Benghazigate Breadcrumbs

In the movie Conspiracy Theory, actor Mel Gibson plays Jerry Fletcher, a quirky cab driver who believes that inexplicable world events are evidence of government conspiracies. He publishes his conspiracy theories in a newsletter which no one takes seriously, including the theater audience, until it turns out that one theory is correct. Because he has blown their cover, government agents track him down and try to kill him.

Most things are as they appear to be or as we’re told they are. Except conspiracies. They are secreted for a reason. And they remain undercover until someone suspends disbelief in the obvious explanation and considers other interpretations of the evidence that lead to a different conclusion.

I suspect that’s true of the emerging Benghazigate cover-up.

In early January, then former Secretary of State Clinton was called to testify before a Senate hearing looking into the government’s handling of the Benghazi attack before, during, and after it occurred. Her appearance before the Senate panel was destined to turn out badly because (a) Clinton doesn’t feel she is accountable to anyone, and (b) former Senator Clinton’s demeanor during the questioning suggested she was a bit torqued that she had to answer to those who were once her peers.

Her eruption occurred as Senator Ron Johnson questioned Clinton on what she knew and when she knew it. In view of the overwhelming evidence that the Benghazi attack was planned and perpetrated by al-Qaeda, Johnson was more than a tad interested in the cockamamie story floated by UN Ambassador Rice, Obama, and Clinton that the attack was a response to an online video lampooning the prophet Muhammad. A transcript and video of her barely contained fury with Johnson puts the lie to her apologists who claim the now famous “what difference does it make?” fulmination is quoted out of context. See for yourself. Here’s the text.

With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night decided to go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again.

Hmm. As Hamlet’s mom observed, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

Nine months have passed since the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three of his security detail. We’ve heard the Obama administration’s explanations du jour. They are, like most things Obama, a work in progress. Predictably, no one is to blame for Benghazi. Like the IRS and Associated Press revelations, the people who are in charge strangely never seem in charge when incompetence or scandals are uncovered. Last month we heard the testimony of two whistleblowers who blew the administration’s cover story and were demoted when they unsuccessfully tried to have the Benghazi story told truthfully.

The Democrat Party leaders point out – at least once a day – that the failure of the Republicans to uncover a conspiracy is proof that there’s not one. Well, that’s the way it is with conspiracies, Sherlock; the breadcrumbs are usually hard to follow. But there are enough of them here to suggest that the entire story, if not the true story, is yet to be known.

Keep in mind that, as the administration’s story morphed from video to terrorist act, the attack on the Benghazi occurred on the 11th anniversary of 9/11. Hardly a coincidence in that date. Also keep in mind that this tragic debacle occurred within two months of the presidential election. Lots of self-serving interests in keeping that unfavorable story off the front pages. And why Benghazi? The Libyan embassy is in Tripoli 400 miles west. Benghazi is a consulate – a ramshackle building with a nearby annex. There are larger, more prestigious embassies throughout the Middle East and surrounding countries. Why not attack one of those?

Last year I blogged about the Benghazi attack and the deaths which Obama called “bumps in the road.” You can read that blog post to get the details. Today I will try to follow the breadcrumbs

The alleged reason for intervening in the Libyan uprising was to prevent a humanitarian crisis – i.e. a large scale loss of civilian lives caught in the crossfire of the uprising. If the Tunisian, Egyptian, and Yemeni uprisings taught anything, however, they taught that there are very few civilians around in an anti-government revolution. Everyone takes sides and there may be more than two sides, although it usually boils down to a ruthless government against everyone else. Everyone else is usually a loose federation of parties whose only common denominator is to get rid of the guy in power.

Such is the modern Middle East which is comprised of ancient tribes and sub-tribes many of whom hate each other. And let’s not forget that the guy in power is no outsider. He was a tribal leader in the bad old days and retains tribal identity once in power. The Arab spring, which Obama laughably calls an outbreak of democracy, is an outbreak of regional civil wars with bad guys on all sides. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to intervene in someone else’s civil war, especially when it’s hard to know who to cheer for. But it is seriously stupid to help destabilize or destroy a stable government without any thought – and certainly no control – concerning the power vacuum that follows … which so far hasn’t produced an outbreak of democracy in Afghanistan, Iraq, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, whose ruler is still in place.

A world yearning to be free is a fanciful if not incorrect belief among western democracies. Democracy and representative government is hard work. Regional stability seems to me to be a more preferable goal even if achieved by means the west finds distasteful. Qaddafi is now gone, with the help of the west, and Libya has been made safe for outside interference, civil unrest, internal power struggles, violence, and the ever-present conflict between secular Sunnis and Shiite zealots. Absent the iron-fisted leaders that kept them in check, the Muslim Brotherhood is free to move about the Middle East – at least most of it.

So, what if humanitarian motives weren’t the real reason for involving ourselves in Libya? Of the more than 30 people rescued from the Benghazi compound only seven were with the State Department. The rest were with the CIA. The CIA, in fact, was the initial presence in Benghazi arriving in February 2011 just after the uprising began. It set up shop in the consulate annex, which it called an office of the State Department consulate. As a practical matter, the State Department presence in Benghazi was simply to provide cover for the CIA. Even Libyan authorities didn’t know the CIA was there.

