Jonathan Karl of ABC News has finally obtained the smoking gun. We now know that the Obama Administration was actively engaged in scrubbing all references to al Qaeda from the infamous CIA talking points surrounding Benghazi. Therefore, we also know that the administration knew from day one that al-Qaeda was involved in the September 11 anniversary attacks.
The parsing, double talk, and half-truths the President, Hillary Clinton and others in the administration engaged in for over 9 days, where they falsely manufactured a narrative blaming the deaths of four Americans on a spontaneous protest over a YouTube video, is bad enough. How, though, can the White House explain their repeated declarations to the national media that unequivocally claimed that there was absolutely no evidence Libya was a terror attack?
In fact, the White House stood by this declaration for eight full days. [Emphais added throughout].
September 19: Jay Carney to CBS News’ Bill Plante in the White House briefing room:
PLANTE: You are still maintaining that there was no evidence of a pre-planned attack–
CARNEY: Bill, let me just repeat now–
PLANTE: But how is it that the attackers had RPGs, automatic weapons, mortars…
CARNEY: Bill, I know you’ve done a little bit of reading about Libya since the unrest that began with Gaddafi. The place has an abundance of weapons.
PLANTE: But you expect a street mob to come armed that way?
CARNEY: There are unfortunately many bad actors throughout the region and they’re very armed. ….
PLANTE: But they planned to do it, don’t you think?
CARNEY: They might, or they might not. All I can tell you is that based on the information that we had then and have now we do not yet have indication that it was pre-planned or pre-meditated. There’s an active investigation. If that active investigation produces facts that lead to a different conclusion, we will make clear that that is where the investigation has led. Our interest is in finding out the facts of what happened, not taking what we’ve read in the newspaper and making bold assertions that we know what happened.
Carney might not have known he was lying, but nonetheless, this was a bald-faced lie being told a full eight days after the attack. Carney wasn’t the first one to tell it, either. Susan Rice similarly claimed there was no evidence Libya was a terror attack as late as Sept 16 on two of the five Sunday shows she visited that day:
September 16: Susan Rice to CBS News’ Bob Schieffer:
BOB SCHIEFFER: But you do not agree with [Magariaf] that this was something that had been plotted out several months ago?
SUSAN RICE: We do not– we do not have information at present that leads us to conclude that this was premeditated or preplanned.
September 16: Susan Rice to Fox News’ Chris Wallace:
RICE: The best information and the best assessment we have today is that was, in fact, not a pre-planned and pre-meditated attack. That what happened initially — it was a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired in Cairo, as a consequence of the video, that people gathered outside the embassy and then it grew very violent. Those with extremist ties joined the fray and came with heavy weapons, which unfortunately are quite common in post-revolutionary Libya. And that then spun out of control. We don’t see at this point — signs that this was a coordinated, pre-meditated attack. Obviously we’ll wait for the results of the investigation and we don’t want to jump to conclusions before then. But I do think it’s important for the American people to know our best current assessment.
Telling the national media there is no evidence of a terror attack isn’t parsing or double-talk, or engaging in “careful wording.”
It is engaging in the art of the brazen lie to further an even more brazen coverup.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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