http://beforeitsnews.com/forex/2012/10/warning-have-a-stash-of-cash-2444886.html
Lloyds says crash fixed after millions left without access to cash
Millions of bank customers were left with no access to their money on Friday afternoon after systems issues at two separate banking groups led to cards being declined at check outs and cash points, and the banks’ online systems freezing up.
By Rosie Murray-West3:21PM BST 05 Oct 2012
Credits wikipedia
Customers of the Lloyds Banking Group, which includes Halifax and Bank of Scotland, were unable to use cash machines or debit cards, and struggled to bank online. The Co-operative Bank and Smile were also affected by system problems, in a situation reminiscent of the high-profile IT issue at Royal Bank of Scotland in June, which left millions of its customers without cash for several days.
Lloyds said that its systems were up and running again at 4pm and promised that it was “working hard to process the transactions impacted by this problem”. “They will be resolved by the close of play today,” a spokesman said. “We know our customers rely on us, and we apologise for the inconvenience we have caused them,” he added. The bank’s telephone systems were also affected while customers were unable to withdraw money in their branches, which were also affected by the system failure.
A spokesman for the Co-operative Bank, which experienced similar issues, said that its issue was also fixed on Friday afternoon. “We can confirm that our systems are now fully operational and customers should now be able to use their accounts as normal. We would like to apologise for the inconvenience caused by this temporary issue.”
The bank said that there was no connection between the problems at the banks, despite the fact that the Co-operative Bank is about to take on 4.8 million Lloyds customers after agreeing terms to buy 632 Lloyds branches across the UK. Many new Co-operative Bank customers made the switch to the bank following the systems problems at NatWest and Royal Bank of Scotland. The bank prides itself on its high scores for customer satisfaction and sees itself as a challenger to the major high street banks.
Angry bank customers took to microblogging site Twitter to complain about the problems. Friday is the busiest day of the week for cash machine withdrawals and many had been left without cash for Friday night drinks or weekend plans.
OliviaCreaven complained: “#LloydsTSB this is disgusting! No access to any money just before the weekend!!!! Sort it out.”
Justin Wilkinson @slinky1989 said on Twitter “Anyone else having issues with lloyds tsb atm? Card declined everywhere and internet banking not working”. Amy Slade said “Lloyds TSB transactions are down. All accounts frozen. Same thing that happened to RBS #givememymoney #banks. Social media consultant Lucinda Castiles said “Lloyds bank is no longer fit for purpose. Its regular computer glitches are now becoming unacceptable to businesses.”
Customer Gareth Baines said Lloyds & Co-Op hit by computer troubles. Proving computer systems akin to the abacus aren’t fit for modern day banking”.
bank raid coming ???
https://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/cybercrime-gang-recruiting-botmasters-large-scale-mitm-attacks-american-banks-100412
October 4, 2012, 12:15PM
Cybercrime Gang Recruiting Botmasters for Large-Scale MiTM Attacks on American Banks
6 Comments
A slew of major American banks, some already stressed by a stream of DDoS attacks carried out over the past 10 days, may soon have to brace themselves for a large-scale coordinated attack bent on pulling off fraudulent wire transfers.
RSA’s FraudAction research team has been monitoring underground chatter and has put together various clues to deduce that a cybercrime gang is actively recruiting up to 100 botmasters to participate in a complicated man-in-the-middle hijacking scam using a variant of the proprietary Gozi Trojan.
This is the first time a private cybercrime organization has recruited outsiders to participate in a financially motivated attack, said Mor Ahuvia, cybercrime communications specialist for RSA FraudAction. The attackers are promising their recruits a cut of the profits, and are requiring an initial investment in hardware and training in how to deploy the Gozi Prinimalka Trojan, Ahuvia added. Also, the gang will only share executable files with their partners, and will not give up the Trojan’s compilers, keeping the recruits dependent on the gang for updates
Generally, cybercrime gangs deploy as few as five individual botmasters to help in successful campaigns; with this kind of scale, banks could be facing up 30 times the number of compromised machines and fraudulent transfers, if the campaign is successful.
“This Trojan is not well known. This is not SpyEye or Citadel; it’s not available for everyone to buy,” Ahuvia said. “Security vendors and antivirus signatures are less likely to catch it or be familiar with it. It will be tricky for vendors to detect and block it. This gang is keeping a tight hold on the compiler. By only giving up executable files, they can control how any antivirus signatures are in the wild and keep unique signatures to a minimum.”
