US Senators see Benghazi attack footage

WASHINGTON: US senators got their first look Thursday at dramatic video footage of the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi as they probed the government's response to the deadly September 11 assault in Libya.

Four Americans were killed in the attack including the US ambassador, Chris Stevens, and President Barack Obama's administration is under fire over security at the consulate and for its evolving narrative about the assault.

"The film is a composite from a number of sources," said Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, after she and her colleagues attended a closed door viewing.

"It is real time and it begins before the incident started and it goes through the incident and the exodus," she added.

The deputy chairman of the panel, Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss, told reporters that the hearing with US intelligence officials made clear that errors were committed.

"We know mistakes were made and we have to learn from that," he said.

Chambliss said there would eventually be public hearings and "the American people are going to have the opportunity to see the questions asked and get the answers to questions that they have had since September 11th of this year."

Several congressional hearings, most of them closed to the public, are probing the Benghazi killings this week.

The CIA's ex-director David Petraeus, the former general who stepped down last week after admitting to an extramarital affair with his biographer, testifies at two of them Friday.

Feinstein said senators are looking forward to hearing from him, among other reasons because he has been to Tripoli to interview people about the attack on the consulate.

CNN, citing a source close to Petraeus and familiar with his thinking on the issue, said the retired four-star general would "set the record straight and tell everything he knows."

The former CIA chief will say while he knew "almost immediately" that Al-Qaeda-linked Ansar al-Sharia militants were to blame, there was "confusion" about the assault, with 20 intelligence reports linking it to a video deemed insulting to Islam.

Republicans have seized on the account of Benghazi that the US envoy to the United Nations, Susan Rice, presented on Sunday talk shows five days after the attack.

At that point, she said the incident stemmed from a "spontaneous" reaction to a raid on the US embassy in Cairo by extremists and an anti-Muslim video made on US soil.

The administration subsequently revised its position to say that the attack was carried out by militants linked to Al-Qaeda, and State Department and FBI probes are currently under way to find out what happened.

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