Benghazi

Every day, residents of the two cities gather at photographic displays in their respective downtowns, paying homage to a distinct pantheon of the fallen: heroes of the regime in one case, martyrs of the resistance in the other. Officials in each city denounce atrocities — slayings, rapes, mass detentions — allegedly unfolding daily in the rival city. Here in Tripoli, marchers proclaim their unbending allegiance to the country's longtime leader. About 650 miles to the east, they trumpet their revulsion for him. Tripoli and Benghazi have come to embody the battle for Libya's future.

WASHINGTON - Nearly six months after President Obama vowed to "bring to justice" the militants who killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya, the joint CIA and FBI effort to catch the ringleaders has made little apparent progress. Officials say U.S. authorities do not yet have a full understanding of who planned and carried out the two brief but intense assaults, nearly eight hours apart, on a lightly guarded diplomatic compound and a nearby CIA base late on Sept.

WASHINGTON - Four senior State Department officials resigned under pressure Wednesday after an independent review board determined that they had operational responsibility for "grossly inadequate" security when Islamic militants killed four Americans at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya. At a news conference, retired Adm. Michael G. Mullen, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a leader of the independent panel, said "senior officials in critical positions of authority and responsibility in Washington demonstrated a lack of leadership and management ability.

LONDON - Britain, Germany and the Netherlands urged their citizens Thursday to leave the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi immediately, citing an imminent threat to Westerners months after an assault on the U.S. mission there killed four Americans. None of the countries would elaborate on the intelligence that prompted the advisory, but Britain's Foreign Office said it was "aware of a specific and imminent threat. " The stark warning came a day after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton testified before Congress about the Sept.

WASHINGTON - - About a dozen CIA personnel were evacuated from eastern Libya after heavily armed men stormed the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi and killed four Americans, setting back an important intelligence operation and prompting a debate about how much risk CIA officers should assume in dangerous overseas posts. The decision to withdraw the team from Benghazi drew criticism from former CIA officers, who called it an overly cautious response to the Sept. 11 attack, which killed two security officers, an information technology officer and the U.S. ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens.

The scandal that forced spy chief David H. Petraeus to resign has diverted attention from another problem for the CIA: why the agency failed to anticipate or repel the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed two CIA contractors, as well as the U.S. ambassador and another American. Four House and Senate committees are holding closed hearings this week to examine security arrangements during the assault by armed militants. They will also look at the Obama administration's public response.

BENGHAZI, Libya - Face down on a roof inside the besieged American diplomatic compound, gunfire and flames crackling around them, the two young Libyan guards watched as several bearded men crept toward the ambassador's residence with semiautomatic weapons and grenades strapped to their chests. "We are finished," one of the guards says he remembers thinking. Both are veterans of the ragtag revolutionary forces that toppled Moammar Kadafi. Over the last year, while assigned by their militia to help protect the U.S. mission in Benghazi, the pair had been drilled by American security personnel in using their weapons, securing entrances, climbing walls and waging hand-to-hand combat.

Republican lawmakers failed to open new lines of inquiry on the deadly Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Libya despite back-to-back grillings Wednesday of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton for a fuller explanation of the administration's response to the much-debated terrorist assault. Testifying weeks before she is expected to leave office, Clinton emphasized in consecutive sessions before the House and Senate foreign policy committees that there was a "rapidly changing threat environment" in North Africa, citing the recent terrorist attack in Algeria and growing instability in Mali, Nigeria and elsewhere.

WASHINGTON - A State Department officer who worked in Libya has told congressional investigators that he requested more security for the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi months before it came under terrorist attack but that he received no reply from Washington, according to documents and interviews. Eric Nordstrom, a regional security official at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli until July, told investigators that he sent two cables to the State Department in March and July and asked that more diplomatic security agents be assigned to the lightly guarded compound in Benghazi.

WASHINGTON - Email traffic exchanged during the drafting of talking points about the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, last year shows that the State Department and White House were more involved in shaping the document than they previously let on. The newly released emails highlight the political concerns expressed in those discussions as President Obama's administration wrestled with what to tell the public in...