JMS's Chronology of the Bengazi Raid and "cover-up"

[Jumbo]

Here's something I almost posted late last night when there were only 3 pages, after some reported posts from this thread, but decided not to:

There a couple folks working closer to having a mod problem, but the OP is not one at this point. The only two people close to crossing lines rules-wise, or even near any trolling activity in any way, are those that would be most surprised if they were nailed for it (and one's user notes suggests he should be punted at any time anyway). My suggestion (and you could take this to any of the political treads as we get close to the day) settle down, and discuss the thread topic. I don't care what "side" you're on here but either get a clue or move on.

P.S. I am nearing the out-of-tolerance point again in here with all the partisan silliness, occasional outright idiocy, and what's becoming in more than one case plain old troll crap (and I don't refer to JMS, Thiebear) as we ramp up to the last week of the Carnivale Fantastique. And I am not thinking in terms of "a week" if I hit a button.

I'm only posting it now to demonstrate that fairly regularly, one of us will decide to just let people so inclined to just go on be as big an igwad as they want on their topic du jour unless it gets real ugly.

[JMS]

Here's something I almost posted late last night when there were only 3 pages, after some reported posts from this thread, but decided not to:




I'm only posting it now to demonstrate that fairly regularly, one of us will decide to just let people so inclined to just go on be as big an igwad as they want on their topic du jour unless it gets real ugly.

I must say that I felt the breeze of a hammer going by my head when I read that post.

[Fergasun]

I'm sorry, but it is despicable how political parties try to push the death of others in such a way to gain maximum political advantage from it. It makes me sick. I can't claim that the Democrats don't pull this type of BS either. No matter what the Obama administration does or did at the time, it was the wrong move. It's pretty easy to sit back and arm-chair say... "oh yeah, well I wouldn't have done A, B, C and our guys could have made it home..." especially since we don't know what the situation is like. If we lose a quick response helicopter due to something like an RPG attack... yeah, that would be so much better. That "worse than Watergate" talking point... oh man.. hook line and sinker! It's clear the demographics of voter they are trying to get there (hint* hint* there's a large population that doesn't care about Watergate). Worse than the Benjamin Harrison scandal!

My perception about GOP politicians is that they gladly will trade the death of an American (or 4) if it helps than gain the vote of a thousand Americans. Let's not forget that the real bad guys in this case are the 150 who coordinated and planned the actual attack which is the actual trigger for why this all happened (unless you believe the reason the White House told everyone to stand down is because Obama himself was pulling the trigger and firing the mortars on our own consulate).

[Madison Redskin]

I must say that I felt the breeze of a hammer going by my head when I read that post.

You might have felt the breeze of it going by your head, but that's probably because you're standing near me. I watched it stop 1 mm from my forehead.

[twa]

JMS, the rescue party was only 7+3 Libyan volunteers w/o heavy weapons, much easier to defend to begin with.
and of course not to get caught with your pants down

[visionary]

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/

Congress wants answers on newly found Benghazi documents

The House Oversight Committee is demanding answers from the State Department regarding newly discovered documents found in the wreckage of the U.S. mission in Benghazi that reveal U.S. diplomats noticed a Libyan police officer conducting surveillance of the compound the morning before the Sept. 11 attack and that the Benghazi police department had not responded to requests for more security during the visit of Ambassador Chris Stevens, who died in the attack that night.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) and National Security Subcommittee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), who have been leading a congressional investigation into the security failures surrounding the attack, fired off a letter today to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton regarding the new revelations, obtained by The Cable.

The congressmen are demanding to know whether the Benghazi mission's concerns about Libyan police surveillance and their unanswered requests for more Libyan government security assistance were ever sent to Washington, and if so, why the State Department didn't reveal that before now.

"These documents paint a disturbing picture indicating that elements of the Libyan government might have been complicit in the September 11, 2012 attack on the compound and the murder of four Americans. It also reiterates the fact that the U.S. government may have had evidence indicating that the attack was not a spontaneous event but rather a preplanned terrorist attack that included prior surveillance of the compound as a target," Issa and Chaffetz wrote.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...sj_share_tweet

CIA Takes Heat for Role in Libya

When the bodies of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans killed in Benghazi, Libya, arrived at Andrews Air Force Base after the Sept. 11 attack, they were greeted by the president, the vice president and the secretaries of state and defense. Conspicuously absent was CIA Director David Petraeus.

Officials close to Mr. Petraeus say he stayed away in an effort to conceal the agency's role in collecting intelligence and providing security in Benghazi. Two of the four men who died that day, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, were former Navy SEAL commandos who were publicly identified as State Department....

From the WSJ article:

https://twitter.com/blakehounshell

"Of the more than 30 American officials evacuated from Benghazi following the deadly assault, only seven worked for the State Department."
9:46 PM

"Nearly all the rest worked for the CIA, under diplomatic cover, which was a principal purpose of the consulate, these officials said."
9:46 PM

[Predicto]

Visionary appears to be on to something. This is starting to look like a CIA problem, not a State Department snafu.

