“When I heard that the situation had evolved to them going to a safe haven and then that we could not find the ambassador, I alerted my leadership that we needed to go forward and consider the deployment of the Foreign Emergency Support Team,” Thompson said during his opening statement.
“I notified the White House. They indicated that meetings had already taken place that evening [deciding against deployment],” Stevens added, explaining that he was told “it was not the right time and it was not the team that needed to go right then.”
Info like this makes me still think that a kidnapping was what was planned, but Al Qaeda found out and replaced the kidnappers with themselves.