Row over White House's initial claim that attack on Libya consulate was ... - Daily Mail

By Daily Mail Reporter

PUBLISHED: 21:04 GMT, 23 September 2012 | UPDATED: 01:31 GMT, 24 September 2012

Debate: Mike Rogers challenged the White House over the Libya attacks

A leading House Republican is challenging the White House's initial account that the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya was a spontaneous assault tied to protests over an anti-Islam video.

President Barack Obama has said extremists used the video as an excuse to launch the attack, which killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

But today Republican Mike Rogers of Michigan, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN that he'd seen 'no information' that anti-film protests were ongoing prior to the assault and argued that the administration was 'ill-advised' to link the two.

Meanwhile Robert Gibbs, a senior adviser to the Obama campaign, told Fox News Sunday that the investigation continues and said ‘no one intentionally or unintentionally misled anyone involved in this.’

The White House’s early assertion that the attacks were spontaneous was contradicted by Libya, Congress and even the State Department, who said the attacks were likely to be pre-planned.

On the defensive: Robert Gibbs, a senior adviser to the Obama campaign, said about the September 11 attack: ?no one intentionally or unintentionally misled anyone involved in this?

Deadly: President Barack Obama has said extremists used the video as an excuse to launch the attack, which killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans

Gibbs was keenly defending the administration's handling of the attack on the consulate in Benghazi on September 11 during his Fox interview today.

‘We learned more information every single day about what happened. Nobody wants to get to the bottom of this faster than we do,’ he said.

The dispute comes after Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, continued to link the deadly attack to the video at the same time a top White House official described it as a terrorist attack to Congress.

On Friday, Carney said that it was ‘self evident’ that the attack was the work of terrorists.

'As we have learned more, and as this investigation continues, I anticipate we will continue to learn more facts about the awful assassination and murder of our great ambassador in Libya,’ Gibbs said today.