WASHINGTON—More than 100 pages of emails released by the White House on Wednesday depict a protracted, frustrating and often tense debate about what should be contained in public "talking points" about last year's deadly assault in Benghazi, Libya. After revisions were made, Mr. Petraeus wrote in an e-mail that he would "just as soon not use this then," adding that the talking points wouldn't satisfy Rep. C.A. “”NSS’s call, to be sure; however, this is certainly not what Vice Chairman Ruppersberger was hoping to get for unclass use.” 
 
 In the email, Petraeus is using the acronym for the National Security Council staff and is referring to Rep. Charles Albert “Dutch” Ruppersberger III (D-Md. The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence requested the talking points during a Sept. 14 briefing with then-CIA Director David H. Petraeus. The Standard paraphrased the email as Rhodes “respond[ing] to the group, explaining that [State Department spokeswoman Victoria] Nuland had raised valid concerns and advising that the issues would be resolved at a meeting of the National Security Council’s Deputies Committee the following morning.” Likewise, ABC paraphrased the email’s content as saying “[w]e 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. But CIA Deputy Director Michael Morrell later removed the reference to Ansar al-Sharia because, senior administration officials said, the assessment was still classified and because FBI officials believed making the information public could compromise their investigation. Since the assault that killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, Republicans have accused President Obama and his senior advisers of mischaracterizing the attack, largely to prevent political repercussions during what was then a close re-election campaign. United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice used the talking points as the basis of the administration's explanation of what happened in the assault in a series of television interviews Sept. 16, 2012, five days after the attacks. There is a ton of wrong information getting out into the public domain from Congress and people who are not particularly informed. What was most challenging in this case, senior administration officials said, was doing so within days of the attack as intelligence agencies working in a volatile environment were trying to piece together what happened and who had carried it out.
– If you can't get enough of the Benghazi story, the White House has some reading for you: This afternoon, it released 100 pages of emails and other internal notes that show how its "talking points" evolved after the attack, reports the Washington Post. You can dig in here, as the Washington press corps is surely doing. Snippets of the emails among the White House, State Department, CIA, and FBI had leaked already, leading critics to charge that the State Department was trying to tone down the link to terrorism so it wouldn't look bad. Others disputed that assertion, and the White House apparently hopes the full release will at least ease the controversy, says the Wall Street Journal.