CIA director David Petraeus was surprised when he read the freshly rewritten talking points an aide had emailed him in the early afternoon of Saturday, September 15. One day earlier, analysts with the CIA’s Office of Terrorism Analysis had drafted a set of unclassified talking points policymakers could use to discuss the attacks in Benghazi, Libya. But this new version—produced with input from senior Obama administration policymakers—was a shadow of the original.
The original CIA talking points had been blunt: The
assault on U.S. facilities in Benghazi was a terrorist attack conducted
by a large group of Islamic extremists, including some with ties to al
Qaeda.
These were strong claims. The CIA usually qualifies its
assessments, providing policymakers a sense of whether the conclusions
of its analysis are offered with “high confidence,” “moderate
confidence,” or “low confidence.” That first draft signaled confidence,
even certainty: “We do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al
Qaeda participated in the attack.”
There was good reason for this conviction. Within 24 hours
of the attack, the U.S. government had intercepted communications
between two al Qaeda-linked terrorists discussing the attacks in
Benghazi. One of the jihadists, a member of Ansar al Sharia, reported to
the other that he had participated in the assault on the U.S.
diplomatic post. Solid evidence. And there was more. Later that same
day, the CIA station chief in Libya had sent a memo back to Washington,
reporting that eyewitnesses to the attack said the participants were
known jihadists, with ties to al Qaeda.
Before circulating the talking points to administration policymakers in the early evening of Friday, September 14, CIA officials changed “Islamic extremists with ties to al Qaeda” to simply “Islamic extremists.” But elsewhere, they added new contextual references to radical Islamists. They noted that initial press reports pointed to Ansar al Sharia involvement and added a bullet point highlighting the fact that the agency had warned about another potential attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in the region. “On 10 September we warned of social media reports calling for a demonstration in front of the [Cairo] Embassy and that jihadists were threatening to break into the Embassy.” All told, the draft of the CIA talking points that was sent to top Obama administration officials that Friday evening included more than a half-dozen references to the enemy—al Qaeda, Ansar al Sharia, jihadists, Islamic extremists, and so on. (Continues)
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