Free Republic

WASHINGTON – Is the CIA trying to cover up information relating to the Benghazi attack that killed four Americans? Members of Congress are seeking an investigation into covert CIA efforts to move surface-to-air missiles out of Libya, through Turkey, and into the hands of Syrian rebels, CNN reported over the weekend. Among the many secrets still yet to be told about the Benghazi mission, is just how many Americans were there the night of the September 2012 attack. According to one source, that number was 35, with as many as seven wounded, some seriously. It is unknown how many of...

John Brennan, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, sent a letter to each of the CIA employees who were on the ground during the Benghazi attack on September 11, 2012, inviting them to share information with Congress, according to three sources familiar with the missive. Brennan sent the letter in late May at the behest congressional intelligence committees, whose members remain interested in hearing from the survivors of those attacks. **SNIP** The CNN report has triggered renewed scrutiny of the purpose of the still-obscure CIA mission in Benghazi. A State Department official told CNN that the U.S. government was...

The CIA has been subjecting operatives to monthly polygraph tests in an attempt to suppress details of a US arms smuggling operation in Benghazi that was ongoing when its ambassador was killed by a mob in the city last year, according to reports. Up to 35 CIA operatives were working in the city during the attack last September on the US consulate that resulted in the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, according to CNN.

It has been claimed that CIA agents on the ground during the deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi twice asked for permission to help Ambassador Chris Stevens and twice were told to stand down. Furthermore sources present during the deadly six-hour assault have said that a desperate last request for military assistance once the CIA themselves came under attack was denied, even though elite counter-terrorism units were only two hours away. And it has been claimed there was full communication between the CIA annex in Benghazi and the U.S. military, casting further doubts on the Obama administration's assertion...

“We’re going to gather all the facts,” he says, echoing Hillary’s plea to let the investigation play out until, oh, say, mid-November at the earliest. Simple question: Why does he need “all the facts” about Benghazi to find out (a) whether anyone at the consulate called for help during the attack and (b) if so, who in the chain of command denied that request? He could find that out with 10 minutes of phoning around and then spend another 10 firing the people involved — assuming, of course, that it wasn’t The One himself who delivered the thumbs down on...

The attack that killed four Americans in the Libyan consulate began as a spontaneous protest against the film “The Innocence of Muslims,” but Islamic militants who may have links to Al Qaeda used the opportunity to launch an attack, CIA Director David Petreaus told the House Intelligence Committee today according to one lawmaker who attended a closed-door briefing. Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, the top Democrat on the House Intel committee, said Petraeus laid out “a chronological order exactly what we felt happened, how it happened, and where we’re going in the future.” “In the Benghazi area, in the beginning we feel...

Central Intelligence Agency director David Petraeus has emphatically denied that he or anyone else at the CIA refused assistance to the former Navy SEALs who requested it three times as terrorists attacked the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on the night of Sep. 11. The Weekly Standard and ABC News (report) that Petraeus's denial effectively implicates President Barack Obama, since a refusal to assist "would have been a presidential decision." Earlier today, Denver local reporter Kyle Clarke of KUSA-TV did what the national media largely refuses to do, (asking) Obama directly whether the Americans in Benghazi were denied requests for aid....

...Romney campaign may have misfired with its suggestion that statements by President Obama and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice about the Benghazi attack last month weren’t supported by intelligence,... “Talking points” prepared by the CIA on Sept. 15, the same day that Rice taped three television appearances, support her description of the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate as a reaction to Arab anger about an anti-Muslim video prepared in the United States. According to the CIA account, “The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo...

The CIA station chief in Libya reported to Washington within 24 hours of last month's deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate that there was evidence it was carried out by militants, not a spontaneous mob upset about an American-made video ridiculing Islam's Prophet Muhammad, U.S. officials have told The Associated Press. It is unclear who, if anyone, saw the cable outside the CIA at that point and how high up in the agency the information went.