In the days following the killing of the U.S. ambassador and two ex-Navy
SEALs, President Obama and top State Department officials portrayed the
attack as a spontaneous reaction to an Internet video depicting the
Muslim prophet Mohammad as a lascivious brute. The protests, White House
spokesman Jay Carney said last week, were “in response to a video—a
film—that we have judged to be reprehensible and disgusting.”
Now there is mounting evidence that
the White House’s initial portrayal of the attacks as a mere outgrowth
of protest was incorrect—or, at the very least, incomplete. The
administration’s story itself has recently begun to shift, with Matthew
Olsen, the director of the National Counter-Terrorism Center, telling
Congress on Wednesday that the attackers may have had links to al Qaeda
and Carney characterizing the incident as a “terrorist attack.” (Hillary
Clinton announced on Thursday that she was putting together a panel to
look into the incident.)
But
other indications that the White House’s early narrative was faulty are
also beginning to emerge. One current U.S. intelligence officer working
on the investigation into the incident told The Daily Beast that the
attackers had staked out and monitored the U.S. consulate in Benghazi
before the attack, a move that suggests pre-planning.
What’s
more, two U.S. intelligence officials told The Daily Beast that the
intelligence community is currently analyzing an intercept between a
Libyan politician whose sympathies are with al Qaeda and the Libyan
militia known as the February 17 Brigade—which had been charged with
providing local security to the consulate. In the intercept, the Libyan
politician apparently asks an officer in the brigade to have his men
stand down for a pending attack—another piece of evidence implying the
violence was planned in advance. (Plenty of Libyans, of course, did try
to protect the consulate. “Many of those Libyans died in the gunfight
fighting off the attackers,” one of the officials said. “But there were
some bad apples there as well.”)
Read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/21/obama-s-shaky-libya-narrative.html
Read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/21/obama-s-shaky-libya-narrative.html
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