Republicans provided the erroneous quotes linked to White House emails regarding how to address the September 2012 attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya, CBS News reported on Thursday.
According to the report by chief White House correspondent Major Garrett, a quote leaked on May 10 attributed to then-Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes asking that talking points related to the attack "reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department" without undermining the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was put out by unnamed "Republicans on Capitol Hill."
But, as CNN also reported on Tuesday, Rhodes' email did not mention the State Department; what his email actually said was that the matter should be resolved "in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, particularly the investigation."
Garrett also said that Republicans provided a false quote attributed to State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland saying that, "the penultimate point is a paragraph talking about all the previous warnings provided by the Agency (CIA) about al-Qaeda's presence and activities of al-Qaeda."
But Nuland's email did not actually mention the terrorist group, instead advising that "the penultimate point could be abused by members to beat the State Department for not paying attention to Agency warnings."
Garrett reported that there was no evidence linking the White House to any changes made on the talking points. Instead, it was a mutual decision by the State Department and the Central Investigation Agency to revise the talking points to make them less specific.
Watch CBS' report, aired on Thursday, below.
