US Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens was killed in Benghazi yesterday, according to multiple reports. 
 
 Four Americans, including Christopher Stevens, the US Ambassador to Libya, were killed in an attack on the US consulate in Benghazi Tuesday. The attackers were armed with guns and rockets and were reportedly angry about a YouTube film that made derogatory statements about Islam and its central figure, Mohammed. In a statement released to the press this morning, President Barack Obama "strongly" condemned the "outrageous attack," saying that the slain US personnel "exemplified America's commitment to freedom, justice, and partnership with nations and people around the globe, and stand in stark contrast to those who callously took their lives." 
 
 There were also protests at the US Embassy in Cairo, where Republicans seized on a weak initial statement from officials there to paint the Obama administration as soft-on-Islam (the US Ambassador to Egypt, Anne W. Patterson, is career diplomat who also served as Bush's Ambassador to Pakistan). The initial statement (which appeared before the attacks on the embassies) and a few since-deleted tweets apologized for the offending video and criticized the "continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims." Though the White House told Politico it hadn't approved the statement, GOP Presidential nominee Mitt Romney accused President Barack Obama of sympathizing with the embassy attackers, saying: 
 
 I'm outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. It's disgraceful that the Obama administration's first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks. 
 
 Likewise, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus tweeted yesterday that "Obama sympathizes with attackers in Egypt. Sad and pathetic." So the official Republican response to Americans being killed abroad yesterday is that the president of the United States is on the side of the killers, so vote Romney. 
 
 Despite the persistent Republican fantasy that the United States conducts diplomacy the way that Sean Hannity used to treat Alan Colmes, it's not clear a Republican President would have reacted differently to initial reports. In 2006, when European newspapers published cartoons denigrating Islam's prophet Mohammed, the Bush administration similarly affirmed free speech rights but said that "We find them offensive, and we certainly understand why Muslims would find these images offensive." ||||| An independent panel charged with investigating the deadly Sept. 11 attack in Libya that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans has concluded that systematic management failures at the State Department led to inadequate security that left the diplomatic mission vulnerable. 
 
 FILE - In this April 11, 2011, file photo, then U.S. envoy Chris Stevens attends meetings at the Tibesty Hotel where an African Union delegation was meeting with opposition leaders in Benghazi, Libya.... (Associated Press) 
 
 Despite those failures, the Accountability Review Board determined that no individual American officials ignored or violated their duties and found no cause for any disciplinary action. The board found that contrary to initial reports, there was no protest outside the mission and blamed the incident entirely on terrorists. 
 
 The State Department sent a classified version of the report to lawmakers Tuesday and released an unclassified version later Tuesday. The report makes 29 recommendations to improve embassy security. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she accepted them all. 
 
 THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below. 
 
 An independent review board on Tuesday presented to Congress its report on the Sept. 11 attack in Libya that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans, findings the Obama administration hopes will bolster its assertion that diplomats took all reasonable measures to anticipate and respond to the violence, and end months of finger-pointing and recriminations over whether the deaths could have been avoided. 
 
 Diplomats and intelligence officers alike have spoken about the rising risk in Benghazi and growing debate over how to improve security before the attack, set against Ambassadors Chris Stevens' decision to keep the Benghazi diplomatic post open and even visit there on Sept. 11. 
 
 Late that evening, militants overran the lightly defended U.S. Consulate, setting fire to it and ultimately killing Stevens and information specialist Sean Smith. Militants later fired mortars at the CIA safe house where survivors had taken refuge, killing Americans Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, both former Navy SEALs working for the CIA who had come to help rescue the diplomats. 
 
 Retired Ambassador Thomas Pickering and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen led the independent review, studying cables, video and intelligence and interviewing some survivors. Their review will also include their recommendations on how to keep it from happening again. 
 
 The classified section of their report was sent to Capitol Hill on Tuesday afternoon, a State Department official said. As it was being transmitted, the department began to implement its recommendations, with a team of senior diplomats convening to look at how to execute them. 
 
 An unclassified summary of the report is expected to be made public on Wednesday. On Thursday, the State Department's two deputy secretaries will testify in open sessions before House Foreign Affairs Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee. 
 
 Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was to have appeared at Thursday's hearing but cancelled after fainting and sustaining a concussion last week while recovering from a stomach virus that dehydrated her. Clinton is under doctors' orders to rest. 
 
 The secretary of state is required by law to convene an Accountability Review Board when U.S. officials are killed overseas in the line of duty. The secretary is not, however, required to make its findings public or send classified details to lawmakers. Still, Clinton has pledged to share as much detail as possible. 
 
