A Green Beret’s In-Depth Analysis of ‘Benghazi: The Definitive Report’
-This should have been a major indicator. When did the contract lapse? How high on the priority list was correcting this situation?
“All told, the handful of Americans would kill just under a hundred enemy attackers.“
-Didn’t hear much about these numbers in the news. Important note: the assaulters gave up the rough equivalent of a bunch of pawns to take out a rook, bishop, and two knights. Painful loss, simply put.
“Did Ansar Al-Sharia get inspired after seeing the Egyptians storming the US embassy in Cairo the day before? Did they get offended by an internet video? Did they choose 9/ 11 as the date for the attack because of the obvious symbolism? Maybe. But another contributing factor was JSOC operations in Libya, which kicked the hornets’ nest and pissed off the militia.“
-Logical deduction. Makes sense to me.
“With the left hand not talking to the right, it was impossible for Stevens to see or predict the JSOC expedition into Libya in late summer of 2012, which ultimately led to the attack on the consulate.”
-Main explanation within this report as to the “why” behind the attacks. This seems logical, though the weapon transfers variable would have to play a role to some degree. Whether it played a major role or minor is a very serious question which I doubt we will have answers to in the near future.
“In total, seven Americans with four local militia guards were left to promote diplomacy in one of the most hostile and unstable places on earth.”
-”We had the correct number of assets in Benghazi on the night of 9/11,”-State Department official Charlene Lamb. Her testimony made my blood boil.
“It’s worth noting that the local guards hired by the State Department were armed only with bats, not with firearms of any sort; it’s no surprise they fled.“
-Assets also apply not only to personnel, but equipment as well; yet another Dept. of State failure. I suppose it ‘doesn’t make a difference‘ in the eyes of some.
“With tacit support from Michael Vickers and James Clapper, Brennan works to exploit a number of loopholes and utilize the Obama administration’s creative interpretations of Title 10 and Title 50 powers to launch operations across North Africa and the Middle East, with Admiral McRaven no doubt happy to be along for the ride.”
-Here begins the accountability portion of the report. John Brennan receives a healthy amount, and it seems well deserved.
“Because John Brennan is running his own private war, he is not going through the normal chain of command, and operations are not deconflicted. Ambassador Stevens, for instance, was not read on to the JSOC operations in Libya. He was kept in the dark and ultimately killed in a retaliation that he never could have seen coming. “
-If the CIA is not gathering intelligence on potential attacks via HUMINT or SIGINT, who the hell is? Was there any of that going on? There had to have been a catalyst, even if the bulk of the assault didn’t take place until hours after the initial breach. There is always a thread running somewhere. Our intelligence assets were either kept completely in the dark by the coordinators of this assault, or someone dropped the ball.
“In a Senate hearing after the attack, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Matthew Olsen, stated that there was no evidence of “significant advanced planning or coordination for this attack.” This is a viewpoint shared by Matthew VanDyke, who told Business Insider, “This was not a commando style raid, that’s ridiculous…” The problem with this thesis is that further investigation has clearly shown that there was no protest outside the consulate prior to or during the attack.“
-Again, if they were gathering any HUMINT or SIGINT of any measurable value, or there should have been SOME sort of a blip on the radar that something was in the works. My estimation: this was pure spin from the administration.
“As the Global War on Terror enters the next phase in North Africa and elsewhere, we can only hold our breath and wonder which of our friends will be killed in the next debacle.“
-The next chapter looks to be a disturbing one. I do not look forward to it growing.
“The last thing the White House wanted was journalists digging into what was really going on in Libya, namely, secret weapons transfers from Libya to Syria, a program that remains a peripheral issue in the story of the Benghazi attack. More importantly, they did not want the press investigating the true motivations behind the assault.”
-This stood out as the most valuable piece of the puzzle I gathered from this report. This picture cleared up the majority of questions I had about this entire debacle.
“His willingness to stand up to his CIA boss and do what was right is an example of true American heroism. Glen Doherty ran toward the sound of gunfire, and his CIA and JSOC comrades could have waited it out in Tripoli. Instead, they practically commandeered a local plane and forced their way into the fight. Their presence and the JSOC element’s access to the Predator drone ultimately drove the decision to evacuate the Americans.”
-One of the more sobering elements of the report, but definitely a bright light amid a backdrop of blackness.
