JMS's Chronology of the Bengazi Raid and "cover-up"

[Jumbo]

Here's something I almost posted late last night when there were only 3 pages, after some reported posts from this thread, but decided not to:

There a couple folks working closer to having a mod problem, but the OP is not one at this point. The only two people close to crossing lines rules-wise, or even near any trolling activity in any way, are those that would be most surprised if they were nailed for it (and one's user notes suggests he should be punted at any time anyway). My suggestion (and you could take this to any of the political treads as we get close to the day) settle down, and discuss the thread topic. I don't care what "side" you're on here but either get a clue or move on.

P.S. I am nearing the out-of-tolerance point again in here with all the partisan silliness, occasional outright idiocy, and what's becoming in more than one case plain old troll crap (and I don't refer to JMS, Thiebear) as we ramp up to the last week of the Carnivale Fantastique. And I am not thinking in terms of "a week" if I hit a button.

I'm only posting it now to demonstrate that fairly regularly, one of us will decide to just let people so inclined to just go on be as big an igwad as they want on their topic du jour unless it gets real ugly.

[JMS]

Here's something I almost posted late last night when there were only 3 pages, after some reported posts from this thread, but decided not to:

I'm only posting it now to demonstrate that fairly regularly, one of us will decide to just let people so inclined to just go on be as big an igwad as they want on their topic du jour unless it gets real ugly.

I must say that I felt the breeze of a hammer going by my head when I read that post.

[Fergasun]

I'm sorry, but it is despicable how political parties try to push the death of others in such a way to gain maximum political advantage from it. It makes me sick. I can't claim that the Democrats don't pull this type of BS either. No matter what the Obama administration does or did at the time, it was the wrong move. It's pretty easy to sit back and arm-chair say... "oh yeah, well I wouldn't have done A, B, C and our guys could have made it home..." especially since we don't know what the situation is like. If we lose a quick response helicopter due to something like an RPG attack... yeah, that would be so much better. That "worse than Watergate" talking point... oh man.. hook line and sinker! It's clear the demographics of voter they are trying to get there (hint* hint* there's a large population that doesn't care about Watergate). Worse than the Benjamin Harrison scandal!

My perception about GOP politicians is that they gladly will trade the death of an American (or 4) if it helps than gain the vote of a thousand Americans. Let's not forget that the real bad guys in this case are the 150 who coordinated and planned the actual attack which is the actual trigger for why this all happened (unless you believe the reason the White House told everyone to stand down is because Obama himself was pulling the trigger and firing the mortars on our own consulate).

[Madison Redskin]

I must say that I felt the breeze of a hammer going by my head when I read that post.

You might have felt the breeze of it going by your head, but that's probably because you're standing near me. I watched it stop 1 mm from my forehead.

[twa]

JMS, the rescue party was only 7+3 Libyan volunteers w/o heavy weapons, much easier to defend to begin with.

and of course not to get caught with your pants down

[visionary]

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/

Congress wants answers on newly found Benghazi documents

The House Oversight Committee is demanding answers from the State Department regarding newly discovered documents found in the wreckage of the U.S. mission in Benghazi that reveal U.S. diplomats noticed a Libyan police officer conducting surveillance of the compound the morning before the Sept. 11 attack and that the Benghazi police department had not responded to requests for more security during the visit of Ambassador Chris Stevens, who died in the attack that night.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) and National Security Subcommittee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), who have been leading a congressional investigation into the security failures surrounding the attack, fired off a letter today to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton regarding the new revelations, obtained by The Cable.

The congressmen are demanding to know whether the Benghazi mission's concerns about Libyan police surveillance and their unanswered requests for more Libyan government security assistance were ever sent to Washington, and if so, why the State Department didn't reveal that before now.

"These documents paint a disturbing picture indicating that elements of the Libyan government might have been complicit in the September 11, 2012 attack on the compound and the murder of four Americans. It also reiterates the fact that the U.S. government may have had evidence indicating that the attack was not a spontaneous event but rather a preplanned terrorist attack that included prior surveillance of the compound as a target," Issa and Chaffetz wrote.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204712904578092853621061838.html?mod=wsj_share_tweet

CIA Takes Heat for Role in Libya

When the bodies of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans killed in Benghazi, Libya, arrived at Andrews Air Force Base after the Sept. 11 attack, they were greeted by the president, the vice president and the secretaries of state and defense. Conspicuously absent was CIA Director David Petraeus.

