WASHINGTON – House Intelligence Committee leaders from both parties Sunday slammed a New York Times article that concluded al Qaeda wasn’t behind the deadly 2012 attack on the US diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.
Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the committee, said the New York Times was simply wrong “that al Qaeda was not involved in this.”
“It tells me they didn’t talk to the people on the ground who were doing the fighting, the shooting and the intelligence gathering,” Rogers said on “Fox News Sunday.
On the same show, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a member of the committee, said that the newspaper’s reporting adds value but wasn’t “complete.”
“I agree with Mike … that the intelligence indicates that al Qaeda was involved,” he said.
Schiff noted that the newspapers’ report was “heavily reliant … on people who were interviewed who had a reason to provide the story that they did.”
Republicans have accused the Obama administration of intentionally misleading the public in the weeks following the attack by blaming it on a “spontaneous” riot in response to an American-made YouTube video that mocked Islam, rather than al Qeada-affiliated terrorists.
The New York Times article largely supported the administration’s claim that the video helped spur the attack.
The security failures at the US compound in Benghazi and the administration’s response to the attack have become a potential political liability of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time of the attack and now is eyeing a White House run in 2016.
“I find the timing odd,” Rogers said of the Times’ report. “I don’t want to speculate on why they might do it.”
The military-style assault on the US compound and a nearby CIA outpost killed US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.
Rogers said that US intelligence showed “some level of preplanning” and that there was “aspiration to conduct an attack by al Qaeda and their affiliates in Libya.”
“All of that would directly contradict what the New York Times definitively says was an exhaustive investigation,” he said.
Lawmakers also blasted the newspaper’s conclusion that the Islamist terror group that played the lead role in the attack, al-Shariah, was not affiliated with al Qaeda.
“I dispute that,” said Rogers. “Do they have differences of opinion with al Qaeda core? Yes. Do they have affiliations with al Qaeda core? Definitely.”
Rep. Pete King (R-NY), chairman of the House Homeland Security counterterrorism subcommittee, called the newspaper’s claim about al-Shariah “misleading.”
“Al-Shariah is a part of the al Qaeda umbrella, the al Qaeda network,” King said. “Al-Shariah is a pro- al Qaeda terrorist organization.”