Broadwell: Petraeus Knew of Benghazi Plea for Help
Writer allegedly involved with ex-CIA chief said he knew "within 24 hours" of CIA annex's request for reinforcements.
By Gil Ronen -- 11/11/2012
Paula Broadwell
Reuters
"CIA annex had actually taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner, and they think that the attack on the consulate was an attempt to get these prisoners back. It's still being vetted."
Military expert Paula Broadwell, who was allegedly improperly involved with resigned CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus, confirmed in October that the CIA annex in Benghazi asked for reinforcements when the consulate came under attack on September 11. She also acknowledged that "there was a failure in the system."
Broadwell was speaking at her alma mater, the University of Denver, on October 26. Her lecture, which is on YouTube under the title "Alumni Symposium 2012 Paula Broadwell," now has added value, because based on the recent disclosures, it can now be assumed that she indeed knew exactly what it was that Petraeus knew about the attack.
Broadwell confirmed the reports on Fox News that the CIA annex asked for a special unit, the Commander in Chief's In Extremis Force, to come and assist it. She also said that the force could indeed have reinforced the consulate, and that Petraeus knew all of this, but was not allowed to talk to the press because of his position in the CIA.
"The challenge has been the fog of war, and the greater challenge is that it's political hunting season, and so this whole thing has been turned into a very political sort of arena, if you will," she said. "The fact that came out today is that the ground forces there at the CIA annex, which is different from the consulate, were requesting reinforcements.
"They were requesting the – it's called the C-in-C's In Extremis Force – a group of Delta Force operators, our very, most talented guys we have in the military. They could have come and reinforced the consulate and the CIA annex. Now, I don't know if a lot of you have heard this but the CIA annex had actually taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner, and they think that the attack on the consulate was an attempt to get these prisoners back. It's still being vetted.
"The challenging thing for Gen. Petraeus is that in his new position, he's not allowed to communicate with the press. So he's known all of this – they had correspondence with the CIA station chief in Libya, within 24 hours they kind of knew what was happening."
Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney holds a rally with his wife Ann at Colorado Springs municipal airport in Colorado Springs, Colorado, November 3, 2012.
New York Daily News
America’s heart, soul, brains and muscle — the middle- and working-class people who make this nation great — have been beset for too long by sapping economic decline.
So, too, New York breadwinners and families.
Paychecks are shrunken after more than a decade in which the workplace has asked more of wage earners and rewarded them less. The decline has knocked someone at the midpoint of the salary scale back to where he or she would have been in 1996.
Then, the subway fare, still paid by token, was $1.50, gasoline was $1.23 a gallon and the median rent for a stabilized apartment was $600 a month. Today, the base MetroCard subway fare is $2.25, gasoline is in the $3.90 range and the median stabilized rent is $1,050, with all the increases outpacing wage growth.
A crisis of long duration, the gap between purchasing power and the necessities of life widened after the 2008 meltdown revealed that the U.S. economy was built on toothpicks — and they snapped.
Nine million jobs evaporated. The typical American family saw $50,000 vanish from its net worth, and its median household income dropped by more than $87 a week. New Yorkers got off with a $54 weekly hit.
Our leaders owed us better than lower standards of living, and we must have better if the U.S. is to remain a beacon of prosperity where mothers and fathers can be confident of providing for their children and seeing them climb higher on the ladder.
Revival of the U.S. as a land of opportunity and upward mobility is the central challenge facing the next President. The question for Americans: Who is more likely to accomplish the mission — Barack Obama or Mitt Romney?
Four years ago, the Daily News endorsed Obama, seeing a historic figure whose intelligence, political skills and empathy with common folk positioned him to build on the small practical experience he would bring to the world’s toughest job. We valued Obama’s pledge to govern with bold pragmatism and bipartisanship.
The hopes of those days went unfulfilled.
Achingly slow job creation has left the U.S. with 4.3 million fewer positions than provided incomes to Americans in 2007. Half the new jobs have been part-time, lower-wage slots, a trend that has ruinously sped a hollowing of the middle class.
The official unemployment rate stands at 7.9%, marking only the second month below 8% after 43 months above that level. Worse, add people who are working part-time because they have no better choice and the rate leaps to almost 15%. Still worse, add 8 million people who have given up looking for employment and the number who are out of jobs or who are cobbling together hours to scrape by hits some 23 million people.
Only America’s social safety net, record deficits and the Federal Reserve’s unprecedented low-interest policies have kept the label Great Depression II on the shelf.
New Yorkers have fared no better. The state is alone among the 50 in suffering significantly rising unemployment over the last 12 months, with the rate now at 8.9%. The city’s pain index is 8.8%, and the five boroughs have been trading down in salaries.
