U.S. intelligence now says Benghazi attack "deliberate and organized"

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top U.S. intelligence authority issued an unusual public statement on Friday declaring it now believed the September 11 attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities inBenghazi, Libya, was a "deliberate and organized terrorist attack."

The statement by the office of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper acknowledged that it represented a change in the U.S. intelligence assessment of how and why the attack happened. During the attack on two U.S. government compounds in the eastern Libyan city, four U.S. personnel, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed.

Shawn Turner, spokesman for Clapper's office, said that in the immediate aftermath of the attack, U.S. agencies came to the view that the Benghazi attack had begun spontaneously after protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo against a short film made in California lampooning the Prophet Mohammad.

Turner said that as U.S. intelligence subsequently 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."

He said it remained "unclear" if any individual or specific group commanded the attack. U.S. agencies nonetheless believe that some of the militants involved in the attack were "linked to groups affiliated with, or sympathetic to al-Qaida."

In an apparent reference to a series of contradictory statements by some top Obama administration officials, Turner said intelligence agencies' "initial assessment" had been passed on "to Executive Branch officials and members of Congress, who used that information to discuss the attack publicly and provide updates as they became available."

One U.S. official familiar with the background to the shifting intelligence assessments said the process of figuring out from scraps of intelligence who perpetrated an event like the Benghazi attack was "imprecise" and "evolving."

Debate over whether militant groups planned the assault or whether the violence resulted from protests against the film insulting Islam has become U.S. election-year fodder. Republican lawmakers have demanded answers about the incident from the Obama administration.

Within hours of the attacks ending, some government sources in Washington were already acknowledging they might well have been planned and organized in advance, and that members of two militant factions, Ansar al Shariah and al Qaeda's North Africa-based affiliate, known as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, may have been involved.

But top administration officials later made public statements that contradicted that assessment.

SHIFTING ASSESSMENTS

On September 14, three days after the attacks, President Barack Obama's press secretary, Jay Carney, said the United States had no evidence the Benghazi attack was planned.

Two days later, Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said preliminary information suggested the attacks were not premeditated and were protests against the anti-Muslim film that provoked demonstrations in Egypt.

On September 19, Carney echoed Rice, saying, "Our belief based on the information we had was that it was the video that caused the unrest in Cairo and the video that — and the unrest in Cairo that helped — that precipitated some of the unrest in Benghazi and elsewhere."

A day later, on September 19, Carney was still insisting, "Based on the information that we had at the time and have to this day, we do not have evidence that it was premeditated."

But that same day, one key administration official moved back toward the assessment that the Benghazi assaults had been organized and intentional.

At a congressional hearing, Matthew Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, part of the National Intelligence Director's office, labeled the assaults a "terrorist attack on our embassy" and said the United States was examining information that people involved in the attack had connections to al Qaeda or its North African affiliate.

By the next day, Carney was asserting it was "self-evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack."

In his statement on Friday, Turner said that while U.S. intelligence agencies now believed the Benghazi attacks were well organized and deliberate, with some involvement of people connected to militant factions, it was not clear if "any group or person exercised overall command and control of the attack, and if extremist group leaders directed their members to participate."

US banks hit by more than a week of cyberattacks

U.S. banks have been buffeted by more than a week of powerful cyberattacks, but the mystery surrounding their perpetrators lingers.

One expert said Friday that he was suspicious of claims of responsibility purportedly made by Islamists angry at an anti-Muslim movie made in the United States, explaining that the widely-circulated Internet postings might have been an attempt to deflect attention from the true culprit.

"In the intelligence world, we call that a 'false flag,'" said Mike Smith, whose Web security company Akamai has helped analyze some of the attacks.

The postings, published to the Web earlier this month, suggested that an obscure Islamist group had taken revenge on American financial institutions for the "Innocence of Muslims," a low-budget U.S. film that ridiculed Muhammad, revered by Muslims as the last of God's prophets.

Since then at least half a dozen banks — including the Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Citigroup — have witnessed traffic surges and disruptions. Not all have confirmed they were the victims of an online onslaught, but such surges are a hallmark of denial-of-service attacks, which work by drowning target websites with streams of junk data.

Such attacks are fairly common and generally don't compromise sensitive data or do any lasting damage. Still, they can be a huge headache for companies that rely on their websites to interact with customers.

Most say the recent spate of attacks has been unusually powerful. PNC bank, which was hit on Thursday, has never seen such a strong surge in traffic, spokesman Fred Solomon said in a telephone interview. Smith said he estimated the flow of data at 60 to 65 gigabits per second.

