From FactCheck: There was a sharp exchange between the candidates on the issue of the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi and the question of when the president acknowledged it was a terrorist attack. Obama said he called it an “act of terror” the day after the attack. Romney said that “it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.”
Obama is correct that he referred to “acts of terror” in a Sept. 12 speech in the Rose Garden. But after that Obama refused to characterize it as a terrorist attack while it was under investigation — even though other administration officials did.
The transcript does show that Obama said in a Rose Garden speech on Sept. 12: “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for.” That night, he said at a Las Vegas fundraiser: “No act of terror will dim the light of the values that we proudly shine on the rest of the world, and no act of violence will shake the resolve of the United States of America.” Obama employed the “act of terror” phrase a third time a day later at a campaign event in Colorado.
But Romney isn’t entirely wrong. Romney claimed Obama refused for two weeks after the Benghazi attack to call it a terrorist attack and, instead, blamed it on a spontaneous demonstration in response to an anti-Muslim video that earlier that day triggered a violent protest in Egypt.
The president did seem to suggest in his Rose Garden speech that a reason for the Benghazi attack was the video. Obama said: “Since our founding, the United States has been a nation that respects all faiths. We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. But there is absolutely no justification to this type of senseless violence. None.”
It is also true that Obama refrained from characterizing the attack as an premeditated act of terrorism. The administration adopted a wait-and-see position, deflecting questions until the investigation into the attack could be completed. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland, for example, was asked in a Sept. 17 press briefing if the administration considered the Benghazi attack an act of terror. She said: “Again, I’m not going to put labels on this until we have a complete investigation, okay?”
A day later, Obama was asked about the Benghazi attack on “The Late Show with David Letterman.” The president said “here’s what happened” and began discussing the impact of the anti-Muslim video. He then said “extremists and terrorists used this as an excuse to attack a variety of our embassies, including the consulate in Libya.” He also said, “As offensive as this video was and, obviously, we’ve denounced it and the United States government had nothing to do with it. That’s never an excuse for violence.”
Matt Olsen, head of the National Counterterrorism Center, testified on Sept. 19 that it was a “terrorist attack.” He also said the administration still lacked “specific intelligence that there was a significant advanced planning or coordination for this attack.”
A day later, White House press secretary Jay Carney said it is “self-evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack.” And on Sept. 21 — two days after Olsen’s testimony — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said “what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack.”
Yet, when asked on ABC’s “The View” whether it was a terrorist attack, Obama refused to say. That was on Sept. 24. He said, “We’re still doing an investigation. There’s no doubt that the kind of weapons that were used, the ongoing assault, that it wasn’t just a mob action. We don’t have all the information yet, so we’re still gathering it.”
The Romney campaign has accused the administration of misleading the public by claiming the anti-Muslim video was to blame for the attack in Benghazi, rather than admitting it was a failure to detect and prevent an act of terrorism on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. We cannot say if there was a deliberate attempt to mislead the public or whether, as the administration says, the conflicting statements in the weeks after the attack were the result of an evolving investigation. We’ll leave that for readers to decide.
Update, Oct. 17: We revised our article to include a third instance in which the president used the phrase “act of terror” and another time in which he said that “extremists and terrorists” used the anti-Muslim video “as an excuse” to attack the U.S. consulate in Libya. We thank the readers who brought these incidents to our attention. We also added the date of the president’s interview on “The View.”
