CNN has obtained the full email from a White House official on the Benghazi talking points, which undermines claims that the administration acted deliberately to change the intelligence community’s assessment.

Much of the controversy surrounding the Obama administration’s response to the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on a diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya has focused on a set of unclassified talking points provided to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice. Rice delivered those points five days after the attack, appearing on all five major Sunday news shows. Rice subsequently came under attack for not mentioning Al Qaeda and referencing an anti-Islamic video as the impetus for the attacks, becoming the symbol of the White House’s supposed goal of misleading the American public about what happened.

In recent days, the talking points have come back to the forefront of conservative outrage, as several outlets have released the full edits made to the document, along with the original version the CIA drafted. Alongside those edits were emails that these outlets claimed showed the White House engaging in a flurry of activity that would help President Obama gain reelection. One such email from Deputy National Security Director Ben Rhodes allegedly showed the White House insisting that State Department requests that references to terrorism and Al Qaeda be “scrubbed” from the draft be discussed more fully.

CNN’s Jake Tapper, however, obtained the full text of the email Rhodes sent to the email thread of officials across the government providing their input on the document. Viewed in full, the document shows a distinct lack of intent to maliciously change the narrative compared to paraphrased versions:

All –

Sorry to be late to this discussion. We need to resolve this in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, particularly the investigation.

There is a ton of wrong information getting out into the public domain from Congress and people who are not particularly informed. Insofar as we have firmed up assessments that don’t compromise intel or the investigation, we need to have the capability to correct the record, as there are significant policy and messaging ramifications that would flow from a hardened mis-impression.

We can take this up tomorrow morning at deputies.

Previously, the Weekly Standard and ABC News had reported that Rhodes intervened on behalf of the State Department, urging that the talking points be changed to scrub al-Qaeda references at Nuland’s request. The Standard paraphrased the email as Rhodes “respond[ing] to the group, explaining that [State Department spokeswoman Victoria] Nuland had raised valid concerns and advising that the issues would be resolved at a meeting of the National Security Council’s Deputies Committee the following morning.” Likewise, ABC paraphrased the email’s content as saying “[w]e must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don’t want to undermine the FBI investigation. We thus will work through the talking points tomorrow morning at the Deputies Committee meeting.”

The elevation of the talking points to infamy has seemingly instead helped to undercut the Republican case that a cover-up occurred. In actuality, the only thing to be revealed during this latest round of investigation seems to be a turf war between the CIA and State Department to avoid further blame for the attack, one that played out in the editing process of the talking points. In the end, contrary to Republican claims, the intelligence community did have the last say in what went into the talking points, including that the attacks “were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo,” and immediately preceded by a demonstration.

Despite successfully blocking Susan Rice from becoming the next Secretary of State, Congressional Republicans and right-wing commentators continue to develop new conspiracies about the Obama administration’s alleged cover up of the circumstances surround the September 11 attacks in Benghazi.

The conservative reaction to the tragedy in Benghazi has been to lurch from conspiracy theory to conspiracy theory for months in an effort to portray the Obama administration as mishandeling the responseto the attack. Now, while some have crowed their pleasure that Rice has withdrawn her name from consideration to replace Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, several on the right have managed to read much more sinister motives into the timing behind the announcement.

Blending together reports that Clinton might not testify before Congress on Dec. 20 as previously thought, with Rice’s stepping aside, a new narrative has emerged where an even deeper cover-up is now taking place. Leading among those believe this new theory is Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), who on Thursday accused the Obama administration of pushing Rice out to draw attention away from a forthcoming report from the State Department on Benghazi:

CHAFFETZ: The State Department owes us a report. That’s why I think that’s why Susan Rice made the announcement today, because I think we’re on the verge of getting that report. But you’re starting to see the State Department squirm a little bit. They’re starting to say, “Well, we’ll just give you the summary, maybe Secretary Clinton might not come up.” I think the report — if it’s done accurately — is gonna be a very difficult thing for the White House, the State Department, the Department of Defense, and the CIA to explain.

The hosts of Fox & Friends jumped on the comment on Friday morning and ran with it. Host Gretchen Carlson wondered out loud, “Usually they make these announcements on Fridays, why did they do it on a Thursday? Perhaps this report will be coming out today, which will be the Friday release, or sometime soon.”

Watch it:

The State Department’s Accountability Review Board (ARB) will complete its report in the coming days, but it’s yet unknown when it will be released.

Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), chief antagonists against Rice’s potential nomination, have vowed to continue their pursuit of the truth in the Benghazi attack.

MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell said this afternoon that Susan Rice’s withdrawal as a candidate for Secretary of State will not “help Republicans at all” because members of the party “forced out” a woman of color “before she was nominated.” For months now, Republicans, in an effort spearheaded by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), have relentlessly pursued blocking Rice’s chances for a Secretary of State nomination. Mitchell explained her perspective on MSNBC earlier today:

MITCHELL: I think that this had become sort of an impossible challenge for her to be confirmed, that she realized that, the White House realized it as well. I think they know that they are on good political solid ground, as you were just pointing out. This is not going to help Republicans at all, the fact that a woman and a woman of color has been forced out of a confirmation process even before she was nominated.

Here’s the video:

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Fellow MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski similarly criticized the GOP last month for what “looks like a bunch of old white men running women out of Washington,” as Brzezinski said. “Do the Republicans really think this is going to help their brand?” Scarborough wondered, referring to the GOP’s campaign against Rice, adding:

“This is the first big fight following an election where Republicans got routed not just among African-Americans but among hispanics, among Asian-Americans. I really wonder do a bunch of old white guys…want to make their first big battle, post election, a battle going up against a younger woman of color?”

Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) said in November that the use of racial “code words” was rampant in the GOP’s attacks on Rice.

NBC news is reporting Susan Rice has withdrawn her name from consideration for Secretary of State. NBC’s Brian Williams reports that in a letter to the President, Rice said: “I am highly honored to be considered by you for appointment as Secretary of State.

“The position of Secretary of State should never be politicized. I am saddened that we have reached this point even before you have decided whom to nominate.” President Obama has also put out a statement reading in part: “While I deeply regret the unfair and misleading attacks on Susan Rice, her decision demonstrates the strength of her character and an admirable commitment to rise above the politics of the moment and put our national interests first.”

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) has no idea what happened in Benghazi but he does know that it’s worse than Watergate and the Iran-Contra scandal times 10. Here’s King from a Washington Times article published on Wednesday:

“I believe that it’s a lot bigger than Watergate, and if you link Watergate and Iran-Contra together and multiply it times maybe 10 or so, you’re going to get in the zone where Benghazi is,” Mr. King said. “I don’t think the public has any idea, and I tell you, I don’t either, of the chronology of the events — what took place, and who was where doing what and why. And all the way down through — we still haven’t seen an autopsy report on the ambassador yet. Simple questions that you would ask in the first 24 hours have not been asked yet.”

Of course, mainstream media outlets have extensively reported emerging details about the assault, many of which have undercut Repubican attempts to create a faux-scandal out of the events, over the past three months.

And perhaps King should consult ThinkProgress’ comprehensive timeline on Benghazi to get the details on what is publicly known about the attacks and their aftermath.

Fox News White House correspondent Ed Henry said his network went a little overboard covering the terror attacks on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya. In an interview with the Associated Press, Henry said that Fox gave the story “proper emphasis,” but added that some of the network’s programs and commentators went beyond what was necessary:

Henry rejects the notion that he works off Fox marching orders in discussing the issue, but said, “I wouldn’t lie to you. I see that we’re covering Benghazi a lot, and I think that should be something that we’re asking about.”

He said other news outlets have under-covered the story, since four Americans were killed and there’s still some mystery about what the administration knew and when they knew about the attack.

“We’ve had the proper emphasis,” he said. “But I would not be so deluded to say that some of our shows, some of our commentators, have covered it more than it needed to be covered.”

Of course Henry is being generous. After the Sept. 11 Benghazi attacks up until the last week or so (after facts have silenced the Obama administration’s critics on this issue), Fox News has led an all-out blitz attacking the White House over its response, pushing conspiracy theories and baseless accusations that some of its own hosts had trouble with. And Henry himself participated in Fox’s politicization of the issue.

Fox recently vilified defense journalist Tom Ricks for noting this obvious point, one wonders what the network will do to Henry. (HT: Politico)

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.

Just three days after the Sept. 11 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said there were “demonstrations” at the U.S. diplomatic mission there and that the attackers “seized this opportunity to attack our consulate.” McCain also said during this Sept. 14 press conference on Capitol Hill that he wasn’t certain whether al-Qeada perpetrated the assault.

Yet McCain has been leading a smear campaign against U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice for essentially making the same assessment two days later on the Sept. 16 Sunday talks shows. Making clear that a more thorough forthcoming investigation would provide better information for “definitive conclusions,” here’s what Rice said about the Benghazi attack on that day, from CBS’s Face the Nation:

SUSAN RICE: Based on the best information we have to date, what our assessment is as of the present is in fact what began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our embassy — sparked by this hateful video. But soon after that spontaneous protest began outside of our consulate in Benghazi, we believe that it looks like extremist elements, individuals, joined in that — in that effort with heavy weapons of the sort that are, unfortunately, readily now available in Libya post-revolution. And that it spun from there into something much, much more violent.

McCain has since blasted Rice for making this assessment. Here’s what McCain said on CNN last month during the height of his smear campaign against the U.N. Ambassador:

MCCAIN: It was obvious within 24 hours that the station chief from the CIA had said this was a terrorist attack. It was obvious to one and all that this was not a “spontaneous demonstration” because in real time, they saw there was no demonstration. … Everybody knew that it was an al Qaeda attack, and she continued to tell the world through all of the talk shows that it was a “spontaneous demonstration” sparked by a video. That is not competence in my view

But McCain’s analysis of what occurred in Benghazi in the days after the attack on Sept. 14 mirrors Rice’s assessment during her Sept. 16 Sunday show appearances, saying that the attackers took advantage of a demonstration at the U.S. diplomatic mission:

MCCAIN: It’s hard to know exactly what took place and how long it was planned, and — I don’t have that information. I know very well that there were demonstrations, that there was a group of either al-Qaida or some radical Islamists who — about 15 of them, armed with RPGs and other lethal weapons, that seized this opportunity to attack our consulate. And it was an act of terror. It wasn’t an act of a mob getting out of control. We should understand that. This was a calculated act of terror on the part of a small group of jihadists, not a mob that somehow attacked and sacked our embassy.

So both McCain and Susan Rice believed at roughly the same point after the the Sept. 11 Benghazi attacks that the terrorists took advantage of a spontaneous demonstration against an anti-Islam video at the U.S. diplomatic mission there. And like Rice, McCain couldn’t say definitively if it was al Qaeda. When asked if it was al-Qaeda during his Sept. 14 press conference, McCain said, “It certainly was extremist elements. If it’s not al-Qaida, it’s certainly one of the affiliated organizations.”

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