The NYT is trying to sell some administration spin:
Last summer, as the fighting in Syria raged and questions about the United States’ inaction grew, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton conferred privately with David H. Petraeus, the director of the C.I.A. The two officials were joining forces on a plan to arm the Syrian resistance.
The idea was to vet the rebel groups and train fighters, who would be supplied with weapons.
..
Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Petraeus presented the proposal to the White House, according to administration officials. But with the White House worried about the risks, and with President Obama in the midst of a re-election bid, they were rebuffed.
The facts do not concur with this.
Early September 2012 a ship with weapons from Benghazi arrived in Turkey. The weapons were for fighting the Syrian government. There was some controversy to which groups those weapons should go.
On September 11 2012 the U.S. ambassador to Libya met with the Turkish consul general in Benghazi. It was the last meeting before the ambassador was killed.
When on the same the CIA station in Benghazi was attacked and later evacuated there were 25 CIA or CIA related persons there. This wasn’t a small station for observation of this or that but a huge operation.
It is quite obvious that the CIA and the State Department were involved in organizing weapons for the Syrian insurgency. The White House may (likely) or may not (unlikely) have known about that. If the White House shut down that operation it did so after September 11, not “during the summer”.
It is certainly no pure coincidence that the above NYT spin is published on the same day as anexclusive interview the authors had with Hillary Clinton.
Together they mark the start of the Hillary 2016 campaign.