As many as 30 banks have been targeted, many of them well known and high profile, Ahuvia said. RSA said the gang is targeting American banks because of past success in beating their defenses, as well as a lack of two-factor authentication required for wire transfers.Some European banks, for example, require consumers to use two-factor authentication. She added that RSA FraudAction was unsure how far along the recruitment campaign had gone, or when the attacks would launch.
“There is the chance that once we’ve gone public, they may abandon their plans because there’s too much buzz around it,” Ahuvia said. “On the other hand, I don’t think anything we know will have such a dramatic effect on them. There are so many Trojans available and so many points of failure in security that could go wrong, that they’d still have some chance of success.”
RSA’s researchers were able to make the connection to the Gozi Prinimalka Trojan, which has been in circulation since 2008 and responsible for $5 million in fraud-related losses. Prinimalka is similar to the Gozi Trojan in technical and operational aspects, RSA said, leading to speculation the HangUp Team, which was tied to previous Gozi attacks, is behind this attack as well. Prinimalka is Russian for the word “receive” and is a folder name in every URL patch given by this particular gang to its crimeware servers.
Prinimalka uses the same bot-to-server communication pattern and URL trigger list as Gozi, RSA said. But deployment of the two Trojans is different: Gozi writes a single DLL file to bots upon deployment, while Prinimalka writes two, an executable file and a DAT file which reports to the command and control server.
Once the Trojan is launched, the botmaster fires up a virtual machine synching module. The module then duplicates the victim’s computer, including identifiable features such as time zone, screen resolution, cookies, browser type and version, and software identification, RSA said. This allows the botmaster to impersonate the victim’s machine and access their accounts. Access is carried out over a SOCKS proxy connection installed on the victim’s machine, RSA said.
The cloned virtual system then can move about on the genuine IP address of the compromised machine when accessing the bank website. Taking it a step further, the attackers deploy VoIP phone flooding software that will prevent the victim from receiving a confirmation call or text alerting them to unusual transfer activity, RSA said.
“They are looking for this to be a quick campaign,” Ahuvia said. “They want to make as much as they can until the banks and users harden their systems. They want to cash out quickly.”
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9232117/Cybercriminals_plot_massive_banking_Trojan_attack?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
Cybercriminals plot massive banking Trojan attack
Gang plans to use sophisticated malware to initiate illegal wire transfers, RSA says
October 5, 2012 03:49 PM ET
Computerworld - An international gang of cyber crooks is plotting a major campaign to steal money from the online accounts of thousands of consumers at 30 or more major U.S. banks, security firm RSA warned.
In an advisory Thursday, RSA said it has information suggesting the gang plans to unleash a little-known Trojan program to infiltrate computers belonging to U.S. banking customers and to use the hijacked machines to initiate fraudulent wire transfers from their accounts.
If successful, the effort could turn out to be one of the largest organized banking-Trojan operations to date, Mor Ahuvia, cybercrime communications specialist with RSA's FraudAction team, said today. The gang is now recruiting about 100 botmasters, each of whom would be responsible for carrying out Trojan attacks against U.S. banking customers in return for a share of the loot, she said.
Each botmaster will be backed by an "investor" who will provide money to buy the hardware and software needed for the attacks, Ahuvia said.
"This is the first time we are seeing a financially motivated cyber crime operation being orchestrated at this scale," Ahivia said. "We have seen DDoS attacks and hacking before. But we have never seen it being organized at this scale."
RSA's warning comes at a time when U.S. banks are already on high alert. Over the past two weeks, the online operations of several major banks, including JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo were disrupted by what appeared to be coordinated denial-of-service attacks.
A little-known group called "Cyber fighters of Izz ad-din Al qassam" claimed credit for the attacks, but some security experts think a nation may have been behind the campaign because of the scale and organized nature of the attacks.
In mid-September, the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC) warned banks to be on guard against cyberattackers seeking to steal employee network login credentials to conduct extensive wire transfer fraud. Specifically, the alert warned banks to watch out for hackers using spam, phishing emails, Remote Access Trojans and keystroke loggers to try and pry loose bank employee usernames and passwords.
FS-ISAC also noted that the FBI had seen a new trend where cyber criminals use stolen bank employee credentials to transfer hundreds of thousands of dollars from customer accounts to overseas locations.
