Report: Secret timeline shows how the Obama administration doctored intelligence talking-points on Benghazi attack six weeks before the 2012 election



A top-secret timeline from inside the Obama administration shows how the U.S. government heavily altered talking points about the Benghazi consulate attack that left four Americans dead, despite having clear intelligence reports from Libya indicating that an al Qaeda-linked terror group 'claimed credit' for destroying the diplomatic outpost.

According to a report scheduled for publication May 13 in The Weekly Standard , Deputy CIA Director Mike Morrell cut or changed four of the six paragraphs - removing 148 of the 248 words - in a classified assessment of what happened in Benghazi on September 11, 2012.

The Weekly Standard released its article online Thursday, likely to make it public before a May 8 House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing about the terror attack.

Timeline: The Obama administration apparently altered their talking points heavily in the hours immediately after the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya (pictured here on September 11, 2011)

What remains: As the investigation into the attack continues, the consulate remains damaged

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice famously told audiences of five separate cable television talk shows, just days after the military-style assault, that a YouTube video which blasphemed the Muslim prophet Muhammad, sparked a protest among Libyan civilians that spiraled out of control.

Victim: U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed during the attack

'Our current best assessment, based on the information that we have at present,' Rice said on ABC's This Week program, 'is that, in fact, what this began as, it was a spontaneous - not a premeditated - response to what had transpired in Cairo.'

'In Cairo, as you know, a few hours earlier, there was a violent protest that was undertaken in reaction to this very offensive video that was disseminated.'

This turned out to be false. When the CIA drafted its talking points, they contained a statement that the U.S. government 'know[s] that Islamic extremists with ties to al Qaeda participated in the attack.'



It's unclear whether Rice knew that the talking points, on which she based her comments, had been sanitized of all references to Islamist terrorism. But none of the three different versions of the talking points contains any reference to the video.



Rice later withdrew herself from consideration to become Secretary of State after concerns emerged about her false statements.

The talking points themselves came in response to a request for Maryland Democratic Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, who asked U.S. intelligence leaders for guidance on what members of Congress could reliably tell their constituents about Benghazi.



As Morrell reportedly slashed information from the resulting memo's first draft, Weekly Standard senior writer Stephen Hayes reports, 'gone were the reference to "Islamic extremists," the reminders of agency warnings about al Qaeda in Libya, the reference to "jihadists" in Cairo, the mention of possible surveillance of the facility in Benghazi, and the report of five previous attacks on foreign interests.'

Hayes' article includes the complete texts of three versions of the talking points, showing the edits made over a 24-hour period beginning three days after the attack.

Talking points: The account that then-UN Ambassador Susan Rice gave in televised interviews in the days following the attack are the main points of evidence against the administration

'What remained - and would be included in the final version of the talking points - was mostly boilerplate about ongoing investigations and working with the Libyan government,' Hayes writes, 'together with bland language suggesting that the "violent demonstrations" - no longer "attacks" - were spontaneous responses to protests in Egypt and may have included generic "extremists"'

According to an April 23 interim report on the Benghazi attack from five Republican-controlled House committees, U.S. intelligence knew almost immediately that Ansar al-Sharia, a Libyan terror group linked to al-Qaeda, 'claimed credit' for the Benghazi attack, and that the supposed YouTube-fueled demonstration never occurred.

That report cited emails among various government officials who expressed concerns about the frankness of the talking points' first draft.

