Written by William F. Jasper
inside of U.S. compound in Benghazi the day after the Sept. 11, 2012 attack: AP Images
In
its clumsy attempt to absolve President Obama and former Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton from responsibility for the deadly attack in
Benghazi, Libya, the
New York Times has reignited intense scrutiny and debate over the fiasco and the administration’s lies and cover-ups in its aftermath.
On December 28, the
Times
opened a new chapter in the ongoing furor over “Benghazigate” with an
extensive, 7,000-word article by David D. Kirkpatrick entitled, “
A Deadly Mix in Benghazi.” According to Kirkpatrick, his article is the result of “months of investigation by
The New York Times,”
which “turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international
terrorist groups had any role in the assault.” Moreover, he says, the
September 11, 2012 attack, which resulted in the murder of four
Americans — Ambassador Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty, and Tyrone
Woods — “was fueled in large part by anger at an American-made video
denigrating Islam.”
It is not surprising that the
Times,
which has staunchly supported both President Obama and Hillary Clinton,
would come to their aid once more, producing a piece that echoes and
affirms the administration’s Benghazi talking points, even though the
facts have discredited those talking points.
A number of critics have already pointed out that Kirkpatrick’s latest article is contradicted by earlier
Times
reports which acknowledge the al-Qaeda ties of some of the Libyan
jihadist militias (that the Obama administration, incidentally, was
supporting). See, for instance, Aaron Klein at
World Net Daily here and
here, and Thomas Joscelyn at
The Weekly Standard here.
It is also contradicted by a detailed report prepared by the Library of Congress entitled,
Al-Qaeda in Libya: A Profile, issued in August, 2012, the month before the fatal Benghazi attack.
It is also interesting that the
Times
would once again try to lay the blame for the attack on a spontaneous
riot incited by the anti-Muslim video and protests over the video in
faraway Cairo, Egypt. This, of course, is a resurrection of the Barack
Obama/Susan Rice/Hillary Clinton false narrative issued immediately
after the fatal attack, which was an effort to cover up the fact that
the event was a highly coordinated terrorist attack carried out by some
of the very jihadists the administration was arming and aiding. The
spontaneous riot narrative was also aimed at diverting attention from
the fact that Secretary Clinton had failed to heed repeated warnings
from Ambassador Stevens and State Department security personnel about
the escalating danger in Benghazi and their appeals for additional
security.
However, no credible evidence has been produced to
support the claim that the anti-Muslim video precipitated, or
contributed to, the Benghazi attack. And an
in-depth analysis by Agincourt Solutions, a
prominent social media monitoring firm, could find none of the alleged
Internet traffic and postings in the Benghazi region that were
supposedly responsible for stirring up the attackers.
Pre-emptive Defense for Hillary’s 2016 Presidential Run
The most transparent reason for the
Times’ flimsy
Benghazi whitewash is that the paper was trying to divert attention
from Secretary Clinton’s central role in the whole sordid affair, so
that a festering Benghazigate scandal would not derail her White House
hopes for 2016.
Read More Here
.....
Library of Congress – Federal Research Division
Al-Qaeda in Libya: A Profile
PREFACE
This report attempts to assess al-Qaeda’s pres
ence in Libya. Al-Qaeda Senior Leadership
(AQSL)
and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) have sought to take
advantage of the Libyan Revolution to recruit militants and to reinforce
their operational capabilities in an attempt to create a safe haven and
possibly to extend their area of operations to Libya. Reports have
indicated that AQSL is seeking to create an al-Qaeda clandestine network
in Libya that could beactivated in the future to destabilize the
government and/or to offer logistical support to al-Qaeda’s activities
in North Africa and the Sahel.
AQIM has reportedly formed sleeper cells that are probably connected to an
al-Qaeda underground network in Libya, likely as a way, primarily,
to secure the supply of arms for its ongoing jihadist operations in
Algeria and the Sahel. This report discusses how al-Qaeda and its North
African affiliate are using communications media and face-to-face
contacts to shift the still-evolving post-revolutionary political and
socialdynamic in Libya in a direction that is conducive to jihad and
hateful of the West.
The information in this report is drawn
largely from the Internet and Western and Libyan online publications.
