WASHINGTON - A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee released Wednesday concluded that the attacks 16 months ago that killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, could have been prevented, and blames both U.S. diplomats and the CIA for poor communication and lax security during the weeks leading up to the deadly episode.
The report is broadly consistent with the findings of previous inquiries into the September 2012 attacks, which have become the subject of a fiercely partisan debate, with Republicans saying Obama administration officials made misleading statements about connections between the attackers and al-Qaida.
The report does not break significant new ground on this issue. But it is unsparing in its criticism of the State Department for failing to provide adequate security at the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, the first U.S. facility to be attacked that night and where J. Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador, died.
“The committee found the attacks were preventable, based on extensive intelligence reporting on the terrorist activity in Libya - to include prior threats and attacks against Western targets - and given the known security shortfalls at the U.S. Mission,” the Senate committee said in a news release.
The report found that, in the months before the attacks, U.S. intelligence agencies gave ample warning about deteriorating security in Benghazi and the risks to Americans in the city.
As those warnings were issued, the CIA bolstered its security at the agency’s Benghazi facility - known as the Annex - but the State Department did not make similar moves to protect the diplomatic compound, where Stevens and State Department computer technician Sean Smith died when attackers set fire to the building they were hiding in.
“In sum, the Mission facility had a much weaker security posture than the Annex, with a significant disparity in the quality and quantity of equipment and security upgrades,” the report concluded.
CIA security contractors Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods died in a later attack on the CIA annex.
The Senate report also said the United States had become dependent on armed militias of questionable loyalty in Benghazi, because the government that replaced Moammar Gadhafi after a U.S.-led NATO bombing campaign was incapable of providing security.
“There was no alternative,” the report quoted the chief of the CIA base as saying. “You know, there really is no functioning government there. And the militia groups that both we and the State Department depended on were in fact kind of the de facto government there in Benghazi.”
Yet when CIA security officers sought help from that militia as they rushed to assist the besieged consulate, “the 17th February Brigade members refused, saying they preferred to negotiate with the attackers instead,” the report said.
The 42-page report, which was based on unclassified information, briefing notes and interviews with several key officials, dismissed complaints that would-be rescuers were delayed in their response to the initial attack. But it faulted the Pentagon for not having enough military assets in the region to respond in a timely fashion to the attack.
It also debunks allegations that U.S. military or intelligence personnel had prevented a military relief effort.
“I hope this report will put to rest many of the conspiracy theories and political accusations about what happened in Benghazi,” Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said in a statement.
But the report also confirmed a February 2013 report that Stevens twice rejected offers of additional support from Army Gen. Carter Ham, who was then the head of the Pentagon’s Africa Command, in the weeks before the attacks. The report does not say why Stevens rejected the offers.
The Senate report also offered insight into why there have been no arrests in the case, saying the U.S.-backed Libyan government has been unwilling to help.
“The Libyan government has not shown the political incentive or will within its own country to seek out, arrest and prosecute individuals believed to be associated with the attacks. Furthermore, the security environment in Benghazi remains extremely dangerous for individuals wishing to work with the U.S. government on its investigation into the attacks,” the report stated.
Libyan officials have repeatedly said they do not have a strong enough government or security force to wrest control of Libya’s second-largest city from the various insurgent groups there, making arrests difficult.
According to the CIA, at least 15 people “supporting the investigation or otherwise helpful to the United States have been killed in Benghazi since the attacks, underscoring the lawless and chaotic circumstances in eastern Libya,” the report said.
The report also clarified the origin of intelligence community claims that a demonstration sparked by a video that some Muslims felt insulted the Prophet Muhammad had preceded the attack. The CIA drew that information from news accounts, the report said, without having any independent information to back it up.
The agency also was influenced by statements from Ansar al Shariah, a militia suspected of involvement in the attacks, the report said.
The committee faulted the intelligence community for not moving more quickly to correct the reports once it realized they were inaccurate and said that the failure “caused confusion and influenced the public statements of policymakers.”
It noted that it was not until 12 days after the attacks that the intelligence community reported that there had been no demonstration, even though the CIA and the FBI had viewed surveillance videos and interviewed witnesses shortly after the attacks that confirmed there had been no protest.
While the committee members agreed on 14 findings and 18 related recommendations, the report didn’t end the partisan discord over how President Barack Obama’s administration handled the Benghazi attack. In 16 pages of additional views, six committee Republicans said “important questions remain unanswered” because of a lack of administration cooperation.
“We believe the role of the White House must be fully explored,” they wrote. The Republicans said there were unresolved questions about the administration’s “talking points” in the aftermath of the attack as well as about why the military was unable to respond once the attack was underway.
The committee’s eight Democrats said the partisan debate over the administration’s talking points “consumed a regrettable and disproportionate amount of time and energy” during the committee’s work.
While the intelligence community was wrong in its initial report of a protest outside the Benghazi compound, “there were no efforts by the White House or any other Executive Branch entities to ‘cover-up’ facts or make alterations for political purposes,” they wrote.
The Republicans also laid blame for the State Department’s lack of preparedness on former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the presumed 2016 Democratic presidential front-runner, saying she and her deputies had not paid enough attention to what was happening in Libya. They demanded that the State Department take disciplinary action against senior level officials who’d been identified earlier as having been involved in not providing more security resources to the Benghazi mission.
The State Department said Wednesday that it is implementing all 24 unclassified recommendations for improved security recommended by the Accountability Review Board, an independent panel appointed by Clinton after the attacks.
State Department spokesman Marie Harf said Wednesday that 10 of 12 unclassified recommendations had already been made by the board or a separate best practices group and are being implemented.
The Republicans also criticized Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“From Syria to Benghazi, there has been either a profound inability or clear unwillingness to identify and prevent problems before they arise,” they said. “Given the known operating environment in Benghazi, much less North Africa, a strong military leader would have ensured there was a viable plan in place to rescue Americans should the need arise.” Information for this article was contributed by Mark Mazzetti of The New York Times; by Nancy A. Youssef of McClatchy Newspapers; and by David Lerman and Terry Atlas of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/16/2014