More troubling revelations about Benghazi: CIA never conducted investigation

(Allen B. West) – Just when you thought questions and controversy surrounding the Benghazi terror attack couldn’t get any worse, something else pops up.

American personnel on the ground in Benghazi the night of the 2012 terror attack are outraged after learning that the CIA’s inspector general never conducted an investigation into what happened — despite two CIA workers being killed in the attack and despite at least two complaints being filed by CIA employees, reports Adam Housley of Fox News.

I’d like to believe that since the CIA annex in Benghazi came under attack, the Inspector General of the CIA would want to conduct an investigation of the incident – at the very least to ascertain lessons learned or compile an after action report.

But apparently that’s not the case, and it’s quite disconcerting.

A CIA spokesman said the OIG (Office of the Inspector General) has already “explained fully” to the agency’s congressional oversight committees “why it did not open an investigation into Benghazi-related issues.” In any event, the CIA spokesman said the concerns full under the purview of the State Department’s Accountability Review Board (ARB), and that a separate OIG action could unnecessarily disrupt the FBI’s criminal investigation into the Benghazi attacks.

I find it unconscionable that the CIA would defer to the State Department or even the Department of Justice on a matter directly involving their own agency.

Perhaps the Obama administration has a tighter control over State and Justice — after all, Benghazi occurred under the watch of Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder. It’s well known now that the ARB investigation was quite incomplete – as a matter of fact, it didn’t even include an interview with the Secretary of State Clinton — but then again, “what difference at this point does it make?”

Housley points out separate investigations haven’t stopped the OIG from investigating issues before. Agents at the CIA are apparently upset, frustrated and wondering why this issue remains untouched.

Congressman Frank Wolf’s House Resolution 36, calling for a select committee on Benghazi, now has 187 cosponsors — all Republican unfortunately — and it still has not been brought to the House floor for a vote. There are only two people preventing this legislation from coming to the floor for a vote: Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Speaker John Boehner. The committee hearing process has failed, and in the case of the IRS scandal investigation, has turned into a circus.

The fact remains that four Americans were abandoned to die in Benghazi, and no one in a position to do anything about it in Washington D.C. seems to give a damn.

[H/T Allen B. West]

Amash to Feinstein on Fourth Amendment Pity Party: ‘Hypocrites Like You Are Why the Public Doesn’t Trust Congress’

We’ve entered Mel Brooks level government comedy. Can someone play a sad song on the world’s smallest violin for this woman?

In the ultimate dictionary definition act of hypocrisy, head of the Senate Intelligence Committee Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) is complaining that the CIA violated her committee’s Fourth Amendment rights when she claims the agency removed several key documents from committee computers.

She actually found it within herself to be surprised and outraged that this could happen…to her. Accusing the CIA of breaking federal laws and “undermining the constitutional principle of congressional oversight” Feinstein said, “I am not taking it lightly.” The Department of Justice is reportedly investigating the matter.

Feinstein, if you recall, has been a huge proponent of the NSA’s overreach and basically every government big brother spy program you can imagine in recent years…when it’s aimed at the American people, of course. Here’s just one example from not even a month ago in the LA Times:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) offered a full-throated defense of the government’s collection of data on billions of American phone calls, saying Wednesday that the National Security Agency’s practices have safeguarded the nation without trampling on civil liberties.

“What keeps me up at night, candidly, is another attack against the United States. And I see enough of the threat stream to know that is possible,” Feinstein said at a Pacific Council on International Policy dinner in Century City.

Apparently that same heartfelt “full-throated defense” of government spying overreach ‘safeguarding the nation’ does not apply to herself and her committee, however.

In response to Feinstein’s hypocritical outrage at being targeted by the intelligence community, Rep. Justin Amash (R-Michigan) sent this message out on his official Facebook page:

(Post by Justin Amash.)

“She has had no problem with U.S. intelligence agencies, like the ‪#‎NSA‬, violating the Constitution by spying on hundreds of millions of Americans without probable cause. This kind of hypocrisy is one of the biggest reasons the public can’t stand Congress.”

Exactly.

It’s one of a plethora of reasons, but still. At least someone up on that hill gets it…

Former NSA Contractor Edward Snowden also came out a few hours ago to say that Feinstein is a total hypocrite.

The only person that does not seem to realize it by now is, sadly, Sen. Feinstein.

[H/T FreedomOutpost: Melissa Melton]

CIA Files From Benghazi: Now in the Hands of Al Qaeda?

(The Clarion Project) — The U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) released its Review of the Terrorist Attacks on U.S. Facilities in Benghazi, Libya, September 11-12, 2012 on January 15, 2014.

One of the most disturbing sections in the entire report comes on page 42, where the report cites then-FBI Director Robert Mueller in testimony before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies telling Congress that “as many as 15 individuals supporting the investigation or otherwise helpful to the United States have been killed in Benghazi since the attacks [of September 11, 2012].”

While Director Mueller rightly noted the “lawless and chaotic circumstances in eastern Libya,” the SSCI report also added that “It is unclear whether their killings were related to the Benghazi investigation.”

While calling post-Qaddafi Libya “lawless and chaotic” is something of an understatement, the SSCI’s suspicions about these particular killings and the possibility that they could be connected to the Benghazi investigation should be noted and noted carefully.

The identity of these individuals has not been revealed publicly, but it is certain that the SSCI and the Intelligence Community for which it holds oversight responsibility know who they were. And while it is certainly possible that each and every one of these 15 killings can be explained by the continuing battles among the Al Qaeda militias that led the uprising against former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, the possibility that these are targeted killings – assassinations – must also be considered, even as the SSCI seems to hint that it has thought of this, too.

In an insightful early report about the Benghazi attacks, the Wall Street Journal reported on November 1, 2012 that “…the day after the attack…the CIA appears to have dispatched local Libyan agents to the annex to destroy any sensitive documents and equipment there.”

The WSJ use of the term “agents” would seem to indicate that these local Libyans were CIA recruited assets, who either were trusted enough for this assignment or perhaps were all they had to turn to at that point. They may have been Libyan officials, whether uniformed police or others such as intelligence and security officials.

We do not know and the SSCI report does not tell us. In any case, what that short section of the SSCI report does tell us, at a minimum, is that sensitive documents and equipment were believed by the CIA to have remained in the CIA Annex the day after the attack, that they had not been destroyed or removed by the fleeing Americans and were of sufficient concern to the CIA that it was willing to take a chance on tasking local Libyans to retrieve whatever was there.

What became of any such materials and whether they were successfully recovered or not is not noted in the SSCI report. Tom Joscelyn, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), writing in theWeekly Standard on January 7, 2014 about the Obama administration’s belated admission about the role that Abu Sufian Ben Qumu (a former GITMO detainee) and his group — the Derna, Libya branch of Ansar al-Shariah — played in the Benghazi attack provides a possible follow-up, however.

In the very last line of his piece, “Obama Administration’s Benghazi Bombshell,” Joscelyn writes that two U.S. intelligence officials say that Faraj al Chalabi, an identified Libyan jihadi, “is suspected of bringing materials from the compound in Benghazi to senior al Qaeda leadership in Pakistan.”

This report begs the question: How is it possible for U.S. intelligence officials to so specifically name al-Chalabi as someone who may have taken materials from Benghazi to al-Qa’eda leadership in Pakistan?

What materials have they identified as having been removed from the CIA Annex and how do they know (or why would they suspect) such materials have been taken to Ayman al-Zawahiri in Pakistan in the first place? In fact, it doesn’t seem possible – unless U.S. intelligence officials themselves perhaps were the ones who dispatched al-Chalabi or an associate to the compound to recover those “documents and equipment.”

