Content Section Video From Benghazi Consulate Shows Organized Attack
Oct 12, 2012 4:45 AM EDT
Footage from the night of Sept. 11 might be the clearest evidence yet of a military-style assault on the consulate in Benghazi. Eli Lake reports.
Video footage from the United States consulate in Benghazi, Libya, taken the night of the Sept. 11 anniversary attacks, shows an organized group of armed men attacking the compound, according to two U.S. intelligence officials who have seen the footage and are involved in the ongoing investigation. The footage, which was recovered from the site last week by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, offers some of the most tangible evidence yet that a military-style assault took place, according to these officials.
The Obama administration has been studying the videos, taken from closed-circuit cameras throughout the Benghazi consulate’s four-building compound, for clues about who was responsible for the attack and how it played out. The two officials tell The Daily Beast that analysts are hoping to decipher the faces of the attackers and match them up with known jihadists.
The videos could also play into an expanding investigation by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that is looking at whether security steps could have been taken that would have saved the life of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans killed that day. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, who is one of the Republicans leading the House investigation, says he hasn’t been given the footage.
In addition to the footage from the consulate cameras, the U.S. government is also poring over video taken from an overhead U.S. surveillance drone that arrived for the final hour of the night battle at the consulate compound and nearby annex.
Video from the compound’s cameras debunk the initial line from the Obama administration that there was a protest in front of the consulate on the night of the attacks, according to one of the U.S. intelligence officials who has seen the footage, and a senior Obama administration official familiar with what they show.
The videos were filmed from multiple closed-circuit cameras throughout the compound, and are at times grainy and hard to decipher. There are also some gaps. There is no footage, for example, of Ambassador Chris Stevens going into the safe room where he eventually died from smoke inhalation. The footage at the gate of the compound is taken from an angle that filmed the attackers from the side, so the people in the crowd can mostly be seen in profile.
The Daily Beast first reported that the intelligence behind the initial public assessment that the attack was a spontaneous reaction to an anti-Islam film was based in part on a single intercept between one of the attackers and a middle manager in al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the group’s North African affiliate. In the call, the alleged attacker said the locals went forward with the attack only after watching the riots that same day at the U.S. embassy in Cairo. But that intercept was one of many that suggested an al Qaeda link to the attack, none of which were mentioned in the initial eight days.
In addition to the intercept, the Central Intelligence Agency based its first assessment on open press reports and statements from Libyan politicians with jihadist sympathies. A U.S. intelligence official said there was also information from one of the Libyan nationals saying there was a protest that evening.
Analysts are hoping to decipher the faces of the attackers and match them up with known databases of jihadists.
At the same time, there was evidence that countered this assessment. An initial investigation by congressional Republicans alleged that the families of local Libyans serving for a contractor to provide security at the consulate were urged in the days before the attack to have the guards not show up to work on Sept. 11. U.S. intelligence officers also knew of four suspects within 24 hours of the attack that had links to Ansar al-Sharia, a local jihadist organization with some ties to al Qaeda’s regional affiliate for north Africa.
The video footage also supports the accounts of four diplomatic-security officers who were at the Benghazi compound and who initially responded to the attack. On Sept. 17, these officers told State Department investigators in formal briefings that there was no spontaneous protest the night of the attack, U.S. officials tell The Daily Beast. This information was what led the State Department to conclude there was no protest at the consulate on the day of the attacks, according to these officials.
Nonetheless, White House spokesman Jay Carney continued to say until Sept. 20 that the Benghazi assault resulted from a protest over the Internet film
..TheBlaze TV
Beck Walks Through Libya Timeline and Describes ‘Massive Cover-Up…Bigger Than Watergate’
Posted on October 11, 2012 at 11:29am by Tiffany Gabbay
On Wednesday evening, Glenn Beck delved into a laundry list of evidence revealing that the White House and President Obama have been far from honest when it comes to the recent embassy attacks in Libya and in Cairo.
The latest in a string of damning information now indicates that the State Department even rejected embassy staff’s request for additional security prior to the attack and that security threats were present in Libya for months prior to September 11, when U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, two Navy SEALs and another American civil servant were killed.
The coup de grace for the Obama administration, however, was in blaming a YouTube video for the attacks on U.S. embassies in Cairo and Benghazi when they were in fact premeditated. Watch below as Beck goes point for point through a powerful timeline of events — both in the administration and across the Middle East — that remove any shred of doubt that, as Beck put it, a cover-up far exceeding the Watergate scandal is at play.
A chronology of crucial moments leading up to and in the aftermath of the attacks is provided below courtesy of the Heritage Foundation:
April 6: IED thrown over the fence of the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.
April 11: Gun battle erupts between armed groups two-and-a-half miles from the U.S. Consulate, including rocket-propelled grenades.
April 27: Two South African contractors are kidnapped by armed men, released unharmed.
May 1: Deputy Commander of U.S. Embassy Tripoli’s Local Guard Force is carjacked, beaten, and detained by armed youth.
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May 1: British Embassy in Tripoli is attacked by a violent mob and set on fire. Other NATO embassies attacked as well.
