US officials: We didn’t link Libya attack to video

BRADLEY KLAPPER

LARRY MARGASAK

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — The State Depart­ment said Tues­day it never con­cluded that the con­sulate attack in Libya stemmed from protests over an American-made video ridi­cul­ing Islam, rais­ing fur­ther ques­tions about why the Obama admin­is­tra­tion used that expla­na­tion for more than a week after assailants killed the U.S. ambas­sador and three other Americans.

The rev­e­la­tion came as new doc­u­ments sug­gested inter­nal dis­agree­ment over appro­pri­ate lev­els of secu­rity before the attack, which occurred on the 11th anniver­sary of the Sept. 11 ter­ror attacks on the U.S.

Brief­ing reporters ahead of a hotly antic­i­pated con­gres­sional hear­ing Wednes­day, State Depart­ment offi­cials pro­vided their most detailed run­down of how a peace­ful day in Beng­hazi devolved into a sus­tained attack that involved mul­ti­ple groups of men armed with weapons such as machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and mor­tars over an expanse of more than a mile.

But asked about the administration’s ini­tial — and since retracted — expla­na­tion link­ing the vio­lence to protests over an anti-Muslim video cir­cu­lat­ing on the Inter­net, one offi­cial said, “That was not our con­clu­sion.” He called it a ques­tion for “oth­ers” to answer, with­out spec­i­fy­ing. The offi­cials spoke on con­di­tion of anonymity because they weren’t autho­rized to speak pub­licly on the mat­ter, and pro­vided no evi­dence that might sug­gest a case of spon­ta­neous vio­lence or angry protests that went too far.

The attack has become a major issue in the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, fea­tur­ing promi­nently in Repub­li­can can­di­date Mitt Romney’s lat­est for­eign pol­icy address on Mon­day. He called it an exam­ple of Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s weak­ness in for­eign pol­icy mat­ters, not­ing: “As the admin­is­tra­tion has finally con­ceded, these attacks were the delib­er­ate work of terrorists.”

The admin­is­tra­tion coun­ters that it has pro­vided its best intel­li­gence on the attack, and that it refined its expla­na­tion as more infor­ma­tion came to light. But five days after the attack, Obama’s ambas­sador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, gave a series of inter­views say­ing the admin­is­tra­tion believed the vio­lence was unplanned and that extrem­ists with heav­ier weapons “hijacked” the protest and turned it into an out­right attack.

She has since denied try­ing to mis­lead Con­gress, and a con­cur­rent CIA memo that was obtained by The Asso­ci­ated Press cited intel­li­gence sug­gest­ing the demon­stra­tions in Beng­hazi “were spon­ta­neously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo” and “evolved into a direct assault” on the diplo­matic posts by “extremists.”

Along­side defin­ing the nature of the Beng­hazi attack, Con­gress is look­ing into whether ade­quate secu­rity was in place.

Accord­ing to an email obtained Tues­day by the AP, the top State Depart­ment secu­rity offi­cial in Libya told a con­gres­sional inves­ti­ga­tor that he had argued unsuc­cess­fully for more secu­rity in the weeks before Ambas­sador Chris Stevens, a State Depart­ment com­puter spe­cial­ist and two for­mer Navy SEALs were killed. But depart­ment offi­cials instead wanted to “nor­mal­ize oper­a­tions and reduce secu­rity resources,” he wrote.

Eric Nord­strom, who was the regional secu­rity offi­cer in Libya, also ref­er­enced a State Depart­ment doc­u­ment detail­ing 230 secu­rity inci­dents in Libya between June 2011 and July 2012 that demon­strated the dan­ger there to Americans.

Nord­strom is among the wit­nesses set to tes­tify Wednes­day before the House Over­sight and Gov­ern­ment Reform Com­mit­tee. Accord­ing to the panel’s chair­man, Rep. Dar­rell Issa, R-Calif., and the head of a sub­com­mit­tee, Rep. Jason Chaf­fetz, R-Utah, the State Depart­ment refused repeated requests to pro­vide more secu­rity for U.S. diplo­mats in Libya.

“You will note that there were a num­ber of inci­dents that tar­geted diplo­matic mis­sions and under­scored the GoL’s (gov­ern­ment of Libya) inabil­ity to secure and pro­tect diplo­matic mis­sions,” Nordstrom’s email stated.

“This was a sig­nif­i­cant part of (the diplo­matic) post’s and my argu­ment for main­tain­ing con­tin­ued DS (diplo­matic secu­rity) and DOD (Depart­ment of Defense) secu­rity assets into Sept/Oct. 2012; the GoL was over­whelmed and could not guar­an­tee our protection.

“Sadly, that point was reaf­firmed on Sept. 11, 2012, in Beng­hazi,” he added.

Nord­strom said the inci­dents demon­strated that secu­rity in Libya was frag­ile and could degrade quickly. He added that Libya was “cer­tainly not an envi­ron­ment where (the diplo­matic) post would be directed to ‘nor­mal­ize’ oper­a­tions and reduce secu­rity resources in accor­dance with an arti­fi­cial time table.”

Nord­strom also said diplo­mats in Libya were told not to request an exten­sion of a 16-member spe­cial oper­a­tions mil­i­tary team that left in August, accord­ing to an offi­cial of the Over­sight panel. The offi­cial was not autho­rized to dis­cuss the mat­ter pub­licly and thus spoke only on the con­di­tion of anonymity.

The State Depart­ment has said it never received a request to extend the mil­i­tary team beyond August, and added that its mem­bers were replaced with a secu­rity team that had the same skills.

Democ­rats on the Over­sight com­mit­tee were sharply crit­i­cal of Issa, the chair­man, call­ing his inves­ti­ga­tion “extremely partisan.”

“The chair­man and his staff failed to con­sult with Demo­c­ra­tic mem­bers prior to issu­ing pub­lic let­ters with unver­i­fied alle­ga­tions, con­cealed wit­nesses and refused to make one hear­ing wit­ness avail­able to Demo­c­ra­tic staff, with­held doc­u­ments obtained by the com­mit­tee dur­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion, and effec­tively excluded Demo­c­ra­tic com­mit­tee mem­bers from join­ing a poorly-planned con­gres­sional del­e­ga­tion to Libya,” a Demo­c­ra­tic memo said.

It said in the pre­vi­ous two years, House Repub­li­cans voted to cut the Obama administration’s requests for embassy secu­rity by some $459 million.

The Demo­c­ra­tic memo said Nord­strom told com­mit­tee inves­ti­ga­tors that he sent two cables to State Depart­ment head­quar­ters in March and July 2012 request­ing addi­tional diplo­matic secu­rity agents for Beng­hazi, but that he received no responses.

He stated that Char­lene Lamb, the deputy assis­tant sec­re­tary for inter­na­tional pro­grams, wanted to keep the num­ber of U.S. secu­rity per­son­nel in Beng­hazi arti­fi­cially low and that Lamb believed the Beng­hazi facil­i­ties did not need any diplo­matic secu­rity spe­cial agents because there was a res­i­den­tial safe haven to fall back to in an emergency.

Issa had a phone con­ver­sa­tion Mon­day with Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton about the committee’s investigation.

The FBI is still inves­ti­gat­ing the attack. Clin­ton also has named a State Depart­ment review panel to look into the secu­rity arrange­ments in Libya.

Posted by AP News on Oct 9 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.