House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) on Thursday called on the White House to release an email from a State Department official who, he claimed, attributed the deadly September attack in Benghazi, Libya to “Islamic terrorists.”
But the New York Times obtained a copy of the email, written by senior State Department official A. Elizabeth Jones, who actually made reference to “Islamic extremists,” not “Islamic terrorists.”
Obama administration officials told the Times that it is important to draw a distinction between the two characterizations, “because while the White House did not initially characterize the attack as terrorism, senior officials, including Ambassador Susan E. Rice, acknowledged the possibility that extremists had been involved in the assault.”
Read the entire report in the Times here.
