Chris Van Hollen Blasts Bush-Era Romney Advisers, Calls 9/11 ‘Worst Intelligence Failure We’ve Ever Seen’

On Monday morning’s edition of CNN’s Starting Point, prominent Obama surrogate Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) blasted the Bush-era members of Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s foreign policy team who are trying to score political points over the deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11 of this year. Citing a report in the Wall Street Journal suggesting it was the CIA feeding the Obama administration incorrect information, host Soledad O’Brien asked if such an intelligence failure reflects on the Obama administration.

Rep. Van Hollen replied that such an attack was “ironic,” given the number of Romney advisers “who were part of what was probably the greatest intelligence failure we’ve ever seen, which were the attacks of September 11th, 2001.”

The topic of the Benghazi attack figures to play prominently in tonight’s final presidential debate, but with new reporting that cuts against the Romney campaign’s “politicization” narrative, the result of this increased attention is unclear. Conservatives have advanced the notion that the Obama administration tried to “cover up”the fact that it was terrorists who attacked the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, but the Wall Street Journal reports that the administration was just giving reporters the best information it had at the time:

President Barack Obama was told in his daily intelligence briefing for more than a week after the consulate siege in Benghazi that the assault grew out of a spontaneous protest, despite conflicting reports from witnesses and other sources that began to cast doubt on the accuracy of that assessment almost from the start.

New details about the contents of the President’s Daily Brief, which haven’t been reported previously, show that the Central Intelligence Agency didn’t adjust the classified assessment until Sept. 22, fueling tensions between the administration and the agency.

Additionally, there are several new reports that suggest the Benghazi attack was, in fact, carried out in reaction to the same anti-Muslim video that sparked protests at U.S. diplomatic installations throughout the region.

Rep. Van Hollen pointed out that the WSJ report “shows… that the President and Susan Rice, and others, were presenting the American people with the facts as they were provided to them by the intelligence agencies, which really makes, I think, Mitt Romney and his team look pretty small for the way they tried to exploit this whole thing for political purposes.”

The same could be said of the mainstream media, which seized the Republican “coverup” narrative, and never really allowed for the possibility that the administration was acting in good faith, or that what they were saying was closer to the truth than not. Mainstream outlets like CNN didn’t convict President Obama of intentionally misleading on the Benghazi attack, but they certainly aided in the prosecution.

Soledad asked Rep. Van Hollen, “But if it’s an intelligence failure, and it’s a failure from say, looks like the CIA, isn’t ultimately that an administration failure, since that’s really who put the, you know, leader of the CIA in this position?”

Rep. Van Hollen allowed that this case highlights need for improvement in intelligence gathering, but noted that “it’s just ironic to hear many of the folks on Mitt Romney’s team, who were there during the Bush administration, who were part of what was probably the greatest intelligence failure we’ve ever seen, which were the attacks of September 11th, 2001, coming forward now to try and cast aspersions on the President, on his team.”

What Rep. Van Hollen is referring to is the failure of the Bush administration to do anything to prevent the attacks of 9/11, despite numerous, very specific warnings, a failure that everyone in America gave him a pass for. That’s because, as Rep. Van Hollen pointed out earlier in the interview, we have a tradition, in this country, of coming together in moments of tragedy. That’s what we all did when George W. Bush ignored very specific warnings about a much more serious attack, against the one and only group he had to keep an eye on at the time, and that’s what Republicans ought to have done this time.

In fact, that’s sort of what they did, for a few minutes, anyway. When Republican nominee Mitt Romney came out with a barrage of lies and attacks against the President in the hours following the attack, there were some conservatives who blasted back. Now, they have put all of their political eggs into this basket for tonight’s debate. Time will tell if they get back an omelet, or a gooey basket of shells, but Rep. Van Hollen is correct, it should not have been this way.

Here’s the clip, from CNN’s Starting Point:

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This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.