Over the past few years, cyber crooks have siphoned off millions of dollars from small businesses, school districts and local governments by stealing online usernames and passwords and using those credentials to make the transfers.
The latest discussion suggests that they now have individual consumer accounts in their crosshairs, Ahuvia said, warning that the gang plans to attempt to infiltrate computers in the U.S. with a little known Trojan malware program called Gozi Prinimalka.
The malware is an updated version of a much older banking Trojan, Gozi, which was used by cyber criminals to steal millions of dollars from U.S. banks. The group's plan apparently is to plant the Trojan program on numerous websites and to infect computers when users visit those sites.
The Trojan is triggered when the user of an infected computer types out certain words -- such as the name of a specific bank -- into a URL string.
Unlike the original Gozi, the new version is capable not only of communicating with a central command-and-control server but also of duplicating the victim's PC settings. The Trojan essentially supports a virtual machine cloning feature that can duplicate the infected PC's screen resolutions, cookies, time zone, browser type and version and other settings. That allow the attacker to access a victim's bank website using a computer that appears to have the infected PC's real IP address and other settings, Ahuvia said.
"Impersonated victims' accounts will thus be accessed via a SOCKS proxy connection installed on their infected PCs, enabling the cloned virtual system to take on the genuine IP address when accessing the bank's website," she said in her alert.
Victims of fraudulent wire transfers will not immediately know of the theft because the gang plans on using VoIP flooding software to prevent victims from getting bank notifications on their mobile devices, she added.
Consumers need to ensure that their browsers are properly updated to protect against drive by downloads, she said. They also need to watch for any suspicious behavior or transactions on their accounts.
RSA has also notified U.S. law enforcement and its own FraudAction Global Blocking Network about the threat, she said. Banks, meanwhile, should consider implementing stronger authentication procedures and anomaly detection tools for spotting unusual wire transfers.
and.....
THE END OF THE LINE: QE∞, FALSE FLAGS, BANK RUNS, PRICE CONTROLS & MARTIAL LAW IN AMERICA
And is a banking crisis being planned to cover the Libyan debacle ????
http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2012/10/bombshell-clinton-directed-false-flag-in-benghazi-to-instigate-ww-iii-in-middle-east-2475654.html
Clinton Directed False Flag in Benghazi to Instigate WW III in Middle East
US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, is trying to buy time after having been questioned about the planned attack and coordinated US-sponsored al-Qaeda use to facilitate the murder of the late US Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
Except, there was no US Embassy in Benghazi. There was a “diplomatic office” or CIA-compound which was burned to the ground. The nearest US Embassy to the area is in Tripoli.
Stevens, hardly being a US Ambassador, but rather a gunrunner for the behind the scenes terroristic attacks by the Saudi Arabian nation on the Islamic world. Saudi Arabia adheres to Salafism, an extremist form of Islam that want all other forms of the religion wiped off the map. Stevens was ultimately killed by the same group he had provided guns and other armory for when they were employed by the US to commit the false flag attack on the CIA-compound in Benghazi.
The Government Accountability Office has threatened in a recent report to evaluate Clinton’s role in the attack. Diplomatic Security, which is the responsibility of the US State Department, is compromised if Clinton will allow coerced attacks using US-operatives masquerading as Islamic terrorists for the purpose of committing a flase flag to instigate war with Middle Eastern nations.
Clinton, trying to appear to be concerned about the event, vowed publicly to “find those responsible for the attack.” She said: “There are continuing questions about what exactly happened in Benghazi on that night three weeks ago. We will not rest until we answer those questions and until we track down the terrorists who killed our people.”
However, Clinton had connections to the orchestrated bombing that occurred on the anniversary of September 11th terrorist attacks where al-Qaeda was used as a scapegoat for the deaths of thousands of American citizens in one of the biggest state-sponsored false flags in US history.
Coinciding with Stevens’ death multiple waves of manufactured Muslim uprisings seemed to validate the terrorist attack. A US-funded film was created with the assistance of an FBI-informant who just happened to be an Israeli citizen. Over 100 Jewish donors gave money to have this “wag the dog” trailer produced so that the Islamic riots would have a purpose.
Creating spin to further convolute the issue, Clinton remarked: “We have a lot of work to do to give complete and accurate responses to all the questions and statements that are swirling out there. Let’s establish all the facts before we jump to any conclusions.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was deployed to Tripoli, where the actual US Embassy is located. The crime scene in Benghazi was left to be destroyed by CIA-operatives dressed up as rioters to contaminate the evidence.
