WASHINGTON — A long-delayed Senate Intelligence Committee report released Wednesday faulted both the State Department and the intelligence community for not preventing attacks on two outposts in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including a U.S. ambassador, about 16 months ago.

The bipartisan report laid out more than a dozen findings regarding the assaults on a diplomatic compound and a CIA annex in the city. It said the State Department failed to increase security at its mission despite warnings, and blamed intelligence agencies for not sharing information about the existence of the CIA outpost with the U.S. military.

The committee determined that the U.S. military command in Africa didn’t know about the CIA annex and that the Pentagon didn’t have the resources in place to defend the State Department compound in an emergency.

“The attacks were preventable, based on extensive intelligence reporting on the terrorist activity in Libya – to include prior threats and attacks against Western targets – and given the known security shortfalls at the U.S. Mission,” the panel said in a statement.’

The report also noted, chillingly, that the FBI’s investigation into the attacks has been hampered in Libya, and that 15 people “supporting the investigation or otherwise helpful to the United States” have since been killed in Benghazi. The report said it was unclear whether those killings were related to the investigation.

NO COVERUP

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The report found no evidence of the kind of political coverup that Republicans have long alleged. Much of it recounted now-familiar facts about deteriorating security conditions in Benghazi in 2012, a year after the fall of longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi. It filled in new details about the relationship between the State Department compound and the CIA annex about a mile away, and described the rising concern among many intelligence specialists about the growing potency of Islamist militants in the city.

“In spite of the deteriorating security situation in Benghazi and ample strategic warnings, the United States Government simply did not do enough to prevent these attacks and ensure the safety of those serving in Benghazi,” said Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said the Senate report adds little new information and does not do much to expand to the government’s understanding of the attacks. “We should have been better then, and we need to get better going forward,” Harf said.

The report was based on dozens of committee hearings, briefings and interviews – including with survivors of the attacks – and on thousands of pages of intelligence and State Department materials collected between September 2012 and December 2013.

The document contains only one mention of former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is named by the panel’s Republicans as the official who should ultimately be held responsible for the failures at Benghazi. Even so, the report will likely provide fodder for both Republicans and Democrats as Clinton ponders a possible presidential run in 2016.

The committee described the attacks as opportunistic and said there was no specific advance warning that they were about to be carried out.

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The report said that on Sept. 18, 2012, the “FBI and CIA reviewed the closed circuit television video from the Mission facility that showed there were no protests prior to the attacks.”

But it took six more days for intelligence officials to revise their chronology of events and say that “there were no demonstrations or protests” at the diplomatic compound “prior to the attacks.”

The report said it was problematic that the CIA and State Department were not working out of the same facility together in the dangerous Benghazi environment. That meant the CIA and its well-trained contractors, who had served in elite U.S. forces, were not on location at the outpost in the event of a crisis.

Six armed CIA employees and a linguist responded to the attack on the compound late on Sept. 11, 2012, the report says. About 30 minutes passed before the CIA team arrived on the scene and “exchanged fire with the attackers.”

Attackers used “diesel fuel to set the main building ablaze, and thick smoke rapidly filled the entire structure,” the report says.

According to testimony by the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, a diplomatic security agent led U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens to an escape window at the diplomatic compound.

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“Nearing unconsciousness himself, the agent opened the emergency escape window and crawled out. He then realized he had become separated from the Ambassador . . . so he re-entered and searched the building multiple times,” the report says.

MILITARY RESPONSE SLOW

The committee found that the military response to the attacks was slow and hindered, but not purposely so. “At approximately 1:15 a.m. Benghazi time [on Sept. 12], a seven-man reinforcement team of additional U.S. security personnel from Tripoli landed at the Benghazi airport and began to negotiate with the local Libyan militias for transportation and a security convoy,” the report says. The team would not leave the airport for the annex until more than three hours later.

A separate attack on the CIA annex at about 5:15 a.m. on Sept. 12 resulted in the deaths of two security officers, who were killed by mortar fire “as they engaged the enemy from the roof of the Annex,” the report says.

In the weeks leading up to the attacks, the CIA knew that conditions on the ground were worsening. In August, the agency alerted the intelligence community that there were Islamist training camps and militias in Benghazi. The agency said it was concerned about local militias providing security at U.S. facilities and about the outpost’s lack of defense.

That same month, there were 20 security incidents in Benghazi.

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The report said that the Libyan militia charged with protecting the diplomatic compound didn’t defend it during the attack.

The committee’s minority criticized the White House for obstructing the report, which the committee had wanted to complete much earlier, and accused Patrick Kennedy, U.S. undersecretary of state for management, of shielding the Obama administration from Congressional oversight.

COLLINS, KING REACT

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said Kennedy “failed to ensure that a facility he personally approved in December 2011 had the necessary security to match the heightened threat environment.”

Maine Sen. Angus King, an independent who also serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, agreed that the evidence presented to the committee showed clearly that the State Department “did not properly prepare or equip the facility for the possibility of attacks like the ones that occurred.” He called on the government to “redouble our efforts” to make sure those serving overseas have information and resources needed to make informed security decisions.

King was not serving in the Senate at the time of the political fallout over the “talking points” immediately following the attack but weighed in on the issue on Wednesday.

“I have concluded after numerous hearings, briefings, and analysis of the documents that there was no political manipulation of the facts, and I support the report’s bipartisan recommendation that ‘the Intelligence Community should simply tell Congress which facts are unclassified and let Members of Congress provide additional context for the public,’” King said in a statement.


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