FBI team examines site of deadly Libya attack

More than three weeks after a deadly assault on a U.S. Consulate in Libya killed four Americans, FBI investigators spent Thursday examining the destroyed complex in the port city of Benghazi, CBS News reports.

CBS News correspondent Bob Orr reports a team of forensic specialists were escorted by a small U.S. military contingent that provided security, according to a U.S. official. The investigators spent several hours at the consulate and annex sites, the official estimated.

CBS News senior correspondent John Miller reports the team collected whatever evidence they could from the site, given the amount of damage the area sustained in the attack, according to a U.S. official.

The official wouldn’t tell Orr what was recovered from the scenes, describing the work as a general effort to collect and https://www.urajoa2uj.online document potential evidence.

More in U.S. compound attack in Benghazi

U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the assault, which the White House has referred to as a terrorist attack.

Meanwhile, CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports that, according to a House committee, a State Department officer told panel members there were 13 threats made against the consulate during the six months before the attack on the facility on the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

The officer told committee members that the U.S. mission had made repeated requests for increased security.

A spokesman for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is holding a hearing on the controversy next week, said its source is Regional Security Officer Eric Nordstrom, who was stationed in Libya from September 2011 to June 2012.

According to the panel, Nordstrom has already given a private briefing to members. The State Department confirmed he will appear at a committee hearing Wednesday with the deputy assistant secretary for international programs, Charlene Lamb, who is involved in reviewing security requests, Attkisson reports.

Separately, The Washington Post reports one of its reporters found “sensitive documents” that were “only loosely secured” in the burned-out remains of the consulate Wednesday. The newspaper says the discovery “further complicates efforts by the Obama administration to respond to what has rapidly become a major foreign-policy issue just weeks before the election.”

Republicans have accused the Obama administration of being unprepared for the terrorist attack by Muslim extremists on the consulate, then allegedly issuing misinformation about it.

Initially, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice suggested the attack was spontaneous, sparked by an anti-Islam video on the Web.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said she’s committed to finding out exactly what happened leading up to the assault and whether security requests were made but denied.

“No one wants the answers more than we do here at the (State) Department,” Clinton said. It has appointed a review board to investigate the controversy.

A letter to Clinton from the committee chairman, Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and panel member Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, had said the information came from “individuals with direct knowledge of events in Libya.”

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A U.S. official told CBS News that Nafis considered targeting President Obama before settling on the Federal Reserve building just blocks from the World Trade Center site but those considerations never got beyond the discussion stage. On “CBS This Morning” Thursday, CBS News senior correspondent John Miller reported that Nafis had made statements that he was in contact with a Qaeda network before he arrived in the United States in January. But there was no allegation that Nafis actually received training or direction from the terrorist group. In conversations recorded by the FBI, Miller reports Nafis allegedly said he admired the radical U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who inspired the “underwear bomber,” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and the accused Fort Hood shooter, Maj. Nidal Hasan. Even after Awlaki was killed in a drone strike, his magazine, called Inspire, supplied Nafis with the outlines for his plot. Prosecutors said Nafis traveled to the U.S. on a student visa in January to carry out an attack. Hours after his arrest, Bangladeshi detectives were at his family’s three-story home in the Jatrabari neighborhood in south Dhaka. “We are just collecting details about Nafis from his family,” one officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. Nafis’ family said he was incapable of such actions and he went to America to study business administration, not to carry out any attack. Nafis was so timid, he couldn’t even venture out onto the roof alone, his father said. “He used to take someone to go the roof at night. I can’t believe he could be part of it (the plot).” “He is very gentle and devoted to his studies,” he said, pointing to Nafis’ time studying at the private North South University in Dhaka. However, Belal Ahmed, a spokesman for the university, said Nafis was a terrible student who was put on probation and threatened with expulsion if he didn’t bring his grades up. Nafis eventually just stopped coming to school, Ahmed said. Ahsanullah said his son convinced him to send him to America to study, arguing that with a U.S. degree he had a better chance at success in Bangladesh. “I spent all my savings to send him to America,” he said. CBS News reports that Nafis was enrolled at Southeast Missouri State University for the spring semester earlier this year and that he was pursuing a degree in cyber security; he is no longer enrolled there. He was pursuing a bachelor’s degree in cybersecurity. University spokeswoman Ann Hayes told The Associated Press that Nafis requested a transfer of his records in July and the university complied, though she couldn’t say where the records were transferred. Mohammad Arif Akunjee, a childhood friend, said Nafis wanted to be a businessman. Just a few hours before his arrest, Nafis talked to his mother over Skype to update her on his plans, Bilkis said. “My brother told my mother that he was doing well in studies in the U.S. and was transferring to a college in New York,” said his sister. Early Thursday, a relative living in Switzerland called to tell the family Nafis had been arrested. “We woke up with this terrible news. We just can’t believe it,” she said. Ahsanullah called on the government to “get my son back home.” Bangladesh does not have the same record of involvement in global terrorism as Pakistan, with which it once formed a nation before winning its independence in 1971. At least one Bangladeshi was among those detained by the U.S. at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.
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