This strikes me as just pure bureaucratic incompetence on the part of the State Department. Since this was an "interim facility" that did not meet the established security standards, there had to be a signed written wavier for USG personnel to occupy the facilities. That wavier would have to be signed by the Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security (Eric Boswell) or the U/S for Management (Pat Kennedy) or SECSTATE Hillary Clinton. I am 100% certain that the written wavier exists since it is a Congressional requirement. I would love to see who signed it.
Without knowing the true mission of the diplomatic mission at Benghazi I am sure there was tremendous pressure from the intel agencies and State to have something on the ground there hence the rush to put people in despite the lack of security. The true purpose was probably what was located in the annex.
As far as ignoring or not responding to the mission's request for more security in Benghazi, there was probably a feeling in Washington that we should keep the American footprint as small as possible so as not to draw too much attention to the mission and to placate the Libyan government in Tripoli, which did not want the center of political gravity to shift back to Benghazi, which was the interim capital of the revolutionary forces fighting Ghadaffi.
LOL
In round figures, how many folks in State had input/knowledge of all this?
That’s an awful lot of CYA got to be going on in only that one department, and this whole deal is growing more legs by the second.
My second question: Given my previous comment, what’s your best estimate on how long before somebody decides to go public? (Or maybe even has it gone down already but the story’s not for release until Monday.)
Seems that Hillary claims she forwarded all the requests from Stevens for security to the administration keeping her copies as evidence for when it all blew up. She must have know the shiitte was going to hit the fan.
You are right once again I did recall in several links reading that the footprint should be negligible so they were going to use local security. But it was easily corrupted and that's what happened.
I have another link that is loaded with stuff I am checking out. If it pans out I will get your take on it since you know these people well.Thanks again.