The REAL Benghazi Story: What the White House and Hillary Don't Want You to Know (7 page)

Middle Eastern security officials further stated that after Gaddafi’s downfall, Stevens was heavily involved in the State Department effort to collect weapons from the Libyan rebels.
Those weapons were then transferred in part to the rebels fighting in Syria, the officials said.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) last March disclosed in an interview with Fox News that Stevens was in Benghazi to keep weapons caches, particularly MANPADS, from falling into terrorist hands. Fox News host Bret Baier asked Graham why Stevens was in the Benghazi mission amid the many known security threats to the facility. Graham replied, “Because that’s where the action was regarding the rising Islamic extremists who were trying to get their hands on weapons that are flowing freely in Libya.”

The senator added, “We were desperately trying to control the anti-aircraft missiles, the man pads that were all over Libya, that are now all over the Mideast.”
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Now, let’s get to Shapiro’s largely unnoticed remarks from February 2, 2012, which may shed further light on the activities taking place inside the attacked Benghazi facility. Let’s recall the U.S. facility itself was protected by the February 17 Martyrs Brigade, which is part of the al-Qaeda–allied Ansar al-Sharia group. That group also was in possession of a significant quantity of MANPADS and was reluctant to give them up, Middle Eastern security officials previously told me.

In his speech seven months before the Benghazi attack, Shapiro stated, “Currently in Libya we are engaged in the most extensive effort to combat the proliferation of MANPADS in U.S. history.” Shapiro was addressing a forum at the
Stimson Center, a nonprofit think tank that describes itself as seeking “pragmatic solutions for some of the most important peace and security challenges around the world.”
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Shapiro explained that Libya had “accumulated the largest stockpile of MANPADS of any non-MANPADS producing country in the world.” He also related how then secretary of state Hillary Clinton “committed to providing $40 million to assist Libya’s efforts to secure and recover its weapons stockpiles.” Of that funding, $3 million went to unspecified nongovernmental organizations that specialize in conventional weapons destruction and stockpile security.
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The NGOs and a U.S. team coordinated all efforts with Libya’s Transitional National Council, or TNC, said Shapiro. The U.S. team was led by Mark Adams, a State Department expert from the MANPADS Task Force.
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Tellingly, Shapiro stated that Adams was deployed in August 2011, not to Tripoli where the U.S. maintained an embassy, but to Benghazi. The only official U.S. diplomatic presence in Benghazi consisted of the CIA annex and nearby U.S. facility that were the targets of the September 11, 2012, attack.

Shapiro expanded on the coordination with the TNC. “A fact often overlooked in our response to events in Libya, is that – unlike in Iraq and Afghanistan – we did not have tens of thousands of U.S. forces on the ground, nor did we control movement and access,” he said. “This meant we did not have complete freedom of movement around the country. Our efforts on the ground therefore had to be
carefully coordinated and fully supported by the TNC.”
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Speaking of the missiles, Shapiro said, “Many of these weapons were taken by militias and anti-Qadhafi forces during the fighting.” Later he explained that “because many militias believe MANPADS have some utility in ground combat, many militia groups remain reluctant to relinquish them.”
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This prompts the obvious question for us – was the facility attacked by militias in an effort to thwart the collection of MANPADS?

Shapiro explained that the U.S. collection efforts consisted of three phases: “Phase I entailed an effort to rapidly survey, secure, and disable loose MANPADS across the country,” he said. “To accomplish this, we immediately deployed our Quick Reaction Force, which are teams made up of civilian technical specialists.”
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Phase 2 efforts were intended to help the Libyan government to integrate militias and veterans of the fighting, including consolidating weapons into secure facilities and assisting in the destruction of items that the Libyans deemed in excess of their security requirements.
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Such actions, we can imagine, were likely not supported by the jihadist rebels.

