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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King calls for Rice resignation over Libya story, Kerry defends

A top Republican called Friday for U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice to resign over her "misleading" statements on the Libya terror attack -- escalating a brewing battle between lawmakers and the administration over the changing narrative.

Rep. Peter King, the New York Republican who heads the House Homeland Security Committee, told National Review that he thinks Rice should resign over the controversy. He was referring to her repeated claims during interviews on the Sunday after the attack that the strike was a “spontaneous” reaction to protests in Cairo over an anti-Islam film -- though officials now acknowledge it was a coordinated terror attack.

"She is America's foreign policy spokesman to the world," King said. "The fact is she gave out information which was either intentionally or unintentionally misleading and wrong, and there should be consequences for that. And I don’t see how she didn’t know how … that information was wrong.”

He called for a “full investigation.”

King’s statement, the first call by a top-ranking lawmaker for a resignation in connection with the controversy, triggered a swift response from Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who leapt to Rice’s defense. Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he was “deeply disturbed by efforts to find the politics instead of finding the facts in this debate.”

“Everyone who cares about the four fallen Americans in Benghazi would do well to take a deep breath about what happened and allow Secretary Clinton's proactive, independent investigation to proceed,” he said in a statement. “I’m particularly troubled by calls for Ambassador Rice’s resignation. She is a remarkable public servant for whom the liberation of the Libyan people has been a personal issue and a public mission. She's an enormously capable person who has represented us at the United Nations with strength and character.”

King’s statement, though, was a sign he perhaps wasn’t satisfied by the claim by the nation's top intelligence official Friday that administration officials who initially said the attack was spontaneous did so based on intelligence officials' guidance.

The statement by Shawn Turner, spokesman for Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, was put out late Friday -- the statement appeared to take the blame for the confusion, and also marked a complete reversal from the administration’s initial claims about the origin of the strike.

"As we learned more about the attack, we revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists," Turner said. "It remains unclear if any group or person exercised overall command and control of the attack, and if extremist group leaders directed their members to participate. However, we do assess that some of those involved were linked to groups affiliated with or sympathetic to Al Qaeda."

Turner, though, sought to explain that officials who discussed the attack as spontaneous did so based on intelligence community assessments.

"In the immediate aftermath, there was information that led us to assess that the attack began spontaneously following protests earlier that day at our embassy in Cairo," he said. "We provided that initial assessment to Executive Branch officials and members of Congress, who used that information to discuss the attack publicly and provide updates as they became available. Throughout our investigation we continued to emphasize that information gathered was preliminary and evolving."

However, sources have told Fox News that intelligence officials knew within 24 hours the attack that left the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans dead was terrorism, and that they suspected it was tied to Al Qaeda.

It's unclear, then, why the intelligence community told Executive Branch officials it was spontaneous. In the midst of the changing story, King and other Republicans have complained that they were misled by the administration. They pointed to briefings as well as Rice’s Sunday show comments.

Meanwhile, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are raising questions about security at the compound in Benghazi. All members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee wrote to the State Department on Thursday asking for additional details about security at U.S. diplomatic posts and for a fuller explanation of the attacks on U.S. compounds in Libya, Egypt and Yemen.

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Republicans crank up pressure on administration to clear up facts on Libya attack

After two weeks of changing stories from the Obama administration regarding the Libya terror attack, Republican lawmakers are putting increasing pressure on the president and his advisers to explain why they made such "implausible" statements in the days following the strike. 

Members of Congress, frustrated over an apparently light-on-details intelligence briefing last week and the initial insistence by officials that the attack was linked to anger over an anti-Islam film, fired off a round of letters this week seeking clear answers. Mitt Romney, after initially laying low over the changing Libya narrative, also has started to hammer the president over the issue. 

Republicans now are openly suggesting that the administration may have covered up details of the attack for political purposes. 

"We are getting close to an election, and all I can think of is they're just trying to keep the facts unknown until after the election," Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, told Fox News on Wednesday. "The way they're handling this is so incompetent." 

