A swift response by newly trained Libyan security forces to a June bombing outside the U.S. consulate in Benghazi may have led U.S. officials to underestimate the security threat in the country, The New York Times reported. “That the local security did so well back in June probably gave us a false sense of security,” one U.S. official said. “We may have fooled ourselves.” Security at the mission has come under scrutiny as the Obama administration has provided shifting accounts of what happened during the attack and whether security lapses were to blame. The U.S. had boosted security at the mission, following an April attack on the convoy of the U.N. special envoy for Libya, by upping the number of sandbagged defensive positions and giving Libyan security guards more training. Those efforts proved effective when militants attacked the mission with a homemade bomb in early June. But officials may have misread the threat, because afterward, the State Department did not express a need for more security, according to House Homeland Security Committee Chair Rep. Peter King.
