Who Is Responsible for Benghazi?

Apparently, David Petraeus doesn’t just lie about his private life. He also at least airbrushes the truth when it comes to national security, telling the House Intelligence Committee that he always said Benghazi was a terrorist attack.

Rep. Peter King — who attended both Petraeus’ testimony Friday and the former DCIA’s briefing to lawmakers on Sept. 14 — has a more jaundiced view:

Petraeus’ testimony both challenges the Obama administration’s repeated claims that the attack was a “spontaneous” protest over an anti-Islam video, and according to King conflicts with his own briefing to lawmakers on Sept. 14. Sources have said Petraeus, in that briefing, also described the attack as a protest that spun out of control.

“His testimony today was that from the start, he had told us that this was a terrorist attack,” King said, adding that he told Petraeus he had a “different recollection.”

But never mind the self-serving shifting sands of the increasingly slimy general. The lede from the same Fox story is the important news:

Former CIA Director David Petraeus testified in a closed-door hearing Friday morning that his agency determined immediately after the Sept. 11 Libya attack that “Al-Qaeda involvement” was suspected — but the line was taken out in the final version circulated to administration officials, according to a top lawmaker who was briefed.

There’s your smoking gun, as the saying goes. Someone, or ones, somewhere redacted that crucial line.

Who?

A commenter — CatDaddyKSC — on Breitbart.com has an interesting theory:

Consider this possibility … the talking points came from the CIA, and they were altered by the campaign people in Chicago. The coverup has been about hiding the sharing of classified information with campaign officials who don’t have the proper clearance. This sharing of information could also be the source of the earlier leaks such as the virus in Iran’s nuclear program.

I’ve always wondered why David Axelrod appeared on news programs to talk about the administration’s official policies when he was a campaign official. Those of us old enough to remember Watergate will recall the mixing of official administration business with CREEP (Committee to Reelect the President) activities and the Democrat’s outrage at the time. Perhaps we are seeing the results of a similar improper mix.

CatDaddyKSC may be on to something, and I am highlighting his comment in the hope that the FBI and the staffs of the House and Senate committees will take notice. I suspect too that, if true, this is more than just an “improper mix.” Legal lines may have been crossed here with a political campaign redacting or helping to redact classified material it should never have seen in the first place.

What may emerge is a kind of government by cabal, a super-government composed of David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett, Eric Holder, and possibly a few others who operated, in the service of the president, above and beyond our legal and constitutional systems — all the time thinking what they did was for the better good of our country.

Events like Benghazi could and should be whitewashed, since in their views Obama’s continued rule was of paramount importance. To say this is a crime beyond Watergate is to understate it. In the coming days we shall see how this evolves. It is the duty of every American citizen to watch carefully, since many forces conspire to push it under the rug.

Sheryl Longin helped with this story.

Also read: Benghazi and Willful Sharia Blindness