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

[Redskins Diehard]

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

Disagree with that assessment. Perhaps it became an Agency problem because the Department was not reacting. Security of the consulate is the responsibility of the Regional Security Officer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_Security_Officer If in this case he did not act(which from reports I think he did move the Ambassador to the "safe room") or more likely did not have resources at his disposal(they usually do not have many) then it is possible that another organization ignored normal protocol and acted because well somebody had to. It doesn't surprise me that some nearby folks with experience in such situation went to the sound of the guns because that is the kind of guys they are. In this case those guys happened to be on the payroll of the CIA it appears.

I have mentioned in another thread that I personally don't think the upper levels of the Administration have any place in how the tactical decisions played out that night. I would be curious as to what the contingency plan was for a case like this playing out. It does seem to me that is the bigger issue in this case.

[Tweedr01]

Then you are living in your own reality Tweedy. Every President since FDR going back 80 years has released more income tax returns than Romney, and None of the Presidents in history over that time had such a close association with Tax Fraud. If you can't see the relevance then it's only because you are wishing to impose your myopic taylored view on the world and create an individual precident for Mitt Romney.... Which frankly sucks....

I mean hell the dude admitted paying about 12.9% taxes one year and 13.9% another year; on tens of millions of dollars worth of income, while sheltering tens of millions off shore. In the 60 minutes interview he thought it was reasonable for him to pay half the tax rate of folks making orders of magnatude less income.... Seriously how much worse could it be that he would be too embarrassed to release them? We can only wonder.

So what you're saying is there is a politician....and he's not being completely honest? For shame! He must be the only one....

I was actually going to respond to your reply to me above in a less condescending tone PMS, because you stopped with the snarkiness, but that definitely picked back up here. BTW, trolling is trying to get a rise out of someone, which since I was not talking to you, was not my intention.

And again, I could care less about someones personal taxes. If they are doing something illegal then the IRS will be the ones to condemn them, not myself. It's not my job. Would you be upset if he had a bunch of unpaid parking tickets? Should I take matters into my own hands, or let the correct authorities handle it? Is releasing all of your tax returns mandatory?

You blast Romney for being underhanded, do you really think Big O is some sort of saint? They are all politicians, they are bred to be dishonest. I seriously cannot wait until these two parties get a wake up call from people who don't just do as their party tells them to, there is no way these two stooges are the best available,

[Stadium-Armory]

I'm confused. I recall seeing 'protesters' on TV during the attack. Now they're saying there was no protest. What am I missing?

[JMS]

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

Yeah, that's a thinly veiled assertion. The state department doesn't find and destroy weapons cashes. The CIA's hands were all over this, both seals were at a complex identified as a CIA annex, and both were identified as CIA contractors...
But hell more than half the people who work at Langley tell their kids they work for the state department.

[AsburySkinsFan]

Yeah, that's a thinly veiled assertion. The state department doesn't find and destroy weapons cashes. The CIA's hands were all over this, both seals were at a complex identified as a CIA annex, and both were identified as CIA contractors...
But hell more than half the people who work at Langley tell their kids they work for the state department.

The State Dept and our embassies are the fronts for operations, always have been. I'm not saying that's what happened, just stating fact.

IMO, this whole thing seems more like a 9/11 anniversary attack that just happened to coincide with the protests over the video, now whether one had anything to do with the other in Benghazi is uncertain.

[Thiebear]

ASF: Its not that uncertain: Between the emails, and the observations, and the video's and everything else:
This was predicted over and over again by Mr. Steven's up to a few hours before his death. (With specific examples)

JMS: I know you say "nothing" could have stopped this:

I just wanted to point out: I would put 1000$ on a 16 person Special forces SST (team)
against.. well ANYONE, but especially what we saw on television.

Far less got from the Annex to the Embassy, back to the Annex and held it long enough?
Imagine if the guys that were trained to do this were onsite.

And if someone saw one of the local "Security" taking pictures inside or taping the movements outside, Wood from the Special Ops team would have "handled" it faster..
You cant predict 100% but locked doors with 16 SST's sure would keep things safer and or prevent it better than having alqaeda 'protecting' them from alqaeda.

On Aug. 2, six weeks before Stevens was killed, he requested 'protective detail bodyguard' positions, calling the security situation in Libya 'unpredictable, volatile and violent.
A month earlier, he requested that the State Department extend his tour of duty personnel, which is a 16-man temporary security team trained in combating terrorism. The request was denied and the security team left 8 August.
Stevens had asked for the security team to stay through mid-September.
Colonel Andrew Wood, the leader of the security team that left Libya in the weeks before the terror attack, told CBS News that Stevens fought hard against losing the team.

'It was quite a degree of frustration on their part,' he said. 'They were -- I guess you could say -- clenched-fist over the whole issue.

Can you add the requests for security to the timeline in the OP?
And when the security team was pulled.
might want to fix the 10:30pm part also
(You are updating the timeline as things come in?)


Since it "seems" so similar to me: to include 2 requests to help denied: third one approved:

At the second crash site, two Delta Force snipers, SFC Randy Shughart and MSG Gary Gordon, were inserted by Black Hawk Super 6-2 - piloted by CW3 Mike Goffena. Their first two requests to be inserted were turned down, but they were finally granted permission upon their third request. They inflicted heavy casualties on the approaching Somali mob. When Gordon was eventually killed, Shughart picked up Gordon's CAR-15 and gave it to Super 6-4 pilot CW3 Michael Durant. Shugart went back around the nose of the chopper and held off the mob for about ten more minutes, before he was killed. The Somalis then overran the crash site and killed all but Durant. He was nearly beaten to death, but was saved when members of Aidid's militia came to take him prisoner.[43] For their actions, SFC Shughart and MSG Gordon were posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, the first awarded since the Vietnam War.[29]

[JMS]

And yes, it is a big bank.

Yes and No... it really depends upon which party is in control.

Banks don't have squadrons to heavy transports to bring generators and other equipment in state. Banks don't have access to 61,000 workforce to be called up and assembled on a moments notice. Banks don't have access to federal disaster logistics paid for and prepared for such contingencies. Banks don't preposition supplies or operate emergency shelters which are pre staged. FEMAs role is to stand between the federal government and the state and assist in tapping federal resources and even advise the governor what federal resources are available. It was set up by Jimmy Carter and was one of the most respected organization in government before it was reorganized, placed under homeland security, and it's budget was severely cut after 911. It lost most of it's experienced people who made the organization such a gem at that time, and thus pretty much **** the bed during hurricane Katrina. It's nice to see it working so well in NJ now.

, but no one is going to convince me that an supremely large organization like FEMA is run with great efficiency and sustainability.

That's why I asked which administration was in charge when you were there, cause the parties treat FEMA with entirely different funding and expectations.

For much of U.S. history, any federal aid was ad hoc. Congress would pass a law specifying how it would help a particular town or state in the wake of a particular act of God.
As the resources and responsibilities of the federal bureaucracy grew, a hodgepodge of more than 100 agencies and departments acquired responsibility over pieces of disaster
response, from highways to dams to nuclear plants. At the request of the nation’s governors, who’d grown frustrated trying to figure out which office in Washington to call for what,
when faced with natural disasters, President Carter created FEMA in 1979.

To call FEMA inefficient is rather hilarious when considering the alternative which frankly we lived through in the 1960's and 70's.. It's also funny considering the history of the agency
and how respected it was before Katrina.

