January 17, 2014 | Quote
Senate Says No Doubt al-Qaeda in on Benghazi
A Senate report on the Benghazi attack that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans bolsters Obama administration critics who suspected from the start that al-Qaeda was involved and that it was not a spontaneous protest that went out of control.
The report, released Wednesday by the committee's Democratic majority, said individuals affiliated with groups such as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula were in on the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. compound.
Whether the attack was ordered by a high-level al-Qaeda chief or planned on short notice by people on the ground remains unclear, the report said. But the report left no doubt that it was an organized terrorist attack – a fact denied for days after the deaths by President Obama and former secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
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Also named was the Mohammad Jamal Network, headed by an Egyptian trained by al-Qaeda in the 1980s who answers to al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, said Thomas Joscelyn, an analyst at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies who follows extremists in North Africa.
“Jamal was in direct contact with Zawahiri in 2011 and 2012. And, according to both the U.S. government and the United Nations, Jamal conspired with AQAP, AQIM and al-Qaeda's senior leadership,” Joscelyn said.