Benghazi Boogaloo

He was furious at a CNN producer who asked him why he didn't go to his committee meeting.

Hill reporters seem to be testing Sen. John McCain's patience.

Yesterday, Sen. McCain told a reporter that his question was "one of the dumbest questions I've ever heard."

Today, when asked by CNN's Ted Barrett why he had missed a classified briefing on the attack in Benghazi, Libya, he responded thusly:


"I have no comment about my schedule and I'm not going to comment on how I spend my time to the media."

Asked why he wouldn't comment, McCain grew agitated: "Because I have the right as a senator to have no comment and who the hell are you to tell me I can or not?”

When CNN noted that McCain had missed a key meeting on a subject the senator has been intensely upset about, McCain said, "I'm upset that you keep badgering me."

Deputy CIA Director Mark Morell told the House committee on Thursday that Rice was provided with an unclassified version of events at the American mission, according to Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a committee member. The assessment concluded that a spontaneous protest over an anti-Muslim video had evolved into an attack on the American consulate, a description that Rice presented in the television interviews.

The briefings present a single, government-wide account of the evening of 9/11 in Benghazi. Until Thursday, Congress had received separate accounts of the attack from the State Department, CIA, and the military.



The hearings revolved around a multimedia presentation prepared by the National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC) that included photos and video collated from overhead drone footage of Libya, as well as closed-circuit camera film from the diplomatic mission and the CIA base in Benghazi.



The video that was shown, according to two U.S. officials, was confusing. “You had people there doing a mix of things with a mix of motivations,” one U.S. intelligence official said. The official stressed that neither the video alone nor the briefing proved that the initial attack was well-organized, despite subsequent evidence to support that theory, including testimony from diplomatic security officers that the attackers cordoned off the area during the siege of the diplomatic mission. “This involved many, many people, and it’s a mix of intent, motivation, a mix of skill, armament,” the official said.


The drone footage was no clearer. Because the unarmed predator drone was used to scout out locations for the CIA team executing the rescue of the personnel, the overhead footage did not provide consistent footage of the attack, one congressional staff member said.

While the video was at times confusing, the briefing corroborated earlier administration accounts of attempts to provide military back-up on the evening of the attack. The Daily Beast reported on Thursday that CIA director Mike Morell testified that his agency did not request lethal military assistance like special operations teams, platoons of specialized Marines, or armed predator drones.

SUSAN RICE (Ambassador to the United Nations): Bob, let me tell you what we understand to be the assessment at present. First of all, very importantly, as you discussed with the President, there is an investigation that the United States government will launch led by the FBI, that has begun and--

SUSAN RICE: --sparked by this hateful video. But soon after that spontaneous protest began outside of our consulate in Benghazi, we believe that it looks like extremist elements, individuals, joined in that-- in that effort with heavy weapons of the sort that are, unfortunately, readily now available in Libya post-revolution. And that it spun from there into something much, much more violent.

BOB SCHIEFFER: But you do not agree with him 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.


BOB SCHIEFFER: Do you agree or disagree with him that al Qaeda had some part in this?


SUSAN RICE: Well, we'll have to find out that out. I mean I think it's clear that there were extremist elements that joined in and escalated the violence. Whether they were al Qaeda affiliates, whether they were Libyan-based extremists or al Qaeda itself I think is one of the things we'll have to determine.

The CIA's talking points read as follows:

"The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the US diplomatic post in Benghazi and subsequently its annex. There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.


This assessment may change as additional information is collected and analyzed and as currently available information continues to be evaluated.


The investigation is on-going, and the US Government is working with Libyan authorities to bring to justice those responsible for the deaths of US citizens."

I think a concise summary of the article, or of the position the article represents, would be that the administration was asked for help with security by the embassy several times, failed to respond, and now that the embassy has been attacked have sought to escape responsibility by mischaracterizing the nature of the attack.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Ex-CIA Director David Petraeus told lawmakers during private hearings Friday that he believed all along that the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya was a terrorist strike, even though that wasn't how the Obama administration initially described it publicly.

The retired general addressed the House Intelligence Committee in his first Capitol Hill testimony since resigning last week over an extramarital affair with his biographer Paula Broadwell, but he did not discuss that scandal except to express regret about the circumstances of his departure.

Lawmakers said Petraeus testified that the CIA's talking points written in response to the assault on the diplomat post in Benghazi that killed four Americans referred to it as a terrorist attack. But Petraeus told the lawmakers it was removed by other federal agencies who made changes to the CIA's draft.

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said Petraeus said he did not know who removed the reference to terrorism. King said to this day it's still not clear how the final talking points emerged that were used by U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice five days after the attack when the White House sent her to appear in a series of television interviews. Rice said it appeared the attack was sparked by a spontaneous protest over an anti-Muslim video.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said Petraeus disputed Republican suggestions that the White House misled the public on what led to the violence in the midst of President Barack Obama's re-election campaign.

"There was an interagency process to draft it, not a political process," Schiff said after the hearing. "They came up with the best assessment without compromising classified information or source or methods. So changes were made to protect classified information.

"The general was adamant there was no politicization of the process, no White House interference or political agenda," Schiff said. "He completely debunked that idea."

Schiff said Petraeus said Rice's comments in the television interviews "reflected the best intelligence at the time that could be released publicly."

King said Petraeus had briefed the House committee on Sept. 14 and he does not recall Petraeus being so positive at that time that it was a terrorist attack. "He thought all along that he made it clear there was terrorist involvement," King said. "That was not my recollection."

Another way to view it is that a US ambassador was tortured and raped and THEN killed and the present US administration hasn't done and isn't likely to do anything about it,

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) has admitted that the CIA and intelligence community approved U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice’s talking points before she made her much-derided Sept. 16 appearance on several Sunday news shows to discuss the attacks in Benghazi. King, one of the most outspoken critics of the Obama administration’s response to the attack, came to his conclusion following testimony from former CIA Director David Petraeus.

After leaving the closed-door hearing, King spoke with reporters for several minutes about Petraeus’ statements. Rice’s television appearances were among the topics discussed, leading King to indicate that while Petraeus did not personally write Rice’s talking points, the CIA did approve them:


Q: Did he say why it was taken out of the talking points that [the attack] was Al Qaeda affiliated?

KING: He didn’t know.

Q: He didn’t know? What do you mean he didn’t know?

KING: They were not involved — it was done, the process was completed and they said, “Ok go with those talking points.” Again it’s interagency — I got the impression that 7, 8, 9 different agencies.

Q: Did he give you the impression that he was upset it was taken out?

KING: No.

Q: You said the CIA said “OK” to the revised report –

KING: No, well, they said in that, after it goes through the process, they OK’d it to go. Yeah, they said “Okay for it to go.”

Watch the hearings, and be enlightened...if you can.