What the News Media Missed in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Benghazi Report

Last month’s Senate Intelligence Committee report on the September 2012 terrorist attacks against the U.S. consulate in Benghazi made headlines for its bipartisan conclusions that the attacks could have been prevented and for citing four al-Qaeda groups that were involved in the attacks or contributed participants.  While some of the report was debatable and watered-down, its findings are significant and further discredits the Obama Administration’s contention that the attacks were the result of demonstrations outside the consulate due to an anti-Muslim video.

 

Although it is an important bipartisan report on the Benghazi tragedy, reading the whole report carefully indicates much less agreement than the committee’s Democratic majority and the news media have claimed and suggests the report only got out the door after committee members agreed to discuss their substantial disagreements in an “additional views” appendix.  The report’s additional views are far more interesting than the body of the report and reflect the continuing wide partisan differences over the Benghazi tragedy and the Obama administration’s refusal to fully cooperate with congressional investigations of the attacks.

 

Additional views are not unusual for congressional reports and are usually part of Senate Intelligence committee reports.  The Benghazi report included additional views by the Democratic majority, by the committee’s Republican members (except for Senator Susan Collins), and a separate set of additional views by Collins.

 

The committee’s Democratic members submitted five pages of additional views that preview how Hillary Clinton is certain to respond to criticism about her handling of the Benghazi attacks if she runs for president: the controversy over this tragedy is political, has been generated by “misinformed speculation and accusations” and it is time to move on.

 

The Democratic additional views focus on the infamous talking points about the Benghazi attacks provided to the intelligence committees on September 15, 2012, claiming that they were “flawed but mostly accurate.”  This document, initially drafted by the CIA and cleared through several government agencies and senior Obama officials at the National Security Council, was used by Ambassador Susan Rice on Sunday morning talk shows on September 16th and echoed by Obama officials for weeks.  The talking points said the consulate attacks were due to demonstrations stemming from an anti-Muslim video. 

 

The committee’s Democratic members blamed the CIA for inaccurate information in the talking points and said the CIA – not the NSC – removed references to al-Qaeda prior to sending the document around for inter-agency clearance.  They concluded that there were no efforts by the White House or others in the Executive Branch to cover-up facts or make alterations for political purposes. 

 

The Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats had to overlook a lot of inconvenient facts to come to such conclusions.

 

By contrast, in their 16-pages of additional views, six of the seven Republican members of the Senate Intelligence Committee present alternative views that are a powerful indictment of how the Obama administration mishandled the Benghazi tragedy and its efforts to cover-up the facts of the attacks before the November 2012 election.  The most important sentence of the Republican additional views is this:

 

“Many of us were frustrated and astounded by the great pains the Administration took after the attacks to avoid the clear linkage of what happened in Benghazi to the threat from international terrorism.” 

Concerning the talking points, the six Republicans found that the administration took steps to mislead Congress and the American people about the Benghazi attacks and the threat from al-Qaeda before the 2012 election.

 

“Rather than provide Congress with the best intelligence and on-the-ground assessments, the Administration chose to try to frame the story in a way that minimized any connection to terrorism.  Before the Benghazi attacks—in the lead-up to the 2012 presidential election, the administration continued to script the narrative that al-Qaeda had been decimated and on the run.  The Benghazi terrorist attacks inconveniently, and overwhelmingly, interfered with this fictitious and false narrative.”  

The additional views by the six Republicans rejected the charge that the CIA was at fault for erroneous language in the talking points, noting that emails reluctantly released to the committee clearly show the White House was asked to coordinate on the talking points from the earliest moments and had the final say in approving them.  The Republican members noted that this does not comport with what Acting CIA Director Morell told the intelligence committees in November 2012.

 

“. . . in spite of his [CIA Director Petraeus] own misgivings, the final content of the talking points was the ‘[National Security Staff’s] call, to be sure.’  In contrast, the Acting Director’s testimony perpetuated the myth that the White House played no part in the drafting or editing of the talking points.” 

This observation by the six Senate Intelligence Committee Republicans are supported by a Feb. 4 story by Fox News reporter Catherine Herridge that Morell – who is now a member of a Washington, DC consulting firm with close ties to Hillary Clinton – may have altered the Benghazi talking points to benefit the Obama administration before the November 2012 election by removing the word “Islamic” but keeping the word “demonstration.” 

 

The committee Democrats complained in their additional views that “controversy over the CIA talking points consumed a regrettable and disproportionate amount of time during the committee’s substantive review of the Benghazi attacks.”  Of course the Democrats said this because they were trying to paper over and shift the blame for an unprecedented and brazen scheme by the Obama Administration to manipulate the facts about the Benghazi attacks to ensure this tragedy did not prevent Mr Obama from being reelected.  The six Senate Intelligence Committee Republicans are to be given credit for not mincing their words about this abuse of the American people’s trust by President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and other senior Obama officials. 

