This analysis appears to be very Republican partisan, but it does have a lot of information, facts and interesting chronologies. Rep. Issa, of Arab abstraction and the richest man in Congress, is strictly partisan, and is not after the truth but to promote the Republican agenda and attack Democrats, especially Obama. In addition, I have seen no evidence that the US policy, overt or covert, is recruiting Islamists, or funneling Libyan weapons to Syria. If Libya gave the Free Syrian Army shoulder launched and ground to air missiles, how come they aren't being used to attack Assad's air force? They would be used if they had them. - BK
Published on Wednesday,
23 January 2013 15:46
Written by DTN
BENGHAZI: THE
TERRORIST ATTACK OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2012
This report examines the most significant events that
occurred before, during, and after the September
11, 2012 Islamic terrorist attacks against an American diplomatic
mission (and a nearby CIA annex) in Benghazi,
Libya.
The compound that housed the diplomatic mission possessed
none of the security features usually found in such a facility: e.g.,
bulletproof glass, reinforced ballistic doors, a “safe room,” and high concrete
barriers surrounding the buildings. It also lacked an adequate supply of
trained security personnel. According to Congressman Darrell Issa, the Obama
administration intentionally withdrew security personnel and equipment from the
mission in Benghazi for political
reasons, so as to “conve[y] the impression that the situation in Libya
was getting better [i.e., safer], not worse.”
In March 2011, American diplomat Christopher Stevens was
stationed in Benghazi as the American liaison to Libya's “opposition” rebels — among
whom were many al Qaeda-affiliated jihadists — who were fighting to topple the
longstanding regime of President Muammar Qaddafi. Ambassador Stevens' task was
to help coordinate covert U.S.
assistance to these rebels. In short, the Obama administration elected to aid
and abet individuals and groups that were allied ideologically and tactically
with al Qaeda.
Following Qaddafi's fall from power in the summer of 2011,
Ambassador Stevens was tasked with finding and securing the vast caches of
powerful armaments which the Libyan dictator had amassed during his long reign.
In turn, Stevens facilitated the transfer of these arms to the “opposition” rebels
in Syria who
were trying to topple yet another Arab dictator—Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad.
As in Libya,
the rebels in Syria
were likewise known to include al Qaeda and other Shariah-supremacist groups.
So once again, the Obama administration was willfully helping the cause of al
Qaeda and its affiliates. In addition to facilitating arms transfers, Stevens'
duties also included the recruitment of Islamic jihadists from Libya
and elsewhere in North Africa who were willing to
personally go into combat against the Assad regime in Syria.
The U.S.
diplomatic mission in Benghazi
served as a headquarters from which all the aforementioned activities could be
coordinated with officials and diplomats from such countries as Turkey,
Saudi Arabia,
and Qatar.
As 2012 progressed, violent jihadist activity became
increasingly commonplace in Benghazi
and elsewhere throughout Libya
and North Africa. At or near the U.S.
mission in Benghazi, for instance,
there were many acts of terrorism featuring the use of guns, improvised
explosive devices, hand grenades, rocket-propelled grenades, and car-bombs, to
say nothing of the explicit threats against Americans issued by known
terrorists like al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri. As a result of such
developments, Ambassador Stevens and others at the U.S.
mission in Benghazi repeatedly
asked the Obama administration for increased security provisions during 2012,
but these requests were invariably denied or ignored.
Then, on the night of September 11, 2012, the U.S.
mission in Benghazi was attacked by
a large group of heavily armed terrorists. Over the ensuing 7 hours, Americans
stationed at the diplomatic mission and at the nearby CIA
annex issued 3 urgent requests for military back-up, all of which were denied
by the Obama administration. By the time the violence was over, 4 Americans
were dead: Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Foreign Service Information
Management Officer Sean Smith, and two former Navy SEALS, Glen Doherty and
Tyrone Woods, who fought valiantly (but unsuccessfully) to drive away the
attackers.
In the wake of the violence, the Obama administration
immediately and persistently characterized what had occurred in Benghazi
not as an act of terrorism, but as a spontaneous, unplanned uprising that just
happened, coincidentally, to take place on the anniversary of 9/11. Moreover,
the administration portrayed the attack as an event that had evolved from what
began as a low-level protest against an obscure YouTube video that disparaged
Muslims and their faith. In reality, however, by this time U.S.
intelligence agencies had already gained more than enough evidence to conclude
unequivocally that the attack on the mission in Benghazi
was a planned terrorist incident, not a spontaneous act carried out in reaction
to a video. Indeed, the video had nothing whatsoever to do with the attack.
Given these realities, it is likely that the Obama
administration's post-September 11 actions were aimed at drawing public
attention away from a number of highly important facts:
the U.S.
mission in Benghazi had never
adopted adequate security measures;
the administration had ignored dozens of warning signs about
growing Islamic extremism and jihadism in the region over a period of more than
6 months;
the administration, for political reasons, had ignored or
denied repeated requests for extra security by American diplomats stationed in Benghazi;
the administration had failed to beef up security even for
the anniversary of 9/11, a date of obvious significance to terrorists;
the administration, fully cognizant of what was happening on
the ground during the September 11 attacks in Benghazi, nonetheless denied
multiple calls for help by Americans who were stationed there;
the administration had been lying when, throughout the
presidential election season, it relentlessly advanced the notion that "al
Qaeda is on the run" and Islamic terrorism was in decline thanks to
President Obama's policies; and perhaps most significantly,
throughout 2011 and 2012 the administration had been lending
its assistance to jihadists affiliated with al Qaeda, supposedly the
organization that represented the prime focus of Obama's anti-terrorism
efforts; moreover, some of those same jihadists had personally fought against U.S.
troops in Iraq
and Afghanistan.
This section of Discover The Networks explores the
significance of the events in Benghazi
and of the Obama administration's response to those events
BENGHAZI:
THE TERRORIST ATTACK OF SEPTEMBER 11,
2012
What Exactly Was the U.S.
“Consulate” in Benghazi, Libya?
Though the media have generally referred to the
Benghazi-based
U.S.
facility attacked by terrorists on
September
11, 2012 as a “consulate,” it should rightfully be called a
“diplomatic mission.”
As investigative journalist
Aaron
Klein points out: “A consulate typically refers to the building that
officially houses a consul, who is the official representativ[e] of the
government of one state in the territory of another.... Consulates at times
function as junior embassies, providing services related to visas, passports
and citizen information.... The main role of a consulate is to foster trade
with the host and care for its own citizens who are traveling or living in the
host nation. Diplomatic missions, on the other hand, maintain a more
generalized role. A diplomatic mission is simply a group of people from one
state or an international inter-governmental organization present in another
state to represent matters of the sending state or organization in the
receiving state.”
Notably, the U.S. State Department website has no
listing of
any consulate located in
Benghazi.
Still more evidence that the facility was a mission rather than a consulate
comes from the post-September 11 remarks of President
Barack
Obama and Secretary of State
Hillary
Clinton, both of whom referred to the post as a “
mission.”
Lack of Security at the U.S.
Mission in Benghazi
The U.S. Department of State website
emphasizes the
great importance of implementing adequate security measures at all American
missions around the world: “With terrorist organizations and coalitions
operating across international borders, the threat of terrorism against
U.S.
interests remains great. Therefore, any
U.S.
mission overseas can be a target even if identified as being in a low-threat
environment. As a result, [Diplomatic Security] is more dedicated than ever to
its mission of … implementing security programs that shield
U.S.
missions and residences overseas from physical and technical attack.”
