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John McCain asked yesterday on CBS’ Face the Nation, “What did the president know? When did he know it? And what did he do about it?”  Fox News has more on the first two questions this morning.  According to their sources, the FBI and the National Counterterrorism Center briefed lawmakers two days after the attack on al-Qaeda’s connections to the Benghazi attack, one day before the CIA director showed up on Capitol Hill to tell a completely different story: Two days after the Libya terror attack, representatives of the FBI and National Counterterrorism Center gave Capitol Hill briefings in which...

Two days after the deadly Libya terror attack, representatives of the FBI and National Counterterrorism Center gave Capitol Hill briefings in which they said the evidence supported an Al Qaeda or Al Qaeda-affiliated attack, Fox News has learned. The description of the attack by those in the Sept. 13 briefings stands in stark contrast to the now controversial briefing on Capitol Hill by CIA Director David Petraeus the following day -- and raises even more questions about why Petraeus described the attack as tied to a demonstration. The Sept. 13 assessment was based on intercepts that included individuals, believed to...

Benghazi-gate: The president reveals a disturbing callousness toward our war dead on yet another talk show. When will he tell jihadists to stop clinging to their guns and religion and fearing people not like them? During the second presidential debate President Obama told challenger Mitt Romney that he found suggestions that he and his administration were covering up the truth about the terrorist attack on Benghazi for political reasons "offensive." He said he was the one who had to greet the coffins when they came home. Then they deserve more honor, respect and protection than they were given by their...

Credibility: When President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton stepped into the Rose Garden the morning of Sept. 12, they likely knew the attack on our Benghazi consulate the day before was organized by terrorists. They knew because they were likely privy to a flurry of emails among administration officials discussing the attack in real time. Yet they said nothing about what they knew and, worse, had done nothing to mount a rescue despite American forces being less than an hour away during the seven-hour blitz. According to Fox News, 300 to 400 national security figures received these emails in...

Scandal: More than six hours after terrorists attacked our consulate, former Navy SEALs manned a blood-soaked machine gun to defend U.S. territory. Meanwhile Apache helicopters sat on the ground in Italy. At 4 a.m. local time on Sept. 11 — six hours and 20 minutes after the initial attack began — former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed at the CIA annex not far from the consulate by a mortar shell. The machine gun they were firing was encrusted with blood, an indication they continued to fight after being wounded. During that eternity, Woods and Doherty might...

Scandal: More than six hours after terrorists attacked our consulate, former Navy SEALs manned a blood-soaked machine gun to defend U.S. territory. Meanwhile Apache helicopters sat on the ground in Italy. At 4 a.m. local time on Sept. 11 — six hours and 20 minutes after the initial attack began — former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed at the CIA annex not far from the consulate by a mortar shell. The machine gun they were firing was encrusted with blood, an indication they continued to fight after being wounded. During that eternity, Woods and Doherty might...

It has become accepted to use the term al Qaeda when referring to any violent Islamic grouping that appears to have a broader organizational connection. To refine that definition there has been added the recognition of at least three so-called "franchises" with a national or regional orientation: al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). All have an outreach beyond their immediate geographical area. The mistake that is made, however, is to characterize al Qaeda as the overall operational director of the movement.The theoretical central control organization, al...

U.S. intelligence believes that assailants connected to al Qaeda in Iraq were among the core group that attacked the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, a U.S. government official told CNN. That would represent the second al Qaeda affiliate associated with the deadly September 11 attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. Previously, intelligence officials said there were signs of connections to al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the North African wing of the terror group. The revelation that members of al Qaeda in Iraq are suspected of involvement in the Libya attack comes at a time when...

By Mr. Curmudgeon:Fox News reports that their network obtained copies of State Department e-mails proving the Obama administration knew the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya was the work of an Al Qaeda-affiliated terror network and not a mob angered by an anti-Islamic video posted on YouTube.A State Department e-mail sent to the White House Situation Room two hours after the attack reads, "Ansar al-Sharia (an Al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist group) Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack."The administration's cover story, blaming the attack on a Libyan mob angered by an American-made anti-Islamic video, was obviously meant to deflect blame from...

....Even before the attack on the U.S. compound, according to an Oct. 2, 2012 report in The Washington Post, the White House held a series of secret meetings that came out of a growing concern that "al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb" (AQIM) was gaining strength after it took control of the northern parts of the African state of Mali, where it created a new Afghan-like sanctuary. In the last year it has begun to spread its influence across the Sahara. AQIM's weaponry came from post-Gadhafi Libya, whose arsenal was boosting the arms trade from Morocco to Sinai. Israeli sources have...

