Unclassified Benghazi, To Be Continued

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Unclassified Benghazi, To Be Continued ( John Batchelor on CNBC)

By: John Batchelor
December 20, 2012



Spoke to Joe Kernan, of CNBC "Kudlow Report," re the unclassified report on the Benghazi tragedy, and I aimed to be clear that the State Department is not at fault (about 9 minutes into the lengthy segment) The Benghazi mission was and continues to be a national security operation for arming, training, funding and transporting Libyan Jihadists from Cyrenaica Province of Libya to Syria to pretend to be the "Free Syrian Army." This is the Obama foreign policy after two years of the Arab Spring -- making common cause with strongmen and hiring gunmen to do the bidding of the powers. Benghazi is a window on the larger operation that aims to pressure Assad to leave Damascus or to pressure Tehran to negotiate with the US in order to preserve Assad. The men who killed the ambassador and the CIA ops at Benghazi were cuthroats and blackguards who were also the known hirelings of the US and Turkey. The strike that day was a revenge attack in response to the US drone-killing a Libyan gangster who was No. 3 at Al Qaeda, named al-Libi. This is what the classified report begins to discuss. The Benghazi story will play out for years. What is also true is that the Islamists and Jihadists know they can play Washington for chumps. No hurry on the details. White House speakers propose distortions of the narrative. History disposes the distorters (Susan Rice). Game is afoot, to be continued, enjoy


Unclassified Benghazi, To Be Continued | John Batchelor Show

 

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Granny says, "Dat's right, yea, sure - ain't gonna be no scapegoatin'...

White House Insists No One at Lower Level ‘Taking the Fall’ in Benghazi
December 20, 2012 – Accountability on the Benghazi attack prompted White House Press Secretary Jay Carney to become testy with reporters Thursday, who asked if everyone who can be held accountable in light of a recent report on the matter has been.

“That report is extremely detailed, very critical of both the inadequacies in our security. Immediate accountability has been brought to bear with regard to individuals who are very senior,” Carney said of the Accountability Review Board report released this week. The report criticized the State Department for failure in preventing a terrorist attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens. The report also affirmed there was no “spontaneous demonstration” outside the compound as Obama administration officials first claimed.

Four State Department officials resigned from their office, the most senior being Eric Boswell, assistant secretary of State for diplomatic security, and Charlene Lame, deputy assistant secretary for embassy security. During questions from reporters, Carney quipped, “They’re not taking the fall. Taking the fall suggests this was not accountability and responsibility. What are you suggesting?” Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Adm. Mike Mullen co-chaired the five-member Accountability Review Board appointed by Secretary of State Clinton in September to investigate the attack.

During the Thursday press briefing, ABC News reporter Jake Tapper asked Carney if the president was satisfied with the level of accountability. “By every measure the report has been assessed to be sharply critical and very pointed and clear eyed about problems that exist, problems that need to be fixed and the need for accountability,” Carney said. He added, “There has already been, in this very brief period of time, actions that demonstrate accountability is being upheld.”

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Three resign for Benghazi security failures
December 19th, 2012 - Three State Department officials, including two who oversaw security decisions at the diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, resigned in the wake of a review of security failures there, senior State Department officials told CNN Wednesday.

The independent review of the September 11 attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi released Tuesday cites "systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies" at the State Department. The attacks killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

The failures resulted in a security plan "that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place," the 39-page unclassified version of the report concludes. Despite all the criticism, the board found no U.S. government employee had engaged in misconduct or ignored responsibilities, and it did not recommend any individual be disciplined.

Eric Boswell, assistant secretary of diplomatic security, and Charlene Lamb, deputy assistant secretary of state for international programs, submitted their resignations, a senior official said. A third official in the Near East Affairs bureau also resigned, the official said. Boswell and Lamb oversaw security for the Benghazi mission. Lamb testified before Congress about the security precautions. Documents show Lamb denied repeated requests for additional security in Libya.

Three resign for Benghazi security failures – CNN Security Clearance - CNN.com Blogs

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State Dept security chief resigns after Benghazi
December 20, 2012 WASHINGTON (AP) — Four State Department officials resigned under pressure Wednesday, less than a day after a damning report blamed management failures for a lack of security at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, where militants killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans on Sept. 11.

The resignations came as lawmakers expressed anger and frustration over the findings of an independent review panel, and the State Department struggled to find a balance between protecting its diplomats while allowing them to do their jobs connecting with people in high-risk posts. Obama administration officials said those who had stepped down included Eric Boswell, the assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security; Charlene Lamb, the deputy assistant secretary responsible for embassy security; and Raymond Maxwell, the deputy assistant secretary of state who oversees the Maghreb nations of Libya, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss personnel matters publicly.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the department had accepted the resignations of four people: Boswell as well as two others in the bureau of diplomatic security and one in the bureau of Near East Affairs. She would not name the other three officials. Some of those who resigned may have the option of being reassigned to other duties, the officials said. The department declined immediate comment on the resignation of the officials whose decisions had been criticized in the unclassified version of the Accountability Review Board's report that was released late Tuesday.

