Hillaryâ€™s Benghazi Stand-Down Order Exposed-Benghazi film unlocks the cover-up.

Benghazi film unlocks the cover-up.

January 13, 2016

A preview by Benghazi security officer Kris "Tanto" Paronto of 13 Hours, the block-buster Michael Bay film that premieres on Thursday, raises dramatic new questions about the refusal by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to authorize a military rescue of the besieged U.S. diplomatic facility and the nearby CIA Annex on Sept 11-12, 2012.

In a presentation at a conference organized by the Maryland Citizen Action Network last weekend, Paronto revealed that two AC-130H "Spectre" gunships were "on call" that night, both within range of Benghazi.

One of them was a six-hour flight away, co-located with a U.S. special operations team in Djibouti.

The other was at Naval Air Station Sigonella, in Sicily. "That's a 45-minute flight," Paronto said.

The Spectre gunship with its 25mm rapid-fire gatling guns, its 40 mm precision Bofors gun, and its 105mm canon is "good in urban warfare because you have little collateral damage," Paronto explained.

In fact, it was just what the beleaguered security team needed. They could see the jihadis advancing on the Annex compound throughout the night and lit them up with lasers, which the airborne crew could have used for precision targeting purposes. On-line videos of the Spectre gunship in operation show that it can walk its cannons up narrow streets, killing fighters while leaving the surrounding buildings intact and people inside them unharmed.

"I asked for the Spectre and ISR [an armed Predator drone] at 9:37 pm," Paronto said, certain that the attacks actually started at 9:32 pm local time, not 9:42 pm as previously reported. "At midnight, they told us they were still working on getting us that Spectre gunship. Not that it was not available, but that they were still working on it."

And there were more forces immediately available for a rescue effort, in particular, the European Command (EUCOM) Commander's In-Extremis Force, which was then on a counter-terrorism training mission in Croatia, a 3 hour flight from Benghazi.

Paronto knew people in that unit, and remembers calling them after he and his security team got back to the CIA Annex from the diplomatic compound, where they had just rescued the surviving U.S. personnel. "They were loading their gear into their aircraft and ready to go," he recalled.

Later, his friends in the unit told him they had been shut down sometime after midnight.

All evidence now points to a specific stand-down order issued by Secretary Clinton, since the Libyan facilities came under her direct authority. Without a specific request for assistance from the State Department, the Pentagon was powerless to act.

Last month, the State Department released a critical email, sent at 7:09 pm Washington time (1:09 am Benghazi time) from Jeremy Bash, a top aide to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, informing Mrs. Clinton's office of various military assets that were "spinning up as we speak" to deploy to Benghazi.

Among those assets were C-110 in Croatia, two U.S. Marine Corps Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team (FAST) platoons based in Rota, Spain, the Spectre gunships, armed Predator drones, and possibly elements of Marine Expeditionary Units in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.

In preparation for deploying C-110 directly to Benghazi from Croatia, General Carter Ham, commander-in-chief of Africa Command (AFRICOM), issued orders transferring authority for C-110 to him from European Command (EUCOM).

General Ham was doing what any smart U.S. military officer would have done, by laying the ground work for a formal order he expected to come down an hour or two later.

"Assuming Principals agree to deploy these elements, we will ask State to secure the approval from host nation," Bash wrote. "Please advise how you wish to convey that approval to us."

When Bash sent that email, Paronto and his team-mates had just fought off an assault on the Annex by twenty or more well-armed jihadis. They would continue to fight throughout the night, as larger and increasingly brazen groups of jihadis gathered in dark areas beyond the Annex the security officers referred to as "Zombiland."

They certainly could have used the support from the Spectre gunship, or the arrival of forty or so well-armed Special Operations combat specialists from C-110.

To date, the State Department has not released any reply from Mrs. Clinton's office to Bash's 7:09 PM request. However, we know from the testimony of the top U.S. diplomat in Tripoli at the time, Greg Hicks, that the State Department never requested country clearance from Libya for any U.S. forces that night.

And when the orders finally went out from Panetta's office an hour later, they included a retransfer of C-110 from AFRICOM back to EUCOM, along with orders for the unit to move to Sigonella the next day and hold in place, instead of flying to Benghazi.

In other words, because Mrs. Clinton refused to authorize those forces to deploy into Libya to assist State Department personnel and State Department facilities, Panetta had no other choice but to put them on hold.

"The State Department was concerned that an overt U.S. military presence in Libya could topple the government," a senior AFRICOM commander involved in that night's events told me. "They were in denial. They wanted a narrative that al Qaeda was on the run. Instead, four Americans died."

With the release of the Bash email and 13 Hours, Mrs. Clinton's cover has been blown.

I also asked Paronto last weekend if he had heard reports of an Iranian Quds Force presence in Benghazi, as I had been hearing from numerous U.S. military intelligence sources, including senior AFRICOM commanders.

"Everyone knew the Iranians were there," he replied. "Especially once the Red Cross [Red Crescent] team from Iran was 'kidnapped' in Benghazi [on July 31] by Ansar al-Sharia, we knew about them and were tracking them."

As I reported in Dark Forces: the Truth About What Happened in Benghazi, U.S. military and civilian intelligence agencies produced between 50 to 60 reports on the Iranian presence in Benghazi and Derna in 2012, and Iran's deep involvement with Ansar al-Sharia, the group that claimed responsibility for the Benghazi attacks. Multiple FOIA requests seeking copies of these reports from the National Director of Intelligence and from AFRICOM have gone without response.