Officials at the White House and State Department were advised two hours after attackers assaulted the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11 that an Islamic militant group had claimed credit for the attack, official emails show. The emails, obtained by Reuters from government sources not connected with U.S. spy agencies or the State Department and who requested anonymity, specifically mention that the Libyan group called Ansar al-Sharia had asserted responsibility for the attacks.

The assault on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi last month appears to have been an opportunistic attack rather than a long-planned operation, and intelligence agencies have found no evidence that it was ordered by Al Qaeda, according to U.S. officials and witnesses interviewed in Libya. The attack was "carried out following a minimum amount of planning," said a U.S. intelligence official, who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a matter still under investigation. "The attackers exhibited a high degree of disorganization. Some joined the attack in progress, some did not have weapons and others just seemed...

CAIRO — Libyan authorities have singled out Ahmed Abu Khattala, a leader of the Benghazi-based Islamist group Ansar al-Sharia, as a commander in the attack that killed the American ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, last month, Libyans involved in the investigation said on Wednesday. Witnesses at the scene of the attack on the American Mission in Benghazi have said they saw Mr. Abu Khattala leading the assault, and his personal involvement is the latest link between the attack and his brigade, Ansar al-Sharia, a puritanical militant group that wants to advance Islamic law in Libya.

allAfrica.com: North Africa: As Al-Qaeda Falls, Ansar Al-Sharia Rises By Mawassi Lahcen Oct 5, 2012 – [...] However, we should also note that the name itself is not new, given that Abu Hamza al-Masri, who is currently detained in Britain and is wanted in Yemen and America in connection with terrorist crimes, has already given the name to his group which he founded in London after he returned from Afghanistan in 1994. Abu Hamza was aspiring to make Ansar al-Sharia a global organisation with branches in many countries. Magharebia: Is this just a rebranding ...

Weeks before the presidential election, President Barack Obama’s administration faces mounting opposition from within the ranks of U.S. intelligence agencies over what career officers say is a “cover up” of intelligence information about terrorism in North Africa. Intelligence held back from senior officials and the public includes numerous classified reports revealing clear Iranian support for jihadists throughout the tumultuous North Africa and Middle East region, as well as notably widespread al Qaeda penetration into Egypt and Libya in the months before the deadly Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. “The Iranian strategy is two-fold: upping the...

Abu Hamza The infamous Arab Muslim cleric Abu Hamza al-Masry, dubbed the 'hate cleric,'[1] in 1994, he began traveling back and forth to Bosnia in order to support Jihadist activities there. And, in 1995, he founded the Jama'at Ansar al-Shari'a (Supporters of Sharia, SOS), organization in order to promote the establishment of Sharia law worldwide.[2] In 2006, he was jailed in Britain for inciting murder and racial hatred.[3] He has been charged with 11 counts of criminal conduct related to the taking of 16 hostages in Yemen in 1998, advocating violent jihad in Afghanistan in 2001 and conspiring to establish...

SNIPPET: "New York City is the center of a public uproar as Internet blogger Pamela Gellar rises with an “anti-jihad” ad campaign." SNIPPET: "Gellar and her group are protesting the Jihad, which in definition is the religious duty of Muslims. According to the Dictionary of Islam, jihad is defined as “A religious war with those who are unbelievers in the mission of Muhammad . . . enjoined especially for the purpose of advancing Islam and repelling evil from Muslims.” The literal meaning of jihad, according to the British Broadcasting Network, “is struggle or effort, and it means much more than...

After more than two weeks of obfuscation and misdirection from the Obama administration, the American public is coming to understand what the U.S. intelligence community learned in the 48 hours immediately following the September 11 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Among the important new details: * Top Pentagon officials declared the assault a terrorist attack on “Day One.” Doing so enabled them to expedite any response to the attack (Yahoo! News). * U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials understood right away that the attacks were planned for the eleventh anniversary of 9/11 (THE WEEKLY STANDARD). * Within 24...

Suspicion in last week's attack that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans has focused on members of a hardcore Islamist militia known for its sympathies to al-Qaida, its fierce animosity to the U.S. and its intimidation of other Muslims who don't conform to its harsh ideology. That doesn't mean Libyan authorities will move against Ansar al-Shariah soon. The group is among the most powerful of the many, heavily armed militias that the government relies on to keep security in Benghazi. In fact, it guards one of Benghazi's main hospitals. Libya's militias are a legacy of last...

Thousands of pages of previously secret military documents about detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison now put a name, a history and a face on hundreds of men in captivity there. The documents include details on 158 men on whom no information has ever been released. The hundreds of classified documents - marked "secret" and "noforn" meaning the information is not to be shared with representatives of other countries - are assessments, interviews and internal memos from the Pentagon's Joint Task Force at Guantanamo. The task force was supposed to determine who the detainees were, how they might be connected...