 ARB inquiries are designed to look at security procedures before and during the incidents in question, and make recommendations on how they can be prevented in the future. Previous boards, notably the ones established after the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, have found broad fault across all branches of government, including Congress, but have not targeted individuals for blame. 
 
 The Benghazi report is widely expected to draw similar conclusions, finding that security was clearly lacking at the mission but that blame for that rests within the government bureaucracy and that there is no way to prove that additional protection could have stopped the attack. 
 
 The Benghazi incident became politically heated in the last weeks of the tight presidential campaign, with U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice criticized for saying in television interviews that the attack was part of a protest over an anti-Islamic film that had started in Cairo earlier that day. Her comments came days after the administration had intelligence pointing to a militant attack. The political fallout is not within the review board's mandate and its report is not expected to mention the controversy, except possibly in passing. 
 
 But the incident also sparked debate on the larger question of how U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers can do their jobs in unstable environments, as al-Qaida spreads across Africa, without also expanding their security. Diplomats have said that overreacting to the attack could produce what some are calling a "Benghazi effect" that would wall them off from the people they are supposed to be engaged with. 
 
 Though called a consulate, the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi was so small it was only lightly staffed by a skeleton crew of diplomats and guarded by a local Libyan force. Its small size was partly because there was not yet much diplomacy to do in a city still rebuilding after the revolution that toppled Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi, but also because the consulate's role was in part to provide cover for the larger intelligence gathering mission in the region. 
 
 Most of the roughly two dozen Americans based in Benghazi worked for the CIA, some helping the State Department track and buy up the tens of thousands of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile systems known as MANPADS _ man-portable-air-defense-systems _ that have made their way from Gadhafi's arsenal to the open market, trying to keep them out of the hands of al-Qaida sympathizers throughout the region. That work included developing a network of tipsters in the port city who would watch for weapons shipments headed out of the country. 
 
 The officers were also trying to track al-Qaida's recruitment efforts in Benghazi and the small city of Darna, a couple hundred miles up the coast. Since the fall of the Gadhafi regime, Darna has become a hotbed of militant groups, such as al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb and the militant group Ansar al-Shariah, the lead suspect in the Benghazi attack, according to two U.S. officials briefed on the intelligence. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. 
 
 The drone that flew over Benghazi the night of the attack to give policymakers back in Washington a view of the violence had been patrolling over Darna, officials said. 
 
 Some Libyan militiamen did respond during the attack, the officials said, but not in numbers sufficient or with enough organization to repel the mob. It was the CIA rescue team that came in, guns blazing, to rescue the diplomats, while a second pick-up team of two special operations troops and CIA security personnel flew in on a hastily chartered plane from Tripoli, convinced Libyan militiamen at the airport to give them transport and rushed in to help protect the diplomats, who by then had reached a CIA safe house in the town, where they were attacked again. 
 
 The combined CIA teams held off a brief gunfire attack at the second location, so the militiamen fired mortars at the building, killing the two ex-Navy SEALs who were part of the CIA security team. The combined CIA team returned fire and the mortar fire ceased, and they were able to get the diplomats to the airport. 
 
 ___ ||||| (CBS/AP) BOSTON - A former Navy SEAL from a Boston suburb was one of four Americans who died in the attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya Wednesday. 
 
 Forty-two-year-old Glen Doherty was killed with U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Benghazi, a family friend told CBS Boston on Thursday. 
 
 "He was on security detail and he was protecting the ambassador and also helping the wounded"' when he was killed, his sister, Katie Quigly told the Boston Globe. 
 
 Doherty was a 1988 graduate of Winchester High School. 
 
 A third victim has been identified as Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith, an Air Force veteran who had worked as an information management officer for 10 years in posts such as Brussels, Baghdad and Pretoria. 
 
 The identity of the fourth American killed is still not known. 
 
 A closer look at U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens 
 
 New questions about makers of anti-Muslim film 
 
 Romney's Libya gibes aimed to show contrasts with Obama 
 
 The four Americans were killed when a group of U.S. employees went to the consulate to try to evacuate staff as the building came under attack by a mob wielding guns and rocket propelled grenades. Stevens is the first U.S. ambassador to be killed in an attack since 1979, when Ambassador Adolph Dubs was killed in Afghanistan. 
 
 On Thursday, a senior Libyan security official said the attack was an organized two-part operation by heavily armed militants that included a precisely timed raid on a supposedly secret safe house just as Libyan and U.S. security forces were arriving to rescue evacuated consulate staff. 
 
