Attack on Benghazi a 'Cover-Up': The Scoop that Puts Hillary at Risk

According to ABC News and The Weekly Standard, while under Hillary Clinton’s leadership, the U.S. Department of State wanted to hide the failings of the security to Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, killed in an attack in Libya. This news puts at risk Clinton’s run for the presidency in 2016.

The “Benghazi question” is a time bomb that is ready to explode and cause a serious political embarrassment for the Obama administration. Almost every day, new facts come to light that bring into question the administration’s version of the events and arouse suspicion of a cover-up. More than Obama, the true target of the attacks — fueled by Republicans with clamor — is probably Hillary Clinton, who is a possible Democratic candidate for the 2016 presidential race and who was secretary of state when the American embassy in Libya was attacked — an attack in which Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans lost their lives.

The latest blow came when the White House handed over to members of Congress a number of emails that have since been made public by ABC News and The Weekly Standard. The emails demonstrate something that the administration has long denied. That is, they show that U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice’s talking points in TV interviews were revised many times — at least 12 — to create a version of the story that would best limit the culpability of Clinton’s State Department.

In order to better understand what happened, we need to return to the tumultuous hours that immediately followed the attack on the embassy (and the deaths of four Americans) that occurred on Sept. 11, 2012. In order to placate Republican critics and respond to the journalists’ doubts, the Obama administration decided to send Rice to appear on five of the most popular televised Sunday morning talk shows. Rice, a government official who is very close to Obama, offered a number of details that were prepared by the CIA and the Department of State. Specifically, Rice attributed the violence to a spontaneous public protest, in response to an anti-Islamic video, “Innocence of Muslims,” and not — as it later emerged — to a premeditated attack by a group of Islamic militants. During all of the past months, both the Obama administration and the Department of State have maintained that there was never an attempted cover-up and that what Rice said was based on all the information that was available at that time. The emails that were released in the past hours bring this assertion into question.

Rice’s talking points for her television appearances were originally written by the CIA. After a first reading, Victoria Nuland, spokesperson for the Department of State, requested that every reference to “at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi” be removed. Nuland justified this request with the fear that the phrase could be used by members of Congress “to beat the State Department for not paying attention to Agency warnings.” After other requests for revisions, all references to Ansar al-Shari’a, a group affiliated with al-Qaida, were cut from the original version. To justify the request, Nuland wrote that we do not want to “prejudice the investigation.”

The emails therefore appear to confirm the attempt, above all by the Department of State, to minimize the political implications of the attack on Benghazi in order to hide what subsequent investigations have revealed: huge intelligence leaks and gaping errors in the management of the security of Ambassador Stevens and the other three Americans. The administration has always responded to these claims by accusing Republicans of trying to “politicize” a tragedy. Yesterday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney once again explained in a press conference that “the whole effort here by Republicans to find some hidden mystery comes to nothing.” The same Carney, however, has been subjected by journalists to a never-ending stream of questions. Last November, he had confirmed that the version prepared for Rice by the CIA had essentially not been touched by either the White House or the Department of State.

Behind this incident, there is not only the political battle between Democrats and Republicans, but also a clear underground battle between sectors of the administration. The CIA, it seems, is not willing to pay the price for the report’s errors and omissions that would seem to be principally attributable to the Department of State. It is Hillary Clinton, who at the time of the incident was secretary of state and the person responsible for the authenticity of the facts, who could feel the most fallout from the “Benghazi case.” If it were to be confirmed that she attempted a “cover-up,” her candidacy for the 2016 presidential elections would be effectively over.

Another terrible blow hit Clinton several days ago from Deputy Chief in Mission for the U.S. Gregory Hicks, America’s number two in Libya after Ambassador Stevens. In front of an investigatory committee, Hicks asserted that it was “a terrorist attack from the get-go,” and that he was heavily harassed by Clinton’s people for having brought into question the authenticity of the official version.