• White House releases additional documents related to Benghazi response

    One hundred pages of emails were passed out by the White House Wednesday as the Obama administration tried to put an end to the long simmering dispute over what took place when the American compound in Benghazi was attacked. NBC's Peter Alexander reports.

    Michael O'Brien writes

     

    Under increasing scrutiny from congressional Republicans, the White House on Wednesday released copies of emails and other additional supporting documents related to its response to last fall’s attack on a U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya.

    The White House released the materials in the wake of Republicans’ clamor for more information about how the Obama administration crafted its explanation for the incident, which came at the height of last year’s campaign season, and resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

    The emails convey different parts of the administration -- the White House, the State Department, and the CIA -- trading drafts of talking points for use not just by representatives of the administration, but also by members of Congress.

    Read part one of the White House emails (.pdf)

    From the very first draft, the talking points included references to "Islamic extremists" who might have participated in the attack.

    The most significant changes involved removing references to Ansar al-Sharia to not hinder the investigation into the attack, and changing reference to the Benghazi location to a "mission" or "diplomatic post," rather than a consulate.

    Those talking points, though, were subjected to scrutiny and a series of tweaks from different agencies to ensure the talking points did not get out in front of investigators, who did not yet appear to have a full grasp of the underpinnings of the attack at that point.

    The documents released by the White House indicated that then-CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell voiced similar concerns to those from State Department officials and that the same intelligence analysts who drafted the original talking points were comfortable with the language included in the edits, NBC's Peter Alexander reported.

    On page 95 of the documents released Wednesday, an email appears to show that then-CIA Director David Petraeus wasn't completely sold on releasing the talking points, writing: "No mention of the cable to Cairo, either? Frankly, I'd just as soon not use this, then ... NSS's call, to be sure; however, this is certainly not what Vice Chairman Ruppersberger was hoping to get for unclas use. Regardless, thx for the great work."

    A congressional hearing last week, where whistleblowers took issue with the administration’s initial explanation that the attacks were the spontaneous outgrowth of an unrelated protest (and not a terrorist attack) gave rise to new demands for more information from the administration.

    Read part two of the White House emails (.pdf)

    Republicans took the emails as a validation of their criticism of the White House for making more changes to its talking points than the administration had originally let on.

    “The seemingly political nature of the State Department’s concerns raises questions about the motivations behind these changes and who at the State Department was seeking them. This release is long overdue and there are relevant documents the Administration has still refused to produce,” said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. “We hope, however, that this limited release of documents is a sign of more cooperation to come.”

    President Barack Obama has dismissed Republicans’ interest in the administration’s evolving explanation for the attack as a “sideshow,” as recently as this Monday.

    “The whole issue of talking points, frankly, throughout this process has been a sideshow,” he said. “What we have been very clear about throughout was that immediately after this event happened, we were not clear who exactly had carried it out, how it had occurred, what the motivations were.”

    Underlying Republicans’ interest in the Benghazi matter – at which they’ve kept now for six months – is a suspicion that the administration clouded the reality of the attack so as to not damage Obama’s prospects for re-election.

    “The president ran out the clock and he won the election,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, S.C., a chief Republican critic of Obama’s on Benghazi, said Tuesday on Fox News. “He was able to get Benghazi behind him in terms of electoral politics, but it won't go away.”

    Meanwhile, U.S. government officials said investigators have identified a person who played a central role in the attack in Benghazi, and that federal criminal charges against that person will soon be made public. The person to be named in the charges is not yet in U.S. custody, one official said.

    Word of that progress in the investigation followed a statement by Attorney General Eric Holder, who told the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday that the Justice Department has taken "definitive, concrete action" to bring people to justice who were responsible for the attack.

    "We have been aggressive and we are in a good position. Definitive action has been taken," Holder said, though he declined to be more specific. 

    "We will be prepared shortly to reveal what we have done," he said.

    NBC News' Pete Williams and Jonathan Dienst contributed to this report.

     

    This story was originally published on Wed May 15, 2013 5:01 PM EDT

  • Clinton takes responsibility in Benghazi attack, clashes with Republicans

    Tom Curry, National Affairs Writer, NBC News writes

    Updated at 2:20p.m. ET: In a hearing marked by sometimes sharp and pointed exchanges, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee she took responsibility for not adequately protecting U.S. personnel in the Sept. 11 attack on a diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya that resulted in the killing of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. 

    While being grilled by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., a fired-up Hillary Clinton defends her department's handling of the flow of information concerning the cause of the deadly attack on the US consulate in Benghazi on Sept. 11th, 2012, maintaining accusations of misleading Americans could not "be further from the truth."

    Defending the administration’s immediate handling of the attack, Clinton clashed at times with Republicans over the account the administration gave in the initial days after Sept. 11.

    Clinton said the Obama administration did not try to mislead the American people about the cause of the attacks. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” she said as she sparred with Sen. Ron Johnson, R- Wisc.

    She angrily told Johnson that at this stage it did not really matter what the precise origins or motives of the attack were: “What difference at this point does it make?”

    She told Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, a Republican, “we did not have a clear picture” of all that was going on in Benghazi although she did acknowledge that senators had “legitimate questions” about the administration’s account.

    Sen. John McCain, R- Ariz., -- after telling Clinton “we are proud of you” and that all over the world “you are viewed with admiration and respect” -- delivered a blistering criticism of the Obama administration’s handling of the events in Libya.

    “There are many questions that are unanswered and the answers you’ve given this morning are frankly not satisfactory to me,” McCain told Clinton. He added “the American people and the families of these four brave Americans still haven’t gotten the answers they deserve.”

