Agence France-Presse/Getty Images Marines at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland last September carry caskets of the remains of the four Americans killed in Benghazi, Libya. 
 
 WASHINGTON—More than 100 pages of emails released by the White House on Wednesday depict a protracted, frustrating and often tense debate about what should be contained in public "talking points" about last year's deadly assault in Benghazi, Libya. 
 
 The emails reveal a tussle within the administration about what it could confidently say about the attacks while an investigation into the assault was ongoing. 
 
 Senior administration officials said the emails—which the White House released to try to quell a partisan controversy—encompassed a two-day discussion among several agencies as officials wrote and rewrote the talking points on the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks. 
 
 Republicans have charged that the White House had political motives—less than two months before the presidential election—for changing the talking points to remove references to terrorist involvement in the assault. 
 
 Administration officials on Wednesday described the emails, written by officials ranging from unnamed career employees to then-Central Intelligence Agency director David Petraeus, as a mundane set of documents. 
 
 Talking Points Map See key milestones in the changes to the Benghazi talking points. View Graphics 
 
 Officials from across the national-security establishment made suggestions aimed at protecting their own interests and turf, as the talking points were edited to remove a mention of al Qaeda and to delete sentences referring to previous warnings about extremist threats in Benghazi. 
 
 As the discussion proceeded, frustrations appeared to emerge. 
 
 "Sir -- We've tried to work the draft talking points for [the House Intelligence Committee] through the coordination process but have run into major problems," a CIA employee wrote in an e-mail explaining that the talking points wouldn't be completed that day. 
 
 While many of the emails already had leaked before Wednesday, the release of the complete set paints a fuller picture of an administration struggling with how much to disclose about an assault that remains a focus of partisan division. 
 
 Republicans have made clear they still have unanswered questions, including how an independent review board conducted its investigation of the attacks last year. 
 
 By the end of the administration's interagency process last September, the final version of talking points was comprised of three paragraphs—a document that clearly didn't satisfy everyone. 
 
 After revisions were made, Mr. Petraeus wrote in an e-mail that he would "just as soon not use this then," adding that the talking points wouldn't satisfy Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (D., Md.), who was among those who had requested them. 
 
 The analyst who drafted the initial version of the talking points wrote at the end of the process that lawmakers "won't like them. : )" —using the happy- face emoticon. 
 
 From start to finish, the document included the now-disproved assertion that the attacks in Benghazi were spurred by a protest over an anti-Muslim video that had originated in the U.S.. 
 
 Senior administration officials said Wednesday that the talking points were consistent with classified intelligence available at the time. They disputed Republicans' suggestions of political interference, noting that the first draft of the talking points assembled by the CIA included a reference to demonstrations. 
 
 The e-mails confirm objections by then State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland to a line about prior CIA warnings in Benghazi. Senior intelligence officials disclosed Wednesday that Michael Morell, then CIA deputy director, agreed with Ms. Nuland. He eventually took over the editing process, deleting mentions of past threats. 
 
 The White House release of the emails came a week after public interest in last year's terror assault unexpectedly rebounded with congressional testimony by three State Department employees, which reopened lingering questions about the attacks. 
 
 Republicans in recent days had demanded the release of the e-mails. Administration lawyers for months had rebuffed calls to hand over the emails on the grounds the exchanges were part of internal administration deliberations, but allowed some lawmakers to see them earlier this year. 
 
 Administration officials also have complained that congressional Republicans in recent days had been leaking selective excerpts from the emails to buttress their argument that the talking points were manipulated for political purposes. 
 
 The talking points were meant to provide a first public account of the attacks on U.S. posts in Benghazi, which claimed the lives of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. 
 
 The very first set of talking points said "extremists with ties to al Qaeda" took part in the attacks. The final product made no reference to al Qaeda, but to extremists. 
 
 United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice used the talking points as the basis of the administration's explanation of what happened in the assault in a series of television interviews Sept. 16, 2012, five days after the attacks. 
 
