking Points Release of E-Mails Shows Jostling on Libya Talking Points
(about 2 hours later)
WASHINGTON — One hundred pages of e-mails released by the White House on Wednesday reveal intensive jostling among top intelligence and diplomatic officials over the government’s “talking points” in the aftermath of last September’s attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans. WASHINGTON — E-mails released by the White House on Wednesday revealed a fierce internal jostling over the government’s official talking points in the aftermath of last September’s attacks in Benghazi, Libya, not only between the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency, but at the highest levels of the C.I.A.
The documents suggest that the top two officials at the C.I.A. disagreed about how many details the administration should disclose about the agency’s view of who carried out the attacks and its earlier warnings about terrorist threats in the region.  The 100 pages of e-mails showed a disagreement between David H. Petraeus, then the director of the C.I.A., and his deputy, Michael J. Morrell, over how much to disclose in the talking points, which were used by Susan E. Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, in television appearances days after the attacks.
In a copy of a draft memo released by the White House, Michael J. Morrell, the agency’s deputy director, crossed out five sentences from the talking points that described the agency’s warnings about threats from Islamic extremists. State Department officials also strongly urged that the warnings be left out, according to the e-mails. Mr. Morrell, administration officials said, deleted a reference in the draft version of the talking points to C.I.A. warnings of extremist threats in Libya, which State Department officials objected to because they feared it would reflect badly on them.
The C.I.A. director at the time, David H. Petraeus, evidently disagreed with his deputy and believed that the warnings should be made public. “Frankly, I’d just as soon not use this, then …” Mr. Petraeus wrote in an e-mail to colleagues, referring to a version of the talking points that excluded the warnings. Mr. Morrell, officials said, acted on his own and not in response to pressure from the State Department. But when the final draft of the talking points was sent to Mr. Petraeus, he dismissed them, saying “Frankly, I’d just as soon not use this,” adding that the heavily scrubbed account would not satisfy the House Democrat who had requested it.
The version the administration used in the days after the attacks, primarily by Susan E. Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, did not include suspicions about the involvement of a Libyan militant group with ties to Al Qaeda. State Department officials objected to the inclusion of that information. “This is certainly not what Vice Chairman Ruppersberger was hoping to get,” Mr. Petraeus wrote, referring to Representative C. A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, which had asked Mr. Petraeus for talking points to use with reporters in discussing the attack on Benghazi.
The administration has since acknowledged the involvement of Ansar al-Shariah, an extremist group with Qaeda ties. The White House released the e-mails to reporters after Republicans seized on snippets of the correspondence that became public last Friday to suggest that President Obama’s White House staff had taken an active role in altering the talking points. The White House released the e-mails to reporters after Republicans seized on snippets of the correspondence that became public on Friday to suggest that President Obama’s national security staff had been complicit in trying to alter the talking points for political reasons.
In releasing them, White House officials were hoping to show that intelligence officials, not political advisers, drove the debate over the talking points.  While the e-mails portrayed White House officials as being sensitive to the concerns of the State Department, they suggest Mr. Obama’s aides mostly mediated a bureaucratic tug-of-war between the State Department and the C.I.A. over how much to disclose — all under heavy time constraints because of the demands from Capitol Hill. The e-mails revealed no new details about the administration’s evolving account of the Sept. 11 attack, which killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
It remained unclear why Mr. Morrell objected to the inclusion of the warnings and whether his objections or the State Department’s played the dominant role in having them removed. “In recent days, these e-mails have been selectively and inaccurately read out to the media,” said a White House spokesman, Eric Schultz. By releasing them, he said, the White House had shown that the drafting process was “focused on providing the facts as we knew them, based on the best information available at the time and protecting an ongoing investigation.”
After the release, Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Speaker John A. Boehner, criticized what he called the “political nature” of the State Department’s requested changes. Still, the final version of the talking points is stripped of material — including a reference to Libya being awash with weapons and fighters that made it a dangerous environment — which critics say would have raised questions about the State Department’s security posture.
“This release is long overdue, and there are relevant documents the administration has still refused to produce,” Mr. Buck said. “We hope, however, that this limited release of documents is a sign of more cooperation to come.” Republicans welcomed the release of the e-mails, saying they confirmed that the administration had airbrushed its account of the attack during an election campaign. They also said the e-mails belied the White House’s insistence that it had only changed one word in the talking points.
