The Contradiction of Peter King

Peter King, who already appeared to have largely reached conclusions regarding what had occurred in Benghazi before Petraeus's testimony this morning, gave conclusions consistent with his consistent anti-Administration bias:

"He now clearly believes that it [the Sept. 11 attack] did not arise out of a demonstration, that it was not spontaneous and it was clear terrorist involvement.”

However, King's statement has been directly contradicted by others in the Petraeus hearing this morning, and by Ambassadorial staff who received the same information as Rice at the time:

Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the committee's top Democrat, said after the hearing that Petraeus stated that there were two lines of intelligence information were received: that spontaneous protests were occurring that were in response to the anti-Islamic video, and that *after* this, a more organized attack on the Embassy was started.

At the time that information was communicated to Rice and others, it was believed that the protests were spontaneous, and this was based upon the intelligence information received at that time.

Ambassador Patrick Kennedy confirmed this, stating that he and all Ambassadorial staff had received this same information, and that "if any one of them had appeared on television on Sunday morning, they would have made the same report as Rice did, based on the intelligence that they had received."

Rep. Ruppersberger, after hearing the Petraeus testimony this morning, stated that he was satisfied that the FBI had behaved properly in not notifying the White House or lawmakers about the inquiry sooner, in keeping with post-Watergate rules set up to prevent interference in criminal investigations.