Standing Questions:
- Is the CIA or JSOC capable/willing to run operations without knowledge or consent of the Dept. of State?
- What quantifiable actions has the Department of State done to fix their operations abroad?
- What was the original intelligence source that referenced the YouTube video? How did that become the assumed reason for the attack in the State Department?
- Did the absence of executive authority hamper the speed at which assets could have provided support?
Read more: http://sofrep.com/17331/in-depth-analysis-of-benghazi-the-definitive-report/#ixzz2MRw5AQz7
Was Obama Gun Running Again?
In-Extremis | Katechon
Posted on Thursday, November 01, 2012 8:00:54 PM by Katechon
It is becoming increasingly clear that the Obama régime has been running guns and armaments and munitions to the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliate jihadist groups, including heat-seeking shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles designed to shoot down jetliners. The American Mission in Libya was apparently trying to buy back man-portable anti-aircraft missiles that the Obama Régime sold or gave to the Muslim Brotherhood and then went "missing." The Administration was also trying to buy back weapons previously owned by the Gaddafi Régime that spread everywhere after the "revolution."
Peter Bouckaert, Human Rights Watch emergencies director, told CNN he has seen the same pattern in armories looted elsewhere in Libya, noting that "in every city we arrive, the first thing to disappear are the surface-to-air missiles." He said such missiles can fetch many thousands of dollars on the black market. "We are talking about some 20,000 surface-to-air missiles in all of Libya, and I've seen cars packed with them." he said. [...] The United States has spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to buy them back [...]
A report by the UN Support Mission in Libya (PDF) said that Gaddafi had accumulated a large stockpile of MANPADs, and that although thousands were "destroyed" during the 2011 military intervention in Libya, there were "increasing concerns over the looting and likely proliferation of these portable defence systems, as well as munitions and mines, highlighting the potential risk to local and regional stability."“The rebels came from all over the western mountains, and they just took what they wanted,” said Riyad, a supervisor of the ruined arsenal’s small contingent of rebel guards.
As soon as islamic organizations outside Libya realized that there were Manpads available, they tried to get them. When the Obama Régime discovered that thousands of MANPADs had "disappeared" and were "on the loose in Libya" it turned around and stuck a LOT of cash in the CIA "annex", or "safehouse" in order to BUY those weapons back. (I wrote about the CIA annex here.) Fox News Bureau Chief of Intelligence Catherine Herridge said that the role being played by the U.S. Mission in Libya is to control the movement of weapons out of Libya to Syrian rebels fighting to bring down the Bashar Al-Assad régime. The Benghazi mission played a key role in “engaging, legitimating, enriching and emboldening Islamists who have taken over or are ascendant in much of the Middle East,” said the president of the Center for Security Policy. From there, we can infer that Ghadaffi was overthrown in order to use Libya as the doorway to get the arms in for distribution to Syria, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt and eventually Saudi Arabia. Especially Syria, for now. That's the big picture. The State Department and the CIA were somehow, some way running or heavily involved in this armament pipeline. But what was Stevens' function inside this apparatus? What do we know about it? I suggest that we use this thread to aggregate facts, data and sources in order to help answering that question. Only when we will get to see more clearly what role Stevens played in the running of this armament pipeline (to the incipient Caliphate) will we begin to learn "Why the Obama régime wanted him dead?," or at least: a) Why was the security protection for the Benghazi Mission prior to the 9/11 anniversary attack stripped?, and b) Why did the Obama régime refuse to send (or even permit) local help on the night of the attack. How did Ambassador Stevens help in the gun and armament running? We know that Benghazi was staffed by CIA operatives, working for the State Department, whose job was a) to secure and destroy dangerous weapons (like RPGs and SAMs) looted from Gaddafi’s stockpiles during and after the 2011 revolution, and b) to facilitate the onward shipment of those weapons to Syria. Was Ambassador Stevens' job to cover for all of this? We know that Obama signed an intelligence finding in early 2012 authorizing U.S. support for the Syrian rebels, and that this summer CIA operatives were on the Turkish-Syrian border helping to steer weapons deliveries to selected Syrian rebel groups, most of them “hard-line Islamic jihadists.”
