A guy who, trying to help, doesn’t: David Brooks, offering the time-honored, Washington insider perspective, claiming that anyone who’s a personal friend of his—in this case, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland—can’t have done anything wrong. In fact, Brooks makes a good point—Benghazi was really a CIA operation, something the Agency has managed to obfuscate with remarkable success, so that a good share of the blame for the disaster should go to the agency rather than Hillary Clinton. However, Brooks does a little obfuscating of his own, covering up the fact that his friend wanted information excluded from the talking points—about the involvement of “extremists” linked with Al Qaeda—because it might lead to questions that the Administration wouldn’t want to discuss. Finally, Brooks remarks that “in the absence of a clear narrative, the talking points gravitated toward the least politically problematic story, blaming the anti-Muslim video and the Cairo demonstrations.” Because when four Americans are murdered overseas, you want to give the most politically convenient explanation, even if it isn’t true.
Two guys who, trying to help, don’t: The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, a self-proclaimed liberal, provides an inside account of the development of the Benghazi talking points via an email provided by Tommy Vietor, former spokesman for the National Security Council. Tommy sounds like a guy who wears a plaid coat, who slaps you on the back and hands you a booze while he’s stealing your wallet. He answers questions that weren’t asked and ignores the ones that were. Here’s how Vietor deals with Jay Carney’s notorious claim that the Administration only changed one word of the massively edited talking points: “I think it’s fair to say that we could’ve been clearer that we were referring to this final CIA version of the talking points when we said we made one edit, but the fact that the government edited these points isn’t surprising or at all nefarious—it’s routine.” Tommy should selling used cars, not sitting in on National Security Council meetings.
The silent spooks: I’ve already mentioned the CIA’s remarkable success in keeping a low profile, despite the fact that Benghazi was essentially their show. In its original talking points, the CIA patted itself on the back for providing warnings about the dangerous situation in Benghazi, but failed to note that it failed to provide warning of the attack on the American installation itself, which is the kind of thing we pay them to do. “Empty Wheel” raises a lot of the issuesabout what the CIA might have been doing in Bengahzi to attract an attack, issues that Republicans left entirely unexplored.
Source greaser of the week: Politico’s Glenn Thrush allows anonymous aides to “explain” why then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton didn’t do the talk show circuit after the murders in Benghazi, leaving the job to Susan Rice. Because she hates doing talk shows! She really does! She really really does! But doesn’t being Secretary of State mean that sometimes you have to do things you “hate”? Apparently not.* What about National Security Adviser Tom Donilon? Couldn’t he have done the job? Well, Glenn explains, not even bothering to call an “aide,” Tom’s really shy and “prefers to stay in the background.” What about Gen. Petraeus, then head of the CIA? According to Thrush, Petaeus didn’t like the talking points. “He was especially annoyed that a paragraph referring to social-media calls for an attack on the Cairo embassy had been scrubbed.” Which had what to do with the attack on Benghazi?
*And if Hillary starts doing the talk shows prior to her run for the presidency in 2016, don’t be too surprised. And don’t be too surprised if Glenn hasn’t forgotten all about this.
