Policy

CIA Called Source of Diluted Benghazi Talking Points

It was bureaucratic inertia what done it

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"A highly cautious, bureaucratic process that had the effect of watering down the U.S.'s own intelligence" led to the controversial "talking points" that U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice used when she spoke about the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, The Wall Street Journal reports this morning.

In a story based on interviews of "officials from a cross-section of agencies who had direct knowledge of the deliberations," the Journal adds more reporting to the picture of why Rice on Sept. 16 said on Sunday talk shows that "extremist elements" may have been involved in the attack — but did not refer to them as terrorists or say they were connected to al-Qaida.