The board's co-chairman, retired Adm. Mike Mullen, told reporters that the board had not determined that any officials had "engaged in willful misconduct or knowingly ignored his or her responsibilities," But Mullen, a former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, added, "We did conclude that certain State Department bureau level senior officials in critical levels of authority and responsibility in Washington demonstrated a lack of leadership and management ability appropriate for senior ranks in their responses to security concerns posed by the special mission."

More State Dept security chief resigns after Benghazi | CNS News

 

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Huh?...

Why Obama Sent No Rescue: Benghazi Lasted ‘8 Hours’ But Was ‘Over in ... 30 Minutes’
December 20, 2012 - The chairman and the vice chairman of the State Department Accountability Review Board (ARB) that investigated the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, made dramatically different statements on Wednesday about the duration of those attacks that resulted in the deaths of four Americans.

The relevant duration of the event shrunk from "almost eight hours" to "only about 20 or 30 minutes" when a reporter asked this "accountability" team why the U.S. military had not been sent to Benghazi to help that night. During his opening statement at a State Department briefing, Ambassador Thomas Pickering, who chaired the ARB, said the terrorist attacks occurred over a span of almost eight hours. “What happened on September 11th and 12th in Benghazi was a series of attacks in multiple locations by unknown assailants that ebbed and flowed over a period of almost eight hours,” Pickering volunteered.

About 20 minutes later in the same briefing, as Ambassador Pickering nodded his head in agreement, retired Admiral Michael Mullen, the vice chairman of the ARB, put the Benghazi terror event in a very different timeframe. He said it lasted only about 20 or 30 minutes. Mullen, who formerly served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was responding to a reporter who had asked why the U.S. military never became involved. “Why such a passing reference to military involvement?” the reporter asked. “Can you explain why they couldn’t have done more?” “We looked at the force posture very specifically, and while we had a lot of forces in Europe both at sea and on land, it is not reasonable that they could have responded … in any kind of timely way,” said Mullen. “This was over in a matter of about 20 or 30 minutes with respect to the Special Mission specifically. And we had no forces ready or tethered, if you will, focused on that mission so that they could respond, nor would I expect we would have.”

Mullen not only narrowed the length of the terror attack to 20 or 30 minutes, but also defined it as only those events at the “Special Mission” compound, which was the State Department's facility in Benghazi. However, a CIA timeline of the Sept. 11 events, which was provided by a senior U.S. intelligence official, and which generally comports with the description of events in the ARB’s own report, shows that about one hour and fifty minutes elapsed between the time the State Department’s “Special Mission” compound first came under attack and the moment when a rescue team from the nearby CIA “Annex” was able to extract the surviving U.S. personnel from that mission. But even that was not nearly the end of the terror attacks on the Americans in Benghazi that night.

As the State Department security personnel rescued by the team from the Annex fled from the "Special Mission" to the Annex—as both the CIA timeline and the ARB report show—it was attacked. The Annex facility itself was also under fire until about 1:00 a.m.--or about two hours and twenty minutes after the attack first started at the "Special Mission." The terrorists would then launch yet another attack on the Annex shortly after 5:00 a.m.

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Benghazi suspects still on the loose
December 19th, 2012 - More than three months after the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, not a single person has been charged in connection with the assault.

Most, if not all, of those questioned in Libya since the attack have been released. A Libyan source with knowledge of the investigation, who did not want to be identified because of the sensitivities involved in the probe, told CNN there are indications that the perpetrators of the attack came from beyond the Benghazi area and slipped away immediately afterward. The source says it is possible the attackers came from the city of Derna or surrounding areas, about 120 miles (200 km) to the east, which remains a stronghold of militant Islamist and jihadist groups.

The September 11 attack killed four Americans, including Chris Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya. The State Department's independent report on security lapses in Benghazi did not focus on who was responsible as part of its mandate, review leader Ambassador Thomas Pickering said Wednesday, but the FBI continues to investigate. Militant Islamist and jihadist groups are now flourishing in eastern Libya, the source says, and are too strong for the government to "put back in the box." Independent militias like Libyan Shield - which includes militant Islamists among its members - continue to dominate in Benghazi, and the government's security forces and judiciary are toothless.

Sources monitoring the security situation in eastern Libya say that if anything, it has worsened since the attack on the consulate, with a series of assassinations and attempted assassinations of security officials. Islamist militants are blamed for many of these attacks. One of the officials killed was Faraj Mohammed el-Drissi. He was gunned down in Benghazi in late November. Drissi had been in charge of the city's security for just one month. Of his three alleged assailants, one was subsequently arrested, the Libyan source said.

On Sunday, there was a major attack on the security headquarters in Benghazi - apparently in an effort to try to free the arrested man. The attack included the use of at least one rocket-propelled grenade, and a lengthy sun battle followed. The source told CNN four police officers were killed, but the attackers eventually fled without being able to free the man. The source says that according to local officials, the attack was launched because the detainee had begun to talk about who was behind the assassination - and had implicated a former Guantanamo Bay detainee. That man is Sufian bin Qumu, who earlier this year was believed to be operating a camp in a remote area outside Derna. His detainee assessment at the prison camp described him as having a "long-term association with Islamist extremist Jihad and members of al Qaeda and other extremist groups."

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