ACLU lawyer Hima Shamsi (background) addresses Judge Pohl, while 9/11 victim family members (left to right): Gordon Haberman, Kathy Haberman, Jo Aquaviva, and Anthony Aquaviva observe from behind a glass barrier at the U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba on Wednesday.

The self-professed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks showed up to court in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Wednesday wearing a camouflage vest after a judge ruled that the military-style garment would not disrupt the proceedings.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was using his attire to make a political statement, which he coupled with a monologue late in the day’s proceedings to condemn what he called prosecutors "elastic" use of national security to justify its actions.

"The government uses national security as it chooses," the Arabic-speaking Mohammed said through a translator while seated at a defense table. "Many can kill people under the name of national security and torture people in the name of national security."

Mohammed was appearing before the military commission for the third day of hearings that will set the ground rules for the trial of the 47-year-old Kuwaiti and four accused co-conspirators accused of planning and aiding hijackers who flew commercial airlines into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania, killing 2,976 people.

All five defendants are charged with terrorism and murder and could be sentenced to death if convicted. The trial is likely more than a year away.

Fashion statement
Mohammed, who has grown a long beard in detention and dyed it with henna, wore the vest over his traditional white tunic and turban. He and a co-defendant had sought to wear camouflage items at their May 5 arraignment, but that request was denied.

At the time, the commander of the Guantanamo Bay prison said the camouflage might make it harder for the military prison guards to gain control if necessary, suggesting the clothing could create confusion about telling the difference between prisoners and fellow troops.

Earlier coverage of the week's Guantanamo pre-trial hearings:
Tuesday: Hearings for accused Sept. 11 terror planners haggle over rights, secrecy
Monday: 9/11 mastermind, alleged accomplices return to Guantanamo court

In Tuesday’s hearing, Military Judge Army Col. James Pohl dismissed the suggestion that the more than a dozen military members in the courtroom would have any problem distinguishing the bearded defendants. But just to be sure, he specifically prohibited them from wearing any items from U.S. military uniforms.

Mohammed considers himself a prisoner of war and wanted the same right to wear a uniform as the Japanese and German troops prosecuted for war crimes after World War II, according to his lawyers.

Mohammed surprised the courtroom midway through the afternoon by raising his hand to request that the court allow him to make a statement.

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Judge Pohl said defendants are not generally permitted to comment on proceedings, but then granted his request.

"This is a one-time occurrence," Pohl told the defendant after some some back-and-forth.

"We are all human beings," Mohammed said in his brief monologue. "Your blood is not made out of gold and ours is made out of water."

He said that while Americans were sad that 3,000 people were killed on Sept. 11, the U.S. government has "killed millions of people."

He urged the judge not to be persuaded by the government's "crocodile tears," and he complained that the U.S. president can "legislate" assassinations in the name of protecting Americans.

Battle over secrecy 
Earlier Wednesday, the court resumed hearing arguments on the admissibility of testimony that includes information about the period of detention and harsh interrogation techniques employed at secret CIA prisons, before the men's transfer to Guantanamo Bay in 2006.

The government has already acknowledged some details about the secret prisons, including the fact that Mohammed was subjected to a near-drowning technique called water-boarding 183 times, but prosecutors have said that restrictions are necessary to prevent the release of information that would reveal information about intelligence sources and methods.

ACLU attorney Hina Shamsi picked up where she left off Tuesday when court adjourned, arguing that the detention information should be part of the public record.

Shamsi said the restrictions were overly broad and intended not to protect national security so much as to prevent the public from learning more details about the harsh confinement of the defendants in the CIA's prisons overseas.

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"We are aware, your honor, of no other protective order that is as radical as what the government is asking you to judicially bless here," Shamsi said.

But government prosecutor Joanna Baltes said the ACLU and other critics of the proposed rules are exaggerating the restrictions. She said the restrictions, known as protective orders, are similar to those in major terrorism cases in civilian courts.

"I think it is a very inflammatory allegation for the ACLU to come in and claim they have never seen anything like this," Baltes said.

The painstaking pre-trial hearings are intended to deal with 25 motions, many of them dealing with security rules and defendants’ rights.

On Monday, the court agreed that the defendants could not be forced to attend the pre-trial hearings.

At Wednesday’s hearings, Mohammed, who was born in Kuwait, and Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, a Pakistani, were the only two of the five who attended. Mustafa Al Hawsawi, a Saudi; and Walid Bin Attash and Ramzi Binalshibh, both from Yemen, sat this one out.

Hearings were slated to continue on Thursday morning.

The Associated Press and NBC News' Courtney Kube and Kari Huus contributed to this report.

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Nueces County Sheriff

Mansour Arbabsiar is seen in a 2001 booking photo after he was charged for check fraud.

Updated at 2:30 p.m. ET: A Texas man pleaded guilty Wednesday to plotting to assassinate Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, acknowledging he agreed to hire what he thought was a drug dealer in Mexico last year for $1.5 million to carry out the attack with explosives at a Washington, D.C., restaurant.

Manssor Arbabsiar, 58, entered the plea to two conspiracy charges and a murder-for-hire count in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Judge John F. Keenan repeatedly asked Arbabsiar whether he intended to kill the ambassador. Arbabsiar, a U.S. citizen who holds an Iranian passport, said he did.

"I take responsibility for my actions," Arbabsiar said.

Arbabsiar also admitted he agreed to help transfer more than $100,000 through a New York bank to help further the plot. 

When Arbabsiar's arrest was announced last year, President Barack Obama's administration accused the Iranian government of being behind the planned assassination of Ambassador Adel al Jubeir in Washington.

The press attache at Iran's mission to the United Nations then called the accusation "baseless."

"Mr. Arbabsiar’s plea today confirms what our investigation had already uncovered: that he plotted to murder the Saudi Ambassador with members of Iran’s elite Qods Force," said FBI Acting Assistant Director Mary Galligan. "The FBI remains ever vigilant toward acts of terror both here and abroad."

Authorities say Arbabsiar earlier admitted his role in a $1.5 million plot to kill the ambassador at a restaurant by setting off explosives. 

See the original story at NBCNewYork.com | More from NBCNewYork.com

Sentencing is scheduled Jan. 23. Arbabsiar faces up to 25 years in prison. A trial had been scheduled for January.

Arbabsiar, who lived in Corpus Christi, Texas, for more than a decade, said he went to Mexico last year to meet a man named Junior, "who turned out to be an FBI agent." He said that he and others had agreed to arrange the kidnapping of ambassador Al-Jubeir, but Junior said it would be easier to kill the ambassador.

Arbabsiar has been held without bail since he was arrested Sept. 29, 2011 at John F. Kennedy International Airport. He was brought into court Wednesday in handcuffs. He spoke English and did not use a translator, despite saying he understood only about half of what he read in English. Bearded and bespectacled, he smiled several times during the proceeding, including in the direction of courtroom artists who were seated in the jury box when he entered court.

Defense lawyers say Arbabsiar suffers from bipolar disorder.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward Kim said that if the government had proceeded to trial, it would have presented a jury with secretly recorded conversations between Arbabsiar and a confidential source, along with Arbabsiar's extensive post-arrest statement to authorities and emails and financial records.

Authorities have said they secretly recorded conversations between Arbabsiar and an informant with the Drug Enforcement Administration after Arbabsiar approached the informant in Mexico and asked his knowledge of explosives for a plot to blow up the Saudi embassy in Washington. They said Arbabsiar later offered $1.5 million for the death of the ambassador.

A second person, Gholam Shakuri, was charged in the plot but remains at large in Iran.

The Justice Department said Shakuri is an Iran-based member of Iran’s Qods Force, which is a special operations unit of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that is said to sponsor and promote terrorist activities abroad.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara stated: “As was originally charged, and as Arbabsiar has now admitted, he was the extended murderous hand of his co-conspirators, officials of the Iranian military based in Iran, who plotted to kill the Saudi Ambassador in the United States and were willing to kill as many bystanders as necessary to do so. Arbabsiar traveled to and from the United States, Mexico and Iran and was in telephone contact with his Iranian confederates while he brokered an audacious plot. The audacity of the plot should not cause doubt, but rather vigilance regarding others like Arbabsiar, who are enlisted as the violent emissaries of plotting foreign officials. This office will continue to pursue the co-conspirators in this plot and others in Iran or elsewhere who try to export murder. Thanks to the great work of the FBI, DEA and the prosecutors in this office, Mr. Arbabsiar must now answer for his conduct.”

Pete Williams is NBC News' justice correspondent. Jonathan Dienst is WNBC's chief investigative correspondent. Shimon Prokupecz is a WNBC investigative producer.    

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Defense Secretary Leon Panetta issued a call to arms against cyber attacks on U.S. targets and said the Pentagon must be prepared to launch preemptive attacks in cyberspace against potential attackers. He warned that a cyber attack by a nation state or terrorists on the U.S. could be America's "cyber Pearl Harbor" and "be just as destructive as the terrorist attack of 9/11."

In a speech before business executives in New York, Panetta revealed that cyber intruders have already gained access to some of America's critical control systems that run chemical, electric and water systems with the intent to "cause panic, destruction and loss of life."

With a current annual budget of $3 billion for cybersecurity, Panetta urged that more needs to be done to create an army of "skilled cyber warriors" to confront the immediate and growing threat. The Defense Department is already hammering out new "rules of engagement" for a potential cyber war.

US Officials see Iran, not outrage over film, behind cyber attacks on banks

Panetta stressed that defending against potentially disastrous cyber attack on America will take a total government and business-wide effort. 

Panetta said that before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, warning signs went largely ignored.

"We cannot let that happen again," Panetta warned. "This is a pre-9/11 moment. The attackers are plotting."

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WASHINGTON — A Special Forces soldier who commanded the security team for U.S. diplomats in Libya until just before the fatal attack there told a congressional hearing Wednesday that there was never enough personnel to protect the consulate in Benghazi.

Lt. Col. Andrew Wood, who commanded a 16-member U.S. military team in Libya from Feb. 12 to Aug. 14, told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that U.S. security was so weak that in April, only one U.S. diplomatic security agent was stationed in Benghazi.

"The security in Benghazi was a struggle and remained a struggle throughout my time there ... Diplomatic security remained weak,'' according to Wood's testimony. "The RSO (regional security officer) struggled to obtain additional personnel there (in Benghazi), but was never able to attain the numbers he felt comfortable with," Wood said.

That view was echoed by Eric Nordstrom, is the former chief security officer for U.S. diplomats in Libya, who told the committee his pleas for more security were ignored.

Nordstrom addressed the diplomatic security issue in an Oct. 1 email to a congressional investigator. He said his requests for more security were blocked by a department policy to "normalize operations and reduce security resources."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not testify on Wednesday, but sent two high level department officials to testify at the hearing.

Patrick Kennedy, Under Secretary of State for Management, responded to allegations that the outcome of the attack indicated lax security.

The assault on the U.S. compound was "an unprecedented attack by dozens of heavily armed men," Kennedy said. "There was no actionable intelligence available... indicating that there was a planned massive attack."

He said there are regular assessments of resources required to mitigate risk for employees, but that risk cannot be eliminated.

Another state department official, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Programs Charlene Lamb, added that the state department "had the correct number of assets in Benghazi at the time," based on recent assessments.  

The Sept. 11 attack on the consulate killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif, who chaired the hearing, set the tone for a contentious back-and-forth over whether the attack on Benghazi could have been averted if intelligence and security had been handled differently by the State Department.

"We know the tragedy in Benghazi ended as it did," Issa said. “We know now that it was caused by a terrorist attack that was reasonably predictable to eventually happen somewhere in the world, especially on Sept. 11. Requests for extensions for more security in Libya appear to have often been rejected."

Democrats were concerned that after the attacks, a Republican member of the committee visited Libya to investigate, but no Democrats were present on that fact-finding trip.

They accused Republicans for blocking funding requested by the State Department for beefing up security at outposts throughout the turbulent region.

Republicans expressed frustration that the State Department put out a fairly detailed timeline on the attacks to the press the night before the hearings.

Briefing reporters Tuesday ahead of the hearing, State Department officials were asked about the administration's initial — and since retracted — explanation linking the violence to protests over an American-made anti-Muslim video circulating on the Internet.

