Graham doubles down on accusations that Obama purposefully hid the truth about Libya attack

Senate hawk Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is doubling down on his theory that the Obama administration deliberately hid the truth about the attack in Libya that left four Americans dead even as the accuracy of that assertion is increasingly in doubt.

Graham, a longtime critic of Obama's foreign policy, has become the most vocal proponent of the theory that Obama tied the attack to anger over an anti-Islam video so he could look strong on national security. The issue of who knew what when has become an issue in the presidential race, with the Obama campaign now saying the president called the Sept. 11 attack on the consulate in Benghazi an “act of terror” from the beginning but continued to tie it to the video based on his intelligence team's initial assessment.

“The video had nothing to do with this because there was never a mob,” Graham told Fox News on Wednesday night. “If it's a riot based on a video that's spontaneous, they have a lot less blame. And I'd be the first to say that if this was a mob generated by video, that's a different national security threat, harder to plan for. So they wanted us to believe that.”

Reporters on the ground in Libya paint a more nuanced picture, however. Both The New York Times and Bloomberg reported this week that numerous witnesses to the attacks — and the attackers themselves — similarly describe a hastily organized strike, without any warning or protest, by well-known local Islamic militants infuriated by a U.S.-made anti-Islam video that had sparked violent protests in neighboring Egypt hours earlier.

Graham added that the deaths of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were tangible evidence that Obama's foreign policy is spiraling out of control. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has made the same point on the campaign trail and during Tuesday night's debate with Obama.

“The best you could say is they took one piece of intelligence and spun it and denied the obvious. But the most likely scenario is that they constructed a scenario where they would be less culpable because if the truth came out that the Benghazi consulate had been attacked in April and June previously, and that the British had to leave Benghazi and the Red Cross was driven out, then that's a different story,” Graham said.

“It's a story about al Qaeda coming back, Libya going south, and it destroys the narrative that by killing bin Laden, al Qaeda's been dismantled. And it also destroys the narrative you can lead from behind in Libya and everything's fine. I hold the president personally accountable for knowing the security situation in the world.”