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Posted on 10/30/2012 4:08:14 PM PDT by jazusamo
(CNSNews.com) - President Barack Obama met with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Vice President Joe Biden at the White House on Sept. 11, 2012 at 5:00 PM—just 55 minutes after a State Department email notified the White House and the Pentagon that the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi was under attack.
The meeting between Obama, Panetta and Biden had been scheduled before the attack took place, and the Department Defense is not commenting now on whether the three men were aware when they met that day of the ongoing Benghazi attack or whether Obama used that meeting to discuss with his defense secretary what should be done to defend the U.S. personnel in Benghazi.
“Secretary Panetta met with President Obama, as the White House-provided scheduled indicates,” Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale told CNSNews.com on Tuesday. “However, neither the content nor the subject of discussions between the President and his advisors are appropriate for disclosure.”
The fact that the president had been scheduled to meet with Vice President Biden and Defense Secretary Panetta at 5:00 p.m. on Sept. 11 had been publicized on the Washington Daybook--a planning service to which news orgnizations subscribe--and included on the official White House schedule posted online by the White House itself.
The State Department email notifying the White House and Pentagon of the Sept. 11 Benghazi attack was obtained and reported by CBS News.
The terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi began at about 9:40 p.m. Benghazi time—or about 3:40 p.m. Washington, D.C. time. “The attack began at approximately 9:40 p.m. local time,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Charlene Lamb told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in written testimony submitted Oct. 10.
About 25 minutes after the attack started—at 4:05 p.m. Washington, D.C. time—the State Department sent an email that went to multiple recipients, including two at the White House and one at the Pentagon.
The subject line on this email said: “U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack.” The text of the email said: “The Regional Security Officer reports the diplomatic mission is under attack. Embassy Tripoli reports approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well. Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and our COM personnel are in the compound safe haven.” It went on to say: “The Operations Center will provide updates as available.”
In her testimony to the Oversight Committee, Charlene Lamb indicated that not long after the attack started, she was able to monitor it from Washington, D.C., in “almost real time.”
“When the attack began, a Diplomatic Security agent working in the Tactical Operations Center immediately activated the Imminent Danger Notification System and made an emergency announcement over the PA,” Lamb testified. “Based on our security protocols, he also alerted the annex U.S. quick reaction security team stationed nearby, the Libyan 17th February Brigade, Embassy Tripoli, and the Diplomatic Security Command Center in Washington. From that point on, I could follow what was happening in almost real-time.”
According to Lamb, three U.S. agents used an armored car to approach the safe haven at the U.S. consulate to rescue a U.S. security agent on the roof of the facility and also to try to retrieve Amb. Chris Stevens and Sean Smith, an Air Force veteran and State Department communications specialist.
“Despite thick smoke, the agents entered the building multiple times trying to locate the Ambassador and Mr. Smith,” Lamb testified. “After numerous attempts, they found Sean Smith and, with the assistance of members of the U.S. quick reaction team, removed him from the building. Unfortunately, he was already deceased. They still could not find the Ambassador.”
It was not until 11:00 p.m. Benghazi time—or just as Obama’s 5:00 p.m. meeting with Panetta and Biden was starting in Washington, D.C.—that the U.S. security agents in Benghazi decided to abandon the main consulate facility there.
“At 11 p.m. members of the Libyan 17th February Brigade advised they could no longer hold the area around the main building and insisted on evacuating the site,” Lamb testified. “The agents made a final search for the Ambassador before leaving in an armed vehicle.
But the battle was far from over.
“Upon arriving at the annex around midnight, they took up defensive positions, including on the roof,” Lamb testified. “Shortly after their arrival, the annex itself began taking intermittent fire for a period of time.”
The battle continued, with the attackers now using mortars, and it was only in the “early morning” that two more Americans were killed and two more were wounded.
“In the early morning, an additional security team arrived from Tripoli and proceeded to the annex,” Lamb testified. “Shortly after they arrived, the annex started taking mortar fire, with as many as three direct hits on the compound. It was during this mortar attack that Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed and a Diplomatic Security agent and an annex quick reaction security team member were critically wounded.”
Doherty and Woods were both former Navy Seals who served in both the Iraq and Afghan wars. They were working as U.S. security personnel in Libya.
When exactly did Obama learn that U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi was under attack and who did he order to do something about it? The White House is not saying.
“I can tell you, as I've said over the last couple of months since this happened, the minute I found out what was happening, I gave three very clear directives,” Obama told KUSA TV in Denver on Friday. “Number one, make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to.”
Fred Lucas of CNSNews.com asked the White House on both Monday and Tuesday to reveal exactly when Obama learned the U.S. mission in Benghazi was under attack and who exactly he directed to ‘make sure that we are securing our personnel’ there?” The White House did not respond.
