i have my own concerns with the talking points. i will edit them and send it back around for final coordination before we send them to the committee. what you are looking at here is what i did. i'm responsible for the changes on this piece of paper. the names you see are the names of the individuals who i wanted to send the talking points to one more time before we send them to you. so let me go through them. first you see in cs and the eye. what i wanted to make sure it's the final version of the talking points were okay from the

perspective of our operations officers and from the perspective of our analysts and i was most interested in knowing that they were okay from the perspective of the director of ota who you know and you and i both have great respect for. let's go down the names. robert trujillo was and is the number three in the office of the director of national intelligence. he represents the dni and deputies views. alan p. know was the intelligence officer for the middle east. he was at that deputies meeting. mats olson was and is the director of the national counterterrorism center. jake sullivan was then the head of policy planning at the state department and is now the vice president's national security adviser. mark juliano was head of the fbi

's national security division. lisa monico was head of the department of justice national security division and ben rhodes was the national security staff. >> during any of those conversations with anyone on that list no one including the spokesperson for the national security council indicated that there needed to be changes for any reason whatsoever? >> i never spoke to any of these people. they only sent an e-mail. the changes that were suggested by the national security staff was at that point and at that point they had made to suggestions earlier in the process before i was even aware that the talking points existed but at that point in the process they only change that the national security staff suggested was a change that was suggested by ben rhodes to

change the word consulate to diplomatic post and he suggested that change for accuracy purposes since it was technically not a consulate. that is the only change that was suggested at that time to the talking points. >> did anyone tell you that the talking points were going to be used for susan rice? the ambassador the united nations? >> no, sir. >> did anyone tell you in the subsequent days on september 15 once he realized there was a fairly extensive description of why the conclusion was that it was not a protest on the 15th, to that information making into the hands of the individuals who would have provided those talking points to susan rice? >> i'm sorry sir i don't follow. >> you sent a detailed medication to you and your staff indicating all of the reasons that he believed that this was an extremist attack that had some level of preplanning.

did that information ever make it to the individuals on the list? did they ever hear about this conversation from your the agency? >> yes, so the detailed e-mail sent on the morning of the 16th, what i did with that was two things. the first thing i did with that was immediately sent it to the analyst and say so now what do you think and the analyst responded to that e-mail hours later saying look we are sticking to our judgment. the second thing i did was to send that document to dr. petraeus and i think my note to him said something like sir i do not know what to make of this discrepancy between the station chief in the analyst. i have asked the analyst to look at it and i believe his response was let's see what the analysts say. i do know that either the monday or tuesday of the following week

just as i had given the deputies a heads-up that this was an issue i told the deputies orally that the analysts had looked at the issue and that they were sticking with their judgment that there had been a protest. >> so with all of your training and all of your experience your gut reaction did you believe that was the right decision? >> i believe what i analysts said that there was a protest. i also believed it to be a terrorist attack. you see we never saw those two things as mutually exclusive and so i believe both of those at the same time. >> knowing what you know now would you have been surprised that many of the eyewitnesses we have talked to said they were surprised by the narrative on sunday the 16th? they were shocked, members of your organization. i think the word was shocked. >> i'm a little surprised by that quite frankly because if they were members of my

organization, to that they would have seen the analysis written on the 13th that said there was a protest and said the attack evolved spontaneously from the protest so if they were shocked on sunday when they heard that they were shocked on thursday the 13th when they read it. >> and you are familiar with the executive, on the 12th something that i received did say that it was likely not opportunistic. it was because of the description of the armed insurgency that in fact on the 12th it was in fact on that day so there was a different narrative from the folks on the ground than there was by the analysts here. you can imagine how that creates confusion and the investigators and why some might draw that conclusion at the height of a political campaign that maybe something doesn't look right here giving the folks on the ground the testimony that was

completely different from what the analytical product was including on the 15th which was a detailed e-mail highlighting the differences of opinion on this particular case from the folks who were on the ground during the event. >> chairman let me actually read you what that piece on the 12th set. it said the presence of armed assailants from the incidents outset suggest this was an intentional assault and not an escalation of the peaceful protests. very interesting. here is what really happened though. so the analyst who wrote the piece in the very early morning hours of the 12th mind you the tax it just occurred compact and the analysts were putting together what we call a situation report. when the analysts finished with the piece and when the analyst went home, that sentence was not

in there. that sentence was added by one of the editors after the analyst left. the editors said that she thought there needed to be a bottom line. she was a trained military analyst and she wrote that sentence. when the analyst came in the next morning they were very unhappy that sentence had been added and they complained about the addition of that sentence. that is what happened. it was a bureaucratic mistake. no politics. i can certainly understand the confusion it created and in retrospect what we probably should have done was when we wrote the piece on the 13th was to make it clear how the language evolved from what was said on the 12th to get rid of that confusion. i agree with you 100%. >> i'm not sure i would call it a bureaucratic mistake if the analyst was right. >> but that analyst was not an

analyst, was not a counterterrorism analyst and wasn't not an analyst on benghazi. she was looking at it as an editor and adding a judgment that she had no right to add. >> may be on your time you can ask the question and we have a lot of questions here. have a lot of questions here and i will pass out to members at the end. at any time did you have any verbal conversation with anybody at the white house about what the nature of those talking points were and what they needed to look like? >> no, sir. >> at any time you do have any conversation with anybody at the white house and i mean anybody, that had anything to do with comparing susan rice for going out in being the face for america on september 16? >> no, sir. i didn't even know she was of

going to be on the sunday show. >> no one asked you to prepare talking points for her porch of prepare documents for her? >> no sir. >> what she briefed by the agency or a half informational much aerials available from the materials we disgusted she have any of those materials? >> i i believe schiavo talking points. >> just the talking points. >> i believe she of the talking points but she would have had access to all of the intelligence information that she had received in the days before. >> would that have included the september 15 analysis from your chief of station on the ground? >> no. that was not disseminated outside of the cia. >> don't you think that was an important document to get into the hands of someone who is going to brief the country on what's actually happening on the ground? >> like i said, he gave two reasons why he believed what he believed. like i said i did not find either one of them compelling.

like i said i asked him for more information. it took them 24 hours to produce that. once he produced that i asked the analyst to relook at their judgment. they did within hours. they stuck to their judgment and like i said i did give the deputies and oral heads up that the station chief had a different view. >> i have more questions. i know there are a lot of folks that want to ask questions. thank you very much. >> mr. chairman mr. schiff had to go to a hearing. i would like to be in regular order and give my time at this point and then go back to regular order. is that okay? >> i think the ranking member and i also want to take the opportunity to thank the chairman for the way he has led our committee. you brought a real commitment to the country's security to this job. you have been thorough in your preparation of the hearings

though we have on occasional butted heads it has never diminished my respect for you and i want to wish you success in the future. mr. morrell like way i want to appreciate all you have done and regret that it's necessary for you to come in today yet again on this issue but very grateful that you were more than willing to do so. in an opportunity to hopefully put these issues to rest. the detailed e-mail you got from the chief of station on september 16 did not include any reference to terrorist attack. that terminology, or did it? >> i don't recall, sir. >> of that terminology was not

used would it be because other terms like extremists or militants were used in its place? >> sir, one of the things we have learned of this process is that the words we use internal to the cia aren't always the worst that people outside of the cia understands understand so too was the word extremist was a synonym for the word terrorist. not only for the analyst but also our operators so when we said the word extremist we went terrorist and clearly that's not true for everybody. i think from here on out we will be more careful in thinking about what the audience is going to hear when they hear the words we say. >> is if the chief of stations did not include the word terror or terrorist attack it wasn't because they necessarily concluded that wasn't the case

but the word was often used as a proxy. >> he thought this was a terrorist attack. >> do you recall whether there was any -- whether the chief of station at the time was ready to explain it as al qaeda per se? >> in his detailed e-mail on the 16th he said regarding motivation, he said we don't know what motivated the attackers but he said i think there are three possibilities. the first was an attack on the anniversary of 9/11 using 9/11 9/11 -- the 9/11 anniversary as a reason for the attack. the second reason, the second motivation was a call for revenge by ayman zawahiri for the deaf of the senior al qaeda

leader in pakistan named ali be days before. the third motivation that he described as a possible motivation was the youtube video >> in this detailed memorandum the station chief could not discount the possibility even then that the video played a role in the attacks on the facility's? >> that is correct. >> now a couple of the reasons that the chief of station believed there was no spontaneous demonstration word that he discounted certain signals intelligence. is that right? >> that is correct. >> that signals intelligence indicated there was a demonstration in ashley at the consulate. >> that is correct. >> and even if you discounted that particular signal

