re: New York Times claims they had a reporter on scene at Benghazi

quote:

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As to the first group:

quote:
The intelligence that helped inform those talking points—and what the U.S. public would ultimately be told—came in part from an intercept of a phone call between one of the alleged attackers and a middle manager from al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the group’s north African affiliate, according to U.S. officials familiar with the intercept. In the call, the alleged attacker said the locals went forward with the attack only after watching the riots that same day at the U.S. embassy in Cairo.

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After posting this paragraph, you followed it up with a link to the Daily Beast story from which it was extracted to support your position. Most readers will either not click on the link, or will merely scan it briefly. That could leave them with a distorted sense of your properly-attributed excerpt.

Why?

Because your quote is immediately followed by this (why did you stop at the word "Cairo"? :

"However, the intercept was one of several monitored conversations during and after the attacks between members of local militia called Ansar al-Sharia and AQIM, which, taken together, suggest the assault was in fact a premeditated terrorist attack, according to U.S. intelligence counter-terrorism officials not authorized to talk to the press.

In one of the calls, for example, members of Ansar al-Sharia bragged about their successful attack against the American consulate (sic)and the U.S. ambassador.

It's unclear why the talking points said the attacks were spontaneous and why they didn't mention the possibility of al-Qaeda involvement given the content of the intercepts and the organizations the the speakers were affiliated with. One U.S. intelligence official said the widely-distributed assessment was an example of "cherry picking", or choosing one piece of intelligence and ignoring other pieces, to support a preferred thesis."

Again, my quote from the link begins with the very next word after your quote from the link ends. Which merely illustrates how relying on too many quotes, without context, is a circle game. In this case particularly, considering the source publication, and the date of publication (Oct 1, 2012, 20 days after the attack and a time when misinformation was overflowing everywhere. If you go back and read countless Benghazi stories from 2012, the factual errors are mind-numbing in retrospect!)




Your Kirkpatrick quote does not support your Daily Beast quote.