What Happened in Benghazi
I barely remember what was going on around the time of the Benghazi attacks. I hadn’t yet decided to follow politics and therefore didn’t really know what was going on. I remember hearing about a tragedy, Americans died. Maybe it could have been prevented. Hillary Clinton, at the time Secretary of State, was to blame. The past election cycle and movie 13 Hours has brought the situation up again and I had to wonder how everything was connected. This post hopes to provide context for the situation and figure out the facts of that night and the months that followed.
Libya is an African state, next to Egypt, sitting on the Mediterranean Sea. In 2011, Arab Spring rose throughout the Northern African and Middle Eastern world. Arab Spring saw revolutions in various countries hoping to oust dictatorships and gain democracy. Libyans rose up against the 40+ year rule of Muammar al-Qaddafi. In July of 2012, Libya voted for a new parliament that would draft a new constitution. This was just 2 months before the Benghazi attack.
On September 11th, 2012, protests broke out in Egypt over an American film that supposedly insults the Prophet Muhammad, called Innocence of Muslims. Egyptians gathered outside the U.S. embassy in Cairo to protest the film, some stormed the compound, scaling the walls. This set up of a neighboring country is important to the reporting of the attacks in Libya.
The events that transpired on the anniversary of 9/11 in 2012 involved two facilities and three teams. The first facility is the State Department Temporary Mission Facility (TMF). TMF’s are not considered full embassies and thus do not have full protections, such as stationed Marines. This specific TMF was being rented out as a basic villa, and as such was more vulnerable than embassies because they were not built to sustain rockets or bombs. The TMF contained Ambassador Chris Stevens, Information Management Officer Sean Smith, and State Diplomatic Security (DS). The second facility was the covert CIA complex, referred to as the “Annex”. Supposedly, the Annex was in place without the Libyan government’s knowledge to obtain information on high-grade weapons. The team depicted in 13 Hours that went to help those at the TMF were contractors for this CIA facility, and included Tyrone Woods. The third team in this narrative was the CIA Tripoli team, who upon hearing of the violence at the TMF, flew to Benghazi and secured transportation for the Americans out of the situation. This team included Glen Doherty.
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (“HPSCI”) was tasked with looking into the events leading up to and coming out of the Benghazi attacks. They established a timeline of events from that night, as well as delved into questions of misconduct. The following is the timeline that was found through surveillance and reconnaissance video, FBI intelligence reports, CIA cables, and email traffic, all corroborated through eyewitness testimony.
The House Intelligence Report had six major findings. The following is pulled directly from their report. Specific examples and evidence for these statements can be found here.
- CIA security personnel on the ground in Benghazi, Libya, during the attacks that began on September 11, 2012, exhibited bravery and tactical expertise, saving the lives of fellow Americans from the State Department under difficult conditions.
- In the months prior to the attacks, the [Intelligence Community] provided intelligence about previous attacks and the increased threat in Benghazi, but it did not have specific, tactical warning of the September 11 attacks. The CIA was conducting no unauthorized activity in Benghazi and was not collecting and shipping arms o Syria. The CIA ensured sufficient security for CIA facilities in Benghazi and was able to assist the State Department in Benghazi. Succinctly, there was no intelligence failure.
- Al-Qa’ida-affiliated groups participated in the attacks on U.S. facilities ate in Benghazi, and the appropriate U.S. personnel made responsible tactical decisions about how to respond to the attacks and rescue fellow Americans. There was neither a stand down order nor a denial of available air support, and no American was left behind.
- After the attacks, the early intelligence assessments and the Administration’s [Obama term two] initial public narrative on the causes and motivations for the attacks were not fully accurate. HPSCI asked for the talking points, which Ambassador Rice ended up using for her talk show appearances on September 16, solely to aid the Members’ ability to communicate publicly using the best available intelligence at the time. The process and edits made to these talking points was flawed.
- In the course of HPSCI’s investigation, while some agencies, were slow to respond to Committee inquiries, after an extensive and comprehensive search, there is no evidence that any officer was intimidated, forced to sign NDAs [Non-Disclosure Agreements] or otherwise kept from speaking to Congress, or polygraphed because of their presence in Benghazi.
The Benghazi attacks result in the deaths of four Americans: Ambassador Christopher Stevens, information manager Sean Smith, and contractors Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.
In 2016, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (Secretary of State during the Benghazi attacks) was sued by the mother of Sean Smith and father of Tyrone Woods. The parents alleged that Clinton’s lax security (specifically her emails) led to their children’s deaths. What was Clinton’s role in Benghazi?
Clinton was one of the three main contenders charged with misleading the public. Along with Ambassador Rice and President Obama, Secretary Clinton went with the initial statements that the attacks resulted from a protest getting out of hand. What they stated happened (that a protest to an American made film insulting the Prophet Muhammad) was proved not factual, especially when it was revealed that those things did happen, but at the Cairo Embassy in Egypt. The story switched from being a “spontaneous” attack to “premeditated”.
As more details came out, questions popped up to the level of security and resources the TMF had, when the government knew the situation in Benghazi was deteriorating.
The reason Benghazi is considered a scandal tied to Clinton is that she had on a private server over 50,000 pages of email that served her job as Secretary of State; around 850 pages related to Libya. This is where the lawsuit comes into play. Clinton is seen as negligent by the laxity pertaining to security. In the various House and Senate reports, as well as the testimony by CIA and Department of State members, Clinton is barely mentioned. She is seen as having passed along faulty information (as is Obama and Rice). That information was requested by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Deputy CIA Director Morell significantly changed the talking points so that the CIA wouldn’t be seen as self serving. It appears that there was no malicious intent from the Executive arm of the government to misinform U.S. citizens, just a bad culmination of events.
The attacks in Benghazi were unfortunate, but it appears that nothing could have prevented the attack, even if there were more secure measures. Perhaps in that matter, lives could have been saved, but Libya is a tumultuous place with little legitimate leadership and plenty of militias, and violence would have occurred if someone wanted violence done. The State Department could have done more to ensure heightened security measures, but that would require a bigger budget for diplomatic measures, and the current trend is to build up military measures instead, taking away important resources for Americans abroad. Hopefully, new administrations learn from this mistake, but currently it appears that these trends will go on.
