Wednesday, October 24, 2012
House was told that a militant group was claiming responsibility for the violence that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.
A State Department email sent to intelligence officials and the White House situation room said the Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter, and also called for an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli.
The document may fuel Republican efforts to show that the White House knew it was a terrorist attack, even as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was saying — five days afterward — that it appeared to be a protest gone awry.
The Obama administration's account of the Benghazi events has become a campaign issue, with Republican challenger Mitt Romney and GOP lawmakers accusing the White House of misleading Americans about the nature of the attack.
The Associated Press and other news organizations obtained the unclassified email and two related emails from government officials who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about them publicly.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday that the review board she appointed to investigate the attack is "looking at everything," rather than "cherry picking one story here or one document there."
White House press secretary Jay Carney said the emails represented just one piece of information the administration was receiving at the time.
"There were emails about all sorts of information that was becoming available in the aftermath of the attack," Carney said. "The whole point of an intelligence community and what they do is to assess strands of information and make judgments about what happened and who is responsible."
Carney, traveling with President Barack Obama Wednesday on Air Force One, said the emails were unclassified and referred to assertions made on a social media site.
There were a series of three emails sent by State Department officials in Washington as events unfolded on Sept. 11. Among the recipients was the White House situation room.
The first email said that the State Department's regional security officer reported the mission in Benghazi was under attack, and that "20 armed people fired shots." It said that Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was killed in the attack, was in Benghazi, and that Stevens and four others were in the compound's safe haven.
Forty-nine minutes later, an email said that the firing at the consulate "has stopped and the compound has been cleared," while a response team was attempting to locate people.
The next message, one hour and 13 minutes after the second and some two hours after the attack began, a message reported that Ansar-al-Sharia claimed responsibility for the attack.
"Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Faceboook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli," it said.
Ansar al-Sharia bragged to members of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb that it was responsible for the attack, according to recordings of phone calls intercepted by U.S. intelligence. But the group has publicly denied having anything to do with the attack.
Clinton, speaking to reporters at the State Department, said, "You know, posting something on Facebook is not in and of itself evidence and I think it just underscores how fluid the reporting was at the time and continued some time to be."
She added, "What I keep in mind is that four brave Americans were killed and we will find out what happened, we will take whatever measures are necessary to fix anything that needs to be fixed and we will bring those to justice who committed these murders."
Comments
donnaladd 11 years, 6 months ago
What's remarkable about this story is that Obama opponents act as if the State Department and intelligence community are supposed to immediately release every email or tip they get immediately after an attack. The political attackers refuse to take into account that these tips must be confirmed and that the lives of people still in the dangerous spots must be taken in account. The ignorance of the response and politicization of this tragedy is really terrifying.
Should we assume they're going to demand all emails and tips received from every intelligence operations in the last decade or so to make sure all were released as soon as they hit the inbox?
I'll also say it again: I saw on The New York Times site the day after the attack that the administration believed it may be a terrorist act. It shocked me when people started lying and saying they'd never seen it. Americans should be smarter than this, especially when it comes to protecting the lives of our intelligence community. The ignorance is just shocking.
brjohn9 11 years, 6 months ago
Republicans act as if it is simply a fact that the video really wasn't the reason why protests broke out at our embassies, but that is not the case. Most of the protests apparently were sparked by the video. They also ignore what Rice actually said, which is that the event apparently started as a spontaneous protest, and then another group of people showed up with heavy weapons to attack the consulate. She also stressed that this was only an initial assessment, based on incomplete information.
"We believe that folks in Benghazi, a small number of people came to the embassy to -- or to the consulate, rather, to replicate the sort of challenge that was posed in Cairo. And then as that unfolded, it seems to have been hijacked, let us say, by some individual clusters of extremists who came with heavier weapons, weapons that as you know in -- in the wake of the revolution in Libya are -- are quite common and accessible. And it then evolved from there."
brjohn9 11 years, 6 months ago
But the whole Republican line of attack on this issue makes no sense. Why would Obama deliberately allow an attack on our consulate right before the election? What political purpose would it serve for him to deliberately lie about the cause of the attack? This argument only holds together if you believe that Obama is an appeaser who sympathizes with the protestors more than the dead Americans. That thinking runs just beneath the surface of the attack. The problem they face in selling the attack politically is that few people outside of the right-wing echo chamber are ever going to buy the argument that Obama is soft on terrorism, for good reason. To say nothing of other figments of Sean Hannity's fevered imagination.
Beyond that, the Republican attacks are just desperate opportunism, to reclaim their advantage on foreign policy, which Bush destroyed. They must also want to avenge all the foreign-policy deceptions and disasters of the Bush years.
donnaladd 11 years, 5 months ago
I just got back into town and noticed this thread. Here are several pieces everyone should examine over the whole manufactured Benghazi furor, which it seems that media have backed off on after realizing how they got slapped factually on it (and, not to mention, Romney). You'll still hear the tin-foil crowd flipping out about it (probably to justify their weeks of obsession over a non-scandal), but consider these pieces to put it in perspective. (Caution: one Benghazi-obsessed friend and Romney defender unfriended because I posted these links on his Facebook page; he clearly didn't know how to respond to them):
National Journal: http://www.nationaljournal.com/nation...">Benghazi: The Real Libya Story Is No Story http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k_LMT...">Condi Rice's reasoned remarks on FOX-News CNN: http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10...">Doubts surface over e-mail on claim of responsibility for Benghazi attack Foreign Policy: http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/pos...">Leaked State Dept Benghazi e-mails might have been wrong
And then there's this loveliness: http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/pos...">Issa’s Benghazi document dump exposes several Libyans working with the U.S.
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