A two-year investigation by the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House intelligence panel rejects allegations that the Obama administration intentionally misled the public about the deadly attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.
Spurning “the swirl of rumors and unsupported allegations” over the Benghazi assault, the lawmakers said in a redacted version of their report released today that there was never a “stand-down” order blocking rescue efforts and that White House officials weren’t to blame for an inaccurate initial account of the events on Sept. 11, 2012.
The report by Republican Chairman Mike Rogers and the committee’s top Democrat, Charles “Dutch” Ruppersberger of Maryland, was devoted mostly to defending the performance of the Central Intelligence Agency. Along the way, though, it implicitly rebuffed allegations that were lodged by Republican Representative Darrell Issa and embraced by party leaders including former presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
The attacks on a U.S. diplomatic post and a CIA annex killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and became a flash point in President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign that year.
Much of the criticism turned on the administration’s initial account that the attacks grew out of a spontaneous protest over an anti-Islamic video, a version presented by Susan Rice, who at the time was the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, on Sunday television talk shows.
‘Contradictory’ Intelligence
The report said the CIA made that incorrect assessment based on “a stream of contradictory and conflicting intelligence that came in after the attacks.” It said the agency corrected it “two days after Ambassador Rice spoke,” once it obtained closed-captioned television footage and FBI interviews. Rice is now Obama’s national security adviser.
The report nonetheless documented that White House officials were eager to embrace the initial, inaccurate account. It cites an e-mail from Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, who urged Rice “to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.”
The report said there was no intelligence failure before the attacks and that the CIA’s chief of the Tripoli station had warned Ambassador Stevens of the “serious and credible” threats to Americans in Libya, and particularly in Benghazi, days before the attack.
The report was one of the last acts in Congress by Rogers of Michigan, who is retiring to become a radio talk-show host.
Issa of California couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
© Copyright 2025 Bloomberg News. All rights reserved.