Wall Street Journal - Lawmakers Dispute Parts of Benghazi Article

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By Julian E. Barnes

Key members of the House intelligence committee said Sunday that classified documents show links between Al Qaeda and the militants involved in the 2012 attack on the diplomatic complex in Benghazi, Libya.

The New York Times this weekend published a lengthy article on the Benghazi attack that questioned the involvement of Al Qaeda in the incident, and said the violence was fueled "in large part by anger at" an anti-Islamic video, contrary to the claims of some members of Congress. "Months of investigation…turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault," in which four Americans died, the article said.

But Rep. Mike Rogers (R., Mich.), the chairman of the House intelligence committee, criticized the newspaper report on "Fox News Sunday," saying the Times reporters didn't have access to classified documents.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.), who also serves on the intelligence committee, was less critical of the New York Times report. Also appearing on Fox, he said while he agreed some of the militants were motivated by the anti-Islamic video, the intelligence indicates Al Qaeda was involved.

He said the intelligence included reports based on covert listening to conversations among people who said they were involved in the attack, though he acknowledged that some of those reports could be misleading because people "boast of things that they were not involved in for various purposes."

"I don't think it's either accurate to characterize this as a long-time preplanned core Al Qaeda operation or something completely unaffiliated," he said.

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