CIA Disputes Broadwell's Benghazi Comment
The Central Intelligence Agency disputes a theory advanced by author Paula Broadwell that insurgents may have attacked the U.S. consulate and a CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11 in bid to free militants being held there by the agency.
Ms. Broadwell, the woman with whom former Army Gen. David Petraeus is said to have had an extramarital affair that led to his resignation as CIA director on Friday, suggested the rationale for the consulate attack in an address at the University of Denver on Oct. 26.
"I don't know if a lot of you had heard this, but the CIA annex had actually taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner and they think the attack on the consulate was an attempt to get these prisoners back," she said then. "It's still being vetted."
But a CIA spokesman said there were no militant prisoners there, noting that President Barack Obama ended CIA authority to hold detainees in 2009. "Any suggestion that the agency is still in the detention business is uninformed and baseless," said the spokesperson.