As the Libyan authority began to collapse so did its weapons arsenal, including a substantial number of shoulder-fired heat-seeking surface to air rocket launchers. It’s estimated that Qaddafi had over 20,000 of them. Since the UN-sanctioned humanitarian effort created an alliance of US, British, and French air forces, the small Libyan air force was suppressed. Thus these weapons, now in the hands of the rebels fighting to topple Qaddafi, were of little value. What the rebels needed was cash and the CIA obligingly supplied it – in return for the weapons. It makes sense that the CIA would have established relations early on with rebel leaders whose palms could be greased to get these weapons.

For what purpose? To get them in the hands of the Syrian rebels who were getting mauled in their effort to topple the Iranian and Russian backed Assad regime. The Times of London reported that a Libyan ship carrying a 400-ton arms cargo docked in a Turkish port. Its cargo would be trucked over the border and into the hands of the Syrian rebels. Shortly after, the Syrian rebels began shooting down Assad’s murderous helicopters and jets – a capability they hadn’t had before.

The CIA, of course, denies its involvement in the Syrian uprising, which would be expected of a government agency whose business is spying. But questions are beginning to be asked by those in Congress who are following the breadcrumbs. Was the CIA the core of the US operations in Benghazi with the State Department as its cover, and was it involved in gun-running? The breadcrumbs indicate yes on both counts.

Conspicuously absent when the four caskets arrived at Andrews Air Force Base was David Petraeus, then the head of the CIA, even though two caskets contained the remains of his men. He says he stayed away to avoid revealing a CIA connection in the Benghazi tragedy. CIA careerists despised him for it.

The cover on the CIA’s role in supplying Syrian rebels was blown a year ago and the CIA most surely concocted the fantasy of the lampooning video, which Clinton, Rice, and Obama so willingly peddled as co-conspirators in the cover-up.

Those asking the breadcrumb questions are mostly Republicans. Those deflecting the questions as a non-issue are mostly Democrats intent on protecting Clinton, who will undoubtedly run for President in 2016.

But there is no way that Clinton’s ambassador, Chris Stevens, did not know about the weapons transfer. He was the face of the US government to the anti-Qaddafi rebels and he therefore had to know that al-Qaeda was fighting with the rebels – contrary to Obama’s recent assertion that al-Qaeda wasn’t involved in Benghazi. Stevens’ principal contact with the Libyan rebels was known to have met with Syrian rebel leaders after Qaddafi was killed. The Syrians crossed into Turkey for the meeting whose purpose was to negotiate how Libya could supply money, arms, and fighters to aid Syrian rebels. Stevens' last meeting on the day he was killed was with the Turkish Consul General Ali Sait Akin, most likely in connection with weapon shipments through Turkey. How could Clinton not have known what Stevens, her subordinate, knew?

Democrats on investigative committees and the media are trying mightily to divert attention away from Obama – what he knew and when he knew it. He may have broken the law unless he can establish plausible deniability that he knew anything about the weapons shipments to the Syrian rebels. The exposure of the weapons transfer, therefore, raises serious problems for him. The transfer of weapons to al-Qaeda, who are known to be among the fighters in the Syrian uprising, is prevented under a UN arms embargo, which is binding on all member countries.

Moreover, Vladimir Putin has accused the US – Obama – of supplying weapons to “terrorists” who are trying to overthrow the president of a sovereign country. Obama has, of course, denied the charge, claiming US aid in Syria was limited to humanitarian help. What do you call something someone says knowing it’s not true?

The great imponderable here is why the Benghazi attack occurred. The existence of the CIA was unknown in Libya. Posing as State Department staff, the CIA pumped $40 million into Libyan rebel pockets to buy arms from the Qaddafi arsenal for Syria. Thus, the attack could not have been aimed at the CIA.
 

Was Stevens the target? Chris Stevens was very popular among Libyans, many of whom wanted their picture taken with him when he traveled in public. He refused a visible security detail when he was in public places making him more accessible. Those who say he wasn’t the target of the attack, that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, ignore the larger question of the attack itself – why it happened at all.

This week, Obama announced that the US would begin supplying arms to the Syrian rebels because Assad had used chemical weapons against them. That’s a ruse allowing the US to do overtly what it has been doing covertly. For those who think outside the dots, a dot worth considering is this one. The Benghazi attack was a hit job – a Middle East tit-for-tat.

The Russians, Iranians, and Syrian government privately knew arms were flowing to the rebels from Libya. They knew the American CIA was involved, at least in Turkey. And they may have known that Stevens was involved in the illegal gun-running. It would not have taken a lot of effort to organize a hit squad in Syria and send them to Libya to do the deed. As fluid as Middle East borders are, a Syrian al-Qaeda group would have blended in with local Libyan militia and perhaps even been welcomed, whether the Syrian’s mission was known or not. The state sponsors of the hit squad would surely have known the gravity of their act. Wars have started over less. Maybe one has already started.

Those are some breadcrumbs worth following.