Pat Smith Mother of State Dept. Official Slain in Libya Blasts Obama Remark: My Son Is Not Very Optimal He Is Also Very Dead

State Department computer expert Sean Smith was killed during the terrorist assault on the U.S. Consulate in Libya on Sept. 11. (Photo credit: Department of State)

​UPDATE: Pat Smith told the Boston Herald she never said the quotes attributed to her by the Daily Mail.

“It’s all (expletive). They lied. They lied,” Smith told the newspaper Saturday. “Very simple. It’s very simple. I did not say that. And I’ve got a big enough mouth. I’m not afraid of saying what I believe, and I did not say that.”

​Original story below:

The mother of a State Department official killed during the terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya blasted President Barack Obama’s “not optimal” comment about the deaths of four Americans, saying, “My son is not very optimal — he is also very dead.”

Pat Smith, mother of State Department computer expert Sean Smith, told the Daily Mail Friday that Obama’s remark on “The Daily Show” was “a disrespectful thing to say and I don’t think it’s right.”

“How can you say somebody being killed is not very optimal? I don’t think the president has the right idea of the English language,” Smith, 72, told the Mail from her San Diego, Calif. home. “It’s insensitive to say my son is not very optimal — he is also very dead. I’ve not been optimal since he died and the past few weeks have been pure hell.”

Obama had been responding to Comedy Central host Jon Stewart’s question about the White House’s shifting response to the Libya attack. Stewart used the word “optimal” in his question, saying: “I would say, even you would admit, it was not the optimal response, at least to the American people, as far as all of us being on the same page.”

“Here’s what I’ll say,” Obama replied. “If four Americans get killed, it’s not optimal. We’re going to fix it.”

Smith told the Mail she is still “waiting for the truth to come out” about what exactly happened to her son.

“I still want to know the truth. I’m finally starting to get some answers but I won’t give up,” she said. “There’s a lot of stupid things that have been said about my son and what happened and this is another one of them.”

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