CNN's Candy Crowley appears to have developed a bad case of amnesia since the presidential debate when she fact checked Mitt Romney's claim that President Obama did not call the attack in Libya an act of terror.
May 20, 2013

I'm not sure what happened, but it appears Candy Crowley has either gotten tired of being beaten up on by right-wingers for being unfair to poor old Mittens during the presidential debates, or she's developed a really bad case of amnesia since she first stunned Romney by fact checking him when he claimed that President Obama did not call the attack in Libya an act of terror.

Whatever the reason, she did a complete 180 and began the right's game of parsing the President's words when interviewing White House advisor Dan Pfeiffer this Sunday: CNN's Crowley Adopts False Right-Wing Claim That Obama Didn't Call Benghazi A Terrorist Attack.

Transcript via CNN below the fold.

CROWLEY: Let me ask and turn you to Benghazi. When Susan Rice went on this show and all the other shows on Sunday, was the president aware of the talking points that we have seen sort of emerge over the last six months?

PFEIFFER: Of the many things the president gets involved in, talking points for Sundays shows is not one of them. But what he was aware of was the consensus of the intelligence community at the time.

CROWLEY: So, he was aware -- was he aware at the back and forth between the state department and --

(CROSSTALK)

CROWLEY: None of that --

PFEIFFER: No, never -- no president would be involved in something like that.

CROWLEY: So, he did say in an interview in CBS which we later learned after the election, but a week and a half after Susan Rice was on, he did say he wasn't sure if it was a terrorist attack in a CBS interview.

PFEIFFER: No one was sure at that point. That's the point. That's why, as you look at the e-mails, the intelligence community --

CROWLEY: Well, no, the president --

(CROSSTALK)

CROWLEY: Libya, they were sure of it and the CIA seemed pretty sure of it.

PFEIFFER: Let's distinguish between two things. Was it an act of terror? Absolutely. And the president called it the day after in the Rose Garden. Was al Qaeda or al Qaeda affiliated extremists or an active terrorist group involve in a premeditated attack? No one knew that at the time and that's exactly why the talking points were written by the intelligence community, by the CIA as --

CROWLEY: So, why didn't the president just say, yes, it was a terrorist attack?

PFEIFFER: He already called it acts of terror. What we didn't know yet was whether it was a premeditated attack by a terrorist group or something that it come as a result of protest or the video that sparked outrage across the Middle East that week.

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