intelligence was that the only signals intelligence that was pointing in that direction indicating that there had been a protest? >> sir there were roughly 12 reports, some of them press reports, some of them intelligence reports indicating that there was a protest. the intelligence reports included reporting from the national security agency and the central intelligence agency and the department of defense. >> indicating what? >> indicating that there was a protest prior to the assault on the state department facility. >> so when the chief of station gave us another reason why he believes there have been no protests there were a couple of press reports indicating there had no protests and those were nonetheless a contrast to other press rep words indicating that there had been a protest? at this point we know there

wasn't a protest so it's not any more about what really happened that will be new at the time. >> correct. >> so the analysts perhaps unlike the chief of station would have the complete press reports, the other intelligence products to make their assessment whereas the chief station might have some of that but not necessarily the whole collection of intelligence. >> that is correct sir. >> is that the reason why when you got his e-mail on the 16th you went back to him to say can you give us more substantiation because it's inconsistent with some of the other reporting we got? >> it was his e-mail on the 15th and i went back and asked him for more information you sir read. >> mr. westmoreland leading the investigation into this issue. >> thank you mr. chairman. thank you mr. moreau. with all your years in the cia

who is the one person that you would count on the most to get your information from anything that happens in a country where he was the station chief? speaking you asked the question again? >> who would you go to to get the most accurate information if you wanted to find out about an incident that happened in a country? >> if i'm looking for the cia's judgment about what happened in a particular case i would go to my analyst. >> not to the people on the ground? >> the chief of stations he was very important but it is not determinative. >> so the analyst is not the most important? >> there are two sides to the central intelligence agency the operational side in the analytic side that makes analytic judgments. >> okay this analysts, was he the gentleman that was at the

roundtable with director petraeus? on the 13th? >> the a senior analyst that i spoke about who did the first draft of the talking points, the director of our office of terrorism analysis is a woman and yes i believe she was with director petraeus in front of this committee, k. yes. >> okay so on september 14 i think the director was there with this analysts and at 4:42 p.m. on the 14th officers in the cia office of public affairs and congressional affairs deleted the phrase with ties to al qaeda so your analysts, the one that knew what was going on, that you took their analysis from use the word al qaeda, right? >> yes, sir. >> the officers were trying to

ensure the talking points contained no information that would hinder the de-ice investigation. the same cia officers change the word attacks, so this analysts that you are counting on originally used the word attack, correct? >> yes sir. >> it's says then that it was changed to demonstrations. >> yes sir. >> were they demonstrating rpgs, mortars, heavy machine guns? is that what they were demonstrating? >> sir they don't remember exactly why they changed attacks to demonstrations. >> your analysts the one you have given so much credence to originally had attack. >> one of the reasons they say they made the changes because it didn't make a lot of sense to

say that attacks evolved into assault. >> you are relying on this lady's analysis, is that not correct? >> yes. >> okay and it says they also changed the phrase they participated in the attacks to the extremist participated in violent demonstrations. now i am having a hard time why you would want to say with four americans dead and the place set on fire that this is a demonstration rather than an attack when rpgs, heavy machine guns, mortars and others were used. how can you call that a demonstration? >> sir the change that you just mentioned from attacks to demonstrations was a change that was actually made before the senior analyst sent the talking

points to the office of congressional affairs. it was a change that was recommended by the operations officers who she was core dating with and she was okay with that change. >> but my point is you are not counting on the analyst and what she analyzed. you are counting on what other people said was wrong. >> not on that third change sir. she made that change before she sent it to the office of congressional affairs as my written testimony makes clear. >> so she thought it needed changing, not somebody else. >> she agreed with the change. >> when was the first time you heard from chief of station in tripoli that this was a land coordinated attack? >> this is complicated. let me walk you through this. the first indication that there was not a protest was a

disseminated intelligence report from our station on that friday and what that report said is that our officers who went from benghazi taste to try to rescue the state department colleagues did not see the protest when they arrived. that was the first indication. our analysts discounted that for the reasons i explained earlier. the second time, the second time was saturday morning, the saturday morning in which the chief of station sent an e-mail with a very short reference to i don't think there was a protest. let me give you two reasons why in the third time was on sunday morning when he sent a much more detailed note explaining why he thought that. >> two points. one, the information that you said that analysts had was a used report and i think it came

from some calls from around the benghazi that were made to another country by somebody was what the news report was. the other thing was a demonstration. we all saw the demonstrations in cairo and all around the world, these demonstrations. you were saying you have a rovlin with this grs team that got there. i don't think it was an hour. >> it wasn't our, sir. >> i think was more like 45 minutes but when you see those demonstrations they don't just last for 30 minutes and then everybody goes home. you would see people malingering around and doing things. they do not see that. what they saw was an rpg and heavy machine guns and you know being shot at. they didn't see anybody malingering around with a sign protesting something. if you watch any of the videos

those people are there for hours, not minutes but ours. >> sir, i'm telling you at the analyst.. the analyst thought if there was a protest which they believed outside of the state department facility and the attack starts that most likely that protest is going to break up and dissipate. that is what they thought and that is not an unreasonable thing to think. >> mr. ruppersberger. >> i want to thank you for the investigation in this matter. two areas that i want to get into very quickly so other people can have a chance to answer questions. first when i was asking for the talking points i was asking for something simple to give some of our new members the talking points that were unclassified knowing this would be an

immediate issue and i'm really concerned right now that it got to the level where it got and we didn't get the talking points back in a day or two. it just goes to show you some times where we go in and government at goes beyond where it needs to be so i hope you can learn from the situation. i never expected more than a year and a half after the attack that leads to be talking about this. who changed the talking points? protest or no protest and i think the focus of where the rings need to be now is to find the bad guys who killed the americans. and also to make sure we learned from what would happen in areas and benghazi to make sure that our facilities for the american state department or the intelligence community are safe and we know what to do. we need to focus on tracking down the people who did this and i hope we are close to that. now i have a letter from the department of defense that said

it has responded to six congressional investigations in this case and has participated in 15 congressional hearings briefings and interviews and dedicated thousands of man-hours to this task costing the taxpayers millions of dollars. the cia has responded in a similar magnitude. how much money do you think that the cia has been on this issue? >> sir i really can't speculate. i really don't know. >> despite all of this no evidence that i have seen and if you have any please tell us that a motivation, note evidence of political motivation uncovered but yet it continues. can you tell us what kind of threat terrorist groups like al qaeda and -- pose right now? >> i believe the terrorist threat to america today is very significant. the way i talk about this is that we are still at war with

al qaeda, very much at war with al qaeda and did not war both sides have had a great victory. our great victory has been the decimation and near defeat of the al qaeda leadership in pakistan but al al qaeda's great victory has been the spread of its ideology across a very wide swath of the muslim world from northern nigeria into the sun hell across darth africa in the east africa in syria, in iraq and so both sides of had this great victory and the threat to americans remains very significant and congressman i'm deeply concerned that the thread is actually going to grow in the years ahead. >> and do you think the fact of

whether or not in the beginning it was inspired by the news media from the protest or whether it was a planned attack at this point? would that make any difference on the focus of finding terrorists are dealing with the situation as it occurred in and benghazi? >> there is no doubt in my mind and there was no doubt in the analyst mind although they said extremists rather than terrorist that there is no doubt in my mind are the analyst mind that this was a terrorist attack irregardless of what motivated them and irregardless of whether there was a protester not. >> i would think from that position we could move forward and again our focus as i said before is catching the bad guys. the other question what to get into very quickly is we as americans care very much about her patriotic men and women on the ground whether it's military or the intelligence community or whatever it is and our theme is we never leave an american behind. we always stand up for people.

there have been allegations out there that i've heard off and on that we left our americans behind in a situation. can you please discuss the long-standing security procedures that cia stations and bases have particularly in remote and dangerous parts of the world? is the cia expect military assets will be able to provide immediate protection that matter where they are in the world? what i'm getting to is you have your own security and their well-trained and even in this situation if it weren't for the smoke that would have happened, hopefully looking back or people trained and did what they were supposed to do. another thing that hasn't come out and i'm not sure if this is classified about how many americans that were both locations and benghazi were saved based on the training and expertise of the cia security force who always from what i've seen and the chairman i have

traveled and a lot of this members of the committee all of the world and understand that the security is and what they train for. did the cia's view of band and by the u.s. military in a situation? >> no, we did not. >> can you explain who these people were and how many americans were saved in this benghazi situation because of their training and expertise? >> i don't think i can go into specific numbers but what i will say is something the chairman said earlier. i have no doubt, there is no doubt in my mind that had the cia security officers from benghazi days not responded to the state department facility that we would have lost many more state department officers there. there's no doubt in my mind and there's also no doubt in my mind that had cia officers and u.s. military officers responded from tripoli to benghazi.

