15 of US' Benghazi Sources Have Been Killed

Senate report also concludes that consulate attack was 'preventable'
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 15, 2014 2:02 PM CST
15 of US' Benghazi Sources Have Been Killed
A man looks at documents at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, after an attack that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, Sept. 12, 2012.   (AP Photo/Ibrahim Alaguri, File)

The US government didn't do enough to prevent the attack on the Benghazi consulate, a long-awaited Senate Intelligence Committee report concludes. The bipartisan report chastises the CIA for operating out of a different building than the State Department—a facility the military didn't even know about, the Washington Post reports. It criticizes the State Department for failing to increase security as the situation became more dangerous, and the military for being ill-prepared, and slow (but not intentionally slow) in response. "The attacks were preventable," the panel wrote.

In one attention-grabbing nugget, the report also reveals that during the probe, 15 people "supporting the investigation" have been killed in Libya, though it's unclear if their deaths are related. The report also addresses the central political conflict around the attacks—the question of whether the Obama administration intentionally mischaracterized the attack as a protest. The report blames intelligence agencies for providing Susan Rice with inaccurate talking points, according to Politico. Testimony declassified Monday, however, indicates that the Pentagon believed it was a terrorist attack right away, the New York Daily News reports. (More Benghazi stories.)

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