to the new york times article over the weekend. an extensive analysis of the benghazi attack of 9/11 of which the new york times concluded there was no al qaeda connection among the militants that took part in the attack. let s bring in the panel. stephen hayes, kirsten powers and charles krathammer. stephen, let s start with you. you took this on in the new york standard said kirkpatrick did extensive reporting on the ground but missed on the big points. i think his reporting was in many respects terrific but the details that he provided about the inside of the mother s house of one of the chief suspects of the benghazi attacks, fantastic on the ground minute by minute reporting. where he made the mistake is drawing sweeping conclusions that weren t justified by his reporting or the body of evidence collected about the attacks since. and his main mistake was declaring in a kata gorical way
to senior al qaeda leadership in pakistan. so there were clearly al qaeda ties. it is a stretch to inaccurate to make a sweeping and kata gore cal claim that al qaeda had nothing to do with this. and you make the focus that pointing all of this on al qaeda is focusing on the wrong thing. it is a strong man argument if you remember what the outcry was about after susan rice went on the shows, nobody knew who did it but it was a good belief that it was a terrorist attack and they took time until they did come out and say that. so it wasn t that it was al qaeda per se, even though i think there is evidence to show there were al qaeda affiliated groups, maybe they are affiliated but maybe not core al qaeda. but the description that the administration was giving wasn t accurate. these people were out and upset about a video and haphazardly attacked in benghazi, which