Shawn Turner, spokesman for Clapper’s office said that initially the reports were of a spontaneous attack, but “we revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists.”
However the publicly issued statement mentioned it was not clear if “any group or person exercised overall command and control of the attack, and if extremist group leaders directed their members to participate.”
So, what is clear, is yet not clear, but sufficiently clear to issue a public statement for increasing the clear confusion over the Benghazi mess.
Statements from the administration following the death of the U.S. ambassador in Libya make one thing clear again – regardless of who dies or lives in service of the nation the intelligence of diplomats twist and turn according to administrative or political exigencies.
As Reuters reports, within hours of the attacks, some government sources in Washington had begun to acknowledge it was an organized attack planned well in advance and members of Ansar al Shariah and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, may have been involved.
Three days after, Jay Carney, the press secretary of President Barrack Obama said the nation had no evidence that the Benghazi attacks were planned and not spontaneous.
Jay Carney was supported two days later by Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who said the attacks were not premeditated and were protests against the anti-Muslim film making rounds on the internet. The same film that provoked outbursts in Egypt.
On September 19, the President’s press secretary kept insisting that there was nothing to show that attacks at Benghazi were premeditated.
However, directly contradicting the President’s press secretary, on the very same day, Matthew Olsen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center said in a Congressional hearing that the assaults in Benghazi were a “terrorist attack on our embassy.”
Now, that made the President’s press secretary feel uncomfortable all over, so on the very next day, on September 20, Carney asserted that it was “self-evident what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack.”
It’s all so clear, truly, only Ambassador Stevens is dead and not coming back home.