Questions for
White House Over Benghazi Just Beginning
“We
have two likely possibilities for what occurred, plus a subplot involving arms
to al-Qaeda, which could be treason.”
By Bob Owens
October
29, 2012 - 10:06 am
Incompetence. Abandonment.
Treason.
It has been a
sickening few days for those of us who have closely followed the revelations
coming out about the Benghazi terror attack that killed not only Ambassador Chris
Stevens and diplomat Sean Smith, but also CIA operators (and former SEALs)
Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, who died undertaking a rescue mission —
unauthorized — to save the rest of the consulate staff.
We’ve learned
about the incredible heroism of a CIA force that repeatedly called for help for
as it was being attacked. Disturbingly, we learned that this force had been
told to “stand down” twice by their chain of command, and that they violated
direct orders to conduct this rescue mission. Our consulate staff was left to
die.
Let me say that
again:
our consulate staff was to be abandoned and
left to die.
We’ve also heard
claims about why Ambassador Stevens was in Benghazi to begin with: some
sources suggest this was part of an Obama administration plot to arm Syrian
rebels.
We should tackle
each of these related issues separately.
For starters, we
now know that not a single American life should have been lost. Trucks
with the Islamist cell’s logo and with heavy machine guns mounted on them took
up blocking positions around the consulate no later than 8:00 p.m., according
to Libyan
eyewitnesses. These so-called “technicals” did not let anyone in or out for
one hour and 40 minutes, until the attack began at 9:40 p.m. local time.
In that time,
air assets based in Italy, Sicily, and the Mediterranean Sea could have easily
dispatched the forces preparing for an attack, using precision weapons to
destroy these logo-identified blocking vehicles. There is every reason to
believe that the timely launch of air assets would have destroyed the attacking
force as they prepared for their assault, without the loss of a single American
life. For reasons as yet unknown, these easily identifiable enemy assets
massing for an attack on the U.S. consulate were met with indifference by U.S.
forces.
Our CIA assets,
which seem to have been composed of former SEALs and other special operations
personnel, conducted an unsupported rescue mission under fire. They saved the
lives of the remaining consulate staff and recovered the body of Sean Smith,
whom they then escorted back to their safe-house a mile away.
Once there, they
came under fire again — including fire from a terrorist team armed with
mortars.
Then something
truly extraordinary and troubling took
place:
At that point,
they called again for military support and help because they were taking fire
at the CIA safe house, or annex. The request was denied. There were no
communications problems at the annex, according to those present at the
compound. The team was in constant radio contact with their headquarters. In
fact, at least one member of the team was on the roof of the annex manning a
heavy machine gun when mortars were fired at the CIA compound. The security
officer had a laser on the target that was firing, and repeatedly requested
back-up support from a Spectre gunship, which is commonly used by U.S. special
operations forces to provide support to special operation teams on the ground
involved in intense firefights.
After reading
this, I
was simply stunned. According to the article, an American CIA
agent had a laser on a target and was attempting to call in close air support —
and was denied. While this article never explicitly says so, some have
suggested that the “security officer” in the article was Ty Woods, soon to be killed
by that same mortar. Let’s unpack this.
In this context,
there are two ways to “lase” a target. One is simply using a visible laser
designator/laser sight to point out the target’s location. The second is the
use of a laser target designator (LTD), which is a far more sophisticated
device. An LTD uses coded pulses of a band of light not visible to the human
eye, and these pulses communicate and synchronize with an aircraft-mounted
module to direct a finite and fairly exclusive family of air-launched guided
weapons.
If the CIA
officer was lasing a target with the laser designator/laser sight on his
weapon, one might argue (and some have) that this was an act of improvisation —
a hope that the visible lasing would convince the mortar team to flee their position
in fear of being bombed. This position is not without merit but overlooks two
salient facts. The first is that these security officers lasing the target were
manning a heavy machine gun, which presumably would have the reach and power to
eliminate the mortar team, or at least suppress it, without air support. It
also overlooks the fact that the article directly states that the target was
being lased for a specific asset, a “Spectre.”
Airborne
gunships have been around since the Vietnam war, when C-47 transport planes
were first equipped with port-side mounted mini-guns for close air support
missions, becoming AC-47s.
By 1967, a
desire to improve upon the concept involved replacing the aged twin-engine C-47
base aircraft with the four-engine C-130, which had greater speed, more fuel,
and a greater capacity for weapons and ammunition. These AC130s carried various
nicknames, including “Spooky” (inherited from the AC-47) and “Spectre,” the
latter of which has been the most publicly recognizable name of these powerful
ground support aircraft.
If the CIA
operators were using an LTD, it additionally means that air assets were not in
Italy or Sicily on the ground. It means that strike aircraft were overhead,
and were denied permission to fire from someone in the chain of command. LTDs
must sync with overhead aircraft; they have no deterrent effect since they use
a spectrum of light we cannot see and can only communicate with craft overhead.
