Esam Omran Al-fetori / Reuters

The U.S. consulate in Benghazi is seen in flames on Sept. 11.

WASHINGTON -- A senior intelligence official has issued a new timeline for the events surrounding the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, indicating a series of tragic miscalculations that left CIA officers exposed at an annex near the consulate -- but no evidence of interference from Washington or of the CIA witholding aid from the State Department, as Republican critics have alleged.

According to the timeline, CIA officials in Libya sent a security team to the consulate within 25 minutes of the report of the attack, and the U.S. military sent an unarmed drone to provide intelligence information.

Four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, information management officer Sean Smith and security personnel Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, were killed in the attack Sept. 11-12.

Questions have been raised about whether the consulate had adequate security and whether the State Department responded appropriately to requests for more protection.

Also, immediately after the Benghazi attack, U.S. spy agencies produced conflicting reports on who was behind them, U.S. officials have said. Most said extremists with possible al-Qaida ties were involved. But a few reports, which the Obama administration emphasized in public statements, said the attacks could have been spontaneous protests against an anti-Muslim video made in the U.S.

According to the senior intelligence official:

• The officers on the ground in Benghazi responded quickly to the attack, risking their lives in an attempt to rescue those at the consulate.
• There was no second-guessing of decisions made on the ground and no order to anybody to stand down in providing support. "At every level in the chain of command, from the senior officers in Libya to the most senior officials in Washington, everyone was fully engaged in trying to provide whatever help they could," the official said. 
• The U.S. military provided essential support, including sending an unarmed drone and medical evacuation.
• Two U.S. security teams were involved -- one that was sent from the annex to the consulate and a tactical support team that was sent from Tripoli, each composed of approximately half a dozen security officers. Two U.S. military officers were on the team from Tripoli.

The chain of events described in the timeline:

-- Around 9:40 p.m. local time, the first call comes in to the annex that the consulate is under attack.

-- Fewer than 25 minutes later, a security team of about half a dozen leaves the annex for the consulate.

-- Over the next 25 minutes, team members approach the compound, attempt to secure heavy weapons from Libyan allies and make their way into the compound under fire.

-- At 11:11 p.m., an unarmed drone that had been requested from the U.S. military arrives over the compound.

-- By 11:30 p.m., all U.S. personnel, except for the missing ambassador, depart the compound in vehicles under fire.

-- Over the next roughly 90 minutes, the annex receives sporadic small-arms fire and rounds from rocket-propelled grenades; the security team returns fire, and the attackers disperse about 1 a.m.

-- At about the same time, the second team of security personnel lands at the Benghazi airport and tries to negotiate for transport into town. Upon learning Stevens was missing and that the situation at the annex had calmed, their focus becomes locating him, perhaps at a local hospital.

-- Still before dawn, the team at the airport secures transportation and armed escort and -- having learned that the ambassador was almost certainly dead -- heads to the annex to assist with the evacuation.

-- The second team arrives with Libyan support at the annex at 5:15 a.m., just before the mortar rounds begin to hit the annex. The two security officers were killed when they took direct mortar fire as they engaged the enemy. That attack lasted only 11 minutes then also dissipated.

-- Less than an hour later, a heavily armed Libyan military unit arrived to help evacuate all U.S. personnel.

Earlier Thursday, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said a review board has been set up to examine the Benghazi attack and the government's response before and after the assault.

Catherine Chomiak is an NBC News producer. Andrea Mitchell is NBC News' senior foreign affairs correspondent.

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Updated at 4:00 p.m. ET: Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah made a rare public appearance in Beirut on Monday, calling for sustained protests against an anti-Islam film that already has provoked a week of demonstrations aimed at Western interests in Muslim countries worldwide.

"The world should know our anger will not be a passing outburst but the start of a serious movement that will continue on the level of the Muslim nation to defend the Prophet of God," Nasrallah told tens of thousands of marchers in Beirut's southern suburbs.

Meanwhile, the State Department urged U.S. citizens to avoid all travel to Lebanon due to an "upsurge in violence" there. On Friday, anti-Western protesters torched a KFC in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli.

In northwest Pakistan, hundreds of protesters torched a press club and a government building, triggering clashes with police that left at least one person dead.

