Glenn Kessler is the putative “fact-checker” for the Washington Post, but he steps out of that role in a recent column, which the Post styles not as fact checking, but as an “analy-tic look” at the news about Benghazi. According to Kessler, the administration didn’t intentionally lie about the nature of the Benghazi attack; no, the whole affair was simply a bureaucratic mix-up or as he puts it a “bureaucratic knife fight, pitting the State Department against the CIA.”

But who is Kessler kidding? Almost from the beginning of the Benghazi attack, the administration knew who was responsible (i.e., terrorists), yet everyone, from President Obama to Hillary Clinton to Susan Rice lied about it, pinning the blame instead on an American exercising his First Amendment rights. And all for the purpose of protecting Obama during the 2012 election campaign. A bureaucratic dispute about talking points doesn’t somehow make the subsequent lies disappear.

There’s no way to spin these lies, but that doesn’t stop Kessler from trying. His article is nothing more than a 500-word non sequitur.  Rather than fact checker or analyst, there’s a better term for Kessler:  propagandist.

Update:  Kessler has since written a fact checker column in which he considers Obama’s claim he called Benghazi an “act of terrorism” on the day following the attack. Kessler concludes that Obama’s claim is not true and he gives the president four Pinocchios. Okay, but this doesn’t absolve Kessler of the misdirection contained in his “analysis.”