by Aaron Klein
Ismail Salabi, a commander of the February 17 Brigade, told Reuters that Haroun was a member of the Brigade until he quit to form a brigade of his own. Haroun told Reuters his weapons smuggling operation was run with an associate, who helped him coordinate about a dozen people in Libyan cities collecting weapons for Syria. Let’s pause here. This indicates Haroun, formerly of the February 17 Brigade, was possibly used as a proxy to ship weapons to Syria, and he may have also aided in the weapons collection effort.
Fox News may find one of its exclusive reports vindicated by Haroun’s interview, information that may tie in to a motivation for the Benghazi assaults. In October 2012, Fox News reported the Libyan-flagged vessel Al Entisar, which means “The Victory,” was received in the Turkish port of Iskenderun, thirty-five miles from the Syrian border, just five days before Stevens was killed. The shipment, disguised as humanitarian aid, was described as the largest consignment of weapons headed for Syria’s rebels. Fox News reported the shipment “may have some link to the Sept. 11 terror attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.”20 That shipment seems to be the one described by Haroun in his Reuters article. Both Haroun and his associate spoke to the news agency about an August 2012 shipment with weapons hidden among about 460 metric tons of aid destined for Syrian refugees.21
A recent UN report appears to confirm that weapons were hidden in the Al Entisar, Reuters noted. A UN panel found that the loading port for the shipment was Benghazi, that the exporter was “a relief organization based in Benghazi,” and that the consignee was the same Islamic foundation based in Turkey that Haroun told Reuters had helped with documentation.22
SECRET PRISON?
Besides weapons dealing and MANPAD collection, there have been some unsubstantiated reports claiming the CIA was running an interrogation center or secret prison at the Benghazi annex. A Fox News report quoted a well-placed Washington source confirming “there were Libyan militiamen being held at the CIA annex in Benghazi and that their presence was being looked at as a possible motive for the staged attack on the consulate and annex that night.”23
Fox News further cited multiple intelligence sources who served in Benghazi as saying “there were more than just Libyan militia members who were held and interrogated by CIA contractors at the CIA annex in the days prior to the attack. Other prisoners from additional countries in Africa and the Middle East were brought to this location.”
The same day Fox News originally reported on the alleged CIA prison in Benghazi, October 26, 2012, Paula Broadwell, the alleged mistress of ex-CIA director David Petraeus, gave a speech in which she claimed the CIA may have operated a secret detention center in Benghazi. The forty-one-minute speech, a keynote address at a University of Denver alumni symposium, was removed from the university’s YouTube account after it was publicized in two links on the popular Drudge Report on November 11.24 Following media inquiries, the video was reposted by the university at a different link. University of Denver spokeswoman Kim Divigil told me that day the video “was down for several hours this morning but immediately restored.”
During the session, Broadwell stated, “Now, I don’t know if a lot of you heard this, but the CIA annex had actually had taken a couple of Libya militia members prisoner. And they think that the attack on the consulate was an effort to try to get these prisoners back. So that’s still being vetted.”25 It wasn’t clear whether Broadwell was simply referring to the Fox News article about prisoners being held in Benghazi. A CIA spokesman flatly denied Broadwell’s claim of a prison at the Libyan annex. He said the CIA “has not had detention authority since January 2009, when Executive Order 13491 was issued.” Suggestion that the agency is “still in the detention business is uninformed and baseless,” the spokesman added.26
Obviously Paula Broadwell is not exactly a credible source on Benghazi. However, her comments and the Fox News report simply add more to the mystery of the events surrounding the attack.
GOP’S INVESTIGATOR IGNORING REAL BENGHAZI SCANDAL?
One need not be a nuanced observer of international affairs to understand that any weapons collection or distribution program centered inside the Benghazi mission could be a critical detail in determining the main motivation for the jihadist assault against the compound. As noted in the previous chapter, such activities may also go a long way toward explaining why the Benghazi mission was established so secretively and why there was not a large U.S. security presence protecting the compound since such a visible security contingent would draw attention to the existence of the facility.
Yet Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight Committee investigating the attacks, claimed in a radio interview that any involvement by the attacked U.S. Benghazi facility in arms trafficking “would have absolutely nothing to do with” the lack of adequate security at the compound where Stevens was murdered. Issa made the puzzling statement to radio host Hugh Hewitt after repeatedly deflecting questions about the alleged arms smuggling to al-Qaeda–linked Mid-East rebels based at the Benghazi compound.27
Issa claimed in the August 2013 radio interview that whether there was arms trafficking or not, it “would have absolutely nothing to do with whether or not you provide the security necessary for a long-time, loyal ambassador who was a specialist in the Middle East. I visited him in multiple Middle Eastern countries over his tenure. He was asking for more security. Asked about the reports of arms trafficking at the Benghazi compound, Issa told Hewitt, “It’s not one of the items that we know, although I’ve seen it on the internet, too.” Issa stressed his own investigation will only focus on why Stevens was denied sufficient security and why terrorists allegedly responsible for the attacks have still not been apprehended. (We’ll discuss how Obama may have thwarted the capture of some of the most wanted Benghazi terrorists in chapter 6.)
