Carney: 'We Did Not Hide' Role of Terrorism in Benghazi Talking Points
Posted on 05/10/2013 2:43:42 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The White House says it made only minimal changes to the now-discredited talking points used to discuss the deadly attack last year on a U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya.
The remarks, by White House press secretary Jay Carney, came in response to an ABC News exclusive on Friday that detailed changes to a memo used by U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to discuss the deadly Sept. 11, 2012, attack in the days after it happened.
Rice's remarks on several Sunday morning talk shows days after the attack, in which she wrongly characterized them as germinating from protests sparked by a YouTube video offensive to Muslims, have long been called out by Republicans and were fodder for the 2012 campaign.
On Friday, ABC reported that it had obtained 12 different versions of the talking points contained in a series of emails "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."
At a news conference on Friday, Carney disputed the assertion that the emails reveal substantive changes at the behest of the White House or State Department.
He said the only edit to the talking points made at the request of the administration was "a matter of nonsubstantive factual correction" that involved changing the word "consulate" in reference to the U.S. compound in Benghazi to "diplomatic post".
Carney also reiterated that President Obama, in his first public remarks on the attack, referred to it as an "act of terror."
However, the emails reportedly show excised references to al-Qaida and Ansar al-Sharia, the group ultimately blamed for the attack.
"The concern was the points not provide information that was speculative," Carney told reporters. He said that at the time, it was only speculation that Ansar al-Sharia was involved and that the administration did not know that "concretely."
The talking points were originally written for Congress. But before Congress got them, references were deleted to terrorism by the intelligence community, and to prior warnings of a possible attack.
ABC reports that an email from State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland shows that she was "concerned" that a section of the talking points saying the U.S. could not rule out that the attackers "previously surveilled U.S. facilities" would 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?"
Oh OK.....must be me : )
Well, that settles that issue. Let's move on. Old news.
RE: Old news.
That’s what Jay Carney said. Did he use the words : “Ancient History” ?
So it was the same lies!
I watched most of that interview as it happened. I wonder what planet Carney is living on?
FWIW, it looked like a lot of the reporters were incredulous with his answers, but they couldn’t come to actually start asking him the kind of questions that would make him mad. I think they love their position so much that the soft pedal any hard questions so they can maintain that position.
I thought a couple of the reporters wanted just tell Carney that he was an idiot for thinking he could tell them “no substantive changes were made” to the talking points by the White House or State Dept.
“act of terror”
Of course, 0bama referred to it as a scary thing. He was terrified of it. Still is.
Deny...deny...deny. Its the Alinsky method.
I guess it all depends on what the meaning of the word substantive is....
Shouldn’t we start some kind of fr-office pool to when Carney steps down. More time with the family and all......
So.... Why do we have to pay for SO MANY people in SO MANY agencies making SO MANY changes to a document, if they’re not substantive changes?
Twitter has a new hash tag.....#JayCarneyExcuses
Pretty funny stuff.....LOL
Sydney Berger knows how to destroy the compromising drafts stored in the National Archives.
They hate us for our freedoms, in this case- You Tube.
How much longer are the American people going to just sit there and allow their intelligence to be insulted by their government?
It’s hard not to get a giddy feeling about all this, but we’ve seen these slimy bastids get away before with the help of the MSM.
IOW, their careers hang in the balance and they credibly believe if they push too hard with their questions, so as to make someone in the administration mad, they could easily get fired with one phone call to their boss.
IOW, they are content to act as if they're journalists when in fact, they're knowingly part of a corrupt political system that very effectively stifles criticism while paying them six-figure salaries and expense accounts.
HF
All politics aside, this was absolutely filthy dealing.
The President's posturing and dithering gets on my nerves, sure. But I can't bother to get too worked up about it.
This is different - the administration knew that American servicemen and diplomatic representatives of our nation were going to murdered by terrorists.
They knew it was going to happen and they had the notice they needed to react, they had resources they needed to react, they had every justification any nation could ever need to do the right thing.
And instead, they sat back waiting for those men to die - and the only thing they did while they were waiting was to come up with a good cover story for the media.
It is unforgiveable.
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