In the wake of the emails that were shown to the Senate Intelligence Committee this week, that confirmed John Brennan’s involvement in altering Susan Rice’s Benghazi talking points, the sentiment by many is that while the emails show Brennan’s involvement, they don’t reveal anything new.
The something ‘new’ that’s important is Brennan’s involvement because of what happens when you couple this new fact with charges made in a very recent book by two very credible authors.
Take a look at what ranking member Saxby Chambliss had to say, via The Hill:
“Brennan was involved,” Senate Intelligence Committee Vice-Chairman Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) said after the briefing. “It’s pretty obvious what happened.”
“At the end of the day it should have been pretty easy to determine who made the changes and what changes were made.”
He described an “extensive, bureaucratic and frankly unnecessary process” that led to the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations publicly linking the attack to a peaceful protest gone awry. Republicans have accused the White House of twisting the talking points to avoid harming Obama’s national security reputation ahead of the November elections.
There seems to be a lack of interest in dot-connecting, even in conservative media circles…
Via Chad Pergram at Greta Wire (h/t Hot Air):
One source familiar with the briefing indicated that they did not believe the emails shed any new light on anything that was not already known and said the messages did not demonstrate an effort by the administration to deliberately downplay the role of “al Qai’da” or “terrorists.”
Emails I obtained in October made it clear that the State Department said very early on that the attacks were driven by an al Qai’da affiliated group.
Ok, so why the narrative that the video was responsible?
When the emails revealing Brennan’s involvement in the talking points are viewed in a vacuum, perhaps Pergram might be correct but how about looking at all of the evidence for a minute? According to Brandon Webb and Jack Murphy, the authors of Benghazi: The Definitive Report, Brennan was running a covert operation without the knowledge of then CIA Director David Petraeus or Christopher Stevens.
Let’s revisit an article about this book in the Daily Mail:
Murphy and co-author Brandon Webb also revealed that the September 11 Benghazi terrorist attack that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, was retaliation by Islamist militants who had been targeted by covert U.S. military operations.
Webb and Murphy claim that the September 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. consulate and a CIA outpost in Benghazi proved to Petraeus that he was an outsider in the Obama administration and that he would remain marginalized as long as he was at the CIA.
The central premise of ‘Benghazi: The Definitive Report’ is that the attacks were precipitated by secret raids JSOC had performed in Libya. An attack on the Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia days before September 11 may have been the final straw.
According to Webb and Murphy, John Brennan was the man behind those raids. As such, would he not have a motive to prevent that truth from coming out after four Americans were murdered?
Could not that motive have manifested itself in false talking points that led away from the truth?
To Pergram’s point, perhaps the process of crafting Rice’s talking points seemed rather innocuous and didn’t reveal a smoking gun but one thing that was revealed was Brennan’s involvement. If Webb and Murphy are correct, shouldn’t Brennan’s involvement in crafting the talking points at all, raise suspicions?
Now that we know Brennan was involved in the talking points, take another look at this interview with Webb and Murphy from less than two weeks ago: