Libya Terrorists Bragged About Attack on U.S. Consulate

Eli Lake keeps digging away at this story, at the Daily Beast, "Intercepts Show Attackers on U.S. Consulate in Benghazi Bragged to Al Qaeda" (at Memeorandum):

Conversations monitored by U.S. intelligence show Ansar al-Sharia jihadists boasted to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb about the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and others—more evidence the assault was not a spontaneous reaction to the anti-Muslim video.

In the communications, members of Ansar al-Sharia (AAS) bragged about their successful attack against the American consulate and the U.S. ambassador, according to three U.S. intelligence officials who spoke to The Daily Beast anonymously because they were not authorized to talk to the press.

At this stage there is no consensus inside the U.S. intelligence community that AQIM planned the attack, but the communications are more evidence that the attack was no spontaneous reaction to an Internet video, as the Obama administration had said for the first nine days after the attack.

This week, Obama administration officials are coming around to the view that the assault on the consulate in Benghazi was a planned terrorist attack. Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said, “As we determined the details of what took place there and how that attack took place, it became clear that there were terrorists who planned that attack.”

After the attack, there were multiple pieces of intelligence that strongly pointed to al Qaeda. The Daily Beast reported Wednesday that early intelligence pointed to al Qaeda, including strong leads on four of the attackers, and the location of one of those attackers. That said, the intelligence community did not offer Congress or senior Obama administration officials any consensus analysis on the perpetrator of the attack in those early days after it occurred...

Continue reading.

Plus, here's an interesting piece at Foreign Policy, "Kerry, Rice position themselves on Benghazi attack."

I'll be interested to see why Susan Rice continued to claim a spontaneous attack in Libya days after the event and in the midst of administration knowledge of the truth, including information on the Ambassador's notebook. Is she covering up for the president? What did she know and when did she know it?

More later...