Officials close to Mr. Petraeus say he stayed away in an effort to conceal the agency's role in collecting intelligence and providing security in Benghazi. Two of the four men who died that day, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, were former Navy SEAL commandos who were publicly identified as State Department....

From the WSJ article:

https://twitter.com/blakehounshell

"Of the more than 30 American officials evacuated from Benghazi following the deadly assault, only seven worked for the State Department."

9:46 PM

"Nearly all the rest worked for the CIA, under diplomatic cover, which was a principal purpose of the consulate, these officials said."

9:46 PM

[Predicto]

Visionary appears to be on to something. This is starting to look like a CIA problem, not a State Department snafu.

(Reuters) - CIA officials on the ground in Libya dispatched security forces to the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi within 25 minutes and made other key decisions about how to respond to the waves of attacks on U.S. installations on September 11, a senior American intelligence official said on Thursday.

Officials in Washington monitored events through message traffic and a hovering U.S. military drone but did not interfere with or reject requests for help from officials in the line of fire, the official said.

The information emerged as officials made available on Thursday a timeline chronicling the U.S. response to the Benghazi attacks in which Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, and three other American officials died. The material appears to refute claims by critics that officials in Washington delayed sending help to the besieged personnel.

The handling of the attack by the Obama administration and CIA has come under sharp criticism by supporters of Republican challenger Mitt Romney during the campaign ahead of the presidential election on November 6.

The senior intelligence official said that CIA officers in Benghazi, "responded to the situation on the night of 11 and 12 September as quickly and as effectively as possible.

"The security officers in particular were genuine heroes. They quickly tried to rally additional local support and heavier weapons, and when that could not be accomplished within minutes, they still moved in and put their own lives on the line to save their comrades," the official said.

"At every level in the chain of command, from the senior officers in Libya to the most senior officials in Washington, everyone was fully engaged in trying to provide whatever help they could," the official said.

"There was no second-guessing those decisions being made on the ground, by people at every U.S. organization that could play a role in assisting those in danger. There were no orders to anybody to stand down in providing support," the official added.

read more at http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/02/us-usa-libya-cia-idUSBRE8A102T20121102

[visionary]

Visionary appears to be on to something. This is starting to look like a CIA problem, not a State Department snafu.

read more at http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/02/us-usa-libya-cia-idUSBRE8A102T20121102

Well I can't really take credit for that perspective.

I think some of the media folks have been looking into this lately, I remember some speculations about it in the Post a few weeks back.

I have been wondering about CIA's role in this though since we first learned about the safehouse a day or two after 9/11 and wondered who knew about it.

But I've been fairly distracted by all the state department stuff, so I didn't think about it too much.

[JMS]

JMS, the rescue party was only 7+3 Libyan volunteers w/o heavy weapons, much easier to defend to begin with.

and of course not to get caught with your pants down

That's what I thoujght too. The two former seals who were CIA contractors had eight guys in their party. I originally thought that they were the releif colum which got to town at after 1 am. But TheBear pointed outg that the time line doesn't fit as we have other creditable reports that the two former seals who died had helped to evacuate the consulate to the CIA annex prior to the CIA annex coming under attack. An attack which eventually took the lives of the two former seals..

If they had come from Tripoli as the WSJ timeline indicates a relief party did reach the annex after 1am and before the seals died, If the seals were part of that colum, then they never would have gone to the consulate as all the people were at the Annex by 1:30 am. So I was thinking the relief from Tripoli was a different group, size as of yet undetermined.

But yeah the seals had 8 guys in their party.

[Special K]

Clearly, the only real solution to this is to have Obama hand over his birth certificate, Mitt Romney his tax returns, Ron Paul his medical marijuana card, Paul Ryan his fitness routine and admission that his hot body is due to performance enhancing drugs, and a full-scale civil war-like reenactment of the Libya attack. Using real terrorists. This needs to be as authentic as possible to settle once and for all, any politcal pandering demonstrated by politicians during election season.

That's all I ask for.

So tell me, those who embrace the view that Federal government should be smaller and we should all just fend for ourselves, how many of you and yours were affected by this storm or if you would be affected by a future storm where you lose everything and yet you don't expect the Federal government to come in and get basic services like power, sewage, running water, roads, etc. up and running. Or are the states and individuals just supposed to suck it up and do everything themselves?