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In a departure from statement by other administration officials, the officials said the department never believed the attack was a protest gone awry over a film ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad, while "others" in the Obama administration initially drew that conclusion.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

It was a top administration diplomatic official — U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice — who gave a series of interviews five days after the attack that wrongly described the attack as spontaneous.

She said the administration believed the violence was unplanned and that extremists with heavier weapons "hijacked" the protest against the anti-Islamic video. She did qualify her remarks to say that was the best information she had at the time. Rice since has denied trying to mislead Congress.

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Handling of security and the aftermath of the attack has become an increasingly prominent theme for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and other Republican leaders who say they never believed the original explanation.

Democrats on the committee said that they were left out of the investigation leading up to today's hearing, calling it "completely one-sided and unique."

"Although the chairman claims that we are pursuing this investigation on a bipartisan basis, that has simply not been the case," said ranking member Elijah Cummings, D-Md. 

Democrats on the committee said they had no access to documents that Republicans claim to have pertaining to the investigation. They also say that they had no access to one of the witnesses, Lt. Col Wood.

Issa was "resorting to petty abuses in what should be a serious and responsible investigation of this fatal attack," Cummings said.

An aide said they did have access to the committee's interview with Eric Nordstrom, who acts as a Regional Security Officer for the State Department, but only because Cummings, assisted with arranging the interview.

Cummings was asked last week if he thought the hearing was political, answering "I think it's a lot politics, come on." He released a statement later saying he supports investigating the attacks in Benghazi, but in a more strategic way.

NBC News staff, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Jane Rosenberg / Reuters

In this courtroom sketch, Islamist cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri is seen standing with his lawyer Jeremy Schneider in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, where he pleaded not guilty to criminal charges on Tuesday.

An extremist preacher accused of terrorism by the U.S. government pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges related to conspiring with Seattle men to set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon.

Egyptian-born Abu Hamza al-Masri, indicted under that name Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, is accused of providing material support to al-Qaida network by trying to set up a terrorist training camp in Bly, Ore., in 1999 and of attempting to organize support for the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Hamza is also charged with helping abduct 16 hostages — including two Americans — in Yemen in 1998; three Britons and an Australian were killed.

After Hamza's plea, U.S. District Judge Katherine B. Forrest set the 54-year-old's trial to begin Aug. 26, 2013, The Associated Press reported.

Previous story: Abu Hamza, 4 others tied to al-Qaida arrive in US to face terrorism charges

Hamza, a British citizen, is known for turning London's Finsbury Park Mosque into a training ground for extremist Islamists, including Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and "shoe bomber" Richard Reid. Hamza had been jailed in Britain since 2004 on separate charges.

He was flown late on Friday to the United States along with four other men also wanted on U.S. terrorism charges. Hamza could face up to life in prison if convicted on the charges.

He reportedly has unusual needs in prison: He is missing an eye, he has lost part of each of his arms, and lawyers in England said he suffers from diabetes, depression and chronic sleep deprivation.

Earlier Tuesday, the trial date for two of the other men brought from England — Khaled al-Fawwaz and Adel Abdul Bary — was set for October 2013. Al-Fawwaz and Bary are charged with participating in the bombings of embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in August 1998. The two were indicted in a case that also charged Osama bin Laden. Both al-Fawwaz and Bary have pleaded not guilty.

This article includes reporting by The Associated Press and Reuters.

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JERUSALEM — The Israeli air force shot down a drone after it crossed into southern Israel on Saturday, the military said, but it remained unclear where the aircraft had come from.

The drone was first spotted above the Mediterranean in the area of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip to the west of Israel, said military spokeswoman Avital Leibovich.

 It was kept under surveillance and followed by Israeli air force jets before it was shot down above a forest in an unpopulated area near the border with the occupied West Bank.

Leibovich said it was shot down at about 10 a.m. (3 a.m. ET), after it travelled east some 55 kilometers (35 miles) across Israel's southern Negev desert.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak praised the interception as "sharp and effective."

"We view with great severity the attempt to compromise Israeli air space and will consider our response in due course,"Barak said in a statement.

Soldiers, assisted by helicopters, were searching the area for the remains of the drone, which security sources said most likely did not originate from the Gaza Strip.

Israel's Army Radio reported the drone was not carrying any explosives.

Israeli parliament member Miri Regev, a former chief spokesman of the military, wrote on Twitter it was an "Iranian drone launched by Hezbollah," referring to the Lebanese Shi'ite group that fought a war with Israel in 2006.

Defense officials would not confirm Hezbollah's connection to the drone.

On at least one occasion, Iranian-backed Hezbollah has launched a drone into Israel. And in 2010, an Israeli warplane shot down an apparently unmanned balloon in the Negev near the country's Dimona nuclear reactor.

The Israeli military released a 10-second video clip of what it said was Saturday's mid-air interception. In the video, a small, unidentified aircraft is seen moments before being destroyed by a missile fired from a fighter jet.

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AP

French police officers stand guard at the entrance of a building in Strasbourg, France, Saturday where a suspect was shot dead after firing at police.

French authorities raided homes in cities across France on Saturday, arresting 11 terror suspects and killing one who reportedly first opened fire on police.

"A vast anti-terrorist operation was conducted this morning," Paris Prosecutor Francois Molins told a news conference.

The suspects arrested in various French cities were affiliated with a Salafist movement and believed to constitute a jihadist cell, Molins said.

He identified the man who was shot and killed by police in Strasbourg after he fired on them, lightly wounding three, as Jeremie Sidney, 33.

Molins described Sidney as a French national who recently converted to Islam after spending two years in prison for drug dealing.

"Jeremie Sidney appeared to be a delinquent converted to radical Islam who belonged to a group suspected, without certainty, to want to enter into jihad," Molins said.

French authorities say Sidney’s fingerprints match those on a grenade that was tossed into a Jewish kosher market in Sarcelles, a Paris suburb, on Sept. 19.

Police had been preparing for Saturday’s operation for weeks as result of the investigation of the attack in Sarcelles.

The people arrested were between the ages of 19 and 25, The Associated Press reported.

In the house raids carried out in the Paris region, Strasbourg, Cannes and Nice, authorities found arms, large amounts of money and four wills, suggesting the suspects may have been planning an attack.

A statement from President Francois Hollande praised the police for the raids and said the state would continue to "protect the French against all terrorist threats."

The Sarcelles attack took place on the same day that a French satirical paper published crude caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, and while anti-Western protests were growing against an anti-Islam film.

NBC News' Nancy Ing, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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EPA

Islamic cleric Abu Hamza al- Masri is seen in a courtroom sketch in front of a U.S. federal court judge in lower Manhattan on Saturday.

An extremist preacher and four other men accused of terrorism by the U.S. government arrived in New York overnight after they lost a years-long battle to remain in the United Kingdom. All appeared in federal courts within several hours of arriving.

The preacher, Abu Hamza al-Masri, is charged in connection with the abduction of 16 people, including two American tourists, in Yemen in 1998; conspiring to set up a terrorist training camp in Bly, Ore., in 1999; and supporting violent jihad in Afghanistan in 2000 and 2001.

In a final appeal to avert extradition, lawyers for the 54-year-old argued he could not travel because of poor health. The Egyptian-born British citizen has one eye and hooks in place of hands he claims to have lost fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. Lawyers said he suffers from depression, chronic sleep deprivation, diabetes and other ailments.

Hamza was taken to a lockup next to the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan. He later appeared in court for the first time Saturday wearing a short-sleeved blue prison shirt but without his prosthetic hooks, which he complained had been taken away as he was being transported from London overnight.

His court-appointed lawyer, Sabrina Shroff, asked that his prosthetics be immediately returned "so he can use his arms," The Associated Press reported.

In the 1990s, the fiery anti-American preacher turned London's Finsbury Park Mosque into a training ground for extremist Islamists, attracting men including Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and "shoe bomber" Richard Reid.

Hamza, indicted under the name Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, entered no plea, saying only "I do" when asked by U.S. Magistrate Judge Frank Maas whether he swears that his financial affidavit used to determine is he qualifies for a court-appointed lawyer was correct.

Separately, Egyptian Adel Abdel Bary, 52 and Saudi Khaled al Fawwaz, 50, are charged with conspiring with al-Qaida to kill Americans and attack U.S. interests abroad.