The third phase would have seen the United States help ensure that the Libyans met modern standards, including updating storage facilities, improving security, and implementing safety management practices.
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The U.S. efforts clearly failed in that phase. In April, the United Nations released a report revealing that weapons
from Libya to extremists were proliferating at an “alarming rate,” fueling conflicts in Mali, Syria, Gaza, and elsewhere.
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Meanwhile, what Shapiro failed to note is that he is somewhat complicit in the largest terrorist looting of MANPADS that took place immediately after the U.S.-NATO military campaign in 2011 that helped end Moammar Gaddafi’s rule in Libya. Gaddafi had hoarded Africa’s biggest known reserve of MANPADS, with his stock said to number between fifteen thousand and twenty thousand. Many of the missiles were stolen by militias fighting in Libya, including those backed by the United States in their anti-Gaddafi efforts.

CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson later reported that the United States was unable to secure “thousands” of MANPADS. She quoted a “well-placed source” divulging that hundreds of missiles were tracked going to AQIM, a group in the Islamic Maghreb, which is the al-Qaeda franchise based in Algeria that is now considered one of the gravest threats to the United States.
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Could this missile threat explain why no air support was sent during the Benghazi attacks?

D
etails about what really happened to murdered ambassador Chris Stevens the night of the Benghazi onslaught are sketchy to say the least. The official State Department story line regarding Stevens’ fate has some glaring but, until now, largely unchallenged inconsistencies, to put it mildly. These inconsistencies prompt significant questions about the official version of events. Primary among our line of questioning is whether at any point, alive or dead, Stevens was held hostage, and if so by whom? I will show it is likely the rebels were in control of Stevens’ body for a period of time that disastrous night. If this was the case, how was the corpse eventually released? Were there negotiations to secure the remains? What promises did we make for Stevens’ body and to whom? If his body were held hostage, why do we not know about it? These details are important in comprehending the scope of the Real Benghazi Story.

Raising some eyebrows, Thomas Pickering, the State Department’s lead Benghazi investigator and author of the State-sponsored Accountability Review Board report, refused to deny there was a plan to kidnap Stevens. At a House Oversight and Government Reform committee hearing on Benghazi in mid-September 2013, Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) asked Pickering directly about a potential kidnap plot.

“Is it true that they were planning to kidnap the ambassador and it went wrong?” she asked.

“I can’t comment on that,” Pickering replied, followed by a long pause.

Committee Chairman Darrell Issa stepped in and changed the subject. However, later in the hearing, Pickering further commented on the kidnapping issue. He stated: “Kidnapping seemed to me to be far-fetched. Because in effect in the testimony that was given and the public report, they did not make a serious attempt to go into the closed area of the villa. It is not even sure in my view that they knew the ambassador was there. So I would say, while I said I didn’t want to touch that, I would say in retrospect it doesn’t seem highly likely. It could be. But I don’t think so.”
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The kidnapping question was further fueled in part by an al-Qaeda member’s claim that Stevens was killed in a botched capture attempt. Obviously we need to take anything a terrorist says with more than a grain of salt. But let’s take a closer look at the jihadist’s boast before we further probe the kidnap question.

Abdallah Dhu al-Bajadin, who was identified by U.S. officials speaking to the
Washington Free Beacon
as a known weapons experts for al-Qaeda, wrote on a jihadi website that Stevens was killed by lethal injection after plans to kidnap him during the Benghazi assault went awry. The
Free Beacon
reported al-Bajadin’s claim was not immediately being rejected by U.S. law enforcement officials probing the ambassador’s death.
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In the March 14, 2013, posting on the Ansar al-Mujahideen Network, an al-Qaeda–linked jihadi website, al-Bajadin claimed Stevens was given a lethal injection that was overlooked during the medical autopsy on his body. “The plan was based on abduction and exchange of high-level prisoners,” he wrote; however, “the operation took another turn, for a reason God only knows, when one of the members of the jihadist cell improvised and followed Plan B.”
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Al-Bajadin lectured that a lethal injection is given in “more than one place in the human body that autopsy doctors ignore when they see that the symptoms are similar to another specific and common illness. Anyone who studied the art of silent assassination that spies applied during the Cold War would easily identify these parts of the body,” he said. The terrorist claimed he waited until the date of his posting to reveal the botched kidnapping and lethal injection because “the cell” behind “the infiltrative and secret operation is now completely safe from intelligence bureaus.”
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Let’s put the al-Qaeda allegation aside and instead focus on the U.S. government’s account of what happened to Stevens. We’d need to make several monumental leaps of faith if the official version of events surrounding Stevens’ untimely death is to be believed. Here we must review what the State Department’s ARB report on the Benghazi attack has to say about what it claims happened to him that doomed night.