(Reuters) - CIA officials on the ground in Libya dispatched security forces to the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi within 25 minutes and made other key decisions about how to respond to the waves of attacks on U.S. installations on September 11, a senior American intelligence official said on Thursday.

Officials in Washington monitored events through message traffic and a hovering U.S. military drone but did not interfere with or reject requests for help from officials in the line of fire, the official said.

The information emerged as officials made available on Thursday a timeline chronicling the U.S. response to the Benghazi attacks in which Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, and three other American officials died. The material appears to refute claims by critics that officials in Washington delayed sending help to the besieged personnel.

The handling of the attack by the Obama administration and CIA has come under sharp criticism by supporters of Republican challenger Mitt Romney during the campaign ahead of the presidential election on November 6.

The senior intelligence official said that CIA officers in Benghazi, "responded to the situation on the night of 11 and 12 September as quickly and as effectively as possible.

"The security officers in particular were genuine heroes. They quickly tried to rally additional local support and heavier weapons, and when that could not be accomplished within minutes, they still moved in and put their own lives on the line to save their comrades," the official said.

"At every level in the chain of command, from the senior officers in Libya to the most senior officials in Washington, everyone was fully engaged in trying to provide whatever help they could," the official said.

"There was no second-guessing those decisions being made on the ground, by people at every U.S. organization that could play a role in assisting those in danger. There were no orders to anybody to stand down in providing support," the official added.

read more at http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...8A102T20121102

[visionary]

Visionary appears to be on to something. This is starting to look like a CIA problem, not a State Department snafu.



read more at http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...8A102T20121102

Well I can't really take credit for that perspective.
I think some of the media folks have been looking into this lately, I remember some speculations about it in the Post a few weeks back.
I have been wondering about CIA's role in this though since we first learned about the safehouse a day or two after 9/11 and wondered who knew about it.
But I've been fairly distracted by all the state department stuff, so I didn't think about it too much.

[JMS]

JMS, the rescue party was only 7+3 Libyan volunteers w/o heavy weapons, much easier to defend to begin with.
and of course not to get caught with your pants down

That's what I thoujght too. The two former seals who were CIA contractors had eight guys in their party. I originally thought that they were the releif colum which got to town at after 1 am. But TheBear pointed outg that the time line doesn't fit as we have other creditable reports that the two former seals who died had helped to evacuate the consulate to the CIA annex prior to the CIA annex coming under attack. An attack which eventually took the lives of the two former seals..

If they had come from Tripoli as the WSJ timeline indicates a relief party did reach the annex after 1am and before the seals died, If the seals were part of that colum, then they never would have gone to the consulate as all the people were at the Annex by 1:30 am. So I was thinking the relief from Tripoli was a different group, size as of yet undetermined.

But yeah the seals had 8 guys in their party.

[Special K]

Clearly, the only real solution to this is to have Obama hand over his birth certificate, Mitt Romney his tax returns, Ron Paul his medical marijuana card, Paul Ryan his fitness routine and admission that his hot body is due to performance enhancing drugs, and a full-scale civil war-like reenactment of the Libya attack. Using real terrorists. This needs to be as authentic as possible to settle once and for all, any politcal pandering demonstrated by politicians during election season.

That's all I ask for.

So tell me, those who embrace the view that Federal government should be smaller and we should all just fend for ourselves, how many of you and yours were affected by this storm or if you would be affected by a future storm where you lose everything and yet you don't expect the Federal government to come in and get basic services like power, sewage, running water, roads, etc. up and running. Or are the states and individuals just supposed to suck it up and do everything themselves?

As someone who worked for FEMA as a disaster specialist, I think I have pretty good insight about the organization. First of all, I think a lot of people misunderstand what FEMA realistically does in disasters. FEMA is basically a big bank. The organization was not, and still is not intended to be a primary first responder. This is a major misconception held by many people...

Personally, I think the agency needs to be WAY downsized and more of the disater relief burden placed on the states and individuals. The numer one rule of disaster management is that management starts at the LOCAL level. That's because response is faster and more efficient. The larger the entity involved in the situation, the less efficent it becomes. That is a fact, and one I can substantiate, firsthand.

Furthermore, yes, some victims do have to pay for their own repairs. If you live in a designated flood plain, you have to have flood insurance (not just State Farm Homeowners) to receive a dime from FEMA. I fully agree with that. Make sure your **** is insured people, particularly if you live in a high risk area. I'm not saying everyone affected by the disaster doesn't have their stuff insured, but it is really disconcerting to witness the number of people who haven't taken any preventative disaster precautions, lose it all, and expect the federal government step in and cover everything.