One of those jihadis was Abdelhakim Belhadj. Abdulhakim Belhadj, head of the Tripoli Military Council and the former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, "met with Free Syrian Army leaders in Istanbul and on the border with Turkey," said a military official working with Mr Belhadj. "Mustafa Abdul Jalil (the interim Libyan president) sent him there. -- Ruth Sherlock in Tripoli, 27 Nov 2011, for the TelegraphBelhadj’s contact with the Syrian Free Army was part of a Lybian delegation to Turkey offering arms and fighters to the Turkish-backed Syrian jihadis.
The Daily Telegraph on Saturday [November 26 2011] revealed that the new Libyan authorities had offered money and weapons to the growing insurgency against Bashar al-Assad. Mr Belhaj also discussed sending Libyan fighters to train troops, the source said. Having ousted one dictator, triumphant young men, still filled with revolutionary fervour, are keen to topple the next. The commanders of armed gangs still roaming Tripoli's streets said yesterday that "hundreds" of fighters wanted to wage war against the Assad regime.So we have the United-States, Libya and Turkey working together with and through Al-Qaeda-linked jihadists like Belhadj to get weapons into the hands of Syrian rebels, known to be dominated by Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. We know also that a Libyan-flagged vessel, Al-Entisar, docked at the Turkish port of Iskanderun on September 6, 2012.
A mysterious Libyan ship [the Libyan-flagged vessel Al Entisar, which means "The Victory,"] -- reportedly carrying weapons and bound for Syrian rebels -- [...] was received in the Turkish port of Iskenderun -- 35 miles from the Syrian border -- on Sept. 6 [...] On the night of Sept. 11, [Ambassador] Stevens met with the Turkish Consul General Ali Sait Akin, and escorted him out of the consulate front gate one hour before the assault began at approximately 9:35 p.m. local time. [A] source told Fox News that Stevens was in Benghazi to negotiate a weapons transfer, an effort to get SA-7 missiles out of the hands of Libya-based extremists. [...] According to an initial Sept. 14 report by the Times of London, Al Entisar was carrying 400 tons of cargo. Some of it was humanitarian, but also reportedly weapons, described by the report as the largest consignment of weapons headed for Syria's rebels on the frontlines. "This is the Libyan ship ... which is basically carrying weapons that are found in Libya," said Walid Phares, a Fox News Middle East and terrorism analyst. [...] The cargo reportedly included surface-to-air anti-aircraft missiles, RPG's and Russian-designed shoulder-launched missiles known as MANPADS. The ship's Libyan captain told the Times of London that "I can only talk about the medicine and humanitarian aid" for the Syrian rebels. It was reported there was a fight about the weapons and who got what "between the free Syrian Army and the Muslim Brotherhood." "The point is that both of these weapons systems are extremely accurate and very simple to use," Fox News military analyst Col. David Hunt explained. He said the passage of weapons from Libya to Syria would escalate the conflict. "With a short amount of instruction, you've got somebody capable of taking down any, any aircraft. Anywhere in the world." [...] In March 2011, the Reuters news service first reported that President Obama had authorized a "secret order ... (allowing) covert U.S. government support for rebel forces" to push the Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi from office. At a hearing on March 31, before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, several lawmakers raised concerns about the finding reported by the Reuters news service and whether the Obama administration knew who constituted the rebel forces and whether Islamists were among their ranks. "What assurances do we have that they will not pose a threat to the United States if they succeed in toppling Qaddafi?" Republican Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., asked. "There are reports that some opposition figures have links to Al Qaeda and extremist groups that have fought against our forces in Iraq." [...] A month after the October 2011 death of Qaddafi, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced in Tripoli that the U.S. was committing $40 million to help Libya "secure and recover its weapons stockpiles." [...] http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/25/was-syrian-weapons-shipment-factor-in-ambassadors-benghazi-visit/The group accused of moving the weapons is the Foundation for Human Rights, and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH). U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens’ last meeting in Benghazi the night he was killed was with the Turkish Consul General Ali Sait Akin, who is reported to have been there to discuss a weapons transfer or a warning about the possible compromise of the Libyan weapons pipeline to Syria. Whatever the topic of Ambassador Stevens’ discussion with Akin, he clearly and knowingly put himself in harm’s way to be there, in Benghazi, on the night of September 11.
