Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama's Washington

by Sharyl Attkisson

  One might be able to believe that the administration’s wholesale avoidance of the term terrorism in direct reference to Benghazi is an accident of wording. Except that the same accident happened in those early days when White House spokesman Carney briefed reporters, when Secretary of State Clinton spoke at the return of the victims’ bodies, and when U.S. ambassador Rice appeared on Sunday talk shows. Except that the references to terrorism and al-Qaeda were purposefully removed from the talking points used to relate details to the public. In fact, one would have to go out of his way to use so many synonyms for the attackers and not say the actual word terrorist.

  Taken together, it’s difficult to believe the wording is anything other than a purposeful strategy. The main unanswered questions: Who spearheaded the strategy? Why? And in what form was it transmitted to all the officials who got on board with it?

  So what does all this have to do with my own situation at CBS?

  In an unexpected way, it came to expose the extraordinary lengths to which some of my colleagues would go to misrepresent and slant the facts when they had explicit evidence to the contrary, which they kept hidden. It was enough to irreparably destroy any confidence in and respect I might have had for those at the network who were involved.

  In the Benghazi chapter of this book, I referred to the fact that 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft happened to have an unrelated interview scheduled with President Obama the day after the Benghazi attacks.

  However, the contents of his crucial interview, as it related to Benghazi, were largely kept under wraps at the time. The interview was only pulled out of the archives more than five weeks later when CBS Evening News managers wished to cherry-pick an excerpt and dictate its use out of context in a way that supported President Obama’s version of events.

  It’s October 19, 2012, three days after that fateful Obama-Romney debate and less than three weeks before the election. Obama had managed to turn around Romney’s advantage. The president had held his own in the debate. Maybe even thrown Romney back on his heels with his Benghazi answer, insisting he’d immediately labled the attacks “terrorism.” After being smacked down by Crowley, Romney would hesitate to raise the specter of Benghazi again during the rest of the campaign.

  But still simmering in the background is the building flap over whether the Obama administration had tried to hide the Benghazi attacks’ terrorist ties. The CBS Evening News wants the controversy addressed and, preferably, put to rest. The New York producers commission a story on the topic from a fellow CBS Washington correspondent.

  Midday, I’m in the Washington newsroom when I overhear our senior producer relay strict instructions from New York. The instructions say that the other correspondent’s story must include a specific, never-before-aired sound bite from President Obama’s September 12 60 Minutes interview with Kroft. I’m busy working on my own story that day, but it’s news to me that 60 Minutes had spoken to the president about Benghazi weeks before. New York also dictates the precise wording that the other correspondent should use to introduce the chosen Obama sound bite. It appears to be an attempt to make the president’s case for him—that he had called the Benghazi attacks “terrorism.”

  The resulting Evening News script reads as follows:

  It had been about 14 hours since the attack, and the President said he did not believe it was due simply to mob violence. “You’re right that this is not a situation that was exactly the same as what happened in Egypt,” Obama said, referring to protests sparked by an anti-Islam film. “And my suspicion is that there are folks involved in this who were looking to target Americans from the start.” Shortly after that, Obama stepped into the Rose Garden and spoke of the killing of four Americans as if it were a terrorist attack. “No act of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation,” Obama said in his Rose Garden remarks.

  I mentally note that my own interpretation of the president’s Rose Garden remarks isn’t quite the same.

  Meanwhile, in subsequent days, my producers and I break several more important stories on Benghazi as documents and witnesses chip away at the Obama administration’s narrative.

  On October 24, 2012, I exclusively obtain the email alerts issued by the State Department to the White House Situation Room and government and intelligence agencies as the attacks unfolded on September 11. One of the initial alerts stated what the Obama administration kept hidden from the public: that the Islamic militant group Ansar al-Sharia had claimed responsibility for the attacks. As evidence mounts, none of it supports the Obama administration’s narrative about a spontaneous protest.

  As I’m writing my script for the Evening News, the hotline from the New York fishbowl sounds in the Washington newsroom. New York is instructing me to insert the same Obama 60 Minutes sound bite in my story that they’d told the other correspondent to use a few days before.

  “It has to be used, and you have to use that same wording to introduce it: Obama ‘said he did not believe it was simply due to mob violence,’ ” my senior producer tells me in the voice that conveys to me there’s no arguing the point and don’t-ask-why-because-he-doesn’t-know-the-answer. Their minds are made up.

  So for the second time in five days, New York has us insert the same line and Obama sound bite in an Evening News story to imply that the president had called Benghazi a terrorist attack the next day. It seems as though they’re putting a lot of effort into trying to defend the president on this point.