You are correct though that at first, the agency mostly cut checks to help pay for state and local efforts, When Hurricane Andrew, then the most expensive storm in U.S. history, decimated wide swaths of Florida in 1992, it also laid bare FEMA’s shortcomings; in some parts of the state it took days for food, supplies, and personnel to arrive. One of the enduring sound bites of the disaster was the emergency management director of Dade County lashing out against Washington at a news conference: “Where in the hell is the cavalry?” George H. W. Bush, then president, was widely blamed for the slow response. Bill Clinton took office the next year determined not to let that happen to him. Clinton believed that Andrew probably cost George H. W. Bush being reelected. Clinton elevated FEMA to a cabinet-level agency and named James Lee Witt, Arkansas’s emergency manager, to head it. Witt was the first person with disaster experience to lead FEMA. Former administrators tended to be well-connected ex-military officers or presidential pals(i.e. Brownie). Witt shifted the turned the agency into a body that did much more than spread money around after the fact. There was substantial progress in making the agency capable of actually coming in to provide bodies and equipment and resources. As we are seeing now in NJ.

To date the agency has performed 700 rescues and brought 2.5 million liters of water and 1.5 million meals to the area. In New York and New Jersey, 10,979 people have used FEMA shelters.

The Democrat's administration expectations for FEMA is to act as a go between between federal resources and the State Governors who are in charge of any relief effort. Recent Republican administrations have treated FEMA as a bank, and then call in the army to take control of natural disasters As Bush did for Katrina.

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

I agree with that, which Is why FEMA at it's most ambitious really acts as support for the state governors and doesn't nationalize disasters. It's more about what resources the
federal government has and how to best organize them in a timely mannor to make them available to the State governor's like Christi.... It's the stripped down FEMA which has
lead to nationalizing disasters as what occurred with Katrina.Obama isn't incharge of NJ, nor is FEMA... Governor Christi is; FEMA is just telling him what they can do for him.
One interface to access the federal bureaucracy. Least that's how it's envisioned to work.

---------- Post added November-2nd-2012 at 12:57 PM ----------

The State Dept and our embassies are the fronts for operations, always have been. I'm not saying that's what happened, just stating fact..

Yes, I agree the state department (embassies and consulates) are fronts for CIA operations globally. All embassies are fronts for spy operations.
I just don't think the state department has anything to do with these CIA operations, they are merely the cover.

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

I take that at it's face value as true. It sounds true to me.

---------- Post added November-2nd-2012 at 01:00 PM ----------

JMS: I know you say "nothing" could have stopped this:

I just wanted to point out: I would put 1000$ on a 16 person Special forces SST (team)
against.. well ANYONE, but especially what we saw on television.

I don't know man... 150 armed terrorists, hell could be 600 guys for all we know.
We just have reports of 150 were involved on the initial attack. Against 16 guys. there is no precedent for saying 16 guys would have done any better.
There is frankly a lot of precedent for saying a much larger group than 16 would still have been insufficiant against 150 terrorists attacking out of nowhere.

I'll also point out that 30 guys were evacuated from Benghezi.. that includes 8 guys who were at the CIA Annex and perhaps the security team from Tripoli;
but it seem like a 16 man security team would be comparable to the actual number of folks deployed at the consulate in total.. which does seem to be overkill even if the 16
member team could have been effective... which frankly I don't see.

16 against 150, sounds like that movie the Magnificent Seven. Good movie, bad plan.

[AsburySkinsFan]

Imagine another Blackhawk Down only this time in Benghazi. It is too easy to armchair quarterback this thing from 15,000 miles and 2 months away, but there is no telling what greater havok could have been brought about with a single rpg.

[Predicto]

Disagree with that assessment. Perhaps it became an Agency problem because the Department was not reacting. Security of the consulate is the responsibility of the Regional Security Officer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_Security_Officer If in this case he did not act(which from reports I think he did move the Ambassador to the "safe room") or more likely did not have resources at his disposal(they usually do not have many) then it is possible that another organization ignored normal protocol and acted because well somebody had to. It doesn't surprise me that some nearby folks with experience in such situation went to the sound of the guns because that is the kind of guys they are. In this case those guys happened to be on the payroll of the CIA it appears.

