The REAL Benghazi Story: What the White House and Hillary Don't Want You to Know (11 page)

It’s bad enough al-Libi’s capture was almost immediately leaked to the news media. Four days later, on October 9, the Obama administration strangely told the news media that the Libyan government had approved the al-Libi raid and also granted permission to seize Khattala. The details were splashed on the front page of the
New York Times
in a story titled “U.S. Officials Say Libya Approved Commando Raids.” The article quotes “more than half a dozen American diplomatic, military, law enforcement,
intelligence and other administration officials.” Regarding the Libyan government’s approval, the
Times
reports, “The Libyans’ consent marks a significant step forward for the Obama administration, which has been criticized by Congressional Republicans for moving too slowly to apprehend the Benghazi suspects.”
⁸

In its reporting, the
Times
notes what is patently obvious: the leak of the al-Libi raid may have given Khattala a heads-up that his own capture was impending. Reported the
Times
, “While American officials expected that the Libyan government would claim that it had known nothing about the operation, news of the raid has raised concerns that the suspect in the Benghazi attacks, Ahmed Abu Khattala, has now been tipped off that the United States has the ability to conduct an operation in Libya.” Even the
Times
was puzzled, writing, “It is not clear why American military commanders did not conduct both operations simultaneously to avoid this problem.”
⁹

Indeed, U.S. Forces may have been ready to act to capture Khattala as soon as the day after al-Libi’s arrest, according to some officials speaking to CNN. The news network revealed a top-level White House meeting was scheduled for around October 7 to get Obama’s final approval to capture Khattala.
¹⁰
However, al-Libi’s capture and its subsequent leak to news media sent Khattala underground and further caused a major rift with the Libyan government, which demanded an end to any future U.S. raids.

CNN reported the Khattala raid never materialized
“partly because there was so much publicity inside Libya and in the Western press about the al-Libi capture.”
¹¹
The publicity about al-Libi’s capture was nearly unavoidable since U.S. forces for some reason seized the wanted terrorist in broad daylight instead of capturing him in a more secretive manner.

CNN related that the aborted Khattala capture is leading “to sensitive questions inside the administration about the tradeoff between getting al-Libi and going after the perpetrators of the politically charged Benghazi attack.” Obama had previously vowed to make it a “priority” to bring the Benghazi suspects “to justice.”

In its October 9 front-page piece, the
New York Times
disclosed that the efforts to track Khattala had been in place for months. The newspaper further reported the Pentagon “has been preparing contingency plans for months in the event Mr. Obama orders a military operation” to seize Khattala and other terrorists for the Benghazi attack.
¹²

Unfortunately for Libyan prime minister Ali Zeidan, the publicity surrounding al-Libi’s capture created such a backlash for him that he was reportedly briefly kidnapped in retaliation for allowing the United States to act on Libyan soil.

Washington Post
opinion writer Mark Thiessen took issue with the Obama administration’s leak to the
New York Times
about the Libyan government’s approval of al-Libi’s capture. “With the leak that the Libyans approved both raids, and the kidnapping of the Libyan prime minister, [Khattala’s] government probably will not authorize more such operations
for the foreseeable future,” he wrote.
¹³

Indeed, in December 2013, the
Washington Post
featured an update on Khattala, making it crystal clear the decision to capture al-Libi may leave Khattala free to live in jihadist paradise in Libya for quite some time to come. It is increasingly unlikely the United States will have another opportunity to capture him anytime soon, the paper said. One official told the
Post
that Khattala is operating in eastern Libya with impunity. “He’s as free as a bird,” the official complained.
¹⁴

The
Post
recalled the mission to capture Khattala was scrapped after al-Libi’s seizure, and any plans to remove him from Libya were put on the back burner. American officials claimed that another raid to seize Khattala could “lead to the toppling of Zeidan’s government and increase the chaos in a country that the United States would like to see stabilize.”

But Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, isn’t buying it. “I don’t subscribe to that theory, and that is a theory,” Rogers told the
Post
.
¹⁵

It makes little sense that the Obama administration decided to expose details of the Libyan government’s approval of the raids. The leak was sure to inflame Zeidan. The method of capturing al-Libi in broad daylight while his family watched seemed almost designed to attract attention from both the news media and the terrorist community in Libya. It doesn’t take a tactical genius to understand that as soon as al-Libi’s very public capture was inevitably made known, jihadists throughout Libya would go dark. And once it was announced that Zeidan’s
administration had rubber-stamped the raids, the resulting pressure against him to not allow future capture operations was almost sure to come.

Too much just doesn’t add up.

O
bservers of the Benghazi scandal are quite familiar with the generalities of Hillary Clinton’s infamous testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Clinton’s reaction to the murderous September 11, 2012, Benghazi attacks will forever be remembered by eight insulting words: “What difference at this point does it make?!”
¹
This infuriated response was fired at a lawmaker who dared to press her on why four Americans, including a sitting U.S. ambassador, were murdered. Clinton’s testimony that day, and specifically her shocking “what difference” jibe, has become so associated with the attacks that the image of her testimony is one of the most frequently returned pictures in Google whenever a user types in the word “Benghazi.”

However, despite Clinton’s very public display of what many see as arrogance in the face of a legitimate line of inquisition, few are aware of the central role she played in
the real Benghazi scandal, from her direct involvement in approving lawful occupancy of the disgracefully unsecured U.S. special mission, to the weapons-to-rebels scheme, to the very reason Ambassador Chris Stevens was in the compound on the dangerous day of 9/11 in the first place. We are herein going to document Clinton’s undeniably fundamental role in virtually the entire Benghazi story, replete with information indicating she may have perjured herself during sworn testimony.

