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Posted on 05/10/2013 11:04:45 AM PDT by neverdem
Today's blockbuster ABC News report about White House and State Dept. involvement in revising the CIA’s Benghazi talking points has provided Republicans with new talking points in their effort to discredit former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton. But Jonathan Karl, the ABC News White House correspondent who landed the scoop, says not so fast.
The emails obtained by Karl show that State Dept. spokesman Victoria Nuland raised objections to a paragraph in the talking points mentioning threats from extremists linked to Al Qaeda. When a round of revisions did not satisfy her concerns, she wrote back: “These changes don’t resolve all of my issues or those of my building's leadership."
In that reference to the "building's leadership," some see a reference to Sec. Clinton. But Karl says that to date, no such evidence exists.
"There's no evidence that I've seen that Hillary Clinton was aware of what was going on, or in any way tried to direct what was in these talking points," Karl told POLITICO on Friday morning. "But that sentence is certainly open to interpretation, and you can guarantee it is going to seized on by Republicans for a long time, because ultimately the leadership of that building is Hillary Clinton."
Republicans have been fighting to keep the Benghazi story alive for months, and the right-wing blogosphere has made it their r'aison d'etre. Despite front page reports in the New York Times and scoops from reporters like Karl, conservatives accuse the mainstream media of failing to adequately investigate the story.
Those accusations are likely to subside this weekend in the wake of Karl's report (and that of The Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes), which comes on the heels of Wednesday's 'emotional' testimony from three State Dept. officials. Benghazi is now driving the news cycle and -- as my colleagues Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman pointed out on Thursday -- Hillary Clinton is once again fair-game for critics.
The Sunday shows will be almost entirely dedicated to the issue: ABC's "This Week," will feature interviews with Sens. John McCain and Jack Reed, and Gen. James Cartwright, retired Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will join the roundtable. CBS's "Face The Nation" will feature interviews with former Sec. of Defense Robert Gates and Sens. Dick Durbin and Kelly Ayotte. NBC's "Meet The Press" will have exclusive interviews with House Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa and Senate Intelligence Chair Dianne Feinstein.
But where the story goes after Sunday is anyone's guess.
"I have no idea how long this story will go on, but what is clear after this week is that there are still legitimate questions to be asked, and there's also going to be a political story regarding Hillary Clinton," Karl told POLITICO. "The story clearly has legs -- for how long, I just don't know."
She will have her minions say she was not aware of the revisions to the talking points before they were repeated to all and sundry. But since she was on the phone with her staff in Libya, she certainly knew the talking points were incorrect, and yet she herself repeated them.
She can’t get out of this one. She says she didn’t know who changed the talking points, but she knew they were lies and she repeated them anyway.
She needs to be served a subpoena. She has a few more questions to answer.
maybe send that direct quote to him and aks him how on earth he couldn’t find any evidence when you foudn it with just a minute or two searching and ask him what he gets for a salary becvause it’;s obvious he doesn’t desefrve what he’s getting
The name of the law firm that Herself, the Cold and Joyless, once worked with, should have been changed to Waffle, Straddle & Backfill. Herself learned her fine points of legal argument (deny, obfuscate, use emotion in place of logic, and ignore any direct challenges) while serving there, yet was never known to provide any legal opinion worthy of the definition.
The only reason some people study law is to find the loopholes.
One can only wonder why someone in the GOP/conservative media doesn’t create a website updated to that very thing. Lies by media directly countered in near realtime.
And names in Bold.
I’d think it would be popular and impossible to defend against. Perhaps they just don’t want to.
Perhaps they feel the effort would be too labor intensive...
Job security in these economically uncertain times....
That fact needs to be repeated over and over.
To summarize what Limbaugh has been saying fir days:
At about 5pm eastern time in Washington, we’re told that Obama met separately with Hillary Clinton and Leon Panetta telling each they needed to handle the attack in Benghazi.
Neither Hillary Clinton nor Panetta had the authority to order the military into action. And, conversely, neither could legally order the military to “stand down” during an attack on sovereign territory.
Obama’s whereabouts after 5 pm are undocumented. We are to believe Obama was having fish tacos and watching TV...while a terrorist attack was occurring on the 10 year anniversary of 9-11.
do these media outlets ever stop defending their cult and actually do their job.
SHe is the top of the dept, she is hands on, and now we’re supposed to think she had no clue any of this was done and how about after Rice went on and Clinton heard about this, ?
Did she do anything, or what does it matter in their minds, it’s all about getting Obama elected and getting Clinton elected.
Politics and party before country and truth, is the todays media slogan
When Benghazi happened, my first impression was that Hillary was strictly covering her own considerable rear end, that she knew what was being done, but separated herself from it to the extent possible. And then she refused to go on TV and present the cover story, thus Susan Rice was picked for that job and was not in a position to refuse.
She probably did know about the rewritten talking points, but was already heading for the tall grass, or for the wine tastings in Australia.
And she’s been distancing herself from the entire episode to the extent possible ever since. And I wonder if she really intended to resign as S of S when she did?
Hey Jon!
ALL of the evidence makes it absolutely clear that Hillary KNEW the Benghazi attack was conducted by terrorists!
Because THAT is exactly what she was told at 2:00 a.m. the very night of the attack, by the man who was, at that moment, head diplomat in Libya.
When the boss doesn’t have to take responsibility, the government is too big. What better example.
“I wasn’t involved in the talking points process.... As I understand it, as I’ve been told, it was a typical interagency process where staff, including from the State Department, all participated, to try to come up with whatever was going to be made publicly available, and it was an intelligence product.”
“With all due respect,the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided to go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?”—Hillary Clinton
They may be correct.
This seems to have Iranian-born Valerie Jarrett’s MO all over it.
Would the insider circle (Obama(s), Jarrett, Holder, Rice, Brennan...) let any of the true career politicians manage this sensitive situation? Especially one who has goals for 2016?
Lets face it. Most of the career politicians - including Hillary - in this administration have been window dressing.
Now, why do you suppose investigative journalists wouldn't also seize that and try to get to the bottom of the truth?
Ok, so then prosecute her for incompetence...
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