Administration Officials Downplay CIA-State Department Squabbling In Benghazi Emails
BRIAN BEUTLER MAY 15, 2013, 6:44 PM
At a briefing for reporters at the White House Wednesday, senior administration officials — including a senior intelligence official — sought to stamp out the last embers of controversy surrounding the inter- and intra-agency processes that yielded official, early talking points about the attacks on a U.S. facility in Benghazi, Libya.
Responding to pressure from reporters and Republicans on Capitol Hill, the administration released what they claim are all emails internal to, and between, relevant government agencies drawing up the talking points that Susan Rice used when appearing on Sunday talk shows a few days after the attacks that left four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens, dead. Those emails are characteristic of the laborious bureaucratic process required to finalize the talking points, but do reflect disagreements between senior officials in agencies outside the White House over what information the talking points should contain.
The emails vindicate the administration’s claim that White House officials did not partake in defensive wrangling over the framing or content of the talking points. But they do confirm that the State Department and CIA were at odds, at least for a time, over how comprehensive the talking points should be.
That squabbling — which appear to reflect at least in part the two agencies’ desires to insulate themselves from blame for the attacks — is the only remaining aspect of the controversy, perpetuated by Republicans and conservatives, over the administration’s private deliberations and public communications in the days after the attack.
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