Two years after they began an investigation into the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Libya, Republicans on the House Benghazi Committee on Tuesday unveiled an 800-page report laying into the White House for its handling of the incident and presenting previously undisclosed facts from testimony.

The document is heavy on details from the night itself, in a report Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign dismissed as a redux of discredited "conspiracy theories."


From the video conference that was convened even as the attack was still underway to the unlikely assistance the Americans received that night, here are seven details from the GOP report worth reading:

1. The 7:30 video conference

According to the Republican report, during a 7:30 p.m. video conference convened at the White House that included Clinton and other top officials with the State Department, the Defense Department and the White House, five of the 10 action items referenced "The Innocence of Muslims" video without providing a solid link between the cause of the attack and the video's inflammatory rhetoric.

"I don’t remember specifically, you know, how we talked about it. I’m sure that we did, right, because we were — the fact is that it came — the discussion of taking the video down was part of our conversation in this call that was really focused on what was going on in Benghazi," Matt Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, testified.

According to rough notes from a subsequent conference call held by Avril Haines, deputy counsel to the president for national security affairs, it was conveyed that Clinton would likely issue a statement "addressing the violence and distancing the USG [United States government] from the videos that are believed to have instigated it (at least in part); while no one is sure of the cause, exactly, there is reportedly a new Terry Jones video threatening to burn Korans and a second film that includes a number of insulting statements about Mohamed," it continued, in reference to a Florida pastor who had burned copies of the Quran.

The 7:30 meeting took place while Ambassador Christ Stevens was still considered missing and before Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed, the report said, even as there was virtually no discussion about the video on the ground in Libya prior to the attacks.

A senior State Department official confirmed on Oct. 9, 2012, that there was no protest outside the compound, as initially claimed by the administration.

2. The clothing changes

The report found that Marines in the Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team sat on a plane in Rota, Spain, for three hours and changed in and out of their uniforms four times. During the aforementioned video briefing, Vice Adm. Kurt W. Tidd testified that the State Department had requested that the FAST platoon arrive in Libya wearing civilian clothing rather than their uniforms, noting that he disagreed with State that clothing would have a material impact on safety. The Defense Department made the assessment that wearing civilian clothes would have the opposite effect, making troops less safe as they traveled through Tripoli.

"Apparently [Under Secretary of State for Management] Pat K[ennedy] expressed concern on the [White House meeting] about Libyan reaction if uniformed U.S. forces arrived in country in military aircraft; there was discussion of the option of entering in plainclothes, which [Joint Chiefs of Staff] explained was possible but noted that the risks to the forces to remaining in plainclothes increased as they transited from point of entry to the relevant location of action," a State Department email regarding the White House meeting reads.

The GOP report concluded that the emails "confirm the understanding among the individuals participating in the White House meeting that deployment to Benghazi was not imminent. As the Defense Department timeline shows, none of the orders given to the assets that night contained an order to deploy to Benghazi."

"The FAST platoons were ordered to prepare to deploy, not to deploy," it noted, and other special forces were ordered to an intermediate staging base, not to Benghazi or Tripoli.

According to the report, the optics of having Marines charging into Benghazi wearing their uniforms presented what amounted to an image problem for the White House, which had long maintained that there would be no "boots on the ground" in Libya. "A principal objective was to limit military engagement: the administration’s 'no boots on the ground' policy prevailed throughout the Benghazi Mission’s existence in Libya," the report said. "Apart from 'no boots on the ground,' U.S. policy remained indefinite and undefined throughout Stevens’ tenure in Benghazi."

State Department deputy spokesperson Mark Toner in a statement on Tuesday said the clothing issue did not affect the speed or timeliness of any possible military response.

“We are aware that the committee is critical of these issues, but we are not aware of any finding that they had any impact on the attacks or our ability to send help," the statement says. "The fact is, we did not cause a delay. ... Concerns about what they wore had no bearing on the timing of their arrival.”

3. The dinner party

During the 7:30 video conference, Navy Adm. James Winnefeld, then the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was conspicuously absent. Winnefeld testified that he had left the Pentagon to host a dinner party for foreign dignitaries at his home and received one update on the call during the dinner. After the dinner concluded, the report says Winnefeld testified that he went to his home's secured communications facility.

James Miller, undersecretary of defense for policy at the time, was also absent from the call "due to an unexpected family emergency," asking Defense chief of staff Jeremy Bash to participate in his place after being unable to connect to the call from home.

Bash had identified Winnefeld and Miller as the people that State should be in contact with as the proper individuals to "convey" their approval to deploy forces to Benghazi, suggesting the two Defense Department officials would be the two channels to receive notification of State's approval.

4. Military never deployed

None of the relevant military forces met their deadlines to deploy to Benghazi, according to the report, which found that they did not even depart until after the attack had concluded. When they did arrive in Libya, the military forces went to Tripoli.

"We were never given an execute order to move any forces until we got to move in the C-17 to evacuate folks out of Tripoli later that next morning," Vice Admiral Charles J. Leidig, deputy commander for military operations at AFRICOM, testified. "There was never an execute order to move any forces from Sigonella into Africa or from Rota into Africa until later. So, I mean, we did get an order eventually to move the FAST team into Tripoli to provide security, but during that evening hour, that incident, there were no execute orders to move forces into our [area of responsibility]."

Pressed on the specific timeline, Leidig said the order to move the FAST platoon into Tripoli came long after the mortar attack in Benghazi. Although the troops had been under a "prepare to deploy" order, they were not deployed.

Army Lt. Dana Chipman told former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in an interview transcribed by the panel in January that “nothing could have affected what occurred in Benghazi," according to a letter sent by Democrats to Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.).

5. The pro-Qadhafi forces that saved Americans

On the night of the attack, it was loyalists to ousted dictator Muammar Qadhafi who helped rescue Americans trapped in the facility, not the ruling Libyan government or militia that had been tasked with protecting the complex.

A special operator in Benghazi testified that the situation had become "untenable" at the compound, noting that the facility did not have enough shooters and lacked armed vehicles to transport the Americans, wounded or otherwise, to the airport.

"The forces that arrived at the Annex shortly after the mortar attacks were able to transport all State Department and CIA personnel safely to the airport. The forces, known as Libyan Military Intelligence, arrived with 50 heavily-armed security vehicles," the special operator testified. "Libyan Military Intelligence was not part of the Libyan government, nor affiliated with any of the militias the CIA or State Department had developed a relationship with during the prior 18 months since the Libyan revolution took place."

"Instead, Libya Military Intelligence—whom the CIA did not even know existed until the night of the attacks—were comprised of former military officers under the Qadhafi regime who had gone into hiding in fear of being assassinated, and wanted to keep their presence in Benghazi as quiet as possible so as to not attract attention from the militias in control of Benghazi," the special operator continued. "In other words, some of the very individuals the United States had helped remove from power during the Libyan revolution were the only Libyans that came to the assistance of the United States on the night of the Benghazi attacks."

6. CIA analysts copped to errors

The manager of analysts who wrote a CIA intelligence assessment on Sept. 13, 2012 — two days after the attack — featured in President Barack Obama's daily briefing said the piece did not intend to focus on the role of protests as a precipitating event to the Benghazi attacks.

"So we did not think the question of protests was particularly germane to answering that question. In fact, it was fully probably a week," the manager testified. "And we had several conversations among ourselves and even with more senior people in the DI [Directorate of Analysis] about, why in the hell would everybody care about protests? We just—we weren’t tracking on it because it wasn’t germane to what we were trying to do, which it doesn’t really excuse our sloppy work, particularly in that paragraph here. I mean the ticks are the ticks. They are based on reporting. But our assessment was just imprecisely written. We weren’t careful enough about it."

But the report itself was touted by officials, among them Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell, as showing evidence that protests had occurred. The director of the Office of Terrorism Analysis testified that the supporting evidence backing up a mention of "the early stages of the protest" was "incorrect," as the source for the supposedly supporting article is dated Sept. 4, 2012, a full week before the attacks.

Morell made note of a headline on a subsequent page, "Extremists Capitalized on Benghazi Protests," described as a "text box" by the OTA director.

"So the headline—and I admit that in retrospect, if I could go back and change this headline, I would," the OTA director testified. "Because the headline, it was more meant to be about the, we know extremists were involved and less about whether or not there were protests."

The manager of the analysts who wrote the piece said the title was a "mistake." Asked what that meant, the manager responded, "So, God, how do I begin?" going on to note that the mistake was not caught until Sept. 24. The title should have been more focused on the idea that the "extremists [were] motivated to attack in Benghazi because of protests in Cairo," she testified.

Morell said the piece could have been written better.

"I have reasons beyond yours as to why I don’t think this is as well done as it could be, and you’re pointing out some additional ones," Morell testified. "So I don’t think it is as well done as it could have been."

7. State officials said Susan Rice went 'off the reservation'

Susan Rice, then the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, went on a series of shows the Sunday after the Benghazi attack using language that the committee found did not match up with the talking points she had been provided. Rice remarked that the attacks did not appear to be premeditated and resulted from ongoing protests, often connecting the attack to the video. On NBC's "Meet the Press," Rice claimed the Benghazi attack to be the result of "almost a copycat" protest similar to one against a U.S. facility in Cairo.

"I don't know that it was overstating or even misstating. But I would agree that the word 'copycat' does not appear in the talking points," Rice later testified.

Speaking to CNN, Rice made reference to the number of attackers at the compound, while there is no reference to the number of protesters included in her talking points. "I don't recall exactly how I acquired that information," Rice testified.

“I think Rice was off the reservation on this one," the State Department's senior Libya desk officer in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs wrote in an email, according to the report.

The deputy director in the office of press and public diplomacy in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs responded, “Off the reservation on five networks!”

The report goes on to note that even as mid- and lower-level State employees speaking to the embassy in Tripoli said Rice went too far with her statements, senior officials at the State Department and the White House were all in for defending what Rice had said.

Then-deputy national security adviser Denis McDonough "apparently told the SVTS [Secure Video Teleconference] group today that everyone was required to 'shut their pieholes' about the Benghazi attack in light of the FBI investigation, due to start tomorrow," the deputy director in the Office of Maghreb Affairs wrote in an email.