>> which is over 600 miles. >> which is over 600 miles. had they not responded that night and gone to benghazi that more americans would have died on that base and benghazi. i believe there are large number of americans alive today thanks to the response of both the cia officers at an gauzy base and the cia and military officers and tripoli. >> all of the evidence i have heard in the hearings that i attended and not one time did anyone make a comment that they felt they were abandoned by the united states government or united states military. >> i know of no stand down order from anybody in the military but i am aware of several requests by cia for military support that night and those requests were being delivered. >> i want to get one last question. we on this committee need to respond to the public and yet we have the issue of we can't violate the law about giving out

classified information. we need, especially members who haven't been on the committee as long as other committees we need guidance sometimes on the classified issue. what have we learned as far as asking for simple direct talking points to help us deal with the issue and not give out classified information? if you had to do over because every one of these guidance -- we are trying to find the facts for the american public. how would you have handled this in the future? >> as the committee knows -- as this committee knows one of the things that i did when i was active director the second time was asked for a lessons learned paper on the talking points process and that paper really had to conclusions. the first conclusion is that we

should really not ian the business of writing unclassified talking points for the american people. we did not do that for the executive branch and we in general do not do that for congress. so this paper called clued it that we should be reluctant to do that. we are very good at speaking to policymakers. we are not trained in speaking to the american public. we see extremists and terrorists is the same thing. obviously the american public does not so my first idea on lessons learned would have been to push back and say why doesn't the committee take a first stab at writing the talking points and then we will take a look at them. the second conclusion that the lessons learned paper came to us , if we do write unclassified talking points than the substance -- substantive expert

should be involved in the editorial process all the way through and not do what we did in this case which was experts up front, a bunch of congressional affairs and public affairs people in the middle and only bringing in the experts at the end. >> if you look at chairman colin powell who went to the united nations and was relying on information received from the community about weapons of mass destruction in iraq and the same thing with susan rice. she went through a tough time when she was responding to what information she got so there are a lot of lessons to be learned here. >> yes sir. >> mr. thornberry. >> thank you mr. chairman and mr. morell thank you for being here in your years of service to the cia. i wanted to stand that are the deputies meeting on the 13th and your subsequent edits to the talking points. were you all having daily deputy meetings at this time? >> yes sir we were having twice

daily deputy meetings. >> so twice a day on the 13th on the 14th of the 15th you would have these videoconference meetings in which you participated as a deputy for the cia? >> that's correct. >> i assume there would you deputy from state and defense as well as members of the white house national security staff. >> via the i, doj, nctc. >> so as we reviewed the e-mails e-mails -- let me backup back up for just a minute. as best you remember the deputies meetings the two deputies meetings on the 14th ipers m. benghazi had to be a major issue that you all discussed. >> it was not sir. we were not looking backwards at that point. we were looking forward so the focus of all of these deputy meetings particularly the ones on saturday and sunday -- susan

rice was on the sunday shows and i was on the deputy meeting. the focus was on keeping americans safe in all the places in the world where there were continuing protests and demonstrations so we were not looking backward to what happened and in benghazi. we were looking forward on how do we keep americans safe. >> which is interesting to me. even on the 14th the basic tenor of the meetings was we got the americans have so were not worrying about libya anymore. >> we were very worried about tripoli but we were not focused on benghazi because we were focused on keeping americans safe going forward. >> the two meetings on the 14th do you remember the talking points ever coming up there? >> on the 14th, no i do not remember that. >> as i go and look at the e-mails as of not 10:00 on the night of the 14th it looks like the f. eia has signed off.

the talking points have been edited to reflect the state department concerns although it doesn't say they signed off so i'm not clear. did you have conversations after 10:00 at night from the state department that said we are still not happy? >> no sir. >> as of 10:00 at night there's his e-mail this is okay we have made these changes and can we go ahead and send them and there was a brief answer back that said no. what time was your deputies meeting the next morning? >> i believe it was 8:00 a.m.. i believe it was 8:00 a.m.. >> and did you have conversations with state department folks or e-mails from state department folks that morning that said we are still not having be? >> as i said earlier my executive assistant told me that the state department was not happy with talking points.

>> the morning of the 14th? >> the 14th as i arrived at work. >> you have barred he testified today that they never came up at the deputies meeting the talking points didn't until you brought them up. it was not part of the agenda even though the national security count counsel staff had been the ones to suggest bringing that up at the staffing meeting. >> correct. >> what i'm puzzled by as you look at that -- the edits that you made that ron chart you did take up most of the words basically that are in the talking points and even though the fbi is okay with them you take outwards because you are afraid they will damage the fbi investigation. you take out everything that is even related to warnings and a bunch of other stuff too met. to me it seems like you are more interested in protecting the

state department and more adjusted and protectinprotectin g the fbi than the fbi is in director of detroit are -- petraeus wanted more information there. can you explain the motivation? >> as i said earlier first of all if you look at what i took out the vast majority is information related to the warning and as i said earlier i thought it inappropriate for the cia to say publicly that we warned of an attack coming and we also had in there that we have sent a warning cable to cairo which i see absolutely no relevance of sending a warning cable to cairo to what happened in the ghazi. i simply saw this as a way for cia to pound its chest and say look, we warned. therefore laying all the blame on the state department. i did not think that appropriate. i thought there would plenty of

time to have a conversation about what was warned in who responded and how. i didn't think that discussion should start publicly. that was the judgment i made at the time. >> is says the availability of weapons certainly kutcher alluded to the lethality of the attacks. that didn't have anything to do with warnings. >> i saw it is totally speculative. we didn't know that the attackers had any specific training. we just didn't know at that point so i sought is speculative. i didn't think it was helpful. and i'm not saying i made all the right decisions in each one of these cases but that is why he made the decision. >> this is such a drastic change from what i've been going on for two days through the process and that is why up and puzzled by the changes you've made that are seemingly more protective of other agencies even than those

other agencies are. i thank you for your response. >> mr. morell thank you for coming in your many years of service. i want to align myself with what our ranking member ruppersberger said in expressing our heartfelt sadness for those who were killed and their appreciation for those who are still alive who served us so bravely. they are all heroes and i think we should be focusing on what we can do to make sure a tragedy like this never happens again and we should try to apprehend the murders that killed these brave americans. i think anything short of that is an incredible misplacement of time and resources. the changes in the talking points did you make any changes for political reasons? >> no sir.

>> did you know whether not there were protests when you edited the talking points? >> when i edited the talking points i believe that they were protests and i believed it because that is what my analysts thought. >> some mention has been made about the chief of station comments or the memo stating this wasn't a protest. >> yes sir. >> is one assessmenassessmen t regardless how qualified that person is drums all other assessments? >> no sir it's a data point and in important data point that the analyst take into account. station chiefs did not determine the analytic line of the central intelligence agency. analysts do. >> as i recall in our meeting of february the 13th two days after this tragedy to place when general petraeus was in our committee for a classified roundtable. you were not there.

but you were briefed on what happened and what was said to? >> i was told later in the day of the talking points. >> i was not speaking specifically to the talking points. i was going to talk about a specific question that general petraeus was asked in his response where he laid out for us why he believed it was not only sparked by this protest but why it was spontaneous in disbelief. someone on our committee specifically asked how in the world did this happen? to people just drive around the streets with this type of weaponry in the car and he stated well yes, they do and they look for opportunities. was he making this stuff up

>> i was told that they did not like the warning language be there. >> i was going to ask another

question but you talked about the talking points about notifying the embassy of cairo of social media reports calling for demonstrations. but you don't see any relevance to that in the cable going to cairo in the fact that this was all being blamed on a video, of the protest was because of the video? >> and an explanation a member of the committee asked for it give us a classified talking point somewhat happened in benghazi tonight at the 11th and the 12th. i did not see the central intelligence agency sending a warning cable to cairo saying that there is a potential violent demonstration coming into the embassy as relevant to what happened in benghazi. >> even though the demonstration was over the youtube video? >> correct.

>> why was ambassador rice to go chosen to go on the sunday talk shows? >> i have no idea. >> what was your reaction when he saw the explanation about what happened to? >> i did not see you on the sunday shows. >> you have never seen her? >> i did not see her on the sunday shows. it was probably days later that i read what she said on the shows. >> what was your reaction when he finally did? >> my reaction was twofold. one was that what she said about the attacks evolving as dante kneisley from a protest was exactly what the talking points said and exactly what the intelligence community analysts believed. when she talked about the video my reaction was that's not something that the analysts have attributed this attack two. >> you seven i think

septembeseptembe r 13 the analyst said it was a protest based on a number of press and intel reports. can you give us any examples? was a numerous reports? >> there were roughly a dozen. >> how much were pressed? >> i think about happen have sir. the committee has those documents. >> when you finally read ambassador rice's sunday morning talkshow transcripts or ever -- however you find out about it djou complained to the white house or were you comfortable with what she said? >> i did not complain too anybody sir. >> you also stated you noted there was a conflict between the cos and analysts. once you notice that you immediately addressed it and the way you addressed it was appropriate. how quick and what you consider

appropriate? >> i addressed it very quickly. sir i was the one who spotted what the cos said. it was in the bottom of the e-mail. it was three or four sentences. i was the one who spotted it and said hey this is inconsistent with what the analysts think. we need to dig into this. we need to resolve this. i was the one to do that. that is an appropriate role for the deputy director of the central intelligence agency. i would expect the director to do that. i asked the chief of station for more information. as you know. i explained that earlier. he provided it within 24 hours and within 12 hours i asked the analyst to provide their view on whether they should change their analysis based on what the chief of station said so i think that's pretty quick. >> wouldn't you consider a shift from a protest to a coordinated

attack a large shift? >> so two thoughts. one is yes, that's a significant change but the second thought is as i said earlier we never thought that a protest and a terrorist attack were mutually exclusive. with the analysts believe really from day one. >> could it have been a terrorist attack that erupted into a protest? >> sure. absolutely. >> why was there no attempt after ambassador rice went on five or six sunday morning talk shows to ever correct the record? in fact it was more an attack than a protest. >> i don't follow you sir. >> she went out and said it was solely because of the youtube video and later we learned that no it was more an attack and

there was never an attempt to correct it. >> sir there's a difference between what it was which was a terrorist attack and what motivated it. those are two completely different things. no doubt it was a terrorist attack. to this day we still don't know the motivations of the people who conducted the attack because we never caught any of them. the analysts have views about what motivated the attack. the analysts view is that it was one of two things. it was what happened in cairo that these guys in benghazi saw what happened in cairo to do the same thing. the other possibility the analysts he is the revenge for the root death of al-libi. we just heard from congressman shifts that this chief of station sees three possibilities. the 9/11 anniversary revenge for al-liby and the video.

the chief of station thinks the video may have been the motivation for the attack in benghazi. a big difference between what happened, and attack and motivation. >> i yield back. >> thank you mr. morell. i really appreciate your testimony and given two or three decades of service to our nation always working to protect our security and never in a partisan role or spirit. i believe what you are telling us today and your account of what happened and i appreciate that the first you made was that you wanted to honor the heroes who lost their lives and we all have to keep that in mind. i fully supported the accountability review boards

investigation of the incident, the conclusions and findings that they had on how we could have done this more effectively. we on the intelligence community have reviewed a tremendous number of documents -- held several interviews on this as well. throughout all of this i have not seen any evidence that anyone lied or intentionally misled the american people about the attack nor that anyone including you mr. morell and appropriately edited the talking points which this committee has asked for. we all agree that mistakes were made, there were some things that could've been done better throughout the process. drafting and distributed talking points however i agree with you that what your internal review found that there was quote note

effort on the part of the cia officers to spin the talking points to accommodate a political agenda or deflect criticism for the agency or the administration unquote. ultimately it is critical that we determined what happened so we can apprehend the perpetrators so we can prevent future tragedies and their consulate facilities around the world however i believe we have shifted from legitimate fact-based oversight into partisan spirited campaign and we must not continue to demean those that lost their lives they perpetrating this obviously political attack line. going forward there will be other times when this committee will won't help in commenting on important security issues to the american public and will want to do so in a way that protects classified information although i would understand the reluctance and coming up with classified talking points.

i want to ask you what are the key lessons that the cia has learned from this tragic incident? >> as i said when i was acting director i asked for two reviews the first review was a review of our performance in producing the analysis. and the second review was a review of our performance on the talking points. i asked the director of intelligence the analytical arm of the agency to do the analytic review and asked general counsel to do the review on the talking points. i told that individual that i expected him to look at my own performance and he knew that i was deadly serious about that. i told you what the bottom line of the talking points lessons learned were that we should be

reluctant to talking points in the future but if we choose the substantive expert should be there every step of the way. the bottom line on the analytic reviews lessons learned wherefore. number one the importance of the precision of language. that first sentence in the analysis on the 13th and the first sentence in the talking points on the attacks evolving spontaneously from a protest was not well-written. what the analysts believed was not that the protesters became the attackers but the analysts believed that the terrorists opportuniopportuni stically took advantage of the protest to attack. so the precision of language is very important. that was lesson learned number one. lesson learned number two was beware of unconscious bias and what the analysts were saying to themselves was one of the reasons we bought in to the idea that there was a protest based

on a dozen or so reasons of intelligence which is not a lot, was the fact that there were protests and demonstrations going on all over the place. they said the fact that there were protests and demonstrations going on all over the place influence their judgment about what happened in benghazi and they needed to be careful about that bias going forward. the third was that they needed to be quicker to write about a change and analysis once they made that change. when we heard from the libyans on the 18th that they had seen the video from the state department facility and saw no protests our analysts were prepared to write but it took them four days to publish the piece so what they were saying in the lessons learned is we have to move more quickly. four days is too long. the last lesson earned -- learned is that analysts have to

push collectors to collect information more quickly. and where this comes from is one of the criticisms why didn't the analysts just pick up the phone and call the people in benghazi gnash them and in the answer to that question is i didn't want my analysts being investigators and i don't think you want analysts being investigators. the fbi certainly doesn't want my analysts being investigators but i do want my analysts picking up the phone and pushing collectors to produce more information and a more timely way to push the fbi to get those i i r.'s out more quickly. that is what the fourth lesson talks about. >> thank you mr. chairman mr. morell thank you for your long years of service.

ms. schakowsky lead you down a path i was going to ask about and that is the intellectual nimbleness of analysts. we all have private decisions and you spoke to those quite well. and we all have a political point of view somewhere deep inside of us and some of us more over than others. any sense whatsoever that your analysts were influenced by their own personal political views about what should be said? >> i do not believe so sir. >> with respect to the press report that seems to dominate and analytical work is art and science. with the annals have been able to tell that the press reports were or were not at daisy chain of one person reporting and a series of subsequent press reports and sheer volume look like a big deal but it was one person's misinformmisinform ation? >> that is something they would look at. that is certainly something they think about.

>> the weight of evidence the e-mails that i have read more direct in terms of being and attack the weight of evidence in this instance was unable to overcome the other biases in terms of prior decision-making and the weight of press reports. is that a fair station? >> that is a fair statement. the analysts stuck with their judgment. >> you said someone from the state department was pushing back on the reports and ms. nides said my building leadership -- who is she talking about? >> i don't know. you would have to talk to her. >> where she him the food chain? >> i believe you are talking about ms. newlin. she was a spokesperson for the department at the time.

i don't know what the chain of command is above her. >> thank you. mr. morell this is probably an unfair question but there are an awful lot of comments being made about your post and the fact would you speak to us about your role is any in the discussions about your post, distinguished government service by the way,, played in the job that you now have and any comments you would like to make about that. >> i would be happy to. my first discussions about going to work for them began in november some four months after he left the job. >> november of? >> november of 2013. some four months after he left the job.

i was attracted to going to work at begin because i admired the principles there. it is absolutely -- i think their traffic public servants and it turns out they are terrific businessmen too. it is absolutely true that three of them are democrats but as you know one of them is a republican and you know him very well. he was a staff draft of this committee. he worked in the bush white house and had met were on the one the election he would have been on the transition team for intelligence. that is why i went to work there and what i did in september of 2012 had absolutely nothing to do with my going to work for beacon in november of 2013. >> thank you for that in one final question. i have got an e-mail chain dated

