The New York Times put the Benghazi hearing on its front page as its lead story today, with a carryover to page 3 – a sign that even the Times concluded the news was fit to prominently print.
As published, the story differed from the version posted late yesterday on the Times’ website, which is not unusual, as stories posted quickly on the web are often refined for the later print version. But perhaps it is worth preserving two paragraphs from the initial web version that were left on the cutting room floor, since they reflect a unanimous view on an issue repeatedly raised in the hearing:
All three witnesses – Mr. Hicks, Mr. Nordstrom and Mark I. Thompson, the former deputy coordinator for operations in the State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau – insisted that the inflammatory anti-Islamic YouTube video that the White House initially blamed for the attack was something they never considered a factor in the assault on the compound.
Republicans raised the question of the video again and again on Wednesday because it has become clear that American officials on the ground and in Washington immediately believed that attackers were terrorists, not demonstrators who turned violent, as Ms. Rice alleged in a series of Sunday talk show interviews shortly after the Benghazi attack.
In a statement that lit up Twitter yesterday as soon as it was made, Hicks said “the video was a non-event in Libya” – not just in Benghazi but elsewhere in the country. That statement was not reported by the Times in either its post or its printed story.
We still do not have the full story of how the State Department and the White House scrubbed the Benghazi talking points of any reference to a terrorist attack and handed them to the UN ambassador to deliver on TV. For that story, we will need to hear from witnesses other than those who testified yesterday. It has now been confirmed, however, as a result of sworn testimony, that those – unlike the UN ambassador – who had personal knowledge of what happened the night of September 11 all knew immediately what they were (and were not) facing. And undoubtedly so did those who gave the UN ambassador the talking points.
