Since completing the draft of this book, five House of Representatives committees have issued an Interim Report on the September 11, 2012, terrorist attacks in Benghazi. Those committees: Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, Judiciary, Oversight & Government Reform, and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Those committees are continuing to investigate the Benghazi 9/11 attacks, their aftermath, and their ramifications. As it stands the Interim Report makes for sobering reading, and it is well worthy of mention in this book, hence the points quoted from it below.
1. Prior to the Benghazi attacks, State Department officials in Libya made repeated requests for additional security that were denied in Washington despite ample documentation of the threat posed by violent extremist militia.
2. The volatile security environment erupted on September 11, 2012, when militia composed of al Qa’ida-affiliated extremists attacked U.S. interests in Benghazi.
3. After the attacks, the Administration perpetuated a deliberately misleading and incomplete narrative that the violence grew out of a demonstration caused by a YouTube video. The Administration consciously decided not to discuss extremist involvement or previous attacks against Western interests in Benghazi.
4. After the U.S.-backed Libyan revolution ended the Gaddafi regime, the U.S. government did not deploy sufficient U.S. security elements to protect U.S. interests and personnel that remained on the ground.
5. Repeated requests for additional security were denied at the highest levels of the State Department.
6. The attacks were not the result of a failure by the Intelligence Community (IC) to recognize and communicate the threat. 7. On the evening of September 11, 2012, U.S. security teams on the ground in Benghazi exhibited extreme bravery responding to the attacks by al-Qa’ida-affiliated groups against the U.S.mission.
8. Senior Administration officials knowingly minimized the role played by al-Qa’ida-affiliated entities and other associated groups in the attacks, and decided to exclude from the discussion the previous attempts by extremists to attack U.S. persons or facilities in Libya.
9. This singular event (the Benghazi 9/11 attack) will be repeated unless the United States recognizes and responds to the threats we face around the world, and properly postures resources and security assets to counter and respond to those threats. Until that time the United States will remain in reactionary mode and should expect more catastrophes like Benghazi, in which U.S. personnel on the ground perform bravely, but are not provided with the resources for an effective response.
10. Congress must maintain pressure on the Administration to ensure the United States takes all necessary steps to find the Benghazi attackers. Active terrorist organizations and potential recruits will be emboldened to attack U.S. interests if the U.S. fails to hold those responsible for this attack accountable.
11. The decision by the British Embassy, United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross to withdraw their personnel from Benghazi after armed assailants launched directed attacks against each organization were additional major indicators of the increasingly threatening environment.
12. These developments caused Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Wood, who led U.S. military efforts to supplement diplomatic security in Libya, to recommend that the State Department consider pulling out of Benghazi altogether. Lt-Col Woods believed that after withdrawal of these organizations, “it was apparent to me that were the last [Western] flag flying in Benghazi. We were the last thing on their target list to remove from Benghazi.”
13. Despite mounting security concerns, for the most of 2012 the Benghazi Mission was forced to rely on fewer than the approved number of DS agents. Reports indicate the Benghazi Mission was typically staffed with only three DS agents, and sometimes as few as one DS agent.
14. The 17th February Martyrs Brigade was one of the militias that fought for Gaddafi’s overthrow. Numerous reports have indicated that the Brigade had extremist connections and it had been implicated in the kidnapping of American citizens as well as in the threats against U.S. military assets.
15. Due to security concerns and bureaucratic entanglements among the Department for Justice, State and Defense, the FBI team investigating the terrorist attacks did not access the crime scene until more than three weeks later, on October 4, 2012. During this time the site was not secured and curious locals and international media were able to pick through the burned-out remains of the U.S. facility.
16. The State Department’s Accountability Review Board (ARB) highlights “systematic failures” of Washington, D.C.–based decision-makers that left the Benghazi Mission with significant security shortfalls. Yet, the Board also fails to conduct an appropriately thorough and independent review of which officials bear responsibility for those decisions.
17. Despite repeated requests for further security by U.S. officials working in the high-risk, high-threat environment, requests were denied by senior leadership in the State Department . . . Thus, the Administration was willing to provide necessary force to expel Gaddafi in support of the Libyan opposition, yet it simply failed to provide sufficient protection for the U.S. personnel and interests that remained.
While I take no issue with all the points raised above—indeed, I commend the committees on their Interim Report and a set of findings that reflect my own empirical experiences on the ground in Benghazi—I find it strikingly odd that there is not one reference made in this report, or that of the Accountability Review Board, of the role played by any Blue Mountain personnel, namely, myself and my guards, in responding to the Benghazi 9/11 attacks. Under considerable risk to our own safety we located the Ambassador in the Benghazi Medical Center, verified his identity and that he had been killed, alerted U.S. authorities, and provided photographic proof of his death and whereabouts. No mention is made of that in either of the official U.S. reports. We alone returned to the Embassy in the direct aftermath of the attack—again at very real danger to ourselves—to check for any American dead, photograph and document the crime scene, and provide all of that evidence, augmented by my own verbal testimony, to U.S. authorities. Again, no mention is made of that in any official U.S.documents, or at least not ones that I have seen released to the American and world publics.
I have no interest in seeking official recognition for my own sake: it doesn’t interest me and is irrelevant. But if a full accounting of Benghazi 9/11 is to be reached, and the right lessons are to be learned, it needs to be truly a full accounting—which raises the question, why have we been written out of the equation? Has it somehow been made an “unmentionable” that a lone British security operator and a handful of Libyan guards managed to do what the FBI failed to do for weeks on end—if at all—and what the State Department made impossible on the night of the attack, by refusing to protect and garrison the Benghazi Mission properly, and if so, on whose orders and in whose interests has this been made an “unmentionable”? When the FBI originally interviewed me at my home, I was asked to go to the United States to tell my side of the story. I said I was willing, but it never happened. Too many people died or were horrifically injured, and America (and her allies) was too badly wounded by Benghazi 9/11 to play politics with the truth, or to suppress any aspects of what took place there. A full and open accounting should be just that, and nothing less.