WASHINGTON, Oct 12, 2012 (AFP)
WASHINGTON, Oct 12, 2012 (AFP)
The White House Friday battled to clear up a new flap over Libya, after Vice President Joe Biden appeared to contradict evidence that officials refused extra security for US posts in the country.
Biden said in his campaign debate with Republican Paul Ryan on Thursday that “we weren’t told they wanted more security” as a row raged over the circumstances surrounding the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi on September 11.
His comments appeared to contradict statements by a US security official to a congressional hearing this week that extra protection for American diplomatic posts in Tripoli and Benghazi had been refused in Washington.
White House spokesman Jay Carney sought to clear up the latest messy addition to the administration’s frequently changing narrative on the attack, which has been drawn into the heated final days of the presidential election.
“The vice president was speaking about himself and the president and the White House. Obviously he wasn’t talking (about) the administration writ large.”
Carney said that security issues related to Libya diplomatic posts and elsewhere were dealt with in the appropriate place — at the State Department — and not at the White House.
“The vice president certainly was aware of the testimony,” he said.
“Nowhere in those four hours of testimony was it suggested that those requests were made essentially to the White House because that is not how this works.”
Two officials testified on Wednesday that requests for extra support for US posts in Tripoli and Benghazi had been refused.
“It was abundantly clear: we were not going to get resources until the aftermath of an incident,” regional security officer Eric Nordstrom told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing.
Nordstrom said he sought to bolster security by asking for 12 more agents, but was told by a State Department regional director that he was asking for the “sun, moon and the stars.”
Obama has promised to get to the bottom of what happened in Benghazi that led to the deaths of four Americans, including US ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens.
But the administration’s shifting narrative on the attack has prompted his Republican foe Mitt Romney to charge that he is covering up the true nature of the episode to avoid political damage ahead of the November 6 election.
The White House in turn has accused Romney of trying to politicize the attack.
