by Aaron Klein
Small-scale camps grew out of training areas created last year by militias fighting Libyan government security forces. After the government fell, these compounds continued to churn out fighters trained in marksmanship and explosives, American officials said.
Ansar al-Shariah, a local militant group some of whose members had ties to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, a local Qaeda affiliate, operated a militant training camp whose location was well known to Benghazi residents. On the Friday after the attack, demonstrators overran it.
American intelligence agencies had provided the administration with reports for much of the past year warning that the Libyan government was weakening and had little control over the militias, including Ansar al-Shariah.8
Things only get worse for Kirkpatrick. In his distorted “A Deadly Mix in Benghazi,” the Times reporter claims the attacks were largely not premeditated, although again he does allow that some parts of the assault were loosely planned that day. “Surveillance of the American compound appears to have been underway at least 12 hours before the assault started,” reported Kirkpatrick in his rewrite of history. “The violence, though, also had spontaneous elements. Anger at the video motivated the initial attack.”
The journalist continued: “Looters and arsonists, without any sign of a plan, were the ones who ravaged the compound after the initial attack, according to more than a dozen Libyan witnesses as well as many American officials who have viewed the footage from security cameras.”9
Both of Kirkpatrick’s major contentions – that al-Qaeda was not involved and that the attack was largely not premeditated – are contradicted by a piece he cowrote with Steven Lee Myers on September 12, 2012, titled “Libya Attack Brings Challenges for U.S.”10 That’s right. Kirkpatrick is so committed to his revisionist narrative he is willing to basically repudiate his own reporting without batting an eyebrow.
The article says: “Islamist militants armed with antiaircraft weapons and rocket-propelled grenades stormed a lightly defended United States diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.” The two writers added, “The assailants seemed organized, well trained and heavily armed, and they appeared to have at least some level of advance planning.” Further contrasting with Kirkpatrick’s later piece, the article went on to quote Col. Wolfgang Pusztai, Austria’s former defense attaché to Libya, as saying he believed the attack “was ‘deliberately planned and executed’ by about a core group of 30 to 40 assailants who were ‘well trained and organized.’”11
The “assault was led by a brigade of Islamist fighters known as Ansar al-Sharia, or the Supporters of Islamic Law,” the writers informed. “Brigade members emphasized at the time that they were not acting alone.” Ansar al-Sharia, as you well know by now, is an al-Qaeda–linked group.
Kirkpatrick and Myers continued: “On Wednesday, perhaps apprehensive over Mr. Stevens’ death, the brigade said in a statement that its supporters ‘were not officially involved or were not ordered to be involved’ in the attack.
“At the same time, the brigade praised those who protested as ‘the best of the best’ of the Libyan people and supported their response to the video ‘in the strongest possible terms.’”
More al-Qaeda and organized extremist connections to the Benghazi attack were reported by the Daily Beast, which confirmed an October 2012 Wall Street Journal report that fighters affiliated with the Egypt-based, al-Qaeda–linked Jamal Network group participated in the Benghazi attack.12 Later on, the eighty-five-page Senate report on the Benghazi attacks, released January 2014, would confirm Jamal’s involvement.13
Kirkpatrick’s claim that the attacks were mostly not premeditated doesn’t fit with the State ARB investigation into Benghazi, either. The ARB described a well-orchestrated attack with militants who seemingly had specific knowledge of the compound. The State investigation focused on “men armed with AK rifles” who “started to destroy the living room contents and then approached the safe area gate and started banging on it.”14
In another detail bespeaking a plan, the ARB stated that the intruders smoked up Villa C, likely to make breathing so difficult that anyone inside the safe room where Ambassador Chris Stevens was holed up would need to come out.15
It may be further difficult for keen observers to swallow the Times’ claim of unplanned looters in light of events that demonstrated the attackers knew the location of the nearby CIA annex or that they set up checkpoints, as they did, to ensure against the escape by Americans inside the special mission. In fact, as you may recall from chapter 4, they seemed to know where everything was, right down to the gasoline, the generators – and the precise location of Stevens’ safe room.
Now let’s get to Kirkpatrick’s clownish claim that the Benghazi attacks were motivated by an anti-Muhammad film. First, the storyline simply doesn’t jibe with an independent investigation that reportedly found no mention of the film on social media in Libya in the three days leading up to the attack. Agincourt Solutions, the leading social media monitoring firm, reviewed more than four thousand postings and found that the first reference to the film was not detected on social media until the day after the attack.16
The Times’ claim of popular protests about the Muhammad film doesn’t hold up to logic. The U.S. special mission was not a permanent facility, nor was its existence widely known by the public in Libya. Indeed, the State Department’s ARB report on the Benghazi attack itself documented the facility was set up secretively and without the knowledge of the new Libyan government.
Kirkpatrick may not have realized it, but he undermined his own claims about the Muhammad film later in the article, where he may have inadvertently alluded to some of the real motivation for the attackers. Interestingly, Kirkpatrick’s article seeks to link the Benghazi attack to protests planned outside the U.S. embassy in Cairo. Reads the Times piece: “[O]n Sept. 8, a popular Islamist preacher lit the fuse by screening a clip of the video on the ultraconservative Egyptian satellite channel El Nas. American diplomats in Cairo raised the alarm in Washington about a growing backlash, including calls for a protest outside their embassy.”17
However, as we extensively covered in chapter 5, the Cairo protest on September 11 was announced days in advance as part of a movement to free the so-called blind sheikh, Omar Abdel-Rahman, held in the United States over the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The State Department’s ARB report stated that the “Omar Abdurrahman group” was involved in previous attacks against diplomatic facilities in Benghazi.18 Kirkpatrick failed to report that the anti-U.S. protest movement outside the Cairo embassy was a long-term project about freeing Rahman.
On the day of the September 11, 2012, protests in Cairo, CNN’s Nic Robertson interviewed Rahman’s son, who described the protest as being about freeing his father. No Muhammad film was mentioned. A big banner calling for Rahman’s release can be seen as Robertson walked to the embassy protests.
ASSOCIATED PRESS BATTLES REUTERS
The case study of Kirkpatrick is simply the tip of the iceberg. There are legitimate questions about a Reuters article penned in the immediate aftermath of the jihadist attack against the U.S. mission in Benghazi.
Reads the September 12, 2012, Reuters report: “Accounts from Libyan and U.S. officials, and from locals who watched what began as a protest on Tuesday against a crudely made American film that insults the Prophet Mohammad spiral into violence and a military-style assault on U.S. troops, point to a series of unfortunate choices amid the confusion and fear.” The article then quotes one protester – identified only as “a 17-year-old student named Hamam” – as saying, “When we had heard that there was a film that was insulting to the Prophet, we, as members of the public, and not as militia brigades, we came to the consulate here to protest and hold a small demonstration.”19
“Hamam” further claimed that a rumor had spread that a protester had been wounded by firing from inside the U.S. mission, and so Hamam and many others “went off to retrieve guns” which, Reuters reported, “like many Libyans, the
y keep at home for security.”
In other words, Reuters expects us to believe a bunch of local Libyan civilian protesters congregated outside the mission to protest an obscure film, and then, after a rumor had spread about an injured protester, these locals went home to retrieve weapons, only to return as expert warriors with inside knowledge of the compound. They then established armed and manned checkpoints around the U.S. mission, engaged in hours of fierce gun battles, overran the compound, knew about the existence of a secretive CIA annex, and even had mortars prepared to be fired at the second U.S. facility.
The news agency further reported: “Some of those who took part in the initial demonstration in Benghazi insisted it was a spontaneous, unplanned public protest which had begun relatively peacefully. Anger over the film also saw an unruly protest at the U.S. embassy across the Egyptian border in Cairo on Tuesday evening, with protesters scaling the walls.” Of course, as noted both in this chapter and earlier in this book, the Cairo protests showed no signs of being about the film.
The version of events presented by Reuters would later be somewhat contradicted by an October 27, 2012, Associated Press report also based on a firsthand witness account. Reports the AP:
It began around nightfall on Sept. 11 with around 150 bearded gunmen, some wearing the Afghan-style tunics favored by Islamic militants, sealing off the streets leading to the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. They set up roadblocks with pick-up trucks mounted with heavy machine guns, according to witnesses.
The trucks bore the logo of Ansar al-Shariah, a powerful local group of Islamist militants who worked with the municipal government to manage security in Benghazi, the main city in eastern Libya and birthplace of the uprising last year that ousted Moammar Gadhafi after a 42-year dictatorship.
Clearly contradicting the Reuters witness, the AP reported, “There was no sign of a spontaneous protest against an American-made movie denigrating Islam’s Prophet Muhammad. But a lawyer passing by the scene said he saw the militants gathering around 20 youths from nearby to chant against the film. Within an hour or so, the assault began, guns blazing as the militants blasted into the compound.”20
Whom to believe? Reuters’ claim of a “spontaneous, unplanned public protest” over an anti-Muhammad film, or the AP’s report that there was “no sign of a spontaneous protest” against the obscure movie?
THE REAL BENGHAZI HOAX
Did you know the Benghazi controversy is actually a made-up scandal, generated out of whole cloth by Republicans for partisan gain? This is the central theme of a recent e-book by David Brock, founder of the controversial, George Soros–funded, progressive activist organization Media Matters for America. Brock seems to believe it is illegitimate to ask questions about the State Department’s repeated refusal to secure the U.S. special mission, the Obama administration’s talking point fabrications, or why Special Forces were not deployed during the assault. These and other topics are deceptively dealt with in Brock’s The Benghazi Hoax, coauthored with Media Matters executive Ari Rabin-Havt. I would not waste ink on Brock’s fantastical farce except that some members of the news media actually took the e-book tripe seriously.
Brock is a known Hillary Clinton associate, so it’s not surprising to read that he used the e-book to absolve Clinton of wrongdoing related to the September 11, 2012, attack. I invite Brock to review chapter 7 of this book, aptly titled, which thoroughly documents Clinton’s central role in the Benghazi scandal. Progressive activist Brock further hails the State Department’s Accountability Review Board report on Benghazi as thorough, fair, and accurate, despite its major reported flaws. “The Obama administration had done exactly what any citizen would expect of its government – investigated an overseas security breach in depth,”21 Brock wrote. He praised ARB authors former ambassador Thomas Pickering and retired admiral Mike Mullen as “two figures with resumes beyond reproach.”22
Brock, of course, did not report that Pickering has largely unreported ties to the revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa. Pickering is linked primarily through his role as a member of the small board of the International Crisis Group, or ICG, one of the main proponents of the international “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine.23 The doctrine is the very military protocol used to justify the NATO bombing campaign that brought down Moammar Gaddafi’s regime in Libya.
With no previous military, terrorism, or international news reporting experience to speak of, newfound national security expert Brock next disputed the claim that highly trained Special Forces were available and could have been deployed in time to make a difference in the September 11, 2012, attack. Brock may want to have a brief conversation with Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. We reported in chapter 3 that Dempsey admitted 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. There are major questions about why this special force, known as the C-110 or the EUCOM CIF, was not immediately ordered to Libya, especially since the assumption for several hours that night was that our U.S. ambassador had been kidnapped.
Brock and cohort Rabin-Havt did not bother to raise the many questions prompted by Dempsey’s testimony, including an admission to the highly unusual move of changing command of the Special Forces in the middle of the Benghazi attack. Instead, the dynamic Media Matters duo attempted to refute the exclusive Fox News interview discussed in chapter 3, in which an unnamed military special ops member, with face and voice disguised, contradicted Obama administration and ARB claims that there wasn’t enough time for military forces to deploy the night of the attack. “It was a compelling argument, especially for a typical news consumer who possesses only a casual knowledge of military affairs,” they wrote.24
“Military experts, however, dismissed these notions,” they contend. The authors then quoted former defense secretary Robert Gates stating that the suggestion the military could have responded in time was based on “sort of a cartoonish impression of military capabilities and military forces.”25
Brock and Rabin-Ravt further quoted former secretary of defense Leon Panetta arguing in February 2013 that a military response during the attack was unfeasible. Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee: “The reason simply is because armed UAVs, AC-130 gunships or fixed-wing fighters, with the associated tanking, you’ve got to provide air refueling abilities; you’ve got to arm all the weapons before you put them on the planes; targeting and support facilities, were not in the vicinity of Libya. And because of the distance, it would have taken at least nine to 12 hours, if not more, to deploy these forces to Benghazi.”26
Brock and Rabin-Ravt entirely ignore the news-making remarks of Dempsey, who not only conceded that the C-110 Special Forces were stationed just a few hours away but also stated that command of the forces was transferred from the military’s European command to AFRICOM, or the United States Africa Command, during the attack, a move that may warrant further investigation. Dempsey did not give any reason for the strange transfer of command, nor could he provide a timeline for the transfer the night of the attack.
Meanwhile, Brock and Rabin-Ravt seem to have been caught in a talking points scandal of their own. The industrious activists promote as fact the disputed claim that White House talking points on the Benghazi attack were edited to preserve a criminal investigation. Brock and Rabin-Havt do not cite any evidence for their claim about the talking points editing, and they fail to inform readers of the forty-six-page House Republican report that purports to have discovered another reason for scrubbing the talking points of references to terrorism: protecting the State Department’s reputation (see chapter 8).27 In other words, Brock and Rabin-Ravt are contradicted by lawmakers who had exclusive access to witnesses, classified documents, and intelligence reports.
Brock and Rabin-Ravt wrote of the talking points editing scandal:
Over the next 24 hours, a set of talking points was drafted by the CIA’s Office of Terrorism Analysis, and then alte
red multiple times through an interagency process involving the State Department, the White House, and others. In the end, much of the intelligence agency’s specifics about the suspected perpetrators of the attack were removed in order to preserve the criminal investigation.28
The authors did not provide any reference for their claim. In fact, their sole argument rests on the integrity of then CIA director David Petraeus, who reportedly helped oversee the drafting of the talking-points document. “Petraeus would have had little to gain from misleading Congress, given both his track record of political independence and the enormous respect that he had from members of both parties,” wrote Brock and Rabin-Havt.29
However, Petraeus might have had good reason to edit the talking points. As detailed in chapter 7, he was complicit with Hillary Clinton in advocating a plan to arm the Syrian rebels – a plan White House officials claim to have rejected. It seems the real hoax perpetuated here is the publication of Brock’s e-book, The Benghazi Hoax.
10
FROM BENGHAZI TO…THE BOSTON BOMBING?
The real Benghazi story extends far beyond the deadly attacks on a U.S. special mission and CIA annex. We are today feeling the ramifications of the U.S.-coordinated arms shipments and vast supplies of aid and other support to the jihadist-led Mid-East rebels, with conflicts being fueled from Syria to Egypt to Israel to Mali to Algeria. Militants behind the Benghazi attacks may be linked to the Boston Marathon bombing and to the recent hijacking of an Algerian gas complex, targeting Westerners. In backing the rebels in Libya and later in Syria, the Obama administration may have unwittingly helped to create an al-Qaeda–allied army of thousands of highly motivated, well-trained gunmen. Besides wreaking havoc in the Middle East and Africa, these hard-line Islamists have been rampantly persecuting Middle Eastern and African Christians and other minorities. Among the ranks of these Islamists are Americans, Australians, and Europeans who could return home to carry out domestic terrorist attacks.