I have mentioned in another thread that I personally don't think the upper levels of the Administration have any place in how the tactical decisions played out that night. I would be curious as to what the contingency plan was for a case like this playing out. It does seem to me that is the bigger issue in this case.

I'm not saying that the CIA screwed up (or didn't screw up). I'm saying that the fact that covert CIA operation are intertwined in this situation is the reason that information is not coming out as quickly as some people want.

It's not a cover-up of some amorphous wrongdoing by the Administration that is causing any delay, it's the usual "don't expose what our covert ops are doing" secrecy. Fox is essentially demanding that we undercut our covert efforts in the Middle East to satisfy their partisanship.

Or so it appears to me right now.

[visionary]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...y-at-benghazi/

Libyan militia’s failed security at Benghazi

The degree to which the CIA succeeded or failed in upholding what The Wall Street Journal says was a secret agreement to provide “emergency security” for the consulate appears to be the subject of some dispute. But one thing that perhaps the State Department and CIA might agree on, based on the information publicly reported so far, is the degree to which the Benghazi consulate was failed by its Libyan security forces.

Though U.S. officials seem to have largely refrained from pointing fingers at their Libyan counterparts, one consistent feature of the drip-drip of information about the Benghazi attack seems to be that U.S. agencies felt they were not getting the security they expected and perhaps needed from the host country.

Still, it’s not shocking that the nascent Libyan state would be unable to meet those expectations, and its failure raises questions about why the U.S. agencies were caught off guard by this on Sept. 11.

That inability is rooted in some tough realities about Libya’s post-war government, which is still politically fractured and institutionally weak. These problems are not the responsibility of the U.S. State Department or the CIA to solve, but they also were presumably no secret to the U.S. agencies relying on Tripoli for security.

In most countries, in the event of an attack on American diplomats, U.S. officials would contact the host country’s military or security services. But when the only numbers you can call are the cell phones of citizen militiamen, the consulate’s security is resting in large part on the ability and desire of those militiamen to answer their phones late on a Tuesday.

Based on the concerns that Stevens and his staff had expressed to the Libyan government, it does not seem that he had been happy with the militia’s security even before the attack. It’s difficult to understand why the State Department or CIA would have thought that February 17 Brigade would have been able to repel a surprise attack on the consulate or that the Libyan government would be able to fill the gap in a crisis. Given that the State Department saw the risk of such an attack as high, why continue relying on the militiamen for day-to-day consulate security?

http://blogs.cfr.org/zenko/2012/11/0...g-in-benghazi/

What Was That Drone Doing in Benghazi?

At 5:41 p.m. Eastern time, Mrs. Clinton called Mr. Petraeus. She wanted to make sure the two agencies were on the same page. Shortly before that call, at 4:30 p.m., the Pentagon’s command center had alerted Defense Secretary Panetta and others to the attack. Minutes later, the U.S. military’s Africa Command redirected an unarmed drone from its surveillance mission over militant camps to Benghazi.

When the drone arrived at 5:11 p.m. Eastern time, cameras captured images of burning buildings, helping officials in Washington pinpoint which facilities had been targeted by militants. But the images didn’t help the CIA team on the ground respond to the attacks, officials said.

[twa]

Imagine another Blackhawk Down only this time in Benghazi. It is too easy to armchair quarterback this thing from 15,000 miles and 2 months away, but there is no telling what greater havok could have been brought about with a single rpg.

If it was so dangerous why take away his security forces?
It did not suddenly become dangerous,and this could have been much worse w/o a small team's intervention

[JMS]

off topic... self edited.

---------- Post added November-2nd-2012 at 01:38 PM ----------

(You are updating the timeline as things come in?)

I corrected it once, when you pointed out the timeline.. (1) give me a link to that quote saying the security team was pulled... please... (2) also a link to your claim the seals were denied twice, and before getting approval to moved in.

