According to an email released Saturday by House Republicans, it seems that overseas U.S. diplomats warned Hillary Clinton and other State Department officials about blaming the 2012 Benghazi terror strikes on a fiery Internet video.
Then-National Security Adviser Susan Rice said on TV that the attacks were inspired by the anti-Islamic video. The deadly Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on a U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya took place right after three days the email was sent.
The GOP-led House Select Committee on Benghazi released the email that was sent from the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, Libya, to the State Department led by Clinton from 2009 to 2013. But the names of the sender and receiver have been removed.
The unknown sender mentioned, “The film’s not as explosive of an issue here as it appears to be in other countries in the region, and it is becoming increasingly clear that the series of events in Benghazi was much more terrorist attack than a protest, which escalated into violence.
U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the attacks.
When asked during a 2013 Senate hearing about what sparked the attacks, Clinton responded:
“It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again.”
Matt Wolking, Select committee spokesman, told FoxNews.com on Saturday that the email was not part of the batch released on Friday by the State Department.
He also said in a statement, “This email shows that State Department staff privately raised serious concerns about conflating the terrorist attacks in Benghazi with a video. Even as the secretary of state and other Obama administration officials continued to do so publicly.”
Wolking also claimed that a former CIA chief said intelligence analysts never mentioned that the video was a reason.
Wolking said, “So while Secretary Clinton may use the ‘fog of war’ as a convenient excuse for why she said one thing in private and something else in public, the reality is that’s just another smokescreen”.