I will caution
that this is highly speculative, but an LTD would presumably not be used for
just any variant of the C-130-based gunships. While we did have AC-130 gunships
based close to Benghazi, they would not make the best use of targets lit by an
LTD. The AC-130 uses guns, not guided weapons.
The same cannot
be said of another “Spectre” variant, the MC-130W.
The MC-130W is
built to use precision-guided weapons, including the GBU-44/B Viper Strike
glide bomb and the AGM-175 Griffin missile. Both are laser-guided
weapons that can be directed using a ground-based LTD. Both are weapons
designed to be highly accurate, with small warheads to greatly reduce the
danger of collateral damage. They are precisely the kind of weapon an
experienced CIA operator would call in if they wanted to reduce the threat of
collateral damage, like the kind of damage that might be caused by firing an
HMG from a rooftop.
If this is what
occurred, it seems that even in weapon selection, the primary concern of the
HMG operator was saving innocent lives.
But we do not
know at this time which actually occurred. Based upon the information we can
glean, we’re left with two most probable outcomes.
Either
the Obama administration refused to launch close-air support aircraft from
nearby bases that
could have eliminated enemy forces attacking Americans trapped on the ground, or we had close air support aircraft overhead that
could have taken out the terrorists that had Americans under fire with
precision weapons — and the administration refused
to let them fire.
The moral
cowardice of both decisions is unconscionable.
Writing
yesterday at the Weekly Standard, William Kristol asked ten
questions of the administration, attempting to discover how the White House
in general and President Obama in particular responded to the unfolding
attacks. It is not a terribly exciting list of questions for the most part, nor
was it intended to be. The questions emulate those that might be asked in a
criminal indictment:
1.) To whom did
the president give the first of his “three very clear directives” — that is,
“make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to”?
2.) How did he
transmit this directive to the military and other agencies?
3.) During the
time when Americans were under attack, did the president convene a formal or
informal meeting of his national security council? Did the president go to the
situation room?
4.) During this
time, with which members of the national security team did the president speak
directly?
5.) Did Obama
speak by phone or teleconference with the combatant commanders who would have
sent assistance to the men under attack?
6.) Did he speak
with CIA director David Petraeus?
These are
questions of leadership and basic competence that must be answered. Did Obama
actually lead? If he did, who under his command failed?
Then Kristol
asks the more provocative questions.
7.) Was the
president made aware of the repeated requests for assistance from the men under
attack? When and by whom?
8.) Did he issue
any directives in response to these requests?
9.) Did the
president refuse to authorize an armed drone strike on the attackers?
10.) Did the
president refuse to authorize a AC-130 or MC-130 to enter Libyan
airspace during the attack?
These
ten questions alone could end a presidency, but they are far
from the only questions swirling around Benghazi. As noted earlier, we face the
question of what Ambassador Stevens was doing in Benghazi without security.
Some are
speculating that Stevens was in Benghazi to facilitate the transfer of weapons
to rebel forces in Syria fighting the regime of dictator Bashar Assad. This is
the position of former
CIA operative
Clare Lopez.
The
Libyan-flagged Al Entisar may be the smoking
gun:
Through shipping
records, Fox News has confirmed that the Libyan-flagged vessel Al Entisar, which
means “The Victory,” was received in the Turkish port of Iskenderun — 35 miles
from the Syrian border — on Sept. 6, just five days before Ambassador Chris
Stevens, information management officer Sean Smith and former Navy Seals Tyrone
Woods and Glen Doherty were killed during an extended assault by more than 100
Islamist militants.
On the night of
Sept. 11, in what would become his last known public meeting, Stevens met with
the Turkish Consul General Ali Sait Akin, and escorted him out of the consulate
front gate one hour before the assault began at approximately 9:35 p.m. local
time.
Retired Admiral
James Lyons notes various
sources claiming: ”One of Stevens’ main missions in Libya was to
facilitate the transfer of much of Gadhafi’s military equipment, including the
deadly SA-7 — portable SAMs — to Islamists and other al-Qaeda-affiliated groups
fighting the Assad Regime in Syria.”
Barack Obama has
long had a cozy relationship with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan,
and their
alliance with Islamists in Syria battling Bashir Assad has been criticized
before.
If
Ambassador Stevens was facilitating weapons transfers from Libya to Syrian
Islamist forces aligned with al-Qaeda, via his Turkish alliance, then we are
at a troubling, perhaps catastrophic point in this republic’s history.
We have been at
war with the Islamist hydra of al-Qaeda for more than a decade, and now
sources are accusing a sitting president of arming this enemy.
18 USC § 2381
provides us with a legal
threshold for treason:
“Whoever, owing
allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their
enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is
guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than
five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be
incapable of holding any office under the United States.”
Providing
munitions to al-Qaeda-aligned Islamist forces would seem to meet that standard.
The Obama
administration has the most damaging charge of all to which it must answer, and
can be offered no quarter.
