Don’t know if the British began reporting it or not, but it’s been known for a while that the State Dept. presence in Libya was a gun running operation for Al Qaeda. I remember reading an account of that information very shortly after the terrorist murders in Benghazi.
it was . Seymour Hirsch wrote about it . it was called the”Rat Line”
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line