9:15 a.m. at 11:15 a.m. and it appears to be from matt olson to aim michael j. anna: . is that you? >> it must be. >> these are the points that oa ndi sent to ruppersberger yesterday afternoon based on his request. which would have been on the 14th. at what point in time did the talking points come? >> so i understand and i too and confused by this. nctc also did some talking points and i didn't know until that e-mail that there were two sets of talking points. you all would know better than i whether there were two sets of talking points are not. >> so the reference to odni is to nctc. >> yes, sir. >> thank you and i yield back. >> thank you mr. chairman and mr. morell thank you for

testifying here today and especially i want to thank you for your 33 years of service to our country with great distinction. he you have always put country first in my opinion always done your duty and have been very candid and forthcoming in your testimony before the committee whenever you have appeared since i've i have been on this committee. the fact that you are here voluntarily today reinforces how seriously you believe in the truth. we can all agree that benghazi was a terrible tragedy and it's important to remember that we lost four brave americans that they and we must make sure that we never let something like that ever happen again. i supported the independent arp investigation which interviewed more than 100 people, it

reviewed thousands of documents and watched hours of video. we spoke with people on the ground in benghazi as well as military and intelligence officials within government as well as outside experts. we in this committee have conducted extensive oversight. you alone have been before as three times and we have reviewed thousands of classified documents and interview the central figures in with this issue. i believe these never-ending benghazi hearings quite frankly have become a very costly distraction. in my opinion they are no longer about finding problems. instead they have needlessly consumed dozens of man-hours and millions of taxpayer dollars. i think that is very

disappointing. that being said i am happy that you have had a chance to address some of the allegations that are out there and speak directly to us in the american people. i thank you again for your candor. i hope that your testimony today is going to put an end to what i believe has become baseless conspiracy theories and allow this committee to return to the urgent work that we have before us. on that point i'm going to move to an area that does involve real national security and concerns of threats that we have to deal with going forward. part of that work is to eliminate bulk collection of metadata while maintaining the capability fight will to keeping us and our allies safe. you were part of the president's panel that recently reviewed our intelligence programs including the meta-data collection program this past sunday. he said that the president's

plan and the approach were very close to each other. you also said the house plan is adopted that you will be comfortable with that. with that can you elaborate on the conference and any further insights you might have on this topic? >> yes sir. my main concern as i said on the review group was how do we protect this program going forward? how do we make sure we still have his 215 program because i believe it is absolutely vital for the protection of of this country but at the same time it was absolutely clear that we had lost the trust of the american people and needed to find a way to win it back. so the review group's recommendations were designed to do both that. designed to win back the trust while protecting the program and if you remember the review

group's recommendations with the government should not hold the data. there should be a court order prior to an inquiry and who held the data would be left up to the experts. the presidents recommendation is completely consistent with the review groups. i actually believed that the house plan, this committee's plan is very close to the review groups recommendation. in some ways i must tell you i like this committee's approach a little bit better because it actually speeds the process and it allows to bring into, to bring into play some of the data that is not currently in play. there is a gap out there today that i worry about and what you guys have crafted here allows for the closure of that gap and i think that is very important.

i could support the president's plan. i could also support this committee's plan and since i have this opportunity to speak to the american people i want them to know how much oversight this committee does on all sorts of issues and it is very rigorous oversight. believe me i have sat on this chair a lot very rigorous and tough questions and on no program was there more oversight than the 215 program. >> thank you mr. morell and i want to thank and commend the chairman and ranking member for the hard work and they attended the press conference with the data program and the data held by the government. that legislation has rolled out and i have her she ate that and i appreciate your comments and insight so going forward i hope

we will pass this legislation soon and he said it right. the program works but the american people have to have confidence in it and it will never be abused and i think this is the right path forward. i thank you mr. chairman and i yield back. >> thank you and thank you we work on that bill with us. that was an important piece of legislation as we move forward and wouldn't have happened without your help and assistance. mr. king. >> there are so many questions on this whole issue of the talking points into believe your version would require absolute faith in your word. today you said you always value the ability to communicate with congress and this committee particular and get us a chairman mentioned in his opening statement he was sitting at the table along with the intelligence officials when we were trying to fight out who

changed the talking points. i don't think anyone on the committee have the faintest idea that you have anything to do with those talking points. it wasn't until six months later after all the questions were being asked in the inquiry went on as to who change the talking points six months later when the white house released the e-mails we found out how to radically involve fewer and quite frankly i have to say that was at best misleading by omission we did that day and lying by omission. we trusted you and by not being forthcoming i think you violated your application to this committee into congress. let me go into several other things. you dismiss the e-mail from the station chiefs in benghazi. i is a very different interpretinterpret ation from yours previewing congressman schiff made reference to signals intelligence. if we know what the station chief elf and why that would not be significant he is the guy on the ground. he is the one that is closest to

it and if you ride up the issue with those that are familiar with the full context of that is again misleading here today. you said there was no politics or changes done for political reasons yet when we look at victoria newlin. she said she had serious concerns and this is another talking point about members of congress making assertions to the media that could be used by members to beat the state department for not paying attention to agency warnings. that is clearly concerned by the state department about their reputation. we also have for instance a memo to ben rhodes among others. there is information of a particular and congress. this is a response not only from the house intelligence committee but also the guidance we need to brief members and correct the

record so clearly the administration wanted to use this for political purposes or at least to frame their nature of the debate. and then victoria newlin and finally i guess she says this has resolved all of my issues or is ms. conway mentioned those of my leadership and the question is who is she talking about? is she talking about the seventh floor and who on the seventh floor? then we go to an e-mail from general petraeus. you quoted general petraeus at the very end. i i've never known anyone who is a leader of any department or agency that was more controlling than general petraeus and yet he says frankly this is certainly not what device chamber ruppersberger was hoping to get. why was general petraeus so passive? why was he sitting back the way he was.

then you accompanied susan rice to see senator graham and senator ayotte and senator mccain and the question came up about the fbi and you brought up the fbi changing talking points and later that day that had to be changed. after you leave the government you go to a firm which has as one of his principles a person in the leadership in the state department. one of those people victoria newlin seem to be worried about many go to cbs news and the brother of ben rhodes was concerned his brother is the director. you can smile and say it's all conspiracies and isolated by itself i might agree with you. this is why people have questions. so i would ask you these questions and then you can answer whatever else you want to. ..

>> no one said anything to you? nobody in the white house said to you anything at all? >> no. >> no knowledge of it at all, sir? >> no, sir. >> when you accompanied wright, is it cues mir far cia officials to accompany the presidential nominee? >> so i was asked to go -- >> customary for that to be done? >> it's -- it's an ad hoc thing. it does not happen every day where a -- it was not a presidential nominee.

>> mentioned -- >> she had not been nominated yet. >> which is why she was meeting with the senate. >> to explain what she said on the sunday shows. i was asked to go with her. >> reporter: who asked you? >> the white house. >> who at the white house? >> dennis. i asked to go to explain one thing only, the consistency between the talking points about the attack evolving from a protest. i was asked to talk about the consistencies of the talking points and classified analysis. that's why i was asked to go. that's what i did. >> reporter: the question you asked, you got it wrong. you volunteered, you got it wrong. >> yes, sir, i got it wrong. >> two months after the talking appointments, went with susan rice to brief senators on what happened, and you were wrong. >> i was asked the question, who took al-qaeda out of the talking points? i got is wrong. i said, the fbi, when, in fact,

the cia was the one to take it out of the talking points. what i was thinking at the time was about another change the fbi asked for. the fbi made another change because it did not want to be too definitive about who conducted the attack. i got it mixed up. i corrected the record as soon as i found out, within several -- >> they called the fbi, and the fbi protested very vigorously. >> nobody from the fbi ever called me to complain. >> they called anybody in the cia? >> nobody at the cia, and i just checked this, congressman; they called nobody at the cia, and i corrected the record long before i knew that the fbi was upset, and, in fact, i did not know they were upset until a couple months ago. >> if you had too much to prepare, and you -- how come, suddenly, four hours, you had to check? >> so, congressman, what happened was i was asked the

question, made a mistake, got not car to go back, and my head of congressional affairs with me in the meeting saying, michael, i think you got that wrong. i said, well, let's find out, and if i did, let's correct the record. when we got back to headquarters, we had a meeting in the office where i found out that i was, indeed, wrong, and i told my head of congressional affairs to correct the record, and within two or three hours, he had done so. not within 24 as some people have said, and not -- i didn't wait until i heard that the fbi was upset before i corrected the record. i corrected the record as soon as i found out. how many people in this town do that? >> i would have to say we have to believe a lot of circumstances in this entire totality in your version. i fine it difficult to do. i yield back. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. morel, can you speculate or how do you feel the reasons why

