US Politics Mega-thread - Page 24

Early Uncertainty on Libya Account - October 18, 2012

WASHINGTON—The night before Susan Rice went public with the administration's assessment that the Sept. 11 U.S. consulate attack in Libya grew out of a spontaneous demonstration against an anti-Muslim video, intelligence analysts were receiving new information that contradicted the account she gave.

Intelligence agencies soon amended their stance, but it then took weeks longer—until early October—for a new intelligence assessment discounting the protests to make its way into public statements from senior officials in the Obama administration.

Amb. Susan Rice spoke Sept. 16 about the Benghazi attack days earlier.

Ms. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, based her statements that Sunday on intelligence agency conclusions that the attack had spun out of protests in Benghazi, fueled by anger over an anti-Islamic, U.S.-made video that had sparked protests elsewhere.

The picture began to change over that weekend, according to U.S. intelligence officials, in the most detailed account yet to emerge of a period that has been a focus of controversy over the Obama administration's handling of the aftermath of the attack, which killed four Americans including the U.S. ambassador.

Some intelligence came in on Saturday evening that contradicted the protest claim and prompted the office of the Director of National Intelligence to begin to question the agencies' initial conclusions, intelligence officials said.

Despite their growing uncertainty, intelligence officials didn't feel they had enough conclusive, new information to revise their assessment. Ms. Rice wasn't warned of their new doubts before she went on the air the next morning and spoke of the attacks being spurred by demonstrations, intelligence officials acknowledged.

More information casting doubt on the protest element came in on Sunday morning, around the time that Ms. Rice was completing her TV appearances, the officials said. She began taping the shows early Sunday morning. By the time intelligence analysts began to realize "there's enough here to build a body of evidence that there probably were not protests, those things were already recorded and she [Ms. Rice] was already out there," a senior intelligence official said.

Unanswered in the account is whose role it was to prevent Ms. Rice from broadcasting information that already risked being wrong. Also unanswered is why it took longer for the new information to come out publicly, even after the DNI revised its assessment. The administration has since said that the consulate siege was a deliberate terrorist attack by militants and not the outgrowth of a protest. Officials still describe it as opportunistic rather than premeditated, however, as they have from early on.

Officials in the first week also played down suggestions that an al Qaeda affiliate may have been involved in the siege. Intelligence officials now have evidence that al Qaeda-linked militants were at the scene of the attack, although those militants may not have been its leaders, according to people briefed on the matter.

President Barack Obama has been forced to defend his administration's response. Appearing Thursday on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," Mr. Obama, asked about whether the administration's communications had been "optimal," said: "Here's what I'll say. If four Americans get killed, it's not optimal. We're going to fix it. All of it. And what happens, during the course of a presidency, is that the government is a big operation and, any given time, something screws up. And you make sure that you find out what's broken and you fix it."

Ms. Rice's Sept. 16 portrayal of the attack has drawn Republican calls for her resignation and charges that the White House was politicizing intelligence.

Ms. Rice based her comments on talking points provided to her the previous day by the Central Intelligence Agency and based on consultations with the office of the DNI, which was responsible for developing consensus assessments based on input from the various intelligence agencies, according to officials who described the sequence of events.

The talking points, which were initially written for congressional committees and top administration officials, said "the currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi and subsequently its annex," according to officials.

The talking points also said there were "indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations."

Defenders of Ms. Rice argue her comments were carefully hedged. "I think it's clear that there were extremist elements that joined and escalated the violence, whether they were al Qaeda affiliates, whether they were Libyan-based extremist or al Qaeda itself, I think, is one of the things we'll have to determine," she told CBS on Sept. 16.

A spokeswoman for Ms. Rice, Erin Pelton, said that the ambassador made clear in her remarks that the investigation was still under way. "At every turn Ambassador Rice provided—and said she was providing—the best information and the best assessment that the administration had at the time, based on what was provided to Ambassador Rice and other senior U.S. officials by the U.S. intelligence community," Ms. Pelton said.

Some officials briefed on the initial intelligence were surprised by Ms. Rice's assertion that the attack was preceded by protests. Intelligence agencies late in that week began to raise questions about the assessment.

"Around that time, I saw no finished products [reports] that said there were peaceful protests," said one person briefed on the investigation. "There was plenty of stuff that indicated there was the possibility of a coordinated attack."

Another U.S. intelligence official said initial intelligence reports are often incomplete and can turn out to be false, and that it took time sift through conflicting accounts to conclude that the attack didn't evolve from a protest.

"The early question was whether extremists took over a crowd, or [whether] they were the crowd," the official said. "It took time—until that next week—to sort through varied and conflicting firsthand accounts to better understand the composition of the extremist attackers that night."

Ms. Rice and other Cabinet-level officials were first informed about the assessment that there had been protests on Sept. 13. The intelligence came from press reports, intercepted communications and informants' tips immediately after the attacks.

Officials declined to provide details about the nature of the intelligence that arrived over the weekend of Sept. 15 that prompted their shift in thinking. Officials said interviews with U.S. officials and Libyans who were at the scene contributed, but it was unclear when those took place and what other intelligence affected the assessment.

The intelligence assessment was changed by DNI around Sept. 18 to reflect the new information that there was no protest, intelligence officials said.

The change wasn't made public. Officials said the DNI's findings are classified and were still evolving.

Ms. Rice and many other top officials weren't informed about the change in the assessment until Saturday, Sept. 22, according to U.S. officials.

In a rare public statement on Sept. 28, the DNI acknowledged other changes in its assessment, including that investigators were looking at possible links to al Qaeda affiliates. The statement, however, made no mention of the changed assessment on protests. The DNI declined to comment on the lag time.

Senior administration officials didn't start talking publicly about the revised assessment until last week.

Some senior officials have raised questions about the process used by DNI in developing consensus assessments. These critics say that process slows the flow of raw intelligence to policy makers who need the information quickly to make decisions.

DNI supporters say the system is designed to weed out raw intelligence that can't be substantiated and reduce the risk that policy makers will act on bad information.

"Assessments are updated when the preponderance of new intelligence tells us that our earlier conclusions need to be revised," a senior U.S. intelligence official said.