CBS Evening News Highlights Collapse Of Right Wing Scandal Mongering Over Benghazi Talking Points

From the May 16 edition of CBS' CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley:

Video file

SCOTT PELLEY: Also at his news conference today the president called for tighter security for U.S. diplomatic facilities to prevent an attack like the one in Benghazi, Libya, last year that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Of course, Benghazi has become a political controversy. Republicans claim that the Administration watered down the facts in talking points that were given to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice for television appearances while Mr. Obama was running for reelection. Republicans on Capitol Hill claim that they had found proof of this in White House e-mails that they leaked to reporters last week. Well, it turns out some of the quotes in those e-mails were wrong. Major Garrett is at the White House for us tonight. Major?

MAJOR GARRETT: Scott, Republicans have claimed that the State Department under Hillary Clinton was trying to protect itself from criticism. The White House released the real e-mails late yesterday, and here's what we found when we compared them to the quotes that had been provided by Republicans. One e-mail was written by Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes.

On Friday, Republicans leaked what they said was a quote from Rhodes. “We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don't want to undermine the FBI investigation.” But it turns out, in the actual e-mail Rhodes did not mention the State Department. It read “We need to resolve this in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, particularly the investigation.”

Republicans also provided what they said was a quote from an e-mail written by State Department Spokesman Victoria Nuland. The Republican version quotes Nuland discussing: “The penultimate point is a paragraph talking about all the previous warnings provided by the Agency about al-Qaeda's presence and activities of al-Qaeda.” The actual e-mail from Nuland says: the "...penultimate point could be abused by Members to beat the State Department for not paying attention to Agency warnings..." The C.I.A. agreed with the concerns raised by the State Department and revised the talking points to make them less specific than the C.I.A.'s original version, eliminating references to al-Qaeda and affiliates and earlier security warnings. There is no evidence, Scott, the White House orchestrated these changes.

PELLEY: Major, thank you.

Previously:

Media Observers on ABC's Jonathan Karl Benghazi Talking Points Story: “Sloppy” And “Inaccurate”

What ABC And The Weekly Standard Got Wrong On The Benghazi Emails

Should Jonathan Karl Reveal His Benghazi Email Source?