This morning, Washington Post fact checker Glen Kessler decided to fact check Marco Rubio’s statement at the latest GOP debate that Hillary Clinton lied about al Qaeda’s involvement in the September 11, 2012 attack in Benghazi. In public, Clinton initially attributed the attack to spontaneous protests arising from a blasphemous YouTube video. We now know that on the evening of the attack Clinton emailed her daughter Chelsea saying the attack was by an “al-Queda like group.” Nonetheless, Kessler gives Rubio two Pinocchios out of a possible four, concluding:
Along the way, Kessler ends up making some questionable judgements in explaining how the intelligence assessments on Benghazi played out, and appears to have exposed Hillary Clinton wrongly disseminating classified info. More on that last point in a bit, but first, it’s worth noting that the Clinton campaign is engaged in some mendacious spin.
He quotes a Clinton campaign spokesman. “Josh Schwerin, a Clinton spokesman, said, ‘Rubio’s statement that she ever said the video was the cause is false.’” This statement comes right after Kessler himself notes that multiple family members of the men killed in Benghazi have reported Clinton personally told them she blamed the video as the cause and even promised to have the filmmaker arrested. That’s surely worth some Pinocchios, right? It seems like a pretty good indicator that Clinton and her campaign aren’t inclined to be honest here.
From there, Kessler attempts to finger the CIA for being the source of Hillary’s confusion:
(Morell’s testimony contradicts Rubio’s claim on CNN on Oct. 29, the morning after the debate, that “there was never a shred of evidence presented to anyone that this was spontaneous. And the CIA understood that.” On CBS, Rubio also claimed that it was “not accurate” that the CIA changed its assessment, which is also wrong.)
I don’t know which Morrell testimony Kessler is citing, because the deputy director testified before Congress in 2014 and his testimony then appears to support Rubio’s claim. Here’s how the WEEKLY STANDARD’s Thom Joscelyn reported on Morrell’s April 2, 2014 testimony:
“The analysts said from the get-go that al Qaeda was involved in this attack,” Morell said.
The former CIA man was asked why, then, was “al Qaeda” edited out of the administration’s now infamous talking points.
“The only way we knew that anybody who was involved in that attack that night was associated with al Qaeda was from classified sources,” Morell claimed.
Minutes later he reiterated the point: “The only way we knew that some of the people who were involved in the attack that night were associated with al Qaeda was from classified sources.”
According to Morell, if the CIA had included a reference to al Qaeda in the administration’s talking points, then it would have had to declassify that sensitive intelligence.
This is doubtful. The Obama administration could have made a general reference to “al Qaeda” in its earliest explanations of the Benghazi attack without exposing any specific intelligence. It was not a stretch to link al Qaeda to a terrorist attack on the anniversary of September 11, 2001.
Two points here. First, Morrell is trying to square an improbable circle. It’s hard to acknowledge that CIA always knew al Qaeda played a role in the attack and explain why this basic fact of the attack was left out of the Obama administration’s public talking points, in favor of Clinton and other administration officials blaming the video. (There were other contradictory assessments, more on that in a bit.) As Joscelyn notes, it is hard to believe this is anything other than CYA.
Second, let’s assume Morrell is telling the truth and revealing al Qaeda affiliates were involved in the attack would jeopardize classified CIA sources. If that’s the case, what was Hillary Clinton doing disseminating this information to her daughter on her insecure, home-brew personal email server?
Either Hillary Clinton was actively engaged in dishonesty, or she was mishandling classified info. Which is it?
Beyond this, Kessler’s fact check is something of a train wreck. First, he gives an incredibly generous reading of the House Intelligence Committee’s Benghazi report to defend Hillary Clinton:
This characterization of the report is, at best, far too generous. This is from finding 11 of the House Intelligence Committee report:
However, it was not clear whether the terrorist attacks were committed by al-Qa’ida or by various groups of other bad actors, some of who may have been affiliated with al-Qa’ida. Early CIA, NCTC, DIA, and CJCS intelligence assessments on September 12th and 13th stated that members of AAS and various al-Qa’ida affiliates “likely,” “probably,” or “possibl[y]” participated in the attacks.
So, while there were some contradictory bits of evidence floating around, there was plenty of evidence al Qaeda elements were involved in the attack. In fact, the initial and “ironic” CIA report Kessler cites notes that the weapons involved in the attack strongly suggest it was a pre-planned attack, not a spontaneous protest.
What evidence was there for the “theory” that it was the result of the video? The report isn’t specific at all on that point, beyond vague references to intelligence assessments. As for how the theory that the video was behind the attacks, Kessler overlooks how the report notes the Obama administration, which was in full reelection mode, had a political motive not to acknowledge Benghazi as a terrorist attack:
Kessler also writes the following, which needlessly muddies the waters: “Amazingly, the CIA analysts did not gain access to eyewitness accounts until Sept. 22, when the FBI first published an intelligence report on its interviews.” Actually, CIA analysts should have known better sooner than that. The report notes that a message the Tripoli station chief sent to Morrell on September 16 said there was no “‘ground truth reporting’ that a protest occurred and that the attacks did not appear to be the ‘result of escalating mob violence,'” and “based on his conversations with the security personnel who had been on the ground, the analysts should not rely on the intelligence indicating that a protest occurred.” Susan Rice went on national television the same day blaming the video for the attack, so the subtext of the station chief’s note appears to be trying to keep the CIA from being implicated in political talking points that are easily disprovable. And contra Kessler, at least by five days after the attack, CIA analysts should have been warned off of saying the attack was caused by the video, and that assessment was rooted in eyewitness accounts.
Kessler is right in noting there were a lot of contradictory things being said in the first 10 days or so after the attack, but he doesn’t make any effort to assess how political motivations played a role in this. If you read the House Intelligence Committee’s report, you know that the public accounts of what happened in Benghazi from the CIA and broader intelligence community appear far from reliable. With an election two months away, it would clearly redound to the administration’s benefit to stick to talking points denying an al Qaeda terror attack had killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans, or at the very least muddy the waters thoroughly before a media narrative can gel. And it continues to benefit Hillary Clinton that Kessler elides over a lot of information to ignore the political motivations. Finally, is no one troubled by the fact that not only was it erroneous to blame the attack on the video, but there were awfully chilling First Amendment implications involved in this explanation and carrying out a threat to arrest filmmaker?
Reading between the lines of his fact check, Kessler does appear to be hedging his bets a bit. And in general, Kessler is right that you should be careful when you call someone a liar. But this is a classic example of why media fact checking worsens political debates, rather than improves our understanding. In light of the evidence, the implication that Rubio’s a liar for calling Clinton a liar is unfair to Rubio. There’s lots of evidence that suggests she is lying about Benghazi, and just how much benefit of the doubt does she deserve? Given what we know now, would anyone say Hillary Clinton didn’t lie about her email server multiple times when that controversy erupted earlier this year? What about the Clintons’s historical track record of honesty? And it’s especially questionable when Kessler himself reports her campaign is currently telling untruths about how she characterized the Benghazi attack to the victims’ families.
Kessler works harder, is fairer, generally does a much better job that than his fact checking peers, and he’s always been responsive to criticism. And yet, even the exception proves the rule: It’s impossible to imagine a Republican figure with such a checkered reputation for honesty getting this kind of benefit of the doubt from a media “fact checker.”
