Tonight on Special Report, Bret Baier sat down with Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter to talk about the ongoing fallout from the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
Republicans are trying to get to the bottom of what the Obama administration knew about the attack and when they knew it. Specific questions have arisen on why U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice went on several Sunday talk shows five days after the Sept. 11 attack and said that the incident resulted spontaneously from protests over an anti-Islam film.
The Obama administration later revealed that intelligence officials knew within 24 hours of the attack that terrorists had launched a coordinated assault on the compound, killing four Americans, including U.S. Amb. to Libya Chris Stevens.
Yesterday, Cutter said that the scandal surrounding the administration’s response is being driven by the Romney campaign, calling it “reckless and irresponsible” for them to politicize it. Tonight, she scoffed at the notion that the administration has tried to hide anything, pointing to the report two weeks after the attack by the Director of National Intelligence.
“His statement said there was an original conclusion that people were taking advantage of protests surrounding that video to attack the embassy. We then learned weeks later that it was a deliberate, premeditated attack by terrorists. That’s what responsible people do when they are conducting an investigation and releasing information so that the American people can understand what happened,” said Cutter. Watch the full exchange:
The deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya that killed four Americans was directly tied to al-Qaida and involved a former detainee at the Guantanamo Bay prison, intelligence sources told Fox News.
The information comes as a top Obama White House official described the assault for the first time as a “terrorist attack” — and Republican lawmakers intensified their questioning of administration officials on security issues and whether consulate security personnel had communicated with extremists before the attack occurred.
The White House has long claimed the assault had been a "spontaneous" act.
"Yes, they were killed in the course of a terrorist attack on our embassy," Matt Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said on Wednesday during a Senate hearing, Fox reports.
But Olsen echoed administration colleagues in saying U.S. officials have no specific intelligence about "significant advanced planning or coordination" for the attack.
His statement, however, goes beyond White House Press Secretary Jay Carney and Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, saying the Sept. 11 attack on the consulate was spontaneous.
Olsen is the first top White House official to call the strike an act of terrorism, Fox reports.
Intelligence sources told Fox that Sufyan Ben Qumu is thought to have been involved — and even may have led the Benghazi attack, which killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.
Qumu, a Libyan, was released from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2007 and transferred into Libyan custody on the condition that he is kept in jail. His Guantanamo files also show he has ties to the financiers behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Olson, repeating Wednesday that the FBI is handling the Benghazi investigation, also acknowledged the attack could lead back to al-Qaida and its affiliates.
"We are looking at indications that individuals involved in the attack may have had connections to al-Qaida or al-Qaida's affiliates, in particular al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb," he said at a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Fox reports.
“The facts that we have now indicate that this was an opportunistic attack on our embassy, the attack began and evolved and escalated over several hours," Olson said, according to Fox.
But Olsen sidestepped a question from Maine Sen. Susan Collins about whether communication had occurred between extremist elements and the local consulate guards, Reuters reports.
"I think that would be better addressed in the session that we're going to have tomorrow," Olsen told the Republican senator, Reuters reports. U.S. officials said the possibility of such collusion is part of their investigation.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper are to brief lawmakers in a closed session on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers said on Wednesday that they agreed with Libyan officials who said the attack was preplanned.
“You don't bring rocket-propelled grenades and heavy weapons to spontaneous demonstrations," Arizona Sen. John McCain told Reuters.
"I think it was a preplanned event to have occurred probably on 9/11,” Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee chairman, told Reuters. “It seemed well-coordinated."
He described the assault as an "al Qaida-style attack."
There was command-and-control on the ground, with initial reports showing clearly that the attackers were moving toward specific targets on the compound, Rogers said.
"They had objectives. They had targets they were working toward. They were using military-style movements,” he told Reuters. “I just look at that and think I don't know how you say that that wasn't a pre-planned event when you have that kind of coordination."
Obama administration officials say U.S. intelligence agencies had not seen any warnings to indicate the consulate was going to be attacked.
In fact, Press Secretary Carney said earlier on Wednesday that there was still "no evidence of a preplanned or pre-meditated attack," which occurred on the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
"I made that clear last week, Ambassador Rice made that clear Sunday," Carney said at the daily White House press briefing.
Rice appeared on "Fox News Sunday" and four other morning talk shows to say the attack was "spontaneous" and was sparked by an early protest that day outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, over an anti-Islamic video.
"It was a reaction to a video that had nothing to do with the United States," Rice told Fox on Sunday. "The best information and the best assessment we have today is that this was not a pre-planned, pre-meditated attack. What happened initially was that it was a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired in Cairo."
That account clashed with claims by the Libyan president that the attack was in fact premeditated, Fox reports.
Other sources, including an intelligence source in Libya who spoke to Fox on Wednesday, have echoed those claims. The intelligence source even said that, contrary to the suggestion by the Obama administration, no major protest in Benghazi occurred before the deadly attack at the U.S. consulate.
A U.S. official did not dispute the claim, Fox reports.
Meanwhile, other new details emerged on security arrangements at the Benghazi consulate, Reuters reports. Five civilian American security officers were stationed at the consulate, congressional aides said on condition of anonymity.
The State Department said it had contracted with a private security firm, U.K.-based Blue Mountain Group, to hire Libyan nationals to carry out security measures at the Benghazi consulate. Their jobs included operating metal detectors and sweeping cars for explosives.
On Wednesday, Republican lawmakers also pressed their questions on U.S. security arrangements in a region where weapons, including sophisticated arms looted from arsenals assembled by the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, were widely available.
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard McKeon said he was "really concerned about the lack of support that the ambassador had, the lack of protection."
“We had no military personnel there" in Benghazi, McKeon said after a closed-door briefing from Pentagon officials, Reuters reports.
He said this was "inconceivable" after an attack on the compound earlier in the year.
Clinton defended the security arrangements earlier this week.
"Let me assure you that our security in Benghazi included a unit of host government security forces, as well as a local guard force of the kind that we rely on in many places around the world," she said on Tuesday.
Also on Wednesday, FBI investigators arrived in Libya after an initial delay over security concerns. The investigation team should reach Benghazi before the end of the week, U.S. officials said.
Their goal is to determine what happened on the ground and who was responsible.
Remember back in the beginning of 2011 when Obama told us about the freedom lovers in Egypt and Libya living under the oppression of dictators and needing our immediate help to establish democracy in their fair lands?
You do? So do I. How weird. We should become best friends. Facebook me.
Anyway … it turns out that the “freedom lovers” Obama coerced lots of Americans to rally behind (and whom he also pimped out with billions of sawbucks from America’s pitiful piggy bank) were bat crap crazy.
I’m talking crazy on steroids crazy—and not just peaceful crazy like Joe Biden but rather hide-sharp-objects-from-them, menopausal wolverine sow crazy.
Yep, these “yearners for democracy” turned out to be radicals of radicals who’d like nothing more than to eradicate the U.S. and Israel and establish a global bounce house for all things Muslim.
Whoopsie, eh Mr. President? You kind of misjudged that one, señor.
Congressman Allen West (R-Fl) issued a statement demolishing President Obama over the murder of the US Ambassador to Libya and three embassy employees on Tuesday.
“Less than 24 hours after our nation remembered the heinous attacks of September 11, 2001, Americans
find their sovereign soil attacked again as more American lives are
lost at the hands of intolerant, barbaric, radical Muslims.
United
States Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and several embassy
staff were murdered late yesterday when suspected religious extremists
stormed the United States Consulate in Benghazi. This morning, my
condolences and prayers go out to the families of the victims.
Americans
need to question whether the deaths of these innocent patriots could
have been avoided. The Obama Administration touted the Arab Spring as
an awakening of freedom, which we now see is a nightmare of Islamism.
Even
more concerning, is the initial response to these attacks last night
from the embassy officials of the Obama Administration was to apologize
for a Facebook video that supposedly hurt Muslim feelings. President Obama’s policy of appeasement towards the Islamic world has manifested itself into a specter of unconscionable hatred.
How anyone can believe this President is strong on national security and foreign policy is beyond my comprehension.
President Obama has clearly surpassed former President Jimmy Carter
and his actions during the Iranian Embassy crisis as the weakest and
most ineffective person to ever occupy the White House.”
The Romney campaign should be spreading that statement far and wide.
A Hemet insurance salesman says he was a consultant on the anti-Muslim film that has sparked rioting in Libya and Egypt and which news reports have blamed for the deaths of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other diplomats in Libya.
Steven Klein, owner of Wise Home Insurance Services, said he believes Muslim extremists control most of the mosques across the United States and that his intention is only to tell the truth.
A Cal State San Bernardino center that monitors extremist groups describes Klein as part of a national anti-Muslim hate movement.