As someone who worked for FEMA as a disaster specialist, I think I have pretty good insight about the organization. First of all, I think a lot of people misunderstand what FEMA realistically does in disasters. FEMA is basically a big bank. The organization was not, and still is not intended to be a primary first responder. This is a major misconception held by many people...

Personally, I think the agency needs to be WAY downsized and more of the disater relief burden placed on the states and individuals. The numer one rule of disaster management is that management starts at the LOCAL level. That's because response is faster and more efficient. The larger the entity involved in the situation, the less efficent it becomes. That is a fact, and one I can substantiate, firsthand.

Furthermore, yes, some victims do have to pay for their own repairs. If you live in a designated flood plain, you have to have flood insurance (not just State Farm Homeowners) to receive a dime from FEMA. I fully agree with that. Make sure your **** is insured people, particularly if you live in a high risk area. I'm not saying everyone affected by the disaster doesn't have their stuff insured, but it is really disconcerting to witness the number of people who haven't taken any preventative disaster precautions, lose it all, and expect the federal government step in and cover everything.

For the record, I'm not saying FEMA needs to be abolished, but I've dealt with that agency long enough to understand major changes need to be made. FEMA can't keep getting bailed out by the government everytime a disaster hits and millions of dollars are wasted due to inefficiency. Not with the debt we are presently drowning in...

[JMS]

Visionary appears to be on to something. This is starting to look like a CIA problem, not a State Department snafu.

read more at http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/02/us-usa-libya-cia-idUSBRE8A102T20121102

That entirely jibes with the WSJ timeline and what was published before..... Except for one thing. the article kind of contradicts itslef. The annex was less than a mile away and the security team took 25 minutes to reach the consulate. The WSJ timeline did say the the initial security team including the two seals were delayed 20 minutes as the CIA looked for ally support, heavier weapons, and a clearer picture of what was happenning...

Also this new article from Visionary confirms that there were two relief columns from the CIA. One was locak and got tothe consulate withing 25 minutes of the attack. This consisted of the two former seals and six other men all from the cia annex.... Then we have this other security team flying in from Tripoli.

Also we have our first report of a drone in the air watching everything, which was one of Fox news accusations.

I don't see how any of that makes the CIA culpable..

[twa]

That's what I thoujght too. .

Those 10 secured the consulate and rescued the staff, the group from Tripoli met them later

a decent security force could easily have prevented this mess

[JMS]

As someone who worked for FEMA as a disaster specialist, I think I have pretty good insight about the organization. First of all, I think a lot of people misunderstand what FEMA realistically does in disasters. FEMA is basically a big bank. The organization was not, and still is not intended to be a primary first responder. This is a major misconception held by many people...

..

Guess that depends on which administration you worked for..

I wouldn't say FEMA is a big bank. I would say FEMA as envisioned by Jimmy Carter when he set up the agency, is an organization set up to assist in brining federal resources to bare in support of the state governors who are the men in charge in a natural disaster. FEMA has contingency plans and has resources and are supposed to be able to tap into those federal resources in disasters. Currently in NJ FEMA is facilitarying using military transport in helping Governor Christi move assets to where they can be more effective... Christi is in charge, but FEMA has assets to help him.

---------- Post added November-2nd-2012 at 01:32 AM ----------

a decent security force could easily have prevented this mess

I don't think so. Again I go back to Teran in 1979 or Hanoi in 1968... Those were embassies, heavily fortified embassies. the forces which compromised those instalations were alot less leathal than 150 well armed terrorists...

I mean can I envision a security force which would have protected the consulate... sure.. but then it really wouldnt' be a functioning consulate but rather a fire base with a 1000 yard kill zone around it. There is something about a consulate and it's need to be open and accessable to the locals and faciliatate interactions which is incompatable with being able to protect itself from a 150 armed terrorists decending on it with no notice...

Again I say no embassy or consulate in the world could have stood up to such an assult without assistance from the local host government. That we only lost 4 guys is a miracle.

[Fergasun]

Did you guys get to this angle yet?

rt.com: American killed in Libya was on State Department Intelligence Operation

One of the four Americans killed in Libya earlier this week when an American diplomatic mission was stormed on September 11 had been deployed by the US State Department on an intelligence gathering operation to find and destroy dangerous weapons. Glen Doherty, a 42-year-old former Navy SEAL, told ABC News only one month before his death that he had been contracted by the State Department to travel overseas in an effort to locate and eliminate MANPADS shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles. The US government had feared that as many as thousands of the high-powered warheads had fallen into the hands of both rebels and regime fighters after former leader Muammar Gaddafi was executed earlier this year amid months of chaos in region.

[Special K]

Guess that depends on which administration you worked for..

I wouldn't say FEMA is a big bank. I would say FEMA as envisioned by Jimmy Carter when he set up the agency, is an organization set up to assist in brining federal resources to bare in support of the state governors who are the men in charge in a natural disaster. FEMA has contingency plans and has resources and are supposed to be able to tap into those federal resources in disasters. Currently in NJ FEMA is facilitarying using military transport in helping Governor Christi move assets to where they can be more effective... Christi is in charge, but FEMA has assets to help him.

I am perfectly aware of FEMA's incident command, its partnership with local governments, and how it's run

And yes, it is a big bank. And that is the perception held by most of the American public. That is the perception held by the majority of employees. If you don't understand that, you probably won't understand either why the organization is constantly having to get bailed out by the taxpayers with emergency funding. Last year, the entire FEMA workforce assisting with Hurrican Irene & Tropical Storm Lee, were less than 24 hours from having to close up the JFO's and disaster recovery centers in affected areas because we were bankrupt. That was a result of multiple issues, including federal budget pissing contest between parties. Emergency funding was passed by congress, but no one is going to convince me that an supremely large organization like FEMA is run with great efficiency and sustainability.

My emergency management experience at both the local and federal levels has convinced me disasters are more effiectively handled at local and state levels.

Sorry for the derail. I'll let you continue squabbling over the Libya cluster.

[Redskins Diehard]

Visionary appears to be on to something. This is starting to look like a CIA problem, not a State Department snafu.

read more at http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/02/us-usa-libya-cia-idUSBRE8A102T20121102

Disagree with that assessment. Perhaps it became an Agency problem because the Department was not reacting. Security of the consulate is the responsibility of the Regional Security Officer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_Security_Officer If in this case he did not act(which from reports I think he did move the Ambassador to the "safe room") or more likely did not have resources at his disposal(they usually do not have many) then it is possible that another organization ignored normal protocol and acted because well somebody had to. It doesn't surprise me that some nearby folks with experience in such situation went to the sound of the guns because that is the kind of guys they are. In this case those guys happened to be on the payroll of the CIA it appears.

I have mentioned in another thread that I personally don't think the upper levels of the Administration have any place in how the tactical decisions played out that night. I would be curious as to what the contingency plan was for a case like this playing out. It does seem to me that is the bigger issue in this case.

[Tweedr01]

Then you are living in your own reality Tweedy. Every President since FDR going back 80 years has released more income tax returns than Romney, and None of the Presidents in history over that time had such a close association with Tax Fraud. If you can't see the relevance then it's only because you are wishing to impose your myopic taylored view on the world and create an individual precident for Mitt Romney.... Which frankly sucks....

I mean hell the dude admitted paying about 12.9% taxes one year and 13.9% another year; on tens of millions of dollars worth of income, while sheltering tens of millions off shore. In the 60 minutes interview he thought it was reasonable for him to pay half the tax rate of folks making orders of magnatude less income.... Seriously how much worse could it be that he would be too embarrassed to release them? We can only wonder.

So what you're saying is there is a politician....and he's not being completely honest? For shame! He must be the only one....

I was actually going to respond to your reply to me above in a less condescending tone PMS, because you stopped with the snarkiness, but that definitely picked back up here. BTW, trolling is trying to get a rise out of someone, which since I was not talking to you, was not my intention.

And again, I could care less about someones personal taxes. If they are doing something illegal then the IRS will be the ones to condemn them, not myself. It's not my job. Would you be upset if he had a bunch of unpaid parking tickets? Should I take matters into my own hands, or let the correct authorities handle it? Is releasing all of your tax returns mandatory?

You blast Romney for being underhanded, do you really think Big O is some sort of saint? They are all politicians, they are bred to be dishonest. I seriously cannot wait until these two parties get a wake up call from people who don't just do as their party tells them to, there is no way these two stooges are the best available,

[Stadium-Armory]

I'm confused. I recall seeing 'protesters' on TV during the attack. Now they're saying there was no protest. What am I missing?

