The REAL Benghazi Story: What the White House and Hillary Don't Want You to Know (6 page)

Why would the Pentagon deploy the C-110 to a training mission in Croatia during the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist atrocities – the one day jihadists worldwide are known to be the most motivated to carry out new attacks?

The C-110 Special Forces could have made a difference, according to the whistle-blower operator who spoke to Fox News. They would have been there before the second attack, he said. “They would have been there at a minimum to provide a quick reaction force that could facilitate their exfil out of the… problem situation. Nobody knew how it was going to develop. And you hear people and a whole bunch of advisers say, ‘We wouldn’t have sent them because the security was an unknown situation’.”
⁴

It is instructive to note that in his testimony, former deputy Libyan ambassador and whistle-blower Gregory Hicks said he contacted AFRICOM the night of the attack
but received no support. Stated Hicks, “At about 10:45 or 11:00 we confer, and I asked the defense attache who had been talking about AFRICOM and with the joint staff, ‘Is anything coming? Will they be sending us any help? Is there something out there?’ And he answered that, the nearest help was in Aviano, the nearest – where there were fighter planes. He said that it would take two to three hours for them to get onsite, but that there also were no tankers available for them to refuel. And I said, ‘Thank you very much,’ and we went on with our work.”
⁵

Aviano, Italy, is 1,044 miles from Benghazi, about 100 miles farther than the Croatian capital.

Dempsey is not the only top military official to admit Special Forces were hours away. Gen. Carter Ham, the former head of U.S. forces in Africa, who had commanded those special forces after control was passed to him the night of the attack, confirmed the presence of the highly trained Special Forces. (Recall that Ham didn’t even know about the existence of the Benghazi annex, according to the Senate’s extensive 2014 investigation, as documented in
chapter 1
.)

Like Dempsey’s comments, Ham’s remarks were made in a public arena but were largely not covered by the news media. As I will show, Ham’s explanation for why the military assets stationed abroad were not utilized during the attack raises more questions than it answers about his decision making. In remarks at the Aspen Security Forum on July 19, 2013, Ham stated he first received word of the Benghazi attack from his command post in Stuttgart, Germany.
⁶

The EUCOM CIF “happened to be in Croatia at the time,” Ham attested, “there on a six-hour notice, which is a pretty normal alert time.” He further conceded that the force had “all their aircraft with them.”

Asked why no outside forces were deployed to Benghazi during the attack, Ham responded that after the initial assault on the U.S. special mission, he believed the attack was finished. (This explanation, of course, has been contradicted by Benghazi witnesses, who described no lull in the fighting.)

Ham’s explanation may raise questions about his stated judgment that night, which turned out to be mortally off base regardless of whether there was no lull in the fighting. Even if he believed the fighting to be over after the initial assault (a contention that within itself is highly questionable since he could not have known what else the attackers had planned, as noted earlier in this chapter), after the initial attack on the U.S. mission, there was a second round of deadly attacks against the nearby CIA annex, the location to which the victims of the first assaults were evacuated. And remember, even after the initial assault on the U.S. mission, Stevens was still missing, as Ham stated, so the deployment of a hostage rescue team may have been appropriate.

Asked why no forces were deployed to Benghazi after the initial assault, Ham told the Aspen Institute, “In my mind at that point, we were no longer in a response to an attack. We were in a recovery.”

That statement appears to be contradicted by his next sentence.

“And frankly, I thought, we were in a potential hostage rescue situation, because the ambassador was unaccounted for,” he said. So all the worst fears as a U.S. ambassador – being held hostage – were now being realized.

If he thought there was a hostage situation, wouldn’t the deployment of Special Forces have been appropriate?

Ham stated that all they knew after the first assault “was that there was some kind of attack. “We knew from the embassy in Tripoli how many people and who they were,” he said. “Pretty shortly thereafter we knew that the ambassador and Mr. [Sean] Smith were unaccounted for. But we didn’t know much more than that.”

