EDMUND BURKEThe Washington Post op-ed page today has dueling columns related to the so-called Benghazi scandal – one by Ruth Marcus (here); the other by Charles Krauthammer (here). In the actual newspaper, Marcus’ column appropriately runs down the left-hand side of the page and Krauthammer’s down the right-hand side. Both journalists evaluate the emails that passed among the State Department, the CIA, and the White House on September 14, 2012, while those agencies were furiously discussing what the infamous talking points that Susan Rice later relied upon should contain – or, more accurately, not contain. Marcus says that the “White House comes off looking rather responsible” while Krauthammer says the facts show that “the administration was assiduously trying to control and suppress” information. Who’s right?
The Republican narrative – reargued by Krauthammer – is that the administration knew all along that what occurred in Benghazi was a planned terrorist attack, but for political reasons wanted to mislead the American public into believing that the attack erupted spontaneously from demonstrations. Do the emails support that narrative?
As it turns out, a necessary villain in that narrative is Victoria Nuland, who represented the State Department in those email discussions. Krauthammer writes:
“The original CIA draft included four paragraphs on the involvement of al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists and the dangerous security situation in Benghazi. These paragraphs were stricken after strenuous State Department objections mediated by the White House.”
It was Victoria Nuland who made those strenuous objections.
I’ll return to Nuland a moment. But first, about what was Nuland objecting? One key sentence was this: “On 10 September we [the CIA] warned of social media reports calling for a demonstration in front of the Embassy [in Cairo] and that jihadists were threatening to break into the Embassy.” Here’s another key sentence: “The Agency [CIA] has produced numerous pieces on the threat of extremists linked to al-Qaeda in Benghazi and eastern Libya.” There’s also a mention of the group Ansar al-Sharia, which was calling for jihad in Libya. The original talking points don’t blame Ansar al-Sharia for the attack; they merely state that early press reports blamed that group, and note that although the group denied direct responsibility it did not deny that its individual members may have been involved. You can read all of the emails and talking point drafts for yourself here.
All of that was removed so that, as Krauthammer sees it, “All that was left was the fable of the spontaneous demonstration.” Krauthammer argues that was the dirty work of the State Department – i.e., Nuland – with White House support. Although Krauthammer doesn’t tell his readers this, the extent of White House support was an email from Deputy National Security Adviser Benjamin J. Rhodes, who wrote: “We need to resolve this in a way that respects all relevant equities, especially the investigation.”
The CIA, says Krauthammer, was merely a scribe in making deletions, and the FBI did not raise “significant objections.” In other words, the two agencies responsible for suppressing the truth were those with political motivations – the ones headed by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
But Krauthammer ignores an email sent at 4:20 p.m. by the General Counsel of the CIA, who wrote:
“Folks, I know there is hurry to get this out, but we need to hold it long enough to ascertain whether providing it conflicts with express instructions from NSS/DOJ/FBI that, in light of the criminal investigation, we are not to generate statements with assessments as to who did this, etc. – even internally not to mention for public release.”
So the FBI didn’t have to voice those concerns because the General Counsel of the CIA voiced them on the FBI’s behalf.
Incidentally, if you read the emails for yourself, I think you’ll see that although today we know there were no demonstrations in Benghazi that day, and the attacks were launched exclusively by terrorists, things seemed murkier to participants in those email exchanges on September 14, three days after the attack. In fact, it seems they didn’t view those two things – demonstration versus terrorist attack – as separate and distinct possibilities. Rather, the original talking points seem to suggest that jihadists may have helped inspire demonstrations to cover, camouflage, or help recruit additional participants for a planned attack. The talking points don’t say that expressly. Only one thing then seemed certain: The United States didn’t yet know exactly what happened and was investigating.
This brings us back to Victoria Nuland. If there are villains, she has to be among them because it was Nuland who demanded the deletions that – according to Krauthammer – were intended to conceal the truth and promote a fable. In an email sent at 7:39 p.m., Nuland raised two concerns. Why, she asks, “do we want Hill to be fingering Ansar al Sharia, when we aren’t doing that ourselves until we have investigation results.” It’s important to bear in mind that while today we are focused on the talking points later being used by Susan Rice, those same talking points were also to be given to members of Congress, and it’s Congress on which Nuland is focused. Second, Nuland says she’s concerned that the talking points may lead members of Congress “to beat the State Department for not paying attention to Agency warnings.” In other words, the CIA is covering itself by saying it warned the State Department about possible attacks – but at the expense of State which members of Congress will blame for ignoring those warnings.
Was Nuland a political operative seeking to protect Hillary Clinton or ensure the reelection of Barack Obama? Or – far more prosaically – was she a State Department bureaucrat seeking to protect her agency?
Victoria Nuland is, in fact, a career foreign service officer who has served in important posts in both Republican and Democratic administrations. In Bill Clinton’s administration, she was chief of staff to Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbot. In George W. Bush’s administration, she was principal deputy foreign policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney. Later she served as ambassador to NATO (Bush administration) and special envoy to Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (Obama administration). At the time of the relevant events, she was the State Department’s spokesperson. Nuland also happens to be married to well-known neoconservative historian Robert Kagan.
In his column, Krauthammer wrote: “Let the facts speak for themselves.” So be it.