Report undercuts Benghazi claims

A Republican-controlled congressional committee said on Friday that Obama administration officials did not deliberately provide misleading information about a 2012 assault on the US consulate in Benghazi and said the CIA responded properly to the attack.

The report by the House intelligence committee, based on a two-year investigation, directly undercuts a series of politically charged accusations that the Republicans have levelled in the aftermath of the attack in Libya.

In particular, the report said that there was no evidence that US security personnel were stood down from helping individuals trapped in the consulate or that appeals for military help had been denied. It also concluded that the administration officials who initially and wrongly said the attack grew out of a protest were using information supplied by the intelligence community.

Four Americans died during the attack on the Benghazi consulate, including the then ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens.

The incident, which took place on September 11 and only two months before a presidential election, sparked a political furore as Republican politicians used it to cast the Obama administration as weak and ineffective.

There have been six different reports into the attack by congressional committees and by a state department panel. However, the House intelligence committee report carries particular political weight because it was prepared by a Republican-controlled committee.

Democrats immediately called on House Republican leaders to abandon a special committee set up earlier this year to look into the attack, which many see as an attempt to damage Hillary Clinton who was secretary of state at the time.

The committee looked specifically at the role played by the CIA, which had a separate facility in Benghazi near the consulate. It concluded that CIA personnel "bravely assisted" the State department and took "reasonable tactical decisions".

There was "no evidence there was either a stand down order or a denial of available aerial support", said the report, co-authored by Republican chairman of the committee Mike Rogers and the leading Democrat Dutch Ruppersberger.

The report, released late on a Friday afternoon, concluded that the initial reports about a protest outside the consulate were incorrect but that there had been "a stream of contradictory and conflicting intelligence".

While President Barack Obama had been planning to appoint Susan Rice, then ambassador to the UN, as his secretary of state after the election, the furore over the administration's early statements about the attack effectively destroyed her chances. The report said that the CIA talking points about the incident maintained there had been a protest until two days after Ms Rice made a series of highly criticised television appearances.

The report denied reports that US personnel present in Benghazi had been intimidated or prevented from giving evidence before Congress.

Previous reports into the attack have been critical of the security procedures and capabilities that the State department made available at the consulate.

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