We begin tonight with breaking news. Reporting you’ll see only right here. Today a hearse bore the body of a Navy Seal Glenn Doherty passed his child at home, just outside Boston. Tonight 360 has obtained exclusive new details about the security climate leading up to his murder and the murder of three others last week, including in Libya, including the American ambassador there Christopher Stevens. 

 

 

360 has learned exclusive the concerns that the ambassador had, the threat he foresaw and the signal he gave to at least one person we know about, about what he was seeing. Today some in the administration in closely conceding what many observers already suspected that the killings, though they happened during a wave of protests over that anti-Muslim YouTube video, were not committed just by protesters. Listen to the administration’s National Counterterrorism Center director today at a Senate Homeland Security hearing. 

 

“And I would say yes, they were killed in the course of a terrorist attack on our embassy.” 

 

Mr. Olsen went on say that investigators lacked specific intelligence concerning, in his words, significant advanced planning coordination. He said they are looking to connections to al-Qaeda and local al-Qaeda affiliates. Now you are looking at the scene, just outside the consulate in Benghazi as a pro-American crowd tried to rush in Ambassador Stevens who is wounded still alive to the hospital. Tonight, as we said, 360 has obtained exclusive information about the climate that led up to all of this. A source familiar with Ambassador Stevens thinking says that in the months before his death, he talked about being worried about what he called the never ending security threats specifically in Benghazi. The source telling us that the ambassador specifically mentioned the rise in Islamic extremism, the growing al-Qaeda presence in Libya, and said he was on an al-Qaeda hit list. In addition, our source tells us he e-mailed a journalist in the wake of the bombing near the consulate in June. He wrote, and I quote, Maybe you should head east to Benghazi to check out the situation there which appears to be heating up.

 

What we don’t yet know is why? Given all that ambassador Stevens thought, why he traveled with such an apparently light security detail? Why he was allowed to? Did he want it that way despite the risk or did his warnings go unheeded, and that he and his people died because of it? At this point we simply don’t know. Senator John McCain supported President Obama’s action to oust Muammar Gaddafi. He’s also criticized some of the steps taken since then. And is sharply skeptical of the administration’s account so far of what happened in Benghazi to the ambassador and the three others. I spoke to Senator McCain earlier today.