Lawmakers: CIA’s #2 Lied to Us About Benghazi -- By Stephen Hayes, The Weekly Standard, gnom.es

Two leading Republicans on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence say that Michael Morell, former deputy director and twice acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency, provided an account of his role on Benghazi that was often highly misleading and at times deliberately false.

“I went back and reviewed some of his testimony the other day and he’s gotten himself in a real box,” says Senator Saxby Chambliss, the highest-ranking Republican on the committee. “It’s really strange. I’ve always thought Mike was a straight-up guy, gave us good briefings—factual, straightforward. I mean, this has really been strange the last few weeks—all this now being uncovered.”

At issue is the central role Morell played in producing the Obama administration’s flawed talking points about the fatal attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012, and the misleading answers he provided to lawmakers who investigated them.

The allegations of misconduct are serious. In the “additional views” portion of the recent Senate Intelligence Committee report, six Republican members  accuse Morell of lying in sworn testimony to Congress.

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Morell—now counselor to Beacon Global Strategies, a consultancy close to Hillary Clinton—did not respond to a request for comment.

Three aspects of the controversy are drawing particular interest: (1) Morell’s obfuscation of his central role in rewriting the talking points, (2) Morell’s contention that the FBI rewrote the talking points, and (3) Morell’s false claim that the talking points were provided to the White House merely as a heads-up and not for coordination.

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