 Republicans have said the talking points show the administration misled the public about the role of al Qaeda. Democrats charge the GOP with trying to damage the standing of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a 2016 Democratic presidential prospect. 
 
 One of the White House officials involved in the talking-points debate, former National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor, issued a statement Wednesday defending the way the administration handled the matter. 
 
 "Some people have understandably asked how we were so wrong about there being a protest," Mr. Vietor said in the statement. "I don't know. When I was in government, I asked some intelligence officials how it happened. They told me that there were many different strands of information indicating there was a protest, both open source and intelligence based." 
 
 He added, "In fact, a number of news outlets reported there were protests." 
 
 Write to Colleen McCain Nelson at colleen.nelson@wsj.com and Adam Entous at adam.entous@wsj.com 
 
 A version of this article appeared May 16, 2013, on page A4 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Benghazi Emails Released. ||||| The Obama administration released 100 pages of emails Wednesday that reveal differences between intelligence analysts and State Department officials over how to describe the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. post in Benghazi, Libya. 
 
 The internal debate did not include political interference from the White House, according to the emails, which were provided to Congressional intelligence committees several months ago. 
 
 (Read the emails here.) 
 
 Since the assault that killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, Republicans have accused President Obama and his senior advisers of mischaracterizing the attack, largely to prevent political repercussions during what was then a close re-election campaign. 
 
 Much of the Republican concern has focused on whether administration officials acknowledged early enough that an Islamist terrorist organization was behind the attack, rather than groups of demonstrators participating in anti-American protests outside many U.S. diplomatic missions in the Middle East and North Africa. 
 
 According to the emails and initial CIA-drafted talking points, the agency believed the attack included a mix of Islamist extremists from Ansar al-Sharia, an al-Qaeda affiliated group, and angry demonstrators. 
 
 White House officials did not challenge that analysis, the emails show. 
 
 But CIA Deputy Director Michael Morrell later removed the reference to Ansar al-Sharia because, senior administration officials said, the assessment was still classified and because FBI officials believed making the information public could compromise their investigation. 
 
 Senior administration officials said Wednesday the emails capture what is a fairly routine conversation between agencies over how to talk about a major event. What was most challenging in this case, senior administration officials said, was doing so within days of the attack as intelligence agencies working in a volatile environment were trying to piece together what happened and who had carried it out. 
 
 The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence requested the talking points during a Sept. 14 briefing with then-CIA Director David H. Petraeus. The request set off the internal discussion over how much information could be revealed by members of Congress in the days ahead -- and by administration officials. 
 
 U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, who did not participate in the email exchanges directly, appeared on a series of Sunday shows two days after the Petraeus briefing. The talking points she delivered emerged from the email discussion revealed Wednesday, and eventually cost her the nomination for Secretary of State amid Republican criticism that she intentionally misrepresented the attack. 
 
 The talking points, which were edited a dozen times between Sept. 14 and 15, also show that the source of the debate between the CIA and the State Department was whether previous agency warnings of attacks in the Benghazi area should be included in public statements. 
 
 The two agencies had the most at stake in the Benghazi aftermath. The attacks targeted a State Department post and a CIA site, where a U.S.-effort to disarm Libya’s militia in the area was centered. Virtually no Americans were in the diplomatic post, only at the CIA site where the agency was responsible for security. 
 
 Senior administration officials said Wednesday that Morrell, who took the lead in editing the talking points drafted by the CIA’s director of of the Office of Terrorism Analysis, agreed with State Department concerns over including the warnings. 
 
 But Petraeus, Morrell’s boss at the time, appeared to have reservations about not including the warnings, which would have made the CIA look prescient at the State Department’s expense. 
 
 “I spoke to the Director earlier about State’s deep concerns about mentioning the warnings and the other work done on this,” Morrell wrote to an official in the CIA’s Office of Public Affairs and Office of Legislative Affairs in the early afternoon of Sept. 15, referring to Petraeus. “But you will want to reemphasize in your note to DCIA.” 
 
