New York Times Reporter on Benghazi: ‘No Chance This Was an al Qaeda Attack’

KIRKPATRICK: "I've talked to some of the people, who I believe were lead perpetrators, and it's just-- it's just obvious from them and the people around them, they're-- they're purely local people. Their-- their pasts are known, their records are known, when they were in prison, who they hung out with in prison, who their associations are. There is just no chance that this was an al Qaeda attack if, by al Qaeda, you mean the organization founded by Osama bin Laden. Now I've tried to understand some of the statements coming out of United States Congress blaming al Qaeda for this, and the only way that they make sense to me is if you're using the term al Qaeda a little differently. If you're using the term al Qaeda to describe even a local group of Islamist militants who may dislike democracy or have a grudge against the United States, if you're going to call anybody like that al Qaeda, then OK. Certainly there were some anti-western Islamist militants involved in this attack.  But to me that's a-- that's a semantic difference and not a useful way of answering the original question -- "