The office of American spy chief has released a statement supporting claims by the Obama administration that the killing of US ambassador to Libya in Benghazi during a protest rally was an “organized terrorist attack.”

The Friday statement issued by the office of Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper came amid growing criticism of Democratic President Barack Obama mostly by US lawmakers from the rival Republican Party over the revised description of the September 11 incident at the US Consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi that killed the American envoy and three of his staff.

Administration officials originally described the incident, which took place as crowds of people gathered at the US diplomatic post to protest the publication of a US-made film that insulted Islam’s highly revered prophet, as spontaneous but in recent days have claimed that it was an act of terrorism with links to al-Qaeda.


Meanwhile on Friday the leading US daily The New York Times emphasized in a report that fears about lack of security for Americans in Libya have kept FBI intelligence agents and investigators from visiting the US consulate in Benghazi, forcing them to attempt to piece together the circumstances of the deadly attack on the diplomatic post from over 400 miles away in Tripoli.

“Investigators are so worried about the tenuous security… that they have been unwilling to risk taking some potential Libyan witnesses into the American Embassy in Tripoli. Instead, the investigators have resorted to the awkward solution of questioning some witnesses in cars outside the embassy,” said the report.

The development also comes as US Senate Foreign Relations Committee forwarded a letter to the State Department on Thursday inquiring about intelligence data during the period leading up to the killings and the level of security at American diplomatic posts in Libya.

Shawn Turner, a spokesman for Clapper, insisted that US spy agencies have revised their assessments based on intelligence that has surfaced through an ongoing probe.

“In the immediate aftermath, there was information that led us to assess that the attack began spontaneously following protests earlier that day at our embassy in Cairo,” Turner said.

However, analysts have since “revised our initial assessments to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists,” Turner added. “Some of those involved were linked to groups affiliated with, or sympathetic to al-Qaeda.”

US Republicans lawmakers have accused the administration of seeking to tone down what they have described as ‘terrorist links’ at a time Obama has insisted on the degradation of al-Qaeda as a major foreign policy acheivement.
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