we have not been able to bring perpetrators to justice? >> congressman, that's a very good question. it has been eight months since leaving my job as deputy director so i have no idea the status of the investigation, no idea what the status of the cia's support in the investigation is so i can't speculate on where things stand. it's a question for the federal bureau of investigations. >> well, to my colleagues on the other side who think this is a witch hunt, we are pressing because is we don't have retribution. we have an ambassador, an american hero killed, brutally murdered, and we are getting bureaucratic, whatever you call it, about why nobody can take

responsibility. we talked to the fbi, they have one version, and i know this is not the cia's job, but to anyone who wantings to know why this is not going away, that's the reason it's not going away. i want to see them brought to justice. i want retribution. i would pull the switch if i could. this is outray out. that's where the american people are upset. that's why the committee will not let it go, and that's why the american people -- i get this question more and more and more, and we get on talking points, about two steps in, and the station chief said that, and bottom line is that we got people running around who killed americans, who were sipping maitais, whatever they were sipping, and we can't do anything about it. the american people should not let it go, and especially for the memory of the heros and everyone else in the cia and, excuse me, you know, you've been there for so many years. you've seen brave men and women put their lives in harm's way

time and time again. is this how we want to send a message to the rest of the people on the front lines that all this time goes by, and the united states of america can't bring these thugs to justice? i just think it's wrong, and i apologize, and i yield back. >> mr. congressman, i agree with you 100%. there is nobody, there is nobody who wants to bring these guys to justice more than me, and you know why. >> i know that. i appreciate it. the problem we got is that we can't get anybody in this great united states of america and this government with all the resources we have to bear, we get -- we get all kinds of stories about why this can't happen. now, if it was a month later, if it was two months later, we might say, okay, there might be reasons why, but this is a long time. this is a long time. i think we send a message to anyone else who wants to pull this kind of a stunt that, you know, maybe the united states is not so serious bout all this.

i don't blame this on you, but for anyone wondering why this is going on, this is why it's going on. this is why it shouldn't ever be let go until we get to the bottom of it. i yield back. >> no apology necessary. >> thank you, mr. chairman. just to follow up on the question. the reason that the perp trapters have not been brought to justice yet is because they are not labeled al-qaeda by the united states government, the official united states government. isn't that right? >> sir, i don't know that. >> but the cia, you know this, the cia did consider them to be al-qaeda, didn't they? what we said and what the analysts still believe is that the attackers that night, that some of them were affiliated with al-qaeda. >> thank you. i'm going to switch topics here. you participated in your testimony, you participated in a deputy's committee on september

12th. you don't mention it, but you also participated in a deputy's call on the 13th. >> correct. >> on boast of these, you discuss the benghazi attack; correct? >> correct. >> who else participated in that call other than deputies? >> which one? >> on the 12th and the 13th. >> so i don't remember in detail, sir, who participated, but -- >> maybe more specific. is it -- was anyone from tripoli on those calls? >> on the 12th, i'm certain of it because there at the time, and i remember that both the chief of station and the deputy chief of mission were on, and i believe they were also op on the 13th, but i don't remember that for certain, sir. >> okay. in our investigation that we've been going on for a long time, the first evidence we have, i mention this mysterious product

that is actually you brought it up on the 13th. >> so i don't remember -- i don't remember saying that there was briefing the deputies, that there was a protest when at the deputy's meeting on the 13th, but i would not be surprised at all that i did so. >> the way i understand it -- >> why -- >> maybe this will stir your recollection because i know it was a long time ago, that you got an update on the call from the chief of station and the target, and update, led the call, a quick update, and they terned to you, and you talked about this new stream of this new product? >> correct. >> is that right? >> so, again, i don't remember, but as i said, i would not be surprised that i briefed the deputies op the 13th that the

attack evolved from a protest. why am the i not surprised? that morning, we publishedded a piece that said that, and my job as deputy director was to represent the views of the cia at the deputies meeting. i would not be surprised at all, sir. >> right, right, so did you -- did the deputy national security adviser, now the white house chief of staff, did he know about that product before you mentioned it? >> which product are we talking about? >> on the 13 #th? >> yes, the 13th. >> he would have read that product that morning. >> had you conspired beforehand? >> no. conspired to do what? >> to talk about this protest leading to the attack. >> no. >> okay. you had not talked to dennis? he did not -- he was not prompting you to announce this? >> this was the cia's considered judgment at the time. a written product produced --

>> i thought it was all the ic community signed off on the product. >> correct. >> okay. so i think one of the problems here is the station chief, base chief, diplomatic security officials, all the dod officials, and all the cia station personnel that were in benghazi have all reported by this time that the assault began as a pre-planned attack, not a protest. in other words, the product that you were using on the 13th was contra dilgted by every sing single person on the imrownd in libya. >> didn't know it at the time, sir. didn't know it until saturday morning when the chief of stations cement an e-mail. >> what were you guys talking about on the deputy's committee meeting on the 12th and 13th? >> so, on the 12 #th; there was no discussion of the protest. no discussion of a protest on the 12th. on the 13 #th, any discussion of the protest would have. based on the classified product

that was produced that morning. >> were you involved with discussions in tripoli? >> as i said, screening on the 12 and on the screen, i believe, on the 13th. >> wouldn't they have said -- >> they did not say this was not a protest. i do not remember that. >> this committee, the chairman actually went own, as he said in the opening statement, the chairman, we had this committee significant intelligence to where the chairman of our committee was able to go out and say this was an attack. on the 12th, i believe. you're telling me you're on call with tripoli, deputies committee, sometimes twice a day, and you don't know until the 14 #th or 15th that everybody on the ground believes this was a pre-planned attack? >> sir, we believe from the get-go this was an attack. we believe from the get-go this was a terrorist attack.

the analysts did not believe then or now that there was significant preplanning. >> all right. i understand, mr. morell, but the problem is that you've got, you know, all conflicting stories. all right? the stories that you talked to the senators, and what was brought up, they were change by the fbi, not the white house. youssef mejri know, later you took responsibility for that. there's other contradictions about whether or not in the talking points, whether the white house was involved or not. all of this has been proved false, but i read your testimony, and there's an excuse for everything. for everything. for all of that, you have app excuse for, which is fine, but when the chairman asked you about sitting next to jim clapper in november 2012, you don't have an excuse. you only have an apology. >> i have an explanation of why

i did not say anything in response to the question who took al-qaeda out of the talking pointings because i did not know at the time who did that. >> but -- >> my apology -- the chairman was asking -- >> my apology -- >> you sat in front of the committee on november 2012, and you had a chance -- you wouldn't have had to be here today had you just said what you knew at the time. >> i don't believe that at all, sir. i'd be here anyway because the only think i would have been able to say at the time was mr. chairman, i do not know who removed al-qaeda from the talking points, but what i can tell you, mr. chairman, i playeded a role in editing the points. that's the only thing i could have said at the time. >> i know my time expired, plach, thank you for letting me go over. i yield back. >> mr. chair, thank you. mr. morell, on september 11th,

we know there's a fair amount of activity going on at the compound that day in ben gay city, the ambassador came to visit am bar dore stevens at the compound that day. we know from eyewitness testimony on the ground contemporaneous times from the rso there that the ambassador there and all throughout the day, there were no sightings, no indication in any way of any gathering of any protesters around the compound around benghazi. there was closer to television, there was 17th, and people there offering security. no one at any time prior to the attack gave indication there was a protest going on at the compound. the rso, himself, said, there was nothing going on at the compound. the chief of station in tripoli

had no indication of any protests going on. the political officers had no indication of anything going on. the grs officers coming from the annex over, no one, anyone involved in this situation, no withdrawn had any indication of a protest going on. yet the the obama administration allowed its spokesman for the first time in the first public disclosure five times on the sunday morning shows, made a false narrative that a youtube video was the reason to explain there were protests, which we now know were ab rigses, never exist the, were there. this is a false narrative. this is why it's not a small issue. this is a big issue, mr. morell, because we have e-mails in front of us that do not lie.

