Feinstein questions language

The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Sunday that she planned to investigate why the CIA’s quick determination of a terrorist role in the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi, Libya, was not reflected in the “talking points” used days later on television by Susan Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations.

But the chairman, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., also said she felt certain that the White House was not behind any change in the language used. “With the allegation that the White House changed those talking points, that is false,” she said on the NBC program Meet the Press.

The White House, she said, had changed a reference to the “consulate” in Benghazi to the more accurate “mission.” “That’s the only change that anyone in the White House made, and I have checked this out,” Feinstein said.

She said a transcript of testimony given by former CIA director David Petraeus a day after the attack showed that “Petraeus very clearly said that it was a terrorist attack.”

But asked whether President Barack Obama or anyone working for him had deliberately misled the public by characterizing the attack as resulting from a spontaneous protest - to avoid invoking a terrorist threat at a key point in the presidential campaign - she was adamant, saying, “No, no.”

The U.S. ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three other Americans were killed in the attack.

Rep. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said that the talking points were amended during a review by an interdepartmental “deputies committee,” which he described as being “populated by appointees from the administration.”

“We do know that the intelligence community, as they presented it, was accurate, and it did include terrorism,” Rogers, of Michigan, said on Meet the Press.

Feinstein said that Rice, in five television appearances on Sept. 16, had carefully followed the talking points. Fe instein made quite clear her displeasure that as a result of doing so, Rice has been roundly criticized by some Republican senators.

“I have read every one of the five interviews she did that day,” Feinstein said. “She was within the context of that statement, and for this, she has been pilloried for two months.

“I don’t understand it. It has to stop.”

Obama, in his news conference on Thursday, angrily challenged Rice’s Republican critics to take their complaints directly to him.

But one of those critics, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., appeared to retreat slightly on Sunday. Asked on NBC whether he would actively block Rice should the president nominate her to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, he would not go that far.

Graham said that he was “very disappointed” in Rice, but that as a general rule, “I’m very deferential to the president’s picks.”

Another of the Republican critics, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, suggested that some sort of mea culpa from Rice might help ease her potential nomination to a Cabinet post. Still, he said, “Under the present circumstances, until we find out all the information as to what happened, I don’t think you could want to support any nominee right now.”