[JMS]

Did you guys get to this angle yet?

rt.com: American killed in Libya was on State Department Intelligence Operation

Yeah, that's a thinly veiled assertion. The state department doesn't find and destroy weapons cashes. The CIA's hands were all over this, both seals were at a complex identified as a CIA annex, and both were identified as CIA contractors...

But hell more than half the people who work at Langley tell their kids they work for the state department.

[AsburySkinsFan]

Yeah, that's a thinly veiled assertion. The state department doesn't find and destroy weapons cashes. The CIA's hands were all over this, both seals were at a complex identified as a CIA annex, and both were identified as CIA contractors...

But hell more than half the people who work at Langley tell their kids they work for the state department.

The State Dept and our embassies are the fronts for operations, always have been. I'm not saying that's what happened, just stating fact.

IMO, this whole thing seems more like a 9/11 anniversary attack that just happened to coincide with the protests over the video, now whether one had anything to do with the other in Benghazi is uncertain.

[Thiebear]

ASF: Its not that uncertain: Between the emails, and the observations, and the video's and everything else:

This was predicted over and over again by Mr. Steven's up to a few hours before his death. (With specific examples)

JMS: I know you say "nothing" could have stopped this:

I just wanted to point out: I would put 1000$ on a 16 person Special forces SST (team)

against.. well ANYONE, but especially what we saw on television.

Far less got from the Annex to the Embassy, back to the Annex and held it long enough?

Imagine if the guys that were trained to do this were onsite.

And if someone saw one of the local "Security" taking pictures inside or taping the movements outside, Wood from the Special Ops team would have "handled" it faster..

You cant predict 100% but locked doors with 16 SST's sure would keep things safer and or prevent it better than having alqaeda 'protecting' them from alqaeda.

On Aug. 2, six weeks before Stevens was killed, he requested 'protective detail bodyguard' positions, calling the security situation in Libya 'unpredictable, volatile and violent.

A month earlier, he requested that the State Department extend his tour of duty personnel, which is a 16-man temporary security team trained in combating terrorism. The request was denied and the security team left 8 August.

Stevens had asked for the security team to stay through mid-September.

Colonel Andrew Wood, the leader of the security team that left Libya in the weeks before the terror attack, told CBS News that Stevens fought hard against losing the team.

'It was quite a degree of frustration on their part,' he said. 'They were -- I guess you could say -- clenched-fist over the whole issue.

Can you add the requests for security to the timeline in the OP?

And when the security team was pulled.

might want to fix the 10:30pm part also

(You are updating the timeline as things come in?)

Since it "seems" so similar to me: to include 2 requests to help denied: third one approved:

At the second crash site, two Delta Force snipers, SFC Randy Shughart and MSG Gary Gordon, were inserted by Black Hawk Super 6-2 - piloted by CW3 Mike Goffena. Their first two requests to be inserted were turned down, but they were finally granted permission upon their third request. They inflicted heavy casualties on the approaching Somali mob. When Gordon was eventually killed, Shughart picked up Gordon's CAR-15 and gave it to Super 6-4 pilot CW3 Michael Durant. Shugart went back around the nose of the chopper and held off the mob for about ten more minutes, before he was killed. The Somalis then overran the crash site and killed all but Durant. He was nearly beaten to death, but was saved when members of Aidid's militia came to take him prisoner.[43] For their actions, SFC Shughart and MSG Gordon were posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, the first awarded since the Vietnam War.[29]

[JMS]

And yes, it is a big bank.

Yes and No... it really depends upon which party is in control.

Banks don't have squadrons to heavy transports to bring generators and other equipment in state. Banks don't have access to 61,000 workforce to be called up and assembled on a moments notice. Banks don't have access to federal disaster logistics paid for and prepared for such contingencies. Banks don't preposition supplies or operate emergency shelters which are pre staged. FEMAs role is to stand between the federal government and the state and assist in tapping federal resources and even advise the governor what federal resources are available. It was set up by Jimmy Carter and was one of the most respected organization in government before it was reorganized, placed under homeland security, and it's budget was severely cut after 911. It lost most of it's experienced people who made the organization such a gem at that time, and thus pretty much **** the bed during hurricane Katrina. It's nice to see it working so well in NJ now.

