The Benghazi Attack and Consular Relations
by Christina Hennecken
On September 11, 2012, the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks—and just hours after demonstrators stormed a compound outside the U.S. embassy in Cairo, Egypt—Islamist militants armed with anti-aircraft weapons and grenade launchers attacked an American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya. U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three members of his staff were killed during the attack. The incident represented the first death of an American ambassador due to a violent assault in more than 30 years. An estimated six Libyan guards were protecting the facility. The Libyan Deputy Interior Minister, Wanis al-Sharif, admitted that he ordered the withdrawal of security forces during the initial phase of protests in a purported effort to avoid inflaming the crowd with confrontation.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) initially believed that the attack was a spontaneous event following protests in Cairo related to an anti-Islamic YouTube video. On September 28, however, the Director of Public Affairs for ODNI, Shawn Turner, released a public statement asserting that, after over two weeks of investigation, ODNI had revised its assessment and believed the event was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack linked to al-Qaeda.