Particular attention has been given to AQSL and AQIM sources, especially
propaganda videos featuring their leaders and a written essay from
‘Atiyah al-Libi, an influential
Libyan al-Qaeda leader killed in
Pakistan by a U.S. drone strike in August 2011. Although a wide range of
sources were utilized, including those in French a nd Arabic, as well
as in English,the information found was quite limited and largely
presumptive. Given the scarcity of
information, further research is
needed to better penetrate the organization of al-Qaeda’s clandestine
network in Libya, its leaders, areas of concentration, and chain of
command. The Web addresses presented in this report were valid as of
August 2012.
Library of Congress – Federal Research Division Al-Qaeda in Libya: A Profile
1
1.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
x
Al-Qaeda has tried to exploit the “Arab Awake
ning” in North Africa for its own purposes
during the past year. Al-Qaeda Senior Leadersh
ip (AQSL), based in Pakistan, is likely
seeking to build a clandestine network in Libya
as it pursues its strategy of reinforcing its
presence in North Africa and the Middle East
, taking advantage of the “Arab Awakening”
that has disrupted existing counterterrorism
capabilities. Although AQSL’
s previous attempt
to co-opt the Libyan Islamic Fighting Gr
oup (LIFG) was inconclusive, the Libyan
Revolution may have created an environment
conducive to jihad and empowered the large
and active community of Libyan jihadists,
which is known to be well connected to
international jihad.
x
AQSL’s strategic goals remain restoration of the caliphate, instituting sharia, and ending the
Western presence in Muslim lands. Al-Qaeda’s
primary goal in Libya is to establish an
Islamic emirate as part of its overall
objective to reestablish the caliphate.
x
AQSL in Pakistan issued strategic guidance to
followers in Libya and elsewhere to take
advantage of the Libyan rebellion. AQSL’s strategic guidance was to:
¾
gather weapons,
¾
establish training camps,
¾
build a network in secret,
¾
establish an Islamic state, and
¾
institute sharia.
x
AQSL in Pakistan dispatched trusted senior ope
ratives as emissaries and leaders who could
supervise building a network. Al-Qaeda has esta
blished a core network in Libya, but it
remains clandestine and refrains
from using the al-Qaeda name.
x
Ansar al-Sharia, led by Sufian Ben Qhumu, a fo
rmer Guantanamo detainee, has increasingly
embodied al-Qaeda’s presence in Libya, as indi
cated by its active social-media propaganda,
extremist discourse, and hatred of th
e West, especially the United States.
x
Al-Qaeda adherents in Libya used the 2011 Revol
ution
to establish well-armed, well-trained,and combat-experienced militias.
Militia groups, led by Wisam Ben Hamid and Hayaka Alla have adopted
similar behavior, with, however, fewer advertised grudges against the
West.The only open-source materialthat has linked these groups,aside
from their jihadist credentials and their defense of sharia, is their
attachment to the flag that has come to symbolize al-Qaeda.
Read More Here : Library of Congress – Federal Research Division PDF
.....
A Deadly Mix in Benghazi
By David D. Kirkpatrick
December 28, 2013
Benghazi, Libya
A boyish-looking American diplomat was meeting for the first time with the Islamist leaders of eastern Libya’s most formidable militias.
It
was Sept. 9, 2012. Gathered on folding chairs in a banquet hall by the
Mediterranean, the Libyans warned of rising threats against Americans
from extremists in Benghazi. One militia leader, with a long beard and
mismatched military fatigues, mentioned time in exile in Afghanistan. An
American guard discreetly touched his gun.
“Since Benghazi isn’t safe, it is better for you to leave now,”
Mohamed al-Gharabi,
the leader of the Rafallah al-Sehati Brigade, later recalled telling
the Americans. “I specifically told the Americans myself that we hoped
that they would leave Benghazi as soon as possible.”
Yet as the
militiamen snacked on Twinkie-style cakes with their American guests,
they also gushed about their gratitude for President Obama’s support in
their uprising against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. They emphasized that
they wanted to build a partnership with the United States, especially in
the form of more investment. They specifically asked for Benghazi
outlets of McDonald’s and KFC.
The diplomat, David McFarland, a
former congressional aide who had never before met with a Libyan militia
leader, left feeling agitated, according to colleagues. But the meeting
did not shake his faith in the prospects for deeper involvement in
Libya. Two days later, he summarized the meeting in
a cable to Washington, describing a mixed message from the militia leaders.
Despite
“growing problems with security,” he wrote, the fighters wanted the
United States to become more engaged “by ‘pressuring’ American
businesses to invest in Benghazi.”
The cable, dated Sept. 11, 2012, was sent over the name of Mr. McFarland’s boss, Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
Later
that day, Mr. Stevens was dead, killed with three other Americans in
Benghazi in the most significant attack on United States property in 11
years, since Sept. 11, 2001.
The Diplomatic Mission on Sept. 11, 2012
Four Americans died in attacks on a diplomatic mission and a C.I.A. compound in Benghazi.
As
the attacks begin, there are seven Americans at the mission, including
five armed diplomatic security officers; the information officer, Sean
Smith; and Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. Both Mr. Smith and
Ambassador Stevens die in the attack.
The cable was a
last token of months of American misunderstandings and misperceptions
about Libya and especially Benghazi, many fostered by shadows of the
earlier Sept. 11 attack. The United States waded deeply into
post-Qaddafi Libya, hoping to build a beachhead against extremists,
especially Al Qaeda. It believed it could draw a bright line between
friends and enemies in Libya. But it ultimately lost its ambassador in
an attack that involved both avowed opponents of the West and fighters
belonging to militias that the Americans had taken for allies.
Months
of investigation by The New York Times, centered on extensive
interviews with Libyans in Benghazi who had direct knowledge of the
attack there and its context, turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda or
other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault. The
attack was led, instead, by fighters who had benefited directly from
NATO’s extensive air power and logistics support during the uprising
against Colonel Qaddafi. And contrary to claims by some members of
Congress, it was fueled in large part by anger at an American-made video
denigrating Islam.
A fuller accounting of the attacks suggests
lessons for the United States that go well beyond Libya. It shows the
risks of expecting American aid in a time of desperation to buy durable
loyalty, and the difficulty of discerning friends from allies of
convenience in a culture shaped by decades of anti-Western sentiment.
Both are challenges now hanging over the American involvement in Syria’s
civil conflict.
The attack also suggests that, as the threats
from local militants around the region have multiplied, an intensive
focus on combating Al Qaeda may distract from safeguarding American
interests.
In this case, a central figure in the attack was an eccentric, malcontent militia leader,
Ahmed Abu Khattala,
according to numerous Libyans present at the time. American officials
briefed on the American criminal investigation into the killings call
him a prime suspect. Mr. Abu Khattala declared openly and often that he
placed the United States not far behind Colonel Qaddafi on his list of
infidel enemies. But he had no known affiliations with terrorist groups,
and he had escaped scrutiny from the 20-person C.I.A. station in
Benghazi that was set up to monitor the local situation.
Mr. Abu
Khattala, who denies participating in the attack, was firmly embedded in
the network of Benghazi militias before and afterward. Many other
Islamist leaders consider him an erratic extremist. But he was never
more than a step removed from the most influential commanders who
dominated Benghazi and who befriended the Americans. They were his
neighbors, his fellow inmates and his comrades on the front lines in the
fight against Colonel Qaddafi.
To this day, some militia leaders
offer alibis for Mr. Abu Khattala. All resist quiet American pressure to
turn him over to face prosecution. Last spring, one of Libya’s most
influential militia leaders sought to make him a kind of local judge.
Fifteen
months after Mr. Stevens’s death, the question of responsibility
remains a searing issue in Washington, framed by two contradictory story
lines.
One has it that the video, which was posted on YouTube,
inspired spontaneous street protests that got out of hand. This version,
based on early intelligence reports, was initially offered publicly by
Susan E. Rice, who is now Mr. Obama’s national security adviser.
The
other, favored by Republicans, holds that Mr. Stevens died in a
carefully planned assault by Al Qaeda to mark the anniversary of its
strike on the United States 11 years before. Republicans have accused
the Obama administration of covering up evidence of Al Qaeda’s role to
avoid undermining the president’s claim that the group has been
decimated, in part because of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
The
investigation by The Times shows that the reality in Benghazi was
different, and murkier, than either of those story lines suggests.
Benghazi was not infiltrated by Al Qaeda, but nonetheless contained
grave local threats to American interests. The attack does not appear to
have been meticulously planned, but neither was it spontaneous or
without warning signs.
Read More Here
*
Libya Warnings Were Plentiful, but Unspecific
Mohammad Hannon/Associated Press
Investigators had little access to the American Mission compound in Benghazi immediately after the September attack.