When the materials likely later were confirmed to be missing from the compound but hadn’t been delivered as expected, the panic would have begun to build.

Both Joscelyn and Fox News have reported that al-Chalabi is a known associate of the Al-Qaeda “inner core” with ties that go back to the late 1990s. He has been identified as a former bodyguard for Osama bin-Laden.

Without naming anyone specifically, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) confirmed that individuals under investigation for connections to the Benghazi attack indeed had “strong al Qaeda ties.” Further, according to Bill Gertz, writing in the Free Beacon on June 27, 2013, al-Chalabi—who’d already been identified as being “involved in planning” the attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi – had been detained by Libyan officials in March 2013 and then let go in June 2013, ostensibly for lack of evidence.

Yet, according to Gertz, the U.S. government “has evidence al Chalabi was linked to the Benghazi attack.”

Note that neither Gertz nor the U.S. government claims that al-Chalabi was physically present on site the night of the attack, but only that he was known (somehow) to have been “involved in planning.”

Adding to the chain of evidence, the Gertz article was the first to note that al-Chalabi went to Pakistan right after the September 11, 2012 attack and then returned to Libya (which is when he was arrested).

It must be wondered at this point why al-Chalabi isn’t sitting in a cell in Guantanamo Bay, if U.S. intelligence officials are, and apparently very shortly after the attack, were aware that he was not only involved in planning the Benghazi attack, but also likely had couriered highly sensitive materials from the CIA Annex to Al Qaeda in Pakistan.

If CCTV video footage from inside the CIA Annex during the night of the attack had identified al-Chalabi (with his known Al Qaeda links) on the scene, it would also have recorded whether he or anyone else removed sensitive materials that night. There is no public information that either of these is the case.

Rather, the fact that the CIA dispatched “local Libyan agents” “the day after the attack” suggests that U.S. intelligence had at least some reason to believe such materials were still there and could be recovered. It also would seem to indicate that al-Chalabi did not depart for Pakistan until sometime after September 12, 2012 as well as after the sensitive materials were understood to be missing.

Given the size of that CIA Annex operation (which the WSJ puts at aroundtwo dozen operatives), there would have been quite a bit of reporting flowing to multiple recipients in and around Washington,  D.C. on a daily basis. Some of that reporting very well may have provided at least indications of the identities of various Libyans who may have been working with those operatives.

It is easy to imagine that Ayman al-Zawahiri and the rest of the Al Qaeda top leadership in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area might have considered this to be extremely valuable—and desirable—information.

Connecting these dots in this way may or may not yield an accurate assessment of exactly what happened at that Benghazi compound or even exactly who eventually removed whatever sensitive documents and materials may have been there.

But the deaths under undisclosed circumstances of 15 individuals who had been at some point “supporting the investigation” in the months following the attack, after a known Al Qaeda jihadi (al-Chalabi) personally couriered materials from the CIA Annex to Al Qaeda core leadership, would at least suggest that maybe Al Qaeda has gotten its hands on some names—names belonging to people they do not want speaking with U.S. authorities.

[H/T The Clarion Project]

Secret Purpose of Benghazi Annex Is Still a Secret

(WND) — The CIA annex in Benghazi was set up so that the movements of U.S. personnel were hidden from locals, according to the Senate’s 88-page report on the Sept. 11, 2012, attack.

The report further states the nearby U.S. special mission, the site of the initial assault, did not store classified information.

The new details prompt questions about what activities were transpiring in the mission and annex, two separate facilities about 1.2 miles apart.

The Senate report states that intelligence and State Department personnel should “generally be co-located overseas except where the IC (Intelligence Community) determines that, for operational reasons, co-location is not helpful in meeting mission objectives or that it poses a security risk.”

Page 39 of the report finds that keeping intelligence facilities separate from State Department compounds “can provide important operational advantages.”