But security at the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi
lacked the
multiple
layers of security that are typically present at such posts—i.e., it
was not
protected by
a contingent of U.S. Marines, nor did it have bulletproof glass, reinforced
ballistic doors, a “safe room,” three-meter-high
barriers
surrounding the facility, or a 100-foot setback from the building to those
barriers. In order to operate a mission with such low levels of security in
place, a
waiver from
Washington would have been
required.
There was also an inadequate amount of security personnel at
the mission in
Benghazi. According
to Eric Nordstrom, former Regional Security Officer at the U.S. Embassy in
Libya,
security at the
Benghazi facility
was “
inappropriately
low.” Nordstrom reports that there were never, at any time, more than
three direct-hire
U.S. security
agents assigned to the compound, and he has
testified that
“in deference to sensitivity to Libyan practice, the guards at
Benghazi
were unarmed.”
Sometimes only a single guard was stationed at the
U.S.
mission in
Benghazi. On such
occasions, the lone agent depended upon support from members of the February 17
Martyrs Brigade (F17MB) who lived in the compound. F17MB is a Libyan
militia led
by Fawzi Bukatef, who has known ties to both the
Muslim
Brotherhood (the Islamic supremacist organization that gave rise
to
al
Qaeda and
Hamas)
and other Islamist fighters.
For additional security in
Benghazi,
the State Department
hired the
little-known British company Blue Mountain Group instead of one of the large
firms it has traditionally used in overseas danger zones;
Blue
Mountain employed local Libyans to
serve as guards who patrolled the compound with only flashlights and batons
rather than firearms.
Congressman Darrell Issa (R-California), citing the
testimony of witnesses and the content of key documents,
explains why
the security at the
Benghazi
mission was so woefully inadequate: “[T]he [Obama] administration made a policy
decision to place
Libya
into a 'normalized' country status as quickly as possible. The normalization
process, which began in November 2011, appeared to have been aimed at conveying
the impression that the situation in
Libya
was getting better, not worse. The administration's decision to normalize was
the basis for systematically withdrawing security personnel and
equipment—including a much-needed DC aircraft—without taking into account the
reality on the ground.”
Noting also that “some have claimed that resources were not
provided [for security in
Benghazi]
because of budgetary contraints,” Issa emphasizes that “this was not the case.”
Indeed, the State Department was in possession of some
$2.2
billion that could have been spent on upgrading security at
U.S.
embassies, consulates, and missions around the world, but the Obama
administration elected not to do so.
March 2011:
Ambassador Christopher Stephens' Role in the Obama Administration's Support of
Libyan Jihadists Tied to Al Qaeda
In March 2011 President Obama
signs a
secret order, or presidential “
finding,”
that authorizes covert operations to aid the “opposition” rebels in
Libya
who are fighting to topple the 42-year dictatorial rule of President Muammar
Qaddafi. As The New York Times
reports,
“The Obama administration secretly gave its blessing to arms shipments [
originating in
Qatar and the United Arab Emirates] to Libyan rebels.” Moreover, President
Obama
says the
U.S. has not
ruled out providing military hardware directly to those rebels: “It's fair to
say that if we wanted to get weapons into
Libya,
we probably could. We're looking at all our options at this point.”
Among the Libyan rebels are many al Qaeda-affiliated
jihadists. Indeed, the rebels'
top military
commander, Abdelhakim Belhadj, is the leader of an al Qaeda franchise known as
the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. Another opposition leader, Abdel-Hakim
al-Hasidi,
confirms that
a substantial number of the Libyan rebels are al Qaeda fighters who previously
battled
U.S.
troops in
Iraq
and
Afghanistan.
And former
CIA officer
Bruce
Riedel tells the Hindustan Times: “There is no question that
al-Qaeda’s Libyan franchise, [the] Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, is a part of
the opposition. It has always been [Qaddafi's] biggest enemy, and its
stronghold is
Benghazi.”
Also in
March
2011, 52-year-old American diplomat John Christopher Stevens (a.k.a.
Christopher Stevens)—
formerly the
number two official at the
U.S.
embassy in
Tripoli—is designated as
the American liaison to the Libyan rebels. Stevens'
task is
to help coordinate
U.S.
assistance to these rebels, who are now engaged against Qaddafi. Abdelhakim
Belhadj is almost certainly one of Stevens' most important
contacts for
this initiative. Journalist
Clare
Lopez puts these facts in perspective: “During the 2011 Libyan revolt
against Muammar Qaddafi, reckless
U.S.
policy flung American forces and money into the conflict on the side of the
rebels, who were known at the time to include Al-Qaeda elements.… That means
that Stevens was authorized by the U.S. Department of State and the Obama
administration to aid and abet individuals and groups that were, at a minimum,
allied ideologically with Al-Qaeda, the jihadist terrorist organization that attacked
the homeland on the first 9/11, the one that’s not supposed to exist anymore
after the killing of its leader, Osama bin Laden, on May 2, 2011.”
Summer 2011 to Early 2012:
Christopher Stevens' Role in Post-Qaddafi Libya:
Funneling Libyan Weapons and Jihadists to Syria,
to Help Al Qaeda-Affiliated Rebels Fight the Assad Regime.
Frank
Gaffney, founder and president of the Center for Security Policy, writes that
after Muammar Qaddafi's fall from power in the summer of 2011, “[Christopher]
Stevens [is] appointed ambassador to the new Libya run by [Abdelhakim] Belhadj
[leader of the al Qaeda-linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group] and his friends.”
At this point, Stevens is tasked with finding and securing “the immense amount
of armaments that had been cached by the dictator around the country and
systematically looted during and after the revolution.” Stevens'
mission is
to help transfer “arms recovered from the former regime’s stocks to the
'opposition' in
Syria,”
where, “as in
Libya,
the insurgents are known to include al Qaeda and other Shariah-supremacist
groups, including none other than Abdelhakim Belhadj.” These Syrian insurgents,
organized under the banner of the “Free Syrian Army,” are fighting to topple
the rule of their nation's president, Bashar al-Assad.
Benghazi
is a logical place in which to station Stevens for this task, since, as Gaffney
notes, it is “one of the places in
Libya
most awash with such weapons in the most dangerous of hands.”
Stevens' duties also include the recruitment of Islamic
jihadists willing to personally go into combat against the Assad regime in
Syria.
Investigative journalist Aaron Klein writes that
according
to Middle Eastern security officials: “The U.S. diplomatic mission in
Benghazi ... actually served as a meeting place to coordinate aid for the
rebel-led insurgencies in the Middle East … Among the tasks performed inside
the building was collaborating with Arab countries on the recruitment of
fighters—including jihadists—to target Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.”
These recruits generally
hailed from
Libya and elsewhere in North Africa, and were dispatched to Syria via Turkey
with the
help of
CIA operatives stationed
along the border shared by those two countries. One of the most
noteworthy jihadists
making his way to Syria was
Abdelhakim
Belhadj, former leader of the al Qaeda-linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group
that brought down Qaddafi in Libya before subsequently
disbanding.
Middle Eastern security officials
describe the
U.S. mission in
Benghazi at this time as
essentially a diplomatic meeting place where Stevens and other American
officials could confer with the Turkish, Saudi and Qatari governments on how to
best support the
Mideast's various insurgencies,
especially the rebels opposing Assad in
Syria.
