CNN, Spanked

Let's see, suddenly stories are popping up all over about the US State Department strongly chastising CNN over reporting about a diary/notebook they found 4 days after the attack belonging to the late ambassador Stevens:

The news channel, in a story posted online Saturday, said that it found a journal belonging to Stevens four days after he died in a Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Three other Americans also were killed. CNN broke a pledge to the late ambassador's family that it wouldn't report on the diary, said State Department spokesman Philippe Reines, a senior adviser to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. In a blistering statement, Reines called CNN's actions "indefensible."

Hmm. Blue on blue. Interesting.  What's going on?

Well, it's not so much of a stretch to wonder if State was more ticked off about CNN finding the notebook in the first place (where were State investigators/FBI) than what was reported, ie, Mr. Stevens' concern about rising extremism and being on an AQ hit list prior to the spontaneous attacks caused entirely by a movie trailer.  Or perhaps it has more to do with the Secretary previously dismissing the hit list story only to be trumped by CNN referring to the diary as evidence.

So we're either seeing petty retribution--CNN being punished by State for exposing mistruths or the administration engaging in a tactic to make the outrage over CNN the story instead of the actual facts reported from the notebook.  Nothing would be a surprise.  The only surprise would be the outrage extending into the CNN news hierarchy.

HILL-BUZZ    9/24/12 

An infamous writer at Buzzfeed takes on the State Department for trashing CNN:

"[I]t's unfortunate that you are trying to make a scapegoat out of CNN," he wrote. "That State was forced to flee Benghazi--again, because of such inadequate security, leaving behind all sorts of sensitive information--tells us more about DoS than CNN." In response to Hastings' line of questioning -- which was admittedly driven by his personal opinions on the issue -- Reines told Hastings to "F--k off" and "Have a good life," both quotes that BuzzFeed used in its headline for the post.

Keep in mind these quotes are from an email exchange that Buzzfeed published. But how does it reflect on our State Department to have one of their main spokesmen telling a reporter to F off for questioning motives? This should be a large font leading story on all sites right now. It would be if Romney's spokesman told someone to F off, simply during a campaign.