Thread by @JewhadiTM

9/11/2012: Politicized Intel on Benghazi Previewed the Obama Admin's Russia Hoax breitbart.com/politics/2019/…

2 congressional sources who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity said Mike Morell, acting CIA Dir, along with Dir of National Intel James Clapper and National Counterterrorism Center Dir Matthew Olsen testified behind closed doors that they didn’t alter the talking points.

On Nov. 16, 2012, former CIA director David Petraeus testified before the same congressional intelligence committee and also replied no to the question of whether he had changed the talking points, three congressional sources told Reuters.

Then on Nov. 27 the CIA reportedly told lawmakers that it had in fact changed the wording of the unclassified talking points to delete a reference to al-Qaida. That Nov. 27 meeting was between Morell, Rice and Sens. Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte and the late John McCain.

A statement by McCain, Graham and Ayotte specifically related that Morell told them during the meeting that the FBI had removed references to al-Qaida from the talking points “and did so to prevent compromising an ongoing criminal investigation” of the attack on the U.S. mission.

The senators’ joint statement specifically reads: “Around 10:00 this morning in a meeting requested by Ambassador Rice, accompanied by acting CIA Director Mike Morell, we asked Mr. Morell who changed the unclassified talking points to remove references to al-Qaida.

In response, Mr. Morell said the FBI removed the references and did so to prevent compromising an ongoing criminal investigation. We were surprised by this revelation and the reasoning behind it.”

Meanwhile, a few hours after his meeting with the senators, Morell’s office reportedly contacted Graham and stated that Morell “misspoke” in the earlier meeting and that it was, in fact, the CIA, not the FBI, that deleted the al-Qaida references.

“They were unable to give a reason as to why,” stated Graham of the strange about face. “CIA officials contacted us and indicated that Acting Director Morell misspoke in our earlier meeting. The CIA now says that it deleted the al-Qaida references, not the FBI.”

“They were unable to give a reason as to why,” Graham said in a statement.

An intelligence official called Morell’s change “an honest mistake and it was corrected as soon as it was realized. There is nothing more to this.”

A U.S. intelligence official further told CBS News there was “absolutely no intent to misinform.” The official claimed the talking points “were never meant to be definitive and, in fact, noted that the assessment may change.”

“The points clearly reflect the early indications of extremist involvement in a direct result. It wasn’t until after they were used in public that analysts reconciled contradictory information about how the assault began.”

Graham at the time went so far as to suggest he would hold up the nomination of Morell if Obama had nominated him to be the CIA director, a position ultimately filled by John Brennan.

All of the sudden, in June 2013, Morell announced he was stepping down to spend more time with family. In a statement, he acknowledged the reason for stepping down may be difficult to swallow, but “when I say that it is time for my family, nothing could be more real than that”

Morell served 33 years in the agency and was a frontrunner for CIA director. Morell later reemerged as a counselor to Beacon Global Strategies, a consult group particularly close to Hillary Clinton.

The firm is led by Philippe I. Reines, who served from 2009 to 2013 as Clinton’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Strategic Communications and Senior Communications Advisor.

In February 2014 a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report revealed that Morell was in receipt of critical information on Sep. 15, 2012, one day before Rice used the talking points publically.

The report said that Morell and others at the CIA received an email from the CIA’s Libya station chief stating the attacks were “not/not an escalation of protests.”

So on the same day Morell helped to edit the talking points by calling the attacks a “demonstration,” he received information from his own station chief clearly contradicting this claim.

“Evidence rebuts administration claims that the talking points were modified to protect classified information or to protect an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),” the report states, directly contradicting Morell’s claims.

The report charges that the talking points were “deliberately” edited to “protect the State Department.”

“Specifically, State Department emails reveal senior officials had ‘serious concerns’ about the talking points, because members of Congress might attack the State Department for ‘not paying attention to agency warnings’ about the growing threat in Benghazi.

The administration even spent $70,000 in taxpayer funds on an ad campaign denouncing an anti-Muhammad film. The ads reportedly aired on seven Pakistani networks.

Meanwhile, some of the same personalities involved in the Benghazi talking points scandal played key roles in perpetuating the Russia collusion narrative.

Brennan’s CIA reportedly convened a “secret task force at CIA headquarters composed of several dozen analysts and officers from the CIA, the NSA and the FBI” that formed the early stages of the Russia probe, stages now under investigation by the Trump administration.