 Wanis al-Sharef, eastern Libya's deputy interior minister, said Stevens and another American were killed in the consulate as plainclothes Libyan security were evacuating them to the safe house. The second assault targeted the safe house, killing two Americans and wounding nearly about 30 Libyans and Americans. 
 
 Meanwhile the Obama administration has begun what appears to be a terrorist hunt in Libya, as evidence mounts that the attack was perpetrated by well-armed thugs and not an out-of-control crowd. 
 
 CBS News correspondent David Martin reports the FBI has opened an investigation into the deaths, and agents will be sent to sift through the wreckage for evidence. They will be accompanied by a second team sent just for their protection. 
 
 As part of the hunt for the attackers, officials say the U.S. will increase its surveillance over Libya, including the use of unmanned drones. In addition, the U.S. Navy is positioning two destroyers armed with cruise missiles off the coast of Libya. 
 
 One destroyer, the USS Laboon, moved to a position off the coast Wednesday, and the USS McFaul is en route and should be stationed off the coast within days. Officials said the ships, which carry Tomahawk cruise missiles, do not have a specific mission. But they give commanders flexibility to respond to any mission ordered by the president. 
 
 The investigation will focus on whether the assault on the U.S. Consulate in Libya was a planned terrorist strike to mark the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and not a spontaneous mob enraged over an anti-Islam YouTube video. 
 
 After the attack, an elite anti-terrorist unit of about 40 Marines was flown in to beef up security at the American embassy in the capital of Tripoli. Air Force transport planes flew the bodies of the dead Americans out, along with at least three who were injured and the rest of the approximately 25 diplomats assigned to the consulate. At the same time, the U.S. State Department urged all non-essential personnel to leave on commercial flights. 
 
 U.S. consulate attack in Libya 
 
 Three Americans injured in the assault on the consulate in Benghazi were being treated Thursday at the U.S. military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, near America's Ramstein Air Base, CBS News has learned. 
 
 Wanis al-Sharef, a Libyan Interior Ministry official in Benghazi, said there had been threats that Islamic militants might try to take revenge for the death of al Qaeda's No. 2 commander Abu Yahya al-Libi, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan in June, and he said the U.S. consulate should have been better protected. 
 
 Confirming al-Libi's death for the first time in a video posted online Monday, al Qaeda chief Ayman Al-Zawahri called on Muslims in al-Libi's native Libya to take revenge for his death. 
 
 U.S. officials believe the militants were using the demonstration against the video as a cover to get into the consulate and then take as much revenge as they could on Americans, Martin reports. 
 
 While the White House has been hesitant to call the attack planned, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers was not so ambiguous. 
 
 "Absolutely it's a terrorist attack," Rogers told CBS News Capitol Hill producer Jill Jackson. "This was not done by the Libyan government. It was done by an external group we believe has at least extremist ties, maybe al Qaeda ties, and the style and the signature of the attack clearly would be something that we have seen before and would be in line with something al Qaeda would do." 
 
 Romney doubles down on WH criticism of attacks 
 
 Obama on Libya attack: "Justice will be done" 
 
 Libya doctor: U.S. ambassador died of asphyxia 
 
 The White House says President Obama called the presidents of Libya and Egypt Tuesday and urged them to continue working with the United States to ensure the safety of diplomatic personnel. 
 
 Mr. Obama thanked Libyan President Mohamed Magariaf for his condolences over the deaths of Stevens and the three other State Department officers. The White House says the two leaders agreed to work together to bring the attackers to justice. 
 
 During a second call, Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi promised Egypt "would honor its obligation to ensure the safety of American personnel," the White House said. 
 
 Mr. Obama told Morsi that while "he rejects efforts to denigrate Islam ... there is never any justification for violence against innocents." 
 
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– The attack on the US consulate in Libya that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens wasn't the spontaneous act of violence it initially appeared to be—it was planned. Or at least, that's what the Obama administration suspects. Whereas yesterday's riots in Egypt appeared spontaneous, attackers in Libya showed up with mortars and rocket-propelled-grenades, officials tell the New York Times, though they're not sure yet if those people organized the riot or merely took advantage. But sources tell CNN that they don't believe Stevens was specifically targeted. Stevens died of smoke inhalation, a Libyan doctor tells the AP. A US official says the building caught fire when someone threw a grenade. Employees "were fighting the fire inside and the attackers outside," the official tells CNN, adding that there were "valiant but unsuccessful" attempts to go back and save people. In a brief statement today, President Obama vowed that "justice will be done," the AP reports. He didn't elaborate on what that might mean, but a senior official says that the White House is expected to approve a plan to send spy drones to look for jihadi camps near Benghazi that may have been involved in the attack.