CIA saw militant links to attack
A station chief reported on the deadly assault in Libya within 24 hours,
U.S. officials are saying.
October 20, 2012
By Kimberly Dozier, Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The CIA station chief in Libya reported to Washington within 24 hours of last month's deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate that there was evidence it was carried out by militants, not a spontaneous mob upset about an American-made video ridiculing Islam's Prophet Muhammad, U.S. officials have told the Associated Press.
It is unclear who, if anyone, saw the cable outside the CIA at that point and how high up in the agency the information went (Is it unclear who, if anyone, claimed that the attacks were a spontaneous mob action by a group of Muslims upset about an American-made video ridiculing the Prophet of the Islamic faith? ... if it is NOT unclear, then they should be named, to let us know who, in the future we are to immediately distrust on such issues). The Obama administration maintained publicly for a week that the attack on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans was a result of the mobs that staged less-deadly protests across the Muslim world around the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks on the United States (so, did someone, any one at all let "the Obama administration" know or give the Obama administration the information that is was a terrorist act, and not some group of crazed and dazed towel-heads over-reacting to a (for all intents and appearances) fairly dumb and unenlightened ).
Those statements have become highly charged political fodder as the presidential election approaches.
The White House now says the attack probably was carried out by an al-Qaeda-linked group, with no public demonstration beforehand. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton blamed the "fog of war" (blame it on "the fog of war" -- Mob action because of bad movie reviews, being equally foggy with "Al Queda terrorism" and "Hey fellow CIA analyst - should we chalk this one up to a "bad movie reaction, or a terrorist attack? what the hey, it can't matter anyway )lor the early conflicting accounts.
The officials who told the AP about the CIA cable spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to release such information publicly (but, for one reason or another, they felt compelled to release it - wonder why?).
Congressional aides (congressional aides to which party, or is this a bi-partisan timeline) say they expect to get the documents by the end of this week to build a timeline of what the intelligence community knew and compare that to what the White House was telling the public.
The two U.S. officials said the CIA station chief in Libya compiled intelligence reports from eyewitnesses within 24 hours of the assault on the consulate that indicated militants launched the violence, using the pretext of demonstrations against U.S. facilities in Egypt against the film to cover their intent. The report from the station chief was written late Wednesday, Sept. 12, and reached intelligence agencies in Washington the next day, intelligence officials said.
Yet, on Saturday of that week, briefing points sent by the CIA (which raises an obvious question - Is the Obama administration "encouraging" the CIA to cook up intel, a la' the Cheney Administration?) to Congress said "demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault."
The briefing points, obtained by the AP, added: "There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations" but did not mention eyewitness accounts that blamed militants alone.
