According to the U.S. State Department and counterterrorism officials, the effective response by newly trained Libyan guards to a small bombing outside the American Embassy in the months before the September attacks led U.S. officials to overestimate the effectiveness of the security forces in Benghazi, and to underestimate the threat to personnel there.
"That the local security did so well back in June probably gave us a false sense of security," an American official who has served in Libya told the New York Times. "We may have fooled ourselves."