The State Department claims that cryptic warnings of an impending attack on Benghazi was relayed, yet devoid of a time frame and therefore ignored. In response, Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and Jason Chaffetz, House Representative of Utah are demanding an investigation and that Clinton explain the actions of the State Department in the time up and until the coordinated attack.
According to the letter from Issa to Clinton: “Based on information provided to the Committee by individuals with direct knowledge of events in Libya, the attack that claimed the ambassador’s life was the latest in a long line of attacks on Western diplomats and officials in Libya in the months leading up to September 11, 2012. It was clearly never, as Administration officials once insisted, the result of a popular protest,” the committee’s chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and subcommittee chairman, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, write. “In addition, multiple U.S. federal government officials have confirmed to the Committee that, prior to the September 11 attack, the U.S. mission in Libya made repeated requests for increased security in Benghazi. The mission in Libya, however, was denied these resources by officials in Washington.”
Stevens, having no idea that he was about to be sacrificed by the US government for the sake of a false flag attack, was not concerned about utilizing security in the days before the bombing. In fact, Clinton authorized the security to be lessened in Benghazi and the US Marines guarding the US Embassy in Tripoli to be disarmed.
Clinton wrote back to Issa, saying: “I appreciate that you and your committee are deeply interested in finding out what happened leading up to and during the attacks in Benghazi, and are looking for ways to prevent it from happening again. I share that commitment.” She asked Issa to allow that any summations of the event at Benghazi be held off until November, after the elections, or perhaps into 2013 because witnesses were being questioned at the State Department’s Office of Legislative Affairs. This must be a request to defer the issue until Clinton and their lackeys can get their stories straight.
To keep the truth that the attack on Benghazi was a US-backed false flag, documents at the compound were destroyed just prior to the attack. This act mirrors the sudden shredding of documents at the US Embassy in Beirut that destroyed classified information. These documents showed the names of Libyans who were working with the US as well as oil contracts and information regarding the coordinated attack. Clinton was in contact with the al-Qaeda operatives who attacked the compound in Benghazi and murdered Stevens just 48 hours before the event was enacted.
Publicly, the US State Department denies this fact by refusing to comment. The compound in Benghazi that was burned by al-Qaeda operatives was looted to make sure all evidence was removed before the press, residents of Libya or any official could gain access to the buildings. The compound in Benghazi was a safe-house that Stevens would have fled to during an emergency situation. Knowing this, Clinton combined fake revolutionaries with CIA-operatives to create a situation that could be spun to serve the purpose of the US and Israel in destroying the sovereign nations in the Middle East.
Last month Clinton admitted that al-Qaeda was used in the attack in Benghazi. Speaking to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Clinton stated that al-Qaeda was employed to facilitate a manufactured threat of Islamic extremism in the region. Clinton explains: “Now with a larger safe haven and increased freedom to maneuver, terrorists are seeking to extend their reach and their networks in multiple directions. And they are working with other violent extremists to undermine the democratic transitions under way in North Africa, as we tragically saw in Benghazi.”
In line with the US version of the story, Israeli “intelligence” reported that “This attack , along with the one in Egypt, is a reminder of the Iranian invasion of a U.S. embassy in Tehran that led to a lengthy hostage crisis which brought down the [President Jimmy] Carter administration.”
and is the Intel Community waging war against the State Department ???
Revolt of the Spooks
Intelligence officials angered by Obama administration cover up of intelligence on Iranian, al Qaeda surge in Egypt and Libya
The White House / AP Images
BY:
Weeks before the presidential election, President Barack Obama’s administration faces mounting opposition from within the ranks of U.S. intelligence agencies over what careerofficers say is a “cover up” of intelligence information about terrorism in North Africa.
Intelligence held back from senior officials and the public includes numerous classified reports revealing clear Iranian support for jihadists throughout the tumultuous North Africa and Middle East region, as well as notably widespread al Qaeda penetration into Egypt and Libya in the months before the deadly Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.
“The Iranian strategy is two-fold: upping the ante for the Obama administration’s economic sanctions against Iran and perceived cyber operations against Iran’s nuclear weapons program by conducting terror attacks on soft U.S. targets and cyber attacks against U.S. financial interests,” said one official, speaking confidentially.
The Iranian effort also seeks to take the international community’s spotlight off Iran’s support for its Syrian ally.
