Senate report faults State Department in Benghazi attack

A report by the Senate called the State Department's choice to keep a US mission open in Benghazi a mistake. The report also faulted the intelligence community for a lack of specific information surrounding the deadly Sept. 11 attack in Libya, in which four Americans were killed.

By By Tabassum Zakaria,?Reuters / December 31, 2012

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, speaks to reporters following a closed-door briefing on the investigation of the deadly Sept. 11 attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, at the Capitol in Washington Dec. 19. A report released by the Senate today said the State Department was at fault for keeping the US mission in Benghazi open when it was under threat.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP

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The State Department's decision to keep the?U.S. mission?in Benghazi open despite inadequate security and increasingly dangerous threat assessments before it was attacked in September was a "grievous mistake," a?Senate?report said on Monday.

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The?Senate Homeland Security Committee's report about the Sept. 11 attacks on the?U.S. mission?and a nearby annex, which killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to?Libya, faulted intelligence agencies for not having enough focus on Libyan extremists. It also faulted the State Department for waiting for specific warnings instead of acting on security.

The assessment follows a scathing report by an independent State Department accountability review board that resulted in a top security official and three others at the department stepping down.

The attack, in which U.S. Ambassador?Christopher Stevens?died, has put diplomatic security practices at posts in insecure areas under scrutiny and raised questions about whether intelligence on terrorism in the region was adequate.

The?Senate?report said the lack of specific intelligence of an imminent threat in Benghazi "may reflect a failure" in the intelligence community's focus on terrorist groups that have weak or no operational ties to al Qaeda and its affiliates.

"With?Osama bin Laden?dead and core al Qaeda weakened, a new collection of violent Islamist extremist organizations and cells have emerged in the last two to three years," the report said. That trend has been seen in the "Arab Spring" countries undergoing political transition or military conflict, it said.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/6sJ87RXOM9U/Senate-report-faults-State-Department-in-Benghazi-attack

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