Libya _ Fighters, Not al-Qaeda, Staged Benghazi Attack, NYT Says&

Bloomberg

The deadly 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was led by fighters who benefited from NATO’s support in the uprising against Muammar Qaddafi, and not al-Qaeda terrorists, the New York Times reported.

The Times, citing extensive interviews with Libyans who had direct knowledge of the attack, on its website yesterday said it found no evidence that al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups had a role in the attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. The newspaper said the Sept. 11 assault was fueled by anger over an American-made video denigrating Islam, the argument made by U.S. officials at the time.

On the day of the attack, U.S. envoy David McFarland had sent a cable to Washington under Stevens’s name, describing a meeting with militia leaders in eastern Libya two days earlier. The meeting highlighted both “growing problems with security” and the fighters’ desire for investment by American companies in the city, according to the Times story.

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Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council, declined to comment on the Times’ story.

Susan Rice, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, in television interviews five days after the 2012 attack, said the assault was a “spontaneous” protest against the anti-Islamic video that was “hijacked” by militants.

Republicans in Congress criticized Rice and the Obama administration’s handling of the attack, saying officials “willfully perpetuated a deliberately misleading and incomplete narrative.”