Revealed: The Benghazi attack wasn't preceded by protests

Ahead of a House hearing on the attack that killed a U.S. ambassador, the State Department contradicts accounts given by others in the Obama administration

A burnt car at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi after an attack on Sept. 11: The State Department has revealed that the violence wasn't sparked by protests against an anti-Islam film after all.
(Image credit: REUTERS/Esam Al-Fetori)

As the Republican-led House Oversight and Government Reform Committee prepared to hold a hearing Wednesday on a a deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, the State Department conceded that it had never concluded that the Sept. 11 assault that killed Libya Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans began with a protest against the anti-Islam film Innocence of Muslims. In fact, State now says there was no demonstration outside the consulate in Benghazi like the one at the U.S. embassy in Cairo. The first sign of trouble, according to the latest account, came with an explosion on the edge of the consulate compound, just before a mob of armed men stormed in. Here, initial reactions to this "extraordinary break with other administration offices," which had claimed for days that a relatively peaceful protest in Benghazi had been hijacked by terrorists:

Finally, we hear the truth

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