I think it’s because it is covering up something much, much bigger. Like gunrunning in the ME.
Plus, they had an election to consider. 0bama’s entire record was based on his “strength” shown by getting bin Laden. He was claiming to be a master of foreign policy and that he had AQ on the run. Now it was all unraveling and he needed it to not be his fault.
Yes, and the Libya war was arguably the largest-scale foreign policy event of his administration. He was already getting some blowback, muted by the media, from the Muslim Brotherhood taking over Egypt and introducing radical Islamic policy. The last thing he needed was to look directly responsible for putting extremists in control of Libya.