He actually doesn’t make Ham look bad, but simply like somebody who was caught up in the rules and at the same time consciously kept out of the loop by the State Dept. The point that Stevens wanted to keep these 39 (originally) people under his control in order to keep them covered by diplomatic immunity and protect them from arrest by the Libyans (which had already happened to Special Forces people there)makes a lot of sense. But then at the end of August, despite his pleas, they stripped away most of these people and left him with only the 9 who were there or nearby at the time of the attack.
I don’t think he made Ham look bad either. I just don’t trust words that come from Hicks’ mouth without corroboration.
Steven appears to have been traveling down the correct path on security but it appears he was sabotaged with the clip below stating he had 30 people and that was cut to 9 by state and defense.
You just gotta wonder about the timing to cut his security to nine when all the other countries embassies and other places in Benghazi were being attacked routinely and the annex/ambassadeurs headquarters appeared to be next. Makes no sense unless Stevens was a target.
Rumors are he knew too much and was lax in keeping everything secret. In the most secretive adm. ever that will get you killed apparently.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304302704579332732276330284?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304302704579332732276330284.html
Because Mr. Kennedy had refused to extend the special forces security mission, State Department protocol required Chris to decline Gen. Ham's two offers to do so, which were made after Aug. 6. I have found the reporting of these so-called offers strange, since my recollection of events is that after the Aug. 6 incident, Gen. Ham wanted to withdraw the entire special forces team from Tripoli until they had Libyan government approval of their new mission and the diplomatic immunity necessary to perform their mission safely. However, Chris convinced Gen. Ham to leave six members of the team in Tripoli. When I arrived in Tripoli on July 31, we had over 30 security personnel, from the State Department and the U.S. military, assigned to protect the diplomatic mission to Libya. All were under the ambassador's authority. On Sept. 11, we had only nine diplomatic security agents under Chris's authority to protect our diplomatic personnel in Tripoli and Benghazi. I was interviewed by the Select Committee and its staff, who were professional and thorough. I explained this sequence of events. For some reason, my explanation did not make it into the Senate report. To sum up: Chris Stevens was not responsible for the reduction in security personnel. His requests for additional security were denied or ignored. Officials at the State and Defense Departments in Washington made the decisions that resulted in reduced security. Sen. Lindsey Graham stated on the Senate floor last week that Chris “was in Benghazi because that is where he was supposed to be doing what America wanted him to do: Try to hold Libya together.” He added, “Quit blaming the dead guy.”
Mr. Hicks served as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli from July 31