For the record, I'm not saying FEMA needs to be abolished, but I've dealt with that agency long enough to understand major changes need to be made. FEMA can't keep getting bailed out by the government everytime a disaster hits and millions of dollars are wasted due to inefficiency. Not with the debt we are presently drowning in...

[JMS]

Visionary appears to be on to something. This is starting to look like a CIA problem, not a State Department snafu.



read more at http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...8A102T20121102

That entirely jibes with the WSJ timeline and what was published before..... Except for one thing. the article kind of contradicts itslef. The annex was less than a mile away and the security team took 25 minutes to reach the consulate. The WSJ timeline did say the the initial security team including the two seals were delayed 20 minutes as the CIA looked for ally support, heavier weapons, and a clearer picture of what was happenning...

Also this new article from Visionary confirms that there were two relief columns from the CIA. One was locak and got tothe consulate withing 25 minutes of the attack. This consisted of the two former seals and six other men all from the cia annex.... Then we have this other security team flying in from Tripoli.

Also we have our first report of a drone in the air watching everything, which was one of Fox news accusations.

I don't see how any of that makes the CIA culpable..

[twa]

That's what I thoujght too. .

Those 10 secured the consulate and rescued the staff, the group from Tripoli met them later
a decent security force could easily have prevented this mess

[JMS]

As someone who worked for FEMA as a disaster specialist, I think I have pretty good insight about the organization. First of all, I think a lot of people misunderstand what FEMA realistically does in disasters. FEMA is basically a big bank. The organization was not, and still is not intended to be a primary first responder. This is a major misconception held by many people...
..

Guess that depends on which administration you worked for..

I wouldn't say FEMA is a big bank. I would say FEMA as envisioned by Jimmy Carter when he set up the agency, is an organization set up to assist in brining federal resources to bare in support of the state governors who are the men in charge in a natural disaster. FEMA has contingency plans and has resources and are supposed to be able to tap into those federal resources in disasters. Currently in NJ FEMA is facilitarying using military transport in helping Governor Christi move assets to where they can be more effective... Christi is in charge, but FEMA has assets to help him.

---------- Post added November-2nd-2012 at 01:32 AM ----------

a decent security force could easily have prevented this mess

I don't think so. Again I go back to Teran in 1979 or Hanoi in 1968... Those were embassies, heavily fortified embassies. the forces which compromised those instalations were alot less leathal than 150 well armed terrorists...

I mean can I envision a security force which would have protected the consulate... sure.. but then it really wouldnt' be a functioning consulate but rather a fire base with a 1000 yard kill zone around it. There is something about a consulate and it's need to be open and accessable to the locals and faciliatate interactions which is incompatable with being able to protect itself from a 150 armed terrorists decending on it with no notice...

Again I say no embassy or consulate in the world could have stood up to such an assult without assistance from the local host government. That we only lost 4 guys is a miracle.

[Fergasun]

Did you guys get to this angle yet?
rt.com: American killed in Libya was on State Department Intelligence Operation

One of the four Americans killed in Libya earlier this week when an American diplomatic mission was stormed on September 11 had been deployed by the US State Department on an intelligence gathering operation to find and destroy dangerous weapons. Glen Doherty, a 42-year-old former Navy SEAL, told ABC News only one month before his death that he had been contracted by the State Department to travel overseas in an effort to locate and eliminate MANPADS shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles. The US government had feared that as many as thousands of the high-powered warheads had fallen into the hands of both rebels and regime fighters after former leader Muammar Gaddafi was executed earlier this year amid months of chaos in region.

[Special K]

Guess that depends on which administration you worked for..

I wouldn't say FEMA is a big bank. I would say FEMA as envisioned by Jimmy Carter when he set up the agency, is an organization set up to assist in brining federal resources to bare in support of the state governors who are the men in charge in a natural disaster. FEMA has contingency plans and has resources and are supposed to be able to tap into those federal resources in disasters. Currently in NJ FEMA is facilitarying using military transport in helping Governor Christi move assets to where they can be more effective... Christi is in charge, but FEMA has assets to help him.

I am perfectly aware of FEMA's incident command, its partnership with local governments, and how it's run

And yes, it is a big bank. And that is the perception held by most of the American public. That is the perception held by the majority of employees. If you don't understand that, you probably won't understand either why the organization is constantly having to get bailed out by the taxpayers with emergency funding. Last year, the entire FEMA workforce assisting with Hurrican Irene & Tropical Storm Lee, were less than 24 hours from having to close up the JFO's and disaster recovery centers in affected areas because we were bankrupt. That was a result of multiple issues, including federal budget pissing contest between parties. Emergency funding was passed by congress, but no one is going to convince me that an supremely large organization like FEMA is run with great efficiency and sustainability.

My emergency management experience at both the local and federal levels has convinced me disasters are more effiectively handled at local and state levels.

Sorry for the derail. I'll let you continue squabbling over the Libya cluster.