State Dept Daily Press Briefing May 10, 2013

MR. VENTRELL: Okay. Good afternoon, everyone. I jumped the gun a little bit yesterday in saying Happy Friday, but today I’m allowed to finally say it: Happy Friday, and welcome to the State Department. I don’t have anything at the top, so I will turn it over to all of you.

QUESTION: So, about the emails that ABC and The Weekly Standard have been reporting on, released today – in the exchanges when Victoria Nuland was emailing with the intelligence community and the White House during the drafting process of the talking points, who was she directly reporting to?

MR. VENTRELL: Well, let me say a few points about the talking points. Just to remind everybody that these were talking points that were developed during the interagency process led by the CIA about how to communicate the best and most current information the Administration had about the Benghazi attacks. And one thing to say that was consistent throughout, despite some of the sort of cherry-picking or looking at one email or another, what was clear throughout is that extremists were involved in the attack and we were clear about that.

And the other thing that was in these talking points throughout – so the question wasn’t whether there were violent extremists. Obviously, there were. But rather, the question was who exactly they were and whether there was also a demonstration at that time. It appears there wasn’t, despite the best intelligence assessments at the time.

Part of the reason that news agencies are now quoting from these is because indeed we made them available to Congress earlier this year, a number of months ago. And so the talking points were based on the intelligence community’s assessments that were the best assessment at the time.

In terms of the State Department role – and you’ve mentioned the Spokesperson’s Office – let me be clear. The State Department first reviewed the points on that Friday evening after the attacks with the understanding that they were prepared for public use by members of Congress. And we in the Spokesperson’s Office raised two primary concerns at that time: that the points went further in assigning responsibility than preliminary assessments suggested and there was concern about preserving the integrity of the investigation; and secondly, were points were inconsistent with the public language the Administration had used to date, meaning members of Congress would be providing more guidance to the public than the Administration. And so those were the two concerns we raised at the level of the Spokesperson’s Office.

Now, I can’t get into the full interagency discussion that was held and every aspect of that. Clearly, there were many other agencies involved, and the White House and others. But that’s what I can tell you about the State Department and our Spokesperson’s Office role the night of that Friday.

QUESTION: The main kind of charge that seems to – is that the CIA warned – says, anyway, in the original draft, in the first few drafts, like, seems to indicate that the CIA warned the State Department several times about a growing threat in al-Qaida, and kind of insinuates through these talking points that they said that they prepared, that the State Department ignored that warning. So did the CIA at any time warn the State Department about a growing Islamic threat in Islamist --

MR. VENTRELL: Well, again, I can’t get into intelligence assessments and how they were shared between agencies or relate the back-and-forth between us and the CIA in this regard. But what I said earlier – and I think you were just walking in, Elise – is that two things remained constant throughout. We always said that it was – in all versions of this, that it was extremists. And also, this notion of the protest was in the intelligence assessment from the beginning and through to the end. That was later – the intelligence community has talked about their updated information when they updated that assessment.

MR. VENTRELL: And then I did also, while I have the opportunity, want to raise one other thing. And that is – and this is something that’s come up this week, this notion that Mr. Hicks had testified to that somehow the FBI investigation was slowed down as a result of these talking points. And I just wanted to take that – that’s another thing that I wanted to be very clear about, just to remind people that the Libyan Government granted visas to the FBI team on the day of those Sunday talk shows. They got their flight clearance the next day, and they arrived in Tripoli on September 18th. The reason they couldn’t travel to Benghazi was because of the security situation on the ground.

And I just want to point out to other people – and this is something that seems to have been lost in the back-and-forth – that – remind people that when he was with Secretary Clinton – this is the Libyan Prime Minister, in a joint press appearance on September 24th, about a week later up at UNGA, he made clear that they would do everything – whatever was necessary to expedite the investigation into the incident and to pursue and to bring justice those perpetrators. So we really reject that claim as well.

QUESTION: -- but when Victoria Nuland, in the email – and she said “leadership,” who does that refer to when she was, like, we need changes because of the leadership?

MR. VENTRELL: I mean, again, I can’t speak to every word that’s been cherry-picked from these emails, but I can tell you as a spokesperson myself and the way that we do interagency talking points --

QUESTION: They’re full quotes; they’re not really necessarily words that are cherry-picked. I mean, the emails are out there themselves. I mean, it’s not --

QUESTION: And you feel that – do you feel that if we were able to read the emails in their entirety, they would show some kind of context that we would understand?

MR. VENTRELL: Well, of course, the emails were only one piece of the wider interagency discussion of this. And so when you take them, and snippets of them, it can be taken out of context.

