“There was never a single shred of evidence presented to anyone” that the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, were “spontaneous, and in fact, the CIA themselves understood that early on.”
— Marco Rubio on Thursday, October 29th, 2015 in an interview on CNN
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio portrayed Hillary Clinton as lying about the circumstances of the Benghazi attack when she said it was the result of an anti-Muslim video instead of al-Qaida-like terrorists.
“There was not a single person on the ground in Benghazi who believed that it was a spontaneous uprising,” he said in an interview on CNN on Oct. 29, 2015.
CNN’s Chris Cuomo asked Rubio how it could be a lie if the CIA told Clinton it was due to a demonstration.
Rubio replied: “She consistently, privately told people, over and over again, including in the early aftermath of it, that this was led by al-Qaida-like elements. There was never a single shred of evidence presented to anyone that this was spontaneous, and in fact, the CIA themselves understood that early on, irrespective of what the administration is telling you now.”
We wanted to fact-check what Rubio said about what the CIA understood, drawing on the seven congressional investigations that followed, as well as news articles provided by Rubio and testimony by officials that the Clinton campaign sent us.
What we found is a very murky situation. It seems like there were indications early on that the attacks were not the result of simple protests. But also early on, some in the government did seem to think that demonstrations over the video were a factor. That constitutes something of a “shred,” contrary to what Rubio said.
To try to sort out the evidence, we created a timeline to show when information was shared about the reason for the attacks. (Other media have created their own timelines, including Factcheck.org and The Washington Post’s The Fact Checker.)
The CIA later said the initial assessment lacked supporting evidence and was subsequently left out of reports. Meanwhile, analysts “received 21 reports that a protest occurred in Benghazi.”
However, the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found issues with the reports because they included information from early news reports, not just original intelligence.
Sept, 12, 2012: President Barack Obama, speaking in the Rose Garden, said, “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation.” He didn’t refer to the video directly.
Sept. 15, 2012: The CIA’s chief of station in Tripoli wrote an email to the then-deputy director of the CIA saying that the attacks were “not an escalation of protests.”
Sept. 16, 2012: U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice appeared on five Sunday talk shows. She talked about the video several times and said, “We do not have information at present that leads us to conclude that this was premeditated or preplanned.”
She said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the current assessment was the attack was “a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired hours before in Cairo — almost a copycat of the demonstrations against our facility in Cairo, which were prompted, of course, by the video.”
Sept. 18, 2012: The CIA and FBI reviewed video footage from the Benghazi compound that showed no protests preceding the attack.
Sept. 19, 2012: Director of National Intelligence Matt Olsen said during a congressional hearing that the State Department officials in Benghazi died “in the course of a terrorist attack on our embassy.”
Sept. 20, 2012: Clinton said during a press conference that “the video that sparked these protests is disgusting and reprehensible, and the United States government, of course, had absolutely nothing to do with it.”
Sept. 21, 2012: Clinton attributed the attack to terrorism during a press conference: “What happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack, and we will not rest until we have tracked down and brought to justice the terrorists who murdered four Americans.”
Sept. 24, 2012: The CIA changed its assessment of the attacks after determining that no protests occurred outside the Benghazi facility before the attacks.
Sept. 28, 2012: Shawn Turner, a spokesman for the director of national intelligence, issued a statement that officials initially thought that the attack was spontaneous but soon concluded that terrorists were involved:
As for whether there was never “a single shred of evidence” presented that the attack was spontaneous despite what Clinton said, a spokeswoman for Rubio pointed to news articles in conservative media about what Clinton and the former acting CIA Director Michael Morell said about the attacks.
For example, in an Oct. 23, 2015, Fox News report, Charles Woods, the father of Ty Woods, who died in the Benghazi attack, shared diary notes he took after meeting Clinton on Sept. 14, 2012. The two spoke at a ceremony when the victims’ bodies were flown back to the United States.
“I gave Hillary a hug and shook her hand. And she said we are going to have the filmmaker arrested who was responsible for the death of my son,” the entry said.
Clinton’s campaign also pointed to statements made by government officials who described initial confusion.
Adding to the confusion was that the Benghazi attack occurred around the same time as protests over the anti-Muslim video in Cairo.
Our ruling
Rubio said on CNN, “There was never a single shred of evidence presented to anyone that this was spontaneous, and in fact, the CIA themselves understood that early on.”
There was some initial confusion about what sparked the Sept. 11, 2012, attack. Although investigations showed that some officials thought it was a terrorist attack immediately, there at least appeared to be some question about whether the video could have played a role.
Rubio exaggerates, but he has a point that much of the early evidence pointed strongly to terrorism.
Overall, we rate his statement Half True.
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