Not that anyone will care, but an ABC news report has nuked the Obama administration’s claim that they only made 1 edit to the talking points. Many edits and 12 revisions later, the actual facts were transformed into a tale that bare no resemblance to the truth.
"How many times did they change it according to ABC News today?" Glenn said. "Twelve times. The State Department left coworkers to die while saying, 'We did no such thing.' They left coworkers unprotected and said, 'We didn't know that they asked for more backup. We didn't know that they wanted things to be changed. We had no warning of something like this coming.' We now know all of that is untrue. They lied to our allies, they lied to the world, they lied to you. And the media smeared anyone who said these things. I know because I was one of them. I pointed out the truth. I showed you the truth. Early. I was a conspiracy theorist. I was a crazy man. Anybody who did it, you're a danger. They smeared, they destroyed, and they covered for the White House, and they're still doing it."
From the report:
When it became clear last fall that the CIA’s now discredited Benghazi talking points were flawed, the White House said repeatedly the documents were put together almost entirely by the intelligence community, but White House documents reviewed by Congress suggest a different story.ABC News has obtained 12 different versions of the talking points that show they were extensively edited as they evolved from the drafts first written entirely by the CIA to the final version distributed to Congress and to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice before she appeared on five talk shows the Sunday after that attack.
White House emails reviewed by ABC News suggest the edits were made with extensive input from the State Department. The edits included requests from the State Department that 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.
According to ABC News, it appears that State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland was the person primarily responsible for the changes:
State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland raised specific objections to this paragraph drafted by the CIA in its earlier versions of the talking points:“The Agency has produced numerous pieces on the threat of extremists linked to al-Qa’ida in Benghazi and eastern Libya. These noted that, since April, there have been at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi by unidentified assailants, including the June attack against the British Ambassador’s convoy. We cannot rule out the individuals has previously surveilled the U.S. facilities, also contributing to the efficacy of the attacks.”
In an email to officials at the White House and the intelligence agencies, State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland took issue with including that information because it “could be abused by members [of Congress] to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so why would we want to feed that either? Concerned …”
After Glenn went off radio, it was announced that the White House was holding an off the record meeting with select members of the White House Press Corp to discuss the issue.
In response to this news, Glenn tweeted the following:
What is happening with BENGHAZI? Who are they setting up to fall? Abc, bbc, CNN all doing a 180. Then a meeting at the WH off record.
— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) May 10, 2013
TRUTH THE PRESS KNEW THEN TOO. m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=XoMu…
— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) May 10, 2013
Off record meeting with press at WH. Watch for coverage to change. Fingers will point to state. Prediction: O will embrace leaks take credit
— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) May 10, 2013