Candor is needed from White House about Libya attack

Openness and candor are the cornerstones of good government, so it is troubling when they seem to be lacking.

That is the case with the way the Obama administration has been handling the now-acknowledged terror attack on the Benghazi consulate in Libya and the murder of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.

It is understandable that there would be confusion on the day of the attack on Sept. 11 and that there would be a reluctance on the part of the administration to make too much information available until there was better knowledge of how the events transpired.
But it now is clear that the initial telling of the event — that it started as a peaceful demonstration that morphed into a violent one — was incorrect and that it was pretty much known it was a deliberate terror attack from nearly the beginning.

The people of America needed to know this sooner than the administration was willing to acknowledge it a week and more afterward. It has the smell of there being political considerations involved and if that was the case, it was wrong of them to do it.

Now there are questions about the lack of security, even though there were apparently clear warnings that there was an increased level of danger. Again, it appears there may be some disingenuousness about this on the part of the State Department and the administration. If so, that is wrong, too.

It is equally clear that opponents of the president don’t have entirely clean hands either. They have their own political motivations.

But candor is the expectation of Americans for their leaders. The Obama administration needs to be out front on this attack and reveal all there is to know about it to the extent that the investigation and security concerns allow. And that needs to be done even if it is embarrassing to them.