Ham’s further statements also prompt questions as to how he could believe the attack was over after the initial assault on the U.S. Benghazi mission. Ham admitted earlier in his remarks that he possessed no intelligence indicating any specific terrorist attacks were planned for Benghazi on the night of the 9/11 anniversary. Therefore, if he knew there was a clear intelligence failure, how could he have known whether the initial assault was a stand-alone attack or part of a multipronged attack, as it turned out to be?

U.S. government agencies, including the CIA, have long denied the persistent claim that there was a “stand down” order during the attack. However, CIA agents on the ground in Benghazi testified to lawmakers that they were loaded into vehicles and ready to aid the besieged U.S. special
mission on September 11, 2012, but were told by superiors to “wait,” a congressman privy to the testimony revealed. If accurate, this would contradict claims made by the State Department’s ARB report, which states that the response team one mile away in the CIA annex was “not delayed by orders from superiors.”
⁷

Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA), head of the House intelligence subcommittee that interviewed the CIA employees, explained that while there was no “stand-down order,” there was a disagreement at the nearby CIA annex about how quickly to respond. Westmoreland revealed that some CIA agents wanted to storm the Benghazi compound immediately, but they were told to wait while the agency collected intelligence on the ongoing attack.
⁸

“Some CIA security contractors disagreed with their bosses and wanted to move more quickly,” the Associated Press reported, drawing from Westmoreland’s comments.
⁹

According to AP writer Kimberly Dozier:

Westmoreland said the CIA security contractors loaded into two vehicles, with weapons ready, the moment they heard the radio call for help from the diplomatic building. Some wanted to rush to the U.S. compound roughly a mile away, and their agitation grew as they heard increasing panic when the diplomats reported the militants were setting the compound on fire.

The CIA team leader and the CIA chief at the Benghazi annex told committee members that they were trying to gather Libyan allies and intelligence before racing into the fray, worried that they might be sending their security team into an ambush with little or no backup.

At least one of those security contractors, a former U.S. Army Ranger, was told to “wait” at least twice, and he argued with his security team leader, according to his testimony, related by Westmoreland. Westmoreland declined to share the names of the officers who testified because they are still CIA employees.
¹⁰

The AP reported the CIA agents said a quicker response would not have saved the lives of those killed in the attacks, including Ambassador Stevens. That claim obviously cannot be verified because of the lack of information regarding what happened to Stevens the night of the attacks.

The narrative of “orders to wait” seems to directly contradict page 23 of the ARB report, which states:

Just prior to receiving the TDY RSO’s distress call shortly after 2142 local, the head of Annex security heard multiple explosions coming from the north in the direction of the SMC… The Annex response team departed its compound in two vehicles at approximately 2205 local. The departure of the Annex team was not delayed by orders from superiors; the team leader decided on his own to depart the Annex compound once it was apparent, despite a brief delay to permit their continuing efforts, that rapid support from local security elements was not forthcoming.
¹¹

In October 2012, CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Young-blood denied reports her agency was told to hold off in aiding those in the Benghazi compound. However, her statement only seems to pertain to her own agency and not
others trying to help, such as U.S. Special Forces. “We can say with confidence that the agency reacted quickly to aid our colleagues during that terrible evening in Benghazi,” Youngblood said at the time. “Moreover, no one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate. In fact, it is important to remember how many lives were saved by courageous Americans who put their own safety at risk that night – and that some of those selfless Americans gave their lives in the effort to rescue their comrades.”
¹²

There is much speculation as to why military assets were ultimately not sent. We can get creative and assert that the Obama administration didn’t believe the attack would progress and so didn’t want to draw more attention to a U.S. mission that was likely being used for sensitive intelligence purposes, like perhaps aiding the Islamic extremist–linked Mid-East rebels.

