[neveralib]

Of the more than 30 U.S. officials evacuated from Benghazi, only seven worked for the State Department, officials briefed on the intelligence told The Wall Street Journal. Nearly all the rest worked for the CIA, under diplomatic cover, which was a principal purpose of the consulate, the Journal said.

This answers some questions and raises others.

If true, this would answer my and others' inquiry as to why these 30 or so personnel have disappeared off the face of the earth and no one has heard a peep about what happened to them or where they are.

That said, when I worked as a covert, military, intel agent I frequently interacted with CIA staff out of an embassy. Not only were we military personnel armed at all times, albeit, handguns (though we did have access to auto weapons in our own civilian compound) but so were the CIA staff.

These "agents" (and I have no reason to believe things have changed) were all "trained" and had gone thru rigorous courses prior to having been assigned overseas.

So why were these 23 or so CIA agents not armed as well and why (I would be surprised if this was not the case) did they not have auto weapons available to them in the Consulate with which to defend themselves.

Something does not compute and the more we learn, the less any of this makes sense.

[livius]

None of this makes sense from any angle. The WH has changed its stories so many times and still not come up with a plausible one.

The consulate or post or whatever you want to call it served a variety of purposes and possibly the attackers themselves didn’t even realize the extent of it. They obviously knew that it was a vulnerable point, though, probably from earlier reconnaissance by locals who were employed there. So it is even more bizarre that it should have been so unguarded if it was, in fact, primarily a CIA facility.

I think this latest “information” from the WH is just an attempt to keep the old shell game going and hide the pea under yet another agency shell. Or perhaps the CIA has been chosen to be the definitive scapegoat in this; I think that Obama has never liked the agency and that he and Jarrett and Axelrod would be very happy to blame it to such an extent that he could claim a need to “reorganize” it (probably out of existence).

None of this addresses the fact that no matter what agency or entity it was, everybody knew that there were Americans under attack and fighting for their lives, and somebody made a decision not to help them.

[Nevadan]

re: If true, this would answer my and others’ inquiry as to why these 30 or so personnel have disappeared off the face of the earth and no one has heard a peep about what happened to them or where they are.

Good question!