The report quotes the unnamed chief of the CIA annex as saying: “We had the luxury that the Mission didn’t have of keeping low-profile and making our … protocol movements, and our vehicular moves were very much low-profile.”

The annex chief continued: “So we had a security advantage, I guess you could say, over our State colleagues.”

The Senate report quoted a June 12, 2012, CIA cable from Benghazi, which said that as “a direct result of a concerted effort to build and maintain a low profile we believe that the locals for the most part do not know we are here and housed/officed in a separate stand alone facility from our [United States government] USG counterparts.”

The report also states that according to the State Department, the “Mission facility did not store classified information, and therefore no Marine contingent was present.”

The activities transpiring at the CIA annex were apparently so secretive that key Pentagon officials overseeing the area did not even know about the existence of the base, as WND reported last week.

The extensive Senate report dropped a major bombshell: The commander of U.S. forces in Africa was not aware of the existence of the besieged CIA annex.

The staggering detail not only raises the question of what was transpiring at the fated annex and nearby U.S. special mission. Questions now must be also raised as to why, on the night of attack, command of an elite unit known as C-110, or the EUCOM CIF, was reportedly transferred from the military’s European command to AFRICOM, or the United States Africa Command.

Page 28 of the 85-page report states:

“With respect to the role of DoD and AFRICOM in emergency evacuations and rescue operations in Benghazi, the Committee received conflicting information on the extent of the awareness within DoD of the Benghazi Annex. According to U.S. AFRICOM, neither the command nor its Commander were aware of an annex in Benghazi, Libya.

“However, it is the Committee’s understanding that other DoD personnel were aware of the Benghazi Annex.”

Page 77 of the report further divulges that Gen. Carter Ham, then-commander of U.S. Africa Command, “was not even aware there was a CIA annex in Benghazi at the time of the attacks.”

Continued the Senate report: “We are puzzled as to how the military leadership expected to effectively respond and rescue Americans in the event of an emergency when it did not even know of the existence of one of the U.S. facilities.”

On the night of the attack, Ham was placed in charge of the C-110, a 40-man Special Ops force maintained for rapid response to emergencies. The force was trained for deployment for events like the Benghazi attack. Command was transferred from the military’s European command to Ham in the middle of the attack.

Ultimately, the C-110, which had reportedly been training in Croatia during the attack, was not deployed to respond in Benghazi. Instead it was ordered to return to its forward operating base in Italy.

[H/T WND: Aaron Klein]

 

Feinstein Unaware of CIA Annex Before Attack on U.S. Compound In Benghazi

(Breitbart) — Senator Dianne Feinstein (D – CA), Chairman of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, told Breitbart News on Monday she did not know a CIA annex existed in Benghazi, Libya before the deadly September 2012 attack, which took the lives of four Americans, on the U.S. compound happened. Feinstein could also not confirm if other members of Congress knew about the CIA annex prior the attack.

Like Feinstein, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D – CA) is also a member of Congress’s Super 8, a group of top House and Senate leaders from both parties as well as intel committee chairmen and ranking members. Pelosi would not confirm nor deny to Breitbart News in September if she was briefed about the CIA annex before the attack on the U.S. facilities in Benghazi.

As reported previously by Breitbart News, section 503’s Presidential Approval and Reporting of Covert Actions in the 1947 National Security Act, mandates the President of the United States to inform Congress (in this case, Congress’s “Super 8“) of any covert CIA actions before authorizing the spy agency of any operations.

According to the recent Senate Select Intelligence Committee report on Benghazi, General Carter Ham, head of AFRICOM at the time of the attack, did not even know about the CIA annex in Benghazi when the deadly assault occurred.

Page 12 of the 85 page report reads:

We are puzzled as to how the military leadership expected to effectively respond and rescue Americans in the event of an emergency when it did not even know of the existence of one of the U.S. facilities.