It's time to remove the wraps of secrecy from those reports as well, so the American public can finally learn the truth about who plotted, organized and paid for the Benghazi attacks.

Kenneth Timmerman is the New York Times best-selling author of "Dark Forces: the Truth About What Happened in Benghazi," and other books.

My reply to Mr. Timmerman on the FPM comment thread:

KRT, throwing the onus over to State is going for a head fake. Yes, state needs to be involved if they are going to ask for permission BEFORE crossing the Libyan border. But for a crisis like that night in Benghazi, in a country that is in a state of anarchy with no central govt control, it’s not necessary to get permission from the “Libyan government” (sic) first. All that is required is to obtain Cross-Border Authority from the Commander in Chief. Did State ask Pakistan for permission before the OBL raid? Of course not. Obama granted the military CBA, and that was that.

On the night of Benghazi, when Obama, Hillary and Panetta met in the Oval Office, it was believed that Ambassador Stevens had been taken by forces loyal to AQ. This is a disaster far greater than the number of lives eventually lost. An ambassador is equal in rank to a four-star general, and Stevens was (it’s thought) involved in running guns to Syria. My point is we’re talking about a crisis much greater than the possible loss of some American spooks and contractors.

But what did Obama do? He left the Oval Office and is not seen again until he’s on AF1 on the way to Las Vegas. IOW, he hid all night, with a missing ambassador believed to be in AQ hands, so that he could not be put on the spot to either grant or withhold CBA. It’s not up to Hillary to ask or not ask the “Libyan government” (sic) for permission to cross the Libyan border. It’s up to POTUS and only POTUS to either grant or deny CBA. No CBA, no rescue mission by assets located outside of Libya. Period.

I am amazed that CBA and Obama’s location that night STILL is not the central focus of this discussion. No CBA = no rescue = Obama hid like a coward, writing off the mission in Libya, likely already planning to blame it on the video.

“Benghazi’s Smoking Gun? Only President Can Give
‘Cross-Border Authority’”
https://pjmedia.com/blog/benghazis-smoking-gun-only-president-can-give-%e2%80%98cross-border-authority%e2%80%99/

I wrote about this just a few weeks after Benghazi. The PJMedia article has been re-archived, and no longer shows the earlier comments thread that ran to 100+ replies.

This is the beginning of the article I wrote back then:

The Benghazi debacle boils down to a single key factor — the granting or withholding of “cross-border authority.” This opinion is informed by my experience as a Navy SEAL officer who took a NavSpecWar Detachment to Beirut.

Once the alarm is sent — in this case, from the consulate in Benghazi — dozens of HQs are notified and are in the planning loop in real time, including AFRICOM and EUCOM, both located in Germany. Without waiting for specific orders from Washington, they begin planning and executing rescue operations, including moving personnel, ships, and aircraft forward toward the location of the crisis. However, there is one thing they can’t do without explicit orders from the president: cross an international border on a hostile mission.

That is the clear “red line” in this type of a crisis situation.

No administration wants to stumble into a war because a jet jockey in hot pursuit (or a mixed-up SEAL squad in a rubber boat) strays into hostile territory. Because of this, only the president can give the order for our military to cross a nation’s border without that nation’s permission. For the Osama bin Laden mission, President Obama granted CBA for our forces to enter Pakistani airspace.

On the other side of the CBA coin: in order to prevent a military rescue in Benghazi, all the POTUS has to do is not grant cross-border authority. If he does not, the entire rescue mission (already in progress) must stop in its tracks.

Ships can loiter on station, but airplanes fall out of the sky, so they must be redirected to an air base (Sigonella, in Sicily) to await the POTUS decision on granting CBA. If the decision to grant CBA never comes, the besieged diplomatic outpost in Benghazi can rely only on assets already “in country” in Libya — such as the Tripoli quick reaction force and the Predator drones. These assets can be put into action on the independent authority of the acting ambassador or CIA station chief in Tripoli. They are already “in country,” so CBA rules do not apply to them.

How might this process have played out in the White House?
The rest is at the PJMedia link.

“”On the night of Benghazi, when Obama, Hillary and Panetta met in the Oval Office””

How do we know that? I’ve heard Panetta testify about arriving at the WH before or after they received the news. He said it was a prearranged meeting with the president. I’ve never heard that Hillary was anywhere that afternoon and evening except at the State Department. Lindsay Graham missed his chance here to ask Panetta if she was at the White House....

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/02/11/now-know-president-obama-was-mia-on-benghazi.html

“”Panetta and the chairman of the joint chiefs, Martin Dempsey, told Graham they didn’t sleep, but said they didn’t know if Obama did. You would think a presidential conscience would keep him awake and engaged until he knew what had happened in Benghazi. You would be wrong. Instead, the two officials said they had only one, 30-minute conversation with Obama. It began at around 5 p.m. Washington time, 90 minutes after the first attack started, and they never spoke to him again that night.

The president’s only instructions, Panetta said, were, “Do whatever you need to do,” though he left the details “up to us.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Doesn’t that sum up his presidency? He gets the big salary and the perks and the ALL IMPORTANT LEGACY of being the first black man (which was the first lie) in the presidency and leaves everything else to the underlings he put in place to be sure they do a good job of destroying the country according to his wishes. Panetta should have told him to sit his *** down and issue the authority he needed to order the military assets to Benghazi.

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Hillary's Benghazi Stand-Down Order Exposed

Benghazi film unlocks the cover-up.