When Hewitt asked Issa again about the reports of arms trafficking to the rebels, the congressman deflected the investigative task: “There’s a specific [House Intelligence] committee chairman, Mike Rogers [R-MI], who deals with sources and methods and clandestine activities,” Issa stated. “Our investigation really is about two questions. When you deny an ambassador security he needs, are you denying it because of gross incompetence, in which case nobody’s been fired? You’ve got to ask why people aren’t being held accountable. Or was this a political aim to make it look like the war on terror was over, that it had been won once Osama bin Laden had been killed?” Those are quite narrow investigative topics.
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WHY NO SPECIAL FORCES OR AIR SUPPORT WERE SENT
One of the persistent questions plaguing the Obama administration and military command regarding the Benghazi episode is why no reinforcements were sent the night of the attacks. The government’s standard response is patently absurd. They say they thought the attack was over after the initial assault, so therefore there was just not enough time to send a rescue mission or air support. But how could they have known what the gunmen had planned or that the first wave was the only attack to be carried out? Further, after the initial assault Ambassador Chris Stevens went missing. The acting assumption of the decision makers that night was that Stevens had been kidnapped, as documented in chapter 4. So why were Special Forces not immediately deployed for a potential hostage situation?
The controversy surrounding the decision not to send reinforcements should have been injected with steroids after Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made a bombshell admission during open congressional testimony. Dempsey conceded that highly trained Special Forces were stationed just a few hours away from Benghazi on the night of the attack but were not told to deploy to Libya
His shocking concession on available assets was broadcast live on C-SPAN, emitted in a room full of reporters. Yet his statements, which open a whole new line of questioning on Benghazi, have until this publication gone almost universally unreported by the news media, with the exception of my own coverage on my WABC radio show and in my WND.com and KleinOnline reportage. Like so many other
aspects of the Benghazi story, Dempsey’s remarks require the trained ear of a reporter familiar with the minutiae of the attack to fully comprehend the ramifications of what he said.
Dempsey made the statements in question during testimony before the Senate Budget Committee on June 12, 2013. The vast majority of news coverage of his testimony that day focused on his statement that U.S. Special Forces “weren’t told to stand down” in response to the attack on the Benghazi mission. “A ‘stand down’ means don’t do anything,” he said. “They were told that the mission they were asked to perform was not in Benghazi, but was at Tripoli airport.”1
While those quotes led most headlines on the Dempsey remarks, the words were not the most newsworthy comments made by Dempsey at the hearing. His admission of highly trained Special Forces near Benghazi is far more important. In comments that may warrant further investigation, Dempsey also stated that on the night of the attack, command of the Special Forces – known as C-110, or the EUCOM CIF – was transferred from the military’s European command to AFRICOM, or the United States Africa Command. Dempsey did not state any reason for the strange transfer of command, nor could he provide a timeline for the transfer the night of the attack.
His remarks for the first time confirm an exclusive Fox News interview aired April 30 in which a special government operator, speaking on condition of anonymity, contradicted claims by the Obama administration and the State Department’s ARB report that there wasn’t enough time for military forces to deploy the night of the attack.
“I know for a fact that C-110, the EUCOM CIF, was doing a training exercise in… not in the region of North Africa, but in Europe,” the special operator told Fox News’ Adam Housley. “And they had the ability to act and to respond.”2 The operator told Fox News the C-110 forces were training in Croatia. The distance between Croatia’s capital, Zagreb, and Benghazi is about 925 miles. Fox News reported the forces were stationed just three and a half hours away.
“We had the ability to load out, get on birds and fly there, at a minimum stage,” the operator told Fox News. “C-110 had the ability to be there, in my opinion, in a matter of about four hours… four to six hours.”
The C-110 is a forty-man special ops force maintained for rapid response to emergencies – in other words, they are trained for deployment for events like the Benghazi attack.
At the Senate hearing, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) asked Dempsey about Housley’s report. “The EUCOM CIF was not in Europe but actually deployed on a training exercise in Croatia. Is that correct?”
Dempsey confirmed, “It was on a training mission in Bosnia, right.”
But Senator Johnson had asked if the forces were training in Croatia, not in Bosnia, and in later remarks, Dempsey said the forces were in Croatia. He neither explained the discrepancy nor even took note of it.3
Johnson then asked Dempsey if he agreed with Fox News that the C-110 could deploy in four to six hours.
“No, I would not agree to that timeline,” he responded. “The travel time alone would have been more than that. And that’s if they were sitting on the tarmac.”
Dempsey’s remarks are inaccurate. Even a large passenger jet can travel from the farthest point of Croatia to Benghazi in about two and a half hours or less. (Remember that in chapter 2 we speculated about what the C-110 may have been doing in Croatia, where there was reportedly a major procurement of weapons for transport to the Syrian rebels).
Dempsey further stated the command of the C-110, or the EUCOM CIF, was transferred the night of the attack, but he didn’t explain why.
“There was a point at which the CIF was transitioned over to AFRICOM” from European command, he said. He could not give a timeline of when the command was transferred, telling Johnson he would take the question for the record.