  It’s not long after that story when the proverbial light switch on the Benghazi story turns off at CBS. The broadcast has gone from asking me to aggressively pursue all leads, to demurring when I begin to turn up more facts that show important inconsistencies in the administration’s accounts. The election is drawing near. Witnesses and documents are raising more legitimate questions by the day. But I feel that familiar Big Chill.

  Leave it alone.

  Troublemaker.

  Pretty soon, the only sure outlet for new developments is CBSNews.com. As with Fast and Furious, the public is thirsty for developments on the Benghazi story and the Web postings draw a great deal of traffic. Clearly, viewers are interested. But the broadcast producers are not.

  It’s not until the weekend before the November presidential election that I learn something that would shake any remaining faith I had in the New York fishbowl.

  It’s Friday afternoon. A colleague calls.

  “You know that interview 60 Minutes did with Obama in the Rose Garden on September twelfth?” the colleague says.

  “Yes,” I answer. “Why?”

  “I just got a transcript. Of the entire interview.”

  “From who?

  “I can’t say. But holy shit.”

  “What’s it say?” I ask.

  “Holy shit.”

  The colleague proceeds to read to me from the transcript. It’s undeniably clear to both of us. We instantly know that the interview that had been kept under such a tight wrap for nearly eight weeks is explosive.

  The very first comment Kroft made, and the president’s response, proved that Romney had been correct all along:

  KROFT Mr. President, this morning you went out of your way to avoid the use of the word terrorism in connection with the Libya attack.

  OBAMA Right.

  Kroft’s take on the president’s wording and intent was the same as mine had been and, according to the president himself, at the time, our take was correct. All the synonyms used by Obama, Clinton, White House spokesman Carney, and Ambassador Rice were intentional. They “went out of [their] way to avoid the use of the word terrorism.”

  Then Kroft asked a question that offered the president the opportunity to clarify or at least hint at the behind-the-scenes conclusions already formed by nearly everyone on the inside: that the attacks were the work of terrorists. But the president balked.

  KROFT Do you believe that this was
a terrorist attack?

  OBAMA Well, it’s too early to know exactly how this came about, what group was involved, but obviously it was an attack on Americans.

  Kroft had asked the question point blank. Though the president has told the world that he unequivocally called it a terrorist attack that very day, and though the media has largely sided with his interpretation, his own hidden interview with CBS belied the claim.

  My thought turns to the selectively chosen Obama sound bite the Evening News had directed me to use a week before. To put it mildly: it was misleading.

  This was a really bad thing.

  Besides the implications for the story itself, I couldn’t get past the fact that upper-level journalists at CBS had been a party to misleading the public. Why wouldn’t they have immediately released the operative sound bite after Romney raised the issue in the debate? It would have been a great moment for CBS. The kind of break that news organizations hope for. We had our hands on original material that no other news outlet had that would shed light on an important controversy. But we hid it.

  Now, eight years after Rathergate, I feared that we’d once again mischaracterized facts in advance of a presidential election to hurt a Republican. We not only had stood by silently as the media largely sided against Romney, but we’d also taken an active part in steering them in that direction.

  Still on the phone with my colleague, we both knew what had to be done but I said it out loud.

  “This has to be published,” I said. “Before the election.”

  “I know,” agreed my colleague.

  What’s really going to bake your noodle later on is—How did the White House know CBS wouldn’t use the part of the 60 Minutes Obama interview that disproved the president’s debate claim?

  Thus began a frenetic forty-eight hours of activity inside CBS News during which a small group of us made individual contact with news executives and explained what we thought needed to happen.

  I told the executives I spoke with that withholding the operative sound bite and information was extremely unethical and dishonest. I argued that we had no choice but to publish it quickly, prior to the election. It was up to them to decide the format, but it had to be published.

  It was all going to come out one way or another. There were 60 Minutes staffers who had been talking about it, wondering why the Evening News had avoided using the operative part of the Obama interview. And now, at the eleventh hour, the chatter had grown so strong that a transcript had been leaked to some of us outside 60 Minutes. Like chewing on a gristly piece of bad meat, it was only going to get bigger. It was only a matter of time before people outside of CBS found out.

  If we published quickly and took our lumps, at least we would have done so before the election. If we didn’t publish, and outsiders found out later—and they would—it would be said that we engaged in a cover-up to try to affect the outcome of the election.

  In no instance did any executive express disagreement to me or to others in our small group. In fact, they enthusiastically agreed. There had been a grave and purposeful error. We had to fix it. And so, the Sunday night before the election, nearly eight weeks after the Obama interview had taken place, the network posted it on CBSNews.com as part of a comprehensive Benghazi timeline that I and several colleagues had built.