Two House Republicans, Reps. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) and Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah), stated in a letter sent this week to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that officials “with direct knowledge of events in Libya” revealed that the Benghazi attack was part of a string of terror attacks and not a spontaneous uprising against an anti-Muslim video produced in the U.S. The lawmakers have scheduled congressional hearings for Oct. 10.
Susan Phalen, spokeswoman for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers (R., Mich.), said the panel is “reviewing all relevant intelligence and the actions of the [intelligence community], as would be expected of the oversight committee.”
But she noted: “At this point in time it does not appear that there was an intelligence failure.”
Intelligence officials pointed to the statement issued Sept. 28 by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) that raised additional concern about the administration’s apparent mishandling of intelligence. The ODNI statement said that “in the immediate aftermath, there was information that led us to assess that the attack began spontaneously following protests earlier that day at our embassy in Cairo.”
Officials say the ODNI’s false information was either knowingly disseminated or was directed to be put out by senior policy officials for political reasons, since the statement was contradicted by numerous intelligence reports at the time of the attack indicating it was al Qaeda-related terrorism.
Among the obvious signs of terrorism was the arms used by the attackers, who were equipped with rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles.
A U.S. intelligence official who disputes the idea of an Obama administration coverup said: “Intelligence professionals follow the information wherever it leads.”
“When there isn’t definitive information, it makes sense to be cautious,” the official said. “There has never been a dogmatic approach to analyzing what happened in Benghazi. Staying open to alternative explanations—and continually refining assessments as new and credible information surfaces—is part of the intelligence business.”
Officials with access to intelligence reports, based on both technical spying and human agents, said specific reporting revealed an alarming surge in clandestine al Qaeda activity months before the attack in Benghazi.
Yet the Obama administration sought to keep the information from becoming public to avoid exposing what the officials say is a Middle East policy failure by Obama.
Officials said that the administration appeared to engage in a disinformation campaign aimed at distancing the president personally during the peak of the presidential election campaign from the disaster in Benghazi, where numerous warning of an attack were ignored, resulting in the deaths of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other officials.
The first part of the apparent campaign, officials said, was the false information provided to U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, who appeared on Sunday television shows after the attack to say the event was a “spontaneous” response to an anti-Muslim video trailer posted online.
Officials said Rice was given the false information to use in media appearances in order to promote the excuse that the obscure video was the cause of the attack, and not the Islamic concept of jihad.
Rice’s claims provoked concern inside the U.S. intelligence community that intelligence about what was going on in Libya and the region was being suppressed, and led to a series of news disclosures about what would later be confirmed as an al Qaeda attack using the group Ansar al Sharia.
After Rice’s incorrect statements, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney repeated the false assessment of the Benghazi attack.
The final element of the campaign involved comments by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was the first to give a partial explanation of the intelligence when she said al Qaeda terrorists operating from Mali were possible culprits in the Benghazi attack.
“What she failed to mention was the cooperation of Iran and Egypt in supporting jihadists in Libya,” the official said, who added the events would be investigated in an apparent effort to stave off internal critics in government.
That has led to delays in getting FBI and other U.S. investigators into Benghazi, raising concerns that some in the White House wanted to delay the FBI’s efforts to uncover evidence about the attack.
The FBI did not reach Benghazi until Thursday, ostensibly over concerns about the lack of security to protect them.
“The Obama Administration is afraid to admit al Qaeda is running rampant throughout the region because it would expose the truth instead of what President Obama so pompously spouted during the Democratic Convention” said the official.
The president said during his nomination acceptance speech that “al Qaeda is on the path to defeat,” an assertion contradicted by the group’s rise in the region.
The administration, in particular, wants to keep hidden solid intelligence showing that the terrorist group behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans is now flourishing under the Muslim Brotherhood regime of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi.
Egypt was among the locations of Obama’s 2009 so-called “apology” tour, when the president criticized past U.S. policies based on what he said was “fear and anger” that prompted actions “contrary to our ideals.” He also promised “a new beginning” for the U.S. and the world’s Muslims and a radical shift in U.S. policy.
The rise of Islamists in the region instead has produced a surge in anti-American protests and riots, culminating in the terrorist attack on the Benghazi consulate.
Recent intelligence reports show that Egypt’s Al-Azhar University in Cairo is emerging as a covert base for al Qaeda organizational and training activities for a jihadi network consisting of many nationalities.
