Former CIA Deputy Director: Benghazi Was Terrorist Attack, But We Don't Know Why

On April 2, former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell told the House Intelligence Committee that he listened to analysts in Washington instead of personnel on the ground in Benghazi when explaining the attack on the U.S. consulate there.

Morell said that he now sees that the analysts “were sorely mistaken”–that there is “no doubt it was a terrorist attack,” but he continued to claim that the reason for the terrorist attack is still unknown.

In a Fox News video of Morell’s testimony, he tells lawmakers: 

There is a difference between what it was, which was a terrorist attack, and what motivated it. Those are two completely different things. No doubt it was a terrorist attack. To this day, we still don’t know the motivations of the people who conducted the attack because we haven’t caught any of them.

Sharyl Attkisson reported that Morell also told lawmakers that “some of the attackers” were “affiliated with Al Qaeda.” He said he did not edit that out of the infamous Benghazi talking points. Rather, “a group of officers from [the CIA] office of Congressional affairs and [the] office of public affairs” did.

But he said he did take the word “Islamic” out of the phrase “Islamic extremists.” 

Reacting to Morell’s testimony, Representative Peter King (R-NY) said: 

The administration has not told the truth [about Benghazi] from the beginning, and Mike Morell was part of that process all along. He gave a lot of excuses today and a lot of reasons, but the fact is, to believe him, you have to believe everything’s contradictory to the facts.

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