    He asked Clinton whether she was aware of numerous warnings from Stevens and other Americans in Libya that the facility in Benghazi was not capable of resisting a sustained assault. He also said there had been other warning signs such as an attack on the British ambassador to Libya.

    He angrily asked Clinton why Defense Department forces were not nearby to defend the Benghazi facility.

    Last month a report issued by the Accountability Review Board (ARB) appointed by Clinton, blamed State Department officials for “systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies” that led to protection for the Benghazi facility that was “grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place.”

    In her response to McCain, Clinton said, as she did to other senators on the panel, that some additional information on the causes and circumstances of the attack is in the classified portions of the report issued by the ARB. Senators and Senate staff can read the classified portions of the ARB report, but the public cannot.

    Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., grills Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the administration's handling of the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi and the events that followed.

    And she blamed members of Congress for holding up additional aid to Libya that might make the country more secure and less chaotic. 

    Clinton was testifying Wednesday afternoon on Benghazi before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

    In his questioning of Clinton Wednesday morning, Sen. Rand Paul, R- Ky., told her, “I’m glad that you’re accepting responsibility. I think that ultimately with your leaving, you accept the culpability for the worst tragedy since 9/11, and I really mean that. Had I been president at the time and I found that you did not read the cables from Benghazi, you did not read the cables from Ambassador Stevens, I would have relieved you of your post.”

    He added, “It’s a failure of leadership” which cost the Americans in Benghazi their lives. “I think it’s good that you’re accepting responsibility-- because no one else is.”

    Paul also argued that U.S. personnel ought to never have been sent to Benghazi “in a war zone” without a military guard. “You shouldn’t send them in with the same kind of embassy staff that you have in Paris,” he added. 

    While testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the murders of U.S. diplomatic personnel in Benghazi, Libya, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got emotional as she recalled the flag-draped coffins at Andrews Air force Base in the days following the attack, stating her work is "not just a matter of policy; it's personal."

    Clinton replied that all four State Department officials criticized in the ARB report for their roles on the Benghazi events had been removed from their jobs and placed on administrative leave. “The ARB (report) made very clear that the level of responsibility for the failures that they outlined was set at the assistant secretary level and below.”

    The furor over the Benghazi attack helped derail one possible nominee to replace Clinton at the State Department, UN ambassador Susan Rice, whom Republicans assailed for using administration talking points that portrayed the incident as a spontaneous response to an inflammatory anti-Islamic video.

    But Clinton told the committee that in the hours and days after the attack, “I was not focused on talking points” and “I wasn’t involved in the talking points process.”

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    In her opening statement, Clinton told the committee, “As I have said many times since September 11, I take responsibility.  Nobody is more committed to getting this right.  I am determined to leave the State Department and our country safer, stronger, and more secure.”

    Clinton's voice choked with emotion as she recalled the return of “those flag-draped caskets” from the Americans killed in Benghazi and put her arms “around the mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters” of those killed. 

    Clinton also used her testimony to deliver a vigorous call for continued U.S. involvement in the North African nation of Mali where the Obama administration is aiding French efforts to defeat Islamic jihadist forces.

    She told the committee that the United States cannot allow Mali to become a safe haven for the group Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), warning of the risk of AQIM attacks on the United States itself.

    Clinton also said she could not confirm reports that some of the terrorists involved in last week’s Algeria hostage taking were also involved in the Benghazi attack but called it a "new thread" to follow.

    She did say that there is no doubt that Algerian terrorists have weapons they obtained from depots in Libya that were opened up and “liberated” after the dictator Moammar Gadhafi was toppled, with U.S. and NATO help, in 2011.

     

    Gary Cameron / Reuters, file

    Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks about the hostage situation in Algeria during a joint news conference with Japan's Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida (not pictured) after their meeting at the State Department in Washington Jan. 18, 2013.

    Clinton said she had accepted the ARBs recommendations for improvements in security procedures and had asked her subordinates “to ensure that all 29 of them are implemented quickly and completely.” She said these changes are designed to “reduce the chances of another Benghazi happening again.”

    On Thursday the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will hold its confirmation hearing for Clinton’s successor, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, who is the committee’s chairman and is likely to be confirmed without any opposition.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • FBI agents keep out of Benghazi

    In a statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, officials said they are revising their initial assessment of the attack in Benghazi to reflect new information indicating that it was a "deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists." NBC's Pete Williams reports.

    The Associated Press writes

    For security reasons, FBI agents are staying away from the Libyan city where a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were killed, two law enforcement officials said Friday.


    The officials say the bureau is not going to put agents in harm's way and that the city of Benghazi must be made secure before the FBI sends investigators there.

    The officials demanded anonymity because they are not authorized to speak on the record about an ongoing investigation.

    FBI agents were sent to Libya last week to look into the Sept. 11 attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens, a State Department computer expert and two former U.S. Navy Seals.

    Terrorist groups in Libya tried to coalesce in month leading to consulate attack, officials say

    At FBI headquarters Friday, spokesman Paul Bresson said "we are moving forward with our investigation," but Bresson declined to comment on the specific location of the agents.

    Several questions still remain as to why top U.S. officials offered the wrong initial assessment of the Benghazi attacks that killed four Americans. Was there a cover-up? Or were they trying to avoid acknowledging mistakes so close to the presidential election? The Obama administration has denied any wrongdoing. NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports.

    Separately, the State Department is further reducing the U.S. Embassy staff in Tripoli for security reasons. The embassy warned Americans of possible demonstrations in the capital and Benghazi on Friday.

    On Thursday, Libya's leader said his government had disbanded about 10 militia groups and will continue to take action against Muslim extremists.

    President Mohammed el-Megarif said the attack on the U.S. Consulate earlier this month that killed the four Americans was a final straw. He did not say when the militias were disbanded, or how many remain.

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