that's not a conspiracy and the e-mails and cables are clear about what we knew when we knew it. we knew while the attack was going on, that there was already from the state department at 4:05 a.m. an alert put out, that the compound was under attack, at 6:08 p.m. that al-qaeda linked group operating in libya claimed credit for the attack. we also know a cable sent on september 12th by cia station chief in libya reported eyewitnesses confirmed the participation of islamic militants and made clear that u.s. facilities in benghazi came under attack, even your first draft from the cia prepared distributed internally showed this is 11:15 a.m., dates stamped on it, that the cia and u.s. government knew that islamic extremists with ties to al-qaeda participated in the attack. all of that we knew.

what changed is when the talking points prepared again by your office, when those talking points intersect the with the white house and those -- those organizations within the white house included senior state department officials seen here national security officials, all of those you talked to was about robert, allen, matt, jake, mark, lisa, ben, all of these -- the only change that happened were senior white house officials. we know from the e-mails, particularly from victoria newland, that it's been referenced by my colleagues from the date stamped time, again, at 9:24 p.m., newland wrote problem remains, and her superiors unhappy, and the changes made did not resolve issues of those of my building leadership.

we know ben rose from the national security team policy further advised the group. futures will be resolved in a meeting of top administration officials, the following morning at the white house. at the white house. saturday. before ms. rice went on the sunday morning shows. they were resolved, all right. in the favor of the white house, and what's odd here is that the false narrative given sunday morning on the sunday morning shows, somehow strangely added up with the view of the white house before the presidential election that they were nearly defeated in the global war op terror was over. everybody on the committee knows that was not true, that al-qaeda was not defeated. everyone on this committee, both sides of the aisle, knows the global war on terror was not over. that was the narrative of the white house and the runup to the presidential election. how weird that that ultimately was reflected in the talking points against all knowledge

from people on the ground and knowledge people had. that's why we're upset because the american people, from my perspective, were intentionally misled by this administration as to what happened in benghazi. >> chairman, can i respond? >> two points, ma'am. number one, the narrative that the attack evolved spontaneously from a protest was a narrative that intelligence community analysts believe, not just cia analysts, but cia community analysts. that was incorrect, but that's what they believed at the time. there is no politics. there was none whatsoever. that's point number one. point number two, let me actually give you the facts of what the state department changed in the talking points and what the white house changed. the white house changed three things. first thing the white house changed was to add cairo in front of the word "embassy" for

the sake of clarity. second thing the white house changed was to rearrange a couple sentences, purely stylistic, and the third thing to change was dhaipg the word consulate to diplomatic post for accuracy. those were the only changes the white house made. the changes the state department made, two, just two. they, too, wanted to change the word "cops lat" to diplomatic post for the same reason, and the second change was to remove the bullet on sharia because state department said it was premature to single out a specific group, and the cia agreed because the only unclassified was sharia's public statement which they then retracted. the state department and the white house made five changes only, all of them in my view fairly insignificant. >> mr. morell, they did not have to change because you made the

changes for them. >> that's the point. >> that's why you're in front of this committee today. you made the changes. >> ma'am, if you look at the record, you'll see the changes i made were fully consistent with what our analysts believed at the time. period. >> the amists that were part of the bureaucracy, not the individuals who were on the ground who had eyewitness testimony and who, as early as september 12 #th sent you a cable that it was not a protest, that it was, in fact, an attack, those were intentionally ignore. >> so, ma'am, do you believe that we should have accepted the chief of station's view without questioning it was a protest? >> i believe that the totality of the information was an intentional misleading of the public. >> because if you believe we

should have accepted his explanation of what happened, you need to accept his view that it could have been the video that it was that night. >> we spoke with him behind closed doors, adamant from the very beginning this was not a spontaneous protest. we heard from him yesterday, and it is not just him, and it is the political officers, all of them agree if you take that versus some press reports and one signal versus the weight and balance are not equal. it is not even equal. the evidence overwhelmingly pointed to the an attack that was al-qaeda or jihad related. >> it was not just one piece, ma'am, there was also reporting -- >> more than one --

>> there was -- >> more than one -- that was not our understanding. >> there was reporting from the cia station that there was a protest as well as from the department of defense. >> [inaudible] >> there was a human piece and department of defense. there was multiple intelligence pieces. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you, mr. morell, for being here, thank you for jr. service to the nation, and i want to thank all of those who also work at cia, nameless individuals who work hard to ensure our nation is protected. like everyone who has said today, one. most important things is trying to make sure that this does not happen again, and i would put out that something like this probably wouldn't is happened and probably won't happen again if all the indicators were given their due attention, the hundreds of reports that were put out prior to the attack that clearly detailed the

deteriorating security position within benghazi, the two prior attacks on temporary facility, the assassination attempt on the british ambassador, they pulled that of benghazi in light of the fact that multiple requests were made to the department of state for increased material to increase security posture which were denied. unlike at the cia facility where requests for additional personnel and security material were granted. you know, there's a lot of talk about who made what change and when. perhaps something you may want to bring back to the ic if you can in your conversations. very simple, microsoft word, correct changes, and perhaps in the future we'll know who made what change and when, and the issue of whether or not this was politically driven, i would ask why was the cia public affairs and congressional affairs officers intimately involved in the drafting of the talking points without having subject matter experts present? just that, in and of itself,

seemed like something was done from a public relations perspective than from a substantive perspective. >> sir, two thoughts on that. one is it was not inappropriate for the office of public affairs and office of congressional affairs to be involved. after all, it was a committee of congress that asked for them, and they were going to be made public. not inappropriate for them to have been involved. what was -- what didn't go right was the exclusion of a substantive expert in the editing session conducted by those two officers. that was a mistake made. >> well, i guess the question, the following, why wasn't there a subject matter expert looped in at that point in time knowing the very request was for this committee to be able to go out and give some type of informed view of what happened? >> i don't know the answer to that question. at the point when that editing session occurred, i still was not even aware that this committee had made the requests. >> moving to some of my

colleagues already referenced the e-mail from the victoria newland, time stamped september 14th at 9:23 that, quote, does not resolve the issue of my building leadership, but i'll tell you, the more concerning e-mail was the one that was time stamped that same day at 7:39 from victoria, that, again, kind of leads us, perhaps down a path of some of the changes or concerns drip by perception and political thought rather than substantive thought, said in part, and ultimate point could be abuse by members to beat the state department for not paying attention to agency warnings so why do we want to feed that either, concern, dot, dot, dot. this does not seem to be talking about, you know, was it an attack, an assault, protest, a demonstration, who was responsible? trying to make sure that the department of state was

protected based on what was beginning to be provided. granted, this process was taking place before the time edit, but, again, looking in the totality of information provided this committee, the state department is trying to backtrack or cover themselves from not paying attention to warnings. the follow-on e-mail from david adams, i'm with toria, referring to ms. newland, the last bullet is especially will read to members like we were repeatedly warn, op and on, speak in the morning to get comments back, and the time e-mail came from her about does it address all the concerns? you can see why it does not -- the information does not necessarily point to giving us the best possible information, but it's being filteredded so as to protect the downtown of state. >> two things, one, is i was not aware of any of the e-mails, never saw it in the e-mails number two, i made the decision

earlier, much earlier than those e-mails were written. i made the decision to take the warning los angeles -- language out. the director's chief of staff was standing there when i said the warning language has to go, and the reason why it had to go was long before the state department wrote those e-mails. >> understanding that happened dun a parallel pathway. >> not parallel. not parallel. >> you didn't know they requested it. >> before. >> nonetheless, they, not knowing it was taken out by you, the draft was not yet edited by you when the e-mail came out, still making that request. >> i made the decision to take the warning language out long before i edited the talking appointments the day before. >> did the department of state know? >> probably not. >> exactly, bringing beback to the e-mail about being concern about perception rather than stuff and information. >> so, to be -- yes. so to be fair to them, though,

for us to have said in unclassified talking points that you could use that we warnedded and warned and warned and not give them the opportunity to say, here's what we did in response to those warnings, i felt was not appropriate. >> well, i appreciate that, but the fact is they did nothing in response to the multiple warnings -- >> i did not know that at the time. >> that's for another discussion. >> i did not know that at the time, and i thought there was plenty of time to have the discussion, and turns out, there's been plenty of time to have the discussion. >> thank you, i yield back. >> thank you, mr. chairman. you know, there's been suggestions from the other side that this investigation's political, that we continue to process this, 19 months, and i guess i'd remind everyone there's an investigation across the capital, going op six years, of the cia at expensive, tens of millions of dollars that continues to this day. i think it's perfectly appropriate for this committee to continue to try to get to the facts of the incredibly important matters, matters to those who not only lost lyes,