“[This] may help explain why there was no major public security presence at
what has been described as a 'consulate,'”
says
Aaron Klein. “Such a presence would draw attention to the shabby,
nondescript building that was allegedly used for such sensitive purposes.”
* November 2011: Abdelhakim Belhadj — former leader of
the al Qaeda-linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group —
meets with
Free Syrian Army leaders in Istanbul and on the Turkish-Syrian border. This is
part of an effort by the new, post-Qaddafi Libyan government to provide
money
and weapons to the growing Islamist insurgency in
Syria.
February 2012 to September 2012:
Growing Danger at the U.S.
Mission in Benghazi
and Elsewhere in Libya
*
February
2012: Eric Nordstrom, the Regional Security Officer at the U.S. embassy in
Tripoli, urges that American security measures in Libya be expanded, citing
dozens of security incidents by “Al-Qaeda-affiliated groups, including Al-Qaeda
in the Islamic Maghreb …”
*
April
6, 2012: An IED [improvised explosive device] is thrown over the fence of
the
U.S.
mission compound fence in
Benghazi
by two Libyans employed at the mission as contract guards. The suspects are
arrested but not prosecuted.
*
April
10, 2012: An IED is thrown at a convoy carrying the United Nations Special
Envoy to
Libya.
No one is arrested.
*
April
11, 2012: A gun battle breaks out 4 kilometers from the
U.S.
mission in
Benghazi.
*
April
25, 2012: A
U.S.
embassy guard in
Tripoli is
detained at a militia checkpoint.
*
April
26, 2012: A fistfight escalates into a gunfight at a
Benghazi
medical university, and a U.S. Foreign Service Officer in attendance is
evacuated.
*
April
27, 2012: Two South African contractors in
Benghazi
are kidnapped, questioned and released. After this incident, Eric Nordstrom,
former Regional Security Officer at the U.S. Embassy in
Libya,
states:
“It is increasingly likely that our direct-hire employees will face the same
challenges in the future.”
*
May
1, 2012: The deputy commander of the local guard force in
Tripoli
is carjacked and beaten.
*
May
3, 2012: The State Department
declines
a request from personnel concerned about security at the
U.S.
embassy in
Libya
for a DC-3 plane to transport them around the country.
*
May
15, 2012: An unknown attacker throws a hand grenade at the Military Police
headquarters in
Benghazi.
*
May
22, 2012: Two RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] rounds are fired at the Red
Cross outpost in
Benghazi, which is
located 1 kilometer from the
U.S.
mission. A pro-al Qaeda group claims credit for the attack. In a Facebook
posting that same day, the group
says,
“now we are preparing a message for the Americans for disturbing the skies over
Derma” (a port city in eastern
Libya).
*
June
2012: A pro-Qaddafi Facebook page posts photos of U.S. Ambassador
Christopher Stevens making his morning run in
Tripoli
and issues a threat against him.
*
June
6, 2012: An IED is left at the gate of the
U.S.
mission in
Benghazi. Six minutes
later, it explodes. An al Qaeda-affiliated group claims credit for the
incident.
After
this bombing,
U.S.
officials observe that local (unarmed) guard forces working for the
Benghazi
compound are now “afraid to work.” Assistant Regional Security Officer David
Oliveira, who is stationed in
Benghazi
at the time, says that these guard forces view the
U.S.
as “a target” and “[don't] want to work overnight.”
*
June
10, 2012: On or about this date, al Qaeda holds a rally in
Benghazi.
The event features fighters from
Libya,
Egypt,
Tunisia,
and
Mali parading
through the streets bearing weapons and black Salafist flags.
*
June
11, 2012: An RPG is fired at a convoy carrying the British Ambassador in
broad daylight as he nears the British consulate in Benghazi, which is located
2 kilometers from the U.S. mission in that city. No one is killed, but the
British close their consulate soon thereafter. No suspects are identified.
*
June
13, 2012: An aide to a former internal security officer is killed in a
car-bomb assassination in
Benghazi.
*
June
21, 2012: A former Libyan military prosecutor is assassinated by gunfire in
Benghazi.
*
June
22, 2012: Ambassador Christopher Stevens sends a cable to the State
Department, noting the continued presence in Libya of Islamist extremist groups
“which warrant ongoing monitoring.”
*
Late
June, 2012: Another attack targets the Red Cross outpost in
Benghazi,
this one in daylight. The Red Cross promptly pulls out, making the
U.S.
mission the last Western outpost in the city.
*
June
25, 2012: Ambassador Stevens issues a cable entitled, “
Libya's
Fragile Security Deteriorates as Tribal Rivalries, Power Plays and Extremism
Intensify.” In this cable, he indicates that the leaders of an al
Qaeda-affiliated group have explicitly stated that they are “target[ing] the
Christians supervising the management of the [
U.S.]
consulate.”
Stevens adds that a “[Government of Libya] national security
official shared his private opinion that the [recent] attacks were the work of
extremists who are opposed to western influence in Libya.”
Moreover, writes Stevens, “[A] number of local contacts [note] that Islamic
extremism appears to be on the rise in eastern Liya and that the Al-Qaeda flag
has been spotted several times flying over government buildings and training
facilities in Derna.”
According to Stevens, “the proliferation of militias and the
absence of effective security and intelligence services” has diminished the
Libyan government's ability to respond to the escalating violence.
*
July
1, 2012: Between 100 and 200 demonstrators storm and ransack the office of
the High National Electoral Commission in
Benghazi.
*
July
4, 2012: A border-control department officer is assassinated in a drive-by
shooting in
Benghazi. No suspects
are arrested.
*
July
6, 2012: A Libyan Air Force helicopter is struck by gunfire from an
anti-aircraft weapon and is forced to land at
Benghazi’s
Benina Airport.
One staff member of
Libya's
High National Election Commission is killed in the attack, and one is wounded.
No suspects are arrested.
*
July
21, 2012: In a memorandum to the State Department, Eric Nordstrom, former
Regional Security Officer at the U.S. Embassy in
Libya,
warns: “[T]he risk of
U.S.
mission personnel, private
U.S.
citizens, and businesspersons encountering an isolating event as a result of
militia or political violence is HIGH. The Government of Libya does not yet
have the ability to effectively respond to and manage the rising criminal and
militia related violence, which could result in an isolating event.”
*
August 2012:
Ambassador Stevens reports that the security situation in
Benghazi
is deteriorating. He informs the State Department of a “
security
vacuum” that is being exploited by independent extremists. Nonetheless, the
16-man Site Security Team of Special Forces assigned to
Libya
is
ordered
out of the country, contrary to the stated wishes of Stevens.
*
August
6, 2012: An attempted carjacking of a vehicle with
U.S.
diplomatic plates is carried out in
Tripoli.
*
August
15, 2012: An emergency meeting is convened at the
U.S.
mission in
Benghazi to discuss the
threat posed by the area's 10 active Islamist militias, including al Qaeda and
Ansar al-Sharia.
*
August
16, 2012: The U.S. Mission in
Benghazi
sends a cable (marked “SECRET” and signed by Ambassador Stevens) to “The Office
of the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.” The cable says that the State
Department’s senior security officer, also known as the RSO, does not believe
the mission can be protected against a “
coordinated
attack.”