At an Oct. 25 Pentagon press briefing, a reporter noted that “there was, in fact, a drone over the CIA annex [in Benghazi] and there were intelligence officials fighting inside the annex,” and then asked Panetta: “Why there wasn't a clear intelligence picture that would have given you what you needed to make some moves, for instance, flying, you know, F-16s over the area to disperse fighters or dropping more special forces in?”
“[T]here's a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking going on here,” Panetta said.
“We quickly responded, as General [Martin] Dempsey [chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] said, in terms of deploying forces to the region,” Panetta continued. “We had FAST platoons in the region. We had ships that we had deployed off of Libya. And we were prepared to respond to any contingency and certainly had forces in place to do that.
“But the basic principle here--basic principle--is that you don't deploy forces into harm's way without knowing what's going on; without having some real-time information about what's taking place,” said Panetta. “And as a result of not having that kind of information, the commander who was on the ground in that area, General Ham, General Dempsey and I felt very strongly that we could not put forces at risk in that situation.”
A reporter followed up: “So the drone, then, and the forces inside the annex weren't giving enough of a clear picture is what you're saying.”
“This happened within a few hours and it was really over before, you know, we had the opportunity to really know what was happening,” Panetta said.
Good piece and dead on the mark. Thanks for linking.
Thanks jazusamo.
the more I learn about this disaster the worse it gets
Yah....they discussed Youtube movie reviews.....
Oh yeah, I have thought that from the beginning, especially since it was caveated with “a previously scheduled meeting. Very convenient and now Biden is being brushed into the picture. The three top dogs, POTUS, VPOTUS, AND SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, just happen to be there when this odd protest takes place.
Why would an intelligence operator ‘paint’ a target with a laser if the assets above were not armed? Who told him to start painting a target? Who would tell an operator to paint a target knowing a drone was unarmed? Conclusion: The drones were likely armed, they were trying to direct fire to the insurgency, and ‘someone’ did not authorize a counter-attack drone strike. Sound logical?
the question we should be asking is,
Who gave the order to deny air support?
Excellent! I'm borrowing it, it's a real keeper!
not true...one drone was wired to the teeth
The email is secondary, Obama knew when the initial phone call came in, your article says after an “email”, “just 55 minutes after a State Department email notified the White House”, here’s where Obama admits he knew when the initial phone call came;
TRANSCRIPT: Presidential debate on foreign policy at Lynn University
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/22/transcript-presidential-debate-on-foreign-policy-at-lynn-university/
Obama “Now with respect to Libya, as I indicated in the last debate, when we received that phone call, I immediately made sure that, number one, that we did everything we could to secure those Americans who were still in harm’s way;”
And here’s when the phone call was placed to Washington(which would have been approx 9:40pm at the consulate);
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2012/10/198791.htm
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL:“...I neglected to mention from the top that that agent from the top of this incident, or the very beginning of this incident, has been on the phone. He had called the quick reaction security team, he had called the Libyan authorities, he had called the Embassy in Tripoli, and he had called Washington.”
Well, he likely has not ever heard of Les Aspin. ...or his brother-in-arms Frank Church. The bastard Church is, of course, primarily responsible for the legislation which forbade the CIA and the FBI to share information, thereby cutting the balls off of America’s security apparatus. Hence, where we are today....
There were three people there but no one qualified to talk about the problem, that’s the problem.
At what point in time did Obama decide to simply let these people die?
Did he watch the rape of Stevens? Who was the last American killed before he went to bed? Did he quickly fall asleep and dream of Vegas?
If all of those murdered were black, would he have sent them help to survive?
I want to see justice and without any quarter given.
The three top dogs, POTUS, VPOTUS, AND SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
You forgot the list the leader of the pack, Valerie Jarrett.
FORMER DELTA OPERATOR ON “THE PANETTA DOCTRINE” OR ALSO KNOWN AS “THE DUMBEST SHIT I EVER HEARD!”
Excellent reference
We know that Stevens was at the building at 8:30pm local time. There is an attack at or about 9:30pm local time. The Ambassador and a security guy and the commo guy go into a safe room. How do we know that? The commo guy is dead and the security guy was supposedly badly wounded. Radio traffic? The security guy gets out of the building. Several people go looking for the Ambassador and the commo guy. They find the commo guy, but he’s dead. They never find the Ambassador. We’re told that looters find the Ambassador and take him to a hospital where he dies. There are photos of the Ambassador but it’s unclear what is happening to him and whether he is alive. We are told that the looters discover the Ambassador’s cell phone and somehow manage to call the Americans at the Annex who go and pick up the Ambassador’s body. There is no mention of an attack on the vehicle or vehicles going to or returning from the hospital. Remember, the vehicle coming from the mission to the annex was severely attacked. Too many gaps in this story.
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