Smith said the profile and power of the attack made it an unlikely fit for the religious youth that the Internet postings called upon to join in the anti-U.S. campaign. He explained that politically-motivated hackers — often called hacktivists — usually flood the Web with appeals for support and post links to software that can turn followers' personal computers into crude cyberweapons.

Twitter and online chat rooms then explode with activity, as casual supporters pile in to coordinate attacks.

"You're not seeing that with this particular set of attacks," Smith said. "At the same time ... the attack traffic is fairly homogeneous. It's not this wide cornucopia of attacks that's coming at you that you see with a hacktivist attack."

So who is behind the campaign?

Cybercriminals often use denial-of-service attacks to shake down smaller websites, but major U.S. banks make unlikely targets for a protection racket.

Could a state actor be at play? U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman, without offering any proof, said he believed the assaults were carried out by Iran in retaliation for tightened economic sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies.

Smith demurred when asked who could be behind the campaign, although he said there were "only a handful of groups out there that have the technical ability or incentive" to carry it out.

In any case, the online attacks appeared to be easing. Solomon, the PNC bank spokesman, said while traffic remained heavy Friday the flow was gradually returning to normal.

Doug Johnson, with the American Bankers Association, echoed that assessment.

Nuclear site ends security contract following nun's break-in

Reuters/Reuters - An aerial view of the Y-12 Plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee is seen in this U.S. government handout photo released on August 3, 2012. REUTERS/National Nuclear Security Administration/Handout

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The government's "Fort Knox" of weapons-grade uranium storage has ended a contract with a unit of an international security firm two months after an 82-year-old nun and other nuclear activists broke into the site.

The managing contractor at the Oak Ridge, Tennessee, site, B&W Y-12, a unit of Babcock & Wilcox Co, said late on Friday it will terminate the contract with WSI Oak Ridge on October 1. WSI is owned by security firm G4S, which was at the center of a dispute over security at this year's London Olympic Games.

The move came after the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), an Energy Departmentagency, sent a letter on Friday to B&W Y-12 President Charles Spencer saying it had "grave concerns" about his company and WSI providing security at Y-12, the nation's only site for storing and processing weapons-grade uranium.

The letter recommended that B&W terminate the subcontract with WSI and work with it to take over security operations after the July 28 break-in.

The nun, Megan Rice, and two others cut perimeter fences to reach the outer wall of a building where enriched uranium was stored. The site was shut temporarily after the breach.

An investigation by the Energy Department's inspector general last month found a security camera had been broken for about six months and was part of a backlog of repairs needed for security at the facility.

The NNSA repeated on Saturday that Energy Secretary Steven Chu has said the incident was an important "wake-up call" for the entire nuclear complex.

"The security of our nation's nuclear material is the Department's most important responsibility, and we have no tolerance for federal or contractor personnel who cannot or will not do their jobs," said NNSA spokesman Joshua McConaha.

After the incident the NNSA's top security official and two other federal officials were reassigned. In addition, top officials at WSI were removed and officers associated with the break-in were fired, demoted, or suspended without pay.

WSI's parent company, G4S, found itself the focus of a political and media storm this summer in Britain over outsourcing of security after it failed to provide enough guards for the Olympics.

WSI did not immediately answer a request for comment about the ending of the contract.

It seems few other jobs will be lost over the incident that brought new questions about the government's outsourcing of sensitive security operations.

B&W said in a statement it will offer employment to all Y-12 security police officers and active union workers with WSI Oak Ridge.

The NNSA and Department of Energy are engaged in reviews of security operations from the contractor, to the federal management, to the security model, McConaha said.

The final review will begin after Chu asks outside observers to analyze current protection of nuclear materials and explore more options for protecting the sites.

Chu received a classified review of the Y-12 incident earlier in the week by the department's health, safety, and security office.

(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Biden Blames Bush Administration for Deficit

FORT MYERS, Fla. - Vice President Joe Biden placed the blame for the ballooning deficit on the Bush administration today, arguing that the previous administration saddled the country with the burden of trillions of dollars in debt.

"Let's get serious here! How did we get this debt? Ladies and gentlemen, they put two wars on a credit card. Not paying a penny, not paying a penny, even though I introduced legislation to pay for that war. They voted against it," Biden said at the Wa-Ke Hatchee Park Recreation Center. "Two, they voted for a new entitlement program without paying one penny for it, and that was clear. Number 3, they added another trillion dollars in the tax cut for the very wealthy, so what's the result? These are the facts, folks, these are the facts.

"The result was by the time the reins got turned back over to Barack [Obama] and me, they had doubled the national debt in eight years, doubled the national debt in eight years," Biden added.