*
Early
September 2012: Unarmed Libyan guards (employed by British contractor Blue
Mountain Group) at the
U.S.
mission in
Benghazi are warned by
their family members to quit their jobs because of rumors of an “impending
attack.”
*
September
6, 2012:
Al-Entisar,
a Libyan-flagged ship, docks in the Turkish
port
of Iskenderun. Its 400 tons of
cargo includes Russian-designed, shoulder-launched missiles known as MANPADS,
rocket-propelled grenades, and surface-to-air missiles—precisely the types of
weapons that had previously made their way into Libya when Qaddafi
acquired many
thousands of them from the former Eastern Bloc countries, and
precisely the
types of weapons the Syrian rebels have been using in their military campaign
against Syrian President Assad. Al-Entisar's
cargo ultimately
ends
up in the
possession of
those same Syrian rebels.
The main
organizer of
this shipment of weapons is the al Qaeda-linked Abdelhakim Belhadj, who
previously
worked
directly with Ambassador Stevens during the Libyan revolution against
Qaddafi. As journalist
Clare Lopez explains,
these facts confirm “the multilateral U.S.-Libya-Turkey agreement to get
weapons into the hands of Syrian rebels—which were known to be dominated by
Al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood elements—by working with and through
Al-Qaeda-linked jihadist figures like [Abdelhakim] Belhadj.”
*
September 8,
2012: A local security officer in
Benghazi warns American
officials that security in the area is rapidly deteriorating, and that
violent
unrest is a distinct possibility.
*
September 9,
2012: The U.S. State Department now has credible
information that
American missions in the
Middle East may be targeted by
terrorists, but diplomats are not instructed to go on high alert or “lockdown.”
*
September
10, 2012: Al Qaeda chief
Ayman
al-Zawahiri—vowing to avenge the death of Abu Yahya al-Libi, a high-ranking
al Qaeda official killed by an American drone attack three months earlier—
issues
direct threats against Americans in Libya. Notwithstanding these
threats, the Obama administration deploys no U.S. Marines to guard the mission
in
Benghazi.
* Summation: As a result of the foregoing incidents,
the
U.S.
mission in
Benghazi makes
repeated
requests for increased security prior to September 11, but these
requests are denied by the Obama administration. One
U.S.
security officer, Eric Nordstrom, twice asks his State Department superiors for
more security at the
Benghazi
mission but receives no response. In making his requests, Nordstrom cites a
chronology of
more
than 200 security incidents that occurred in
Libya
between June 2011 and July 2012. Forty-eight of those incidents were in
Benghazi.
Timeline of the September 11, 2012 Terrorist Attack on the U.S.
Mission in Benghazi
* 9:43 a.m.
Benghazi
time: Ambassador Stevens sends cables to
Washington,
including a
Benghazi weekly
report of
security incidents that reflect Libyans' “growing frustration with police and
security forces who were too weak to keep the country secure.”
* Morning of September 11: News outlets begin to report
that there is growing anger in
Egypt
over a YouTube video, titled
Innocence of Muslims,
which was produced in the
United States
and is critical of the Prophet Muhammad. The video in question is just 14
minutes long and was first posted on the Internet fully two months
earlier—i.e., it is not anything new. Moreover, the video is extremely obscure
and, from an artistic standpoint, of very low quality.
“The Embassy of the United
States in Cairo
condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious
feelings of Muslims—as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions.
Today, the 11th anniversary of the September
11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United
States, Americans are honoring our patriots
and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of
democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American
democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right
of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.”
* Approximately
4:15
p.m. Cairo time: Crowds
begin to form near the
U.S.
embassy compound in
Cairo. Then,
over a three-hour period,
hundreds of
Muslim protesters
storm that
facility, where they destroy the American flag and replace it with a black
Salafist flag that reads, “There is one God, Allah, and Mohammad is his
prophet.”
* Approximately
8:30 to
9:00
p.m. Benghazi time:
Ambassador Stevens concludes his meeting with Turkish Ambassador Ali Kemal
Aydin, his final meeting of the day, and retires to his room in Building C of
the
U.S.
mission compound in
Benghazi. At
this time, there are
no
signs of any unrest in the vicinity of the compound. Five State
Department Diplomatic Security agents (DS) are on site—three of whom are based
in
Benghazi, and two of whom are
travelng with Stevens.
* Approximately
9:40
p.m. Benghazi time:
American personnel at the
Benghazi
mission suddenly hear gunfire and an explosion. Via an electronic security
monitor in the compound's
Tactical Operations
Center, an agent sees dozens of
armed people flooding through a pedestrian gate at the main entrance of the
compound. From this point onward, State Department Diplomatic Security agents
follow events in
real
time on a listen-only, audio-only feed.
* Shortly after 9:40 p.m.
Benghazi
time: The attackers are inside the compound and begin firing into the main
building, setting it ablaze. At this time, there are
three people inside
the building: Ambassador Stevens, a regional security officer, and Foreign
Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith.
*
After
9:40 p.m. Benghazi time:
When the mission in
Benghazi
issues
3 urgent
requests for military back-up, the requests are denied.
CIA
Operators stationed at an annex approximately a mile away
are
told to “stand down” (i.e., not respond) rather than to try to defend
the mission.
Disobeying
that order, former Navy SEALs
Tyrone
Woods and
Glen
Doherty, along with at least one other individual from the
CIA
annex, make their way toward the mission in an attempt to defend the people
therein.
*
10
p.m. Benghazi
time: The U.S. military redeploys
two unmanned
surveillance drones that are already airborne in the region, positioning them
above Benghazi in order to provide real-time intelligence to the
CIA
team on the ground. The drones will take approximately an hour to arrive at
their destination.
*
10:05
p.m. Benghazi
time: The
State Department
Operations Center
issues an alert to several government and intelligence agencies, including the
White House Situation Room, the office of the Director of National
Intelligence, and the FBI. The alert reads: “US Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi
Under Attack—approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been
heard as well. Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in
Benghazi,
and four COM (Chief of Mission/embassy) personnel are in the compound safe
haven.”
*
10:25
p.m. Benghazi
time: The small team of Americans (including Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty)
from the
CIA annex arrives at the
U.S.
mission in
Benghazi. Team members
begin to work on
evacuating those
who remain at the mission; they also remove the body of Foreign Service
Information Management Officer Sean Smith, who was killed early in initial
attack. They also search, without success, for Ambassador Stevens.
* Between
11 p.m.
and
midnight Benghazi
time: Members of the February 17 Martyrs Brigade realize that they cannot
possibly defend the compound, and they
withdraw.
* Between
11 p.m.
and
midnight Benghazi
time: DS agents are
unable to
find Ambassador Stevens anywhere in the mission compound. Under heavy assault,
they are forced to leave the compound with the
CIA
team (which includes Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty) in an armored vehicle that
takes them to the annex about a mile away.
* Between 11 p.m. and midnight Benghazi time: As
evidenced by State Department emails, within two hours after the attack on the
U.S. mission in Benghazi, the State Department is fully
aware that
the Libyan militant group Ansar al-Sharia has already taken credit for the
attack and has called for additional terrorist acts. As former United Nations
Ambassador John Bolton would later explain, “What the emails show beyond any
doubt is that the State Department was fully possessed of the information
in
real
time.”
