No, the Admin wanted to find out the CIA’s sources in Yemen. It was the CIA that foiled the plot, and the AP reporters had done an article on how the CIA had followed up the leads and prevented the attack.
The problem was that this news was coming out just when Obama was boasting about the anniversary of OBL’s death (as if Bambi had anything to do with it!) and this would have undermined the narrative that Osama was just a sort of isolated one-off and that Obama had destroyed all our enemies by killing him.
So the Obama regime classified the whole thing, after the article had already been written, and then started trying to determine the reporters’ sources. I think he planned - and perhaps still plans - on prosecuting them.
That actually dove tails right into their response to Benghazi. They did not want to be seen being attacked by a resurgent Al Qeada.
Our President is covering up Islamic Terrorist attacks across the globe, while at the same time supplying funding to Islamic terrorist in Syria and god knows where else.
“. . . the Admin wanted to find out the CIA’s sources in Yemen . . .”
Your conjecture about the narrative problem for Obama makes some sense. It would then dovetail with the motivation for the Benghazi coverup as well. “AQ has been vanquished by Obama thus ending the so-called War on Terror.”
What I then wonder about is who or what forced Machen’s hand to notify the AP that he had grabbed the phone records a year ago.