Biden recounted that within the first week of being in office, Larry Summers, a top economic adviser to the president, warned newly inaugurated President Obama of the deficit the country faced.

"We were sitting in the oval office, and Larry Summers, the chief economic adviser, and the economic team came in and said 'Mr. President, looking at this year's budget you are going to have a trilliondollar deficit.' He said, 'I haven't done anything yet,'" Biden said. "I'm serious. They said, 'No, Mr. President, the budget they passed, the budget they passed in October of last year guarantees no matter what you do you're going to have a trillion dollar debt this year in the budget.' A trillion dollar deficit to be precise."

Earlier in the week, the Washington Post fact checked President Obama's claim that the Bush administration's policies accounted for 90 percent of the country's current deficit and rated the assertion as false, since the president also pushed spending increases and tax cuts that added to the deficit.

Biden also claimed the Obama administration has proposed a plan that would reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over 10 years and has already decreased the deficit by $1 trillion

"We've already reduced the deficit. In four years, we'll reduce it by another trillion dollars. Ladies and gentlemen look, there's an easy way to do this. We have to make some difficult decisions. We've made them, but we've got to ask the very wealthy to pay more," Biden said.

"President Obama and Vice President Biden have no credibility on reducing our national debt," Amanda Henneberg, a spokeswoman for Romney, responded in a statement. "Over the last four years, the Obama-Biden team has presided over the largest increase in the national debt of any administration in history. And President Obama's latest spending plan is riddled with accounting gimmicks and tax hikes, rather than policies that will get our long-term debt under control. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan will take immediate steps to cut spending and put our nation on track toward a balanced budget."

Biden mocked the GOP's concern about the debt, saying, "I love how they bleed over the national debt," but adding that Republicans would be unwilling to sign onto a deficit reduction plan that would promise $10 in cuts in spending in exchange for a dollar increase in revenue.

The vice president honed in on energy, touting the Obama administration's work as well as highlighting what he believes is the GOP's misunderstanding the role conservation plays in energy exploration and expansion.

"I love to hear them talk about their energy policy, which is 'drill baby drill,' right? OK, now let me say something about drilling. You all realize that there are more gas and oil rigs working today, pumping today, than all the rest of the rigs in the entire rest of the world. Do you know that? That's a fact. That's why we're importing less than we have in decades, that's why we're in the position we're moving in," Biden said.

"Ladies and gentlemen, there is an exponential, exponential supply of natural gas done right and renewable energy that's here in this country," he said. "That's why we doubled - and they voted against it - and Romney talked against it, we doubled the fuel economy standards for cars and trucks by 2025. That will save 12 billion barrels of oil over the period of time. I don't know how they don't think conservation is part of this. They, they sure don't know it."

Tornado hits fair in Spain, flood deaths reach 10

Associated Press/Sergio Torres - A man to clear muddy water from his house, after heavy rain caused flash floods in the town of Villanueva del Rosario, Malaga, southern Spain, Friday, Sept. 28, 2012. Homes were destroyed and at least one woman was killed. Rescue workers are searching to determine if there are more victims. (AP Photo/Sergio Torres)

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — A tornado swept through a fairground in a Spanish town, knocking down a Ferris wheel and injuring 35 people, while the death toll from flooding in the same southern region of the country rose to 10, authorities said Saturday.

Friday's tornado damaged several rides and cut electricity in the temporary fair set up in the main square of Gandia, according to its town hall website. It said 15 of the injured were seriously hurt, all of whom were treated on site.

Local media reported the fair in Valencia province was closed to the public at the time of a thunderstorm and that all the injured were fair workers.

Just inland from the Mediterranean coastal town, five more victims of Friday's flash floods southwest of Gandia were found overnight. They included a middle-aged woman in the town of Lorca.

Last summer, Lorca was hit by Spain's deadliest earthquakes in more than 50 years, leaving nine dead.

A spokeswoman for the regional government of Andalucia told The Associated Press on Saturday that the heavy downpours and resulting high waters had claimed the lives of five people in the province of Murcia, three in Almeria and two in Malaga.

The spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity in keeping with government policy, said a 52-year-old British woman was missing in Almeria as well as one homeless man. Five people originally declared missing had been found alive.

Local media reported that hundreds of citizens had to be evacuated throughout the region.

The flooding disrupted high-speed train service between Madrid and Valencia, and various regional lines, while bridges and roads were also made impassible.

The heavy rains which started Friday morning were expected to continue throughout Saturday, with the front moving north toward Catalonia and the Balearic Islands.