"Stevens was clearly a courageous man who did not see his mission as sitting safely in the capital city meeting high-level government officials in gilded reception rooms. According to my ex-diplomat friend, Stevens would have had the authority to set his own schedule and travel plans, without Washington’s approval. His familiarity with Benghazi apparently gave him a sense of security about the situation there, even on the anniversary of Sept. 11.
That reading proved to be false — tragically false — but that’s a difficult point for the Obama administration to make without appearing to shift blame to a public servant who was clearly much admired, and who gave his life for our country.
And if Stevens, with all of his first-hand knowledge of the Libyan situation, had not anticipated the scale of the attack, he was not alone.
Eric Nordstrom, who has worked as a State Department security expert since 1998 and had been the State Department’s regional security officer from September 2011 to July 2012, told the House Oversight Committee this month that “I had not seen an attack of such ferocity or intensity previously in Libya, nor in my time in the diplomatic security service.”
“Having an extra foot of wall, or an extra half-dozen guards or agents would not have enabled us to respond to that kind of assault,” Nordstrom said. That was far beyond any security level contemplated for the Benghazi consulate. As Nordstrom told the committee, in February 2012 he requested that the number of diplomatic security personnel assigned to the consulate be doubled, from two to four.
There were five in the compound on the night of the attack.
Nordstrom, who had worked closely with Stevens, also attempted to put the situation into a context that the ambassador would have appreciated.
“We must remember that it is critical that we balance our risk mitigation efforts with the needs of our diplomats to do their jobs,” Nordstrom told Congress. “The answer cannot be that they operate from a bunker.” "
In Benghazi, Stevens fatally misjudged risk, reward | Jay Bookman
