Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said that he would place a hold on John Brennan’s nomination as the next CIA Director unless he gets answers about how the U.S. intelligence community generated talking points on the Benghazi terror attack last September. Yet Graham’s threat runs counter to his previous belief that election results should grant presidents leeway in appointing high-level government officials.

The South Carolina Republican is still obsessed with the infamous “talking points” delivered by U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice on Sept. 16, 2012 to explain the administration’s thinking at that time about the Benghazi attack. Appearing on Fox News on Wednesday, Graham threatened to hold up Brennan’s confirmation — or any nominee for CIA Director — in his interview with host Brett Baier:

GRAHAM: I’m not going to confirm John Brennan or anyone else until the administration shares information with the Congress about who deleted references to al Qaeda three weeks before the election. I think it was purposefully done and I want to know who did it and why before we move forward.

BAIER: So, you’re committed to holding that nomination up?

GRAHAM: Yes, and I don’t want to. But I’m not going to let this administration get away from having to be held accountable. The State Department, you’re going to hear from Hillary Clinton. But who did change the talking points? Who did take al Qaeda out? And what did the president do, Bret, during the seven hours?

Watch Graham’s full interview here:

In placing a hold — an informal threat to filibuster a nomination or bill — on Brennan, Graham is choosing to continue to tilt at windmills in the pursuit of “the truth” on Benghazi over adherence to the Constitutional process he lauded in as recently 2010. Compare his current stance to the position he held just two years ago during the confirmation of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. At the time, Graham was a much stronger advocate for Presidential flexibility when it comes to the appointment of qualified individuals.

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The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York has rejected a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to obtain disclosure of a set of memos that describe the use of targeted killings in combating terrorism.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Times intended to secure the release of the criteria used to determine who is and is not eligible to be targeted in the Obama administration’s drone strike program after being rejected by the administration in June.

But in her ruling, Judge Colleen McMahon found that though she agrees that debate on the usage of drone strikes should be made in the open, she is unable to force the government to turn over the documents under FOIA:

However, this Court is constrained by law, and under the law, I can only conclude that the Government has not violated FOIA by refusing to turn over the documents sought in the FOIA requests, and so cannot be compelled by this court of law to explain in detail the reasons why its actions do not violate the Constitution and the laws of the United States. The Alice-in-Wonderland [sic] nature of this pronouncement is not lost on me; but after careful and extensive consideration, I find myself stuck in a paradoxical situation in which I cannot solve a problem because of contradictory constraints and rules — a veritable Catch-22. I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the Executive Branch of our Government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws, while keeping the reason for their conclusion a secret.

White House top counterterrorism adviser John Brennan said the program, part of which was first revealed in May 2012, has a very strict set of limits on who is targeted for drone strikes. However, those limits have never been clearly put forward in public, as the CIA’s drone strikes program remains classified.

In putting forward their suits, the ACLU and New York Times were focused on determining the decision-making process behind the choice to target and kill American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Al-Awlaki, a leading figure in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, was killed in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011. Since then, policymakers and scholars have debated over the legality of the strike that killed al-Awlaki.

In a landmark ruling today, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the CIA tortured a German citizen during his time in custody.

Khaled el-Masri, a German of Lebanese decent, was found to have been taken in 2004 in a joint U.S.-Macedonian effort first to a hotel near the Skopje, Macedonia airport, then to an extraordinary rendition location — also referred to as a “black site” — in Afghanistan. In both locations, the Court has ruled that the actions of both the CIA and Macedonia qualified “beyond a reasonable doubt” as torture:

“Masri’s treatment at Skopje Airport at the hands of the CIA rendition team – being severely beaten, sodomised, shackled and hooded, and subjected to total sensory deprivation – had been carried out in the presence of state officials of [Macedonia] and within its jurisdiction,” the court ruled.

It added: “Its government was consequently responsible for those acts performed by foreign officials. It had failed to submit any arguments explaining or justifying the degree of force used or the necessity of the invasive and potentially debasing measures. Those measures had been used with premeditation, the aim being to cause Mr Masri severe pain or suffering in order to obtain information. In the court’s view, such treatment had amounted to torture, in violation of Article 3 [of the European human rights convention].“

El-Masri was also awarded 60,000 Euros in the verdict, to be paid by Macedonia. The ruling is the first from Europe’s highest judicial authority on human rights that specifically labels the CIA’s actions during the Bush era of extraordinary rendition as torture.

According to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, the practice of taking foreign nationals to third countries for harsh interrogation, often utilizing torture, officially halted in 2009, as the U.S. sought to seek “assurances” that the host country would not utilize torture. Despite that, the renditions themselves remain classified, meaning the full extent of the current program is still unknown.