(*) realizing this story changed.. used to be they were denied requests to move in and disobeyed a direct order when they decided to move... I've seen nothing to suggest they were ever stopped from going to the consulate other than the initial 20 minutes when the CIA was trying to figure out what was going on at the consulate a mile away from their annex.

[Special K]

Yes and No... it really depends upon which party is in control.

Banks don't have squadrons to heavy transports to bring generators and other equipment in state. Banks don't have access to 61,000 workforce to be called up and assembled on a moments notice. Banks don't have access to federal disaster logistics paid for and prepared for such contingencies. Banks don't preposition supplies or operate emergency shelters which are pre staged. FEMAs role is to stand between the federal government and the state and assist in tapping federal resources and even advise the governor what federal resources are available. It was set up by Jimmy Carter and was one of the most respected organization in government before it was reorganized, placed under homeland security, and it's budget was severely cut after 911. It lost most of it's experienced people who made the organization such a gem at that time, and thus pretty much **** the bed during hurricane Katrina. It's nice to see it working so well in NJ now.



That's why I asked which administration was in charge when you were there, cause the parties treat FEMA with entirely different funding and expectations.

For much of U.S. history, any federal aid was ad hoc. Congress would pass a law specifying how it would help a particular town or state in the wake of a particular act of God.
As the resources and responsibilities of the federal bureaucracy grew, a hodgepodge of more than 100 agencies and departments acquired responsibility over pieces of disaster
response, from highways to dams to nuclear plants. At the request of the nation’s governors, who’d grown frustrated trying to figure out which office in Washington to call for what,
when faced with natural disasters, President Carter created FEMA in 1979.

To call FEMA inefficient is rather hilarious when considering the alternative which frankly we lived through in the 1960's and 70's.. It's also funny considering the history of the agency
and how respected it was before Katrina.

Well, you have a major disconnect between what FEMA is envisioned to do, and what it actually, realistically does. On the ground. In a disaster.

But since you are able to wikipedia the history of FEMA and post it on here, you're the professional here

[AsburySkinsFan]

If it was so dangerous why take away his security forces?
It did not suddenly become dangerous,and this could have been much worse w/o a small team's intervention

You're talking about the time leading up to the attack, I'm talking about during he attack itself, but I can see where it would serve your agenda well to pretend that they are one in the same.

[JMS]

Imagine another Blackhawk Down only this time in Benghazi. It is too easy to armchair quarterback this thing from 15,000 miles and 2 months away, but there is no telling what greater havok could have been brought about with a single rpg.

I think that's what Penneta was thinking when he the Africom commander and the chairman of the joint chiefs decided against moving in...

But in the latest CIA timeline released yesterday we find out they did deploy a special forces team from Brag, and they also sent a team from Sicily; it's just that neither team got to Benghazi in time to be of any assistance. The Sicilian team arrived the morning after.
I wonder how that jibes with Penneta's statement about deciding not to go in.?

Two relief columns were involved in aiding the consulate. The first from the annex which arrived 25 minutes after the first attack. the second from Tripoli which arrived 2am that evening before the annex was attacked. Both associated with CIA?
Then they have to special forces teams coming in behind them which didn't arrive in time .

---------- Post added November-2nd-2012 at 02:01 PM ----------

Well, you have a major disconnect between what FEMA is envisioned to do, and what it actually, realistically does. On the ground. In a disaster.

But since you are able to wikipedia the history of FEMA and post it on here, you're the professional here

To date the agency has performed 700 rescues and brought 2.5 million liters of water and 1.5 million meals to the area. In New York and New Jersey, 10,979 people have used FEMA shelters. That's right out of
It was a lot more than a bank under Clinton, and it's a lot more than a bank now under Obama. As I said under Clinton FEMA director was a Cabinet level post. It was a lot more than a bank, and it is today a lot more than a bank.