mistakes, so they were sloppy in the way they reported it after the fact. there s a lot of curiosity about that, but as a member of congress, i was a member for 26 years, what i would have been most concerned about was the original issue of what happened? the ambassador asked for more security. the state department didn t respond to that in a timely way, and why didn t our military get in there and try to help? those are the big issues. the rest of this stuff is just a side show. okay. noelle, is this all about finding answers or is benghazi a political issue for republicans? first of all, i resent the fact that, you know, my opponent has called this a side show. you know, like a joke. it s not a side show. we are drilling it and keeping it in the press because we want to find out answers on who exactly pinpointed as responsible within the entire white house administration for the goofups. lives were lost. this is not a dog and pony show put on by the gop to always keep
hill with mitch mcconnell and also john boehner calling for congressional oversight on this issue. so people are upset. tea party nation sent out a response yesterday with very strong language. you know, this kind of breeds into the belief for a long time that there were politically motivated situations going on in the irs that no one had listened to before. changing gears there, is a growing controversy involving an immigration study by the conservative think tank heritage foundation. i m checking out your article you wrote, david, the latest one, the co-author of the study having resigned. share what this is all about, david. what s happening is heritage is a big influential conservative think tank. they were working on it for months. a study that talked about the cost of immigration reform. they hoped to really make a splash and reset the debate, make put the brakes on of the reform.
black balling the white house. they got to take responsibility. so that fact i resent. now, you know, are we is the gop in 20916 going to use this f hillary clinton runs for president to hammer this issue? you bet. as a national fund-raiser for gop candidates, that s going to be one key issue that the gop can use the hypocrisy here is really outstanding. you know, hillary was never in the earlier hearings when she testified and no one has ever questioned that she never was a part of this. she never was involved in the development of the talking points. she was not involved in the response to what happened. it never got to her level. granted, she was secretary of state. but it is extraordinary hypocrisy on the republicans part to say, oh, well, since she was secretary of state, she was responsible for all the mistakes that were made by people under her. if they want to run against her on that basis, that s fine. they won t win an election. she said she was responsible.
that language raised red flags at the state department where victoria nuland e-mailed that the mention of prior attacks could be abused by members of congress to beat the state department for not paying attention to agency warnings. so why would we want to feed that either? concerned. at white house meeting the following day, officials further diluted the language. that sunday susan rice followed the talking points on all five talk shows. what happened in benghazi was, in fact, initially a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired hours before in cairo. reporter: once that assessment was discounted, the white house insisted it had only changed one word and on friday stood by its story. the cia was the agency that made changes to the edits i mean to the talking points and then produced the talking points. reporter: a thorny issue for the obama administration and analysts say perhaps a larger problem for former secretary of state hillary clinton said to be
does that mean the target here is a 2016 hillary clinton run. who knows. the republicans just want to score political points. the earlier hearings focussed on what was really at issue here. why didn t the state department, whoever was responsible in the state department, respond to the ambassador s request that he made for more security? that s what congress ought to be examining and why didn t our military get over there and respond to the attack more quickly? you know what? those are the key issues. forget the fact that i m a republican strategist and just take away that i m an american citizen and i would like to know the answers. forget trying to play politics with it those are the questions that ought to be asked, not the nonsense that s going on at this hearing about whether the description after the fact was sloppy or not. i ll stipulate to the fact that they were sloppy. they made mistakes thank you. in the way they described this. there s no question about