Benghazi updateFBI investigators visit Benghazi consulate compound

The Benghazi consulate compound in flames following attack // Source: altaghieer.com

After a delay of more than a week owing to security concerns, a team of several FBI investigators earlier this week visited the burned-down U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi to gather more information on the attack which killed Ambassador Stevens. “The FBI continues to coordinate with the U.S. Departments of State, Justice, and Defense, as well as the Libyan government, and other agencies in furtherance of the investigation into the deaths of Ambassador Stevens, Glen Doherty, Sean Smith, and Tyrone Woods,” the FBI said in a statement. “As this is an ongoing investigation, we have no further information to provide.”

Fox New reports that at the same time, the Department of State has created a 5-member independent investigative panel, the Accountability Review Board, to look into security arrangements at the compound, and to determine whether those arrangements were sufficient, and whether information about the deteriorating security situation in the city was ignored.

The panel includes Adm. Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and retired U.S. ambassador Thomas Pickering, who served as America’s top diplomat in several countries.

A notice published in the Federal Register this week said the board will submit its findings “within 60 days of its first meeting, unless the Chair determines a need for additional time.”

Several Republican lawmakers expressed their frustration with this language, seeing in it an indication that the State Department would wait until after the elections to conclude the investigation and announce its results.

Senator Bob Corker (R-Tennessee) and Senator Johnny Isakson (R-Georgia), on Wednesday renewed their demand for documents relating to the attack after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declined to hand over the cables they initially requested. Fox News notes that the House Intelligence Committee has not received any documents from the department, either.

“We hope that in the next few days you follow through with transmitting information requested by members of Congress,” Corker and Isakson wrote in a letter to Clinton. “In particular, we renew our request for all communications between the diplomatic mission in Libya and the State Department related to the security situation to be transmitted to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee without delay.”

“No one wants to determine what happened that night in Benghazi more than the president and I do. No one is more committed to ensuring it doesn’t happen again, and nobody will hold this department more accountable than we hold ourselves because we serve with and we knew the four men we lost,” Clinton said Wednesday.

She did not address specific allegations that diplomats had warned in advance of security concerns.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hold a hearing on 10 October on the consulate attack.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, and then for several days, administration officials contended that the attack on the consulate was a spontaneous reaction to a crude anti-Islamic movie trailer posted to YouTube. The New York Times, Reuters, and Fox News have in the last few days published stories, based on what these news organizations said were reliable sources, that “within hours” of the attack, U.S. intelligence agencies submitted dozens of reports to high officials suggesting that an al Qaeda-affiliated Libyan militia was behind the attack.