Gee, what a surprise to find Mike Morell deeply involved in Biden’s cover-up of the Hunter Biden laptop story. So how shocked, shocked should we be that, when the Biden campaign needed to call in a pro in the dark art of politicizing intelligence, it turned to none other than former CIA muckety-muck Michael Morell? You may remember him as the man behind the infamous Benghazi talking points . . . about which he has been just as honest as he is now in Deep State–splaining to us that his effort to help Joe Biden slough off Hunter's scandalous laptop as Russian disinformation was not – really not, cross-his-heart – a scam to frame the laptop as Russian disinformation.
As our Ari Blaff reports, Morell has fessed up to the House Judiciary Committee that, in the weeks just before the 2020 presidential election, he and his pal Antony Blinken (then a top Biden campaign adviser, now the secretary of state) cooked up the shameful letter signed by 51 partisan Democrats – I mean, er, scrupulously nonpartisan former intelligence and national-security officials. That letter, which branded the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian disinformation, is itself an exquisite piece of disinformation, based on exactly zero, zip, nada evidence, and trading exclusively on the credentials of the former officials.
In other words, this is strictly a case of Washington insiders' cashing in, for partisan gain, on the perception of credibility that results from having had privileged access to national-defense secrets. Worse, they issued their deceptive letter in the teeth of incontestable indicia of the Hunter laptop's authenticity – evidence so overwhelming that even alumni of our spotty $90 billion per annum intelligence community should have figured it out.
As illustrated by Steve Hayes's excellent review of Morell's revisionist memoir, he and his admirers in the media–Democrat complex have energetically labored to memory-hole his doctoring of the talking points generated by the Obama administration following the jihadist massacre of U.S. personnel in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. As Obama officials well knew, the operation in Libya that night, on the eleventh anniversary of al-Qaeda's 9/11 atrocities, was a coordinated terrorist attack. But because it occurred less than two months before Election Day, with Obama campaigning for reelection on the fiction that he had decimated al-Qaeda, the unvarnished truth would not do. Thus did Obama officials strain to depict the massacre as triggered by protests run amok in reaction to an anti-Muslim video.
The CIA knew right away that jihadists had attacked the compound. This patent fact was immediately reported to Washington, including to the State Department. Indeed, it was known that jihadists were conducting surveillance of the American compounds even before the attacks. The later indictment of Ahmed Katallah made the terrorism instigation clear (even though, of course, the Obama Justice Department made no mention of al-Qaeda in the charging document).
In the days after the massacre, the Obama White House wanted the role of terrorism erased. To report what had happened forthrightly would not only have undermined the president's reelection-campaign messaging. It would also have underscored the reckless failures to secure the American compounds. That's what made them such an inviting target for jihadists who, on that fateful night, murdered U.S. ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, State Department official Sean Smith, and two government-security contractors and former Navy SEAL officers, Glen Doherty and Tyrone S. Woods.
Consequently, as Obama adviser Ben Rhodes put it in outlining the administration's messaging goals, officials needed to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy. Gregory Hicks, the State Department official who was briefing his superiors from Libya during and after the attack, later testified that the video was a non-event in Benghazi. Yet, after consulting with President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton put out a statement blaming the video for the attack, despite privately informing her daughter and the Libyan president that the attack appeared to have been carried out by Ansar al-Sharia, an al-Qaeda affiliate.
Talking points about the attack, to be shared with Congress and ultimately the public, were prepared by intelligence officials in coordination with the White House, the State Department, the FBI, and other relevant agencies. The originally drafted talking points mentioned attacks that had been conducted by Islamic militants with ties to al-Qaeda, including Ansar al-Sharia. The talking points were then edited and, as Hayes recounts:
In every case, the changes made by administration and intelligence officials to the Benghazi talking points originated by the CIA had the effect of downplaying the significance of the attacks–cutting Islamic, replacing attacks with demonstrations, removing with ties to al Qaeda, excising mention of the involvement of Ansar al Sharia.
The talking points became a script for Susan Rice, the Obama White House adviser – and now Biden White House adviser – who notoriously made the Sunday talk-show rounds to sell the administration's claim that the video had ignited the attack.
When it eventually emerged that the intelligence had been politicized to obscure the role of terrorists and create the misimpression of a spontaneous uprising, members of Congress pressed intelligence agencies for answers. At a House Intelligence Committee hearing in mid November 2012, Morell testified along with Obama's national-intelligence director, James Clapper, and other top intelligence officials. The committee asked Clapper who was responsible for the talking points. As Clapper replied that he had no idea, Morell – who had been directly responsible – sat mum.
Later, as Obama mulled nominating Rice to replace Clinton as secretary of state but worried that her disastrous post-Benghazi Sunday show rounds would prevent her confirmation, the White House persuaded the ever-accommodating Morell to accompany her to Capitol Hill meetings with key senators. Morell knew Rice's statements in the media appearances had been misleading, but agreed to tag along when she met with three Republicans who had closely followed Benghazi developments – John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Kelly Ayotte. Pressed about the editing of the talking points, Morell falsely told the senators that the FBI had been the culprit. Risibly, he elaborated about how the bureau had supposedly raised concerns that allusions to al-Qaeda could compromise its criminal investigation.
Senator Graham proceeded to call FBI headquarters, and later recalled that they went ballistic over Morell's allegation. Whereupon Morell changed his tune, suddenly remembering that, well, actually, his CIA had made the changes to the talking points. Eventually, called to testify under oath, he further, shall we say, refined this account, conceding that he'd personally made significant changes.
I know this will stun you, too: Originally, Morell insisted that the talking points were developed by intelligence officials and shared with the White House only for its awareness, and certainly not to coordinate a message about the events in Benghazi. Later, when the administration was forced to release emails that showed close coordination, Morell admitted that, well, there just might have been some coordination afoot.
Remarkably, in putting together the letter from the 51 former officials, Morell has told House investigators that his motive was twofold: One intent was to share our concern with the American people that the Russians were playing on this issue; and, two, it was [to] help Vice President Biden.
Good ol' Mike Morell, always with the security of the American people in the front of his mind. In point of fact, while the Russians had nothing to do with Hunter Biden's laptop, the data from the laptop elucidated the tight connection between the Biden family and America's most challenging adversary, the Chinese Communist Party. The latter's operatives, with their close ties to Xi Jinping and his regime, have poured millions of dollars into the Biden family coffers, and the laptop contents corroborate that the point of this operation was to buy the elder Biden's influence.
But why would that be of any concern to a selflessly dedicated, scrupulously nonpartisan intelligence pro, right?
Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at National Review Institute, an NR contributing editor, and author of Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency.