UN ambassador says Libya attack was spontaneous

JOSH LEDERMAN

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — A deadly assault on a U.S. con­sulate in Libya was a spon­ta­neous reac­tion to an anti-Muslim video, the U.S. ambas­sador to the United Nations said Sun­day, even as Libya’s pres­i­dent insisted the attack­ers spent months prepar­ing and care­fully choos­ing their date — the anniver­sary of the Sept. 11 ter­ror­ist attacks.

Unnerved by the rapidly esca­lat­ing raid on Tues­day that claimed the life of the U.S. ambas­sador to Libya and three other Amer­i­cans, the Obama admin­is­tra­tion last week launched an inves­ti­ga­tion into whether ter­ror­ist groups had exploited out­rage over an anti-Muslim video to trig­ger an attack long in the works.

But Ambas­sador Susan Rice said evi­dence gath­ered so far shows no indi­ca­tion of a pre­med­i­tated or coor­di­nated strike. She said the attack in Beng­hazi, pow­ered by mor­tars and rocket-propelled grenades, appeared to be a copy­cat of demon­stra­tions that had erupted hours ear­lier out­side the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, spurred by a YouTube film attrib­uted to a Cal­i­for­nia man mock­ing the Prophet Muhammad.

“It seems to have been hijacked, let us say, by some indi­vid­ual clus­ters of extrem­ists who came with heav­ier weapons,” Rice said, adding that such weaponry is easy to come by in post-revolutionary Libya.

Whether those extrem­ists had ties to al-Qaida or other ter­ror­ist groups has yet to be deter­mined, Rice said, not­ing that the FBI has yet to com­plete its investigation.

Rice’s depic­tion of the chain of events con­trasted with one offered by Libya’s Interim Pres­i­dent Mohammed el-Megarif, who said Sun­day there was no doubt the per­pe­tra­tors had pre­de­ter­mined the date of the attack.

“It was planned, def­i­nitely. It was planned by for­eign­ers, by peo­ple who entered the coun­try a few months ago,” el-Megarif said. “And they were plan­ning this crim­i­nal act since their arrival.”

Brush­ing aside el-Megarif’s assess­ment, Rice said it wouldn’t be the first time that West­ern works crit­i­cal of Islam have trig­gered spon­ta­neous unrest through­out the Mid­dle East. She pointed to Salman Rushdie’s novel “Satanic Verses” and car­toons of the Prophet Muham­mad pub­lished by a Dan­ish news­pa­per in 2006.

But Rep. Mike Rogers, the House Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee chair, said it was pre­ma­ture to rule out a pre­med­i­tated attack. A for­mer FBI agent, Rogers, R-Mich., said there were too many coin­ci­dences to con­clude the Beng­hazi attack hadn’t been planned in advance.

“There’s other infor­ma­tion, clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion we have that just makes you stop for a minute and pause,” Rogers said, with­out elaborating.

Added Arizona’s Sen. John McCain, the top Repub­li­can on the Sen­ate Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee: “Most peo­ple don’t bring rocket-propelled grenades and heavy weapons to a demonstration.”

What started with pro­test­ers scal­ing the embassy wall in Cairo on Tues­day over an ama­teur­ish video derid­ing Islam’s holi­est fig­ure has mush­roomed into a mael­strom of dis­quiet through­out the Mus­lim world. In Libya, U.S. Ambas­sador Chris Stevens and three other Amer­i­cans were killed when pro­test­ers stormed the con­sulate in Beng­hazi. Anti-U.S. protests in 20 coun­tries led the Pen­ta­gon to dis­patch elite Marine anti-terrorism teams to Libya and Yemen and to posi­tion two Navy war­ships off Libya’s coast.

Mean­while, the State Depart­ment ordered all nonessen­tial U.S. gov­ern­ment work­ers and their fam­i­lies out of Sudan and Tunisia. In Lebanon, pro­test­ers torched an Amer­i­can fast-food restau­rant. Even as ten­sions appeared to be eas­ing Sat­ur­day, al-Qaida’s most active Mideast branch was call­ing for fur­ther attacks on U.S. embassies.

“It’s approx­i­mately a reac­tion to this video, and it’s a hate­ful video that had noth­ing to do with the United States and which we find dis­gust­ing and rep­re­hen­si­ble,” Rice said.

Rice’s com­ments appeared to mark a depar­ture from an ear­lier State Depart­ment position.

Cit­ing the ongo­ing FBI probe, State Depart­ment spokes­woman Vic­to­ria Nuland said Fri­day that until the Jus­tice Depart­ment was ready to talk, no details would be released. “Not who they were, not how they hap­pened, not what hap­pened to Ambas­sador Stevens — not any of it.”

But the uncer­tainty of an anx­ious nation ques­tion­ing what was gained by U.S. sup­port for demo­c­ra­tic, pro-Islamic upris­ings in Mus­lim coun­tries has cre­ated a sense of urgency that has been dif­fi­cult for the Obama admin­is­tra­tion to ignore. The tur­bu­lence has also become a major issue in Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s re-election cam­paign, with the Repub­li­can rival for the White House, Mitt Rom­ney, lay­ing blame on the pres­i­dent and accus­ing him of apol­o­giz­ing for the U.S.

Doubts also per­sist about whether secu­rity mea­sures in place to pro­tect U.S. diplo­matic mis­sions, which were over­whelmed in Beng­hazi, were sufficient.

Rice said the U.S. had “no action­able intel­li­gence” about any immi­nent attack in Beng­hazi, and that secu­rity was beefed up in Cairo fol­low­ing signs that the YouTube video might spark protests. She said for­eign gov­ern­ments are step­ping up to con­demn the vio­lence and to ful­fill their oblig­a­tions to pro­tect U.S. embassies.

Rice said it’s too early to judge whether secu­rity should have been stronger in Libya. U.S. Marines, who com­monly pro­tect embassies abroad, were not assigned to the Beng­hazi con­sulate, the State Depart­ment has said. At the embassy in Cairo, Rice said, pro­tec­tions ini­tially afforded by the Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment fell short.

“When Pres­i­dent Obama picked up the phone and spoke to the Pres­i­dent (Mohammed) Morsi, right away things changed,” Rice said. “And that’s an evi­dence of our influ­ence and our impact.”

Rice and Rogers spoke on “Fox News Sun­day,” while el-Megarif and McCain spoke on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” Rice also appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and on “Face the Nation.”

Posted by AP News on Sep 16 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.