Democrats — including some of Mr. Obama’s former top aides — said Wednesday morning that the administration would have to release all of the e-mails in an effort to prove that the president had nothing to hide. “The seemingly political nature of the State Department’s concerns raises questions about the motivations behind these changes and who at the State Department was seeking them,” said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Speaker John A. Boehner.
“I think they would benefit from getting all these e-mails out in public,” David Axelrod, a former senior adviser, said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program. In releasing the e-mails, the White House was hoping to show that intelligence officials, not political advisers, drove the debate over the talking points. It drew attention to a draft of the talking points — the only document provided by the White House that was not part of an e-mail chain — in which Mr. Morrell, in his own writing, crosses out five lines that refer to C.I.A. warnings about the threat of attacks by Al Qaeda-linked extremists in Benghazi and eastern Libya.
During a brief news conference on Monday, Mr. Obama dismissed the Republican inquiry into the Benghazi aftermath as a “sideshow” and said there was nothing to the accusations of a cover-up. But there is no other evidence in the e-mails that Mr. Morrell himself objected to the inclusion of this material. In an e-mail to Mr. Petraeus accompanying the final version of the talking points, Mr. Morrell refers to the State Department’s deep concerns about the references.
“Suddenly, three days ago,” the president told reporters, “this gets spun up as if there’s something new to the story. There’s no ‘there’ there.” The release of the e-mails offers a rare glimpse inside the White House five days after the attacks as it struggled to piece together intelligence to formulate a public account of what happened.
The process began in earnest at 4:20 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 14, when Stephen W. Preston, the C.I.A. general counsel, sent an e-mail to other agency officials warning them not to disclose information that might interfere with the F.B.I.’s investigation.
At 6:20 p.m., the spokesman for the National Security Council at the time, Tommy Vietor, e-mailed to remind officials that Denis McDonough, then the deputy national security adviser and now the White House chief of staff, wanted to insure that the edits were coordinated with the State Department.
At 6:41 p.m., Shawn Turner, the spokesman for the director of national intelligence, suggested saying that on Sept. 10, the C.I.A. had “notified” the American embassy in Cairo, not “warned” it, about social media reports calling for a demonstration and encouraging jihadists to break into the embassy.   Mr. Morrell later removed the entire reference.
At 7:16 p.m., Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokeswoman, weighed in with her initial concerns about insuring that the talking points provided to lawmakers did not go further than what the administration was telling reporters.
Twenty-three minutes later, Ms. Nuland sent White House and intelligence officials an even more pointed e-mail, objecting that the talking points could be “abused” by lawmakers “to beat the State Department for not paying attention to agency warnings so why do we want to feed that either? Concerned ... ”
At 7:51 p.m., the F.B.I. offered only minor changes to the draft, the bureau’s only suggestions during the contentious process.
At 9:24 p.m., Ms. Nuland, reading the latest draft, complained in an e-mail, “These don’t resolve all my issues or those of my building leadership.”  Ten minutes later, Benjamin J. Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser, offered his first comments, saying, “We need to resolve this in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, especially the investigation.”
In a report that set off the latest tempest over the talking points, ABC News reported incorrectly that Mr. Rhodes had emphasized the need to protect the State Department’s interests.
At 9:52 p.m., a C.I.A. spokesman e-mailed to other agency staffers a draft note intended for Mr. Petraeus, warning him that while the White House had quickly cleared the proposed talking points, the State Department had “major concerns.” 
Mr. Obama’s national security deputies reviewed the talking points at a meeting the next day, Sept. 15, Mr. Rhodes said.
At 11:25 a.m., Mr. Rhodes changed a reference to the United States “consulate” in Benghazi to “diplomatic post.” 
Over the next couple of hours, aides made small final changes and e-mailed a final version to lawmakers shortly after 3 p.m.
With time short before Ms. Rice began taping her Sunday morning news shows, the White House also supplied her aides with the final talking points.
Asked by one of Ms. Rice’s aides, “Is this the final language you want to use on Benghazi,” Mr. Rhodes replied with a single word: “Yup.”