The misrepresentations about Hillary's claims regarding the cause of the Benghazi attack become infuriating quite quickly. It is not a black and white path, nor a linear one, nor do the email to Chelsea nor the comments to the Egyptian PM change what was claimed.
In simplified form:
The video inspired the Cairo protests
The attack in Benghazi started, and the assumption by analysts at a distance was that it mirrored the Cairo protests. Clinton assumed the analysts were correct.
Ansar-al-Sharia claimed responsibility.
Clinton sent the email to Chelsea and made comments to the Egyptian PM that jihadists were involved.
Ansar-al-Sharia retracted claims of responsibility, so the idea of video involvement came back to the fore.
CIA analysis was poorly written and badly headlined leaving the impression of video as a cause.
Morrell badly rewrote the CIA talking points, leaving the impression of video as a cause.
Rice oversteps even what the CIA talking points said and the White House and State circle the wagons to defend her (this is, imo, the one point at which Obama and Clinton played politics with it and intentionally fuzzied things).
CIA issues final report correcting the earlier mistakes, and Clinton accepts the findings.
===
It's convoluted but not difficult.
That timeline is ridiculous. Here is the real timeline.
“Everything is calm at 8:30,” a State Department official would later say at an Oct. 9 background briefing for reporters. “There’s nothing unusual. There has been nothing unusual during the day at all outside.”
6:07 p.m.: The State Department’s Operations Center sends an email to the White House, Pentagon, FBI and other government agencies that said Ansar al-Sharia has claimed credit for the attack on its Facebook and Twitter accounts. This is based on information from Embassy Tripoli
About 10:00 p.m.: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issues a statement confirming that one State official was killed in an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. Her statement, which MSNBC posted at 10:32 p.m., made reference to the anti-Muslim video.
11:12 p.m.: Clinton sends an email to her daughter, Chelsea, that reads: “Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an al Qaeda-like group: The Ambassador, whom I handpicked and a young communications officer on temporary duty w a wife and two young children. Very hard day and I fear more of the same tomorrow.”
Sept. 12: Jake Sullivan, Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, sends an email prior to Obama’s Rose Garden address to Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security advisor for strategic communications at the White House, and others that says, “There was not really much violence in Egypt. And we are not saying that the violence in Libya erupted ‘over inflammatory videos.’”
September 12 Statement from Ansar al Sharia:
Ansar al-Shariah Brigade didn’t participate in this popular uprising as a separate entity, but it was carrying out its duties in al-Jala’a hospital and other places where it was entrusted with some duties. The Brigade didn’t participate as a sole entity; rather, it was a spontaneous popular uprising in response to what happened by the West.
Sept. 12, 3:04 p.m.: Clinton calls then-Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Qandil and tells him, “We know the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack — not a protest.”
Sept. 12, 6:06 p.m.: Beth Jones, the acting assistant secretary of state for the Near East, sends an email to top State Department officials that reads in part: “[T]he group that conducted the attacks, Ansar al-Sharia, is affiliated with Islamic extremists.”
It's
convoluted but not difficult
