E-Mails Offer Glimpse at What U.S. Knew in First Hours After Attack in Libya
By ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON — A series of three leaked e-mails sent by State Department
officials beginning shortly after the fatal attack began on the American
diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya,
last month — including one that alerted the White House Situation Room
that a militant group had claimed responsibility for it — stirred new
debate on Wednesday about the Obama administration’s shifting positions
on the cause of the attack.
The first e-mail, sent about a half-hour after the assault began, said
the State Department’s regional security officer in Tripoli, Libya, had
reported that the mission in Benghazi was under attack, and that “20
armed people fired shots.”
An e-mail 49 minutes later said the firing at the mission “has stopped
and the compound has been cleared,” while a response team was trying to
find people.
In the next message, 1 hour 13 minutes after the second, the embassy in
Tripoli reported that a local militant group, Ansar al-Shariah, had
claimed responsibility through postings on Facebook and Twitter.
In the hours after the Benghazi attack, American spy agencies
intercepted electronic communications from Ansar al-Shariah fighters
bragging to an operative with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Al
Qaeda’s North African arm. But Ansar al-Shariah has publicly denied
having anything to do with the attack.
A White House spokesman, Jay Carney, with President Obama on Air Force One
on Wednesday, said the e-mails, reported by Reuters, were unclassified
and among “all sorts of information that was becoming available in the
aftermath of the attack.”
The e-mails surfaced as the Tunisian government confirmed it had
arrested a Tunisian man reportedly linked to the attack, which killed
Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans on Sept. 11.
A spokesman for the Tunisian Interior Ministry, Tarrouch Khaled, told
The Associated Press that the suspect, Ali Harzi, 28, was in custody in
Tunis. Mr. Khaled did not provide details.
Some Republicans have criticized the United States ambassador to the
United Nations, Susan E. Rice, for stating five days after the attack
that it had resulted from a spontaneous mob that was angry about an
anti-Islamic video, even though some intelligence reports and witness
accounts indicated a terrorist attack. Ms. Rice said she had based her
comments on unclassified talking points prepared by the Central
Intelligence Agency.
The issue seemed to die down after Mitt Romney did not press Mr. Obama on the matter in their debate on Monday night.
On Wednesday, three Republican senators, John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey
Graham of South Carolina and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, criticized
Mr. Obama in a letter,
saying the series of e-mails “only adds to the confusion surrounding
what you and your administration knew about the attacks in Benghazi,
when you knew it, and why you responded to those tragic events in the
ways you did.”
Intelligence officials say the gap between the talking points and the
contemporaneous field reports illustrates the lag between turning often
contradictory and incomplete field reporting into a finished assessment.
Administration and intelligence officials made that point again on
Wednesday in trying to put into context the e-mails sent by the State
Department operations center to scores of officials at the Pentagon, the
State Department and the White House.
“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,” Secretary of State Hillary
Rodham Clinton told reporters in Washington.
Labels: Conflict, Diplomacy, Islamism, Libya, United States
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, October 25, 2012
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