Obama denounces Benghazi cover-up charges as ‘political circus’

President Barack Obama gestures during a joint news conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron, Monday, …
President Barack Obama on Monday furiously dismissed as a "political circus" Republican charges that his administration had misled Americans about the Benghazi, Libya. Obama said the suggestion dishonors the memory of the four U.S. citizens killed last September.

"There’s no there there,” Obama said during a joint question-and-answer session with British Prime Minister David Cameraon at the White House. "And the fact that this keeps on getting churned out, frankly, has a lot to do with political motivations."

The president’s angry words came after news reports surfaced Friday that the White House had overseen a process that repeatedly watered down Administration talking points on the attack, removing references to possible involvement by al-Qaida and to prior warnings about threats in Benghazi. Republicans have charged that the White House was worried about the potential political fallout from the spectacular terrorist attack in Obama's re-election campaign. The White House has repeatedly denied that it deliberately misled the public.

"The whole issue of talking points frankly throughout this process has been a sideshow," Obama said.

The talking points, which portrayed the attack as evolving from a demonstration of anger at an Internet video that mocked Islam, "pretty much matched the assessments that I was receiving at that time in my presidential daily briefing," he added, referring to his top-secret morning intelligence review with the CIA.

While protests against the video in Egypt led to an assault on the American embassy in Cairo, officials in Libya never reported a demonstration outside the compound in Benghazi before the assault that claimed the lives of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Obama aides have said that the decision to scrub references in the talking points to al-Qaida and another extremist group, Ansar al-Sharia, reflected the intelligence community's uncertainty about the role they played.

"Immediately after this event happened, we were not clear who exactly had carried it out, how it had occurred, what the motivations were," Obama said. "It happened at the same time as we had seen attacks on US embassies in Cairo as a consequence of this film. And nobody understood exactly what was taking place during the course of those first few days."

The president also pointed to his first public remarks on the attack, in the Rose Garden on Sept. 12, 2012, when he lumped the events in Benghazi in with the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist strikes as "acts of terror."

But he and other senior officials declined in subsequent days to label the attack the work of terrorists. And U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice linked the Benghazi assault to the Internet video when she appeared on morning news shows the first Sunday after the attack.

"I’ve just got to say, here’s what we know: Americans died in Benghazi," Obama said. "What we also know is clearly they were not in a position where they were adequately protected.

"The day after it happened, I acknowledged that this was an act of terrorism and what I pledged to the American people was we would find out what happened we would make sure that it did not happen again and we would make sure that we held accountable those who had perpetrated this terrible crime. And that’s exactly what we’ve been trying to do," he said.

Obama praised the work of envoys like Stevens and diplomats and other personnel serving overseas today, and declared: "We dishonor them when we turn things like this into a political circus."

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Feds get closer look at fake mobile bill charges

WASHINGTON (AP) — When a mysterious, unauthorized fee appears on your cellphone bill, it's called "cramming" and consumer advocates and regulators worry it's emerging as a significant problem as people increasingly ditch their landlines for wireless phones.

The cramming fee is bogus and usually small, under $10 a month. It might be listed on your bill as a "premium service" or other generic-sounding charge. Cramming had long been a problem with traditional landline phones, but after pressure from lawmakers, regulators and others, some of the largest landline carriers last year said they would no longer allow third-party billing — where an outside company offers and then charges the landline customer for services like third-party email, faxing, and voicemail.

Now, the focus of concern is shifting to wireless phones and cramming.

"As people continue to use mobile phones as a payment option, this problem is likely to grow," says Malini Mithal, an assistant director in the financial practices division at the Federal Trade Commission. "It's just a new opportunity for fraudsters."

The commission held a daylong conference on the issue Wednesday with consumer advocates, wireless carrier representatives, and state and federal officials. The meeting came just weeks after the FTC lodged its first mobile cramming case, accusing a Georgia-based company, Wise Media, of bilking consumers out of millions of dollars for text messages with horoscopes, flirting tips and other information.

According to the agency, consumers across the country were signed up randomly for text services from Wise Media and charged $9.99 a month on their mobile bills, without their knowledge or permission. The text messages suggested people had subscribed to the service, but many consumers dismissed the texts as spam. People who responded and said they didn't want the service were charged anyway, the agency said.

The wireless industry says the Wise Media case isn't the norm and mobile carriers are closely vetting third-party vendors who offer services for ringtones and other products and then have charges placed on consumers' mobile bills.

"We have not seen a spike or trend in complaints to the agencies that reflects that this is a growing problem," said Michael Altschul, senior vice president and general counsel at CTIA-The Wireless Association, the main trade group for cellphone companies.

Altschul said the mobile carriers not only monitor who is placing charges on their bills, they also require consumers to verify any premium messaging services with a second text to confirm the charge is allowed. Even so, the commission and others are pressing wireless carriers to offer consumers the option to block third-party billing as a way to prevent cramming charges.

The FTC didn't have recent figures on the number of complaints from consumers about mobile cramming. But Kate Whelley McCabe, an assistant attorney general at the Vermont attorney general's office, says cramming complaints are often underreported anyway. She said many consumers don't even know these charges are appearing on their bills.

McCabe released a study at the FTC workshop showing that of the 802 consumers who returned surveys in Vermont, 60 percent reported that the third-party charges on their mobile telephone bills were unauthorized. More than 55 percent of the respondents also reported that they were not aware of any of the third-party charges until they were asked to review their bills. Nearly 80 percent said that prior to the survey, they were not aware that companies other than their telephone company could bill them for products and services on their mobile phone bills.

Not all third-party charges that might appear on a consumer's cell phone bill are fraudulent, however.

Charities often use message texts as a way to raise money by allowing consumers to use their mobile device to text a donation for storm relief, vaccinating children or other causes. Regulators on Wednesday did not raise concerns about charity texting, but instead focused on commercial messaging services.

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