FBI investigators make brief visit to Benghazi attack site after weeks-long delay

FBI agents made a brief visit to Benghazi this week to examine the scene of the consulate terror attack that killed four Americans -- after being delayed for weeks because of security concerns. 

Fox News confirms that the FBI team, which had been held up for weeks getting into the eastern Libya city, arrived in Benghazi to gather evidence and has since left. 

"The FBI continues to coordinate with the U.S. Departments of State, Justice, and Defense, as well as the Libyan government, and other agencies in furtherance of the investigation into the deaths of Ambassador Stevens, Glen Doherty, Sean Smith, and Tyrone Woods," the FBI said in a statement. "As this is an ongoing investigation, we have no further information to provide."

A Libyan official told AFP that the team worked for three hours collecting evidence. 

As the FBI investigates, an independent panel has been established by the State Department to review what went wrong. That review, though, could take months and U.S. lawmakers were starting to express frustration after their requests for more information were rebuffed as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged lawmakers to wait for the conclusion of an internal review. 

Sens. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., on Wednesday renewed their demand for documents after Clinton declined to hand over the cables they initially requested. The House Intelligence Committee has not received any documents from the department either, Fox News has learned. 

"We hope that in the next few days you follow through with transmitting information requested by members of Congress," Corker and Isakson wrote in a letter to Clinton. "In particular, we renew our request for all communications between the diplomatic mission in Libya and the State Department related to the security situation to be transmitted to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee without delay." 

Clinton raised concerns among some Republican lawmakers that she was pushing off the review's conclusions until after the election, as she named a five-member "Accountability Review Board" to examine the deadly Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. 

"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. 

But she did not address specific allegations that diplomats had warned in advance of security concerns. 

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is planning to hold a hearing on Oct. 10. In a letter to Clinton on Wednesday, Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., asked that the department provide two witnesses -- Eric Nordstrom, who was stationed in Libya until June, and Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Programs Charlene Lamb, a Washington official involved in reviewing security requests. 

The hearing comes as the department's review is just getting underway. Among those on the panel are Adm. Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and retired U.S. Ambassador Thomas Pickering, who served as America's top diplomat in several countries.
Language published in the Federal Register this week declared that the board will submit its findings "within 60 days of its first meeting, unless the Chair determines a need for additional time." 

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, 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, in an earlier letter to Clinton, 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. 

Fox News' Catherine Herridge contributed to this report.

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Obama Miscalculated Politics of Terrorism

“It’s a cavalcade of obstacles right now.”

-- A “senior American law enforcement official” talking to the New York Times about the fact that the scene of a successful terrorist attack against the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya is too dangerous for FBI agents to visit.

Today in Iraq, there was a massive prison break in which dozens of baddies broke out of a prison in Saddam Hussein’s hometown. The inmates, including suspected al Qaeda members, took control of the prison and then shot their way out, leaving 10 guards dead.

The scariest part of the proposition is that al Qaeda members on the outside may have helped their comrades pull it off.

This is bad news for the West in general as it shows another sign of al Qaeda regaining a foothold in the Middle East after many years in decline. Just as prior to the U.S.-led war on the organization that began after the 9/11 attacks, the organization is finding weak, wicked or unstable countries in which to operate.

But this is also bad news for the re-election hopes of President Obama, who has pinned his re-election strategy on a three-point argument: Republican nominee Mitt Romney is a scoundrel unfit for the office and, as Vice President Joe Biden often says, Usama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive.

Leaving aside the fact that General Motors is still on federal life support, the argument is a potent one.

The daring raid that killed bin Laden was the high point of Obama’s term. While he had greater accomplishments, particularly his more than $1 trillion in stimulus measures, his 2010 health law and a massive package of bank regulations, those things were mostly unpopular. Killing the most hated man in what was once known as Christendom is all upside.

This perception of Obama as the vanquisher of al Qaeda was not only reinforced by the president’s frequent mentions of it but by leaks from the administration that cast Obama as a philosopher/warrior contemplating a kill list for his armada of drones and weighing carefully his power of life and death over his enemies.

The only times Obama has much talked about radical Islamist terrorism in the campaign, he has sought to reinforce the notion that the war is won and he won it. He promises constant vigilance, but suggests that the season of anxiety for the nation is over.

Imagine then, the alarm that rose within Team Obama when on the anniversary of  the 9/11 attacks, terrorists pulled off a daring, successful attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, killing the American ambassador and three others.

Thanks to the reporting of FOX News colleague Bret Baier, we now know that the administration had evidence that the killings were part of a terrorist attack. For Islamists to have pulled off such as strike on Sept. 11 was bad enough. That they did it in a nation where NATO had just installed a new government was worse.

After months of vouching for the ascendant Islamist movement across the region as moderate and peaceful, the president found his own ambassador killed at the hands of Islamists.

Compounding the problem for Obama was that he was already feeling a squeeze of foreign policy. It had been reported that the president wasn’t taking most of his daily intelligence briefings in person, preferring to read a written report on his iPad. Meanwhile, Republicans and Israelis were ramping up the pressure on the president to take a harder line against Iran’s nuclear program and the theocracy’s ally in Syria.

This was not a helpful time to have al Qaeda suddenly show itself capable of such a brazen attack, especially if the administration did not take adequate steps to prepare for such a strike – especially not in an election year.

The public response from the president and his team was to not discuss the attack but instead focus on a internet clip of a never-made movie that mocked the founder of Islam, Mohammed. The picture painted by Team Obama was of downtrodden Muslims understandably offended by such blasphemy being whipped into a violent frenzy by opportunists, with the rioters being sort of the bitter clingers of Cairo and Benghazi.

But after more than a week of focusing on the film and not the attack – including a stunning turn by U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice on the Sunday shows – the administration began opening the door to the existence of an Islamist plot and a deliberate attack. The word was getting out and it was time to get ahead of the issue.

But it was too late. As details began to emerge, officials scrambled to show their tough-minded stance on terrorism. The White House press secretary, the secretaries of State and Defense and others all stood up. But not the president, from whose lips the T word have never passed when it comes to the Libya attack.

When talking to female voters while being “eye candy” on daytime chat shows or addressing world leaders at the U.N., the president instead continued to focus on the YouTube clip, denouncing it as a provocation as well as the response of the provoked. After all, if all the Islamist warriors have been killed by SEALs or drones or scattered to the four corners of the earth, how could there be an attack by Islamist warriors?

But in trying to duck and cover on the nature of the attack, the president has worsened and prolonged his political discomfort on the issue. Rather than stepping out early on to show his command and control, the president is left trying to explain the gaps and lapses in the story he and his team told.

His decision to diminish the attack may have looked like a smart political move at the time, but it is proving to be a serious miscalculation.

Whether it’s the Libya debacle, the prison break in Iraq, the slaughter in Syria or Iran’s nuclear defiance, there are lots of signs now that things are heading the wrong way in the Middle East.  And it’s happening as the president makes his closing argument that America is stronger and more respected abroad than when he took office.

These problems go not only to the argument on foreign policy but also Obama’s claims on transparency and vigilance. And it’s a most unfortunate moment to have such a scandal.

And Now, A Word From Charles

“I'm atoned, I'm clean, and ready for sinning again. I'm glad Juan is here so I can gratuitously irritate him and get the year off on the right foot.”

-- Charles Krauthammer on “Special Report with Bret Baier.”


Chris Stirewalt is digital politics editor for Fox News, and his POWER PLAY column appears Monday-Friday on FoxNews.com. Catch Chris Live online daily at 11:30amET  at  http:live.foxnews.com.

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