Obama Admin Had a Dozen Reports that Benghazi Attack Was Terrorism 'Within Hours'

Yet they concocted an alternate reality and sold it to the American public.

Reuters – Within hours of last month’s attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, President Barack Obama’s administration received about a dozen intelligence reports suggesting militants connected to al Qaeda were involved, three government sources said.

Despite these reports, in public statements and private meetings, top U.S. officials spent nearly two weeks highlighting intelligence suggesting that the attacks were spontaneous protests against an anti-Muslim film, while playing down the involvement of organized militant groups.

The Obama administration did a little more than just talk. They had America’s top soldier call up an obscure preacher to intimidate him out of supporting that film, and they publicly identified and then grabbed the alleged filmmaker and made sure the whole world saw the American government taking him in for questioning. Then they had that man arrested, and today he sits in jail on “probation violations.” President Obama continues to connect the attack to the video, and still refuses to call the attacks “terrorism.”

It was not until last Friday that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s office issued an unusual public statement, which described how the picture that intelligence agencies presented to U.S. policymakers had “evolved” into an acknowledgement that the attacks were “deliberate and organized” and “carried out by extremists.”

The existence of the early reports appears to raise fresh questions about the Obama administration’s public messaging about the attack as it seeks to fend off Republican charges that the White House failed to prevent a terrorist strike that left a U.S. ambassador and three others dead.

This was — is, actually — a cover-up. The question is, why? Is the president just in denial about the reality of terrorism, or is his administration trying to hide its bloody failure to anticipate terrorist attacks — on the anniversary of 9-11 — and secure American interests abroad?

h/t Weasel Zippers