September 12, 2012
*
Approximately
midnight Benghazi time,
September
12, 2012: Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty arrive back at the
CIA
annex, which then comes under heavy attack from Islamic terrorists for the next
several hours. The security team returns fire and tries to defend the annex.
*
12:07
a.m. Benghazi time,
September 12,
2012: The State Department Operations Center issues an alert
relaying information that the
U.S.
embassy in
Tripoli has reported:
“Ansar al-Sharia [an Islamic extremist military group] Claims Responsibilty for
Benghazi Attack ... on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on
Embassy Tripoli.”
*
Midnight
to 2 a.m. Benghazi time, September 12, 2012: Defense Secretary Panetta
holds a series of meetings and issues three orders: (a) He orders two Fleet
Antiterrorism Security Team platoons stationed in Rota, Spain, to prepare to
deploy to the U.S. mission in Benghazi and the U.S. embassy in Tripoli; (b) he
orders a special operations team in Europe to move to Sigonella, Sicily—less
than one hour's flight (
480
miles) from Benghazi; and (c) he orders a U.S.-based special operations
team to deploy to Sigonella as well.
*
1:30
a.m. Benghazi time,
September 12, 2012:
The U.S. security team from Embassy Tripoli lands in
Benghazi
and learns that Ambassador Stevens is missing.
* Approximately 4 a.m. to 5:15 a.m. Benghazi time,
September 12, 2012: Former U.S. Navy SEALS Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods
are
killed by
direct
mortar fire as they try to
engage the
attackers at the
CIA annex in Benghazi.
Their deaths come about
7
hours after the start of the violence. Soon thereafter, the attacks
against the
U.S.
mission wind down. All told, 4 Americans are dead: Doherty, Woods, Ambassador
Stevens, and Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith.
The Aftermath: Was It Terrorism or a "Spontaneous"
Attack?
* Morning of
September
12, 2012: The Obama administration immediately characterizes the
murderous violence in
Benghazi as a
spontaneous, unplanned uprising that not only evolved from a low-level protest
against
Innocence of
Muslims, but also just happened, coincidentally, to take place on the
anniversary of 9/11. In reality, however, by this time
U.S.
intelligence agencies have already gained
enough
evidence to conclude unequivocally that the attack on the mission in
Benghazi
was a terrorist incident, not a spontaneous event growing out of a low-level
protest over the obscure YouTube video. In fact, there was never any low-level
protest against that video in
Benghazi.
* Morning of
September
12, 2012: In a morning
speech delivered
in the White House Rose Garden, President Obama
says,
“Make no mistake, we will work with the Libyan government to bring to justice
the killers who attacked our people.” In his remarks, the president makes
reference to
the role that the anti-Muslim YouTube video allegedly played in triggering the
violence: “Since our founding, the
United States
has been a nation that respects all faiths. We reject all efforts to denigrate
the religious beliefs of others. But there is absolutely no justification to
this type of senseless violence. None.” He also makes a passing reference to
“acts of terror” generally, right after he has referred to “troops who made the
ultimate sacrifice in
Iraq
and
Afghanistan,”
and to “our wounded warriors at Walter Reed [Hospital].” But he never actually
characterizes the
Benghazi attack
as a terrorist act.
* Morning of September 12, 2012: After his Rose Garden
speech, Obama
tapes
an interview for 60 Minutes, where he explains that he refrained
from using the word “terrorism” in the speech because “it’s too early to know
exactly how this came about.”
* Afternoon of September 12, 2012: Just a few hours
after having delivered his remarks in the Rose Garden, President Obama flies
to
Las
Vegas for a campaign
fundraiser where
he likens the heroism of the dead Americans in Libya to that of his own
campaign volunteers: “
The
sacrifices that our troops and our diplomats make are obviously very
different from the challenges that we face here domestically, but like them,
you guys are Americans who sense that we can do better than we’re doing…. I’m
just really proud of you.”
* Afternoon of September
12, 2012: Senior administration officials hold a briefing with
reporters to answer questions about the attack. Twice the officials
characterize the perpetrators of the attack as “extremists.”
*
Afternoon of
September 12, 2012: NBC’s Andrea Mitchell asks an administration official
to comment on news reports indicating that the events in
Benghazi
have been “linked to a terror attack, an organized terror attack,” possibly al
Qaeda. The official refers to it as a “complex attack” and says it is “too
early to say who they were” and with whom they were affiliated.
*
4:09
p.m., September 12, 2012: At a press briefing en route to
Las
Vegas, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney is
asked, “Does the White House believe that the attack in
Benghazi
was planned and premeditated?” He replies, “It’s too early for us to make that
judgment. I think—I know that this is being investigated, and we’re working
with the Libyan government to investigate the incident. So I would not want to
speculate on that at this time.”
*
10:08
p.m., September 12, 2012: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
releases a
public statement linking the attack against the U.S. diplomatic mission in
Benghazi to the YouTube video, which she describes as “inflammatory material
posted on the Internet.” “I condemn in the strongest terms the attack on our
mission in
Benghazi today,” says
Mrs. Clinton, adding: “The
United States
deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others.
Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our
nation. But let me be clear — there is no justification for this, none.”
*
September
13, 2012: The Obama administration sends Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton to deliver a televised
statement denouncing
not only the violence in
Benghazi
but also the “disgusting and reprehensible” video allegedly responsible for it,
and stating “very clearly” that “the
United
States government had absolutely nothing to
do with this video.” “We absolutely reject its content and message,” says Mrs.
Clinton, emphasizing
America’s
great “respect for people of faith.”
*
September 13, 2012:
Hillary Clinton meets with Ali Suleiman Aujali—the Libyan ambassador to the
U.S.—at
a State Department event to mark the end of Ramadan. Ambassador Aujali
apologizes to Mrs. Clinton for what he describes as “this terrorist attack
which took place against the American consulate in
Libya.”
Mrs. Clinton, in her remarks, does not characterize it as terrorism. Rather,
she says there is “never any justification for violent acts of this kind.” She
also condemns the anti-Muslim video,.
*
September
13, 2012: White House press secretary Jay Carney
condemns the
YouTube video at a news conference.
*
September 13, 2012:
At a daily press briefing, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland is
asked whether the
Benghazi attack
was “purely spontaneous or was premeditated by militants.” Declining to answer,
she says that the administration does not want to “jump to conclusions.”
*
September 13, 2012:
In a meeting with Moroccan Foreign Minister Saad-Eddine Al-Othmani, Hillary
Clinto denounces the “disgusting and reprehensible” anti-Muslim video and the
violence that it purportedly sparked.
*
September
14, 2012: Press secretary Carney
says:
“We were not aware of any actionable intelligence indicating that an attack on
the
U.S.
mission in
Benghazi was planned or
imminent.”
*
September
14, 2012: President Obama
again
blames the YouTube video for having sparked the violence.
*
September
14, 2012: The White House asks YouTube to review Innocence of
Muslims to see if it complies with the website's terms of use.
*
September
14, 2012: CNN journalists find Ambassador Christopher
Stevens’
diary amid
the rubble of the mission in
Benghazi
where he was killed three days earlier. The diary reveals that Stevens had been
worried for some time about constant security threats, the rise in Islamic
extremism, and the fact that his name was on an al Qaeda hit list.
*
September
14, 2012: At the receiving ceremony where the bodies of the 4
Americans who were killed in
Benghazi
are returned to the
United States,
Hillary Clinton addresses grieving family members.
