Is Susan Rice contradicting Libyan officials? [View all]

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WASHINGTON — A deadly assault on a U.S. consulate in Libya was a spontaneous reaction to an anti-Muslim video, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said Sunday, even as Libya's president insisted the attackers spent months preparing and carefully choosing their date – the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Unnerved by the rapidly escalating raid on Tuesday that claimed the life of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans, the Obama administration last week launched an investigation into whether terrorist groups had exploited outrage over an anti-Muslim video to trigger an attack long in the works.

But Ambassador Susan Rice said evidence gathered so far shows no indication of a premeditated or coordinated strike. She said the attack in Benghazi, powered by mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, appeared to be a copycat of demonstrations that had erupted hours earlier outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, spurred by a YouTube film attributed to a California man mocking the Prophet Muhammad.

"It seems to have been hijacked, let us say, by some individual clusters of extremists who came with heavier weapons," Rice said, adding that such weaponry is easy to come by in post-revolutionary Libya.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20120916/us-us-prophet-film/

Film protests were cover for two-part militant attack, Libyan security official says

BENGHAZI, Libya -- The attack that killed four Americans in Libya, including the U.S. ambassador, was an organized two-part operation by heavily armed militants that included a precisely timed raid on a supposedly secret safe house just as Libyan and U.S. security forces were arriving to rescue evacuated consulate staff, a senior Libyan security official said on Thursday.

Wanis el-Sharef, eastern Libya's deputy interior minister, said the attacks Tuesday night were suspected to have been timed to mark the 9/11 anniversary, with militants using civilian protests of an anti-Islam film as cover for their actions. Infiltrators within the security forces may have tipped off militants to the safe house location, he said.

He said an unspecified number of militants suspected of taking part in the attack have been arrested and that others were being closely monitored by police to see whether they are linked to a group. He refused to elaborate.

Ambassador Chris Stevens and another American were killed in the consulate during the initial violence, as plainclothes Libyan security were evacuating the consulate's staff to the safe house about a mile away, el-Sharef said. The second assault took place several hours later and targeted the safe house -- a villa inside the grounds of the city's equestrian club -- killing two Americans and wounding a number of Libyans and Americans.

http://www.mercurynews.com/nation-world/ci_21535538/film-protests-were-cover-two-part-militant-attack

Can both these accounts be correct or has the Libyan account been deemed to be incorrect? Or are they just ahead of us in the investigation?