WASHINGTON (AFP) - The U.S. intelligence community said Friday that a deadly assault on a US consulate in Libya was a planned attack linked to Al-Qaeda but it stressed that "many unanswered questions" remained.
"It remains unclear if any group or person exercised overall command and control of the attack, and if extremist group leaders directed their members to participate," Shawn Turner, spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said in a statement.
"We do assess that some of those involved were linked to groups affiliated with, or sympathetic to Al-Qaeda."
President Barack Obama's administration has offered varied explanations as to who may have been behind the September 11 attack on the American diplomatic mission in the eastern city of Benghazi, drawing criticism from Republican opponents weeks before a U.S. presidential election.
This week, both Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the top U.S. diplomat Hillary Clinton called the assault a "terrorist attack," with the Pentagon chief also suggesting that it took days for the US government to conclude extremists had launched an orchestrated assault.
"As we learned more about the attack, we revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists," Turner explained.
Some Republican lawmakers have alleged that the Obama administration knew almost immediately afterward that Al-Qaeda was involved in the Benghazi attack, which killed the US ambassador to Libya and three other Americans.
But Turner stressed that despite "progress" made in the investigation, "there remain many unanswered questions."
On Thursday, Panetta said it was too soon to say whether Al-Qaeda or Al-Qaeda-linked groups had a role in the incident.
The U.S. military's top officer, General Martin Dempsey, also said there had been no warning of a direct threat to the American mission in Benghazi before the attack.
"There was a thread of intelligence reporting that groups in the environment in... eastern Libya were seeking to coalesce, but there wasn't anything specific and certainly not a specific threat to the consulate that I'm aware of," the general said.
The State Department initially maintained the attack arose out of a spontaneous protest against an anti-Islam Internet video made in the United States.
<관련 한글뉴스>
"리비아 대사 살해, 알 카에다와 연관 있어"
미 정보기관은 리비아에서 일어난 리비아 영사 살해 사건이 알카에다와 연관 있지만 아직도 의문점이 많다고 밝혔다.
"단독 범행인지 단체가 저지른 일인지, 그랬다면 극단조직이 지휘한 일인지도 알 수 없다," 고 미국가정보국 대변인 숀 터너가 금요일에 말했다.
"우리는 다만 그 중에 몇이 알카에다와 연결되어있거나 동조적이라고 생각합니다."
국방장관 레온 파네타와 힐러리 클린턴은 이번주 초 이 공격이 테러라 규정하였으며 펜타콘에서도 극우주의자들이 저지른 일이라 결론내렸다.
몇몇 공화당 의원들은 오바마 행정부가 주리비아 대사와 세명의 미국인이 사망한 공격이 감행되지마자 알카에다와 관련 있었음을 알고 있었다고 주장하였다. 그러나 터너는 아직도 밝혀야 될 부분이 많다고 일갈했다.
