***UPDATE: Here are the 12 talking point revisions. Keep in mind the Obama Administration has repeatedly denied making these revisions and denied straight through to Sept 19 that there was any evidence of a terror attack.
It looks as though after eight long months, the wheels might have finally come off the Obama Administration’s coverup of the September 11th anniversary attacks in Libya. To justify lies told for over a week about a spontaneous protest, the White House has consistently insisted they had relied on CIA talking points that only the intelligence community had drafted and revised.
Standing on the shoulders of the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes, ABC News’s Jonathan Karl has obtained 12 different versions of these now-infamous CIA talking points, and what he found proves beyond any doubt that the White House and State Department not only knew from the beginning that al-Qaeda was involved in the attack, but that the administration (mostly State) ordered all “references to the Al Qaeda-affiliated group Ansar al-Sharia be deleted as well references to CIA warnings about terrorist threats in Benghazi in the months preceding the attack.”
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s State Department apparently did most of the editing. In his Good Morning America report Friday morning, Karl said that emails have been read that to him…
…that show that many of these changes were directed by Hillary Clinton spokesperson at the State Department, Victoria Nuland. In one email she said that information about CIA warnings ‘could be used by members [of Congress] to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so why would we want to feed that…’
After that email all of those references were deleted.
The most damning part of Karl’s report, though, is this quote he references from White House spokesman Jay Carney from November 28, 2012:
The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two institutions were changing the word ‘consulate’ to ‘diplomatic facility’ because ‘consulate’ was inaccurate.
Karl now has proof that what Carney told White House reporters is a bald-faced lie. Whether Carney knew it was a lie or not is one thing, but that it was a lie is now no longer in question.
After Karl’s report exploded online this morning, ABC News reporter Steven Portnoy tweeted, “Today’s [White House] briefing will be one to watch. Emails make it clear WH was fully aware of CIA/FBI’s belief #Benghazi was an attack involving AQ.”
Thus far the media have been laughably reluctant to not only push for the truth on Libya but also to do anything that might damage the White House politically.
Let’s see if a red-hot smoking gun is enough to finally change that.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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