Did The Attack In Benghazi Disrupt A Major CIA Operation?
Editor’s Note:
There are a plethora of questions surrounding the alleged attack on US diplomatic staff in Benghazi. As more information is gathered, it is clear that the narrative being circulated by both mainstream and alternative media is rife with sharply contrasting statements which have raised more questions and exposed the necessity of a much deeper investigation.
New articles addressing these questions will be published over the next few days and weeks. The established dominant narrative and glaring contradictions will be challenged. I will publish reports that contribute to the list of questions we need to ask.
See >> BENGHAZI ATTACK AND AMBASSADOR STEVENS: WHY THE “SOUND OF SILENCE?
Alexandra
Libya 360°
The September 11 attack that claimed the life of the US ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans disrupted a major CIA operation in the North African country.
According to the New York Times, at least half of the nearly two dozen US personnel evacuated from the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi following the fatal attack on the US consulate and a secret “annex” were “CIA operatives and contractors.”
“It’s a catastrophic intelligence loss,” a US official who had been stationed in Libya told the Times. “We got our eyes poked out.”
The Times report describes the mission of the CIA station in Benghazi as one of “conducting surveillance and collecting information on an array of armed militant groups in and around the city,” including Ansar al-Sharia, an Islamist militia that has been linked by some to the September 11 attack, and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM.
It further states that the CIA “began building a meaningful but covert presence in Benghazi” within months of the February 2011 revolt in Benghazi that seized the city from forces loyal to the government of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Stevens himself was sent into the city in April of that year as the American envoy to the so-called “rebels” organized in the Benghazi-based National Transitional Council (NTC).
What the Times omits from its account of CIA activities in Benghazi, however, is that the agency was not merely conducting covert surveillance on the Islamists based in eastern Libya, but providing them with direct aid and coordinating their operations with those of the NATO air war launched to bring down the Gaddafi regime. In this sense, the September 11 attack that killed Stevens and the three other Americans was very much a case of the chickens coming home to roost.
There is every reason to believe that the robust CIA presence in Benghazi after Gaddafi’s fall also involved more than just surveillance. Libyan Islamists make up the largest single component of the “foreign fighters” who are playing an ever more dominant role in the US-backed sectarian civil war being waged in Syria with the aim of toppling the government of President Bashar al-Assad. According to some estimates, they comprise anywhere from 1,200 to 1,500 of approximately 3,500 fighters who have been infiltrated into Syria from as far away as Chechnya and Pakistan.
The CIA has also set up a center on the border between Turkey and Syria to oversee the funneling of arms, materiel, money and fighters into the Syrian civil war. Given the relationship established between the US agency and the Libyan Islamist militias during the US-NATO war to topple Gaddafi, it seems highly probable that the departure of such elements from eastern Libya and their infiltration into Syria would be coordinated by CIA personnel on both ends.
The government installed by the US-NATO war in the Libyan capital of Tripoli was apparently unaware of the size of the CIA presence in Benghazi, though the agency was supposedly cooperating with Libyan intelligence officials in monitoring the activities of the Islamists.
According to a report published September 21 in the Wall Street Journal, the attempt by Libyan government forces to coordinate a response to the militia assault on the US consulate and the “annex” used by the CIA was hindered by the refusal of American officials to provide the Libyans with GPS coordinates for the “annex,” which came under sustained assault and where two security contractors, former Navy Seals, were killed.
When the US and Libyan rescuers managed to evacuate some 30 Americans from the “annex” and bring them to the Benghazi airport, Libyan officials were stunned by the number of US personnel there and had to bring in a second plane to fly them all out.
“We were surprised by the numbers of Americans who were at the airport,” Libyan Deputy Prime Minister Mustafa Abushagour told the Journal. “We have no problem with intelligence sharing or gathering, but our sovereignty is also key,” he added.
In the aftermath of the attack in Benghazi, the question of security at US facilities has become a politically contested issue, with Republicans charging that the Obama administration had behaved irresponsibly in not having US military personnel protect Stevens and other personnel. They have also accused the administration of misleading the public by describing the assault on the two buildings as an outgrowth of a spontaneous demonstration over the anti-Islamic film that has triggered protests throughout the Muslim world, rather than a terrorist attack.
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard McKeon, a California Republican, last week declared the lack of military guards in Benghazi as “inconceivable” given an earlier attack on the Benghazi compound and other incidents of armed violence in the city.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton responded to the criticism by insisting that local security forces and a private security company that deployed Libyan guards had provided security “of the kind that we rely on in many places around the world.”
By late last week, administration officials had begun referring to the assault as a “terrorist attack.” With the US having deployed warships, drones and a 50-member US Marine rapid reaction force to Libya, this may be preparation for military retaliation.
In Libya itself, thousands of people marched in Benghazi on Friday against the militias. Crowds laid siege to the headquarters of Ansar al-Sharia and another Islamist militia, the Rafallah Sahati brigade, leading to at least four deaths.
The demonstrations clearly expressed public anger over the sway of the Islamists over Benghazi, with participants talking of the need for “a new revolution.”
Late on Saturday, the authorities in Tripoli responded to the popular frustration. The Libyan army chief, Yusseff Mangoush, and national assembly leader Mohamed Magrief announced that “illegitimate” militias would have 48 hours to disarm and disband, or the army would use force.
What this meant was far from clear, however, as Libyan President Mohamed el-Megaref called upon Libyan protesters to leave the “legitimate” militias alone. The president demanded that the demonstrators stop attacks on militias that are “under state legitimacy, and go home.”
The spokesman for the national assembly went further. According to the Wall Street Journal, the spokesman, Omar Humidan, declared that while the militias “have wrong practices… serve their own agenda and have their own ideology… striking these militias and demanding they disband immediately will have grave consequences.”
He continued: “These are the ones that preserve security. The state has a weak army and no way it can fill any vacuum resulting in eviction of these militias… The street is upset because of the militias and their infighting. We are worried of the fallout in the absence of those militias. The state must be given time.”
The militias in Benghazi are almost all offshoots of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a jihadist group that had ties to Al Qaeda and whose leaders were abducted and tortured by the CIA as part of Washington’s “global war on terror.” This is the case with Ansar al-Sharia, which is responsible for providing security at the Al Jala hospital in Benghazi, as well as the Rafallah Sahati brigade, which has also been deployed as a security force in the city, including during the national elections.
In the aftermath of last Friday’s demonstrations, the militias struck back, claiming that the popular repudiation of their policies had been stirred up by supporters of the former Gaddafi regime.
The Rafallah al-Sahati militia announced Monday that it had rounded up 113 people for alleged involvement in the protests. A leader of the group claimed that most of those detained were former members of the Gaddafi-era military or supporters of the deposed president.
Libyan state television reported Monday that on the outskirts of Benghazi the bodies of six Libyan soldiers were found shot, execution style, with their hands cuffed behind them. It was also reported that an army colonel had disappeared and was believed to have been kidnapped.
According to the Wall Street Journal: “Some media reports accused militiamen of taking revenge on Gaddafi-era veterans in the military; in contrast, a military spokesman, Ali al-Shakhli, blamed Gaddafi loyalists, saying they were trying to stir up trouble between the public and the militias.”
Benghazi attack on largest CIA regional operation, Steven’s death collateral
John Roble
Voice of Russia
While the US continues to debate and determine whom to blame and what “failures” led to the attack on the US Embassy compound and CIA safe house in Benghazi, nowhere is anyone considering the fact the event was the result of US meddling into the affairs of foreign states or the fact it was the US who is responsible for the death of Libya’s former leader.
The intelligence and security failure at the United States embassy compound in Benghazi Libya is being spun in so many different ways by the US press and politicians all with an agenda of their own to promote, and even with the deaths of 4 people involved, they are still refusing to look at the real root causes which led to the disaster.
Once again the US government has obfuscated, passed the buck and continued to propagate versions of the event that are contradictory and have little basis in fact, something obvious as their statements are continuously revealed to be false, and that is just from what has been put out there in the media.
What really happened in Benghazi was the result of long running US meddling in the affairs of sovereign nations and in particular in the Muslim world. An area they have shown time and time they have no clear understanding about and even less respect for. The attack in Benghazi was an attack on one of the CIA’s largest operations in the region. This is clear from the fact that Steven’s death was a secondary event in the attack on the compound. They attackers were after what was in the compound, not Stevens.
This was also underlined by the fact that over half of the US personnel evacuated from Benghazi were CIA, the sheer number of them surprising even to Libyan officials and the fact that a CIA safe house was also attacked at the same time.
The most conclusive evidence we have as to the nature of the attack was what was taken from the embassy compound. The UK’s Independent reported that: “missing papers from the consulate are said to list names of Libyans who are working with Americans… while some of the other documents are said to relate to oil contracts.” The same article states that the US knew 48 hours before the attack that American missions could be attacked but failed to do anything about it.
We have heard so many versions starting with the assessment that the incident in Benghazi was not a pre-planned organized attack by Hillary Clinton and her State Department, then “To this day, we do not have a complete picture.” and even statements that it may have been an inside job by rogue CIA Libyan agents and CIA paid Al-Qaeda terrorists, and everything in between, that it is clear they have no idea what happened and underlines their complete disconnect with the countries they are involved with.
The US media and the US government have completely missed the entire point and in their self-serving myopia and have failed to honor their dead with the truth and look at the real cause behind the Benghazi incident. Not the situational and technical causes but the real root cause.
Russia’s Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov may have been brutally honest in the wording of his assessment of the incident and was taken out of context but he was right in painting the event as something other than the US being an “innocent” victim. Something the West loves to do when the deaths of US citizens are involved in any event.
Sure the act was abhorrent, abysmal and in no way should be excused, but why is it that the world should be outraged every time something happens to Americans and every time they die at the hands of terrorists or insurgents or the people they themselves are trying to kill?
Why is it that Americans can invade countries at will, engaging in illegal aggressive wars, and the world has no recourse? And the people who fight to protect their homelands are treated as terrorists and criminals and allowed to be taken to Guantanamo and tortured when the invaders who are killing their families and friends and loved ones and stealing their resources and destroying their homes and cities are allowed to walk around with impunity and kill and desecrate and murder and bomb endlessly at will?
If we are to believe the official US version of 9-11, that some “primitive Muslim terrorists”, and I say that because they are portrayed that way by Americans not because I believe that, then we are to believe that these Al-Qaeda operatives, from some cave in Afghanistan or wherever, planned the most precise controlled demolition in the history of mankind and took the lives of just under 3,000 Americans. Then this was also blowback for meddling in the Muslim world.
Regardless of who planned the 9-11 attacks who benefitted is clear however as the event allowed the US to begin its endless resource war against “terror”, but the world has grown up, and the holes in the official story are now part of dinner table conversation the world over.
The US has been meddling in Muslim countries for decades, and while the US is holding hearings and passing the blame back and forth to everyone and everything under the sun, no one is even thinking that perhaps the blame lies with the US itself and with American arrogance and naivety.
The Clinton’s are concerned, as they know it is Hillary’s aggressive in-your-face-do-what-we-say-or-die stance that contributed to the attack, even going so far as to organize a legal team in case she is blamed, according to the Daily Caller citing author Ed Klein: “former President Bill Clinton is moving fast to develop a contingency plan for how his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, should react if Obama attempts to tie the Benghazi fiasco around her neck.”
The US really believes that they can go anywhere in the world and bring about regime change wherever they want, extra-judicially execute whoever they want, eliminate leaders like dogs in the street, torture anyone in the name of their own “security”, kidnap and disappear anyone at will, bomb whatever country dares to show independence, invade and confiscate the resources of any country they desire, control and punish any country in the world into submission and dictate to absolutely everyone what they can and can’t do. Sadly for the imperial power this is increasingly not the case.
Americans believe the world welcomes them and wants to be like them and travel to America and live in the land of milk and honey and breathe free, something totally untrue yet self gratifying as they sit in the fumes of their degenerate, ignorant, polluted and segregated police state.
That meddling for decades in the Muslim world, engaging in an undeclared endless war against Muslims, extra-judicially executing Muslim leaders and invading Muslim countries never crosses the minds of Americans as a reason for anti-American incidents shows a complete lack of understanding of the people of the world and how the world really works and a complete unbelievable pompous self-righteous arrogance.
Why is it that, in the eyes of Americans and their “allies”, the father of a little Muslim kid in Afghanistan is worth less than an American soldier? Why is it that when Gaddafi was killed like a dog in the street and Hillary Clinton said “We came, we saw, he died” the world was supposed to accept that, yet when Stevens was drug along the street like a dog, we are supposed to go mad with grief and pity and outrage?
Sure Stevens knew there was a security problem, he was working “in country” he had dealings with Al-Qaeda and the mercenaries and insurgents who helped the US to take control of Libya, and assassinate Muamar Gadaffi but no one wanted to listen. Those responsible are not programmed to listen to such news, they honestly believe that Americans are welcomed wherever they go as the bringers of democracy and freedom and anything that does not fit that misconception can not be.
If the US were truly loved as liberators and the bringers of democracy, as they would like the world to believe, some politicians even painting the picture of the Benghazi incident as a sign of success, then in reality they would not need armed guards and security at all.
Sure Benghazi was an intelligence failure but the failure was not with the “intelligence community” but with the simple intelligence to understand that if you kill and attack and humiliate a people long enough they are going to hit back.
True success in the world is when you do not have to use force and weapons to fulfill your goals and make yourself respected and loved and when you are able to walk the streets without guards and truly be called a friend.