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Jake Tapper By Jake Tapper @jaketapper Find on FacebookFollow on Twitter Sep 27, 2012 6:13pm Some Administration Officials Were Concerned About Initial White House Push Blaming Benghazi Attack on Mob, Video Email 25 Smaller Font Text Larger Text | Print Even before Defense Secretary Leon Panetta contradicted the initial story about the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, today, Obama administration officials told ABC News they were concerned after the White House began pushing the line that the attack was spontaneous and not the work of terrorists. Events were too uncertain, and suspicions had been aroused, officials said....

Why should we listen to what Mohamed Magarief has to say about the terrorist attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, which claimed the lives of four Americans, including the first US Ambassador murdered in the line of duty since 1979? For one thing, the Libyan president’s story hasn't changed --- unlike that of the White House. While UN Ambassador Susan Rice insisted ten days ago that the sacking of the consulate happened because a protest over a YouTube video "spun out of control," Magarief has insisted all along that not only was there no protest before the attack, the...

Five days after the attack on the Benghazi consulate that left four Americans dead, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, the Obama administration sent UN Ambassador Susan Rice onto five Sunday talk shows to insist that the sacking of the consulate was the result of a protest over a YouTube video that “spun out of control.” The government of Libya was already scoffing at that story, and by the end of the next week the White House began reluctantly admitting that terrorists had attacked the diplomatic mission. Today, however, Eli Lake reports for the Daily Beast that the Obama administration knew...

The Obama White House knowingly gave false information on the Benghazi terrorist attack. The Obama Administration repeated to reporters that the consulate attack was the related to an offensive YouTube document but they privately were circulating a very different view on the murderous attack. Catherine Herridge from FOX News reported: “There was this private narrative you see in the intelligence community where they separate what happened in Libya from this YouTube clip and then you have this public narrative that you have from this administration. And I got a hold of this Homeland Security Assessment. It talks about the scope...

The White House says it doesn't have any indication that last week's deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was premeditated. But White House spokesman Jay Carney says the matter still is under investigation and that assessment could change. Carney said that, so far, there is no evidence to back up claims that the attacks that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, were planned. He said the violent protest appears to have been sparked by an anti-Islam film made in the U.S.

President Obama has been forced to reassess his view of what caused the attack in Benghazi, Libya that killed US Ambassador Christopher Stevens, raising questions about whether the White House has a solid grasp on the underpinnings of the angry convulsions rocking the Middle East and the impact of the so-called “Cairo doctrine” laid out by Obama shortly after he took office in 2009. The White House initially laid the blame for the attack, as well as dozens of other protests that continue to roil the Mideast, on a YouTube clip from a movie called “The Innocence of Muslims” insulting...

Why Is Obama Disputing Israeli and Libyan Intelligence Posted on 19 September 2012. Why is the Obama administration spending so much time and energy disputing the Israeli and Libyan intelligence reports that the Benghazi Embassy attack was not a spontaneous eruption of violence–rather that it was a carefully planned and choreographed attack? When it comes to intelligence gathering in the Middle East, none is more sophisticated and credible than Israel. As I pointed out in my September 17, syndicated article “BHO: A Portrait Of Stupidity,” An Israeli Foreign Ministry official, speaking in reference to the growing signs of ‘radicalization’ in...

It is a measure of how skewed the reporting is and how intellectually inconsistent is most of the “analysis” from the mainstream media that while Mitt Romney’s comment on the embassy attacks held the attention of the press for days (when in fact he had correctly surmised that the administration was trying to make excuses for the embassy attack by expressing regret over an anti-Muslim video)), there has been comparatively little concern with a much more critical story: Did the Obama team intentionally lie to voters (or just shoot first and aim later) for a week about what it knew,...

For a week various Obama administration figures, including the White House press secretary, have insisted that the attacks on U..S. embassies in the Middle East were a spontaneous reaction to an anti-Muslim video. But that excuse has not held up to even superficial scrutiny. The public certainly senses something is not right. Unlike the media, which is entirely obsessed with Mitt Romney’s remarks about the attacks, the public is troubled by President Obama’s handling or lack of handling of the crisis. The pictures of dead Americans and burned embassies strike a cord with Americans. So it is not surprising that...

Susan Rice, Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, appeared on several of the Sunday morning news shows and mislead the American people by claiming the vicious attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, was unplanned and provoked only by an anti-Islam video. On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Libya’s head of state, Mohamed Yusuf al-Magariaf, president of Libya’s General National Congress, said that the attack on the U.S. Consulate was “preplanned, predetermined.” You can watch Mohamed Yusuf al-Magariaf’s comments here.

