Several official investigations have been completed, are ongoing, or are under consideration. Investigative reporting has also discovered new information about the Obama administrations handling of the aftermath of the attack. 1. Federal Bureau of Investigation The FBI opened its investigation soon after the attack and it remains ongoing. No arrests have been made. On May 2, 2013, the FBI released photos of three men from the Benghazi attack site, asking for help from the public in identifying the individuals. 2. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence The U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence delivered their bipartisan report on the terrorist attacks on January 15, 2014. The majority of the committee offered the following conclusions: The attacks were preventable. Fifteen people in Libya who have tried to help the FBI investigation have been killed. There were no protests in the area prior to the attack. Terrorists who participated in the attacks included members of al-Qaida in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb, Ansar al-Sharia, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and the Mohammad Jamal Network. No stand down order was given by President Barack Obama or any other official anywhere in the government in terms of possible military efforts to combat the attackers, despite later reports. The Benghazi attacks have been the subject of misinformed speculation and accusations long after the basic facts of the attacks have been determined, thereby distracting attention from more important concerns: the tragic deaths of four brave Americans, the hunt for their attackers, efforts by the U.S. Government to avoid future attacks, and the future of the U.S-Libya relationship. The CIA talking points were flawed but still painted a mostly accurate picture of the ICs analysis of the Benghazi attacks at that time, in an unclassified form and without compromising the nascent [FBI] investigation of the attacks. No evidence was found of any effort to downplay the role of terrorists enacting a pre-planned strike in the Benghazi attacks. The reference to al-Qaida included in early drafts of the talking points was removed by CIA staff, not by the White House or the FBI, as was incorrectly alleged by some members of Congress and the press. The CIAs September 15, 2012, talking points.. .wrongly attributed the genesis of the Benghazi attacks to protests that became violent. However, as stated in the report, this characterization reflected the assessment by the IC of the information available at that time, which lacked sufficient intelligence and eyewitness statements to conclude that there were no protests. Further, it is important to remember that this early assessment was made in the context of approximately 40 protests around the globe against U.S. embassies and consulates in response to an inflammatory film. There were also other violent attacks against U.S. embassies and consulates in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and other cities around the world on or after September 11. In general, the majority concluded that the interagency coordination process on the talking points followed normal, but rushed coordination procedures and that there were no efforts by the White House or any other Executive Branch entities to cover-up facts or make alterations for political purposes. Senators from the Republican Party offered additional views: The U.S. State Department was resistant to cooperating with the Senate investigation. The Obama administration manipulated the facts around the attack, with its handling of the attacks having been a source of confusion and that the Administration chose to try to frame the story in a way that minimized any connection to terrorism. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Five House Committees Five House Committees (Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, Intelligence, Judiciary, and Oversight and Government Reform) initiated their own inquiries soon after the attack. The Republicans on these five House Committees delivered an interim report on April 23, 2013. The interim Republican report was critical of the Obama Administrations actions before, during, and after the attack. Among dozens of findings, the report states that: Senior State Department officials knew that the threat environment in Benghazi was high and that the Benghazi compound was vulnerable and unable to withstand an attack, yet the department continued to systematically withdraw security personnel The [Obama] Administration willfully perpetuated a deliberately misleading and incomplete narrative that the attacks evolved from a political demonstration caused by a YouTube video. ... after a White House Deputies Meeting on Saturday, September 15, 2012, the Administration altered the talking points to remove references to the likely participation of Islamic extremists in the attacks. The Administration also removed references to the threat of extremists linked to al-Qaida in Benghazi and eastern Libya ... The Administration deflected responsibility by blaming the IC [intelligence community] for the information it communicated to the public in both the talking points and the subsequent narrative it perpetuated. Additional congressional hearings were conducted May 8, 2013 with three whistleblower witnesses: Mark Thompson, acting deputy assistant Secretary of State for counterterrorism; Greg Hicks, former deputy chief of mission in Libya; and Eric Nordstrom, former regional security officer in Libya. On November 7, 2013, Representative David Nunes (R-CA) wrote a letter to House Speaker John Boehner a week ahead of congressional hearing with CIA contractors who were on the ground during the attack. Nunes wrote that if questions remain unanswered or if some answers differ substantially from the established narrative and timeline of the attack, then it would be warranted to take new measures to complete the investigation and synthesize the information obtained by the Intelligence Committees and other committees investigating the Benghazi attack. 8. State Department Accountability Review Board As required by the Omnibus Diplomatic and Antiterrorism Act of 1986, the State Department announced on October 4, 2012 an Accountability Review Board to examine the facts and circumstances of the attacks. Four members were selected by Clinton and another was selected by Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper. Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering served as the Chairman, Admiral Michael Mullen served as the Vice Chairman, also serving were Catherine Bertini, Richard Shinnick, and Hugh Turner, who represented the intelligence community. The investigation report was released December 20, 2012. It was seen as a sharp criticism of State Department officials in Washington for ignoring requests for more guards and safety upgrades, and for failing to adapt security procedures to a deteriorating security environment. Systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department ... resulted in a special mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place, said the unclassified version of the report. It also blamed too much reliance on local militias who failed to fend off the attackers that evening. The Council on Foreign Relations in an initial report saw it as a refutation to the notion that the Obama administration delayed its response. However, it confirmed that contrary to initial accounts, there was no protest outside the consulate. It placed responsibility for the incident solely upon the attackers, deemed as terrorists. 9. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman (ID-CT) and Ranking Member Susan Collins (R-ME) opened an investigation in mid October 2012. Their final report was delivered December 31, 2012. According to the report, there was a high risk of a significant terrorist attack on U.S. employees and facilities in Benghazi in the months before the September 11, 2012, assault on the Mission, and the State Department failed to take adequate steps to reduce the Missions vulnerability. 10. House Select Committee On January 18, 2013, Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA) introduced a bill (HR 36) to establish a select committee to investigate and report on the attack. As of November 7, 2013, the bill has 178 cosponsors in the House of Representatives, all Republicans. Supporting the formation of a select committee are 700 special operations veterans, Special Operations OPSEC, and the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association (which represents the DSS agents in Benghazi). In May 2014, House Speaker John Boehner announced a House select committee would be formed to further investigate the attacks in light of State Department documents released on April 29, 2014, regarded as the smoking gun.The House voted May 8, 2014 to establish the United States House Select Committee on Events Surrounding the 2012 Terrorist Attack in Benghazi, voting 232-186—225 Republicans and 7 Democrats in favor, 186 Democrats voting against. Investigative reporting Numerous eyewitnesses reported that the attackers said they were reacting to the film Innocence of Muslims. On May 3, 2013, Stephen Hayes wrote in The Weekly Standard that new evidence showed senior Obama administration officials knowingly misled the country about what had happened in the days following the assaults. Hayes said that there was a flurry of revisions made to the talking points in the days before Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, appeared on five Sunday television talk shows. Included in the cuts were references to Islamic extremists, reminders of warnings about al Qaeda in Libya, a reference to jihadists in Cairo, the mention of possible surveillance of the facility in Benghazi, and the report of five previous attacks on foreign interests. On May 10, 2013, ABC News Jonathan Karl reported that Stephen Hayes had obtained 12 different versions of the talking points that show they were extensively edited as they evolved from the drafts first written entirely by the CIA to the final version distributed to Congress and to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice before she appeared on five talk shows. The changes made to the talking points, according to the report, appear to directly contradict what White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said about them in November 2012. Afterwards, Carney stated the reports did not contradict what he said and that it was the CIAs task to review the talking points. The White House then released copies of various emails that were sent to various administration officials shortly after the attack took place to prove that there was no cover up. On the May 12 episode of ABC News This Week, Karl said that when then-CIA Director David Petraeus saw the final talking points the Saturday before Rice went on the Sunday talk shows he said they were essentially useless. Karl went on to quote from an e-mail in which Petraeus said of the talking points: I would just as soon not use them, but its their [the White Houses] call. Research by other media outlets later proved that Karls report was inaccurate, as his sources had twisted what was written in the documents. On the May 19 episode of ABC News This Week, Karl announced he regretted reporting the inaccuracy and acknowledged that he exaggerated the words Obama speechwriter Ben Rhodes had written in one of emails cited in the documents. Memos written by State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland also revealed that she made the revisions because they could be abused by members [of Congress] to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings. On July 11, Nuland, who was nominated by Obama to be the top US envoy to Europe, told various members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during a confirmation hearing that she had made the revisions and that she had feared Republicans in Congress would politicize the original memos and present a false impression that various top US State Department officials, including then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, had covered-up information about the attack. In August 2013, it was reported by Drew Griffin and Kathleen Johnston of CNN that dozens of CIA operatives were on the ground in Benghazi on the night of the attack.[30] Their sources say 35 people were on the ground in Benghazi the night of attack, and 21 of those worked in the annex building. They further reported that according to their sources the agency was going to great lengths to keep what they were doing a secret, including polygraphing some of the survivors monthly in order to find out if they were talking to the media or Congress. The actions of the CIA were described as pure intimidation, with any leak risking the loss of a career. Former CIA agent Robert Baer described the frequency of the polygraphs as rare. A six-part report on an investigation by the New York Times on the attack was published on the Times website on 28 December 2013.[288] Based on months of investigation and extensive interviews with Libyans in Benghazi who had direct knowledge of the attack there and its context, the investigation found no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault, but that that the attackers included militias that benefited directly from NATOs extensive air power and logistics support overthrowing Colonel Qaddafi, and whom the Americans had taken for allies.[288] It found that the US compound had been under surveillance at least 12 hours before the assault started, but that the attack also had spontaneous elements. Anger at the video [Innocence of Muslims] motivated the initial attack. Dozens of people joined in, some of them provoked by the video and others responding to fast-spreading false rumors that guards inside the American compound had shot Libyan protesters. Looters and arsonists, without any sign of a plan, were the ones who ravaged the compound after the initial attack, according to more than a dozen Libyan witnesses as well as many American officials who have viewed the footage from security cameras.[288] In the following weeks, several U.S. lawmakers (both Democrats and Republicans), publicly stated that the intelligence indicates that al Qaeda was involved.
Posted on: Wed, 21 May 2014 15:50:42 +0000
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