Let’s start with Clinton’s personal approval of security conditions at the compound. By this point you are familiar with the stunning backwardness of the U.S. special mission’s so-called security posture. Guard towers were denied; a special reaction team was pulled from Libya’s hot zone; an aircraft was recalled. External protection of the compound was provided entirely by poorly trained, unarmed local Libyans who had virtually no capabilities to fend off armed attackers. Internal security was incomprehensibly left to the devices of armed members of the February 17 Martyrs Brigade militia, a ragtag group affiliated with the al-Qaeda–linked, Islamic extremist Ansar al-Sharia terrorist organization that was later implicated in the Benghazi assault. Despite numerous previous strikes against both the U.S. special mission and other Western compounds in Benghazi, and in spite of a large number of requests from U.S. diplomats on the ground, there was little change in the dismal state of “security” at the mission.

Yet it can now be said that Clinton personally provided the legal waivers for U.S. personnel to occupy that death trap of a mission. This largely unreported detail was confirmed in the Senate’s January 2014 report on Benghazi. Senate investigators found the Benghazi facility required a special waiver since it did not meet the minimum official security standards set by the State Department.

Some of the necessary waivers, the Senate affirmed, could have been issued at lower levels within the State Department. However “other departures, such as the co-location requirement, could only be approved by the Secretary of State.”
²
The “co-location” requirement refers to an unusual housing setup in Benghazi where intelligence and State Department personnel were kept in two separate locations. Traditionally, intelligence personnel operate from official State buildings, such as embassies and consulates. This means Clinton herself approved some aspects of the U.S. special mission, including separating the mission from the seemingly more protected CIA annex. In doing so, did Clinton know she was approving a woefully unprotected compound? If not, then at the very least she is guilty of dereliction of duty and the diplomatic equivalent of criminal negligence.

It has emerged that top deputies working directly under Clinton, including officials known to be close to the ambitious politicians, were single-handedly responsible for some of the most shocking security decisions made regarding the Benghazi compound. It is difficult to imagine, indeed it is entirely nonsensical to argue that these Clinton deputies
were acting without her direct knowledge and permission, especially in the central theater of Libya, the linchpin of the so-called Arab Spring.

In
chapter 1
, we documented that four months before the attack, State Department under secretary Patrick Kennedy canceled the use in Tripoli of a DC-3 aircraft that could have aided in the evacuation of the Benghazi victims. Kennedy also nonsensically denied guard towers to the Benghazi mission and approved the withdrawal of a Security Support Team (or SST, special U.S. forces specifically maintained for counterattacks on U.S. embassies or threats against diplomatic personnel).
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Remember the decision to withdraw the SST was made “despite compelling requests from personnel in Libya that the team be allowed to stay.”
⁴
These details and more were contained in a scathing February 2014 report by Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

That same House Republican report further noted it was Kennedy who in December 2011 approved a one-year extension of the Benghazi mission despite major security lapses at the building. The State Department’s ARB report, while not mentioning Kennedy by name, itself conceded there was a “flawed process by which Special Mission Benghazi’s extension until the end of December 2012 was approved,” admitting it was “a decision that did not take security considerations adequately into account.”
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A January Senate report further assailed Kennedy for declining an offer from the Department of Defense (DoD) to “sustain or provide additional DoD security personnel in
Libya by extending the deployment of the DoD Site Security Team in Tripoli, transitioning to a Marine Security Detachment, or deploying a U.S. Marine Corps Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team.”
⁶

Now, which security-conscious individual would decline an offer from the military to protect the Benghazi compound? The Senate report cited information that not only was Kennedy fully aware of the lack of security in Benghazi, he also “approved every person who went to Libya and received a daily report on the number of personnel, their names, and their status.”
⁷

Even the ARB, known for minimizing Clinton’s complacency in the attacks, states unnamed State officials are guilty of “systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies” that contributed to the “grossly inadequate” security situation in Benghazi.
⁸
Unbashful House Republicans had no problem naming those State officials, all of whom served directly under Clinton. The four officials were revealed to be Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security Eric Boswell, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Diplomatic Security Scott Bultrowicz, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Diplomatic Security for International Programs Charlene Lamb, and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Maghreb Affairs Raymond Maxwell.
⁹

Despite the State Department’s proclamations that those responsible would be disciplined or removed, as of this writing three of the officials were reassigned to new posts.
¹⁰
Maxwell voluntarily retired, something he had planned
to do in 2012 but had postponed due to regional turmoil during the Arab Spring.
¹¹
Maxwell was later found to not have contributed to security decisions in Benghazi, while the other three officials were reportedly involved in those ultimately disastrous decisions.
¹²

The Senate singled out Charlene Lamb, who worked closely with Clinton, for her “unwillingness to provide additional security personnel” to the Benghazi facility.
¹³

Not only were Clinton’s deputies the ones who made the security decisions, they were also involved in later drafting the now discredited talking points on the Benghazi attacks. State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland “played an active role” in crafting those talking points and got promoted to assistant secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs. Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, Jake Sullivan, was also a point man in shaping the talking points.
¹⁴
Interestingly ex-CIA official Mike Morell, a central player in the talking points scandal, took a job as a counselor to Beacon Global Strategies, a consulting group known for its close ties to Clinton.
¹⁵

After reviewing the direct involvement of these Clinton deputies, which of these possibilities do you consider the most likely: Clinton was head-deep in the fatal security posture of the Benghazi mission, or she was unaware of the lack of security that was her own department’s doing? If the latter is the real situation, then someone had better summon the ghost of Sen. Joe McCarthy because it would mean rogue elements hijacked the State Department to deny security to the Benghazi mission without the knowledge of the secretary of state.