Why did the CIA ignore their own station chief in Libya when developing its talking points for the administration?

That's a question that is likely to be answered on Wednesday at a hearing of the House Intelligence Committee.

Washington Times:

Before the Obama administration gave an inaccurate narrative on national television that the Benghazi attacks grew from an anti-American protest, the CIA’s station chief in Libya pointedly told his superiors in Washington that no such demonstration occurred, documents and interviews with current and former intelligence officials show.

The attack was “not an escalation of protests,” the station chief wrote to then-Deputy CIA Director Michael J. Morell in an email dated Sept. 15, 2012 — a full day before the White House sent Susan E. Rice to several Sunday talk shows to disseminate talking points claiming that the Benghazi attack began as a protest over an anti-Islam video.

That the talking points used by Mrs. Rice, who was then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, were written by a CIA that ignored the assessment by its own station chief inside Libya, has emerged as one of the major bones of contention in the more than two years of political fireworks and congressional investigations into the Benghazi attack.

What has never been made public is whether Mr. Morell and others at the CIA explicitly shared the station chief’s assessment with the White House or State Department.

Two former intelligence officials have told The Washington Times that this question likely will be answered at a Wednesday hearing of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence during which Mr. Morell is scheduled to give his public testimony.

Mr. Morell, who has since left the CIA, declined to comment on the matter Monday. He now works at Beacon Global Strategies, a Washington insider strategic communications firm.

One former intelligence official close to Mr. Morell told The Times on the condition of anonymity that “the whole question of communication with the station chief will be addressed in his testimony.”

“We’re confident that it will clarify the situation in the minds of many who are asking,” the former official said.

Another former intelligence official told The Times that Mr. Morell did tell the White House and the State Department that the CIA station chief in Libya had concluded that there was no protest but senior Obama administration and CIA officials in Washington ignored the assessment.

Why they ignored it remains a topic of heated debate within the wider intelligence community.

If the White House was told prior to Rice's appearances on TV, how could they think that they could maintain the fiction about the video? Did they believe they could keep a lid on the whole thing and keep the truth from emerging?

I don't think they believed they could keep what actually happened from the public forever. They only needed to keep it secret for two months - until the election was out olf the way and Obama safely re-elected. After that, it was simply a matter of doing what they're doing now; stonewalling Congress.

Then there's this:

A third source told The Times on Monday that Mr. Morell and other CIA officials in Washington were weighing several pieces of “conflicting information” streaming in about the Benghazi attack as the talking points were being crafted.

“That’s why they ultimately came up with the analysis that they did,” the source said. “The piece that was coming out of Tripoli was important, but it was one piece amid several streams of information.”

One of the former intelligence officials said the Libya station chief’s assessment was being weighed against media reports from the ground in Benghazi that quoted witnesses as saying there had been a protest. Analysts at the CIA, the source said, also were weighing it against reporting by other intelligence divisions, including the National Security Agency.

“The chief of station in Tripoli who was 600 or 700 miles away from the attacks wouldn’t necessarily have the only view of what actually went on in Benghazi,” that former official said.

The station chief may have been hundreds of miles away but he was also in direct contact with the CIA annex. How logical is it to give as much or more weight to "media reports" than your own station chief on the ground?

More questions that aren't likely to be answered anytime soon.

Hat Tip: Ed Lasky