A Three Letter Agency Prepares to Attack Benghazi: A Definitive Report
That said, I do want to comment on some of the grumbling going on behind the scenes. A spokesmen for the National Security Council has said the claim made in the book that the US Government has been facilitating the trafficking of weapons from Libya to Syria is false, a complete fabrication. The statement the NSC gave is technically correct but intrinsically wrong, that is the nature of plausible deniability. They can issue a statement like this because technically they are not the ones trafficking the weapons, but they know all about it and have approved the process. In regards to the JSOC operations that happened inside Libya, it has pretty much been radio silence aside from SOCOM making a statement that they don’t confirm or deny operations.
Meanwhile, in a certain Three Letter Agency, people are sharpening their knives. We’ve seen the crackdown on whistleblowers during this administration but in this case there really isn’t anything they can do to me and my co-author. We are out of the service now and are not writing about anything we did while we served. Like any good intelligence operation, we gathered open source reports, talked to our sources and put the puzzle together. We were never read in on any of these programs. Hell, I’ve never even held a Top Secret clearance. I got out of the Army before the paperwork could finished to be processed. Legally speaking, the spooks are out of luck. Benghazi: The Definitive Report falls under the category of journalism.
However, there is another avenue open to them: character assassination. How do you go about doing this? You could dig into our backgrounds using government databases, check out our military records, talk to some former team mates, that sort of thing. I can’t really imagine what they could find on me…alcohol and women? Big deal, welcome to the US Army folks! But they can fabricate or exaggerate certain claims and then have a few retired analysts or case officers strut their stuff in the media and try to discredit what we wrote. I’m not afraid of it, I just say, go ahead and mentally prepare for it now.
The sad thing is that this clique within the intelligence community could care less about any of the actual operations we discuss in the ebook, it is only the information about David Petraeus that concerns them. You see, that information hits a little close to home and could make some very senior people look very bad. Careers could be on the line and that is what really ruffles some feathers, national security be damned.
I am not trying to use scare tactics as some cheap gimmick to get people to go and buy the book, I don’t believe in that sort of thing. What I will ask is for you to rally around this book if you support this type of reporting and this style of journalism. Spread the word.
It is a brave new world out there in publishing and in journalism, a libertarian wild west type of model, but maybe a better one then simply having four or five corporations who have consolidated the entire news media under their umbrella. If you think it is important to hear from ordinary Americans, former Special Operations soldiers in this case, who do investigative work and then pass that information on to the public is a responsible manner, then please make your voice heard.
I’m writing this now to try to get ahead of the opposition’s decision-making process and stay a few steps ahead of them. If you support this book or this type of reporting then now is the time to say something. Speak out against digital censorship and let people know that you want the unvarnished truth, not some PR spin from the corporate media.
Thanks for reading and thanks for your support!
Read more: http://sofrep.com/17358/three-letter-agency-prepares-to-attack-benghazi/#ixzz2MRxCWXhM
Benghazi: The Definitive Report
The book includes many never before revealed details about the Libyan Civil War and the post-war reconsolidation efforts undertaken by Private Military Companies, the CIA, and Ambassador Chris Stevens. This sets the stage for the situation that led to the attack on the US Consulate (technically a Temporary Mission Facility) in Benghazi. We then tell it like it actually happened that night and detail the heroic actions of Ty Woods and his fellow OGA operators. We will also shatter some myths and misconceptions about denied air support and the resignation of General Petraeus.
Perhaps most damning is the question of why. Why did the attack happen? What got AQIM elements operating under the Ansar Al-Sharia banner so angry that they decided to over run the Consulate? Perhaps events in Egypt and a silly Youtube video helped some of the Sheiks mobilize a large group of extremists but there is more to this situation. Much more. Ambassador Stevens and David Petraeus never could have seen what was coming. They were left in the lurch due to covert operations initiated by the White House, a secret war in North Africa being orchestrated by John Brennan.
Read more: http://sofrep.com/17087/benghazi-report-jack-murphy-brandon-webb-sofrep/#ixzz2MRxjslyX
The unanswered questions of Benghazi
Here are Attkisson’s unanswered questions of Benghazi:
1. What time was Ambassador’s Stevens’ body recovered, what are the known details surrounding his disappearance and death, including where he/his body was taken/found/transported and by whom?
2. Who made the decision not to convene the Counterterrorism Security Group (CSG) the night of the Benghazi attacks? We understand that convening the CSG a protocol under Presidential directive (“NSPD-46”). Is that true? If not, please explain. If so, why was the protocol not followed?
3. Is the Administration revising the applicable Presidential directive? If so, please explain.
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