DeClassified-Dozens of Vessels Surrounded Benghazi When Clinton Ordered Stand-Down

(Before It’s News) — We have heard over and over from The Obama administration during Congressional hearings that there wasn’t enough time to respond with our military to try and help save American lives that were involved in a firefight  during the Benghazi terrorist attack on Sept 11, 2011.  Well, it turns out that wasn’t true. Judicial watch has just released in in a new report that they have  obtained an unclassified navy map of all the naval ships positioned in the area around North Africa, and Guess what, this new map contradicts the Obama administrations claims of saying they didn’t have military assets in the area that would make it in time to help our ambassador Christopher Stevens and his staff fight off a terrorist attack.

JW Gets Map of Military Fleet Positions During Benghazi Attack

Dozens of vessels were stationed in the region on that day, including two aircraft carriers (Dwight D. Eisenhower and Enterprise), four amphibious ships, 13 destroyers, three cruisers and more than a dozen other smaller Navy boats as well as a command ship. Carriers are warships, the powerhouse of the naval fleet with a full-length flight deck for aircraft operations. During the Benghazi attack, two carriers were based to the east in the Arabian Sea, the Navy map shows.

Two amphibious assault ships (Iwo Jima and Gunston Hill) were situated to the east in the Gulf of Oman and one (New York) was in the Gulf of Aden, the map shows. A fourth (Fort McHenry) was located on the west side of the African continent in the Atlantic Ocean. Amphibious ships resemble small aircraft carriers and have air-craft strips for vertical and short take-offs and landings. The destroyers are scattered throughout the region, but the closest appear to be four (Cole, Forrest Sherman, Jason Dunham and Aboon) in the Mediterranean Sea north of Libya. The rest of the fleet includes cruisers, minesweepers, patrols and a command ship.

The map was provided to Judicial Watch by retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Randall R. Schmidt, who is investigating how the military responded to the Benghazi attack. Schmidt flew jet fighters during his active duty and says there’s no reason the military could not have efficiently responded in Benghazi. Schmidt got the map after filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the Navy asking it to identify the location of all its assets in the region on September 11, 2012

http://www.spreaker.com/embed/player/standard?episode_id=4053987

[H/T Judicial Watch]

Benghazi Hearing: ‘I Can’t Comment on That’ When Pickering Was Asked, If Benghazi Was a Botched Kidnapping Attempt

Walid Shoebat reported: Her name is Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) and she sits on the House Oversight and Government Reform committee. She may have asked two of the most important questions at the September 19th hearing on Benghazi but they don’t appear to have been picked up. It was one of the lengthier hearings and her time was toward the end. Reps. Trey Gowdy, Jim Jordan, and Jason Chaffetz appeared to get the majority of what media attention there was in the questioning of the Accountability Review Board’s Co-Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, but Lummis may have gotten the better of Thomas Pickering, the lead chairman on the ARB.

Pickering’s responses to both questions were incredibly revealing and one response appears to be in direct contradiction to witnesses / survivors of the attack.

First, Lummis asked Pickering if the Muslim Brotherhood, along with “Egyptian operatives”, were involved in the Benghazi attack. She cites documented evidence, which likely is a reference to what we introduced as EXHIBIT B in our “Ironclad report”. Pickering’s answer is particularly noteworthy because in one breath, he concedes that an Egyptian group was involved in the attack and says it was in the ARB’s report. The ARB Chairman then catches himself and said he “hope(d)” that such information was in the unclassified report.

Indications are that Pickering’s hopes may have been dashed. There are only two references to Egypt in the unclassified report. One has to do with a small bomb thrown at an Egyptian diplomat’s vehicle. The other has to do with a general reference to the “growing crises in Egypt and Syria”. Another term that cannot be found in the unclassified report is the “Jamal network”, the one group widely acknowledged to have been involved in the attack. As we wrote back in August, the two individuals who led the Jamal network – Tarek Taha Abu Al-Azm and Muhammad Jamal Abdo Al-Kashif – are both connected to the Muslim Brotherhood. Al-Azm was trained by the U.S. Air Force.

If Pickering was talking about the Jamal network, it is official – albeit unintentional – confirmation that a group with ties to the Mursi regime was involved in the Benghazi attack. If Pickering was talking about a different group, that compounds the problems for the Mursi regime.

While that may have been a significant gaffe, it’s not the biggest of Pickering’s two. Note that Lummis asks Pickering if Benghazi was about a plot to kidnap Christopher Stevens and that it went wrong. Initially, Pickering demurred saying, “I can’t comment on that.” Then, after several minutes, he decided to address it more fully. This may have been a serious political mistake. In particular, Pickering said…

“…they (the attackers) did not make a serious attempt to go into the closed area of the villa. It is not even sure, in my view, they knew the Ambassador was there.” {emphasis ours}

He then completed his statement by conceding that a kidnapping plot could have been a possible.