Was David Petraeus blackmailed over Benghazi?

Flopping Aces ^ | 05-13-13 | DrJohn

[Starman417]

The Benghazi affair is on fire and it could possibly go nuclear soon.

It is now very clear that the Obama regime scrubbed the truth from the Benghazi talking points.

Politics: It would be naïve to expect any White House to ignore the political implications of a foreign policy crisis occurring two months before a presidential election. But there is a reason why no White House admits to finessing a tragedy: It's unseemly. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland injected politics into the U.S. response to Benghazi when she raised objections to draft “talking points” being prepared for Rice’s television appearances.

One paragraph, drafted by the CIA, referenced the agency’s warnings about terrorist threats in Benghazi in the months prior to the attack, as well as extremists linked to the al-Qaida affiliate Ansar al-Sharia. In an email to officials at the White House and intelligence agencies, Nuland said the information “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 deleted. The truth was scrubbed.

It was the Obama regime who politicized Benghazi:

“These changes don’t resolve all of my issues or those of my building’s leadership.” With that sentence, one in a series of emails and draft “talking points” leaked to Jonathan Karl of ABC News, the Obama administration was caught playing politics with Benghazi.

We are still speculating as to who altered the talking points but there are hints that Steven Hayes might know:

[O]ne previously opaque aspect of the Obama administration’s efforts is becoming somewhat clearer. An email sent to Susan Rice following a key White House meeting where officials coordinated their public story lays out what happened in that meeting and offers more clues about who might have rewritten the talking points…

Nuland wrote that the changes did not “resolve all my issues or those of my building leadership.” She did not specify whom she meant by State Department “building leadership.” Ben Rhodes, a top Obama foreign policy and national security adviser, responded to the group, explaining that Nuland had raised valid concerns and advising that the issues would be resolved at a meeting of the National Security Council’s Deputies Committee the following morning. The Deputies Committee consists of high-ranking officials at the agencies with responsibility for national security​—​including State, Defense, and the CIA​—​as well as senior White House national security staffers…

According to the email, several officials in the meeting shared the concern of Nuland, who was not part of the deliberations, that the CIA’s talking points might lead to criticism that the State Department had ignored the CIA’s warning about an attack. Mike Morell, deputy director of the CIA, agreed to work with Jake Sullivan and Rhodes to edit the talking points. At the time, Sullivan was deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the State Department’s director of policy planning; he is now the top national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden. Denis McDonough, then a top national security adviser to Obama and now his chief of staff, deferred on Rhodes’s behalf to Sullivan…

The sender of the email spoke with Sullivan after the meeting, reminding him that Rice would be doing the Sunday morning shows and needed to receive the final talking points. Sullivan committed to making sure Rice was updated before the Sunday shows.

The blame for the changes, clearly done at the White House level, was then dumped on the CIA:

“The CIA drafted these talking points and redrafted these talking points,” Carney said. “The fact that there are inputs is always the case in a process like this, but the only edits made by anyone here at the White House were stylistic and nonsubstantive. They corrected the description of the building or the facility in Benghazi from consulate to diplomatic facility and the like. And ultimately, this all has been discussed and reviewed and provided in enormous levels of detail by the administration to Congressional investigators, and the attempt to politicize the talking points, again, is part of an effort to, you know, chase after what isn’t the substance here.”

It is also well known at this time that David Petraeus was astonished to see how his assessment was freed of the truth:

In an email at 2:44 p.m. to Chip Walter, head of the CIA’s legislative affairs office, Petraeus expressed frustration at the new, scrubbed talking points, noting that they had been stripped of much of the content his agency had provided. Petraeus noted with evident disappointment that the policymakers had even taken out the line about the CIA’s warning on Cairo. The CIA director, long regarded as a team player, declined to pick a fight with the White House and seemed resigned to the propagation of the administration’s preferred narrative. The final decisions about what to tell the American people rest with the national security staff, he reminded Walter, and not with the CIA.

This candid, real-time assessment from then-CIA director Petraeus offers a glimpse of what many intelligence officials were saying privately as top Obama officials set aside the truth about Benghazi and spun a fanciful tale about a movie that never mattered and a demonstration that never happened.

Petraeus has even called the altered talking points "useless."

Petraeus twice briefed members of Congress and on both occasions the event was closed to the public. The first assessment for Congressional members came a few days after the September 11 attack in Benghazi and the second one came on November 16, 2012.

Note that it was back in November when the disparity in initial and final talking points was discovered:

(excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...

[Albion Wilde]

General Petraeus got rolled. He was set up as fall guy in case things went south

Trying to feel some sympathy for this privileged cheater. Uhhhnnnh. UHHHNNNNH! Uhnh!

Just can't.

[Wurlitzer]

“Whatever personal transgressions General Petraeus may have engaged in, were held over his head, waiting for the moment these items of personal embarrassment could be used against him.”

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I lost all respect for him when he joined the very people who called him Gen Betrayus. Seems he got into bed with something more dangerous than a tramp.

[little jeremiah]

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