According
to the father of the slain Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods, Mrs. Clinton “came
over … she talked with me. I gave her a hug and shook her hand and she did not
appear to be one bit sincere at all and she mentioned about, ‘We’re going to
have that person arrested and prosecuted that did the video.’ That was the
first time I even heard about anything like that.”
*
September
14, 2012: At a press briefing, State Department spokeswoman
Victoria Nuland says her department
will no longer
answer any questions about the attack in
Benghazi:
“It is now something that you need to talk to the FBI about, not to us about,
because it’s their investigation.”
*
September 14,
2012: Anti-American demonstrations
continue near
the
U.S.
embassy in
Cairo, and the State
Department warns American embassies in
Kuwait,
Oman, and
Jordan
to be ready for possible unrest.
*
September
15, 2012: In his weekly address, President Obama discusses the
Benghazi
attack but makes no mention of terrorism or terrorists. He does mention,
however, the anti-Muslim
video and
“every angry mob” that it inspired in the
Middle East.
* September 16, 2012: President Obama's Ambassador to
the United Nations,
Susan
Rice, appears on five separate Sunday television news programs where she
claims, falsely, that according to the “best information at present,” the
deadly attack in Benghazi was not a premeditated assault but rather a “spontaneous
reaction” to “a hateful and offensive video that was widely disseminated
throughout the Arab and Muslim world.” For example, she
tells Bob
Schieffer on CBS's Face the Nation:
“We'll want to see the results of that investigation to draw
any definitive conclusions. But based on the best information we have to date,
what our assessment is as of the present is in fact what began spontaneously in
Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo
where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our
embassy ... sparked by this hateful video. But soon after that spontaneous
protest began outside of our consulate in Benghazi, we believe that it looks
like extremist elements, individuals, joined in that—in that effort with heavy
weapons of the sort that are, unfortunately, readily now available in Libya
post-revolution. And that it spun from there into something much, much more
violent.... We do not have information at present that leads us to conclude
that this was premeditated or preplanned.”
*
September
16, 2012: Rice's assertion is quickly
contradicted by
Libyan security officials who say that American diplomats were warned as early
as September 8th about potential violent unrest in
Benghazi.
*
September
16, 2012:
Libya’s
interim president, Mohammed el-Magariaf, says the attack on the
U.S.
mission was planned and coordinated by an Islamist group with ties to al
Qaeda.
Says Magariaf:
“The way these perpetrators acted and moved ... this leaves us with no doubt
that this has preplanned, determined—predetermined ... It was
planned—definitely, it was planned by foreigners, by people who ... entered the
country a few months ago, and they were planning this criminal act … since
their arrival."
*
September
16, 2012: In an interview with NPR, President Magariaf says: “The idea that
this criminal and cowardly act was a spontaneous protest that just spun out of
control is completely unfounded and preposterous. We firmly believe that this
was a precalculated, preplanned attack that was carried out specifically to
attack the
U.S.
consulate.”
*
September
17, 2012: State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland
refuses to
characterize the
Benghazi attacks
as terrorism.
*
September
18, 2012: White House press secretary Jay Carney is asked about
Libyan President Magariaf’s assertion that the YouTube video had nothing to do
with the attack in
Benghazi.
Replying that President Obama “would rather wait” for the investigation to be
completed before issuing an opinion on the matter, Carney
says: “But at
this time, as Ambassador Rice said and as I said, our understanding and our
belief based on the information we have is it was the video that caused the
unrest in Cairo, and the video and the unrest in Cairo that helped—that
precipitated some of the unrest in Benghazi and elsewhere. What other factors
were involved is a matter of investigation.”
*
September
18, 2012: Reporters ask Hillary Clinton if Libyan President
Magariaf is “wrong” in saying that “this attack was planned for months.” Mrs.
Clinton
replies:
“The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has said we had no
actionable intelligence that an attack on our post in
Benghazi
was planned or imminent.” She does not say whether she thinks Magariaf is right
or wrong.
*
September
18, 2012: President Obama appears on television with late-night
comedian
David
Letterman. He tells Letterman that “Extremists and terrorists used this [
anti-Muslim video]
as an excuse to attack a variety of our embassies, including the consulate in
Libya.”
*
September
19, 2012: President Obama
appears at
the 40/40 Club in
Manhattan, where
entertainers Jay Z and Beyonce host a $40,000-per-person fundraiser for him.
* September 19, 2012: Matt Olsen, director of the National
Counterterrorism Center,
tells a
Congressional Committee that the Obama administration is continuing to view the
Benghazi incident as an “
opportunistic”
assault rather than a planned one, though he acknowledges that it could
rightfully be classified as terrorism. This marks the first time that anyone in
the Obama administration has used the term “terrorism” specifically in
connection with the
Benghazi
attack.
*
September
19, 2012: At a press briefing, White House press secretary Jay
Carney
says:
“Based on the information we had at the time—we have now, we do not yet have
indication that it was preplanned or premeditated. There’s an active investigation.
If that active investigation produces facts that lead to a different
conclusion, we will make clear that that’s where the investigation has led.”
* September 19, 2012: Former U.S. Attorney for the
Southern District of New York, Andrew McCarthy, who led the investigations into
both attacks on the World Trade Center (1993 and 2001),
says the
Obama administration’s account of the Libyan attacks on the U.S. consulate is
“flat-out fantasy.”
*
September
19, 2012: Jim Carafano, the Heritage Foundation's deputy director
and a leading expert on defense and homeland security,
says the
Obama administration’s contention that the attack on Ambassador Stevens and his
staff in
Libya
was not premeditated cannot be reconciled with reports from the State
Department and the Libyan government.
*
September
20, 2012: White House press secretary Jay Carney completely
reverses his earlier position, now calling it “
self-evident that
what happened in
Benghazi was a
terrorist attack.” Carney continues to maintain, however, that the
administration received no early warnings about it.
*
September
20, 2012: President Obama, citing
insufficient
information, still refuses to characterize the
Benghazi
attack as terrorism. He also makes
reference,
yet again, to the purported role of the YouTube video:
“Well, we’re still doing an investigation, and there
are going to be different circumstances in different countries. And so I don’t
want to speak to something until we have all the information. What we do know
is that the natural protests that arose because of the outrage over the
video were used as an excuse by extremists to see if they can also
directly harm U.S.
interests.”
*
September
20, 2012: The State Department
spends $70,000
in taxpayer funds to purchase public-relations advertisements on seven
different Pakistani television stations. The ads, intended to underscore the
fact that the
U.S.
government had nothing to do with the YouTube video's content or production,
show film clips of speeches where Secretary of State Clinton and President
Obama have previously disavowed the film Innocence of Muslims.
*
September
21, 2012: Secretary of State Clinton says, “What happened in
Benghazi
was a
terrorist
attack.”
*
September
22, 2012: Fawzi Bukatef,
leader of
the February 17 Martyrs Brigades, says that the Obama administration took no
action during the attacks on the mission in
Benghazi,
and that “We [the Brigade] had to coordinate everything.” Bukatef's account is
entirely consistent with Libyan Interior Minister Wanis al-Sharif's earlier
assertion that Libyan security forces had
essentially
handedthe
U.S.
mission personnel over to the attackers.