Whether the outrage about the movie, which was posted on the Internet and depicts the Prophet Muhammad in sexual situations and shows Islam as a violent religion, triggered the death of Stevens on Wednesday, Sept. 12, is under investigation. Initial reports said rioting Muslims were responsible for Stevens’ death.
However, later on Wednesday, the White House said it was investigating whether Stevens’ assassination had been plotted for the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and was coincidental with the street riots in Benghazi.
The film features amateurish production and acting and a disjointed plot that includes episodes from Muhammad’s young life. One scene shows him half-naked after being discovered in bed with a woman. Others depict him using the Quran to justify exploiting others. Muslims believe it is a heresy to portray Muhammad in a film.
Sam Bacile, the man who claims to be the writer and director of “The Innocence of Muslims,” has told news agencies he has gone into hiding. Doubts have been raised about Bacile’s identity and his claim to be an Israeli.
In an interview Wednesday afternoon in his Hemet insurance office, Klein said he knows little about Bacile. He said the name is a pseudonym.
“I knew that going in; this is very dangerous,” Klein said. “I didn’t ask prying questions. I didn’t want to know where he was from. I didn’t want to know his religion.”
In addition, Klein said, “If for some reason the Muslims do get a hold of me and they do torment me or torture me, then I’ve got nothing to tell.”
Klein said Bacile has lived in California for years — he said he doesn’t know where in the state — and he believes Bacile is a Middle Eastern refugee who first fled to France before immigrating to the United States.
Klein, who is an evangelical Christian, said he believes that Bacile is Christian. He said Bacile’s native language is Arabic.
Klein, 62, said Bacile contacted him because of his activism on issues involving Islam.
“Sam found out about me through the grapevine and knew that I wouldn’t back down, that I wasn’t afraid to tell the truth on this stuff,” Klein said.
Klein said the two met once about seven or eight months ago in a Southern California location he declined to reveal. He said it wasn’t in the Inland Empire. They bumped into each other again several weeks later, he said.
Klein said he offered consultation on the film to Bacile and Middle Eastern immigrant supporters of the movie. But Klein said he was not directly involved in its production.
Bacile said he made sure the English was correct in the film and reviewed the script to ensure, in his view, an accurate depiction of Muhammad and Islam. He also said he is serving as a fluent-English-speaking spokesman for the film.
They also talked about concerns that the film could violate U.S. law. Klein said he assured Bacile and the supporters that it wouldn’t because it was protected by freedom of speech.
He said the film was made in the United States and was funded with private money. He isn’t sure who the donors are, he said, but believes that most of the money came from Middle Eastern Christians and Jews who fled their homelands and now live in Europe.
IN THE SPOTLIGHT
In his second-floor business office Wednesday, Klein wore a black shirt, gold-and-white tie and sandals for a series of interviews with news media. He sells policies for hard-to-insure properties and once ran for state insurance commissioner.
He defended the film, which he said tells the truth about Islam, and said he is not responsible for the death of the ambassador or others killed or injured in the violence.
“I’m going to tell the truth …,” he said. “I did not tell them to go out and kill people.”
“You’re responsible for your actions, not me,” he said. “I have never gone out and assaulted anybody. I have never gone out and killed anyone.”
The movie was screened once in a Los Angeles theater about three months ago, but no one showed up, Klein said. About 15 supporters had passed out fliers at mosques, hoping that Muslims would find out what he called the truth about Muhammad. He said he didn’t know when the film appeared online.
Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino, said the movie insults Muslims first by portraying the Prophet Muhammad in a film, and then portraying him as evil and devious.
“The movie is bigoted, reprehensible and incendiary,” Levin said.
Levin called Klein one of the “secondary players in the constellation of the anti-Sharia and anti-Muslim movement in the United States.”
Klein said he founded a group called Courageous Christians United after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks spurred him to get involved in what he called educating people about Islam. He said he later handed the group over to another person.
He then founded Concerned Citizens for the First Amendment, which also educates people about Islam, he said.
Although he has distributed literature about Islam, Klein said he did not attend protests against the building of a new mosque in Temecula in 2010.
But he said he and other members of Concerned Citizens for the First Amendment distributed leaflets on Islam in high schools across Southern California, including in Temecula, Corona, Murrieta, Norco and Menifee.
The leaflets contained hateful, false descriptions of Islam, said Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the greater Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and a Corona resident.
Leaflets distributed in front of Temecula-area schools also opposed construction of the Temecula mosque, Ayloush said.
