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Jay Carney denies that White House pressured CIA to revise its account of Benghazi attack and accuses GOP of leaking emails
The White House was attempting to contain a renewed outbreak of criticism on Friday over the 2011 attack on the US diplomatic mission in Benghazi after leaked emails revealed that state department officials had edited out references to prior terrorism threats from official statements made in the immediate aftermath of the incident.
Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, came under heavy questioning from reporters in a briefing following the leaks on Friday. He denied there had been any attempt by the administration to cajole the CIA into revising its account to remove reference to specific terrorist groups responsible for the Benghazi attack, and countered that the Republicans were attempting to "politicize" the tragic death of four Americans.
He accused the Republican party of leaking the emails that had been openly shared with congressional committees and the Republican leadership by the White House. "The Republicans have chosen to politicize this, to leak this information to reporters – information we provided months ago." But he added: "The whole effort here by Republicans to find some hidden mystery comes to nothing."
Despite Carney's protestations, the publication of extracts of the White House emails by the Weekly Standard and ABC News has rekindled the fire of controversy surrounding Benghazi. The US ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans, died in the 11 September 2012 attack.
According to ABC News, 12 different versions of the talking points were produced. The first was an initial draft drawn up exclusively by the CIA, which then went through 11 further iterations before a final version was produced that was used by the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, to inform her comments made during a round of TV political shows on the Sunday after the attack.
The emails reveal that the State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland objected to a paragraph in the original CIA draft that referred to their having been "at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi" in the five months before the deadly assault on the diplomatic mission. Nuland commented: "Could be abused by members [of Congress] to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so why would we want to feed that either? Concerned …"
The paragraph was removed from the final talking points. Nuland also objected to the CIA draft mentioning a specific al-Qaida affiliate, Ansar al-Sharia, by name. "We don't want to prejudice the investigation," she wrote. Though the group was removed from later drafts, Nuland came back again with the comment: "These changes don't resolve all of my issues or those of my building's leadership."
A meeting of senior officials was convened on the Saturday morning after the attack, to work on the talking points. The meeting included officials from the White House, State Department and CIA.
Carney on Friday attempted to push back on the billowing controversy by calling the sudden surge of media interest in the story "a distraction". He said the talking points were put together through a standard inter-agency process and were designed to provide guidance to administration officials about what was known at the time amid a very fluid situation.
The administration's interventions on the talking points, he said, were limited in scope and designed to prevent officials going beyond what was known into the realms of speculation. "What could not be known at that time was the relevance of warnings," he said, insisting that senior administration figures had made clear that extremist elements were involved in the attacks.
"Susan Rice, using the very talking points we are discussing, talked about the possibility that al-Qaida might be involved or Libyan extremists. That was not an attempt to play this down."
The media swirl around the talking point emails puts Carney himself into a tight spot. In a press briefing last November, he told reporters that the extent of White House and State Department involvement in editing the talking points was a "single adjustment" to change the word "consulate" to "diplomatic facility" as the building in Benghazi that came under attack was not a US consulate.
Asked by reporters on Friday to explain his earlier position, Carney said he stood by his earlier account. "The involvement of the White House was very limited and non-substantive."