On Friday, November 21, the Republican-majority House Intelligence Committee released a report about the CIA and the intelligence community’s conduct in the terror attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya. The report uncritically accepted the CIA’s defense of its conduct, and so reporters hastened to accuse previous Republican inquiries and hearings into Benghazi of being illegitimate political theater. National Journal’s Ron Fournier said the “GOP should be ashamed.” Politico’s Michael Grunwald said the report suggested “Benghazi wasn’t really a scandal.” The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf suggested “audiences of conservative sites [should] express anger at being misled about Benghazi for so long.”
It would be nice if the journalists using the report as a cudgel read the thing. The report is for the most part more damning than the gloss reporters are putting on it. And the parts that aren’t damning are a classic Washington whitewash. It is in no way a complete overview of all that happened on that fateful day of September 11, 2012, nor does it review the conduct of everyone involved. And one of the central facts confirmed by the report is an indictment of the mainstream media coverage of Benghazi. (Here’s one of the things that should have tipped off reporters about the weaknesses in the report: It unironically uses the phrase “mistakes were made” on page one.)
So what does the report get right? To start with, last December the New York Times ran a lengthy piece the paper claimed was based on months of investigation, concluding there was “no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault” and “it was fueled in large part by anger at an American-made video denigrating Islam.” This conclusion was preposterous, and The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes (as well as our contributor Thomas Joscelyn) quickly debunked it. Nonetheless, this remained the “official” version of events right up until hours before the House report dropped confirming that, yes, Benghazi was an al Qaeda attack and, no, it had absolutely nothing to do with a video. That morning, the Times revised its version of events. But soon, everyone in the media was too busy wrongly using the report to shame Republicans to note the stunning journalistic failure.
And notably, the report reviewed only CIA conduct—it did not review the State Department’s actions (or lack thereof). The report notes, “The State Department had contracted with the February 17th Brigade” to provide security in Benghazi. Interestingly enough, the report does not note the full name—the “February 17th Martyrs Brigade,” or that the group is now allied with Ansar al Sharia, which led the attack that night. It would be nice to know more about how this security decision was made, but if the media asked reasonable questions it might put a damper on publishing op-eds from Clintonistas such as Lanny Davis demanding the GOP investigate itself in the wake of the report. Team Hillary is hoping the report will divorce Hillary from any responsibility for the Benghazi tragedy. It assuredly does not.
Finally, the report details a disconcerting version of events showing how the Obama administration’s Benghazi talking points were crafted in a highly politicized and flawed process. If you think the administration denied known facts about al Qaeda’s involvement in favor of blaming a YouTube video, attacking the First Amendment, and putting the president’s reelection above the truth—the report lends credibility to this version of events. The report has numerous other problems (The Scrapbook’s friend Mollie Hemingway published a 6,000-word account at the Federalist of “20 ways the media completely misread” the report, and she was only summarizing). The Scrapbook encourages you to read the report for yourself. Heaven knows the media have no plans to bother.
