In a Friday afternoon statement, the intelligence community sought to clarify why Obama administration officials gave incorrect and misleading information following the September 11th attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
“As the Intelligence Community collects and analyzes more information related to the attack, our understanding of the event continues to evolve,” Director of Public Affairs for National Intelligence Shawn Turner said in a statement.
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“In the immediate aftermath, there was information that led us to assess that the attack began spontaneously following protests earlier that day at our embassy in Cairo. We provided that initial assessment to executive branch officials and members of Congress, who used that information to discuss the attack publicly and provide updates as they became available. Throughout our investigation we continued to emphasize that information gathered was preliminary and evolving,” Turner said.
The Obama administration has come under heavy fire for initially blaming the violence in Benghazi on an anti-Islam film that also sparked riots in Egypt and other countries in the region. While Obama himself alluded to the attack as an “act of terror” in a Rose Garden statement shortly after the attacks, it took the administration nine days to acknowledge a connection to terrorism.
And on September 16th, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice called the attack “spontaneous” rather than “premeditated” on ABCs “This Week.”