Despite the demonstration in Lebanon, Arab countries saw a third day of relative calm after multiple attacks on U.S. diplomatic posts, including one that killed U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, forcing Washington to ramp up security in select countries. At least 10 protesters have died in the week of violence.

The crisis presents President Barack Obama with a foreign policy headache as elections approach.

The California-made movie that has provided the spark for the violence portrays Islam's Prophet Muhammad as a fraud, a womanizer and a child molester. Protesters have directed their anger at the U.S. government, insisting it should do something to stop it, though the film was privately produced.

American officials have criticized it for intentionally offending Muslims -- and in one case, acted to prevent it being shown at a Florida church.

German authorities are considering whether to ban the public screening of the film, titled "Innocence of Muslims" because it could endanger public security, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Monday. A fringe far-right political party says it plans to show the film in Berlin in November.

Germany followed the U.S. lead and withdrew some staff from its embassy in Sudan, which was stormed on Friday.

US analysts: Benghazi emerges as key recruiting ground for al-Qaida

Washington ordered non-essential staff and family members to leave its embassy on Saturday after the Khartoum government turned down a U.S. request to send Marines to bolster security.

Non-essential U.S. personnel have also been withdrawn from Tunisia, and Washington urged U.S. citizens to leave the capital Tunis after the embassy there was targeted on Friday.

Clashes
In Beirut, Hezbollah's Nasrallah called on governments across the world to censor websites carrying clips from the film and urged Muslims to boycott those websites that carried it.

"The world needs to understand our links to God's prophet. ... It did not understand the level of the insult that God's prophet was subjected to through some of the clips of this insulting film," he said, to roars of applause and cheers from the crowd.

Nasrallah has lived in hiding to avoid assassination since Hezbollah fought a month-long war with Israel in 2006.

The crowd at the demonstration was made up of men and women of all ages walking in separate groups, but united in their anger against the anti-Islam film.

“It’s the best we can do,” said Osama, a protester who gave only his first name, to explain why people had come out into the street Monday. “Every Muslim should do the same. Because if we don’t have respect for each other who’s going to respect us? We are against Israel and America, and whatever they do against Muslims.”

Mohammed, another protester who also only gave his first name, explained the target of his anger. “I am against the United States – the government, not the people. They insulted the prophet, and all Muslims around the world want to grab America by their throat.” 

"It's America’s fault if people attacked their embassies," said Haj Mustafa, another demonstrator.  

The U.S. Embassy in Beirut warned American citizens on Monday about the "continued threat of violent demonstrations" and "other violent actions against U.S. interests in Lebanon."

In Pakistan, several hundred demonstrators in the northwest clashed with police Monday after setting fire to a press club and a government building, said police official Mukhtar Ahmed.

The protesters apparently attacked the press club in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province's Upper Dir district because they were angry their rally was not getting more coverage, he said.

One protester died when police and demonstrators exchanged fire, and several others were wounded, police official Akhtar Hayat said.

From July 16: In Pakistan's largest city, 'Old Glory' is flammable and profitable

Elsewhere in Pakistan, hundreds of protesters clashed with police for a second day in the southern city of Karachi as they tried to reach the U.S. Consulate. Police lobbed tear gas and fired in the air to disperse the protesters, who were from the student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami party. Police arrested 40 students, but no injuries have been reported, said senior police officer Asif Ejaz Shaikh.

One protester was killed and over a dozen were wounded in similar clashes in Karachi on Sunday.

Pakistanis have also held many peaceful protests against the film, including one in the southwest town of Chaman on Monday attended by around 3,000 students and teachers.

In neighboring Afghanistan, hundreds of people burned cars and threw rocks at a U.S. military base in the capital, Kabul. Many in the crowd shouted "Death to America!" and "Death to those people who have made a film and insulted our prophet."

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Embassies in Kabul's heavily guarded central zone were placed on lockdown, including the U.S. and British missions, after violence flared near fortified housing compounds for foreign workers in the city's volatile eastern suburbs.

Slideshow: Anti-U.S. protests rock Mideast, Asia and northeast Africa

Youssef Boudlal / Reuters

Protests ignited by a controversial film that ridicules Islam's Prophet Muhammad spread throughout Muslim world.