Bary is also charged with murder, conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction and other offenses in connection with the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people and injured thousands more.

Al-Fawwaz and Bary appeared in a New York court and pleaded not guilty Saturday afternoon, AP reported.

Preet Bharara, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, called the extradition "a watershed moment in our nation's efforts to eradicate terrorism."

"As is charged, these are men who were at the nerve centers of al-Qaida's acts of terror, and they caused blood to be shed, lives to be lost, and families to be shattered," Bharara said, The extradition "makes good on a promise to the American people to use every available diplomatic, legal, and administrative tool to pursue and prosecute charged terrorists no matter how long it takes." 

Two others — Syed Talha Ahsan, 33, and Babar Ahmad, 38 — pleaded not guilty in a federal court in New Haven, Conn., just hours after their arrival in America, AP said.

EPA

Terror suspects Khaled al Fawwaz, center, and Adel Abdel Bary are seen in this courtroom sketch during an appearance in Manhattan Federal Court on Saturday.

Profiles of terror suspects extradited from UK to face trials

They were jailed until trial, and their lawyers declined to comment. Authorities say the men are charged in Connecticut because an Internet service provider there was used to run websites that sought to raise cash, recruit fighters and seek equipment for terrorists, including al-Qaida members.

The five men have been battling extradition for between eight and 14 years. On Friday, Britain's High Court ruled that the men had no more grounds for appeal and could be sent to the U.S. immediately.

British Prime Minister David Cameron hailed the deportation.  

"Like the rest of the public I'm sick to the back teeth of people who come here, threaten our country, who stay at vast expense to the taxpayer and we can't get rid of them," he said, according to The Guardian.

"I'm delighted on this occasion we've managed to send this person off to a country where he will face justice."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Militant groups in North Africa have benefited from lapses in security across the region as countries transition to more democratic government – increasingly funding themselves through kidnapping, a senior U.S. Treasury official said.

The U.S. estimates militant organizations received $120 million in ransoms over the past decade, including to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb in recent years, said David Cohen, undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.

Kidnapping for ransom was an "urgent threat," particularly in the Sahel, a belt of land spanning nearly a dozen of the world's poorest nations on the Sahara's southern rim, Cohen told reporters in Berlin on Tuesday.

"It is what has become perhaps the most challenging and fastest growing technique that terrorist organizations, in particular the affiliates of al-Qaida in North Africa and in Yemen, have been using to fund themselves over the last couple of years."

The Obama administration has been concerned about the growing power and influence of al-Qaida offshoots in Yemen, Somalia, Iraq and North Africa.

Small teams of special operations forces arrived at American embassies throughout North Africa in the months before militants launched the fiery attack on Sept. 11 that killed the U.S. ambassador in Libya. The soldiers' mission: Set up a network that could quickly strike a terrorist target or rescue a hostage.

The teams had yet to do much counterterrorism work in Libya, although the White House signed off a year ago on the plan to build the new military task force in the region and the advance teams had been there for six months, three U.S. counterterror officials and a former intelligence official told The Associated Press. All spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the strategy publicly.

Officials say the military organization was too new to respond to the attack in Benghazi, where the administration now believes armed al-Qaida-linked militants surrounded the lightly guarded U.S. compound, set it on fire and killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Al-Qaida in North Africa emerged out of Algeria's civil conflict and has expanded south into the Sahara, raising its profile in recent years with hit-and-run attacks and kidnappings of westerners.

While the U.S. government has a policy of not paying ransoms, some European governments do so. The average ransom had gone up consistently over the years and was in the range of $5 million per payment, Cohen said.

Back in Washington, D.C., Republicans have questioned whether the Obama administration has been hiding key information or hasn't known what happened in the immediate aftermath of the attack.

On Tuesday, leaders of a congressional committee said requests for added security at the consulate in Benghazi were repeatedly denied, despite a string of less deadly terror attacks on the consulate in recent months. Those included an explosion that blew a hole in the security perimeter and another incident in which an explosive device was tossed over the consulate fence.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told Congress in a letter responding to the accusations that she has set up a group to investigate the Benghazi attack, and it is to begin work this week.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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