Adam Housley @ Fox News:
Despite a carefully narrated version of events rolled out late this week by the CIA claiming agents jumped into action as soon as they were notified of calls for help in Benghazi, security officials on the ground say calls for help went out considerably earlier — and signs of an attack were mounting even before that.
The accounts, from foreign and American security officials in and around Benghazi at the time of the attack, indicate there was in fact a significant lag between when the threat started to show itself and help started to arrive.
According to the CIA, the first calls for assistance came at 9:40 p.m. local time from a senior State Department official at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, to the CIA annex about a mile away.
But according to multiple people on the ground that night, the Blue Mountain Security manager, who was in charge of the local force hired to guard the consulate perimeter, made calls on both two-way radios and cell phones to colleagues in Benghazi warning of problems at least an hour earlier. Those calls allegedly went to local security contractors who say that the CIA annex was also notified much earlier than 9:40 p.m. U.S. military intelligence also told Fox News that armed militia was gathering up to three hours before the attack began.
One source said the Blue Mountain Security chief seemed “distraught” and said “the situation here is very serious, we have a problem.” He also said that even without these phone and radio calls, it was clear to everyone in the security community on the ground in Benghazi much earlier than 9:40 p.m. that fighters were gathering in preparation for an attack.
…One former Special Op now employed by a private company in Benghazi said that even the safe room wasn’t properly set up. He said “the safe room is one of the first measures you take” and that he is “not sure how you can set a safe room without fire suppression and ventilation in case of fire.” He also said, “Ambassador Stevens would likely be alive today if this simple and normal procedure was put into place.”
As details emerge of serious security issues before the attack on Sept. 11, Fox News is also beginning to hear more frustration from sources both on the ground in Benghazi and in the U.S. Multiple British and American sources insist there were other capabilities in the region and are mystified why none were used. Fox News was told there were not only armed drones that monitor Libyan chemical weapon sites in the area, but also F-18’s, AC-130 aircraft and even helicopters that could have been dispatched in a timely fashion.
British intelligence sources said that unarmed drones routinely flew over Benghazi every night in flight patterns and that armed drones which fly over chemical sites, some a short flight from Benghazi, “were always said to be on call.” American sources confirmed this and questioned “why was a drone armed only with a camera dispatched?”
Another source added, “Why would they put a ragtag team together in Tripoli as first responders? This is not even what they do for a living. We had a first responder air base in Italy almost the same distance away.” Despite the team arriving from Tripoli that night, sources said sufficient American back-up never came.
British sources on the ground in Benghazi said they are extremely frustrated by the attack and are still wondering why they weren’t called for help. “We have more people on the ground here than the Americans and I just don’t know why we didn’t get the call?” one said.
PJmedia had this one nailed the other day. There was SOME movement of those assets that were already in country because such movements do not require any presidential authority:
Even these forces were subject to stand-down orders, but they were not held out completely like the assets that could not come into Libya without presidential authorization. Now Obama is trying to take cover behind local decisions that he had nothing to do with.
Petraeus has lost all credibility here, first backing Obama’s lie about a spontaneous protest over the Muhammad video, now standing by as Obama spins with leaked misinformation. The military and the CIA can lie in the national interest but not to help a politician advance his own electoral prospects at the expense of the national interest.
I always thought Petraeus got improper credit for what was actually Rumsfeld’s victory in Iraq. It was Rumsfeld’s force-protection strategy that induced al Qaeda to start attacking the Iraqi population in an effort to support the “civil war” meme that our Democratic Party settled on as its best chance of losing the war at home. This Democrat/al Qaeda alliance turned Iraq’s Sunni population from viciously hostile to the U.S. (we had deposed their minority rule) to exactly the “hostage population” that Petraeus’ COIN strategy is designed to work on. Rumsfeld presided over that transformation, not Petraeus.
Patraeus may not actually be conservative at all. He claims he didn’t vote for McCain on the grounds that generals shouldn’t vote, which is absurd, or insane, and maybe he is even worse. Maybe he is actually an Obama partisan, using his top CIA position now for partisan purposes. If his future in electoral politics is now dead, I think that is a good thing. Overrated to begin with, and his lying about Benghazi is inexcusable.