*
September
24, 2012: Taping an appearance on ABC television's The
View (which would air the folowing day), Obama says it is still impossible
to determine whether the
Benghazi
attack was an act of terrorism: “[W]e
don’t
have all of the information yet, so we are still gathering.”
*
September
25, 2012: In a speech to the UN Assembly, Obama, continuing to
emphasize the notion that the YouTube video triggered the violence in
Benghazi,
states that
“a crude and disgusting video sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world.” He
goes on to
say,
“The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. But to
be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see
in the images of Jesus Christ that are desecrated, or churches that are
destroyed, or the Holocaust that is denied.”
*
September
26, 2012: Libyan president Mohamed al-Magariaf
reiterates that
the September 11 attack in
Benghazi
“was a preplanned act of terrorism directed against American citizens.” He
states
unequivocally that
the YouTube video Innocence of Muslims “had nothing to do with this
attack.”
*
September
26, 2012: At a UN Security Council meeting, Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton, completely reversing her original story,
concedes that
there was an explicit link between al Qaeda's North African network and the
deadly attacks on the
U.S.
mission in
Benghazi 15 days
earlier.
*
September
27, 2012, filmmaker Mark Basseley Youseff (a.k.a. Nakoula Basseley
Nakoula), who produced Innocence of Muslims, is
arrested for
“probation violation” and is denied bail.
*
October 2,
2012: White House press secretary Jay Carney
declines
to comment on reports claiming that
U.S.
diplomats in
Libya
asked for additional security during the weeks preceding
September 11, 2012.
*
October 3,
2012: It is
revealed that
sensitive documents remain only loosely secured in the wreckage of the
U.S.
mission, meaning that vital information about American operations in
Libya
is accessible to looters and curiosity-seekers. Among the items scattered
throughout the looted compound are documents detailing
America's
weapons-collection efforts and emergency-evacuation protocols, Ambassador
Stevens' travel itinerary, and the personnel records of Libyans who were contracted
to secure the mission.
*
October 4,
2012: After weeks of waiting for
security
concerns to be addressed, an FBI team finally gains access to the
ransacked
U.S.
mission compound in
Benghazi. The
team
leaves the
site after just 12 hours. According to a New York Times
report:
“Already looters, curiosity seekers and reporters have been through the site,
which is only protected by two private security guards hired by the compound’s
Libyan owner … It appears that the FBI spent little or no time interviewing
residents in Benghazi. Typically they would spend weeks, rather than hours, at
a crime scene as important to national security as this site.”
U.S.
officials say the hunt for those possibly connected to the September 11 attack
has
narrowed to
just one or two people in an extremist group.
*
October 9,
2012: The State Department
acknowledges that,
contrary to the Obama administration's initial reports, the attack on the
mission in
Benghazi did not begin
as a low-level protest that suddenly and unexpectedly spiraled out of control.
The State Department now concedes that there were no protests at all in
Benghazi
before the deadly assault.
*
October 10,
2012: The State Department
claims that
it has never believed, even for a moment, that the attack in
Benghazi
was carried out in reaction to a YouTube video. The Associated Press
reports:
“Department officials were asked about the administration’s initial—and since
retracted—explanation linking the violence to protests over an American-made
anti-Muslim video circulating on the Internet. One official responded, ‘That
was not our conclusion.’ He called it a question for ‘others’ to answer,
without specifying.”
*
October 11,
2012: When the subject of the
Benghazi
attacks is raised during his vice-presidential debate against Paul Ryan, Vice
President Joe Biden
says,
“We weren’t told they wanted more security there.” In light of the obvious
falsity of that statement, White House spokesman Jay Carney subsequently
explains that Biden's “We” referred only to Biden himself, President Obama, and
the White House.
*
October 15,
2012: In a CNN interview, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
takes the
blame for what happened in
Benghazi.
“I take responsibility. I'm in charge of the State Department's 60,000-plus
people all over the world, 275 posts. The president and the vice president
wouldn't be knowledgeable about specific decisions that are made by security
professionals.” “I want to avoid some kind of political gotcha,” she adds,
noting that “we're very close to an election.”
*
October 18,
2012: On Comedy Central's The Daily Show, host Jon
Stewart
asks Obama:
“Is part of the investigation helping the communication between these
divisions? Not just what happened in
Benghazi,
but what happened within. Because I would say, even you would admit, it was not
the optimal response, at least to the American people, as far as all of us
being on the same page.” To this, Obama responds: “Here's what I’ll say. If
four Americans get killed, it’s not optimal.”
*
October 19,
2012: House Government Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell
Issa
writes a
letter to President Obama, questioning why he has “not been straightforward
with the American people in the aftermath of the attack.”
*
October 25,
2012: Defense Secretary Leon Panetta
says the
U.S. military
did not intervene when the
U.S.
mission in
Benghazi was under
assault because military leaders had no “real-time information” about what was
happening on the ground.
*
October 26,
2012:
CIA director David
Petraeus
emphatically
denies that he or anyone else at the
CIA
refused assistance to the former Navy SEALs who requested help while under
assault on the night of
September 11,
2012. According to The Weekly Standard and ABC News,
Petraeus's
denialstrongly
suggests that the refusal to assist was a presidential decision made by Obama
himself.
*
October 26,
2012: A
CIA spokesman
issues
this
statement: “No one at any level in the
CIA
told anybody not to help those in need [at the
Benghazi
mission]; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate.”
*
October 26,
2012: At a press briefing in
Washington,
the State Department
shuts
down down reporters' questions about
Libya.
The administration appears determined to say as little as possible about the
Benghazi
attack until after the November 6 elections.
*
October 26,
2012: President Obama
says:
“What happened in
Benghazi is a
tragedy.... [M]y biggest priority now is bringing those folks [the
perpetrators] to justice, and I think the American people have seen that’s a
commitment I'll always keep.”
*
October 30,
2012: Senator John McCain
characterizes the
Benghazi affair as either a
“massive cover up” or “massive incompetence.”
* October 31, 2012: Michael Scheuer, who headed the
CIA’s
Osama bin Laden tracking unit in the late 1990s and has worked for the Agency
for more than 20 years,
says that
what occurred in Benghazi was not incompetence but rather a “callous political
decision to let Americans die”:
“It’s hard to claim incompetence when you have the
information in a real-time manner as the White House did. They were watching or
listening to the attack on our people there in Benghazi
for about seven hours. This, clearly, is a case of deciding not to help those
people and now trying, in the waning days of the election campaign, to prevent
Americans from learning what a cowardly and arrogant policy Obama picked in
order to protect his election chances. Had we sent people to try to help the
people who were being attacked, we may have been too late, it may have taken
too long to get there, we may have run into a bigger battle and lost more
people but the key element here is there is no evidence, from day one until
today, that the Obama administration did anything at all to help those people.
Nothing was put in train. Nothing was tried. At the end of the day, we
abandoned those four people on the orders of the president.”
*
November 4,
2012: A car bomb
explodes in
front of a
Benghazi police station
and injures three officers.
*
November 8,
2012: Mark Basseley Youseff, the filmmaker who
produced Innocence of Muslims, is sentenced to a year in
jail for
an “unrelated” offense.
*
November 9,
2012:
CIA director David
Petraeus admits to having had an extramarital affair and
resigns from
his post at the
CIA.
*
November 16,
2012: In
testimony before
the House and Senate intelligence panels, General Petraeus
states that
the
CIA sought to make clear from the outset
that an al Qaeda affiliate was involved in the deadly attack on the
U.S.
diplomatic mission in
Benghazi.
