New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd is mischaracterizing the aftermath of the September attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, in an effort to promote her claim that Hillary Clinton's aides engaged in “obfuscation.”

In her May 12 column, Dowd writes that Gregory Hicks, who was deputy chief of mission in Libya during the attacks and testified before Congress May 8, “believes he was demoted because he spoke up” about the Obama administration's characterization of the attacks in a meeting with Beth Jones, an undersecretary of state.

In fact, Hicks' change of position came after he voluntarily decided not to return to Libya; he subsequently testified that the “overriding factor” in that decision was that his family didn't want him to go back. According to the State Department, that decision took him out of the regular cycle in which Foreign Service officers are assigned, resulting in him being placed in a temporary position as a foreign affairs officer in the Office of Global Intergovernmental Affairs. According to State, Hicks retains the same rank and pay, and has submitted a preference list and is under consideration for his next assignment.

Dowd further claimed:

Hillary's chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, also called Hicks to angrily ask why a State Department lawyer had not been allowed to monitor every meeting in Libya with Congressman Jason Chaffetz, who visited in October. (The lawyer did not have the proper security clearance for one meeting.) Chaffetz, a Republican from Utah, has been a rabid Hillary critic on Fox News since the attack. Hicks said he had never before been scolded for talking to a lawmaker.

But Hicks himself never described Mills as angry. In his testimony, Hicks acknowledged that Mills had offered no “direct criticism” of his actions, but cited the “tone and nuance” of Mills' voice during their conversation as indicating she was “unhappy” (Hicks later repeated a congressional Republican's description of Hicks as “upset.”)

In painting this as part of a pattern of obfuscation, Dowd also ignored the administration's explanation for why Mills would have wanted a State Department lawyer present for Hicks' meeting with Chaffetz - a State Department official told Dowd's paperthat department policy requires one to be present during interviews for Congressional investigations.

Dowd's commentary follows that of Fox News hosts who have baselessly described Hicks as being “excoriated,” “reprimanded,” or “punished” by Mills - a characterization promoted by the false frame that Congressional Republicans pushed in their questioning of Hicks.

Dowd previously engaged in repeated contradictions of her own paper's reporting on the Benghazi attacks to push Republican attacks on U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice.