White House told of Libyan attack claim Sept. 11

LARRY MARGASAK

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — Two hours after the U.S. Con­sulate came under attack in Beng­hazi, Libya, the White House was told that a mil­i­tant group was claim­ing respon­si­bil­ity for the vio­lence that killed the U.S. ambas­sador and three other Americans.

A State Depart­ment email sent to intel­li­gence offi­cials and the White House sit­u­a­tion room said the Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia claimed respon­si­bil­ity on Face­book and Twit­ter, and also called for an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli.

The doc­u­ment may fuel Repub­li­can efforts to show that the White House knew it was a ter­ror­ist attack, even as the U.S. ambas­sador to the United Nations was say­ing — five days after­ward — that it appeared to be a protest gone awry.

The Obama administration’s account of the Beng­hazi events has become a cam­paign issue, with Repub­li­can chal­lenger Mitt Rom­ney and GOP law­mak­ers accus­ing the White House of mis­lead­ing Amer­i­cans about the nature of the attack. But mil­i­tant groups often sur­face after such attacks claim­ing respon­si­bil­ity and it’s dif­fi­cult to imme­di­ately ver­ify such claims.

The Asso­ci­ated Press and other news orga­ni­za­tions obtained the unclas­si­fied email and two related emails from gov­ern­ment offi­cials who requested anonymity because they were not autho­rized to speak about them publicly.

The House and Sen­ate com­mit­tees that over­see intel­li­gence received a raft of doc­u­ments from the Office of Direc­tor of National Intel­li­gence on Mon­day, two con­gres­sional aides said. Con­gres­sional staffers comb­ing through the doc­u­ments have found a kalei­do­scope of some­times con­flict­ing intel­li­gence, back­ing up much of what intel­li­gence offi­cials explained over the past sev­eral weeks.

But mem­bers of both com­mit­tees are still com­plain­ing that the orig­i­nal brief­ing they were given just after the Tues­day, Sept. 11 attack, dif­fered markedly from the expla­na­tion the CIA direc­tor David Petraeus gave them by the end of that week. In that first brief­ing, just 12 hours after con­sulate was burned down, the intel­li­gence com­mit­tees received a report that it was a mil­i­tary style assault, but just days later, Petraeus stressed that mil­i­tants had infil­trated a mob, a U.S. offi­cial said.

U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cials have said Petraeus out­lined that extrem­ists were believed to be in the crowd, and car­ried out the attack, and also stressed the pic­ture was still evolving.

A U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cial said Wednes­day that it was “clear from the out­set that a group of peo­ple gath­ered that evening” but that it took until the week after the attack to deter­mine “whether extrem­ists took over a crowd or if the guys who showed up were all mil­i­tants.” The offi­cial said the brief­ing included the analy­sis that the “attacks that appeared spon­ta­neous,” but also men­tioned pos­si­ble links to regional al-Qaida groups.

Mean­while, the Tunisian gov­ern­ment said it has arrested a 28-year-old Tunisian linked to the U.S. Con­sulate attack. Inte­rior Min­istry spokesman Tar­rouch Khaled said Wednes­day that the sus­pect, Ali Harzi, was in cus­tody in Tunis. Khaled told the AP “his case is in the hands of jus­tice,” but did not elaborate.

Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton said Wednes­day that the review board she appointed to inves­ti­gate the attack is “look­ing at every­thing,” rather than “cherry pick­ing one story here or one doc­u­ment there.”

White House press sec­re­tary Jay Car­ney said the emails rep­re­sented just one piece of infor­ma­tion the admin­is­tra­tion was receiv­ing at the time.

“There were emails about all sorts of infor­ma­tion that was becom­ing avail­able in the after­math of the attack,” Car­ney said. “The whole point of an intel­li­gence com­mu­nity and what they do is to assess strands of infor­ma­tion and make judg­ments about what hap­pened and who is responsible.”

Car­ney, trav­el­ing with Pres­i­dent Barack Obama Wednes­day on Air Force One, said the emails were unclas­si­fied and referred to asser­tions made on a social media site.

There were a series of three emails sent by State Depart­ment offi­cials in Wash­ing­ton as events unfolded on Sept. 11. Among the recip­i­ents was the White House sit­u­a­tion room.

The first email said that the State Department’s regional secu­rity offi­cer reported the mis­sion in Beng­hazi was under attack, and that “20 armed peo­ple fired shots.” It said that Ambas­sador Chris Stevens, who was killed in the attack, was in Beng­hazi, and that Stevens and four oth­ers were in the compound’s safe haven.

Forty-nine min­utes later, an email said that the fir­ing at the con­sulate “has stopped and the com­pound has been cleared,” while a response team was attempt­ing to locate people.

The next mes­sage, one hour and 13 min­utes after the sec­ond and some two hours after the attack began, a mes­sage reported that Ansar-al-Sharia claimed respon­si­bil­ity for the attack.

“Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed respon­si­bil­ity on Face­boook and Twit­ter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli,” it said.

Nearly six hours after the ini­tial attack, a State Depart­ment memo said the shel­ter loca­tion for the Amer­i­cans was receiv­ing mor­tar fire and “there are reports of injuries.”

Ansar al-Sharia bragged to mem­bers of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb that it was respon­si­ble for the attack, accord­ing to record­ings of phone calls inter­cepted by U.S. intel­li­gence. But the group has pub­licly denied hav­ing any­thing to do with the attack.

Clin­ton, speak­ing to reporters at the State Depart­ment, said, “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.”

She added, “What I keep in mind is that four brave Amer­i­cans were killed and we will find out what hap­pened, we will take what­ever mea­sures are nec­es­sary to fix any­thing that needs to be fixed and we will bring those to jus­tice who com­mit­ted these murders.”

Posted by AP News on Oct 24 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.