Panel details changes in Benghazi account

Senators note agency’s ‘grievous mistake’

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., accompanied by the committee’s ranking Republican, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, speaks during a Washington news conference Monday about the committee’s report on the security deficiencies at the temporary U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.
Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., accompanied by the committee’s ranking Republican, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, speaks during a Washington news conference Monday about the committee’s report on the security deficiencies at the temporary U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.

— The FBI, the CIA and other intelligence agencies - but not the White House - made major changes in talking points that led to the Obama administration’s confusing explanations of the attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, a Senate report concluded Monday.

The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee report also said the State Department failed to meet staffing requests from its own security personnel and made the “grievous mistake” of not closing the Benghazi compound at least temporarily because of growing threats.

“The system was in fact flashing red in Libya and Benghazi” before the attack, said Sen. Joe Lieberman, the committee chairman, at a news conference Monday.

The committee, led by Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, and Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, said the White House was only responsible for a minor change in talking points. Some Republicans had questioned whether the president’s staff rewrote the talking points for political reasons.

Initial talking points drafted by intelligence officials that were used in the first days after the attack described the event as a spontaneous protest that spiraled out of control. Lieberman said the intelligence community should no longer be responsible for drafting unclassified talking points that other administration officials might use.

The committee also said the director of national intelligence has been stonewalling the panel in holding back a promised timeline of the talking point changes.

U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the Sept. 11 attack. The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, said she used the talking points to say in television interviews on Sept. 16 that it may have been a protest that got out of hand.

Rice’s incorrect explanation may have cost her a chance to be nominated as the next secretary of state, as Senate Republicans publicly said they would not vote to confirm her. President Barack Obama instead nominated Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who is expected to win easy confirmation.

The State Department in December acknowledged major weaknesses in security and errors in judgment, exposed in a scathing independent report on the assault. Two top State Department officials appealed to Congress to fully fund requests to ensure diplomats and embassies are safe.

Testifying before two congressional committees, senior State Department officials acknowledged that serious management and leadership failures left the diplomatic mission in Benghazi woefully unprepared for the terrorist attack. The independent report, prepared by a review board for the State Department, led four department officials to resign.

Collins said the Defense Department couldn’t have responded in time with military forces to the initial attack that resulted in the death of Stevens and information specialist Sean Smith.

Yet Collins questioned why U.S. troops couldn’t have responded in time to the second attack at a CIA annex that occurred several hours later. That attack killed two former Navy SEALs, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, who were working as security personnel.

Collins said the Pentagon “has insufficient assets to respond to attacks of this type.”

The committee’s report calls for the Defense Department to station more troops and other assets “within range on land and sea to protect and defend both Americans and our allies on the African continent.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is in the hospital for a blood clot related to a concussion she suffered, has agreed to testify to Congress in January on the Benghazi security lapses.

Lieberman said there was no evidence of “direct responsibility by Secretary Clinton” for the security lapses. Echoing the finding of the independent review panel, Lieberman said, “It stopped, as far as we can see, at the midlevel managers.”

Collins said it’s “likely there are others that do need to be held accountable,” though she said that decision should rest with Clinton.

The Senate report said that on Sept. 19, eight days after the attack, National Counterterrorism Center Director Matthew Olsen told the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that the four Americans died “in the course of a terrorist attack.”

The same day, State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland said the department stood by the intelligence community’s assessment. The next day, Sept. 20, presidential spokesman Jay Carney said, “It is, I think, self-evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack.” Clinton also used the words “terrorist attack” on Sept. 21.

Olsen’s acknowledgment was important, the report said, because talking points prepared by intelligence officials the previous week had undergone changes by then.

A line saying “we know” that individuals associated with al-Qaida or its affiliates participated in the attacks was changed to say, “There are indications that extremists participated.”

The talking points dropped the reference to al-Qaida and its affiliates altogether. In addition, a reference to “attacks” was changed to “demonstrations.”

The committee said the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, and representatives from the CIA, the State Department, the National Counteterrorism Center and the FBI told the panel that the changes were made within the CIA and the intelligence community. The change from “we know” there was an al-Qaida connection to “indications” of connections to “extremists” was requested by the FBI.

The report said the only White House change replaced a reference of “consulate” with “mission.”

Intelligence officials differed over whether the al-Qaida reference should remain classified, the report said. It added, however, that the analyst who drafted the original talking points was a veteran career analyst in the intelligence community who believed it was appropriate to include a reference to al-Qaida in the unclassified version.

The analyst came to that conclusion because of claims of responsibility by a militant group, Ansar al-Sharia.

The committee said Clapper offered to provide the committee a detailed timeline on the development of the talking points. Despite repeated requests, the committee said, the information has not been provided.

“According to a senior [intelligence community] official, the timeline has not been delivered as promised because the administration has spent weeks debating internally whether or not it should turn over information considered ‘deliberative’ to the Congress,” the report said.

The report added that if the administration had described the attack as a terrorist assault from the outset, “there would have been much less confusion and division in the public response to what happened there on Sept. 11, 2012.”

“The unnecessary confusion ... should have ended much earlier than it did,” the committee said.

Information for this article was contributed by Larry Margasak of The Associated Press and by David Lerman of Bloomberg News.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/01/2013

Upcoming Events