The ruling comes at a time when the debate over torture is reigniting in the United States. Depictions of the act in the film Zero Dark Thirty has prompted defenders of the torture program under the Bush administration to reemerge, while the Senate Intelligence Committee is due to approve a 6,000 page report on the CIA’s so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” on Thursday.

A new report in the Wall Street Journal makes clear that it was the CIA, not the White House, who ultimately removed references to al Qaeda from a controversial set of talking points on the Sept. 11 attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.

Congressional Republicans and conservative commentators alike have spent weeks wondering just who edited the now infamous talking points, accusing officials across the Obama administration of lying to cover-up the truth about Benghazi. Instead, what they have labeled a political decision to play down the role of al Qaeda by the Obama administration was actually a much more complicated process:

The officials said the first draft of the talking points had a reference to al Qaeda but it was removed by the Central Intelligence Agency, to protect sources and protect investigations, before the talking points were shared with the White House. No evidence has so far emerged that the White House interfered to tone down the public intelligence assessment, despite the attention the charge has received.

Edits and revisions of estimates continued on even as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice was preparing to make her appearances on several Sunday morning news shows to discuss them on Sept. 16:

On Sept. 15, Michael Morell, then CIA deputy director and now acting director, spoke with the CIA station chief in Tripoli, who expressed concern that the agency’s reporting was off the mark. The station chief said there was no protest ongoing at the time of the attack, and he didn’t think the attack was spontaneous. Mr. Morell asked the chief to summarize his views in an email so the analysts at Langley could evaluate his take along with more than a dozen other internal intelligence reports, Mr. Morell later told lawmakers.

Officials placed the talking points that day in a binder that was hand-delivered to Ms. Rice at around 8 p.m. at her home in Washington, where she was making last-minute preparations before making the rounds of the news shows the following morning.

In addition, despite repeated right-wing insistence that the Obama administration mislead the public about the role an anti-Islam video played in the launch of the attack, the new story makes clear that members of the intelligence community “still believe the attack was inspired in part by the earlier protest in Cairo over the video.”

This new reporting solidifies previous stories that tanked Republican theories of official cover-up. By firmly pointing to the CIA, the reports also clarify the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s statement on Nov. 19 that the “intelligence community” edited the talking points, not the White House and that the CIA had approved of the changes.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) today issued a statement essentially conceding that he was wrong in accusing the White House of changing U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice’s talking points on Benghazi for political purposes.

Former CIA Director David Petraeus told lawmakers last week that the CIA’s assessment that al Qaeda was responsible for the Sept. 11 attack that killed four Americans in Benghazi was taken out of Rice’s talking points after an interagency review. McCain and his allies then claimed the White House took out the talking points because it supposedly undercut the Obama administration’s narrative that it had severely weakened al Qaeda.

But Intelligence officials told CNN yesterday that the intelligence community was responsible for the changes made to Rice’s talking points. The Director of National Intelligence spokesperson said that the White House did not make any “substantive changes.”

McCain responded today and instead of taking issue with the substance of the report, the Arizona Republican wondered why administration and intelligence officials didn’t offer this information in closed door sessions:

“I participated in hours of hearings in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence last week regarding the events in Benghazi, where senior intelligence officials were asked this very question, and all of them – including the Director of National Intelligence himself – told us that they did not know who made the changes. Now we have to read the answers to our questions in the media. There are many other questions that remain unanswered. But this latest episode is another reason why many of us are so frustrated with, and suspicious of, the actions of this Administration when it comes to the Benghazi attack.”

Of course, it’s possible that the officials did not know who changed the talking points when McCain and other lawmakers asked last week, and later made inquires into the matter.

But McCain, along with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Republicans, has lead a proverbial witch hunt against the Obama administration and Rice, claiming that the administration deliberately misled the public about the nature of the attacks. Today’s news comes just a week after McCain went on national television and claimed that Rice’s “talking points came from the White House, not from the DNI.” He added on Fox that “I think it’s patently obvious that the talking points that Ambassador Rice had didn’t come from the CIA. It came from the White House.” For weeks, McCain has lambasted the administration for engaging in “either a cover-up or the worst kind of incompetence” on the Benghazi attack. McCain also said last week that “[e]verybody knew that it was an al Qaeda attack and she continued to tell the world through all of the talk shows [on Sept. 16] that it was a ‘spontaneous demonstration’ sparked by a video.”

