adminbefore her widely expected presidential candidacy in 2016.
As newly revealed e-mails appeared to corroborate claims that State Department officials tried to hide intelligence about the attack from the public, prominent politicians, led by John McCain, demanded answers.
“I would call it a cover-up in the extent that there was wilful removal of information which was obvious,” Senator McCain told ABC TV, alluding to changes made to the talking points the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, used to describe the attack.
Hours after the Libyan President described the murder of four Americans last September as a terror attack, Ms Rice contradicted him by saying it was spontaneous reaction to an anti-Muslim video that had already sparked riots in the region. Among the dead was US ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens.
Senator McCain berated White House spokesman Jay Carney for dismissing edits made to the documentation as merely stylistic: “For the President’s spokesman to say that, ‘Well, there was only words or technical changes made in those e-mails’ is a flat-out untruth. That’s just not acceptable.”
Darrell Issa, chairman of the house oversight and government reform committee, said: “The American people were effectively lied to for about a month.”
Much criticism has been directed at Mrs Clinton, secretary of state at the time. As the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for the 2016 election, she is an obvious target for Republican anger.
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, tipped as a presidential hopeful on the Republican side, has offered a scathing critique.
“The evidence we had in January already suggested that Mrs Clinton ignored repeated requests for more security in Benghazi,” he wrote in The Washington Times.
“The new evidence . . . that continues to mount, suggests that at the very least Mrs Clinton should never hold high office again.”
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd was scathing about Mrs Clinton and Barack Obama: “The administration’s behaviour before and during the attack . . . was unworthy of the greatest power on Earth . . . President Obama knew he was sending diplomats and their protectors into a country that was no longer a country, a land rife with fighters affiliated with al-Qa’ida.”
The debate reignited after ABC TV in the US said emails between the White House, State Department and intelligence agencies went through 12 extensive revisions.
Warnings from the CIA about an al-Qa’ida threat were removed. Meanwhile, the head of the internal probe into the attack said Mrs Clinton was never questioned by investigators.
Ambassador Thomas Pickering said he and retired admiral Mike Mullen interviewed her near the end of their investigation into the September 11 attack in Benghazi but saw no need to question her about her role.
He said they knew and understood what she had done “because we had questioned people who had attended meetings with her (about) what went on at those meetings and how they were handled, what was relevant”.
“I don’t think that there was anything there that we didn’t know,” Mr Pickering said.
Meanwhile, President Barack Obama yesterday denied accusations that his administration engaged in a cover-up over the attack on the US mission in Benghazi, slamming Republicans for creating a “sideshow.”
“The day after it happened, I acknowledged that this was an act of terrorism,” Obama told reporters.
“The fact this keeps on getting churned out frankly has a lot to do with political motivations. — theaustralian.com.au/AFP.
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