WASHINGTON — Rep. Paul Ryan joined Republican senators yesterday in calling for an investigation into what the Obama administration knew about the deadly Sept. 11 attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
“The response was slow. It was confused. It was inconsistent,” the Republican vice-presidential candidate said on “Fox News Sunday.” “They first said it was a YouTube video [of an anti-Islam movie] and spontaneous mob. Now we know that it was a planned terrorist attack.”
Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), a member of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), of the Senate Armed Services Committee, also said they want a probe.
“It was either willful ignorance or abysmal intelligence to think that people come to spontaneous demonstrations with heavy weapons, mortars, and the attack goes on for hours,” McCain told CNN’s “State of the Union” yesterday.
The call by Ryan comes after Rep. Peter King (R-LI) demanded on Friday the resignation of Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice for promoting the spontaneous-attack theory.
But White House adviser David Plouffe defended Rice yesterday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“Obviously, you are going to know more two weeks after an event than a week after an event,” he said.
The attack killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.