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November 28, 2012

Rep. Schiff Statement on GOP's Renewed Attacks on UN Ambassador Susan Rice

Washington, DC– Today, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), a senior Member of the Intelligence Community released the following statement:

 
“This week, GOP Senators continued their unfounded criticism of UN Ambassador Susan Rice.  This is a terrible disservice to a dedicated public servant, and a transparent attempt to deny the President a potential cabinet member of his choice. 
 
“The uncontested fact is that the intelligence community provided the talking points Ambassador Rice used as the basis of her statements in the wake of the Benghazi attacks.  The changes that were made to those talking points were made by the intelligence community – not the White House, and not the UN Ambassador – and were made to protect classified sources of information. Unable to make the case that anyone outside the intelligence community was responsible for the inaccuracies in these talking points, some GOP Senators now claim that the UN Ambassador should have rejected the talking points because she supposedly had access to better classified information.
 
“This is nonsense.  Let’s not forget that at the time the UN Ambassador went on the Sunday talk shows, the Director of National Intelligence and the Director of the CIA both believed, erroneously, that Benghazi began as a protest.  Are GOP Senators now claiming that Ambassador Rice had access to better intelligence than the heads of the intelligence agencies themselves?
 
“It’s time to put the election behind us once and for all, and return our focus to where it should have been all along – hunting for those who attacked us that day and bringing them to justice.”