  I exhaled for the first time in two days.

  I paused and thought back to the actual transcript I’d seen of the entire Kroft interview with Obama. 60 Minutes had emailed it to the Evening News fishbowl in New York the very day it took place. Anchor and Managing Editor Pelley. Executive Producer Shevlin. They had to have known. They were emailed the full transcript on day one. They must have known after the Romney debate and when they dictated use of the misleading sound bites in October.

  “Look, we fucked up,” CBS News president Rhodes would tell me in our continuing discussions. “But what matters is that as soon as it was brought to my attention I took steps to correct it. And if there are [congressional] hearings, that’s what I’ll testify to, because it’s the truth.”

  There were no hearings.

  A few Republican members of Congress who were paying closer attention than others contacted CBS News executives with their concerns about the belated posting of the president’s Benghazi interview. But by and large, the whole episode was mostly forgotten, eclipsed by the actual election, after which attentions were focused elsewhere.

  I was relieved that the material was published before the election. But I felt the internal follow-up was crucial. There had been a serious breach of ethics that could have done irreparable harm to the news division, had it not been caught and remedied. Those responsible for the lapse have no business working in a news division. People like that can bring down a news operation by caring more about their own selfish motives than the good of the network and its duty to the public. If there ever were to be an outside inquiry, as there was after Rathergate, we would need to demonstrate that we’d taken all the appropriate steps. That we’d learned from our past mistakes. That meant there should be an internal ethics investigation holding accountable whoever was responsible.

  But that was not to be.

  A few weeks later, I met with David Rhodes during one of his regular visits to Washington. I asked for an update on the internal investigation. For me, there was no point in pulling punches. Speaking of the Evening News managers who I felt had been a party to covering up the Obama bite, I said, “They’re dishonest, they’re unethical, and they’re not very smart. I don’t trust them, I don’t respect them, and I can’t work for them.”

  David assured me that a full investigation was under way. Or was going to be conducted in the future. I wasn’t entirely sure. It was a bit vague.

  “Will the rest of us get to know the results?” I asked. Twice.

  I wondered realistically what could be done. Pretty much the whole New York fishbowl was potentially implicated in the ethics breach. How could CBS really punish them all? And would the network risk taking action that could draw attention to something that had gone relatively unnoticed by the public?

  David assured me that, yes, we would all know the results of the investigation when it was finished.

  That was the last I ever heard of it.

  | CONTROVERSIALIZING IN ACTION

  It’s spring of 2013 and, disillusioned about the network’s handling of the Benghazi story, I nonetheless continue to turn up new information and offer stories. My sources and information on Benghazi are bearing serious fruit but, more often than not, it tends to die on the vine now. The partisan propaganda campaign to portray Benghazi as an Area 51–type conspiracy theory, a Republican-manufactured phony scandal, has successfully taken root with receptive audience members inside and outside CBS. Many other media outlets that had once enthusiastically covered the story have, like CBS, backed off.

  I’m taking a day off on Friday, May 10, when Bureau Chief Isham contacts me and asks me to check out a story that’s just been broken by ABC’s Jonathan Karl about the Benghazi talking points.

  For months, the Obama administration had refused to publicly release crucial emails showing the genesis of the controversial and misleading talking points that excluded mention of terrorism. But the administration had made some of the emails available to members of Congress and their staff on an extremely restricted basis: the documents had to be viewed in a special room during certain hours in the presence of one or more administration officials. Members of Congress and their staff were not allowed to remove the documents from the room. They were not allowed to make copies. All they could do was make handwritten notes about them.

  Karl’s news is big. He reports that ABC has “reviewed” “White House emails” and obtained “12 different versions of the talking points.” They reveal for the first time that, from start to finish, the content of the talking points was transformed from revealing that terrorism and al-
Qaeda were responsible, and that the CIA had issued prior warnings of an attack on the Benghazi compound, to a scrubbed version that removed all traces of terror references. This is the very thing that inside sources had suggested, but the administration had denied.

  Isham wants to know if I can get the emails, too. I make some calls and pretty quickly discover that I can’t get the actual emails. But I can find out what they said from a reliable source who reviewed them. I report back to Isham.

  “I can’t find anybody who has the administration’s emails. The administration turned them over to Congress with a bunch of restrictions. But I can get a read on them from a good source who reviewed the emails and took handwritten notes,” I tell Isham.

  The source reads to me directly from notes and repeats the caveat that there may be paraphrasing because of the unusual arrangement whereby access was limited and they weren’t allowed to photocopy the emails.

  After the briefing, I compare my notes to Karl’s emails and they match up very closely. Not exactly, which could be expected due to the paraphrasing, but the meaning is the same.