Posted on 10/14/2012 11:06:17 AM PDT by COUNTrecount
The State Department has said that it never believed the September 11th attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was the result of a protest over an anti-Islam movie - directly contracting the rest of the Obama administration.
By trying to distance her department from the inept and deceptive handling of the Benghazi attack, which left U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens and three other American officials dead, Hillary Clinton could help herself politically for a 2016 presidential run.
A dramatic new account by the State Department reveals that Stevens was locked inside a 'safe room' choking to death from diesel-heavy smoke as the building around him burned to the ground.
Alongside him was a security guard, tasked with the impossible choice between staying in the deadly room - or facing the rocket-propelled grenades and machine-guns outside.
Eventually the guard slipped through the window (cut)
No-one saw the ambassador alive again - another agent tried desperately to enter the safe-room, but could not find him anywhere.
The State Department's insistence it never bought the story - expressed by the White House and Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations - that a crude anti-Islam film made in California triggered the attack gives ammunition against Obama both to the Romney campaign and congressional Republicans.
State Department sources have said that Clinton has never forgotten that Rice, who served in her husband Bill's administration, was an early supporter of Obama. Rice has ambitions to take over from Clinton if Obama is re-elected but the Benghazi debacle could scupper her chances.
In a briefing on Tuesday, State Department officials said 'others' in the executive branch concluded initially that the attack was part of a protest against the film, which ridiculed the Prophet Muhammad. That was never the State Department's conclusion, reporters were told.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Put together by Freeper...zencycler
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