MR. VENTRELL: And let me clarify, Elise. The things that I made clear, and one of the things that doesn’t necessarily come across in the snippets that have been out there, is specifically that we in the Spokesperson’s Office were looking at them as talking points for members of the House at that time. There’s a wider interagency discussion about how they were developed and how the intelligence community makes their assessments. That’s a different question. So --

QUESTION: I mean, does it matter if they were for Ambassador Rice or if they were for Congress? I mean, talking points are pretty much just like your basic knowledge of the situation and how you want to message it, right?

MR. VENTRELL: Again, I think that’s part of the point of – in terms of us at the spokesperson’s level, some of the tactical assessments are made about who’s speaking and what’s been said prior, and when we’re preparing to go to the podium after we haven’t been for a weekend, sometimes what’s going to be said out there will affect how we’re going to brief later. So those are the kind of tactical concerns we raise at a Spokesperson’s Office, and when you say you’re raising it up, that means that some of the policy makers are also going to be taking a look at it.

I can’t speak in this specific case to the exact context of who’s being referred to, but in general terms, when we as public affairs officers or spokespeople inside of an organization are negotiating online, sometimes we make additional reference to other individuals or other policy makers. So that’s the context that I can provide in general terms about how we operate as press spokespeople. And we very frequently have discussions, whether it’s over email or other format, about what are the – not only the best language to use but the best tactics in terms of explaining what we’re talking about to journalists and to others and to the American people.

QUESTION: You seem to suggest that the emails that – just reading snippets of the emails don’t really fully and accurately describe the concerns that you had. So why not just release the full emails, that the full emails will show that this wasn’t about some kind cover-up?

MR. VENTRELL: Well, first to say on that, Elise, we’ve shared these emails with the Congress --

MR. VENTRELL: -- but let me finish – and that’s been part of their concern, was to see a number of these documents, which we’ve shared – thousands of documents, indeed, including these. In terms of any redaction that would be necessary in an entire email chain in terms of sensitive or personally identifiable information or other things that go through the standard redaction process to make public release, that’s a separate process that goes through the lawyers and I can’t speak to that on an individual document. But suffice it to say, to be transparent with the Congress who had – who wanted some of this information, we shared it with the Congress. Okay?

QUESTION: The Vice Chairman of the Oversight Committee Cummings said that probably Pickering and Mullen should testify. What does – how does the State Department feel about that?

MR. VENTRELL: Well, that’s really up to them. I mean, there was a back-and-forth, and you heard Ambassador Pickering talk about a little bit before that there’d been a process with the committees where it looked like they were prevented from testifying, and so there was some concern there. Whether the committee decides that they want them to testify and those ARB members want to testify is up to them.

MR. VENTRELL: But there was some concern that they were willing to testify. I know Ambassador Pickering in particular spoke to this earlier this week about his willingness, and there was some confusion about why he wasn’t brought into the hearing earlier in the week.

QUESTION: So that’s not a State Department issue. You wouldn’t have a say in if they want to testify or not?

MR. VENTRELL: That wouldn’t necessarily be routed through us. That would be directly to them as individuals.

Asking who Nuland was referring to when she referenced her "leadership" is cherry-picking according to this doofus.

Thanks for this. It's informative.

I'll bet that top levels of CIA right now are willing to go along with the cover-up. Likely a scheme hatched by Tom Donilon of NSA.

They've all decided that CIA will take the fall to get the onus off Hillary. I wonder what Petraeus thinks.

It’s interesting that SOME reporters SOMEWHERE are actually asking questions...

And... the OFFICIAL story remains, “We THOUGHT there was a demonstration”.

Clearly... from other released information, they KNEW immediately there was NO demonstration.

I'll bet that top levels of CIA right now are willing to go along

That may well be. But, John Dean was a step down from Haldeman and Erlichman and nobody saw John Dean coming.

Well, for example, here is one damned lie from the State Department:

“...the question was who exactly they were and whether there was also a demonstration at that time. It appears there wasn’t, despite the best intelligence assessments at the time.”

The only assessments by the intelligence community at the time — which were by definition the best — did not mention a demonstrtion at all.

Only the political talking points did.

The best intelligence assessments at the time did not mention any demonstration.

This makes his phrase “despite the best intelligence assessments at the time” a blatant and damned lie.

Obfuscation:
1.
to confuse, bewilder, or stupefy.

2.
to make obscure or unclear: to obfuscate a problem with extraneous information.

3.
to darken.

Can anyone find a more apt word for this state Department conference with the press.

This whole Benghazi affair has been one Obfuscation , and lie from beginning to end, and we are supposed to clap our hands and wish Hillary and her girlfriend the Muslim Brotherhood plant in the State Department Huma Abedin a happy retirement, until she decides to run for President.

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