Keep in mind this is the same credibility-challenged report that detailed that Stevens’ guards retrieved their weapons and were fully armed during the attacks, particulars contradicted by Benghazi witnesses and compound staffers themselves, who claim none of the guards were armed during the attack, as we reported in
chapter 1
. Remember, since these details are relevant here, as you will see, this is the same ARB that may have given a faulty timeline of the attack, with witnesses claiming there was virtually no lull in the fighting.

Let’s rewind to the beginning of the assault, when a diplomatic Security Service agent saw the armed men attempting to breach the compound and hit the alarm, shouting, “Attack! Attack!” over the loudspeaker.
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Phone calls were reportedly immediately placed to the relevant U.S. agencies, including to a U.S. quick reaction force located at the nearby CIA annex.
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Militants were said to enter the complex with cans of diesel fuel, setting the building ablaze and forcing those inside, including Stevens, to seek refuge in the bathroom until being overcome by smoke.

Diplomatic Security Service Special Agent Scott Strickland
jumped out the bathroom window, but Stevens and Information Management Officer Sean Smith did not follow him, we are told.
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Later, Strickland and three other agents returned to the main building to search for survivors, finding Smith’s body, but not Stevens’.

The ARB details that Stevens’ guard, identified in the State-sanctioned report not as Strickland but as “ARSO 1,” located Stevens and Smith, “asked them to don body armor, and led them into the safe area in Villa C, which ARSO 1 secured.”
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An ARSO, as we discussed in previous chapters, is the State abbreviation for an assistant regional security officer.

Continued the ARB: “ARSO 1, armed with an M4 rifle, shotgun and pistol, took up a defensive position inside the Villa C safe area, with line of sight to the safe area gate and out of view of potential intruders. ARSO 1 gave his cell phone to the Ambassador, who began making calls to local contacts and Embassy Tripoli requesting assistance.”

What the ARB claims happened next doesn’t make much sense in light of other reports. The State document claims “ARSO 1, who was protecting Ambassador Stevens and IMO Smith in the safe area, heard intruders breaking through the Villa C front door. Men armed with AK rifles started to destroy the living room contents and then approached the safe area gate and started banging on it. ARSO 1 did not want to compromise their location in the safe area by engaging the intruders, and he warned the Ambassador and IMO Smith to prepare for the intruders to try to blast the
safe area gate locks open. Instead the intruders departed, and the lights in Villa C appeared to dim.”
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Now, why would the intruders simply depart before attempting to blast their way into the safe area? Earlier, the ARB itself noted the intruders appeared to have inside knowledge of the compound, a detail consistent with information documented in other chapters of this book. Fox News reported that the late Florida representative Bill Young said he spoke for ninety minutes with David Ubben, one of the security agents severely injured in the assault. Young said the agent revealed to him that the intruders knew the exact location of Stevens’ safe room. “He (Ubben) emphasized the fact that it was a very, very military type of operation they had knowledge of almost everything in the compound,” stated Young. “They knew where the gasoline was, they knew where the generators were, they knew where the safe room was, they knew more than they should have about that compound.”
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Yet the ARB asks us to believe that just as these knowledgeable, well-coordinated intruders had Stevens cornered, they decided to leave Villa C, where the ambassador was holed up, without even attempting to gain entry to the safe room.