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FBI Team Spends 12 Hours In Benghazi

Three weeks after the attack on the U.S. consulate that left U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead, a team of FBI investigators got to the site in Benghazi, Libya, on Wednesday and departed today after about 12 hours on the ground, The Associated Press reports.

The BBC writes that an FBI spokeswoman "says the team went to 'all the relevant locations' in Libya's second city in one day, but did not specify what they had found."

According to CNN:

"A U.S. military security force accompanied the FBI team to the site and provided security for them as they traveled there. Officials said it was an indication of the ongoing security concerns in the region."

The AP adds that:

"U.S. intelligence and special operations forces have focused on at most "one or two individuals" in the Libya-based extremist group Ansar al-Shariah who may have had something to do with the attack, according to a U.S. counterterrorism official. But that official and two others said there was no definitive evidence linking even those individuals to the attack. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment on the investigation publicly.

"Members of Ansar al-Shariah were recorded making boastful calls to other militants after the attack, including to members of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, which is suspected of having a role in the attack, one of the officials said. But that's common in the aftermath of any such attack, when different militant groups try to claim credit to build their own stature in the region, the official said.

"So far, U.S. intelligence has found no evidence showing communication between militants prior to the attack, which took place on the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S."

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.