Petraeus: CIA blamed terrorists for Libya attack

WASHINGTON — Tes­ti­fy­ing out of sight, ex-CIA Direc­tor David Petraeus told Con­gress Fri­day that clas­si­fied intel­li­gence showed the deadly raid on the U.S. Con­sulate in Libya was a ter­ror­ist attack but the admin­is­tra­tion with­held the sus­pected role of al-Qaida affil­i­ates to avoid tip­ping them off.

The recently resigned spy chief explained that ref­er­ences to ter­ror­ist groups sus­pected of car­ry­ing out the vio­lence were removed from the pub­lic expla­na­tion of what caused the attack so as not to alert them that U.S. intel­li­gence was on their trail, accord­ing to law­mak­ers who attended Petraeus’ pri­vate briefings.

He also said it ini­tially was unclear whether the mil­i­tants had infil­trated a demon­stra­tion to cover their attack.

The retired four-star gen­eral addressed the House and Sen­ate intel­li­gence com­mit­tees in back-to-back, closed-door hear­ings as ques­tions per­sist over what the Obama admin­is­tra­tion knew in the imme­di­ate after­math of the Sept. 11 attacks and why its pub­lic descrip­tion did not match intel­li­gence agen­cies’ assessments.

After the hear­ings, law­mak­ers who ques­tioned Petraeus said he tes­ti­fied that the CIA’s draft talk­ing points in response to the assault on the diplo­matic post in Beng­hazi that killed four Amer­i­cans referred to it as a ter­ror­ist attack. Petraeus said that ref­er­ence was removed from the final ver­sion, although he wasn’t sure which fed­eral agency deleted it.

Adding to the expla­na­tion, a senior U.S. offi­cial famil­iar with the draft­ing of the points said later that a rea­son the ref­er­ences to al-Qaida were deleted was that the infor­ma­tion came from clas­si­fied sources and the links were, and still are, ten­u­ous. The admin­is­tra­tion also did not want to prej­u­dice a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion in its early stages, that offi­cial said, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymity because the offi­cial was not autho­rized to dis­cuss the process publicly.

Democ­rats said Petraeus made it clear the change was not done for polit­i­cal rea­sons dur­ing Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s re-election campaign.

“The gen­eral was adamant there was no politi­ciza­tion of the process, no White House inter­fer­ence or polit­i­cal agenda,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. “He com­pletely debunked that idea.”

But Repub­li­cans remain crit­i­cal of the administration’s han­dling of the case. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said Petraeus’ tes­ti­mony showed that “clearly the secu­rity mea­sures were inad­e­quate despite an over­whelm­ing and grow­ing amount of infor­ma­tion that showed the area in Beng­hazi was dan­ger­ous, par­tic­u­larly on the night of Sept. 11.”

In fact, Petraeus told law­mak­ers that pro­test­ers lit­er­ally walked in and set fire to the facil­ity, accord­ing to a con­gres­sional offi­cial who attended the brief­ing. U.S. Ambas­sador Chris Stevens died from smoke inhala­tion. Petraeus said secu­rity at the CIA annex was much bet­ter, but the attack­ers had arma­ments to get in.

Sep­a­rately on Fri­day, the Demo­c­ra­tic leader in the Sen­ate rejected a request from John McCain and two other sen­a­tors for a Watergate-style con­gres­sional com­mit­tee to inves­ti­gate the Beng­hazi attack. In a let­ter to McCain, Sen. Harry Reid said sev­eral com­mit­tees in the House and Sen­ate are already inves­ti­gat­ing and he would not allow the Sen­ate to be used as a “venue for base­less par­ti­san attacks.” Repub­li­can House Speaker John Boehner also said this week that a spe­cial com­mit­tee was not necessary.

Petraeus, who had a long and dis­tin­guished mil­i­tary career, was giv­ing his first Capi­tol Hill tes­ti­mony since resign­ing last week in dis­grace over an extra­mar­i­tal affair with his biog­ra­pher, Paula Broad­well. Law­mak­ers said he did not dis­cuss that scan­dal except to express regret about the cir­cum­stances of his depar­ture and say that Beng­hazi had noth­ing to do with his deci­sion to resign.

He was brought to a secure room beneath the Capi­tol, avoid­ing crowds of pho­tog­ra­phers and tele­vi­sion cameras.

Petraeus tes­ti­fied that the CIA draft writ­ten in response to the raid referred to mil­i­tant groups Ansar al-Shariah and al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb but that those names were replaced with the word “extrem­ist” in the final draft, accord­ing to a con­gres­sional staff mem­ber. The staffer said Petraeus tes­ti­fied that he allowed other agen­cies to alter the talk­ing points as they saw fit with­out ask­ing for final review, to get them out quickly.

