The vice presidential debate opened with a question about the Libyan consulate attack. While that section of the evening probably didn’t figure heavily in forming opinions about whether Vice President Biden or Paul Ryan prevailed, it did provide an interesting twist in the unfolding tale of administration prevarications about the murders in Benghazi.

In response to a pointed question from moderator Martha Raddatz about what he and the president knew about the Benghazi attack, Biden threw the intelligence community and the State Department under the bus. The vice president claimed that the story the administration put out about the terrorist attack on the consulate and the murder of the U.S. ambassador being part of the fallout from a controversial anti-Muslim video was the fault of the intelligence they were given. But rather than put the issue to bed, it raises even more troubling questions not only about the security disaster but also about the lack of leadership shown by senior administration officials, including the president. It also contradicts State Department testimony and other comments from intelligence officials that they knew it was a terror attack within 24 hours of it happening.

For Biden to put all of the blame for the lies about the video and the denial of terrorism on intelligence officials says a lot about the complete breakdown of administration counter-terror policy. His denial that anyone in Washington knew that the story put forward by Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, wasn’t true seems implausible. Even if true, it speaks to administration incompetence. The narrative here is still confused and Biden’s contribution only furthers muddies the waters.

It also demonstrates how absurd and hypocritical Democratic attacks are on Mitt Romney for his criticism of the initial reactions from Washington to both the Libya attack and the assault on the U.S. embassy in Cairo, Egypt. Efforts such as those of Biden to deflect blame for a disaster that unfolded without any leadership from the top onto the Republicans are clearly not going to work.