The events surrounding the deaths of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012, look dramatically different depending on your politics. Republicans tend to see a cover-up and a scandal. Democrats see an attempt to damage President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. A Pew poll suggests that the public is divided as well, with 40 percent saying the administration has been dishonest, 37 percent saying it has told the truth, and 23 percent saying they're not sure. Let's assess what we do and don't know.
1. U.N. Ambassador Susan E. Rice gave a deliberately false account of the attack.
This is ground zero in the alleged scandal. Conspiracy theorists contend the administration covered up evidence that Stevens was killed in an organized terrorist attack because Obama, during the 2012 campaign, claimed he had "decimated" al-Qaida. On Sunday talk shows five days after the attack, Rice gave interviews based on talking points supplied by U.S. intelligence agencies; she suggested that Stevens' death resulted from "spontaneous" protests that spread from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, provoked by a movie trailer lampooning the prophet Muhammad.
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