by Aaron Klein
U.S. Representative Westmoreland, chairman of the House Intelligence Subcommittee, told Fox News in November 2013 that State Department employees inside the mission were “not set up for any type of protection. When we interviewed these guys they said that they were really surprised at the lack of security at the mission facility.” Westmoreland was commenting on closed-door testimony given to his intelligence committee.35 He told The Kelly File on Fox News that none of the security officers were armed, and in fact, “one of ‘em was barefooted, and I think they were totally unprepared for any type of attack.”36 Westmoreland was clearly referring to the U.S. assistant regional security officers (again, ARSOs or RSOs) who were inside the compound with Stevens during the initial assault.
Entirely unreported by the news media is that this witness testimony of unarmed personnel directly contradicts the narrative in the State Department’s extensive ARB report, which specifically claims the personnel inside the compound were armed. The report states that the “ARSOs were each armed with their standard issue sidearm pistol; their ‘kits,’ generally consisting of body armor, radio and an M4 rifle, were in their bedroom/sleeping areas, in accord with Special Mission practice.” It even claims that the officer who located Stevens “asked them to don body armor, and led them into the safe area in Villa C.” He radioed in their location and then, “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,” the report notes.37
The ARB report describes in detail the process by which each security officer retrieved kits and guns:
Following the SMC’s emergency plan, ARSO 1 entered Villa C to secure the Ambassador and IMO in the safe area and to retrieve his kit; ARSOs 2, 3, and 4 moved to retrieve their kits, which were located in Villa B and the TOC… .
From Villa C, ARSO 4 ran to his sleeping quarters in Villa B to retrieve his kit, while ARSOs 2 and 3 ran to the TOC, where ARSO 3 had last seen the Ambassador, and where ARSO 2’s kit was located. (ARSO 2’s sleeping quarters were in the TOC, making him the designated “TOC Officer” in their emergency react plan.)… At Villa B, ARSO 3 encountered ARSO 4, who was also arming and equipping himself, and the two then attempted to return to Villa C. They turned back, however, after seeing many armed intruders blocking the alley between Villas B and C.38
Remember Representative Westmoreland said the witness reported that the security officers were unarmed and one was barefoot. That would help explain why no officers reportedly fired any shots or even attempted to engage the intruders. Instead, the officers barricaded themselves in rooms. If that is accurate, does it mean the ARB report details were fabricated out of whole cloth? If those details were falsified, we cannot trust a word in the entire report. The ARB report claims officers did not want to engage the intruders because they were “outnumbered and outgunned by the armed intruders” so they “barricaded themselves in a back room” because they did not want to “compromise their location.”39
WHAT’S THE WHITE HOUSE HIDING?
It is rare for Benghazi witnesses to speak out. The Senate’s Benghazi report slams the White House, Pentagon, and especially the State Department for actively interfering in the investigation into the attacks. In a particularly stinging accusation that went largely unreported by news media, the Senate’s extensive report by its Benghazi investigative committee charged a “strong case can be made that State engaged in retaliation against witnesses who were willing to speak with Congress.”40
The lawmakers also accused the State Department of returning some witnesses to active duty so they were “shielded from, or actively avoided, Committee requests for interviews.” The State Department treated these witnesses in an “unacceptable” fashion, and there is clearly no excuse for it.41
The Senate report revealed that not only have key executive branch witnesses declined to be interviewed, but the White House “still has not provided all relevant documents to the Committee.” Other documents were only provided on a “read only” basis, meaning that the Senate committee was “only permitted to view them for a limited period of time, while being supervised by the coordinating agency,” and they could only refer to their notes rather than the original documents when preparing their report.42
The Senate investigation noted the Department of Defense and other U.S. agencies provided hundreds of key documents, “although sometimes with a significant amount of resistance, especially from State. This lack of cooperation unnecessarily hampered the Committee’s review.”43
CNN reported that CIA operatives involved with the annex in Libya were being subjected to “frequent, even monthly polygraph examinations, according to a source with deep inside knowledge of the agency’s workings.” The goal of the questioning? To “find out if anyone is talking to the media or Congress,” the source told CNN.44
The unusual manner in which the U.S. special mission was set up and the deliberate obfuscation (Pentagon members responsible for security in Africa were unaware of the existence of the annex), combined with information about an al-Qaeda–linked group providing “security,” leaves us with one major question that trumps all others: What in the world was going on inside that ill-fated facility? The absolute lack of security seems to be very deliberate. The State Department likely knew any major security presence at the compound would draw unwanted attention to the secretive activities taking place inside the doomed facility. It is the nature of those activities that we are going to explore in the next chapter.
2
“FAST AND FURIOUS” OF THE MIDDLE EAST
While most of the news media were still parroting claims of popular protests against our “consulate” sparked by an anti-Islam film, I received information from Middle Eastern security sources that told me otherwise. Twelve days after the Benghazi attacks, I reported that both the U.S. mission and the nearby CIA annex in Benghazi served as an intelligence and planning center for sending U.S. aid to rebels in the Middle East, with particular emphasis on shipping weapons to jihadists fighting the regime of Bashar al-Assad of Syria. Egyptian and other Middle Eastern sources also told me just after the attacks that Ambassador Chris Stevens himself played a central role in recruiting and vetting jihadists and coordinating arms shipments to the gunmen fighting Assad’s regime in Syria.1
Prior to the establishment of the Libyan mission, the United States agents also provided aid to the rebels who eventually toppled Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. That aid, the sources stated, included weapons that were carefully purchased via extremist middlemen who used Arab and Turkish financing so as to avoid U.S. government accountability.
