White House releases Benghazi e-mails. Will that quiet critics?

The White House has released 100 pages of e-mails related to its handling of the terrorist attack on a US diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya. They present a fuller picture of a chaotic situation, but are unlikely to quiet critics questioning the administration's 'talking points' at the time.

By Brad Knickerbocker,?Staff writer / May 15, 2013

US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice listens during a news conference at the UN in 2012. Senior State Department officials pressed for changes in the talking points that Ambassador Rice used after the deadly attack on the US diplomatic mission in Libya last September, expressing concerns that Congress might criticize the Obama administration for ignoring warnings of a growing threat in Benghazi.

Bebeto Matthews/AP/File

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The White House Wednesday released 100 pages of e-mails related to its handling of the terrorist attack on a US diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, last year that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

Skip to next paragraph Brad Knickerbocker

Staff writer and editor

Brad Knickerbocker is a staff writer and editor based in Ashland, Oregon.

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The main thrust of what?s become a political scandal for President Obama is that the administration ? specifically, State Department officials ? changed talking points about the attack in order to play down the role of Al Qaeda-linked terrorists while asserting that the violence was ?spontaneous? (perhaps related to a video insulting of Islam, which was roiling much of the Muslim world) rather than coordinated and preplanned.

Instead, the e-mails released Wednesday indicate what the administration hopes will be perceived as something less nefarious in the first few days after the attack, revealing ?intensive jostling between the C.I.A. and the State Department,? as The New York Times puts it.

According to a senior administration official quoted by Politico, CIA deputy director Mike Morell first decided to scrub references to an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist group operating in eastern Libya as well as to prior terrorist attacks in order ?to protect agency and State Department officials still in Libya and to avoid compromising a nascent FBI probe into the Sept. 11, 2012 attack.?

This was before State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland requested scrubbing the documents of similar references to avoid spurring criticism from conservatives, according to senior administration officials who briefed reporters Wednesday.

?Different agencies wanted to edit this language for a variety of reasons,? notes Tommy Vietor, who?recently stepped down as the spokesman for the National Security Council.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/iKCRwi2lw1o/White-House-releases-Benghazi-e-mails.-Will-that-quiet-critics

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