# U.S. Suspects Libya Attack Was Planned

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/u-s-suspects-libya-attack-was-planned/634535>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [September 12, 2012, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/u-s-suspects-libya-attack-was-planned/634535 "2012-09-12T19:54:36Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\
**Post date:** [September 12, 2012, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/u-s-suspects-libya-attack-was-planned/634535/1 "2012-09-12T19:54:36Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> Officials in Washington studying the events of the past 24 hours have focused on the differences between the protests at the American embassy in Cairo and the attack on the consulate in Benghazi, the Libyan city where Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and the other Americans were killed.
> 
> The protesters in Cairo appeared to be a genuinely spontaneous unarmed mob angered by an anti-Islam video said to have been produced in the United States. By contrast, it appeared the attackers in Benghazi were armed with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. Intelligence reports are inconclusive at this point, officials said, but indications suggest the possibility that an organized group had either been waiting for an opportunity to exploit like the protests over the video or perhaps even generated the protests as a cover for their attack.  
> …  
> About 24 hours before the consulate attack, however, Al Qaeda posted to militant forums on the Web a video in which its leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, acknowledged the death in an American drone strike in June of his Libyan deputy, Abu Yahya al-Libi, and called on Libyans to avenge the death.

This would put quite a different spin on things if true.

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**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\
**Post date:** [September 13, 2012, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/u-s-suspects-libya-attack-was-planned/634535/2 "2012-09-13T00:26:56Z")

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Oops. I forgot the link when I posted this earlier and now I can’t find the article. :o

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**Author:** ![davidm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidm/32/225_2.png) [@davidm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidm)\
**Post date:** [September 13, 2012, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/u-s-suspects-libya-attack-was-planned/634535/3 "2012-09-13T00:29:52Z")

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This looks like the same article. It’s not a source I would normally use but the article is supposedly from the New Your Times.

> **[US Suspects Libya Attack Was Planned](https://truthout.org/articles/us-suspects-libya-attack-was-planned/)**
>
> The Obama administration suspects that the attack that killed the American ambassador may have been planned rather than a spontaneous mob getting out of control.

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**Author:** ![Animastryfe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8797f3/32.png) [@Animastryfe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Animastryfe)\
**Post date:** [September 13, 2012, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/u-s-suspects-libya-attack-was-planned/634535/4 "2012-09-13T01:00:29Z")

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Yes, the current New York Times front page article is talking about this: [Libya Mission Attack Kills U.S. Ambassador - The New York Times](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/13/world/middleeast/us-envoy-to-libya-is-reported-killed.html?_r=1&hp)