THEY KNEW: Ex-CIA official gives stunning account on Benghazi -- By Guy Taylor, The Washington Times

The CIA's former deputy director disclosed Wednesday that Obama administration officials were alerted the day before they went on national television that a key tenet of their original Benghazi storyline might be inaccurate. But he did not explain why the administration continued to cling to its narrative even after U.S. intelligence debunked reports that the deadly attack was born out of a protest over an anti-Islam video.

In often testy exchanges with Republicans who accused him of a cover-up, Michael Morell flatly denied that he "inappropriately altered and influenced" the infamous Benghazi talking points to downplay the role of terrorism in the attacks.

But he acknowledged overruling the wishes of his boss at the time, CIA Director David H. Petraeus, by excising from the talking points information that the CIA had warned about possible al Qaeda terrorist attacks in Libya before the Benghazi tragedy unfolded on Sept. 11, 2012, killing ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

"I saw the language as self-serving and defensive on the agency's part," Mr. Morell replied to skeptical lawmakers. "Here was a tragic event, and we were saying, 'We told you so.' This was wrong, in my view, and would have been seen as an attempt to make the CIA look good and shift any possible blame for failing to see the risk of an attack from the agency to the State Department."

He also said references to al Qaeda were removed from the talking points because of concern at the CIA that leaving them in the public narrative could have jeopardized classified sources.

"The only way we knew that anybody who was involved in that attack that night was associated with al Qaeda was from classified sources," he said. "To leave it in, the [CIA] director would have had to declassify that information."

The 33-year veteran of the CIA, who served Democratic and Republican presidents, provided the first concrete timeline of when the CIA began to understand that the original reports were wrong.

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