Posted on 05/06/2013 3:20:39 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The alleged source: Greg Hicks, the same State Department deputy whose jaw dropped when he heard Susan Rice equivocating about whether the consulate attack was pre-planned or not.
Who told SOCAFRICA they couldn’t go to Benghazi?
The account from Gregory Hicks is in stark contrast to assertions from the Obama administration, which insisted that nobody was ever told to stand down and that all available resources were utilized. Hicks gave private testimony to congressional investigators last month in advance of his upcoming appearance at a congressional hearing Wednesday.
According to excerpts released Monday, Hicks told investigators that SOCAFRICA commander Lt. Col. Gibson and his team were on their way to board a C-130 from Tripoli for Benghazi prior to an attack on a second U.S. compound “when [Col. Gibson] got a phone call from SOCAFRICA which said, ‘you can’t go now, you don’t have the authority to go now.’ And so they missed the flight … They were told not to board the flight, so they missed it.”…
“I believe if we had been able to scramble a fighter or aircraft or two over Benghazi as quickly as possible after the attack commenced, I believe there would not have been a mortar attack on the annex in the morning because I believe the Libyans would have split. They would have been scared to death that we would have gotten a laser on them and killed them,” Hicks testified. Two Americans died in the morning mortar attack.
More from Hicks via the Examiner:
“They were told not to board the flight, so they missed it,” Hicks added. “So, anyway, and yeah. I still remember Colonel Gibson, he said, ‘I have never been so embarrassed in my life that a State Department officer has bigger balls than somebody in the military.’ A nice compliment.”
He added that “at that time, the third attack, the mortar attack at 5:15, had not yet occurred, if I remember correctly.”…
Hicks is certain that the special forces team was needed. “We fully intended for those guys to go, because we had already essentially stripped ourselves of our security presence, or our security capability to the bare minimum,” he said in the interview.
No way to know if Gibson’s team would have made it to the scene in time to save Doherty and Woods from the attack on the annex if they had received the order to leave promptly, but that’s beside the point. The point, as Stephen Hayes notes, is that it was unclear at the time if the fighting was over, in which case there’s no obvious reason to have them stand down. On the contrary, if Hicks is right about a threadbare security presence at the consulate — and we know from many, many revelations last fall that he is — then the White House had every reason to err on the side of sending extra military assets. When asked why that didn’t happen, Hicks replied, “I guess they just didn’t have the right authority from the right level.” Any theories as to why that might be? Remember, when Martin Dempsey testified three months ago as to why U.S. troops weren’t sent to the scene, he said, “we never received a request for support from the State Department.” Hicks, who was Stevens’s deputy at State, obviously thought support was needed. Who intervened above him to make sure the request wasn’t sent?
Question: Are we to understand that it’s official Obama administration policy not to intervene in attacks on U.S. diplomats unless intelligence on the ground is perfect, or near perfect? I ask because last year Panetta attempted to wave away all these concerns about troops not being sent to the consulate during the fighting on grounds that “you don’t deploy forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on, without having some real-time information about what’s taking place.” That logic, as applied to the “bare minimum” security presence at Benghazi, suggests that the White House decided to leave whoever was left on the ground at the consulate to fend for themselves while waiting for “help” from Libyan security so that it didn’t have to take the political risk of another Mogadishu by sending American troops on a chaotic rescue mission. Is that what happened here? And is it uniform policy for diplomats in peril, or just ones who happen to come under attack two months before a presidential election?
Update: Any guesses as to whose fault it is that Benghazi hasn’t gotten better coverage until now? Hint: It’s not the media’s, and it’s certainly not the left’s. C’mon, you know who.
Yes, Zero is unfit to be President. His only defense is that he was ignorant - somehow he didn’t know (but sleeping on the job is not a very good reason for not knowing what was going on) while he was clearly incompetent.
Unfortunately, their Hillary led chorus of “what’s it matter now - it was a long time ago” will be adopted by 1/3 plus 1 of the Democrat Senators, so even if the Republicans drive this all the way through impeachment, the Senate will once again not convict. Hopefully the repurcussions will take its toll on the Democrats in the Senate, preferably exposing them for the partisans they are prior to the next election. Could at least put them in the minority.
Did they mean prior to a 2nd attack on the consulate? The way it is written makes no sense.
I believe it was a second attack on a second compound. IIRC the people from the consulate either fled during the original attack or rescued by a civilian security team and taken to the second compound (safe house). IIRC two of the guys from that security team were killed at the safe house. They had used their stash of on-hand cash to rent a plane from Tripoli to get them to Benghazi so they could help. My memory ain’t what it used to be though.
After the consulate was overrun, the CIA base was attacked.
Some have said that the secret base was exposed when the two guys from there disobeyed orders and rescued the couple-dozen Americans at the consulate (they couldn’t find the ambassador and the IT guy who may have already been dead).
I have also read that the CIA base was exposed when the 6 man civilian security team arrived from Tripoli and was escorted to the secret base by Libyan police.
However it was exposed, at some point it started receiving fire.
OK thanks! Makes sense. I suppose a more detailed timeline will be produced that explains it a bit better. So ... it will be interesting if we could actually find out who was involved in making those decisions. My guess is we’ll never fully know
don't forget this possibility:
LLS
I really, really hope you are right.
I do to.
LLS
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.