Launch slideshow

Protests broke out in several part of Kabul. On the main thoroughfare through the city, demonstrators burned tires, shipping containers and at least one police vehicle before they were dispersed.

Elsewhere in the city, police shot in the air to hold back a crowd of about 800 protesters and prevent them from pushing toward government buildings downtown, said Azizullah, a police officer at the site who, like many Afghans, only goes by one name.

The rallies will continue "until the people who made the film go to trial," said one protester, Wahidullah Hotak, among several dozen people demonstrating in front of a Kabul mosque, demanding President Barack Obama bring those who have insulted the prophet to justice.

A number of Afghan religious leaders urged calm.

"Our responsibility is to show a peaceful reaction, to hold peaceful protests. Do not harm people, their property or public property," said Karimullah Saqib, a cleric in Kabul.

In Jakarta, the U.S. Embassy issued an emergency message urging American citizens about planned protests in the Indonesian capital and the city of Medan.

Iran's top leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called on the West to block the film Monday to prove they are not "accomplices" in a "big crime," according to Iranian state TV.

The Islamic Republic's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, condemned to death the Indian-born British novelist Salman Rushdie in 1989 for his novel The Satanic Verses,'' saying its depiction of the Prophet Muhammad was blasphemous.

In Tunisia, more than 1,000 security forces surrounded a mosque in the capital on Monday where a radical Islamic leader wanted by police over clashes at the U.S. Embassy last week was meeting hundreds of followers, a Reuters witness said.

The wave of international violence began last Tuesday when mainly Islamist protesters climbed the U.S. Embassy walls in the Egyptian capital of Cairo and tore down the American flag from a pole in the courtyard.

Ambassador Stevens was killed Tuesday as violent protesters stormed the consulate in Benghazi.

NBC News' Claudio Lavanga contributed to this report from Beirut, Lebanon. NBC News staff, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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Updated at 10 a.m. ET: A man purported to be a filmmaker involved with the anti-Islam video sparking violent unrest in the Middle East and North Africa was escorted by deputies from his Cerritos, Calif., home shortly after midnight Saturday morning, NBCLosAngeles.com reported.

Media and law enforcement had been staking out the home at the end of a cul de sac in the Southern California city for about 48 hours when Nakoula Besseley Nakoula emerged wearing a coat, hat, scarf and glasses.

L.A. County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Steve Whitmore confirmed to NBCLA that Nakoula, 55, was taken to the Cerritos sheriff’s station for interviewing by federal probation officers aimed at determining whether he violated the terms of his 5-year probation by uploading a video to the Internet.

"We are in an assist mode," he said.

Whitmore added that Nakoula, who has denied involvement in the film in a phone call to his Coptic Christian bishop, agreed to the interview prior to the deputies arriving at his home, that the move was "entirely voluntary" and the man was "very cooperative."

Deputies pulled up to the home around midnight, according to witnesses. The group left the home through the side gate because the front door was not working, Whitmore said. NBCLA went to the home earlier this week and saw the front door was missing a knob.

International protesters have cited the 15-minute video posted on the Internet called "The Innocence of Muslims" as a catalyst for their demonstrations in countries such as Libya, Tunisia and Egypt.

Read more on NBCLosAngeles.com

They say the piece is insulting to their religion as it depicts the Prophet Muhammad as a child molester and a thug. In Islam, all images of Muhammad are prohibited, let alone negative ones.

Nakoula has told the Associated Press he was not the director on the film, but rather a logistics manager. The film's mystery producer has been said to go by the pseudonym Sam Bacile.

A telephone number said to belong to Bacile, given to Reuters by U.S.-based Coptic Christian activist Morris Sadek who said he had promoted the film, was later traced back to a person who shares the Nakoula residence. 

Nakoula reportedly requested deputies step up patrols around his home Wednesday after media descended on the area. At the time, Whitmore told reporters there had been no disturbance or crime.

Related: At least 7 reported killed in protests over anti-Islamic video
Related: Two US troops killed at Afghan camp where Prince Harry is based

Early reports suggested the film prompted the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya that killed 14 people, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, two former Navy SEALS who were providing security for Stevens, and information management officer Sean Smith.

