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 The office of the nation’s spy chief issued a statement Friday defending the Obama administration’s accounts of the siege on a U.S. mission in Libya, saying it became clear only in the aftermath that it was “a deliberate and organized terrorist attack.” 
 
 The statement appeared aimed at quieting criticism, mostly from Republicans, of the administration’s shifting characterizations of a Sept. 11 assault that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans. The revised assessment by the Director of National Intelligence, the office that heads up the various U.S. spy agencies including the Central Intelligence Agency, is the most declarative U.S. statement yet that the Sept. 11 assault on U.S. diplomatic sites in Benghazi, Libya—which left four Americans dead, including U.S. CNN has reported, from a diary belonging to J. Christopher Stevens, the American ambassador killed in the attack, that he harbored worries about his security. How the Attack Unfolded View Graphics 
 
 Evidence shortly after the attacks had "led us to assess that the attack began spontaneously following protests earlier that day at our embassy in Cairo," DNI spokesman Shawn Turner said Friday. The changing accounts prompted the spokesman for the nation’s top intelligence official, James R. Clapper Jr., to issue a statement on Friday acknowledging that American intelligence agencies “revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists.” 
 
 The unusual statement was not solicited by the White House, according to Shawn Turner, the spokesman for Mr. Clapper, the director of national intelligence, but it seemed calculated to relieve some of the pressure on the White House for the contradictory accounts given in the two and a half weeks since the attack. In his statement, Mr. Turner said that it was unclear who had directed the attack, but that “we do assess that some of those involved were linked to groups affiliated with, or sympathetic to, Al Qaeda.” 
 
 At the same time, further details about the attack could lay bare lapses in security that could damage the administration. Officials initially described the attack as spontaneous but in recent days have said it was an act of terrorism with links to al-Qaeda. The evolving intelligence picture may explain why administration officials — including Susan E. Rice, ambassador to the United Nations — seemed adamant early on that the attack was part of a spontaneous protest triggered by an anti-Islamic video produced in the United States. After poring over intercepted electronic communications, informant reports and photographs and video from the scene, American intelligence and counterterrorism officials have concluded that a small number of the local Libyan militia members probably have ties to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the Qaeda affiliate in North Africa. It wasn’t until Sept. 20 that the head of the National Counterterrorism Center described the assault as a terrorist attack — a description echoed by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton this week. Mr. Obama, his aides point out, labeled the assault an “act of terror” in his first public response, in the Rose Garden, a day after it happened. "We provided that initial assessment to executive branch officials and members of Congress, who used that information to discuss the attack publicly and provide updates as they became available," he said. “I put out the message because I think it’s important that people understand that early reports are often wrong or incomplete, but our intelligence community continues to work around the clock to gather details and understand exactly what happened in Benghazi,” Turner said. “Given the demand for information, we feel there is a responsibility to provide the facts as we understand them.” 
 
 For the White House, the latest intelligence is helpful in one regard: It indicates that the attack, while carried out in an organized manner, mainly by a local extremist group in eastern Libya, Ansar al-Shariah, was probably not planned months or weeks in advance. Mr. Romney has been cautious in his public comments about the attack since his initial response, which was criticized by Mr. Obama and Republicans for being premature and unseemly in the face of a tragedy. Even allies of the president like Senator John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, have petitioned the White House for more information about how the government protects diplomatic installations abroad.
– The nation's spy chief took the unusual step yesterday of issuing a statement to defend the shifting US position on the Libya consulate attack, reports the Washington Post. Yes, said national intelligence director James Clapper, the assault initially seemed to be a spontaneous response to that anti-Islam movie, but we “revised our initial assessments to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists. Some of those involved were linked to groups affiliated with, or sympathetic to al-Qaeda." The New York Times thinks it's an attempt to take pressure off the White House as Republicans zero in on a potential miscue on national security—if it was a planned attack, why didn't we know about it?—and foreign policy. The Wall Street Journal notes that Mitt Romney kept up the pressure yesterday on the campaign trail: "There was a great deal of confusion about that from the very beginning on the part of the administration, and whether that was something that they were trying to paper over or whether it was just confusion given the uncertain intelligence reports—time will tell." Frequent White House critic Peter King called for the resignation of Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, who stated repeatedly in the days after the attack that it was spontaneous. "Somebody has to pay the price for this," the GOP congressman told CNN.