Fact-checking the Benghazi attacks

By Glenn Kessler, WashPost, Updated: May 12 at 6:00 am

“Your viewers would still have the same unanswered questions as we have. Why our security profile was so low on the anniversary 9/11? Why we didn’t have any assets moving during the siege itself and why the government can’t be trusted to answer your questions completely and accurately in the aftermath?” – Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), Fox News interview, May 5, 2013

In the National Journal recently, columnist Ron Fournier put it bluntly: “Everyone’s Lying to You About Benghazi.” He said Americans were faced with a choice of two evils — White House spin and GOP conspiracy theories. Having examined this issue repeatedly since it first burst into the news, The Fact Checker could not agree more. Neither side has covered itself with glory here.

With all due respect to Rep. Gowdy, the chairman of the new select House committee on the Benghazi attacks, many of the questions he posed have already been answered — and fact-checked. Meanwhile, the White House has done itself no favors with aggressive spin on the issue.

As a reader service, we present in chronological order all 14 fact checks we have done on the 2012 tragedy in Libya, in which four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador, were killed on and just after the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. We have completed five fact checks of Republican statements, four fact checks of Democratic claims and five neutral or analytic examinations of the issue.

(More here.)