Despite Obama, Clinton and other administration officials consistently blaming the Mohammed movie trailer "Innocence of Muslims" for the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya on 9/11, the State Department never linked the terrorist attack to the film.
Via the AP:
The State Department now says it never believed the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was a film protest gone awry, giving congressional Republicans new fodder for criticizing the Obama administration's initial accounts of the assault.
The State Department's extraordinary break with other administration offices came in a department briefing Tuesday, where officials said "others" in the executive branch concluded initially that the protest was based, like others in the Middle East, on a film that ridiculed the Prophet Muhammad.
That was never the department's conclusion, a senior official told reporters.
It wasn't until details started emerging to the public that Obama and his administration officials finally changed their story and were forced to admit the attack was a terror attack, almost a week after the attack which resulted in the deaths of a U.S. Ambassador and three others.
If straight up lying to the American people about the attack wasn't bad enough, what is worse is the Obama administration ignoring or denying requests for more security for the U.S. mission in Libya.
The committee's chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., has accused the State Department of turning aside pleas from its diplomats in Libya to increase security in the months and weeks before the attack in Benghazi. One scheduled witness Wednesday, Eric Nordstrom, is the former chief security officer for U.S. diplomats in Libya who told the committee his pleas for more security were ignored.
Via ABC News, which details those requests for more security:
Nordstrom twice wrote to the State Department – in March and July 2012 — to beef up the presence of American security officers in Benghazi, but neither time was there a response. At no point from December 2011 through July 2012, when he left Libya, were more than three Diplomatic Security Service agents permanently and simultaneously stationed at the Benghazi post.
Nordstrom told investigators that security in Benghazi, Libya, was "inappropriately low."
More:
Nordstrom wanted at least five personnel to be stationed at Benghazi, but the State Department would not allow it. There were American security officers, however, at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, including three Mobile Security Detachments, which were part of the DSS, and a 16-member Security Support Team detailed from Special Operations Command AFRICOM, commanded by Wood. But the State Department would not give him permission to deploy them to be stationed at Benghazi. Deputy Assistant Secretary for international programs Charlene Lamb, in Nordstrom’s view, wanted to keep the number of U.S. security personnel in Benghazi “artificially low,” according to a memo for Democrats on the House Oversight Committee.The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's hearing into the attack and subsequent deaths of U.S. personnel in Libya, started today, October 10, 2012.
Wood, a former Green Beret, told ABC News that he and other members of the Security Support Team wanted to remain in Libya past their deployment was scheduled to end in August, and that Ambassador Stevens wanted them to remain as well. Nordstrom has said that Lamb told him not to request for the Security Support Team to be extended again. (Its deployment had been previously extended in February 2012.)
Lamb will testify before the House committee later today.
“I do recall one conversation with her where she (Lamb) said that since we now had a residential safe haven in Benghazi that she didn’t seem to have a problem with having no agents on the compound because if something happened then personnel could simply go to that residential safe haven,” Nordstrom told investigators.
That safe haven proved a deathtrap. Situated inside the main residence in Benghazi, consisting of three bedrooms and a bathroom set aside from the rest of the building by metal grillwork and several locks, the safe haven is where Stevens and information officer Sean Smith suffered severe smoke inhalation after the attackers set the house on fire.
Previous related WuA posts:
9/13/12- America Attacked Again On 9/11- Media Attacks Romney For Noticing Obama's Failures
9/14/12- America 'was warned of embassy attack but did nothing'
9/14/12- Obama Coverup: U.S. Embassy In Cairo Website Removes Page Condemning Free Speech
9/14/12- Obama Admin Tries To Get 'Innocence of Muslims' Mohammed Movie Trailer Removed From YouTube
9/14/12- YouTube On Mohammed Movie clip 'Innocence of Muslims': "Clearly Within Guidelines Will Stay On YouTube
9/14/12- Al-Qaeda Flies flag On American Soil- Obama At Campaign Event
9/15/12- Four Days Of Terror Attacks Since 9/11/12 And Obama Campaigns For Three Of Them
9/15/12- Barack Obama Bows In Submission To Mohammed Morsi And Muslim Brotherhood
9/16/12- More Details Show Libya Attack Preplanned And Organized Despite Obama Admin Denials
9/19/12- Confronted With Facts Obama Administration Admits Libya 9/11 Attack Preplanned
9/20/12- Libya Terrorist Attack: Now "Self-Evident" To Obama Admin. Was "Self-Evident To Conservatives On 9/11
9/21/12- Obama's Libya Lies Fall Like A House Of Cards
9/22/12- Obama Silent On "Piss Christ" But Spends $70,000 U.S Taxpayers Dollars Against Mohammed Clip
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9/23/12- Exercising My Free Speech "Western Value"- Mohammed Morsi, Go F*ck Yourself
9/26/12- If Obama Admin Knew Stevens Assassination Was Terror Attack Within A Day, Why Lie For A Week?
9/27/12- Wapo Fact Checker: White House Libya Attack Story Changed When No Longer Tenable
9/28/12- Letter Embedded: Bipartisan Senate Demand From Obama Administration On 9/11 Attacks
10/2/12- Obama Admin Denied Request For Extra Security For U.S. Embassy Staff In Libya Prior To Attack
10/7/12 Obama Administration Withdrew 16 Member Special Forces Security Team From Libya In August