Friday, September 28, 2012

Office of Director of National Intelligence issues strange public statement about its intelligence assessments concerning Benghazi attacks

Is the COVER UP being covered up some more  ---  or is it becoming a bigger BLOW UP

According to Reuters, “a top U.S. intelligence authority issued an unusual public statement” today  —   The Office of Director of National Intelligence has declared that  it now believes the September 11th attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi  was a "deliberate and organized terrorist attack."


A statement, by the office of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, officially announced that it had changed the U.S. intelligence assessment of how and why the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi had occurred. During the attacks on two U.S. government compounds in that eastern Libyan city, four U.S. citizens performing various functions on behalf of the U.S., including the U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens, were killed.

According to a spokesman for Clapper's office: 1) in the immediate aftermath of the attack, U.S. agencies came to a view that the Benghazi attack had begun spontaneously following protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and those demonstrations appeared to be directed against a short film made in California lampooning the Prophet Mohammad; 2) then, as U.S. intelligence subsequently learned more about the attack, "We revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists”; however 3) although it remains "unclear" if any individual or specific group orchestrated the attack, U.S. agencies nonetheless do say that some of the militants involved in the attack were "linked to groups affiliated with, or sympathetic to al-Qaeda."

Reporting a little earlier today, a CNN report by Suzanne Kelly had the following take on the same statement from The Office of Director of National Intelligence: 

“In an unusual statement released Friday, the U.S. intelligence community is seeking to explain how it has revised its assessment of the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya.... It has moved from an initial assessment of the September 11 attack as something that began spontaneously following a protest over anti-Muslim film to the current belief that it was "a deliberate and organized terrorist assault carried out by extremists" affiliated or sympathetic with al Qaeda.... The statement represents the fullest accounting yet of the intelligence community's changed understanding of the attack, and suggests it is trying to distance itself from the political debate over whether the Obama administration is being fully forthcoming about its understanding of events.”

Suzanne Kelly notes that The Office of Director of National Intelligence specifically mentioned that its earlier assessment, which had been provided to the White House and appropriate Members of Congress, was at the time specifically characterized as preliminary and subject to change. CNN’s Kelly also noted that today’s statement by the ODNI didn’t contain a specific time line as to when the various assessments and re-assessments were completed and/or provided to the White House and other Executive agencies.

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