U.S. had early indications Libya attack tied to organized militants
WASHINGTON Oct 2 (Reuters)
Within hours of last month's attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, President Barack Obama's administration received about a
dozen intelligence reports suggesting militants connected to al Qaeda were involved, three government sources said.
Despite these reports, in public statements and private meetings, top U.S. officials spent nearly two weeks highlighting intelligence suggesting that
the attacks were spontaneous protests against an anti-Muslim film, while playing down the involvement of organized militant groups.
It was not until last Friday that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's office issued an unusual public statement, which described how
the picture that intelligence agencies presented to U.S. policymakers had "evolved" into an acknowledgement that the attacks were "deliberate and
organized" and "carried out by extremists."
The existence of the early reports appears to raise fresh questions about the Obama administration's public messaging about the attack as it seeks to
fend off Republican charges that the White House failed to prevent a terrorist strike that left a U.S. ambassador and three others dead.
"What we're seeing now is the picture starting to develop that it wasn't a problem with the intelligence that was given, it's what they did with
the intelligence that they were given," Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, said in an
interview on Tuesday.
"This picture is still a little fuzzy but it is starting to come into focus and it appears that there were, very early on, some indications that
there was jihadist participation in the event," he said.
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