 

The six committee Republicans had several other devastating criticisms of the Obama Administration concerning the Benghazi tragedy that have received little attention by the news media.  These include:

• A complete absence of accountability.  The body of the report says nothing about holding White House, State Department, and Pentagon officials accountable for the Benghazi tragedy and devotes only one page to the failure to bring the attackers to justice.  The additional views by the six committee Republicans are sharply critical of the Obama Administration over these failures and notes that “the final responsibility for security at diplomatic compounds rests with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.”  Not only have key officials not been held accountable, the Republicans said “a strong case can be made that State engaged in retaliation against witnesses who were willing to speak with Congress” and that witnesses such as Charlene Lamb [Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Programs] who were shielded from or avoided committee requests for interviews were returned to duty.  An excellent majority staff report by the House Foreign Affairs Committee issued on Feb. 7 “Benghazi: Where is the Accountability?” makes these same points in greater depth.
• Unknowns remain due to the Obama Administration’s obstructionism.  The additional views by the six Republicans detail how White House and State Department officials appeared to do everything possible to block the committee’s investigation.  This included blocking access to witnesses and documents, abusing executive privilege, and playing games with committee jurisdiction rules.  The committee Republicans noted how for seven months the Obama administration refused to provide the full paper trail for the talking points and instead provided a “re-creation” of the drafts to which it only gave the committee limited, “read only” access.  Because of this obstructionism, the six committee Republicans said important issues still need to be addressed to assess why Americans died in Benghazi and why no one has been held accountable.  The Republicans believe this needs to be investigated by “a committee that can and will use subpoena authority to obtain information from an uncooperative State Department.”  In my opinion, a House special committee to do this is long overdue.  Speaker Boehner should approve one immediately.
• The State Department’s absurd attempt to shift blame to the CIA for security shortfalls in Benghazi.  According to the six Republicans, the State Department objected to language in a draft of the committee report concerning security at the Benghazi consulate by claiming that since the same number of people died at the CIA Annex, the CIA should be held equally responsible for its lack of security at the Annex.  The Republican additional views found this argument to be absurd, noting that “there is a tremendous difference between a fortified facility [the CIA Annex] that suffers a fatal blow from a mortar attack and a porous compound that yields to a basic ground assault.”  The six Republicans noted that the two men killed at the CIA Annex (Tyrone Woods and Glenn Doherty) were killed on the roof after being attacked by mortars and that there likely would have been more American casualties if it were not for the successful rescue efforts by the CIA Annex personnel. 

Senator Collins’ additional views are milder than her Republican colleagues but are still very critical of the Obama Administration.  She faults the committee’s report for not placing enough emphasis on “(1) the Administration’s initial misleading of the American people about the terrorist nature of the attack; (2) the failure of the Administration to hold anyone at the State Department, especially Under Secretary Patrick Kennedy, fully responsible for the security lapses; and (3) the unfulfilled promises of President Obama that he would bring the terrorists to justice.”

 

Predictably, the news media has facilitated efforts by the Obama Administration and Senate Democrats to portray the Senate Intelligence Committee report on the Benghazi attacks as the end of this story and a rebuke to Republicans who have alleged a cover-up about the Benghazi tragedy in the run-up to the 2012 presidential election.  Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein has said she hopes this report will put “conspiracy theories” to rest.  Democratic consultant Brent Budowsky joined this fight last month by calling Republican demands for investigations of Benghazi “the GOP Benghazi Disease” in an article in The Hill.  David Ignatius, a notorious apologist for the Obama administration who writes for theWashington Post, said in response to the Senate report that Congressional Republicans wasted a year arguing about “phony issues” and termed GOP interest in this issue an “obsession” and a “jihad.”

 

The Republican additional views to the Senate Intelligence report and the new majority staff report by the House Foreign Affairs Committee prove that there is still a lot to be investigated about the Benghazi attacks.  The news media and Democratic politicians are already stepping up their efforts to portray Republicans trying to pursue this issue as kooks.  Republican congressmen and future presidential candidates should not deterred by this pressure.  The Obama Administration’s cover-up of the Benghazi attacks to ensure Mr Obama would win the 2012 presidential election is a serious affront to our democratic system that it only got away with because the mainstream media refused to do its job.  Hillary Clinton was obviously an active, if not a central, figure in this cover-up.  The integrity of our system of government requires a full and honest accounting of this tragedy and making sure the American people fully weigh Mrs Clinton’s role if she runs for president in 2016.  The additional views by the six Senate Intelligence Committee Republicans provide an excellent blueprint on how to do this.