 About two hours later, Petraeus responds to an email with the final talking points form the Office of Legislative Affairs. 
 
 “Frankly, I’d just as soon not use this,” Petraeus wrote. “”NSS’s call, to be sure; however, this is certainly not what Vice Chairman Ruppersberger was hoping to get for unclass use.” 
 
 In the email, Petraeus is using the acronym for the National Security Council staff and is referring to Rep. Charles Albert “Dutch” Ruppersberger III (D-Md.), the ranking member of the House intelligence committee. 
 
 White House Benghazi Emails ||||| Security Full White House Benghazi Email Undermines GOP’s Cover-Up Claims 
 
 CNN has obtained the full email from a White House official on the Benghazi talking points, which undermines claims that the administration acted deliberately to change the intelligence community’s assessment. 
 
 Much of the controversy surrounding the Obama administration’s response to the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on a diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya has focused on a set of unclassified talking points provided to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice. Rice delivered those points five days after the attack, appearing on all five major Sunday news shows. Rice subsequently came under attack for not mentioning Al Qaeda and referencing an anti-Islamic video as the impetus for the attacks, becoming the symbol of the White House’s supposed goal of misleading the American public about what happened. 
 
 In recent days, the talking points have come back to the forefront of conservative outrage, as several outlets have released the full edits made to the document, along with the original version the CIA drafted. Alongside those edits were emails that these outlets claimed showed the White House engaging in a flurry of activity that would help President Obama gain reelection. One such email from Deputy National Security Director Ben Rhodes allegedly showed the White House insisting that State Department requests that references to terrorism and Al Qaeda be “scrubbed” from the draft be discussed more fully. 
 
 CNN’s Jake Tapper, however, obtained the full text of the email Rhodes sent to the email thread of officials across the government providing their input on the document. Viewed in full, the document shows a distinct lack of intent to maliciously change the narrative compared to paraphrased versions: 
 
 All – Sorry to be late to this discussion. We need to resolve this in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, particularly the investigation. There is a ton of wrong information getting out into the public domain from Congress and people who are not particularly informed. Insofar as we have firmed up assessments that don’t compromise intel or the investigation, we need to have the capability to correct the record, as there are significant policy and messaging ramifications that would flow from a hardened mis-impression. We can take this up tomorrow morning at deputies. 
 
 Previously, the Weekly Standard and ABC News had reported that Rhodes intervened on behalf of the State Department, urging that the talking points be changed to scrub al-Qaeda references at Nuland’s request. The Standard paraphrased the email as Rhodes “respond[ing] to the group, explaining that [State Department spokeswoman Victoria] Nuland had raised valid concerns and advising that the issues would be resolved at a meeting of the National Security Council’s Deputies Committee the following morning.” Likewise, ABC paraphrased the email’s content as saying “[w]e must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don’t want to undermine the FBI investigation. We thus will work through the talking points tomorrow morning at the Deputies Committee meeting.” 
 
 The elevation of the talking points to infamy has seemingly instead helped to undercut the Republican case that a cover-up occurred. In actuality, the only thing to be revealed during this latest round of investigation seems to be a turf war between the CIA and State Department to avoid further blame for the attack, one that played out in the editing process of the talking points. In the end, contrary to Republican claims, the intelligence community did have the last say in what went into the talking points, including that the attacks “were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo,” and immediately preceded by a demonstration.
– If you can't get enough of the Benghazi story, the White House has some reading for you: This afternoon, it released 100 pages of emails and other internal notes that show how its "talking points" evolved after the attack, reports the Washington Post. You can dig in here, as the Washington press corps is surely doing. Snippets of the emails among the White House, State Department, CIA, and FBI had leaked already, leading critics to charge that the State Department was trying to tone down the link to terrorism so it wouldn't look bad. Others disputed that assertion, and the White House apparently hopes the full release will at least ease the controversy, says the Wall Street Journal.