In this chapter, we will abandon statements from anonymous security sources and instead investigate documented information that strongly supports the contention that the attacked Benghazi facilities were utilized for these and other illicit activities in what might amount to the “Fast and Furious” of the Middle East, the “Iran–Contra affair” of the Obama administration. We will also examine how these activities, which seemingly included a separate weapons collection effort, may have been the motivating factor that prompted the September 11, 2012, assaults in the first place.
At immediate issue is the undeniable fact that a good deal of the anti-Assad rebels come from groups openly aligned with al-Qaeda, as well as a witches’ brew of other anti-Western Islamic extremist organizations, including those declared official terrorist groups by the State Department. Another key issue is that until the end of April 2013, the White House had repeatedly denied it was involved in helping to arm the rebels.2
Besides White House denials, other top U.S. officials and former officials, including Hillary Clinton, have implied in congressional testimony that they didn’t know about any U.S. role in procuring weapons for the rebels.3 Central to the problem is the very notion of aiding extremist organizations whose stated goals include the annihilation of the United States, and worldwide supremacy for their brand of Islam. Their val
ues are so backwardly antidemocratic; they are long known for persecuting Christians, Jews, the Druze, and other regional minorities, as well as secular Muslims.
FROM LIBYA TO SYRIA
Before getting to the Benghazi attacks, it is instrumental to briefly review United States–NATO military efforts from March to August 2011that helped topple Gaddafi’s regime. Libya was supposed to be the lynchpin of the so-called Arab Spring, the well-intended blossoming of democracy, freedom, and human rights across the Arab world. It was around this time, in April 2011, that Stevens returned to Libya aboard a Greek cargo ship carrying “a dozen American diplomats and guards and enough vehicles and equipment to set up a diplomatic beachhead in the middle of an armed rebellion.”4 Stevens’ original role in Libya was to serve as the main interlocutor between the Obama administration and the rebels based in Benghazi.
The news media churned out numerous reports of U.S.-coordinated arms being funneled to the anti-Gaddafi rebels starting at about the time Stevens arrived in Libya. In March 2011, Reuters exclusively reported that Obama had signed a secret order authorizing covert U.S. government support for the rebel forces in Libya seeking to oust Gaddafi.5 Also that month, the UK-based Independent reported that “the Americans have asked Saudi Arabia if it can supply weapons to the rebels in Benghazi.”6
In December 2012, the New York Times reported the Obama administration “secretly gave its blessing to arms shipments to Libyan rebels from Qatar [in 2011], but American officials later grew alarmed as evidence grew that Qatar was turning some of the weapons over to Islamic militants, according to United States officials and foreign diplomats.” The article went on to say that the weapons and money from Qatar “strengthened militant groups in Libya, allowing them to become a destabilizing force since the fall of the Qaddafi government.” The weapons came from Qatar and not the United States, according to the Times.7
While the Obama administration clearly was encouraging the arming of the rebels, the reports were careful to indicate that the weapons came from Qatar and not the United States.
At the same time we were reportedly arming the Libyan militias. Rebel leader Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi admitted in an interview that a significant number of the Libyan rebels were al-Qaeda fighters, many of whom had fought U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. He insisted his fighters “are patriots and good Muslims, not terrorists,” but he added that the “members of al-Qaeda are also good Muslims and are fighting against the invader.”8
Adm. James Stavridis, NATO supreme commander for Europe, did not attempt to deny Libya’s rebel force incorporated al-Qaeda. “We have seen flickers in the intelligence of potential al-Qaeda, Hezbollah,” he testified to the U.S. Senate in March 2011.9
Meanwhile, numerous other mainstream media reports confirmed U.S. aid to the rebels fighting in Libya. Are we to believe that after the successful Libyan revolution and historic toppling of the country’s longtime dictator, the United States closed up its guns-to-rebels program that turned the tide against Gaddafi just as the rebel-led insurgency against Syria’s Bashar al-Assad was starting to heat up?
Indeed, our “Arab Spring” adventures pivoted westward when, according to the New York Times, the CIA started helping Arab governments and Turkey obtain and ship weapons to the rebels fighting the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. The Times reported on March 24, 2013, that this covert aid to the Syrian rebels started in early 2012. Syria began on a small scale and continued intermittently through the fall of 2012, expanding into a steady and much heavier flow later that year.10 (My own sources say the airlifts started several months before the fall of 2012. I’ll shortly present evidence of a massive arms shipment from Benghazi to the Syrian rebels in August 2012, one month before the Benghazi assaults.) Remember, this reportedly took place while the White House was publicly denying it had armed the Syrian rebels.
