Dark Forces: The Truth About What Happened in Benghazi (28 page)

You would have to be blind, deaf, and dumb not to see it.

What no one understood at the time was that the missile in the Facebook picture was one of the four hundred SA-7s transferred by Abdelhakim Belhaj through the smugglers’ ratline to Agadez in Niger, where they were retrofitted with CIA batteries and Egyptian gripstocks. Like those missiles, this one had the dark green tube from Qaddafi’s stockpile of Russian-made missiles, and telltale brown gripstock from Egypt. Yet another of these missiles turned up in the hands of an officer of the Free Syrian Army—the faction supposedly supported by the United States—three weeks after the Benghazi attacks.
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Taken together, I believe this is convincing evidence that the National Security Staff under the guidance of John Brennan, with possible assistance from the CIA or CIA contractors, engaged in an illegal covert action to arm the Syrian rebels through cutouts that included the transfer of surface-to-air missiles.

The game was on.

THE AUGUST 16 CABLE

Dylan Davies, the Blue Mountain employee who managed the unarmed security guards at the front gate of the Special Mission Compound in Benghazi, was not shy about giving advice. Ever since he had taken over the contract in the spring he had been warning the temporary State Department Regional Security Officers (TDY RSOs) about the 17th February Martyrs Brigade. They were the local militia that was supposed to provide the armed guards who patrolled the perimeter of the compound and provide a heavily armed quick reaction force (QRF) in the event of serious trouble.

Early on, he met with Renee Crowningshield, the newly arrived RSO, and gave her an earful. The 17th February Martyrs Brigade was “putting bullets in people’s heads,” he told her. “The fact that the militia who formed our QRF were out there killing on the streets made the situation at the [compound] seem all the more insane. There were even reports that 17th February militiamen were joining the ranks of the [Ansar al-] Shariah brigade,” he said.

Crowningshield, a former cop, agreed to put the Libyans through their paces to test their weapons skills. They failed miserably. Davies made pleas for “more boots on the ground” and a new QRF. Crowningshield agreed. “I get what you’re saying,” she told him. “I’ll be writing a full security survey on the Mission, and I’ll ask for the extra funding, manpower, and equipment we need.”
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That was in May.

Over the summer, Davies became more insistent. The 17th February militiamen had their own bungalow, just to the right of the main gate as you entered the compound. They could be seen lounging around in skintight yellow T-shirts, tight combat bottoms, and flip-flops, with an AK-47 slung carelessly over their shoulders. They couldn’t even strip down their weapons. And yet, they were the only ones besides the diplomatic security officers allowed to carry weapons inside the compound itself. The QRF has got to go, he insisted. “They need replacing with some proper, professional soldiers—like U.S. Marine Corps.”

After the Brits pulled out of Benghazi, Davies says the new TDY RSO told him he had sent a cable to the State Department recommending that the QRF be replaced with a twelve-man U.S. Marine Corps detachment. If true, that cable has not been released. General Martin Dempsey later told Congress there were no Marines in Tripoli or Benghazi because the U.S. diplomatic presence in Libya was “in transition between postconflict and prewhatever it was about to become.” Most U.S. diplomatic outposts operating under ostensibly normal conditions had a six-man Marine detachment whose main responsibility was to safeguard classified materials, destroying them in the event of a breach, with overall site security the responsibility of the host government, he explained.
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In late July, a new team of three TDY RSOs arrived in Benghazi, including David Ubben and Scott Wickland, who would still be at the compound on the night of the attack. On August 15, they sat down with Davies in the canteen of the Mission Compound to discuss the QRF at length. The lead RSO was drafting an email for Ambassador Stevens on security at the compound and asked Davies for his input. “Every RSO before you has asked for more manpower and we’ve been denied,” Davies began. “So, presumably that’s not going to change. If you can’t get more men, your only alternative is more firepower. So, imagine you site a .50 caliber on top of Villa C [the VIP villa], mounted on a tripod. From there you can hit the front gate, but also swivel it around to hit the rear. A .50-cal will make even your more die-hard jihadi stop and think twice about trying to get in.”

The RSO argued that Washington would never go for it. “Too aggressive,” he said. But he was worried. How would they stop a full frontal assault? “Like I said, you need more men or a .50-cal. Without one or the other, you’re buggered,” Davies said.

The RSO said he would put that in his email to Ambassador Stevens and his bosses back at State. “I’ll warn them that if the compound comes under a sustained, organized attack it will be overrun,” he said.
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Davies’ credibility was challenged after he gave an interview to CBS
60 Minutes
in October 2013, where apparently out of guilt he exaggerated his role in defending the Special Mission Compound and claimed to have personally discovered the ambassador’s body in a local hospital. But his account of the August 15 security review in Benghazi and the security concerns he raised in the preceding months has been corroborated by multiple sources, including a review of the classified record by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. And that is why the national media jumped all over him for the fabrications in the
60 Minutes
interview: He was yet another inconvenient witness to the dereliction of duty of Hillary Clinton’s State Department.

In a separate book on the Benghazi attacks, former diplomatic security agent Fred Burton recounted in nearly identical terms the emergency meeting that took place on August 15 in the Special Mission Compound cantina. “The exchanges at the meeting were direct and ominously honest,” he wrote. “The TDY RSO expressed his concerns that the DS contingent would be unable to defend the post if it was subjected to a coordinated and serious terrorist attack. They cited a lack of manpower, insufficient physical security infrastructure, limited weapons systems at their disposal, and the lack of
any
reliable host-nation support,” starting with the QRF. In an email back to Stevens in Tripoli, the TDY RSO “emphatically stated that he did not believe the mission could be adequately defended.”
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With that email in hand, Ambassador Stevens convoked an emergency security meeting on August 16, 2012, at the CIA Annex in Tripoli. That meeting was “an extraordinary, not an ordinary event,” commented Representative Mike McCaul, one of several House Republican committee chairs investigating the Benghazi attacks. The latest threat information provided by the CIA chief of base in Benghazi and the station chief in Tripoli convinced the ambassador that the Special Mission Compound in Benghazi was “not prepared to withstand a coordinated attack” and urgently needed additional security.

Stevens formalized these findings in a classified cable he fired off to Washington the same day. The CIA “briefed the [Emergency Action Committee] on the location of approximately ten Islamist militias and AQ training camps within Benghazi,” he wrote. All present “expressed concerns with the lack of host nation security to support the U.S. Mission.” A CIA officer in Benghazi “expressed concerns with the Post’s relationship with [the 17th February Brigade], particularly in light of some of the actions taken by the brigade’s subsidiary members,” while the TDY RSO “expressed concerns with the ability to defend Post in the event of a coordinated attack due to limited manpower, security measures, weapons capabilities, host nation support, and the overall size of the compound.”
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The key decision maker, who received all of Stevens’ requests for additional security, was Undersecretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy. When asked about the still classified August 16 cable, he made the incredible claim that he couldn’t provide additional security because Stevens hadn’t made clear what he needed.

Here is his exchange with Representative McCaul:

M
C
CAUL:
Did you receive that cable, the August 16th cable?

KENNEDY:
Yes, sir, I did. And if I might—

M
C
CAUL:
I have limited time. Did you respond in the affirmative or did you decline that request?

KENNEDY:
This cable, I did not—we did not decline the request.

M
C
CAUL:
Was additional security provided on that day, weeks before the September 11th attack?

KENNEDY:
The cable, sir, and I have a copy in front of me, it closes with, “U.S. Mission Benghazi will submit request to U.S. Embassy Tripoli for additional security upgrades and staffing needs.” We never received that additional request. So, there was no way I could respond to a request that had not yet been submitted.

M
C
CAUL:
Do you know if Secretary Clinton saw this cable?

KENNEDY:
I do not believe so.
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On August 20, the embassy’s weekly report on developments in Benghazi quoted a well-known women’s rights activist, Wafa Bugaighis, to illustrate the worsening security situation. “For the first time since the revolution, I am scared,” she told political officer Eric Gaudiosi, after being detained for attending an international conference in Benghazi. For their part, United Nations officials in Benghazi believed that the Supreme Security Council—the only official force imposing any semblance of law and order—was “fading away” in Benghazi, unwilling to take on “anyone with powerful patrons or from powerful tribes.”
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On August 22, the TDY RSO in Benghazi sent the request to Tripoli that Kennedy referred to in the exchange quoted above. It bore the title, “Security Requests for U.S. Mission Benghazi,” and included specific requirements for physical security upgrades, new equipment, and additional manpower.
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If Undersecretary Kennedy pretended he never saw that request, he simply wasn’t paying attention. Just five days later, on August 27, the State Department issued an updated travel warning on Libya, urging U.S. citizens to stay away because “inter-militia conflict can erupt at any time or any place.”
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The flurry of reports, requests, proposals, and desperate cries for help was not enough to get Washington’s attention. The message from the State Department bosses—including Secretary Hillary Clinton—to our diplomats and warriors in Libya was clear: You’re on your own.

OUT OF CONTROL

On the same day that Stevens sent the secret cable begging yet again for additional security in Benghazi, a U.S. UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan. My sources inside U.S. Special Forces command say it was the second Stinger hit in less than a month. Seven U.S. soldiers were killed—including two Navy SEALs and a Navy explosives expert—as well as three Afghan troops and an Afghan interpreter. The attack occurred in Shah Wali Kot, a rural area outside of Kandahar known as a Taliban stronghold.

U.S. Army Major Martyn Crighton, a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force Joint Command in Kabul, said that the crash was under investigation but there was “no operational reporting” indicating enemy fire had brought down the aircraft.
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The Black Hawk went down “in the heart of Injun territory,” so the search-and-rescue team hastily recovered the bodies and got out, leaving the aircraft behind, my sources report. The EOD tech that briefly inspected the charred wreckage was unable to make a definitive determination on the cause of the crash, but the flight logs showed that the aircraft had been flying well above the range of RPG fire when it went down, sources with access to the logs told me.

The administration “cannot afford to let the public or Congress know they put Stingers in the hands of the Taliban,” a senior active- duty Special Operations officer told me. He said foreign intelligence sources reported that between fifty to sixty Stingers had reached the Taliban since June 2012, plus another two hundred or more SA-24s, but that U.S. forces were not actively looking for them. “We are too busy buying Mi-17s from Russia for the Afghans and leaving with our tail between our legs and claiming victory,” this source said.
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Ten days later, Syrian rebels shot down a government military helicopter over the capital, Damascus. After an hour of firing at it futilely with AK-47s and anti-aircraft artillery, someone arrived with a more effective weapon.

Not long after this, ABC News caught up with former Navy SEAL Glen Doherty in Southern California, where he lived when not working on contract to MVM, a Beltway security firm that provided highly trained former Special Forces soldiers as security guards to the CIA and to other government agencies. According to the ABC News report, which only appeared after he was killed in Benghazi, Doherty said he was “working with the State Department on an intelligence mission to round up dangerous weapons” leftover from the Qaddafi regime.

He went on to explain that he “traveled throughout Libya chasing reports of the weapons and, once they were found, his team would destroy them on the spot by bashing them with hammers or repeatedly running them over with their vehicles.” It was a desperate mission, and every day he and his colleagues at the CIA Annex in Tripoli were losing ground, as more and more missiles leaked out of the country into the hands of al Qaeda and their allies in Mali, Niger, Sudan, Gaza, and, now, Afghanistan.
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After inaugurating a new U.S. consular office in Tripoli on August 26, Ambassador Stevens took some time off to meet with friends in Sweden. He also traveled to Austria and Germany, where he met with European oil executives interested in investing in Libya but afraid of the security situation.