But U.S. officials are also probing the possibility that Wednesday’s attack was planned and timed to coincide with the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

A federal grand jury indictment in February 2009 charged Nakoula in an alleged bank fraud conspiracy. The indictment accused him and others of fraudulently obtaining the identities and Social Security numbers of bank customers at Wells Fargo and withdrawing $860 from bank branches in Cerritos, Artesia and Norwalk.

Nakoula pleaded no contest in 2010 and was ordered to pay more than $790,000 in restitution. He was also sentenced to 21 months in federal prison, but was released early. The terms of his parole included being barred from assuming aliases and using computers or the Internet for five years without approval from his probation officer. 

Many records in the case remain sealed, but prosecutors sought a longer prison term and noted that he misused some of his own relatives' identities to open 600 fraudulent credit accounts.

Los Angeles County District Attorney spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons confirmed that Nakoula also served a year in jail after pleading guilty to possession of meth with the intent to manufacture in 1997.

U.S. officials have said authorities were not investigating the film project itself, and that even if it was inflammatory or led to violence, simply producing it cannot be considered a crime in the United States, which has strong free speech laws. 

It could be difficult to establish a probation violation case against Nakoula. In the federal court system, the conditions of supervised release are geared toward the offense for which a defendant was found guilty and imprisoned.

In Nakoula's case, the offense was bank fraud. His no contest plea was to charges of setting up fraudulent bank accounts using stolen identities and Social Security numbers, depositing checks from those accounts into other phony accounts and then withdrawing the illicit funds from ATM machines.

While it was unclear what might have provoked authorities' interest, the filmmaker's use of a false identity and his access to the Internet through computers could be at issue, according to experts in cyber law and the federal probation system. Nakoula, who told the AP that he was logistics manager for the film, was under requirements to provide authorities with records of all his bank and business accounts. 

There are indications that "Innocence of Muslims" may have already been under way as a film project when Nakoula was arrested. A casting call for actors and crew for a film called "Desert Warrior" ran in Backstage magazine, based in Los Angeles and New York, in May and June 2009. The casting call described the film project as a "historical Arabian Desert adventure" and listed a "Sam Bassiel" as producer.

One notice identified "Pharaoh Voice Inc."as the film's production company. California state records show Pharaoh Voice was incorporated in September 2007 by a "Youssef M. Basseley." The principal address for Pharaoh Voice in Hawaiian Gardens, a southern California community, is the same location where Nakoula lived until 2008, according to state records.

During an interview with AP, Nakoula denied that he was Sam Bacile, but acknowledged knowing him. 

Stan Goldman, a Loyola Law School professor, said whether Nakoula is sent back to jail over potential probation violations linked to the film, such as accessing the Internet, was a subjective decision up to an individual judge.

"Federal judges are gods in their own courtrooms, it varies so much in who they are," he said, noting such a move would be based on his conduct not on the content of the film. 

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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New in this version: U.S. sending 50 Marines to embassy Sudan

Updated at 6:35 p.m. ET: At least seven people were reported to have been killed Friday across the Middle East and Africa in protests over the anti-Islamic video that led to a deadly attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya this week.

The U.S. said late Friday it would send 50 Marines to reinforce security at the embassy in Khartoum, Sudan's capital, where the Arabic news service al-Arabiya reported three people were killed Friday afternoon in a protest. 

Unrest worldwide was centered mainly on U.S. embassies, but other targets also came under attack, including embassies and other outposts of Britain, Germany and the U.N.

Google Inc. rejected a request by the White House on Friday to reconsider its decision to keep online the controversial YouTube clip of the trailer for "Innocence of Muslims," an unreleased U.S.-made movie that depicts the Prophet Muhammad as a womanizer and a gay child abuser. The Internet company said it was censoring the video in India and Indonesia after blocking it in Egypt and Libya.

A spokesman at the embassy in Khartoum said guards on the roof fired warning shots after hundreds of protesters breached the embassy's security perimeter and some tried to climb over the wall.

No members of the embassy staff were injured, the spokesman said.

The protesters moved to the U.S. compound after violent rallies outside the German and British embassies, which are near each other. Witnesses and police said as many as 5,000 protesters surrounding the two compounds were dispersed when police opened fire with tear-gas canisters. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

See the latest on this story at BreakingNews.com

In Tunisia, two people — at least one of them a protester — were killed and 29 others were injured outside the U.S. Embassy in Tunis, the Health Ministry said. At least two of the injured were in critical condition, the ministry reported, according to the official Tunisian news agency, TAP.