Published: October 29, 2012
WASHINGTON — In the months leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks on the
American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, the Obama administration
received intelligence reports that Islamic extremist groups were
operating training camps in the mountains near the Libyan city and that
some of the fighters were “
Al Qaeda-leaning,” according to American and European officials.
The warning about the camps was part of a stream of diplomatic and
intelligence reports that indicated that the security situation
throughout the country, and particularly in eastern Libya, had
deteriorated sharply since the United States reopened its embassy in
Tripoli after the fall of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s government in
September 2011.
By June, Benghazi had experienced a string of assassinations as well as
attacks on the Red Cross and a British envoy’s motorcade. Ambassador
J. Christopher Stevens,
who was killed in the September attack, e-mailed his superiors in
Washington in August alerting them to “a security vacuum” in the city. A
week before Mr. Stevens died, the American Embassy warned that Libyan
officials had declared a “state of maximum alert” in Benghazi after a
car bombing and thwarted bank robbery.
In the closing weeks of the presidential campaign, the circumstances
surrounding the attack on the Benghazi compound have emerged as a major
political issue, as Republicans, led by their presidential candidate,
Mitt Romney, have sought to lay blame for the attack on President Obama,
who they argued had insufficiently protected American lives there.
Interviews with American officials and an examination of State
Department documents do not reveal the kind of smoking gun Republicans
have suggested would emerge in the attack’s aftermath such as a warning
that the diplomatic compound would be targeted and that was overlooked
by administration officials.
What is clear is that even as the State Department responded to the June
attacks, crowning the Benghazi compound walls with concertina wire and
setting up concrete barriers to thwart car bombs, it remained committed
to a security strategy formulated in a very different environment a year
earlier.
In the heady early days after the fall of Colonel Qaddafi’s government,
the administration’s plan was to deploy a modest American security force
and then increasingly rely on trained Libyan personnel to protect
American diplomats — a policy that reflected White House apprehensions
about putting combat troops on the ground as well as Libyan
sensitivities about an obtrusive American security presence.
In the following months, the State Department proceeded with this plan.
In one instance, State Department security officials replaced the
American military team in Tripoli with trained Libyan bodyguards, while
it also maintained the number of State Department security personnel
members at the Benghazi compound around the minimum recommended level.
Questions at Home
But the question on the minds of some lawmakers is why the declining
security situation did not prompt a fundamental rethinking of the
security needs by the State Department and the White House. Three
Congressional investigations and a State Department inquiry are now
examining the attack, which American officials said included
participants from Ansar al-Shariah, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and
the Muhammad Jamal network, a militant group in Egypt.
“Given the large number of attacks that had occurred in Benghazi that
were aimed at Western targets, it is inexplicable to me that security
wasn’t increased,” said Senator Susan Collins of Maine, the senior
Republican on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee,
one of the panels holding inquiries.
Defending their preparations, State Department officials have asserted
that there was no specific intelligence that warned of a large-scale
attack on the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, which they asserted was
unprecedented. The department said it was careful to weigh security with
diplomats’ need to meet with Libyan officials and citizens.
“The lethality of an armed, massed attack by dozens of individuals is
something greater than we’ve ever seen in Libya over the last period
that we’ve been there,” Patrick F. Kennedy, the State Department’s under
secretary for management, told reporters at a news conference on Oct.
10.
But David Oliveira, a State Department security officer who was
stationed in Benghazi from June 2 to July 5, said he told members and
staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that he
recalled thinking that if 100 or more assailants sought to breach the
mission’s walls, “there was nothing that we could do about it because we
just didn’t have the manpower, we just didn’t have the facilities.”
In developing a strategy to bring about the fall of Colonel Qaddafi, Mr.
Obama walked a fine line between critics of any American involvement in
Libya and those like Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who
advocated a stronger American leadership role. Mr. Obama’s approach — a
NATO air campaign supported by the United States — was a success.
After Colonel Qaddafi’s fall, Mr. Obama proceeded with equal caution. He
approved a plan to send to Tripoli a 16-member Site Security Team, a
military unit that included explosive-ordnance personnel, medics and
other specialists. “Day-to-day diplomatic security decisions were
managed by career State Department professional staff,” said Tommy
Vietor, a spokesman for the National Security Council.
.....