McCain has also said he would block the nomination of Rice for Secretary of State, should the President choose her, saying he would “do everything in my power to block her,” that Rice is “not qualified” for the position and that “she should have known better.” He subsequently said he would bock any nominee Obama put forward.

But now that every angle of McCain’s attacks have been completely debunked, all he has left is to complain about not being told that intelligence officials didn’t give him this information sooner.

Intelligence officials told CNN that the intelligence community, not the White House, changed the now infamous Benghazi talking points given to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice before her appearance on several morning news shows in September. CNN quoted both the spokesperson for the Director of National Intelligence and an anonymous official “familiar with the drafting of the talking points.” The DNI spokesperson said that the only “substantive changes” came from the intelligence community and not the White House.

Former CIA Director David Petraeus told lawmakers in a closed door hearing last week that the CIA’s original assessment on the Sept. 11 Benghazi attack was that it was carried out by al Qaeda affiliated groups. But he reportedly said that analysis was later taken out after an interagency review in favor of a more general assessment that “extremists” carried out the attack to broaden the scope and not tip off terrorists to U.S. knowledge on the matter. And despite the fact that Petraeus said the CIA approved the change, Republicans, led by Republican senators John McCain (AZ), Lindsey Graham (SC) and Kelly Ayotte (NH), have accused the White House of stripping the language for political reasons.

But Shawn Turner, the spokesman for the Director of National Intelligence, told CNN that it wasn’t the White House’s decision:

“The intelligence community made substantive, analytical changes before the talking points were sent to government agency partners for their feedback. There were no substantive changes made to the talking points after they left the intelligence community.”

Another anonymous intelligence official echoed Turner, saying that the changes were made based on legitimate intelligence and for legal purposes:

“First, the information about individuals linked to al Qaeda was derived from classified sources. Second, when links were so tenuous – as they still are – it makes sense to be cautious before pointing fingers so you don’t set off a chain of circular and self-reinforcing assumptions. Third, it is important to be careful not to prejudice a criminal investigation in its early stages.”

Indeed, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) told the New York Times last week that in his closed door briefing, Petraeus “was adamant there was no politicization of the process, no White House interference or political agenda.”

The fight over the talking points will most likely continue; it has even become a campaign cause for Republican senators like Lindsey Graham. Others like John McCain have vowed to do “everything” to block the potential nomination of Susan Rice for Secretary of State. But Democrats in Congress and media commentators are beginning to wonder why Republicans are picking a substance-free fight with Rice, a woman and an African-American, after the drubbing they took in last month’s elections among those demographics.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) is quickly learning the ropes in her role as the new partner to some of the Obama administration’s harshest foreign policy critics, jumping more fully into the fray on the now heavily-politicized response to the Sept. 11 attack in Libya.

On Fox News this morning, Ayotte gave what was akin to a greatest hits version of the fact/logic-free Republican narrative on Libya, before focusing in on the administration’s not specifically referring to al Qaeda in their public remarks on the attack.

This newest source of outrage of Ayotte and other Republicans stems from the fact that the CIA’s original unclassified talking points, used by U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice in explaining the administration’s then-understanding of the attack on Sept. 16, were edited before delivery by Rice. In particular, a direct reference to terrorist groups was changed to read “extremists” during an interagency review to both broaden the scope of the points and not warn suspects of the extent of U.S. knowledge. However, this explanation did not satisfy Ayotte:

AYOTTE: Fourteen days later he did not call it a terrorist attack, nor did he reference it as connected to al Qaeda or an al Qaeda affiliated group. In fact the only reference he made to al Qaeda in that U.N. speech to the world was that al Qaeda had been weakened and Osama bin Laden was dead. This raises additional questions, it goes beyond Ambassador Rice. First of all, why were the talking points changed? It doesn’t make any sense to me that we were trying to dupe al Qaeda, that doesn’t pass the laugh test. But also, why was the President out fourteen days later and still failing to call it a terrorist attack to the world?

Watch Ayotte here:

The certainty that Ayotte shows is in no way shared by the administration or the intelligence community. Investigations into the assault’s perpetrators and their motives are still ongoing, with no official determination given yet by Congress, the State Department, or the FBI. While potential links between the Libyan militia Ansar Al-Sharia and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) have surfaced, there have been no “smoking guns” that the latter helped plan the attack, counter to conservative claims.

While Ayotte and others attempt to learn where the change came from, former CIA Direct David Petraeus has already informed Congress that the talking points used by Rice were approved by the CIA, despite GOP concerns about the original content being changed at the Deputies Committee-level of the National Security Council. The White House has also denied that the edit came from it specifically, having only swapped the word “consulate” for “mission.”

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