The con­gres­sional offi­cials weren’t autho­rized to dis­cuss the hear­ing pub­licly and described Petraeus’ tes­ti­mony to The Asso­ci­ated Press on con­di­tion of anonymity.

Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., said Petraeus explained that the CIA’s draft points were sent to other intel­li­gence agen­cies and to some fed­eral agen­cies for review. Udall said Petraeus told them the final doc­u­ment was put in front of all the senior agency lead­ers, includ­ing him, and every­one signed off on it.

“The assess­ment that was pub­licly shared in unclas­si­fied talk­ing points went through a process of edit­ing,” Udall said. “The extrem­ist descrip­tion was put in because in an unclas­si­fied doc­u­ment you want to be care­ful who you iden­tify as being involved.”

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said it remained unclear how the final talk­ing points devel­oped. The edited ver­sion was used by U.N. Ambas­sador Susan Rice five days after the attack when the White House sent her out for a series of tele­vi­sion inter­views. Repub­li­cans have crit­i­cized Rice for say­ing it appeared the attack was sparked by a spon­ta­neous protest over an anti-Muslim video.

“The fact is, the ref­er­ence to al-Qaida was taken out some­where along the line by some­one out­side the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity,” King said. “We need to find out who did it and why.”

King said Petraeus had briefed the House com­mit­tee on Sept. 14, and he did not recall Petraeus being so pos­i­tive at that time that it was a ter­ror­ist attack. “He thought all along that he made it clear there was ter­ror­ist involve­ment,” King said. “That was not my recollection.”

After two hours with Petraeus, the Demo­c­ra­tic chair­man of the Senate’s intel­li­gence com­mit­tee and the panel’s top Repub­li­can sparred over Rice’s tele­vised comments.

Chair­man Dianne Fein­stein of Cal­i­for­nia said Rice relied on “unclas­si­fied talk­ing points at a very early stage. … I don’t think she should have been pil­lo­ried for this.”

Fein­stein recalled the faulty intel­li­gence of the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion, used to jus­tify the inva­sion of Iraq in con­clud­ing that coun­try had weapons of mass destruction.

“A lot of peo­ple were killed based on bad intel­li­gence,” she said. Fein­stein added that mis­takes were made in the ini­tial intel­li­gence on Beng­hazi, but she said, “I don’t think that’s fair game” to blame Rice — who has been men­tioned as a pos­si­ble nom­i­nee for sec­re­tary of state. “To say she is unqual­i­fied to be sec­re­tary of state I think is a mistake.”

Top com­mit­tee Repub­li­can Sen. Saxby Cham­b­liss of Geor­gia said Rice had gone beyond the talk­ing points.

“She even men­tioned that under the lead­er­ship of Barack Obama we had dec­i­mated al-Qaida. She knew at that point in time that al-Qaida was respon­si­ble in part or in whole for the death of Ambas­sador Stevens,” Cham­b­liss said.

Schiff, the Cal­i­for­nia con­gress­man, said Petraeus had said Rice’s com­ments in the tele­vi­sion inter­views “reflected the best intel­li­gence at the time that could be released publicly.”

“There was an inter­a­gency process to draft it, not a polit­i­cal process,” Schiff said. “They came up with the best assess­ment with­out com­pro­mis­ing clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion or source or meth­ods. So changes were made to pro­tect clas­si­fied information.”

Sen. Kent Con­rad, D-N.D., said it’s clear that Rice “used the unclas­si­fied talk­ing points that the entire intel­li­gence com­mu­nity signed off on, so she did com­pletely the appro­pri­ate thing.” He said the changes made to the draft account for the dis­crep­an­cies with some of the reports that were made pub­lic show­ing that the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity knew it was a ter­ror­ist attack all along.

Law­mak­ers spent hours Thurs­day inter­view­ing top intel­li­gence and national secu­rity offi­cials, try­ing to deter­mine what intel­li­gence agen­cies knew before, dur­ing and after the attack. They were shown a video to illus­trate the chronol­ogy of the attack, which edited together secu­rity video from the con­sulate and sur­veil­lance footage taken by an unarmed CIA Preda­tor drone, and even local Libyan cell­phone footage taken from YouTube show­ing Stevens being car­ried out by peo­ple who looked like they were try­ing to res­cue him.

A U.S. offi­cial who viewed it said the video shows clearly there was no demon­stra­tion prior to the attack, and then, sud­denly armed men started stream­ing into the mis­sion. The offi­cial spoke on con­di­tion of anonymity because the offi­cial was not autho­rized to dis­cuss the inves­ti­ga­tion publicly.

Posted by AP News on Nov 17 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.