First, the newspaper ad in this morning’s Washington Times, signed by over five hundred retired generals and admirals (pdf copy here). PJ Media carries the story, told by former Naval aviator Carl Smith, of how this ad developed. This cropped image of it comes courtesy of The Blaze:
Next from retired Navy SEALS on the gross Trust Deficitwith the Obama administration. Just think of all that SEALS, retired SEALS, and murdered SEALS have had to contend with, from their “Commander in Chief.”
As shown in the Noisy Room:
And the new video, “Strong America” demonstrates the devastating defense cuts coming up under Obama. Much but not all of this was schemed up in the overall budget sequester process foisted upon Congress by Obama and his fellow neo-Marxist, former CIA Director and present Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta.
As with all efforts to get the reality of conditions in America and our government to the voter, these are greatly hindered by the Marxstream media. And as in so many other cases, it is up to us to get the message to them, even now, despite the rigged gatekeeping.
Are you better off now than you were four years ago?
Vote for love of country. Vote for Jobs. Vote for Mitt Romney.
Mitt Romney’s plan is to achieve energy independence on this continent by 2020. America is blessed with extraordinary natural resources, and developing them will create millions of good jobs – not only in the energy industry, but also in industries like manufacturing that will benefit from more energy at lower prices. America’s economy will boom when the billions of dollars we send overseas for our oil are kept here at home instead.
Part two of the plan is trade that works for America. Mitt believes that trade can offer enormous opportunities for American businesses and workers, but only if they are given a level playing field on which they can compete and win. That is why he will work to open new markets for American goods and services, while also confronting nations like China that cheat on trade and steal American jobs.
Part three is to provide Americans with the skills to succeed through better public schools, better access to higher education, and better retraining programs that help to match unemployed workers with real-world job opportunities.
Part four is to cut the deficit, reducing the size of government and getting the national debt under control so that America remains a place where businesses want to open up shop and hire.
Finally, part five of Mitt’s plan is to champion small business. Small businesses are the engine of job creation in this country, but they will struggle to succeed if taxes and regulations are too burdensome or if a government in Washington does its best to stifle them. Mitt will pursue comprehensive tax reform that lowers tax rates for all Americans, and he will cut back on the red tape that drives up costs and discourages hiring.
This election presents a clear choice, and an important one: Will America once again be the best place in the world to start a business, hire a worker, or find a job? Or will it continue down the path that President Obama’s borrowing and taxing and spending has led? America is still waiting for its economic recovery and, as president, Mitt Romney will deliver it.
The official position is that the US has refused to allow heavy weapons into Syria.
But there’s growing evidence that U.S. agents—particularly murdered ambassador Chris Stevens—were at least aware of heavy weapons moving from Libya to jihadist Syrian rebels.
…Last month The Times of London reported that a Libyan ship “carrying the largest consignment of weapons for Syria … has docked in Turkey.” The shipment reportedly weighed 400 tons and included SA-7 surface-to-air anti-craft missiles and rocket-propelled grenades.
Those heavy weapons are most likely from Muammar Gaddafi’s stock of about 20,000 portable heat-seeking missiles—the bulk of them SA-7s—that the Libyan leader obtained from the former Eastern bloc. Reuters reports that Syrian rebels have been using those heavy weapons to shoot down Syrian helicopters and fighter jets.
The ship’s captain was “a Libyan from Benghazi and the head of an organization called the Libyan National Council for Relief and Support,” which was presumably established by the new government. That means that Ambassador Stevens had only one person—Belhadj—between himself and the Benghazi man who brought heavy weapons to Syria.
Last week The Telegraph reported that a FSA commander called them “Libyans” when he explained that the FSA doesn’t “want these extremist people here.”
And if the new Libyan government was sending seasoned Islamic fighters and 400 tons of heavy weapons to Syria through a port in southern Turkey—a deal brokered by Stevens’ primary Libyan contact during the Libyan revolution—then the governments of Turkey and the U.S. surely knew about it.
Furthermore there was a CIA post in Benghazi, located 1.2 miles from the U.S. consulate, used as “a base for, among other things, collecting information on the proliferation of weaponry looted from Libyan government arsenals, including surface-to-air missiles” … and that its security features “were more advanced than those at rented villa where Stevens died.”
By Mark Hosenball WASHINGTON | Wed Mar 30, 2011 6:16pm EDT
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama
has signed a secret order authorizing covert U.S. government support for rebel
forces seeking to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, government officials told
Reuters on Wednesday.
Obama signed the order, known as a
presidential "finding", within the last two or three weeks, according
to government sources familiar with the matter.
Such findings are a principal form of
presidential directive used to authorize secret operations by the Central
Intelligence Agency. This is a necessary legal step before such action can take
place but does not mean that it will.
As is common practice for this and all administrations,
I am not going to comment on intelligence matters," White House spokesman
Jay Carney said in a statement. "I will reiterate what the president said
yesterday -- no decision has been made about providing arms to the opposition
or to any group in Libya."
The CIA declined comment.