May 3: The State Department declines a request from personnel concerned about security at the U.S. Embassy in Libya for a DC-3 plane to take them around the country.
May 22: Two rocket-propelled grenades are fired at the Benghazi office of the International Committee of the Red Cross, less than 1 mile from the U.S. Consulate.
June 6: A large IED destroys part of the security perimeter of the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. Creates hole “big enough for 40 men to go through.”
June 10: A car carrying the British ambassador is attacked in Tripoli. Two bodyguards injured.
Late June: The building of the International Red Cross attacked again and closed down, leaving the U.S. flag as the only international one still flying in Benghazi, an obvious target.
August 6: Armed assailants carjack a vehicle with diplomatic plates operated by U.S. personnel.
September 8: A local security officer in Benghazi warns American officials about deteriorating security.
September 11: Protesters attack the U.S. Cairo embassy. U.S. Embassy releases statement and tweets sympathizing with Muslim protesters/attackers.
September 11: U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya is attacked, Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans are killed.
September 12: Secretary Clinton and President Obama issue statements condemning both the video and the attacks.
September 12: U.S. intelligence agencies have enough evidence to conclude a terrorist attackwas involved.
September 13: Press Secretary Jay Carney condemns video and violence at a news conference.
September 14: Carney denies Administration had “actionable intelligence indicating that an attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi was planned or imminent.”
September 14: The bodies of slain Americans return to Andrews Air Force Base. President Obama again blames the YouTube video.
September 16: U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice appears on Sunday talk shows and says the attacks were provoked by the video, exclusively.
September 16: Libyan President Mohamed Magarief says, “no doubt that this [attack] was preplanned, predetermined.”
September 17: State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland refuses to call attacks an act of terror.
September 19: CNN reports having found Ambassador Stevens’s diary, which indicates concern about security threats in Benghazi.
September 19: Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Matthew Olsen tells Congressthe attack in Libya was “terrorism.”
September 20: Carney tries to back up Olsen, says it was “self-evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack.”
September 20: Obama refuses to call attack terrorism, citing insufficient information.
September 21: Secretary of State Clinton, at meeting with Pakistani Foreign Minister, says, “What happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack.”
September 25: On ABC’s “The View,” Obama says, “we don’t have all of the information yet so we are still gathering.”
September 25: To the U.N. assembly, Obama blames “A crude and disgusting video sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world.”
September 26: Libya’s Magarief on the “Today” show says, “It was a preplanned act of terrorism directed against American citizens.”
September 26: Published reports show U.S. Intel agencies and the Obama Administration knew within 24 hours that al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist were involved.
September 27: Innocence of Muslims filmmaker Mark Basseley Youseff (aka Nakoula Basseley Nakoula) is arrested and denied bail on the charges of “probation violation.”
September 28: Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper, Jr., issues a statement backing the Obama Administration’s changing story about the Libyan attack. Says facts are evolving.
October 2: Carney declines to comment on reported requests from diplomats in Libya for additional security, citing the State Department’s internal investigation.
Beck went on to ask why the embassy was denied their repeated requests for additional security and why Stevens was even still present in Benghazi when the British embassy and Red Cross were “smart enough to leave.“ He also wondered why the FBI were not deployed to the scene until last week and spent a mere ”three hours” on the ground there.
“Whose idea was it to make up the video excuse?” Beck asked. He added his theory that Stevens “was our broker tasked with arming the Libyan rebels” and that eventually, when he “needed to get the weapons back,“ the deal ”went bad.”
“This is a massive institutional cover-up bigger than Watergate,” he slammed. It may be just “massive incompetence but you have been lied to in a massive and coordinated fashion.”
Beck suggested that the reason Obama is so focused on “Big Bird” currently is to detract attention away from this scandal and that the president is pandering to the Muslim Brotherhood by condemning the “slander of Islam.”
Remember when the Muslims tried to blow up the world trade center the first time and Clinton shifted all terrorism attention onto his political and social enemies and the second amendment with McVey as an excuse and totally ignored the jihadists who freely prepped for the 911 attack? Clinton got away with all that.
We are doing that again with Obama. He shifted the terrorist protection attention onto his political and social enemies and the first amendment after the Libyan attack. It was Coptic Christians, Rev. Jones, lack of Shira speech control laws, etc. that was to blame for this violence. Christians and the constitution are the REAL terrorists we gotta crack down on and not the jihadists who killed the ambassador. Hillary got caught this time.
But since we know they are doing this clever Marxist up-side-down game, I know they’ve put the country in dire danger by ignoring jihadists and their activities in the US. It is especially dire that they have left the borders wide open while spreading jihadist power and access to WDM in the Middle East.
In some cases Obama has pulled border patrol guards away from the border, too. He’s probably done that to assist his choosen drug Cartel in Mexico but the jihadists are in tight with the Mexican cartels.
The point is, they will let it rip once Romney is in office just as happened to Bush after Clinton allowed the jihadists to prepare unhindered for 911. So as soon as Romney gets in, he’s going to have to get around the pro jihadist element inside the Federal government (Petraus is one) to pursue any and all plots Obama has set up. He also needs to put the kabosh on the US government’s involvement in shipping drugs into the US for Obama’s cartel.