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This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," May 9, 2013. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

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O'REILLY: "Back of the Book" segment tonight. As we discussed in the "Talking Points Memo," the Benghazi, Libya story is very important because there may be a misconduct, misconduct by the federal government, on a high level.

However, democrats, they don't want to know about it. And joining us now from Washington, Fox News Political Analyst, Charles Krauthammer.

You know, I'm trying to be fair on this. I'm trying to be fair on this story. I don't want to be perceived as somebody who is trying to get Hillary Clinton or get President Obama.

But the thing that really, really annoyed me was Hicks, when he said that he was demoted for, pretty much, telling the truth.

And Hillary Clinton had to sign off on that. That -- that's -- that really got me. And you say.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, FOX NEWS POLITICAL ANALYST: That's the heart of the story. That's why the story changed yesterday.

This story isn't going to explode. This is a drip, drip, drip. And what the drip, drip, drip is about is this, the administration tried to suppress the truth about what happened in Benghazi.

And did that consistently and deliberately while the president, at the same time, said publicly that his only objective was to collect the facts and to share them, as they received them, with the American people.

Every piece of evidence that we heard yesterday contradicted that. Now, this is not a hanging offense, it's not a jailing offense, it's not a break-in, it's not a burglary.

It is an administration trying to cover up what was not a criminal act, there could have been misjudgments, and there were, but there was a lot of human error.

You can have some sympathy. They might have made the wrong judgment about to rescue or not. You have to balance it left and right.

So, it was not that great, I mean, a crime. But they decided, in the middle of an election, where the president had proclaimed, "al-Qaeda is gone and conquered all this. The war on terror is over. I'm a big hero. Osama is slain. G.M. is alive and Osama is dead."

In the middle of a campaign where they're pushing this, they decided to maintain that line. They would suppress the truth.

They would demote a hero like Hicks. They would shout at him. They would threaten him. They would not allow him to meet with the Congressional delegation. All of these things are part of a cover-up.

O'REILLY: And it's because of the election. It's a -- you know, and we have to refresh people's memories a little bit. The Watergate scandal was because of the election. Richard Nixon wanted to know --

KRAUTHAMMER: Exactly.

O'REILLY: -- what his opponent was doing, so they broke into the headquarters to try to figure that out. So, this is the same thing. They don't want the narrative that the terror warrior -- Barack Obama had a slip-up in Libya.

They didn't want that to be part of the election campaign. That's what it's all about.

KRAUTHAMMER: Look, but that's the great irony of it. It wasn't as if Obama ordered a burglary or a criminal act, or had a plumber seal it or hide any of this.

It was simply to make him -- look, I have to speculate because why else would you have the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs write a memo the day after the attack saying, "It was an attack by Ansar al-Sharia, the al-Qaeda affiliate."

So, State Department admits it on day two. CIA submits evidence, its evidence on day four that it's all about a terror attack. There is no speculation about a video.

There was no demonstration. Why else would you create a false story that you announced on the five networks. I mean, there is no plausible reason.

O'REILLY: Is it beyond reasonable --

KRAUTHAMMER: The only possible reason is that they were trying to look politically-good --

O'REILLY: Yes. They didn't want to give the republicans a hammer to go after them because, as you know, Romney came out the day after the attack.

KRAUTHAMMER: But it's so disproportionate. It makes no sense. Admit there were some mistakes.

O'REILLY: Of course.

KRAUTHAMMER: Americans are forgiving.

O'REILLY: In this climate, 24/7 news, how do you think you're going to cover something like that up. Come on.

But is it possible that this was done at a level -- I don't think it's possible in the State Department. I think that Hillary Clinton had to know that Hicks was, you know, in their -- he was off the reservation. That's the term they used.

She had to know that. And she was OK with the demotion, which is ridiculous.

But at the White House level, it could have been guys in the campaign. I mean, we have to give the benefit of the doubt here right now, do we not.

KRAUTHAMMER: It wasn't the members of the campaign who doctored the talking points. I'm not saying Obama sat down and he edited them.

But the story that Jay Carney has told, that the only thing that was done by the political people on the talking points was to change one word, I think "embassy" into "facility" or something, is ridiculous. We know what happened in the e-mail.

O'REILLY: I wonder who did that. I wonder who actually sat down and changed that.

KRAUTHAMMER: The story they have put out, Jay Carney has said, "This is the administration's story. We initially assumed or thought, the evidence was, it was a demonstration, not in the video. And as we learned the new evidence, it became a terror attack."

That is completely false. They knew in the State Department, in CIA, everywhere. As Hicks had said, "There was no demonstration."

O'REILLY: Right.

KRAUTHAMMER: "There was no indication of it." They knew it was a terror attack. They subtracted that truth, ended up with a fantasy.

O'REILLY: Right. We just have to find out who did it. That's what we need to know.

KRAUTHAMMER: Well, who did it. It was high people in the White House and high people in state. That we know.

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