The Great War of Our Time: The CIA's Fight Against Terrorism--From Al Qa'ida to ISIS (30 page)

Again, a few members of the House Intelligence Committee have argued that I acted outside my purview when I removed the warning language. Since these were “CIA talking points,” such an argument is absurd. But it is particularly silly given that the primary reason I excised the material was to protect the Central Intelligence Agency.

What I didn’t know at the time was that the warning language had been inserted at the suggestion of my boss, David Petraeus. The director’s chief of staff did not tell me that. Had I known it, I would have walked into the director’s office and discussed it with him that evening. Even though I made it clear that I did not like the warning language, I made no changes to the talking points on Friday evening—this is an inaccuracy in the Senate Intelligence Committee report on Benghazi, which said I did make a change on Friday—as I told my staff I would look at the talking points after they had been fully coordinated in the interagency review process.

The next morning, Saturday, started with my executive assistant’s informing me of two things. First, the State Department, at the working level, had informed us that it objected to the inclusion of the warning language and, because of this, the talking points were in limbo (this was the first time I became aware that the department did not like the talking points). And second, Denis McDonough, Obama’s deputy national security advisor, wanted to discuss the talking points at the deputies meeting scheduled for that morning, which suggested to me that he had been made aware of State’s concern about the warning language. I mentioned all of this to Director Petraeus and his chief of staff on Saturday morning, telling them that I agreed with the State Department’s position and explaining why. Petraeus didn’t argue the point and didn’t tell me he was the one who’d asked for the language to be inserted in the first place.

By the very the end of the deputies meeting, McDonough had not raised the talking point issue, so I did. I told my colleagues that I had some concerns about the talking points and that I knew other agencies did as well. I did not say what my concerns were. I concluded by saying I would edit the talking points myself and share them with the relevant deputies before sending them to the Hill. McDonough simply said, “Thank you, Michael.”

That Saturday was “Family Day” at CIA—an annual event at which the kin of Agency employees are invited to tour our headquarters complex. Because of the nature of intelligence work, the close relatives of CIA officers are rarely allowed to visit Langley. But once per year, on Family Day, employees can bring loved ones in to view exhibits, try on disguises, look at spy gear, take a polygraph test, and tour the director’s and deputy director’s offices. So while hundreds of folks trooped through my office to say hello, I was thinking about the talking points that were waiting for me on my assistant’s desk. I finally sat down with them late that morning. While I did some significant editorial work, my main substantive contribution was to remove the warning language.

I also took out the word “Islamic” in front of “extremists,” an action for which I have also been criticized (for allegedly trying to downplay the role of al Qa‘ida in the attacks). I removed the word “Islamic” for risk mitigation. Demonstrations were occurring in many countries throughout the Muslim world because of the YouTube video defaming the Prophet Muhammad, and the last thing I wanted was to encourage any American to say anything that could make the situation worse. And I thought, incorrectly, that “extremists” would carry the same message as “Islamic extremists”—that this had been a terrorist attack.

When I coordinated the talking points with my deputies colleagues, no significant changes were made. Throughout the entire
process, the White House suggested only three changes and all of them were editorial—not a single one involved an analytic judgment—undercutting the conspiracy theory that the White House played a large role in editing the talking points. Finally, before having our Office of Congressional Affairs send the talking points to the Hill, I asked that the substantive experts and Director Petraeus review and sign off on them. All did so.

One of the narratives in the media has been that I “overruled” my boss on the question of whether or not to include the warning language. Believe me, there was no overruling Director Petraeus on anything. I had a conversation with the director about the warning language, in which he did not oppose my decision to remove it, and he had the opportunity at the end of the process to ask that the warning language be added back in. He did not do so.

While I am the first to admit that the talking points could have been better—they could have been more clearly written and they could have been more robust—the analytic judgments in them were fully consistent with what CIA had written for policy-makers on the morning of the thirteenth. This included the language about the assault on the TMF having evolved from a spontaneous protest. In short, what we were allowing HPSCI members to say publicly was exactly what we had said in our classified publications. Also, and importantly, CIA did not know that the talking points would be used publicly the next day by a senior administration official. We did not know that Susan Rice was going to use them on the Sunday-morning news shows.

It was only much later—in the spring of 2014—that it became clear to me how UN ambassador Susan Rice had come to receive our talking points. They were embedded in a much longer set of White House–produced talking points designed to prepare Ambassador Rice to appear on the Sunday shows the next day. Again, nothing
in the CIA talking points was markedly different from the finished intelligence that Rice and other senior officials had been seeing over the previous four days.

But there was something different in the White House–produced points sent to Rice’s staff. There was a phrase in the “Goals” section: “To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.” The White House has argued that its talking points were not about Benghazi but about the broader protests taking place in the region. But that explanation does not hold water—because just one bullet point later in the “Goals” section of the White House talking points is the following: “To show that we will be resolute in bringing people who harm Americans to justice”—and the only place Americans had been harmed during that period was in Benghazi. My reading of the White House talking points is that they were blaming the Benghazi attack on the video—which is not something CIA did in its talking points or in its classified analysis.

The White House view that its talking points were not about Benghazi had an important consequence. That view meant that the White House talking points did not need to be publicly released in the spring of 2013 along with the other materials related to the executive branch’s public narrative on the Benghazi attacks. This put the entire focus on the CIA talking points.

I had another reaction to the White House talking points as well. I have always believed that there should be a bright red line in any White House between the individuals responsible for national security and those responsible for politics. And the line about how Benghazi was not a failure rooted in broader policy seemed to me to be a political statement, not a national security one.

The reaction to what Ambassador Rice said on those Sunday shows became a slow-moving tidal wave that eventually sank the president’s intention to nominate her as secretary of state. A good
bit of what she said was consistent with the CIA points, but she also said that the video had led to the protests in Benghazi. Why she said this I do not know. It is a question that only she can answer. Perhaps she was following the White House talking points. Perhaps she had her own views; policy-makers are permitted to do so. In this regard, perhaps she was “connecting the dots.” After all, the analysts did believe that the incident in Cairo had been caused by the video and that at least one of the motivations for the protest in Benghazi had been the “success” of those who had gotten over the embassy fence in Cairo. The harder statement to explain is why Rice said that there was a “substantial security presence” in Benghazi, as that point was not in either the CIA or the White House talking points.

That Saturday morning, a day before Ambassador Rice went on the Sunday shows and before I edited the talking points, another set of conversations took place that some would come to see as evidence of politicization on the part of the Agency and me. One media outlet accused me of knowing that there had not been a protest when I edited the talking points—because the CIA chief of station in Tripoli had written me a note telling me so on the morning that I edited them. Here is the real story.

Each CIA station chief in the Muslim countries affected by the regional violence had been asked to send in daily situation reports. In the situation report, or SITREP, from Tripoli filed on Saturday, September 15, our chief there noted that the attacks in Benghazi “were not/not an escalation of protests.” The word
not
was repeated for emphasis. That claim immediately jumped out at me—because I recognized that it was inconsistent with what the analysts thought.

What also jumped out at me, however, was that neither of the chief’s two explanations in the e-mail was compelling. He noted that some press reports said there had been no protest—but that was not convincing because there were also press reports saying just the
opposite. And he explained that his officers in Benghazi, when they reached the TMF that night, had not seen a protest. That was also not compelling because his officers had arrived at the TMF almost an hour after the attack started, and a protest, if there had been one, could easily have dissipated by then. Finally, I was struck by the fact that on the previous day the chief’s own station had sent in a report from a CIA source saying there had been a protest at the TMF. Given all of this, I immediately requested that the chief send a more detailed note, with “supporting evidence and logic” for his view.

I took another step that morning. During the Deputies Committee meeting, I told my colleagues about our chief of station’s view regarding the protest; I pointed out that it differed from what the analysts thought and that we would work to resolve this difference, and get back to everyone. This was not the action of someone who was trying to hide the chief’s view—a charge made against me by some in the media and some in Congress.

The chief responded quickly to my tasking and his follow-on note arrived early on the morning of Sunday, September 16. I did two things. First, I tasked the analysts to read it and to tell me in writing by five p.m. that same day whether the chief’s argument changed their judgment in any way regarding the protest question. Second, I forwarded the chief’s e-mail to Director Petraeus, telling him, “Sir—The bottom line is that I do not know what to make of this. We need to have the analysts look at this and see if there is anything here that changes their view. I have asked them to do so.” The director responded to my note, saying, “Look forward to what the analysts have to say.”

That same Sunday afternoon, the analysts responded with a memo to both the director and me. They stuck with their original view, although they indicated that they were keeping an open mind on the question.

I handled this situation exactly the way I should have. Despite
the claims of some members of Congress and some media commentators, at CIA our operations officers collect intelligence and our analysts produce the assessments. Period. That is the way it has been for the entire history of the organization. Operations officers are the eyes and ears of CIA; analysts are the voice of the organization. Analysts have access to all the available information; our officers in the field do not.

Some have said that I “sided with the analysts” in this debate and that I made a decision that the Agency was going to “go with the analysts’ view rather than our station chief’s view.” At CIA, directors and deputy directors do not tell the analysts what to think and they do not determine the analytic line of the Agency. The analysts do.

While the analysts establish the official line of the Agency, CIA chiefs of station are free—indeed, they are encouraged—to put on record their own view, particularly if it differs from that of the analysts. Our chiefs can, and do quite frequently, disseminate across the intelligence community and within the policy community assessments that capture their own views on a situation (these assessments are called “aardwolfs”—named after an African mammal that has a keen understanding of its environment). Our chief in Tripoli did not produce such an assessment on the protest issue.

Seven days after the CIA talking points were produced—on September 22—the analysts changed their judgment based on new information they had received in the days since their initial assessment, explaining that armed assailants had been present from the incident’s outset and that this suggested it had been an intentional assault and not the escalation of a peaceful protest. The analysts changed their judgment after the Libyan government recovered the security surveillance footage from the TMF’s multiple video cameras, watched it, saw no protest, informed our station of that on September 18, and turned over the footage a few days later.

* * *

In the days, weeks, and months that followed, Benghazi became a constant stream of controversy. Take for example a media story at the time—and recently replayed in a book—that alleged that CIA senior leaders had ordered their officers at our Benghazi base to “stand down” and not come to the aid of their State Department colleagues. Here is what really happened. Within minutes of the attack, the TMF called our base and asked for immediate assistance. The Agency officers sprang into action, breaking out their weapons, armor, and vehicles. These are the kind of men who instinctively run toward danger rather than from it, to help those in harm’s way. And that is exactly the kind of response I’d expected from them. It took about fifteen minutes for them to assemble their gear and be ready to deploy. I expected a different kind of response from the chief of base, and he delivered on that expectation. He had to ensure that he was not sending his officers needlessly to their deaths. So he tried to round up assistance from local Libyan militias. In a few minutes it became clear that there would be no assistance from the locals. While these calls were being made, the response team was frustrated that it was not moving out. Although the delay was no more than five to eight minutes, I am sure that to those involved it must have seemed like forever. The delay was in no way ordered by anyone further up in the chain of command. It was totally justified under the circumstances, and it was exactly the right decision by our chief on the ground.