Catching up Benghazi Ping.
. # 271 is important.
Thanks, Greg.
Catching up Benghazi Ping.
. # 271 is important.
Thanks, Greg.
U.S. officials in Washington monitored the Sept. 11 attack on the American mission in Benghazi as it was happening. But don’t blame American policymakers for initially blaming the unrest in Benghazi on protesters.
Those are those are just two of the many contradictory messages coming from State Department employees as they testify before the House Oversight Committee, which held hearings Wednesday on the attack. But they’re not only only mismatches.
Depending on which witness you believe, security at the Benghazi mission was either just fine — “the correct number of assets,” one State Department official said — or woefully inadequate.
“There was no plan, there was just hope that everything would get better,” one security official testified.
Charlene Lamb, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Programs, said in her prepared testimony (.pdf) that she had a firm grasp on what happened in Benghazi, starting mere moments after the mission came under assault.
“When the attack began, a Diplomatic Security agent working in the tactical operations center immediately… alerted the annex U.S. quick reaction security team stationed nearby … and the Diplomatic Security Command Center in Washington.
From that point on, I could follow what was happening in almost real-time,” Lamb explained.
Yet confusion remained about the attack’s origin.
Five days after the strike, American ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice said the unrest in Benghazi began with a protest against an anti-Islam video.
State Department officials were finally forced to concede on Wednesday there was no protest.
Under Secretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy insisted in testimony on Wednesday that there was no cover-up of the attack’s true cause.
“We have always made clear that we are giving the best information we have at the time. And that information has evolved,” Kennedy said in his prepared statement (.pdf).
“For example, if any administration official, including any career official, were on television on Sunday, September 16th, they would have said what Ambassador Rice said.
The information she had at that point from the intelligence community is the same that I had at that point.
As time went on, additional information became available. Clearly, we know more today than we did on the Sunday after the attack.”
One thing that was known months and months ago: Benghazi was a seriously hostile place for American diplomats.
Gaddafi loyalists plotted to attack U.S. embassies in Benghazi and Tripoli as early as December 2011, according to a summary of security incidents (.pdf) in Libya
compiled by the State Department and given to congressional investigators.
The plot, called “Papa Noel” — French for “Santa Claus” — was busted up by Libyan security forces before it was ever put into action, But the plot was also planned to go into action a mere two months after the death of dictator Muammar Gaddafi, a sign — and an omen —
that militants intended to attack U.S. diplomatic stations much earlier than previously thought.
“According to [government of Libya] security official Abdessalam Borghathi, a network of Gaddafi loyalists were behind the plot
and the GoL arrested the members and dismantled the group,”
the summary stated in a brief entry dated Dec. 20.
The Libyan government reported seizing “150 RPG launchers, and various light weapons and ammunition and undisclosed sums of money.”
The militants also used SMS messages to communicate, “confirming their intent in carrying out this operation as an explosive ‘Christmas gift’ to the Libyan people.”
The alleged plot was only one of 230 “specific security incidents” detailed in the report, but also one of the most sophisticated until the Sept. 11 complex attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and four other Americans.
In April and again in June, militants attacked the consulate on with improvised explosives.
In another warning to American personnel stationed in the city — this time in May — RPG rounds were fired at the nearby Benghazi office of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Two security officers were wounded in an RPG attack on the British ambassador’s convoy in June.