sunday night after susan wright said it was the video. steve: steve croft asked the president. you went out of the way to avoid the word terrorism in connection with the statue of liberty attack. brian: mitt romney said the same thing chris: can they said his was political. the president responded it was too early to tell how it came about. it was an attack on americans. the president is rehuctant to call it terrorism. he said what group was involved. if there was a group involved with rpg s and knew within two hours afterwards that an affiliate of al-qaida claimed responsibility on social media and for the president to say we don t know which group? it is terrorist.
what was being told to congress and us so certain this is exactly what happened. that is what is so concerning about this and why we need to get to the bottom of it. reporter: fox news was told some lawmakers felt the briefing the following day by cia director david petraeus was completely in conflict what they heard from the fbi and ntcc. petraeus characterized attack a consistent with flashmob where the militants showed up with rpg s. that they needed skill to fire the mortar to hit the roof of the annex directly. intelligence official disputed description of the director s briefing and that response raised in part that extremists many with ties to ansar al sharia or aqm didn t plan the attack days and weeks in advance but launched the assault opportunisticly after they learned about violence in cairo. lawmakers who learned more
tuesday that the men were killed. susan rice was on the talk shows saying that was all about video. and now you have hillary clinton saying directly to him, we are going to have that filmmaker arrested, even though we know from these cables that we saw this week that she was told as it was happening, moments after him and that this islamic jihad group was claiming responsibility for it, and she knew that 20 guys with weapons, including rpg s and other weapons were bombing the consulate and unleashing hell. megyn, this is why it was a political decision. it was 13 days later that the filmmaker was arrested and we know that the film had nothing to do with this particular attack on this consulate. now, you say, well, he probably did violate his federal parole. you are a lawyer. i talked to some people in and
the two former navy seals. that is heavy stuff. that is not the kind of thing that a bunch of protesters bring to a protest. who has mortars and backcountry? and what is the thinking about who is behind not shot? i think the military and intelligence perspective, there was no doubt within the first hour of the attack that they were taking mortar fire coming there was a sophisticated military attack by a militia. it was not a protest. there was no doubt about that in the intelligence community. what i think surprise them, they thought that the second location, the cia annex was a secret location. they were surprised that when they rescued the group from the consulate without the ambassador, that when they got back there, they began taking almost immediate fire for several hours. ak-47 fire, rpg s, although militia in libya would have access to that.
on every sunday show she first went on the incident this of course was not a spontaneous reaction to a video. those comments were deeply troubling. that s why we wrote the letter. i have to tell you with the comments she made on those sunday shows that was either incompetence or blatantly misleading the american people. bill: was she lying? i have to tell you, i would think, again i think it is misleading the american people. we knew at the time obviously that the attackers she knew had came with rpg s, diesel cannisters. it was september 11. al qaeda issued a video before 9/11 crying out over the death of his second in charge who was a libyan terrorist and warning and calling for terrorist attacks. so that should have been warning enough. of course there had been several incidents in libya in may and june on the red cross the british ambassador to libya as well as our own