Jihadists twice set off explosives at the consulate prior to the incident that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens, and announced threats on Facebook about escalating attacks on Western targets in the run-up to the 9/11 anniversary, according to whistleblowers reaching out to House Republicans.
In the five months leading up to this year’s 9/11 anniversary, there were two bombings on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and increasing threats to and attacks on the Libyan nationals hired to provide security at the U.S. missions in Tripoli and Benghazi.
Details on these alleged incidents
stem in part from the testimony of a handful of whistleblowers who
approached the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in the
days and weeks following the attack on the Benghazi consulate. The
incidents are disclosed in a letter to be sent Tuesday to Hillary
Clinton from Rep. Darrell Issa,
the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform,
and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the chairman of the oversight committee’s
subcommittee that deals with national security.
The State Department did not offer comment on the record last night.
The
new information disclosed in the letter obtained by The Daily Beast
strongly suggests the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and the late Ambassador Chris Stevens
were known by U.S. security personnel to be targets for terrorists.
Indeed, the terrorists made their threats openly on Facebook.
For
example, following a May 22 early-morning attack on a facility that
housed the International Committee on the Red Cross, a Facebook page
claimed responsibility, and said the attack was a warning and a “message
for the Americans disturbing the skies over Derna.” That reference was
likely to American surveillance drones over a city that provided
fighters to al Qaeda in Iraq in the last decade.
In
June a Facebook page associated with militants linked to the late
Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi posted a threat to Stevens based on the
route he took for his morning jog. The Facebook page also posted a
picture of Stevens. The letter to Clinton notes that “after stopping
these morning runs for about a week, the Ambassador resumed them.”
A
senior State Department official contacted for this story said the
ambassador was “not reckless” with his own security or that of his
staff. But this official also acknowledged that the ambassador was “an
old-school diplomat” and strongly desired to have as few barriers
between himself and the Libyan people.
The
letter also discloses for the first time a bombing at the U.S.
consulate that occurred on April 6, 2012. It says that on that day, two
former security guards for the consulate in Benghazi threw homemade
improvised explosives over the consulate fence. That incident resulted
in no casualties. The Wall Street Journal first reported last
month that on June 6 militants detonated an explosive at the perimeter
gate of the consulate, blowing a hole through the barrier. The letter to
Clinton quotes one source who described the crater as “big enough for
forty men to go through.”
Obama
administration officials have said there was no specific intelligence
predicting the 9/11 anniversary assault on the U.S. consulate in
Benghazi. A senior State Department official acknowledged that there
were five serious attacks on Western targets since the spring in the
lead-up to the attack on the 9/11 anniversary. Speaking of the June 6
attack at the consulate’s perimeter gate, this official said, “The IED
attack caused no loss of life and no injury. The wall acted as designed.
It absorbed it.” This official said that compared with the 9/11
anniversary assault, the earlier attacks in Benghazi were mild. “We
faced a coordinated, military-style assault. We’ve never seen that kind
of attack before,” this official added.
Until
Sept. 19, eight days after the consulate attack, senior administration
officials had said it resulted spontaneously from riots at the U.S.
embassy in Cairo against an Internet video
denigrating the Muslim prophet. Spokesmen for the State Department and
the National Security Council did not return emails late Monday evening.
Rep.
Chaffetz told The Daily Beast Monday that the allegations detailed in
the letter were based on whistleblowers he described as “people who have
firsthand knowledge of the incidents themselves.” Chaffetz declined to
provide more details about the whistleblowers other than to say they
were U.S. government employees and there were fewer than 10 of them.
A senior State Department official contacted for this story said the ambassador was “not reckless” with his own security or that of his staff.
In
some cases the incidents against U.S. personnel or Libyans working to
protect U.S. personnel were mild. In April a U.S. foreign-service
officer stationed in Benghazi was attending a “trade-related event” at
the International Medical University when the security forces of the
university got into a fistfight and then a gunfight with the security
detail for the trade delegation. Eventually the American officer had to
be evacuated by the local Libyan militia that provided security for the
consulate, known as the February 17 Brigade.
On
May 1 at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, the deputy commander of the
embassy’s local security force was “carjacked, beaten, and detained by a
group of armed youth.” Eventually the man escaped his captors and
phoned the embassy. “Libyan security forces fought a gun battle with the
assailants in order to recover a number of stolen vehicles and release
other detainees,” the letter says.
Security
deteriorated significantly in June. On June 10, a man fired a
rocket-propelled grenade in broad daylight into a convoy carrying the
British ambassador to Libya. Later that month, the Red Cross was
attacked again. By the end of June, the British Consulate and the Red
Cross closed their facilities in Benghazi. By the start of July,
the U.S. Consulate was one of the only Western targets left in the city.
“This
was not a safe country on its way to a normalized situation. It was a
very volatile situation,” Chaffetz told The Daily Beast.
The House Oversight Committee is expected to hold a hearing on Oct. 10 on the threats leading up to the attack.
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