The Morsi government has turned a blind eye to both the increased jihadist activity and Iran’s support for it in the region, particularly in Libya and Syria.
However, the administration is keeping the intelligence under wraps to avoid highlighting Obama’s culpability for the democratic aspirations of the Arab Spring being hijacked by Islamists sympathetic to al Qaeda’s terrorist ideology.
Intelligence officials said in Egypt—currently ruled by the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood—one of the key al Qaeda organizers has been identified as Muhammad al-Zawahiri, brother of al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. Muhammad al-Zawahiri was released by Morsi in March after having been sentenced to death for terrorist acts in Egypt.
In recent months Egypt-based al Qaeda terrorists were dispatched to Libya and Syria, where they have been covertly infiltrating Libyan militia groups and Syrian opposition forces opposing the Bashar al Assad regime.
In addition to Egyptian government backing, intelligence from the region has revealed that operatives from Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, the main spy service, and from Iran’s Quds Force paramilitary group and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps are also facilitating al Qaeda terrorists based in Egypt that are preparing to conduct operations to increase instability throughout the region.
The intelligence revealing that al Qaeda is growing in Egypt is said by officials to be one of the reasons behind Obama’s decision to cancel a meeting in New York with Morsi during the U.N. General Assembly meeting last month.
Other news outlets in recent days have revealed new internal U.S. government information that contrasts sharply or contradicts official Obama administration statements that appear designed to minimize the rise of Egyptian-origin terrorism.
The Daily Beast reported Sept. 28 that intercepted communications revealed terrorists belonging to the group Ansar al Sharia were in contact with the group Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb regarding the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and others.
Communications intercepts revealed that the terrorists in Benghazi bragged about the attack, the news outlet reported.
A group called Ansar al Sharia in Egypt was formed in April 2011 and advocates violent jihad and support for al Qaeda.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that terrorists linked to a former Guantanamo prison inmate, Muhammad Jamal Abu Ahmad, was one of the individuals who attacked diplomatic facilities in Libya on Sept. 11, and that intelligence reports showed some of the terrorists in the attack may have been trained in Libyan desert camps.
and......
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/10/05/rice_on_benghazi_blame_the_intelligence_community?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+foreignpolicy%2Fthecable+%28The+Cable%29
Posted By Josh Rogin 
Friday, October 5, 2012 - 6:49 PM 
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U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice told Republican senators that her televised statements last month on the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi were based entirely on information she was given by the intelligence community.
"In my Sept. 16 Sunday show appearances, I was asked to provide the administration's latest understanding of what happened in Benghazi," Rice wrote in a Thursday letter to Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC). "In answering, I relied solely and squarely on the information the intelligence community provided to me and other senior U.S. officials, including through the daily intelligence briefings that present the latest reporting and analysis to policy makers. This information represented the intelligence community's best, current assessment as of the date of my television appearances, and I went out of my way to ensure it was consistent with the information that was being given to Congress."
Rice was responding to a Sept. 26 letter from the GOP senators in which they accused Rice of jumping the gun and disseminating false information about the attack. The letter quotes Rice's comments selectively, leaving out the context where she cautioned that the information was based on initial assessments. Rice emphasized in her response that she had caveated her remarks in her TV appearances.
She also pointed to a Sept. 28 statement from Shawn Turner, spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, admitting that the intelligence community had changed its view of the attack.
"As the Intelligence Community collects and analyzes more information related to the attack, our understanding of the event continues to evolve," Turner said. "As we learned more about the attack, we revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists."
For McCain, Johnson, Ayotte, and Graham, Rice's deflection of blame is not enough to absolve the administration of responsibility for mistakes before and after the attack. They also say they doubt the intelligence community's true views were what Rice and Turner claimed.
"Elements of the intelligence community apparently told the administration within hours of the attack that militants connected with al Qaeda were involved, yet Ambassador Rice claims her comments five days later reflected the 'best' and 'current' assessment of the intelligence community. Either the Obama administration is misleading Congress and the American people, or it is blaming the entire failure on the intelligence community," the senators said in a joint response to Rice's letter today.
"Ambassador Rice claims the administration launched a 'comprehensive' effort to determine what happened in Benghazi, but the administration failed to secure the scene of the terrorist attack for three weeks -- allowing evidence and sensitive information to be compromised and destroyed. From beginning to end, the administration's behavior in the wake of the attack indicates a breathtaking level of incompetence and suggests an intent to deliberately mislead Congress and the American people."
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