Between pages 27 and 28:

With respect to the role of DoD and AFRICOM in emergency evacuations and rescue operations in Benghazi, the Committee received conflicting information on the extent of the awareness within DoD of the Benghazi Annex. According to U.S. AFRICOM, neither the command nor its Commander were aware of an annex in Benghazi, Libya.

However, it is the Committee’s understanding that other  DoD personnel were aware ofthe Benghazi Annex.

The Senate Select Intelligence Committee made no mention as to why the CIA annex was in Benghazi and Rep. Frank Wolf (R – VA), who is leading the call for a Select Committee to investigate the terror attack in Libya, asked why the report failed to address the matter.

[H/T Breitbart]

AT&T Is Selling Out Call Data to the CIA for $10M in Double-Cross

[H/T Intellihub News]: The communications giant AT&T is said to have accepted payments of up to $10 million from the Central Intelligence Agency for the turnover of private caller data according to a recent report.

AT&T has voluntarily accepted at least $10 million in payouts from the C.I.A. allowing the ultra secret spy agency access to the massive caller database network and all records therein.

According to a report by Charlie Savage, “The program adds a new dimension to the debate over government spying and the privacy of communications records, which has been focused on National Security Agency programs in recent months. The disclosure sheds further light on the ties between intelligence officials and communications service providers. And it shows how agencies beyond the N.S.A. use metadata — logs of the date, duration and phone numbers involved in a call, but not the content — to analyze links between people through programs regulated by an inconsistent patchwork of legal standards, procedures and oversight.”_[1]

Now some fear that the C.I.A. has bypassed specific U.S. laws which prevent domestic spying, by colluding on a deal that uses AT&T as a private corporate liaison thus circumventing laws enacted previously. It’s a down and dirty trick that outright deceives the American people and has some like myself disgusted at AT&T’s thought process.

To boot, it is also believed that AT&T maintains contracts with the National Security Agency as well, demonstrating the Orwellian nature of the police state that is now engulfing our once great nation.

“In all cases, whenever any government entity anywhere seeks information from us, we ensure that the request and our response are completely lawful and proper,” said AT&T in a statement to CNNMoney. “Like all telecom providers, we routinely charge governments for producing the information provided. We do not comment on questions concerning national security.”_[2]

“As a matter of longstanding policy, the CIA does not comment on alleged intelligence sources or methods,” the CIA said in a statement. “The CIA protects the nation and upholds the privacy rights of Americans by ensuring that its intelligence collection activities are focused on acquiring foreign intelligence and counterintelligence in accordance with U.S. laws.”_[2]

Yet Another Benghazi Update: Trey Gowdy’s Explosive Claim About Benghazi Survivors, Obama ‘Changing’ Names and ‘Dispersing’ Around Country

It’s a Benghazi Frenzy today, which is only good news.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) was on with Greta Van Susteren last night to discuss the Obama scandals. This was after Jake Tapper on CNN broke the news that there were “dozens” of CIA operatives on the ground in Benghazi on 9-11 when the consulate came under attack. Gowdy then told Greta the Obama Administration is hiding the survivors, dispersing them around the country, and changing their names. And, at the same time Obama is calling this a ‘phony’ scandal!

Mark Levin: CNN Reveals Benghazi Bombshell, This Could be a Huge Break to Expose Coverup

The recent news that CIA operatives are getting polygraphed was reported yesterday, is now gaining traction and could be huge. CNN has uncovered exclusive new information about what is allegedly happening at the CIA, as dozens of CIA operatives were reported on the ground during the Benghazi attack. If this story (CNN report) is accurate, it will be an absolute ‘block buster.’

