The top US intelligence authority issued an unusual public statement on Friday declaring it now believed the September 11 attack on US diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, was a ''deliberate and organized terrorist attack.''
The statement by the office of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper acknowledged that it represented a change in the US intelligence assessment of how and why the attack happened. During the attack on two US government compounds in the eastern Libyan city, four US personnel, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed. Shawn Turner, spokesman for Clapper’s office, said that after the attack, US agencies came to the view that the Benghazi attack had begun spontaneously after protests at the US Embassy in Cairo against a film made in California lampooning the Prophet. He said that as US intelligence subsequently learned more about the attack.
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