E-Mails Offer Glimpse at What U.S. Knew in First Hours After Attack in Libya

By ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — A series of three leaked e-mails sent by State Department officials beginning shortly after the fatal attack began on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, last month — including one that alerted the White House Situation Room that a militant group had claimed responsibility for it — stirred new debate on Wednesday about the Obama administration’s shifting positions on the cause of the attack.

The New York Times

The first e-mail, sent about a half-hour after the assault began, said the State Department’s regional security officer in Tripoli, Libya, had reported that the mission in Benghazi was under attack, and that “20 armed people fired shots.” 

An e-mail 49 minutes later said the firing at the mission “has stopped and the compound has been cleared,” while a response team was trying to find people. 

In the next message, 1 hour 13 minutes after the second, the embassy in Tripoli reported that a local militant group, Ansar al-Shariah, had claimed responsibility through postings on Facebook and Twitter. 

In the hours after the Benghazi attack, American spy agencies intercepted electronic communications from Ansar al-Shariah fighters bragging to an operative with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Al Qaeda’s North African arm. But Ansar al-Shariah has publicly denied having anything to do with the attack. 

A White House spokesman, Jay Carney, with President Obama on Air Force One on Wednesday, said the e-mails, reported by Reuters, were unclassified and among “all sorts of information that was becoming available in the aftermath of the attack.” 

The e-mails surfaced as the Tunisian government confirmed it had arrested a Tunisian man reportedly linked to the attack, which killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans on Sept. 11. 

A spokesman for the Tunisian Interior Ministry, Tarrouch Khaled, told The Associated Press that the suspect, Ali Harzi, 28, was in custody in Tunis. Mr. Khaled did not provide details.

Some Republicans have criticized the United States ambassador to the United Nations, Susan E. Rice, for stating five days after the attack that it had resulted from a spontaneous mob that was angry about an anti-Islamic video, even though some intelligence reports and witness accounts indicated a terrorist attack. Ms. Rice said she had based her comments on unclassified talking points prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency. 

The issue seemed to die down after Mitt Romney did not press Mr. Obama on the matter in their debate on Monday night. 

On Wednesday, three Republican senators, John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, criticized Mr. Obama in a letter, saying the series of e-mails “only adds to the confusion surrounding what you and your administration knew about the attacks in Benghazi, when you knew it, and why you responded to those tragic events in the ways you did.” 

Intelligence officials say the gap between the talking points and the contemporaneous field reports illustrates the lag between turning often contradictory and incomplete field reporting into a finished assessment. 

Administration and intelligence officials made that point again on Wednesday in trying to put into context the e-mails sent by the State Department operations center to scores of officials at the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House. 

“You know, posting something on Facebook is not in and of itself evidence, and I think it just underscores how fluid the reporting was at the time and continued some time to be,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters in Washington.