Cringe and propitiate: that's the Obama administration's response to the hucksters who have seized on a dopey YouTube trailer to enflame crowds across the Islamic world. Administration officials have deplored and condemned the video, sometimes remembering to add a mention of the right of free speech (as incumbent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did) and sometimes omitting it (see for example, Sunday's performance by U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. and potential future Secretary of State Susan Rice on ABC's "This Week"). Blaming the video is convenient for the Obama administration. Blaming the video obviates questions about inadequate security at the...

It seems the administration is hell bent on sticking with the "this isn't about America, it's about a film," argument when it comes to increasing violence from radical Islamists around the world. Despite images of rioters burning in effigy the American flag and photos and dolls representing President Obama in dozens of countries around the world, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said over the weekend that America isn't "impotent" in the Middle East and that the popularity of the United States hasn't been degraded. After showing Rice a map of protests in 33 countries around the world...

Rep. ALLEN WEST (R-Fla.) on FOX News' Justice with Judge Jeanine Sunday night: Well, it's very simple. When I listened to the UN ambassador Susan Rice today several words came to mind: asinine, naive, inept, incompetent and borderline ignorant. Because when you understand that the Egyptian government, their intelligence services, put out a letter talking about the potential threat of an attack, uprisings, about a week before this. It was even printed in the Jerusalem Post on 9/11. And anyhow, I can tell you Judge, being in the combat zones several times after 9/11, we were always on a higher...

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice told me this morning on “This Week” that the United States is not “impotent” in the face of violent anti-American protests sweeping the Muslim world. After showing Rice a map of protests in 33 countries around the world in recent days, I asked Rice, “President Obama pledged to repair America’s relationships with the Muslim world. Why does the U.S. seem so impotent? And why is the U.S. even less popular today in some of these Muslim and Arab countries than it was four years ago?” “We’re not impotent, we’re not even less...

September 16, 2012 Ambassador Susan Rice Denies Obama Needs Viagra Daniel Greenfield Visiting in Cairo to check out the River of Denial, Ambassador Susan Rice, one of the 40 least qualified members of the administration, assured reporters that Obama is not impotent and America is not under attack by Muslims around the world. Then she explained her plans to fly home by closing her eyes and clicking her heels three times. “We’re not impotent,we’re not even less popular to challenge that assessment” said Rice. ” What happened this week in Cairo, in Benghazi and many other parts of the region...

Obama Admin Official Contradicts Libyan Accounts of Attack On Sunday, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice continued to support the Obama Administration's story that the Libyan attacks on the U.S. consulate in Libya that resulted in the death of an ambassador were the result of spontaneous action by rioters rather than a planned and coordinated attack. The only problem with this stance is that it contradicts all reports that are coming out of Libya and statements made by Libya's own president. Whether this is out of political expediency or an Obama Administration's inability to get on the same page...

WASHINGTON—A deadly assault on a U.S. consulate in Libya was a spontaneous reaction to an anti-Muslim video, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said Sunday, even as Libya's president insisted the attackers spent months preparing and carefully choosing their date—the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Unnerved by the rapidly escalating raid on Tuesday that claimed the life of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans, the Obama administration last week launched an investigation into whether terrorist groups had exploited outrage over an anti-Muslim video to trigger an attack long in the works.

Paul Mirengoff at Powerline (reported) that the Marine Corps issued a statement on Thursday confirming that prior to the September 11 murder of Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya, no Marines were stationed in Libya, either at the United States mission in Benghazi or the United States embassy in Tripoli.The Marine Corps has issued a statement regarding its involvement in the recent actions in Egypt and Libya. .. In Libya, the Corps says that no Marines are stationed at the Embassy in Tripoli or the Consulate in Benghazi. Security in Libya, such as it existed, apparently was...

The attack that killed four Americans at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, apparently began as a spontaneous protest against an anti-Islam film before turning violent, Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Sunday. Rice, appearing in NBC’s “Meet the Press,” said she was citing preliminary information and that the FBI was investigating the Tuesday night attack that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three others. A wave of protests and violence has swept across the Middle East and elsewhere in the Muslim world over an obscure, amateurish movie called "Innocence of Muslims" that depicts...

The US insists that the death of an American ambassador and three others in Benghazi resulted from a riot spinning out of control over a cheesy YouTube video. The Libyan government insists that the operation that sacked the consulate and assassinated the four diplomatic personnel was a well-planned plot that exploited the rioting. Who to believe? Whatever you think, don’t bother asking the State Department, because they have told the media they’re done discussing it: The State Department told reporters Friday afternoon that it won’t answer any more questions about the Sept. 11 attack on the consulate in Benghazi that...