Sources: Office of the DNI cut "al Qaeda" reference from Benghazi talking points, and CIA, FBI signed off 
 
 (CBS News) WASHINGTON - CBS News has learned that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) cut specific references to "al Qaeda" and "terrorism" from the unclassified talking points given to Ambassador Susan Rice on the Benghazi consulate attack - with the agreement of the CIA and FBI. The White House or State Department did not make those changes. 
 
 There has been considerable discussion about who made the changes to the talking points that Rice stuck to in her television appearances on Sept. 16 (video), five days after the attack that killed American Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, and three other U.S. nationals. 
 
 Republicans have accused her of making misleading statements by referring to the assault as a "spontaneous" demonstration by extremists. Some have suggested she used the terminology she did for political reasons. 
 
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 However, an intelligence source tells CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan the links to al Qaeda were deemed too "tenuous" to make public, because there was not strong confidence in the person providing the intelligence. CIA Director David Petraeus, however, told Congress he agreed to release the information -- the reference to al Qaeda -- in an early draft of the talking points, which were also distributed to select lawmakers. 
 
 "The intelligence community assessed from the very beginning that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack." DNI spokesman Shawn Turner tells CBS News. That information was shared at a classified level -- which Rice, as a member of President Obama's cabinet, would have been privy to. 
 
 An intelligence source says the talking points were passed from the CIA to the DNI, where the substantive edits were made, and then to FBI, which made more edits as part of "standard procedure." 
 
 Timeline: How Benghazi attack, probe unfolded 
 
 The head of the DNI is James Clapper, an Obama appointee. He ultimately did review the points, before they were given to Ambassador Rice and members of the House intelligence committee on Sept. 14. They were compiled the day before. 
 
 Brennan says her source wouldn't confirm who in the agency suggested the final edits which were signed off on by all intelligence agencies. 
 
 Another source, a senior U.S. official familiar with the drafting of the talking points, tells CBS News the "controversy this word choice has caused came as a surprise." 
 
 "The points were not, as has been insinuated by some, edited to minimize the role of extremists, diminish terrorist affiliations, or play down that this was an attack," the official tells CBS News, adding that there were "legitimate intelligence and legal issues to consider, as is almost always the case when explaining classified assessments publicly." 
 
 "Most people understand that saying 'extremists' were involved in a direct assault on the mission isn't shying away from the idea of terrorist involvement," added the official. "Because of the various elements involved in the attack, the term extremist was meant to capture the range of participants." 
 
 A spokeswoman for House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers suggested today that the DNI's explanation is different that what the committee was told behind closed doors last week. 
 
 "The statement released Monday evening by the DNI's spokesman regarding how the Intelligence Community's talking points were changed gives a new explanation that differs significantly from information provided in testimony to the Committee last week," House Intelligence Committee spokeswoman Susan Phalen told CBS News. "Chairman Rogers looks forward to discussing this new explanation with Director Clapper as soon as possible to understand how the DNI reached this conclusion and why leaders of the Intelligence Community testified late last week that they were unaware of who changed the talking points." 
 
 Several militant groups have been eyed as likely culprits, including the Islamic extremist militia Ansar al Sharia, which was based in Eastern Libya and enjoyed huge power in Benghazi before the attack. Gen. Carter Ham, chief of the U.S. Africa Command, said recently that there were "linkages" between al Qaeda and some of the people who attacked the consulate and the CIA annex about a mile away. 
 
 CBS News senior correspondent John Miller, himself a former Deputy Director of the DNI's analysis division, explained on "CBS This Morning" in the weeks after the Benghazi attack why it has been so difficult for American intelligence agents to clearly identify and label the suspects in the assault. ( 
 
 "We want a wiring diagram," Miller said. "We want an organized picture: 'It was al Qaeda who ordered it, it was Ansar al Sharia who carried it out, it was this group that assisted. The problem is, the lines have blurred between those groups and their members. Ansar al Sharias are popping up in places like Benghazi, but also in Yemen, also in Tunisia, in all these countries -- and they're not al Qaeda, but they are reading from the al Qaeda narrative and they are being influenced by people who are formerly influential extremists in al Qaeda." 
 
 "The actual truth is, the picture isn't that clear, but we can piece it together, and that's not satisfying to people who are used to saying, 'You can attach this attack to that group,'" said Miller. ||||| When it became clear last fall that the CIA's now discredited Benghazi talking points were flawed, the White House said repeatedly the documents were put together almost entirely by the intelligence community, but White House documents reviewed by Congress suggest a different story. 
 
 ABC News has obtained 12 different versions of the talking points that show they were extensively edited as they evolved from the drafts first written entirely by the CIA to the final version distributed to Congress and to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice before she appeared on five talk shows the Sunday after that attack. 
 
 AFP/Getty Images 
 
 Related: Read the Full Benghazi Talking Point Revisions 
 
 White House emails reviewed by ABC News suggest the edits were made with extensive input from the State Department. The edits included requests from the State Department that references to the Al Qaeda-affiliated group Ansar al-Sharia be deleted as well references to CIA warnings about terrorist threats in Benghazi in the months preceding the attack. 
 
 That would appear to directly contradict what White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said about the talking points in November. 
 