Asked whether the C-110 left Croatia that night, Dempsey stated, “They were told to begin preparations to leave Croatia and to return to their normal operating base” in Germany.
Why was a special force that exists for the very purpose of an emergency like Benghazi told in the middle of a massive attack on our U.S. mission to return to their normal operating base instead of immediately deploying to Libya? Dempsey’s statements confirmed the forces were not asked to deploy to Libya.
Why would the Pentagon deploy the C-110 to a training mission in Croatia during the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist atrocities – the one day jihadists worldwide are known to be the most motivated to carry out new attacks?
The C-110 Special Forces could have made a difference, according to the whistle-blower operator who spoke to Fox News. They would have been there before the second attack, he said. “They would have been there at a minimum to provide a quick reaction force that could facilitate their exfil out of the… problem situation. Nobody knew how it was going to develop. And you hear people and a whole bunch of advisers say, ‘We wouldn’t have sent them because the security was an unknown situation’.”4
It is instructive to note that in his testimony, former deputy Libyan ambassador and whistle-blower Gregory Hicks said he contacted AFRICOM the night of the attack but received no support. Stated Hicks, “At about 10:45 or 11:00 we confer, and I asked the defense attache who had been talking about AFRICOM and with the joint staff, ‘Is anything coming? Will they be sending us any help? Is there something out there?’ And he answered that, the nearest help was in Aviano, the nearest – where there were fighter planes. He said that it would take two to three hours for them to get onsite, but that there also were no tankers available for them to refuel. And I said, ‘Thank you very much,’ and we went on with our work.”5
Aviano, Italy, is 1,044 miles from Benghazi, about 100 miles farther than the Croatian capital.
Dempsey is not the only top military official to admit Special Forces were hours away. Gen. Carter Ham, the former head of U.S. forces in Africa, who had commanded those special forces after control was passed to him the night of the attack, confirmed the presence of the highly trained Special Forces. (Recall that Ham didn’t even know about the existence of the Benghazi annex, according to the Senate’s extensive 2014 investigation, as documented in chapter 1.)
Like Dempsey’s comments, Ham’s remarks were made in a public arena but were largely not covered by the news media. As I will show, Ham’s explanation for why the military assets stationed abroad were not utilized during the attack raises more questions than it answers about his decision making. In remarks at the Aspen Security Forum on July 19, 2013, Ham stated he first received word of the Benghazi attack from his command post in Stuttgart, Germany.6
The EUCOM CIF “happened to be in Croatia at the time,” Ham attested, “there on a six-hour notice, which is a pretty normal alert time.” He further conceded that the force had “all their aircraft with them.”
Asked why no outside forces were deployed to Benghazi during the attack, Ham responded that after the initial assault on the U.S. special mission, he believed the attack was finished. (This explanation, of course, has been contradicted by Benghazi witnesses, who described no lull in the fighting.)
Ham’s explanation may raise questions about his stated judgment that night, which turned out to be mortally off base regardless of whether there was no lull in the fighting. Even if he believed the fighting to be over after the initial assault (a contention that within itself is highly questionable since he could not have known what else the attackers had planned, as noted earlier in this chapter), after the initial attack on the U.S. mission, there was a second round of deadly attacks against the nearby CIA annex, the location to which the victims of the first assaults were evacuated. And remember, even after the initial assault on the U.S. mission, Stevens was still missing, as Ham stated, so the deployment of a hostage rescue team may have been appropriate.
Asked why no forces were deployed to Benghazi after the initial assault, Ham told the Aspen Institute, “In my mind at that point, we were no longer in a response to an attack. We were in a recovery.”
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That statement appears to be contradicted by his next sentence.
“And frankly, I thought, we were in a potential hostage rescue situation, because the ambassador was unaccounted for,” he said. So all the worst fears as a U.S. ambassador – being held hostage – were now being realized.
If he thought there was a hostage situation, wouldn’t the deployment of Special Forces have been appropriate?
Ham stated that all they knew after the first assault “was that there was some kind of attack. “We knew from the embassy in Tripoli how many people and who they were,” he said. “Pretty shortly thereafter we knew that the ambassador and Mr. [Sean] Smith were unaccounted for. But we didn’t know much more than that.”
Ham’s further statements also prompt questions as to how he could believe the attack was over after the initial assault on the U.S. Benghazi mission. Ham admitted earlier in his remarks that he possessed no intelligence indicating any specific terrorist attacks were planned for Benghazi on the night of the 9/11 anniversary. Therefore, if he knew there was a clear intelligence failure, how could he have known whether the initial assault was a stand-alone attack or part of a multipronged attack, as it turned out to be?
CIA TOLD TO STAND DOWN?
U.S. government agencies, including the CIA, have long denied the persistent claim that there was a “stand down” order during the attack. However, CIA agents on the ground in Benghazi testified to lawmakers that they were loaded into vehicles and ready to aid the besieged U.S. special mission on September 11, 2012, but were told by superiors to “wait,” a congressman privy to the testimony revealed. If accurate, this would contradict claims made by the State Department’s ARB report, which states that the response team one mile away in the CIA annex was “not delayed by orders from superiors.”7
