Jim Acosta from CNN did a great report on how the Benghazi talking points came to be and in the report he suggested that it was a meeting at the White House that the decision was made to remove references to Ansar al Sharia:
An email dated September 14 at 7:39PM, State Department Spokeswoman Victora Nuland wrote “Why do we want the Hill fingering Ansar al-Sharia when we aren’t doing that ourselves? And the penultimate point could be abused to beat the State Department for not paying attention to agency warnings.” At that point the emails indicate the references to Ansar al Sharia were removed.
But Nuland chimed in again “These don’t resolve all of my issues or those of my building’s leadership. they are consulting with NSS (National Security Council Staff).”
One minute later Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Deputy Chief of Staff emails “I spoke with Tommy. We’ll work this through in the morning. Get comments back.”
Then Ben Rhodes, a top national security official warns the talking points shouldn’t jeopardize the investigation and tables the discussion for a White House meeting the next day, when it appears the decision was made to drop the reference to the terror group.
Watch the entire report: