Clinton pins hopes on internal review to answer mounting questions on what went wrong in Libya

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton responded to mounting questions Wednesday about what went wrong in Libya and who's responsible by asking for more time to complete an internal review, saying, "nobody will hold this department more accountable than we hold ourselves." 

The secretary vowed to get to the bottom of the terror attack that killed four Americans last month in response to a letter by Reps. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, claiming the department turned down requests for more security amid a string of attacks and threats in the lead-up to the Sept. 11 strike. 

"No one wants to determine what happened that night in Benghazi more than the president and I do. No one is more committed to ensuring it doesn't happen again, and nobody will hold this department more accountable than we hold ourselves because we serve with and we knew the four men we lost," Clinton said Wednesday. She did not address the lawmakers' specific allegations. 

As Clinton assured lawmakers that a newly formed "Accountability Review Board" will be getting on the case this week, a U.S. official also confirmed to Fox News that the administration is tracking suspects, though the official could not speculate on what action -- such as drone strikes -- the U.S. could take inside Libya's borders. 

The official claimed some of the militants involved were killed during the Sept. 11 firefight at the U.S. compound in Benghazi. 

Despite the movement, there is still no confirmation that FBI agents dispatched to Libya have arrived in Benghazi. 

And Chaffetz expressed concern that the State Department's findings would be pushed off until "after the election." 

"There are clear signs that (there were) security concerns in Libya and other embassies around the world, and what they were doing is diminishing security in the name of normalizing relations," Chaffetz told Fox News. 

Issa and Chaffetz detailed several attacks in Benghazi in the lead-up to the strike that they suggested should have been warning signs. 

Further, they claimed sources told them that diplomats made "repeated requests" for additional security but were denied. 

New signs also were emerging this week that officials were receiving guidance that the attack was coordinated in the immediate aftermath of the strike despite public comments to the contrary. 

The New York Times, which first reported that the U.S. was tracking suspects, reported that, according to one official, spy agencies were intercepting communications from militant Ansar al-Shariah fighters boasting to someone with an Al Qaeda affiliate. 

Reuters also reported that the Obama administration had "about a dozen" intelligence reports within hours of the attack suggesting Al Qaeda-tied militants were involved. 

Fox News reported last week that intelligence officials were picking up that it was a terror strike within 24 hours. 

Still, top administration officials in the week after the attack insisted it was a "spontaneous" reaction to protests over an anti-Islam film. That film was driving demonstrations across the Middle East and North Africa, but lawmakers and others were saying from the start that Libya was a different situation despite the initial claims of the Obama administration. 

Letters obtained exclusively by Fox News also appear to show the State Department refused to get involved when the company tasked with protecting the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, raised security concerns. 

The letters pertained to a dispute between Blue Mountain Libya, the security license holder in Libya, and its operations partner Blue Mountain UK, which trained and provided the local guards. 

A source with knowledge of two State Department meetings -- one in June and a second in July -- told Fox News that Blue Mountain Libya felt the security provided by the UK partner was "substandard and the situation was unworkable." 

But according to the source, when the Libyans tried to bring in a third party -- an American contractor -- to improve security, a State Department contract officer declined to get involved. 

Asked about that letter Tuesday, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the department's investigation likely would address the issue. 

Fox News' Ed Henry and Catherine Herridge contributed to this report.

Source : foxnews[dot]com Read More

Clinton suggests Libyan consulate attack was work of Al Qaeda affiliate

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggested the deadly consulate attack in Libya involved the Al Qaeda affiliate in North Africa, going further than any other Obama administration official has yet in acknowledging the assault was the work of hardened terrorists.

Clinton was speaking to foreign leaders gathered at a meeting convened by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to address the threat of extremism in the region.

“Now with a larger safe haven and increased freedom to maneuver, terrorists are seeking to extend their reach and their networks in multiple directions,” Clinton told the group, according to a New York Times report. “And they are working with other violent extremists to undermine the democratic transitions under way in North Africa, as we tragically saw in Benghazi.”

It wasn't the first time Clinton had referred to the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, as a terrorist attack. But her reference to the group Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb was notable, especially as President Obama still has yet to publicly refer to the attack as terrorism.

Republicans have pounced on the administration's shifting explanation for the Sept. 11 attack, which left U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans dead. Administration officials initially described it as "spontaneous" violence, possibly related to protests against an anti-Islam film produced in the U.S., but the administration has gradually walked that explanation back while acknowledging the attack was an act of terror.

The White House said Wednesday that Obama, too, considers the deadly assault a terrorist attack. Press Secretary Jay Carney said it is "certainly the case that it is our view as an administration, and the president's view, that it was a terrorist attack."

Carney's comments came after Mitt Romney accused Obama of failing to "level with the American people" about the nature of the attack.

Obama has declined several chances to call the incident a terrorist attack. He said last week that extremists used an anti-Islam video as an excuse to assault U.S. interests, and in an interview this week on ABC's "The View," he would only say that it clearly "wasn't just a mob action."

On Capitol Hill, eight Republicans who head House committees sent a letter to Obama saying they were disturbed by statements from administration officials suggesting that the attack was a protest gone wrong rather than a terrorist attack. They said they would be willing to return to Washington from Congress' nearly two-month recess if the administration scheduled another briefing on Libya.

Clinton and senior Pentagon and intelligence officials briefed members of the House and Senate last Thursday on Libya.

Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina called the continued threat of terrorism "an inconvenient truth" for Obama, given his re-election campaign's efforts to tout the progress made against Al Qaeda.

“But it is not too much to ask why the president and his administration have taken so long to state what has appeared obvious for a long time about what really happened in Benghazi," the senators said in a joint statement. "This is just one more example of this president's failure to lead in the Middle East and how that failure has threatened America's national security interests. Now is not the time to lead from behind.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source : foxnews[dot]com Read More

Obama calls Romney 'new' to foreign policy, recalling '08 criticism

A little more than four years ago, Hillary Clinton suggested then-Democratic primary opponent Barack Obama was so naïve on the world stage he'd need a "foreign policy instruction manual" should he win office. 

Fast forward to the 2012 Democratic National Convention. Obama, now the president, accepted his party's nomination for a second term by touting his experience as a steady leader in the face of overseas crises and mocked his Republican challenger as "new to foreign policy." 

How times have changed. 

But the president's new tactic -- to incorporate into his campaign message the sense that he is the tested leader, and that Mitt Romney is a newbie -- could be a risky one. For starters, it recalls the very criticism against Obama, like the above line from Clinton, when he first ran. 

"Obama had probably less foreign policy experience (when he first ran for president) than Romney has," said Steffen Schmidt, political science professor at Iowa State University. 

Schmidt also noted that Romney is hardly alone among non-incumbent candidates in not having a tremendous foreign policy background. "The truth of the matter is, presidents learn on the job," he said. 

Obama, in an official sense, may have had a bit more foreign policy experience when he first ran than Romney does today. 

Obama, as a first-term senator, was a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And he took several foreign trips. He traveled in 2005 with Republican Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar to Russia and Eastern Europe to visit nuclear and biological weapons facilities. The following year, Obama traveled to the Middle East. Obama, the senator, made another foreign trip to several African countries in late 2006 as well. 

Obama, though, downplayed the value of that experience during his 2008 primary run.  "Experience in Washington is not knowledge of the world," he said in April 2008, according to an account from the time in The New York Times. "This I know. When Sen. Clinton brags, 'I've met leaders from 80 countries,' I know what those trips are like. I've been on them. You go from the airport to the embassy. There's a group of children who do a native dance. You meet with the C.I.A. station chief and the embassy and they give you a briefing. ... And then, you go." 

Obama instead had stressed his time living abroad, as well as a visit to Pakistan back in the 1980s. 

Romney, though, also lived abroad -- in France as a Mormon missionary -- in the 1960s. And both Romney and Obama, as presidential candidates, conducted high-profile overseas tours to bolster their campaigns. 

Obama's, which included an address to a massive crowd in Berlin, was likely better received. Romney stumbled on his summertime tour abroad, most notably when he suggested Britain might not be ready for the 2012 Olympic Games. 

Obama seized on that gaffe during his nomination address last Thursday in Charlotte, N.C. 

"My opponent and his running mate are new to foreign policy," Obama said. "But from all that we've seen and heard, they want to take us back to an era of blustering and blundering that cost America so dearly. After all, you don't call Russia our No. 1 enemy -- not Al Qaeda -- Russia, unless you're still stuck in a Cold War mind warp. 

"You might not be ready for diplomacy with Beijing if you can't visit the Olympics without insulting our closest ally," Obama said. 

Obama went on to say: "You know, I recognize that times have changed since I first spoke to this convention. The times have changed, and so have I. I'm no longer just a candidate. I'm the president." 

Schmidt said Obama may be trying to inject more foreign policy into the mix, not just to deflect from other issues but to defend his administration against a GOP talking point that the president is "leading from behind" on the world stage. 

Indeed, the Romney campaign released a memo over the weekend that highlighted the president's "manifold failures on foreign policy and national security." While Obama touts the successful takedown of Usama bin Laden and the official end of the Iraq war under his watch, Republican claims he has done little to slow what they see as Iran's march toward a nuclear weapon. 

Sen. John McCain, the Republican Party's 2008 nominee, critiqued both Obama and Romney on the foreign policy front in an interview with the Associated Press over the weekend. In the interview, McCain said national security was largely missing from the GOP convention. 

"It's the job of presidents and candidates to lead and articulate their vision for America's role in the world. The world is a more dangerous place than it's been since the end of the Cold War, and so I think the president should lead and I think candidates for the presidency should lead and talk about it, and I'm disappointed that there hasn't been more," McCain said. He was most critical of the current administration, on issues like Iran and Syria.

Source : foxnews[dot]com Read More