, but no one is going to convince me that an supremely large organization like FEMA is run with great efficiency and sustainability.

That's why I asked which administration was in charge when you were there, cause the parties treat FEMA with entirely different funding and expectations.

For much of U.S. history, any federal aid was ad hoc. Congress would pass a law specifying how it would help a particular town or state in the wake of a particular act of God.

As the resources and responsibilities of the federal bureaucracy grew, a hodgepodge of more than 100 agencies and departments acquired responsibility over pieces of disaster

response, from highways to dams to nuclear plants. At the request of the nation’s governors, who’d grown frustrated trying to figure out which office in Washington to call for what,

when faced with natural disasters, President Carter created FEMA in 1979.

To call FEMA inefficient is rather hilarious when considering the alternative which frankly we lived through in the 1960's and 70's.. It's also funny considering the history of the agency

and how respected it was before Katrina.

You are correct though that at first, the agency mostly cut checks to help pay for state and local efforts, When Hurricane Andrew, then the most expensive storm in U.S. history, decimated wide swaths of Florida in 1992, it also laid bare FEMA’s shortcomings; in some parts of the state it took days for food, supplies, and personnel to arrive. One of the enduring sound bites of the disaster was the emergency management director of Dade County lashing out against Washington at a news conference: “Where in the hell is the cavalry?” George H. W. Bush, then president, was widely blamed for the slow response. Bill Clinton took office the next year determined not to let that happen to him. Clinton believed that Andrew probably cost George H. W. Bush being reelected. Clinton elevated FEMA to a cabinet-level agency and named James Lee Witt, Arkansas’s emergency manager, to head it. Witt was the first person with disaster experience to lead FEMA. Former administrators tended to be well-connected ex-military officers or presidential pals(i.e. Brownie). Witt shifted the turned the agency into a body that did much more than spread money around after the fact. There was substantial progress in making the agency capable of actually coming in to provide bodies and equipment and resources. As we are seeing now in NJ.

To date the agency has performed 700 rescues and brought 2.5 million liters of water and 1.5 million meals to the area. In New York and New Jersey, 10,979 people have used FEMA shelters.

The Democrat's administration expectations for FEMA is to act as a go between between federal resources and the State Governors who are in charge of any relief effort. Recent Republican administrations have treated FEMA as a bank, and then call in the army to take control of natural disasters As Bush did for Katrina.

My emergency management experience at both the local and federal levels has convinced me disasters are more effectively handled at local and state levels.

I agree with that, which Is why FEMA at it's most ambitious really acts as support for the state governors and doesn't nationalize disasters. It's more about what resources the

federal government has and how to best organize them in a timely mannor to make them available to the State governor's like Christi.... It's the stripped down FEMA which has

lead to nationalizing disasters as what occurred with Katrina.Obama isn't incharge of NJ, nor is FEMA... Governor Christi is; FEMA is just telling him what they can do for him.

One interface to access the federal bureaucracy. Least that's how it's envisioned to work.

---------- Post added November-2nd-2012 at 12:57 PM ----------

The State Dept and our embassies are the fronts for operations, always have been. I'm not saying that's what happened, just stating fact..

Yes, I agree the state department (embassies and consulates) are fronts for CIA operations globally. All embassies are fronts for spy operations.

I just don't think the state department has anything to do with these CIA operations, they are merely the cover.

From the WSJ article:

https://twitter.com/blakehounshell

"Of the more than 30 American officials evacuated from Benghazi following the deadly assault, only seven worked for the State Department."

9:46 PM

"Nearly all the rest worked for the CIA, under diplomatic cover, which was a principal purpose of the consulate, these officials said."

9:46 PM

I take that at it's face value as true. It sounds true to me.

---------- Post added November-2nd-2012 at 01:00 PM ----------

JMS: I know you say "nothing" could have stopped this:

I just wanted to point out: I would put 1000$ on a 16 person Special forces SST (team)

against.. well ANYONE, but especially what we saw on television.

I don't know man... 150 armed terrorists, hell could be 600 guys for all we know.

We just have reports of 150 were involved on the initial attack. Against 16 guys. there is no precedent for saying 16 guys would have done any better.

There is frankly a lot of precedent for saying a much larger group than 16 would still have been insufficiant against 150 terrorists attacking out of nowhere.