The protesters gathered at the embassy after earlier having set fire to the American School, which was closed Friday, the embassy said in a statement. Both the school and the embassy sustained "severe property damage," it said.

A protester was killed in a clash with police near the U.S Embassy in Cairo, a security source told Reuters. The victim, who died from birdshot wounds, was the first person to be killed in Egypt.

Protesters hurled stones at police, who responded with tear gas. 

The Muslim Brotherhood said on Twitter that it was canceling its call for nationwide protests about the film. However, it said it would still be present in Cairo's central Tahrir Square "for a symbolic protest against the movie."

"We've restricted access to it in countries where it is illegal such as India and Indonesia, as well as in Libya and Egypt, given the very sensitive situations in these two countries," the company said. "This approach is entirely consistent with principles we first laid out in 2007."

White House officials had asked Google earlier on Friday to reconsider whether the video had violated YouTube's terms of service.
Google said on Wednesday that the video was within its guidelines. 
 

Man behind anti-Islam movie ID'd as Egypt-born ex-con

Why films and cartoons of Muhammad spark violence 

Any depiction of Muhammad — favorable or not — is considered blasphemy in most of the Muslim world; the sheer grotesqueness of "Innocence of Muslims" made it a particular provocation.

Four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed Tuesday night in two attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton attended the return of the remains of the four Americans at Joint Base Andrews in suburban Maryland on Friday afternoon.

Americans killed in U.S. consulate attack honored at Andrews

Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee who were briefed by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Friday that it seemed clear that the Libya attacks were planned and premeditated. They cited the weapons carried by the attackers as the primary evidence.

"From all that I've heard," the attacks Tuesday night "were not just some coincidental protest of this film, this anti-Muslim film," said Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn. "They were a well-planned and professional terrorist attack against the U.S. consulate in Benghazi."

Clashes across region
In addition to Sudan, Tunisia, Egypt and Lebanon, demonstrations Friday spanned numerous countries across the Middle East and northern Africa:

•  U.N. multinational peacekeeping observers in the Sinai Peninsula were attacked by demonstrators protesting the movie, Israeli TV reported. Three peacekeepers from Colombia were injured in what appeared to be a coordinated attack using handheld explosive devices and automatic weapons, a spokesman told NBC News.

• About 50 U.S. Marines have been sent to Yemen to provide additional security in the aftermath of Thursday's attack on the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, Defense Department officials told NBC News. The Marines, part of a Fleet Anti-Terror Security Team, are an identical unit to the one sent to Libya earlier this week.

• A large demonstration against the Muhammad movie broke out at BMCI, a bank in Nouakchott, Mauritania, the U.S. Embassy said. It urged all U.S. citizens to avoid the areas around the bank and the Embassy.

• The UN multinational peacekeeping observer mission in the Sinai Peninsula was attacked Friday. Four people, believed to be peacekeepers from Colombia, were reported to have been injured. The multinational force observes the compliance of the Camp David peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.

• In Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, about 200 protesters vented their anger by chanting "death to Jews!" and "death to America!" in a largely peaceful protest outside the heavily guarded U.S. Embassy in Jakarta.

• Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the U.S. Embassy in Amman, Jordan, chanting for jihad and praising the late al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and the killers of Stevens in Libya.

EPA

Protesters clash with security forces after setting a fire at the German Embassy in Khartoum, Sudan, on Friday.

• In Pakistan, protests cropped up in major cities such as Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad, but Friday prayers seemed to have passed without major incidents of violence, NBC News reported.

• About 200 demonstrators gathered Friday outside the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait and hoisted banners.

• In Bangladesh, Islamists tried to march on the U.S. Embassy in Dhaka, and Iranian students protested in Tehran.

• In Nigeria, where the radical Islamist sect Boko Haram has killed hundreds of people this year in an insurgency, the government put police on alert and stepped up security around foreign missions.

• Protesters in Afghanistan set fire to an effigy of Obama and burned a U.S. flag after Friday prayers in the eastern province of Nangarhar.

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