RT @pounderfile: NYT: “Shifting Reports On Libya Killings May CostObama” http://is.gd/ohPtQn <-Man this is bad new for Obama
The New York Times
9:04 AM - 30 Sep 12 · Details
Shifting Reports on Libya Killings May Cost Obama
By MARK LANDLER
Published: September 28, 2012
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WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s shifting accounts of the fatal attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi,Libya, have left President Obama suddenly exposed on national security and foreign policy, a field where he had enjoyed a seemingly unassailable advantage over Mitt Romney in the presidential race.
Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
President Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton at Andrews Air Force Base this month, as the bodies of the Americans killed in Libya arrived.
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After first describing the attack as a spontaneous demonstration run amok, administration officials now describe it as a terrorist act with possible involvement by Al Qaeda. The changing accounts prompted the spokesman for the nation’s top intelligence official, James R. Clapper Jr., to issue a statement on Friday acknowledging that American intelligence agencies “revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists.”
The unusual statement was not solicited by the White House, according to Shawn Turner, the spokesman for Mr. Clapper, the director of national intelligence, but it seemed calculated to relieve some of the pressure on the White House for the contradictory accounts given in the two and a half weeks since the attack. It is unlikely to stop questions from the Romney campaign, which senses an opportunity.
“This incident is a hinge event in the campaign because it opens up the opportunity to talk more broadly about Obama’s foreign policy,” said Richard S. Williamson, a former diplomat and an adviser to Mr. Romney.
But the questions are likely to come not just from partisan Republicans. The Benghazi attack calls into question the accuracy of intelligence-gathering and whether vulnerable American personnel overseas are receiving adequate protection. Even allies of the president like Senator John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, have petitioned the White House for more information about how the government protects diplomatic installations abroad.
Almost since the smoke cleared in Benghazi, Republicans have accused Mr. Obama’s aides of deliberately playing down the attack. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, condemned the administration’s initial account of the attack as “disgraceful,” saying on CBS that it “shows a fundamental misunderstanding not only of warfare, but of what’s going on in that part of the world.”
The White House maintains that its account changed as intelligence agencies gathered more details about the attack, not from any desire to diminish its gravity. Mr. Obama, his aides point out, labeled the assault an “act of terror” in his first public response, in the Rose Garden, a day after it happened.
“In any situation like this, you know more one week later than you did the day after, and more two weeks later than you did one week after,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser. “Given the demand for information, we feel there is a responsibility to provide the facts as we understand them.”
For the White House, the latest intelligence is helpful in one regard: It indicates that the attack, while carried out in an organized manner, mainly by a local extremist group in eastern Libya, Ansar al-Shariah, was probably not planned months or weeks in advance.