I'll also point out that 30 guys were evacuated from Benghezi.. that includes 8 guys who were at the CIA Annex and perhaps the security team from Tripoli;

but it seem like a 16 man security team would be comparable to the actual number of folks deployed at the consulate in total.. which does seem to be overkill even if the 16

member team could have been effective... which frankly I don't see.

16 against 150, sounds like that movie the Magnificent Seven. Good movie, bad plan.

[AsburySkinsFan]

Imagine another Blackhawk Down only this time in Benghazi. It is too easy to armchair quarterback this thing from 15,000 miles and 2 months away, but there is no telling what greater havok could have been brought about with a single rpg.

[Predicto]

Disagree with that assessment. Perhaps it became an Agency problem because the Department was not reacting. Security of the consulate is the responsibility of the Regional Security Officer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_Security_Officer If in this case he did not act(which from reports I think he did move the Ambassador to the "safe room") or more likely did not have resources at his disposal(they usually do not have many) then it is possible that another organization ignored normal protocol and acted because well somebody had to. It doesn't surprise me that some nearby folks with experience in such situation went to the sound of the guns because that is the kind of guys they are. In this case those guys happened to be on the payroll of the CIA it appears.

I have mentioned in another thread that I personally don't think the upper levels of the Administration have any place in how the tactical decisions played out that night. I would be curious as to what the contingency plan was for a case like this playing out. It does seem to me that is the bigger issue in this case.

I'm not saying that the CIA screwed up (or didn't screw up). I'm saying that the fact that covert CIA operation are intertwined in this situation is the reason that information is not coming out as quickly as some people want.

It's not a cover-up of some amorphous wrongdoing by the Administration that is causing any delay, it's the usual "don't expose what our covert ops are doing" secrecy. Fox is essentially demanding that we undercut our covert efforts in the Middle East to satisfy their partisanship.

Or so it appears to me right now.

[visionary]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/11/02/libyan-militias-failed-security-at-benghazi/

Libyan militia’s failed security at Benghazi

The degree to which the CIA succeeded or failed in upholding what The Wall Street Journal says was a secret agreement to provide “emergency security” for the consulate appears to be the subject of some dispute. But one thing that perhaps the State Department and CIA might agree on, based on the information publicly reported so far, is the degree to which the Benghazi consulate was failed by its Libyan security forces.

Though U.S. officials seem to have largely refrained from pointing fingers at their Libyan counterparts, one consistent feature of the drip-drip of information about the Benghazi attack seems to be that U.S. agencies felt they were not getting the security they expected and perhaps needed from the host country.

Still, it’s not shocking that the nascent Libyan state would be unable to meet those expectations, and its failure raises questions about why the U.S. agencies were caught off guard by this on Sept. 11.

That inability is rooted in some tough realities about Libya’s post-war government, which is still politically fractured and institutionally weak. These problems are not the responsibility of the U.S. State Department or the CIA to solve, but they also were presumably no secret to the U.S. agencies relying on Tripoli for security.

In most countries, in the event of an attack on American diplomats, U.S. officials would contact the host country’s military or security services. But when the only numbers you can call are the cell phones of citizen militiamen, the consulate’s security is resting in large part on the ability and desire of those militiamen to answer their phones late on a Tuesday.

Based on the concerns that Stevens and his staff had expressed to the Libyan government, it does not seem that he had been happy with the militia’s security even before the attack. It’s difficult to understand why the State Department or CIA would have thought that February 17 Brigade would have been able to repel a surprise attack on the consulate or that the Libyan government would be able to fill the gap in a crisis. Given that the State Department saw the risk of such an attack as high, why continue relying on the militiamen for day-to-day consulate security?

http://blogs.cfr.org/zenko/2012/11/02/what-was-that-drone-doing-in-benghazi/

What Was That Drone Doing in Benghazi?

At 5:41 p.m. Eastern time, Mrs. Clinton called Mr. Petraeus. She wanted to make sure the two agencies were on the same page. Shortly before that call, at 4:30 p.m., the Pentagon’s command center had alerted Defense Secretary Panetta and others to the attack. Minutes later, the U.S. military’s Africa Command redirected an unarmed drone from its surveillance mission over militant camps to Benghazi.

When the drone arrived at 5:11 p.m. Eastern time, cameras captured images of burning buildings, helping officials in Washington pinpoint which facilities had been targeted by militants. But the images didn’t help the CIA team on the ground respond to the attacks, officials said.