Ayloush said he is familiar with a man named Steven Klein who was involved with the leafleting but can’t confirm it’s the same person.
“He helped organize some very extreme fundamentalist Christian Arabs,” Ayloush said of Klein.
The small group regularly visited mosques in Southern California distributing anti-Islam literature, he said.
“It was not intended to educate or engage,” he said. “It was not an intellectual debate. It was meant to offend.”
Klein said he has written on issues other than Islam, targeting illegal immigration, gays and lesbians serving in the military and Mormonism. But he said he has not attended or organized demonstrations on those issues.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate activity, on Wednesday put out a dossier on Klein. The center quotes him from his Facebook page in 2011 as saying Muslims “are a cancer that WILL attack us and KILL as many as they can to further the Islamic doctrine of Sharia law … Beware, there IS a holy war coming.”
Klein also is associated with the Church of Kaweah in Central California.
A report the center published earlier this year said Klein believes that California is riddled with Muslim Brotherhood sleeper cells “who are awaiting the trigger date and will begin randomly killing as many of us as they can. I know I’m getting prepared to shoot back.”
The Church of Kaweah, which the center lists as a hate group, is described as “a secretive cohort of militant Christian fundamentalists in California who are preparing for war and who believe that churches should avoid government regulation and answer only to God.”
It is located near the village of Three Rivers in the Sierra Nevada foothills.
The church has its own militia, the center said.
Klein said Wednesday afternoon that he hasn’t received any threats and isn’t concerned for his safety. He said he served nine years in Vietnam as a Marine and is used to danger.
“If you show fear,” Klein said, “then you’re in big trouble.”
It's not too late for him to say it after yesterday's vicious attacks.
This is the speech I would have liked to have heard from Presidential candidate Mitt Romney yesterday.
"My fellow Americans, today is the eleven year anniversary of the horrible mass murders of innocent men, women, and children in the United States by sick, twisted terrorists hiding behind the cloak of Islam. By a terrible stroke, today also marked vicious attacks on U.S. diplomatic missions in Egypt and Libya. These attacks, by raging, cowardly mobs, were supposedly instigated by an amateur e-mail about the being whom Muslims consider sacred and a Holy prophet, Mohammed. This e-mail was made in the United States under the protection of our Constitution, which protects freedom or speech and expression. The mobs who attacked our missions objected to the e-mail cartoon or whatever it was. They have the complete right to object. But they do not have the right under any international law to attack our diplomatic stations for any reason at all.
"My opponent, Mr. Barack Obama, chose to meet this international outrage by apologizing to the mobs in the form of a letter from Mrs. Clinton's State Department condemning the making of the offending e-mail.
"Let me be clear about this: Mr. Obama is wrong. We have complete freedom of speech in this country. We do not apologize to mobs of thugs and bullies for our residents having free speech. When I take office, the era of apologizing to foreign thugs and bandits for the United States of America and our freedoms is over. We are not ashamed of being a free country. We are proud of it.
"We expect the governments of Egypt and Libya and all other nations to do their duty under law to protect our embassies. If they can't, we will take appropriate action. We are not going to be pushed around and we are not going to be bullied by gangsters and we are not going to apologize for the Constitution.
"There was a further default in Mr. Obama's leadership today. At a time when the whole world is desperately concerned about the certainty that Iran will soon have nuclear weapons and that same Iran has promised to use them to have a second Holocaust against the Jews and '…wipe Israel off the map…', the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, pleaded with Mr. Obama for a face to face meeting in New York when the President will be there for the opening of the UN General Assembly session. Mr. Obama brushed off Premier Netanyahu, head of government of one of our closest allies, saying his schedule did not permit such a meeting. It turned out that Mr. Obama did have time, however, on this trip to New York City to have a comedy interview with David Letterman.
"When reaction to this behavior turned negative, Mr. Obama hastily did an improvised phone call with Mr. Netanyahu and denied his own version of events released earlier.
"This is unacceptable, especially at a time of extremely high tensions in the Middle East. In the Romney-Ryan administration, peace and the maintenance of security for the U.S. and our allies will take precedence over talk shows and comedy and campaigning, no if's, ands, or buts. Our administration will take war and peace seriously. We realize this may seem uncool to some, but we really don't care. Peace is what we are about, and security. Not laughs."
He didn't make that speech but it's not too late.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Beverly Hills and Malibu. He writes "Ben Stein's Diary" for every issue of The American Spectator.