Petraeus also
says that
references to “Al Qaeda involvement” were stripped from his agency's original
talking points, but he does not know by whom. Following Petraeus's testimony,
Republican Representative Peter King
confirms that
according to Petraeus, “the original [
CIA]
talking points were much more specific about Al Qaeda involvement. And yet the
final ones just said [there were] indications of extremists.”
* November 16, 2012: Twelve Democratic
congresswomen
accuse Republican
Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham of “
clear
sexism and racism” because, in condemning Ambassador Susan Rice for her
misleading narrative about the root causes of the Benghazi attack, they have
described Rice as “unqualified” and “not very bright.”
* November 17, 2012: Frank Gaffney, founder and
president of the Center for Security Policy, makes
reference to
the Obama administration's alleged funneling of weapons, by way of Libya, to
Syrian rebels and jihadists seeking to overthrow Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad: “If it is the case that the Obama administration, was in fact, in the
person of Christopher Stevens and the
CIA
operation in Benghazi, taking arms that had been bought from people who had
liberated them from Gaddafi’s weapons caches and sending some of those to
people [in Syria] who we know include Islamists of the most radical stripe,
which include al-Qaida, that is a scandal that will make Iran-Contra look like
a day at the beach…”
*
December 8,
2012: Mohammed Abu Jamal Ahmed, a suspect in the September 11
attack on the
U.S.
mission in
Benghazi, is
arrested in
Cairo, Egypt.
*
December
13, 2012: After months of criticism over her blatant
misrepresentations of the September 11 events in
Benghazi,
Ambassador Susan Rice
withdraws her
name from consideration as a candidate for Secretary of State (succeeding
Hillary Clinton). President Obama accepts Rice's decision,
saying:
“While I deeply regret the unfair and misleading attacks on Susan Rice in
recent weeks, her decision demonstrates the strength of her character, and an
admirable commitment to rise above the politics of the moment to put our
national interests first…. The American people can be proud to have a public
servant of her caliber and character representing our country.”
*
December
15, 2012: State Department officials
notify the
press that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, “while suffering from a stomach
virus ... became dehydrated and fainted, sustaining a concussion.”
Clinton’s
office
states she
will be unable to participate in the House Foreign Affairs Committee's hearing
on
Benghazi scheduled for December
20 on Capitol Hill.
* December 18, 2012: An independent
report issued
by the Accountability Review Board (ARB) led by Thomas Pickering and former
Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mike Mullen, blames State Department leadership
for “systemic failures” leading up to the Benghazi attack, and asserts that
U.S. officials relied too heavily on Libyan guards at the mission, where
security was “grossly inadequate.” The
report does
not blame Secretary Clinton personally, however. Rather, it singles out the
Bureau of Diplomatic Security and the Bureau of Near East Affairs for a “
lack of
proactive leadership and management ability in their responses to security
concerns.” But despite the failures of those two Bureaus, the ARB states that
no individual officials ignored or violated their duties, and thus it
recommends no disciplinary action.
*
December
19, 2012: In response to the ARB report, Bureau of Diplomatic Security
chief Eric Boswell and his deputy Charlene Lamb both
resign,
along with an unidentified official in the Bureau of Near East Affairs.
*
December
20, 2012: William J. Burns (deputy secretary of state) and Thomas
R. Nides (deputy secretary of state for management and resources) both
testify in
place of Hillary Clinton in the House Foreign Affairs Committee's hearing on
Benghazi.
*
December 20,
2012: The U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, headed by
Senator
John
Kerry, issues a
report entitled,
“
Benghazi: The Attack and the
Lessons Learned.”
*
December
22, 2012: After months of trying to get access, FBI agents
question the
only known suspect in the September 11 attack on the
U.S.
mission in
Benghazi. He is
Ali
al-Harzi, a 26-year-old Tunisian who was detained in
Turkey
and extradited to
Tunisia
in October 2012.
*
December
26, 2012: It is
revealed that
the State Department officials who supposedly resigned on December 19 are
merely on administrative leave; they remain on the State Department payroll and
will all be back to work soon.
* December 30, 2012: Senators Joe Leiberman
(I/D-Connecticut) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) release a
report entitled Flashing
Red: A Special Report On The Terrorist Attack At Benghazi, which
statesthat
on September 11, the terrorists essentially walked into the Benghazi mission
compound unimpeded and set it ablaze, while State Department personnel in
Washington ignored or responded inadequately to repeated pleas for more
security from those on the ground in Libya.
*
December
30, 2012: In an interview with NBC’s David Gregory, President
Obama
says:
“Some individuals have been held accountable inside of the State Department and
what I’ve said is that we are going to fix this to make sure that this does not
happen again, because these are folks that I send into the field. We understand
that there are dangers involved but, you know, when you read the report and it
confirms what we had already seen, you know, based on some of our internal
reviews; there was just some sloppiness, not intentional, in terms of how we
secure embassies in areas where you essentially don’t have governments that
have a lot of capacity to protect those embassies.”
* Late December 2012 to early January 2013:
Although Ahmed
Boukhtala, a member of an Islamic terrorist group, is the main suspect in the
September 11 terrorist attack on the
U.S.
mission in
Benghazi, he continues
to live freely in that city. Libyan authorities are reluctant to become
entangled in cases like his, which involve terror-group affiliations. In an
interview with a Libyan newspaper, Boukhtala neither admits nor denies his role
in the September 11 attack. In response to a direct question regarding the
incident, he
says:
“Let’s first ask about the reason for their presence in Benghazi
in this suspicious and secret way. The other thing is: what is the nature of work
they were doing in Benghazi? What
was the role that the consulate was playing, and who gave it permission to
violate Libya’s
sovereignty and intervene in Libyan politics?”
*
January 3,
2013: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is
released from
the hospital following a bout with the flu, a concussion, and a blood clot. It
is
reported that
she will soon testify in front of a Congressional committee about the terrorist
attack on the American mission in
Benghazi.
*
January 6, 2013:
Reports
say that
Libya's
investigation into the deadly September 11 attack on the
U.S.
mission in
Benghazi has been
hampered by widespread fear that Islamic extremists will retaliate with violence
against witnesses who testify.
* January 9, 2013: Tunisian authorities
release Ali
al-Harzi, the only man held so far in connection with the September 11 attacks
in Benghazi—an indication that the Libyan-led investigation into those attacks
is foundering.
According
to the Benghazi-based analyst and political science professor Khaled
al-Marmimi: “Investigators are afraid to keep probing the case because they are
concerned extremists will kidnap them at any moment.”
* January 10, 2013: Despite President Obama's September
12, 2012 vow to “work with the Libyan government to bring to justice the
killers who attacked our people,” Libyan authorities now
say the
investigation is stalled, if not entirely dead, with witnesses too fearful to
talk and key police officers targeted for violent retribution. According
to
Mohamed
Buisier, a political activist in
Benghazi:
“There is no Libyan investigation. No, no, no. There is not even a will to
investigate anything. Even for us civilians, it is very dangerous if you talk
about this subject.”
*
January 17,
2013: FBI director Robert Mueller
goes to
Libya
to meet with senior officials, including the prime minister, justice minister,
and intelligence chief, to discuss what occurred in
Benghazi
on
September 11, 2012.