Another possibility, particularly for the question of why air support was never sent, may have been touched upon by a recent claim from an attorney representing Benghazi whistle-blowers. The claim may also help explain why it took hours for an American-provided C-130 cargo plane to take off from Tripoli for the short flight to Benghazi to help evacuate survivors, as documented in the State’s ARB report.
¹³
I will present information that furthers the attorney’s claim. In fact, these details may provide an explanation for why
the U.S. Benghazi facilities were attacked in the first place.

Joseph diGenova, a former U.S. attorney who represents Benghazi whistle-blowers, stated that four hundred surface-to-air missiles were taken from Libya during the attacks and that the U.S. feared the missiles could be used to down aircraft. As you will shortly read, there may be a lot more to the missing antiaircraft story. Before we go there, let’s review what DiGenova told WMAL radio in Washington, D.C., in August 2013. He said he “does not know whether [the missiles] were at the annex, but it is clear the annex was somehow involved in the distribution of those missiles.”
¹⁴

DiGenova said his information “comes from a former intelligence official who stayed in constant contact with people in the special ops and intelligence community.”
¹⁵
He stated the Obama administration is worried the missiles can target airliners. “They are worried, specifically according to these sources, about an attempt to shoot down an airliner,” he claimed.
¹⁶

He continued: “And it’s pretty clear that the biggest concern right now are 400 missiles which have been diverted in Libya and have gotten in the hands of some very ugly people.”
¹⁷

Obviously, antiaircraft missiles in the hands of the Libyan rebels or other jihadists would have served as a major threat to any incoming U.S. aircraft sent to aid the American targets during the Benghazi attack.

Such missiles also may have threatened the cargo plane that sat on the tarmac for hours in Tripoli before finally being dispatched in the early morning hours. The ARB
report had stated that the plane took off only after security forces were able to secure the airport.
¹⁸

In his testimony before the Armed Services Committee on June 26, 2013, Gen. Carter Ham was asked why no air support was sent to Benghazi. He replied that the military was facing a “very uncertain situation in an environment which we know we had an unknown surface-to-air threat with the proliferation particularly of shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, many of which remain unaccounted for.”
¹⁹

In House hearings, Maj. Gen. Darryl Roberson, vice director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was further asked whether we provided rebels with any weapons systems, such as missiles, that could have been utilized against us during the attack. Roberson refused to deny that possibility. “Sir, I don’t know that,” was his response.
²⁰

The Senate’s extensive Benghazi report documented the Pentagon was specifically concerned about MANPADS when military leaders discussed responding in Benghazi, explaining officials “worried about the presence of shoulder-fired Surface-to-Air missiles in Libya.” The Senate committee spoke to outside experts who described a whole range of possible problems with dispatching aircraft, from MANPAD concerns to the lack of communication with friendly forces for marking targets. Still, the Senate determined more investigation was needed to “evaluate why DOD found it unnecessary to begin to prepare fighters and make other arrangements, especially in light of the concern that the hostilities could spread to Tripoli.”

Amazingly, the story of missing missiles was first detailed in a largely unnoticed speech to a think tank seven months before the Benghazi attack. As I first exclusively reported, a top State Department official described an unprecedented multimillion-dollar U.S. effort to secure antiaircraft weapons in Libya after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime. The official, Andrew J. Shapiro, assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, explained that U.S. experts were fully coordinating the collection efforts with the Libyan opposition. He said the efforts were taking place in Benghazi, where a leading U.S. expert was deployed. Shapiro conceded that the Western-backed rebels did not want to give up the weapons, particularly man-portable air-defense systems, or MANPADS, which were the focus of the weapons collection efforts.

The information may shed light on why the U.S. special mission in Benghazi was attacked September 11, 2012 in the first place. As documented in
chapter 7
, there is information the Benghazi mission was a planning headquarters for coordinating aid, including weapons distribution, to the jihadist-led rebels, according to informed Middle Eastern security officials. After the fall of Gaddafi, the arming efforts shifted focus to aiding the insurgency targeting Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s regime.