The Times reported that from offices at “secret locations,” American intelligence officers “helped the Arab governments shop for weapons… and have vetted rebel commanders and groups to determine who should receive the weapons as they arrive.” The CIA declined to comment to the Times on the shipments to Syria or its role in them.11
Where were these secret offices located? Could this be a reference to the secret CIA annex and obscure U.S. special mission in Benghazi, where Ambassador Stevens held his final meeting with a Turkish diplomat? Turkey, of course, was one of the main backers of the Syrian rebels.
The New York Times reported in December 2012 that Stevens himself facilitated an application to the State Department for the sale of weapons filed by one Marc Turi, whom the Times describes as an “American arms merchant who had sought to provide weapons to Libya.” The Times reported Turi’s first application was rejected in March 2011 but was approved two months later after he stated “only that he planned to ship arms worth more than $200 million to Qatar.”12 Qatar was Turkey’s partner in aiding the Syrian rebels.
The Times does not question why Stevens would help facilitate Turkish government’s application for an arms dealer. Nor did the Times bother to investigate the possible connection of these activities to the Benghazi attacks. After all, it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to divine a possible link to the Benghazi assaults with a questionable weapons sale between a shady arms dealer and a U.S. ambassador in “secret locations” financed by Arab governments to be sent to Mid-East rebels, including some of the same groups linked to the September 11, 2012, attacks.
Interestingly, the Times reported U.S. intelligence officers aided Arab governments in obtaining weapons, “including a large procurement from Croatia.”13 In the previous chapter we noted the C-110 forty-man special ops force, maintained for emergencies like the Benghazi crisis, was reportedly “training” in Croatia during the Benghazi attacks. The force was not deployed to help the embattled Benghazi compounds. Given all the government distortions, lies, and cover-ups about Benghazi, it is certainly legitimate to ask whether the C-110 actually was being utilized to protect, collect, or ship the weapons reportedly procured from Croatia. We will further explore the curious story of the C-110 in chapter 3.
Let’s get back to the New York Times’ confirmation of arms shipments to the Syrian rebels during the period the Obama administration foursquare denied it was arming those rebels. The paper quoted a former American official as saying that David H. Petraeus, CIA director until November 2012, had been instrumental in helping set up an aviation network to fly the weapons to Syria. It further said Petraeus “had prodded various countries to work together” on the plan. Petraeus did not return multiple e-mails from the Times asking for comment.14 In chapter 7, we will further explore the primary roles of Petraeus and Hillary Clinton in arming the Syrian rebels via a channel that included Stevens and others inside the Benghazi mission.
In March 2013, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) connected Stevens to an effort that involved weapons in Benghazi. He told Fox News that Stevens was in the Libyan city to keep weapons caches from falling into terrorist hands. Host Bret Baier asked Graham why Stevens was in the Benghazi mission despite 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 stated, “We were desperately trying to control the anti-aircraft missiles, the man pads that were all over Libya, that are now all over the Mid-East.”15
Previously, one source told Fox News that Stevens was in Benghazi the very night of the attacks “to negotiate a weapons transfer in an effort to get SA-7 missiles out of the hands of Libya-based extremists.”16
In August 2013, CNN reported there is “speculation” on Capitol Hill that U.S. agencies operating in Benghazi “were secretly helping to move surface-to-air missiles out of Libya, through Turkey, and into the hands of Syrian rebels.”17
As we will more thoroughly detail in chapter 3, there is good information that, aside from coordinating arms shipments to jihadists fight
ing in Syria, U.S. agents at the Benghazi mission were involved in an unprecedented multimillion-dollar U.S. effort to secure antiaircraft weapons in Libya after the fall of Gaddafi’s regime.18
This weapons collection effort may go a long way toward explaining the motive behind the Benghazi attacks. The various jihadist organizations that looted Gaddafi’s man-portable air-defense systems (MANPAD) reserves and the rebel groups that received weapons during the NATO campaign in Libya obviously would feel threatened by an American effort to try to retrieve those weapons.
FEBRUARY 17 MARTYRS BRIGADE
In the previous chapter, I asked why the United States would employ armed members of the February 17 Martyrs Brigade, a division of the al-Qaeda-linked Ansar al-Sharia terrorist organization, to provide “security” at the U.S. special mission? The exact nature of the Brigade’s involvement with the mission might have been unintentionally exposed when a Libyan weapons dealer formerly from the February 17 Martyrs Brigade told Reuters in an in-person interview he had helped ship weapons from Benghazi to the rebels fighting in Syria. No one seems to have connected the dots from what the weapons dealer said to the activities taking place inside the Benghazi compound and whether the Brigade serves as a cutout to ship weapons.
In the Reuters interview published June 18, 2013, Libyan warlord Abdul Basit Haroun declared he is behind some of the biggest shipments of weapons from Libya to Syria. Most of the weapons were sent to Turkey, he said, where they were in turn smuggled into neighboring Syria. Haroun divulged that he sent a massive weapons shipment from the port in Benghazi in August 2012, days before the attack on the U.S. compound. The weapons were smuggled into Syria aboard a Libyan ship that landed in Turkey, purportedly to deliver humanitarian aid, he related.19
