CNN

September 12th, 2012

Rep. Rogers on Libya attack: It certainly appears that the significance of this date was important.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) spoke with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer about the death of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three others today in Libya. A highlight from the interview is after the jump.

Please credit all usage of the information to CNN’s The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer


Transcript Highlight
THIS IS A RUSH FDCH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED

BLITZER: Was there any chatter, as they say, or any indication that something like this was about to happen at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi?

ROGERS: You know, we didn’t get the warning you would hope to get in an event like this so we could have prevented the loss of life.  And what a horrible tragedy for losing a U.S. ambassador, Mr. Stevens.

We think that we’ll be able to go back and take a look.  Again, we’re going to rescrub all of that.  That’s what unfortunately we’ll need to do to make sure that we didn’t miss anything.  But I don’t believe so.  I don’t believe there was some smoking gun that was missed leading up to this.

And there wasn’t that kind of chatter that would lead you to believe that this event was happening on this day with this specific target.  I didn’t see anything like that.  I don’t think our intelligence services have.  But we’re going back to make that scrub, to make sure we understand fully what the picture was leading up to the event and subsequent to the event.

BLITZER: Because it does look, at least based on everything I’ve heard, as a pretty sophisticated assassination effort to kill the United States ambassador.  So here’s the question: was it time to coincide with the eleventh anniversary of 9/11?

ROGERS: I’m an old FBI guy, Wolf.  And I got to tell you, I don’t believe in a lot of coincidences all in the same day.  So, it certainly looks that way to me.  There are differences of opinion as we stand here today.  Remember, we’re going to have more details.  This story will take — we’ll understand all the pieces to this puzzle within days of the event.

But right now, it certainly appears to me that the significance of this date was important.  We knew that al Qaeda for years had a fixation on the 9/11 date since the original attack on the United States.  So, it wouldn’t be implausible to think that they could plan an event.

And by the way, an event like this doesn’t just come together. It’s not something you throw together in a day and say we’re going run out to do this.  This was a very well-sophisticated coordinated event.  I got to believe this was timed to happen on this date.

But we don’t know that for sure as of today.  That’s Mike Rogers looking at what we know from history and the facts I’ve seen making that conclusion.
BLITZER: Was there any chatter, as they say, or any indication that something like this was about to happen at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi?

ROGERS: You know, we didn’t get the warning you would hope to get in an event like this so we could have prevented the loss of life.  And what a horrible tragedy for losing a U.S. ambassador, Mr. Stevens.

We think that we’ll be able to go back and take a look.  Again, we’re going to rescrub all of that.  That’s what unfortunately we’ll need to do to make sure that we didn’t miss anything.  But I don’t believe so.  I don’t believe there was some smoking gun that was missed leading up to this.

And there wasn’t that kind of chatter that would lead you to believe that this event was happening on this day with this specific target.  I didn’t see anything like that.  I don’t think our intelligence services have.  But we’re going back to make that scrub, to make sure we understand fully what the picture was leading up to the event and subsequent to the event.

BLITZER: Because it does look, at least based on everything I’ve heard, as a pretty sophisticated assassination effort to kill the United States ambassador.  So here’s the question: was it time to coincide with the eleventh anniversary of 9/11?

ROGERS: I’m an old FBI guy, Wolf.  And I got to tell you, I don’t believe in a lot of coincidences all in the same day.  So, it certainly looks that way to me.  There are differences of opinion as we stand here today.  Remember, we’re going to have more details.  This story will take — we’ll understand all the pieces to this puzzle within days of the event.

But right now, it certainly appears to me that the significance of this date was important.  We knew that al Qaeda for years had a fixation on the 9/11 date since the original attack on the United States.  So, it wouldn’t be implausible to think that they could plan an event.

And by the way, an event like this doesn’t just come together. It’s not something you throw together in a day and say we’re going run out to do this.  This was a very well-sophisticated coordinated event.  I got to believe this was timed to happen on this date.

But we don’t know that for sure as of today.  That’s Mike Rogers looking at what we know from history and the facts I’ve seen making that conclusion.

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