but the trust of the cia, public perception of cia's role when it provides information to the committee. this is an agency that we all come to rely on, the american people need to be able to rely on it too. i want to ask you, so, why did this go to the interagency review process? we asked the cia for information all the time, every day, multiple occasions, probably much to my folk annoy yaps there. why did this go to the inner agency process? why is ben rose, a political appointee, involved at all? >> this is a good question. very good question. so, fist of all, it was very important that we coordinated the talking points with the rest of the intelligence community because this was an intelligence community judgment that i mentioned earlier that we can't give you something about an

analytic judgment without coordinating with the people who helped come to the judgment. that's number one. number two, we had to provide it to the fbi and department of justice because they just opened an investigation into the death of four americans, and it was very important that we not say anything in app unclassified fashion that puts that invs. gages at risk. number throe, we thought it important to share those talking points with the state department, which just lost officers, and number four, we were givenning talking points to the congressional committee to talk about a very, very important national security issue, and it is important to let the white house know when you're going to do that. that's why went through the inner agency process sir. >> this is what we're up against, every change made makes this thing plain vanilla rather than getting to the heart of what was really going on. that happens at a time we have now agented in a roll more like

a public affairs officer than an intelligence officer, and when you see that, all this put together, that's why you get the questions you get. i think there's a legitimate line of inquiry why actors were involved in talking points to this committee that were requested not from the state department, not from the white house, but from the central intelligence agency. >> the national security staff was the organization at the white house that coordinated on these talking points. they are not a prolife call entity. >> you said that you -- that this committee was not intentionally mislet and used the word "deliberately," do you think we were inadd veer tently misled? >> i think that in looking back at things we could have done better, there is no doubt in my mind that we led people to think about this in not exactly the right way, and the example that i would give -- i give two examples.

the example that i would give is not being -- not using the right language when we said the attack evolved spontaneously from the protest giving the impression that the protesters became the attackers. we never thought that. we could have written that sentence better. when i sat here and did not speak up, when director clapper was asked the question by the chairman, who took out al-qaeda, i should have said something. i didn't. i did not lie. i did not mislead. i could have done better. >> that's a long answer to a yes or no question. my question is, were we misled? >> no. >> my, my, my, i have a different view. you talked today, you said we still don't know the motivation of the folks that evening? >> correct. you won't know that until you get them and talking to them. >> i think you are focusing -- we know they are al-qaeda

apartments. i know precisely why they attacked and killed americans, and i think you do as well, and worked hard against that for many, many years, and to sit here and say you don't nope the motivation of al-qaeda when they kill americans is disingenuous, and focusing on the micro and not the organizational behavior that lies behind what happened. >> not everybody there was associated with al-qaeda. this was a mix of groups. this was a mix of people, some of whom were affiliated with al-qaeda. i, like you, know exactly why al-qaeda guys were there. i don't know why the rest were there, and i don't know why they decided to do the attack when they did. i don't know what motivated the timing, and we will not know this until we talk to them. >> i yield back, mr. chairman. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i'd like to, if i could, change

directions a little bit based on some of the other things that you said. i think we've gone over ad nauseam talking points, and quite frankly, we have all these pages of what the e-mails were back and forth, what you testified to, what you intended, and i don't think you're a liar or a dishonest person. i think there is mistakes you said you made. there's clearly political things going on in the e-mails, whether people want to acknowledge that or not. i mean, it is what it is. we are all human. you might say that the people that work for the national security apparatus in the white house are not political people. we all know that they are. they just are. whether they be democrats or republican administration, it's the truth that people consider how is this going to work in november, just as the president and secretary clinton said, they were against the surge in iraq for political reasons. the same thing, i think, is going on here, but aside from that, one of the things that you said you may have been -- you

made mistakes in this whole process, is you were -- you said you were there on that day, september 11th? >> yes. >> were you at our embassy or where were you, if you can say, at that point? >> so the evening of the 11th, i was at dinner with our partner. >> okay. so when you talked about how you relied on amists to give you whatever best information you could garper from benghazi, immediately after, as opposed to necessarily the station chief on an equal footing, say this event happened while you were there, and there's a station chief there. as you were seeing it, would you call washington and ask an analyst back in washington, what is happening here even though you're there, and a station chief is there, it seems to me that an equal, if not greater weight would be on the person

that was actually on the ground there. >> so, sir, the way the process works is that the people op the ground collect informs. they send that information to washington. the analysts take that information, which is not the totality of information, because the analysts get information from all sorts of places, not just the people on the ground, and analysts look at the totality of the information, and they come to a judgment. that is cia official position. >> do you think that's the best way to go? >> yes, i do think that's the way to go. >> and -- >> and let me say something educational. chiefs of station are encouraged, if they have a different view, to write their own analysis and deseminate it to policy makers. they are encouraged to do that. >> let me switch, if i could, you talked about the military

that showed up the next day at the annex. who 1 the military that -- and did they -- >> there were two military officers from tripoli who volunteers to go with our officers to benghazi and those two individuals are heros. absolute heros. they were on the roof when those mortars hit, and they successfully removed the injured app dead from the roof under fire. they had been decorated, rightfully so, and i'm grateful they volunteer to go to benghazi that night, because had they not, more people would have died. >> can i ask a question with regards, a little outside your lane, but talking about the annex, your personnel that were there, what americans should expect in the future should this happen again and try to avoid it? that's where we all want to get to, and to not have four people

get killed to what the people on the ground that are assigned to the places can expect when they go and serve there. if this would happen again, and we've heard time and time again that there was not enough time for there to be a military or some kind of special forces response because of the distance that responders were from benghazi that day in a very hot spot, whatever, what -- what my question is is that at the time that ambassador stevens died, which was shortly after midnight, and the amount of time that went on, the amount of hours that went on before your two military guys showed up and the mortars at the annex stopped, we were told that there was not enough time for a military response to get there, but the one question that i continue to have, and the one question that we need to know moves forward so we can keep our agents safe and embassy safe is

that how did they know at the time that ambassador stephens was killed, administration, secretary of state, you, how did they know it would end such that there was not enough time to get a military response there? it ended at dawn. they were hoping it would end at dawn, the people in the annex. we had absolutely nod why that was -- what if it went on for eight to ten to 12 more hours? they -- my problem is that i don't feel like the administration was ever going to send a response to benghazi to put boots on the ground in another middle east country because of the perception it had political or otherwise, but to say they didn't have enough time to get anybody, how did they know when it was going to end? >> so i can't tell you about the decision making and discussions at the didn't of defense because i'm totally unaware of those. what i can tell you is that

there were three attacks that night. there was the attack on the diplomatic facility in benghazi. when our officers showed up at the diplomatic facility and rescue the state department officers and took them back to the cia annex, there was a second attack. it was -- it occurred immediately upon the return to our base. that attack lasted about a half hour or so, and that attack was repulsed. things were quiet. thing were quiet for a number of hours. i don't know exactly, three and a half, four hours, but things were quiet before, what i think happened, the guys who did the first attack on the annex went away, got themselves heavier weapons, including mortars, and came back for another go at it. there was a period of time in which it appearedded this was over. now, that does not answer -- i understand that does not answer your question completely, but i just offer that context. >> okay. mr. chairman, i appreciate that, but for the safety of

people like this in the future, just because there's a gap in time, knowing that nobody is coming from the united states of america is very disconcerning to me. >> mr. chairman, can i have one more second? is that okay? i think you've asked thee most important question, which is, what can we do going forward to minimize the chance of this happening again? we'll never be able to guarantee that it will not happen again. there is always risk. i think the things that we need to do to make sure that this does not happen again is, one, i think we need to improve the intelligence collection that in places lick benghazi with real risk, we have to make sure we have battlefield kind of awareness, and i think this committee knows in the days leading up to the attack in benghazi, we were about ready to install a special system at our base that would have given us better intention. we need better intelligence. two, we need to make sure that

the security posture of these facilities is as good as it can possibly be, and, three, i think we need to make sure that the military is always postured in a way that it can respond quickly, if necessary. >> mr. thornberry. >> mr. morell, in addition to the reasons you were discussing with mr. rooney on why this is important, there's another area i want to ask you about. ..

did you experience such frustrations as secretary gates and clinton and others? >> sir vision of the central intelligence agency conducts extremely sensitive operations and i routinely, routinely discuss those operations with mr. brennan and mr. met going to and i would get asked a lot of questions just as i get asked a lot of questions here. i never felt i was being micromanaged their nor have i ever felt i was bing are managed here. >> did you experience or have knowledge of national security council stfe