Pic is from Reuters (front page of FoxNews.com) ….see below from James Rosen:
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A senior Obama administration official tells Fox News this morning that comments by the Libyan president suggesting that the Benghazi attack was planned in advance are not consistent with “the consensus view of the U.S. intelligence community,” which has been investigating the incident, and are accordingly not credible.
“He doesn’t have the information we have,” the U.S. official said of Libyan President Mohammed el-Megarif. ““He doesn’t have the [data] collection potential that we have.”
The Libyan leader told the CBS News program “Face the Nation” on Sunday that the government in Tripoli harbors “no doubt” that the September 11 attack that killed U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans was “preplanned, predetermined.” That assessment conflicted directly with the preliminary conclusion offered on Sunday by U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, who appeared on all five Sunday morning talk shows.
There, Rice maintained that the Benghazi incident “was a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired in Cairo, as a consequence of the video,” and that after the protest outside the U.S. consulate gathered steam, “those with extremist ties joined the fray and came with heavy weapons.”
Asked if the timing of the Benghazi incident – the eleventh anniversary of the September 11 attacks – was simply a coincidence, the senior U.S. official said on Monday: “It is coincidental. All evidence we have points to this video being the spark of these events. In all of the intell and traffic, there was no one out there saying, ‘Oh, it’s September 11th, we must avenge…’”
The senior U.S. official added that this is “the consensus view of the U.S. intelligence community at this point,” and that Ambassador Rice “was not out there volunteering her own opinions.”
The official also discounted as “not accurate” reports that staff at U.S. embassy in Egypt warned Foggy Bottom – in a cable purportedly sent on the afternoon of September 10 – about the effect the anti-Islam video was having, and the likelihood of violent protests in Cairo, but received no response from Washington.
“There was cable traffic, involving discussion of the video and the potential for protests, the Embassy was aware,” the U.S. official told Fox News. “There were discussions about protests between the relevant agencies — intell and State — but the idea that there was no response from State is false.”
Officials at the State Department and the White House continue to express satisfaction with the cooperation they are receiving from foreign governments in the protection of American diplomats and their families. This is said to be especially the case in those instances where President Obama has reached out to foreign heads of state, namely Egypt, Yemen and Libya.
Still, the State Department over the weekend – in a shift of plans that occurred sometime after Friday evening – announced the evacuation of diplomats’ family members and “non-essential” personnel from U.S. Embassies in Tunisia and sudan, sites of some of the most violent scenes on Friday.
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James Rosen
Chief Washington Correspondent