News that Obama had given the authorization
surfaced as the President and other U.S. and allied officials spoke
openly about the possibility of sending arms supplies to Gaddafi's opponents,
who are fighting better-equipped government forces.
The United States is part of a
coalition, with NATO members and some Arab states, which is conducting air
strikes on Libyan government forces under a U.N. mandate aimed at protecting
civilians opposing Gaddafi.
Interviews by U.S. networks on Tuesday, Obama
said the objective was for Gaddafi to "ultimately step down" from
power. He spoke of applying "steady pressure, not only militarily but also
through these other means" to force Gaddafi out.
Obama said the U.S. had not ruled out providing
military hardware to 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," he
told ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer.
In Washington,
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insisted to reporters that no decision had
yet been taken.
U.S. officials monitoring events in Libya say
neither Gaddafi's forces nor the rebels, who have asked the West for heavy
weapons, now appear able to make decisive gains.
While U.S. and allied airstrikes have
seriously damaged Gaddafi's military forces and disrupted his chain of command,
officials say, rebel forces remain disorganized and unable to take full
advantage of western military support.
SPECIFIC OPERATIONS
People familiar with U.S. intelligence procedures said that
Presidential covert action "findings" are normally crafted to provide
broad authorization for a range of potential U.S. government actions to support
a particular covert objective.
In order for specific operations to be
carried out under the provisions of such a broad authorization -- for example
the delivery of cash or weapons to anti-Gaddafi forces -- the White House also
would have to give additional "permission" allowing such activities
to proceed.
Former officials say these follow-up
authorizations are known in the intelligence world as "'Mother may I'
findings."
In 2009 Obama gave a similar authorization
for the expansion of covert U.S.
counter-terrorism actions by the CIA in Yemen.
The White House does not normally confirm such orders have been issued.
Because U.S.
and allied intelligence agencies still have many questions about the identities
and leadership of anti-Gaddafi forces, any covert U.S. activities are likely to
proceed cautiously until more information about the rebels can be collected and
analyzed, officials said.
"The whole issue on (providing rebels
with) training and equipment requires knowing who the rebels are," said
Bruce Riedel, a former senior CIA Middle East expert who has advised the Obama
White House.
Riedel said that helping the rebels to
organize themselves and training them how use weapons effectively would be more
urgent then shipping them arms.
ARMS EMBARGO
Sending in weapons would arguably violate an
arms embargo on Libya by the
U.N. Security Council imposed on February 26, although British, U.S. and French
officials have suggested there may be a loophole.
Getting a waiver would require the agreement
of all 15 council members, which is unlikely at this stage. Diplomats say any
countries that decided to arm the rebels would be unlikely to seek formal
council approval.
An article in early March on the website of
the Voice of America, the U.S.
government's broadcasting
service, speculated on possible secret operations in Libya
and defined a covert action as "any U.S. government effort to change
the economic, military, or political situation overseas in a hidden way."
The article, by VOA intelligence
correspondent Gary Thomas, said covert action "can encompass many things,
including propaganda, covert funding, electoral manipulation, arming and
training insurgents, and even encouraging a coup."
U.S. officials also have said that Saudi Arabia and Qatar, whose
leaders despise Gaddafi, have indicated a willingness to supply Libyan rebels
with weapons.
Members of Congress have expressed anxiety
about U.S. government
activities in Libya.
Some have recalled that weapons provided by the U.S.
and Saudis to mujahedeen fighting Soviet occupation forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s later ended
up in the hands of anti-American militants.
There are fears that the same thing could
happen in Libya unless the U.S. is sure
who it is dealing with. The chairman of the House intelligence committee, Rep.
Mike Rogers, said on Wednesday he opposed supplying arms to the Libyan rebels
fighting Gaddafi "at this time."
"We need to understand more about the
opposition before I would support passing out guns and advanced weapons to
them," Rogers
said in a statement.
"When somebody doesn't do the job, you gotta let `em go," -- Clint Eastwood
Vote for Love of Country! Vote for Jobs and a better Country. Walk with Mitt Romney for a greater stronger nation filled with more jobs, lower gas and food prices and greater opportunity for your Children.
Clint Eastwood Supports Mitt Romney -- October 24, 2012
... Mr. Eastwood is nothing but serious in this new advertisement, in which he indicts President Obama’s term as a failure and urges people to vote for Mitt Romney.
“Obama’s second term would be a rerun of the first, and our country just couldn’t survive that,” he says. “We need someone who could turn it around fast, and that man is Mitt Romney. There’s not much time left, and the future of our country is at stake.”
“I did the ad because I’m concerned for our country,” he said. “I really believe Mitt Romney is the kind of leader we need right now. He’s an experienced businessman, and he knows how to work with people to fix problems. It’s time to give someone else a chance to fix our country.”-- Clint Eastwood
‘You own this country. The politicians work for you.’ -- Clint Eastwood
