In an interview with The Gazette on Saturday, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright defended President Barack Obama’s handling of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on a U.S. compound in Libya, and said the issue has been “turned into a political football.”

The attack on the compound, which was located in the city of Benghazi, left four Americans dead, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

The Obama administration has been criticized by Republicans for, among other things, not immediately labeling the incident a terrorist attack.

Albright, who served as President Bill Clinton’s secretary of state from 1997 to 2001, supported Obama’s actions and said that Republican criticisms are unfounded.

“What I truly am troubled by is how it’s turned into a political football, which is disrespectful and counterproductive, frankly, in terms of getting at what the truth is,” Albright said Saturday.

In the aftermath of the Benghazi attack, the Obama administration first referred tangentially to the incident as an “act of terror,” and the administration did not say it was a “terrorist attack” until Sept. 20.

Also, the U.S. Secretary to the United Nations, Susan E. Rice, had intimated before Sept. 20 that the attack was the result of anger over an infamous anti-Islam YouTube video made in America.

Albright said the president and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have dealt with the attack as well as any administration could, and did well to not jump to conclusions. And Rice, she said, was basing her statements on information from the CIA.

“We live in an age of 24/7 news, and a desire by people to know what is going on. But it’s impossible — I can tell you from my own experience — to know everything right away,” Albright said.

“There’s basically a stream of information that comes in that is called ‘raw data,’ that comes from a variety of different sources. And sometimes they support each other, and sometimes they contradict each other,” Albright said.

Albright said that in the past month, there has been confusion and mistakes in media reports that have led to widespread misunderstanding of the attack. Stories of the attack have been riddled with oversimplifications that Republicans have used as political ammunition, Albright said.

For example, the “embassy,” she said, wasn’t even an embassy or a consulate. It was a compound, she said.

“I think people are talking about things that they don’t fully understand,” Albright said.

Reports that Stevens requested additional security prior to the attack also have holes in them, Albright said. Part of the problem, she said, was that limited funding for the State Department has to be split between programs. Funding, she said, that Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan voted against in Congress.

“In order to have the right amount of security and the right buildings and all that, the State Department needs to have a budget, and what had happened is that the State Department budget, on this, had been turned down,” Albright said.—Contact John Schroyer: 476-4825Twitter: @JohnschroyerFacebook: Gazette John Schroyer

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright Photo by