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Wednesday that President Obama considers the strike a "terrorist attack." Though Obama did not refer to it as such in his address Tuesday to the U.N. General Assembly, several administration officials, including Carney and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have used the term since last week. 

The administration, though, still has not publicly rejected comments made two Sundays ago in several TV interviews by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice. Rice claimed on "Fox News Sunday" and other programs that the attack was a spontaneous assault tied to the anti-U.S. protests in Cairo. Rice, like other administration officials, said the attack was not pre-planned. 

Four senators wrote a letter to Rice on Tuesday asking about her "troubling statements that are inconsistent with the facts" and demanding an explanation. 

"By the date of your comments, it was already clear that the attack in Libya was a terrorist attack, and that heavily armed and well trained attackers appeared to have prepared for an opportunity to attack U.S. interests," they wrote. "Yet, you repeatedly asserted the implausible explanation that the attack in Benghazi was a spontaneous reaction to the video despite growing evidence to the contrary. ... We look forward to a timely response that explains how the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations could characterize an attack on a U.S. consulate so inaccurately five days after a terrorist attack that killed four Americans." 

The letter was signed by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz.; Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H.; Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; and Ron Johnson, R-Wis.

Sens. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., and Bob Corker, R-Tenn., wrote a separate letter Wednesday to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asking about security measures in Benghazi prior to the consulate attack. 

"Specifically, we are concerned over the apparent lack of security preparations made despite a demonstrable increase in risks to U.S. officials and facilities in Benghazi in the period leading up to the attacks," they wrote, citing attacks earlier this year on the consulate, the British ambassador's convoy and the International Committee of the Red Cross office. 

House Republicans including McKeon meanwhile sent a letter to Obama asking about intelligence leading up to the attack and criticizing the administration's discussion of the strike in its aftermath. 

"We are also disturbed by the public statements made by members of the administration that would lead the American public to believe this attack was a protest gone wrong, rather than what it truly was - a terrorist attack on the United States on the anniversary of 9/11," they wrote. 

Slamming the response to the attack as a "pre-9/11 mindset," they asked the Obama administration what it plans to do to protect other U.S. interests abroad from being targeted. 

Obama advisers, though, have denied any attempt to mislead the public. 

Carney said Wednesday that the administration has provided as much information as possible, stressing that the investigation must be allowed to take its course. 

Carney said the administration will provide more facts to the public as they emerge. 

The Romney campaign, though, pressed Obama to personally condemn the attack as terrorism. 

"This is now the second time the White House press secretary has said something that President Obama has declined to admit. If the president thinks the tragic events in Libya were acts of terrorism, he should say so himself," Romney spokesman Ryan Williams said, echoing Romney's comments in an interview with Fox News a day earlier.   

Libyan President Mohamed Magarief, in an interview with NBC News on Wednesday, reiterated his claim that the anti-Islam film had nothing to do with the attack in Libya.

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Obama team tweets campaign message on 9/11 anniversary, day bodies returned from Libya

President Obama and his re-election team marked the anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks and events related to the killing of four Americans abroad that day with a slate of official and somber events. But they also took to Twitter for some campaign business on both days.

"The election is in eight weeks. Sign up to volunteer," reads the first tweet, on Wednesday, the 11th anniversary of the deadly attacks, from @BarackObama.

The tweet went out at 7:07 a.m. President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama then appeared on the White House South Lawn and bowed their heads at 8:46 a.m. --  the exact time the first hijacked plane struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center. The event was followed by the president and first lady laying a wreath at the Pentagon, where the third plane struck.

The Obama campaign declined to comment Saturday for this story.

The second tweet, about a sale of Obama apparel, was posted Friday, about 30 minutes before Obama arrived at Andrews Air Force Base to welcome home the bodies of the four Americans – including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens -- killed at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

"You would expect nothing less from a president whose priorities have been misplaced ever since he came to office," Paul Lindsay, communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said Saturday.

The second tweet read: "Winter is coming, but these sweatshirts are perfect for fall."

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