 "Those talking points originated from the intelligence community. They reflect the IC's best assessments of what they thought had happened," Carney told reporters at the White House press briefing on November 28, 2012. "The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two institutions were changing the word 'consulate' to 'diplomatic facility' because 'consulate' was inaccurate." 
 
 Summaries of White House and State Department emails - some of which were first published by Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard - show that the State Department had extensive input into the editing of the talking points. 
 
 State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland raised specific objections to this paragraph drafted by the CIA in its earlier versions of the talking points: 
 
 "The Agency has produced numerous pieces on the threat of extremists linked to al-Qa'ida in Benghazi and eastern Libya. These noted that, since April, there have been at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi by unidentified assailants, including the June attack against the British Ambassador's convoy. We cannot rule out the individuals has previously surveilled the U.S. facilities, also contributing to the efficacy of the attacks." 
 
 In an email to officials at the White House and the intelligence agencies, State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland took issue with including that information because it "could be abused by members [of Congress] to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so why would we want to feed that either? Concerned …" 
 
 The paragraph was entirely deleted. 
 
 Like the final version used by Ambassador Rice on the Sunday shows, the CIA's first drafts said the attack appeared to have been "spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo" but the CIA version went on to say, "That being said, we do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al-Qa'ida participated in the attack." The draft went on to specifically name the al Qaeda-affiliated group named Ansar al-Sharia. 
 
 Once again, Nuland objected to naming the terrorist groups because "we don't want to prejudice the investigation." 
 
 In response, an NSC staffer coordinating the review of the talking points wrote back to Nuland, "The FBI did not have major concerns with the points and offered only a couple minor suggestions." 
 
 After the talking points were edited slightly to address Nuland's concerns, she responded that changes did not go far enough. 
 
 "These changes don't resolve all of my issues or those of my buildings leadership," Nuland wrote. 
 
 In an email dated 9/14/12 at 9:34 p.m. - three days after the attack and two days before Ambassador Rice appeared on the Sunday shows - Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes wrote an email saying the State Department's concerns needed to be addressed. 
 
 "We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don't want to undermine the FBI investigation. We thus will work through the talking points tomorrow morning at the Deputies Committee meeting." 
 
 Related: Diplomat Says Requests For Benghazi Rescue Were Rejected 
 
 After that meeting, which took place Saturday morning at the White House, the CIA drafted the final version of the talking points - deleting all references to al Qaeda and to the security warnings in Benghazi prior to the attack. 
 
 White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said none of this contradicts what he said about the talking points because ultimately all versions were actually written and signed-off by the CIA. 
 
 "The CIA drafted these talking points and redrafted these talking points," Carney said. "The fact that there are inputs is always the case in a process like this, but the only edits made by anyone here at the White House were stylistic and nonsubstantive. They corrected the description of the building or the facility in Benghazi from consulate to diplomatic facility and the like. And ultimately, this all has been discussed and reviewed and provided in enormous levels of detail by the administration to Congressional investigators, and the attempt to politicize the talking points, again, is part of an effort to, you know, chase after what isn't the substance here." 
 
 UPDATE: A source familiar with the White House emails on the Benghazi talking point revisions say that State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland was raising two concerns about the CIA's first version of talking points, which were going to be sent to Congress: 1) The talking points went further than what she was allowed to say about the attack during her state department briefings; and, 2) she believed the CIA was attempting to exonerate itself at the State Department's expense by suggesting CIA warnings about the security situation were ignored. 
 
 In one email, Nuland asked, why are we suggest Congress "start making assertions to the media [about the al Qaeda connection] that we ourselves are not making because we don't want to prejudice the investigation?" 
 
 One other point: The significant edits - deleting references to al Qaeda and the CIA's warnings - came after a White House meeting on the Saturday before Ambassador Susan Rice appeared on five Sunday shows. Nuland, a 30-year foreign service veteran who has served under Democratic and Republican Secretaries of State, was not at that meeting and played no direct role in preparing Rice for her interviews.
– The Wall Street Journal today takes a look at the life and death of 94 little words: the heavily edited and ultimately faulty Benghazi talking points compiled by the CIA in the wake of the consulate attack. Just a day after the attack, the CIA's reports were already referencing al-Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb. The following day, David Petraeus appeared before House and Senate groups; he, too, mentioned the terrorists, and was asked to compile unclassified talking points that Congress could use. By noon on Sept. 14, a draft was circulating—and it referenced al-Qaeda. But an exhausting process of editing followed, with more than two dozen CIA officials weighing in on the copy over email—and battling about the inclusion of al-Qaeda. Those opposed argued it should be removed because the intel was shaky (sourced from intercepted phone calls) and over fears it could alert al-Qaeda members to the fact that they were being watched. The opponents won out, though the term "extremists" remained; the FBI agreed with the call. It also contained this line: "The demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo." On Sept. 15, the CIA station chief in Tripoli began to voice his concern with the assertions that the attack was both spontaneous and that demonstrations were occurring. He sent the CIA an email summarizing his thoughts the next day—but Susan Rice had already been hand-delivered the 94 fateful words the night before, so that she could prep for her news show appearances. Click for the Journal's full take, which charts the ultimate change in the CIA's assessment.