Sharyl Attkisson draws attention to another newly released Benghazi email (the email is posted online here). I’m not sure, but this seems important:
[The] email indicates that within hours of the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks on Americans in Benghazi, Libya[,] the State Department had already concluded with certainty that the Islamic militia terrorist group Ansar al Sharia was to blame.
The private, internal communication directly contradicts the message that President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice and White House press secretary Jay Carney repeated publicly over the course of the next several weeks.
They often maintained that an anti-Islamic YouTube video inspired a spontaneous demonstration that escalated into violence.
The email is entitled “Libya update from Beth Jones. ” Jones was then-Assistant Secretary of State to Hillary Clinton. According to the email, Jones spoke to Libya’s Ambassador at 9:45am on Sept. 12, 2012 following the attacks.
“When [the Libyan Ambassador] said his government suspected that former Qaddafi regime elements carried out the attacks, I told him the group that conducted the attacks—Ansar Al Sharia—is affiliated with Islamic extremists,” Jones reports in the email.
Attkisson adds in understated fashion:
Obama administration officials have not fully explained who was responsible for deciding to advance the incorrect video narrative eight weeks before the Presidential election. They have said that they were acting on “the best intelligence available at the time” and that they clarified the story as they got more information. However, the vast majority of government witnesses and documents released over the past year and a half indicate there was widespread belief from the start that the attacks were the work of terrorists, not protesters.
I know, I know, the question remains: What difference at this point does it make? I guess we’ll find out, one way or another.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.