New Benghazi Details: Bombshell CNN Reports ‘Unprecedented’ Effort Underway to Keep Secrets From Leaking

We continue to report new information on Benghazi as it happens.  CIA is polygraphing its operatives makes it clear there is a massive effort underway by the Obama administration to cover up details of Benghazi.

http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/apps/cvp/3.0/swf/cnn_embed_2x_container.swf?site=cnn&profile=desktop&context=embedwww&videoId=bestoftv/2013/08/01/lead-dnt-griffin-benghazi-investigation.cnn&contentId=bestoftv/2013/08/01/lead-dnt-griffin-benghazi-investigation.cnn

The Blaze reports: The CIA is polygraphing its operatives on a regular basis in an “unprecedented” effort to prevent Benghazi secrets from leaking out, CNN’s Drew Griffin is reporting, citing unnamed inside sources.

“Since January, some CIA operatives involved in the agency’s missions in Libya, have been subjected to frequent, even monthly polygraph examinations, according to a source with deep inside knowledge of the agency’s workings,” the bombshell report reveals. “The goal of the questioning, according to sources, is to find out if anyone is talking to the media or Congress.”

More from CNN:

It is being described as pure intimidation, with the threat that any unauthorized CIA employee who leaks information could face the end of his or her career.

In exclusive communications obtained by CNN, one insider writes, “You don’t jeopardize yourself, you jeopardize your family as well.”

Another says, “You have no idea the amount of pressure being brought to bear on anyone with knowledge of this operation.”

The CIA responded to CNN’s report in a statement, claiming it “enabled all officers involved in Benghazi the opportunity to meet with Congress,” according to Jake Tapper.

It has also been revealed that as many 35 Americans were in Benghazi on the night of the deadly terror attack, CNN reports, citing anonymous inside sources. As many as seven were wounded and 21 Americans were reportedly working in the building known as the CIA annex.

Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) told CNN that the revelations represent “a form of a cover-up.”

“We should have the people who were on the scene come in, testify under oath, do it publicly, and lay it out. And there really isn’t any national security issue involved with regards to that,” the lawmaker said.

There have been reports and rumors about the U.S. government possibly being involved in the transfer of weapons out of Libya, through Turkey and into the hands of the Syrian rebels. The theory has been analyzed thoroughly on TheBlaze and TheBlaze TV, but many questions remain.

According to the CNN report, the CIA and the State Department were the two U.S. agencies operating in Benghazi. The State Department has denied being involved in any transfer of weapons to other countries, though it clearly stated they “can’t speak for any other agencies.”

The CIA, on the other hand, would not say if they were involved in any transfer of weapons to other nations.

Obama: #2 Pick for CIA Used to Oversee ‘Erotica Readings…’ And is Totally Unqualified

Barack Obama’s latest appointment reminds me of an old Dennis Miller stand up act [at :28 mark] when he said to the audience: ‘the easiest job in the world is a Coroner… what’s the worst thing that can happen huh?’

Maybe Obama was thinking the same thing here when he appointed a former ‘Erotica Reader’ with literally no experience, as the back up to one of the most powerful positions in the government — what can wrong huh?

Breitbart reports: ‘While Obama appointee Avril Haines will be the highest-ranked woman in the CIA to date, she may also be the Agency’s only Deputy Director who used to oversee “erotica readings” at a bookstore.

According to the New York Post, when Haines was 24 years old, she dropped out of a graduate program in physics at John Hopkins University and opened a waterfront bookstore in Baltimore. The store “turned into the regular meeting place of a small group of erotica aficionados,” where Haines held a monthly erotica reading.

Haines would set the mood for the readings. For example, in preparation for one session, “she placed red candles throughout her store,” then “got pulses racing” by reading the following:

In the topmost bed chamber of the house (the prince) found her. He had stepped over sleeping chambermaids and valets, and, breathing the dust and damp of the place, he finally stood in the door of her sanctuary. And approaching her, he gave a soft gasp as he touched her cheek, and her teeth through her parted lips, and then her tender rounded eyelids.

Haines has taken part in “virtually every senior-level meeting at the president’s National Security Council over the past two years.”

She has never worked in the intelligence agency in which she will soon hold the No. 2 role.’

[loveclaw_buttons]