Crocodile's Lament

By: Michael Kelley and Geoffrey Ingersoll | Nov.  12, 2012

As the spotlight shines on ex-CIA Director David Petraeus’  biographer-turned-mistress Paula Broadwell, journalists have uncovered a speech  in which she may  have revealed classified informationabout the attack on a U.S. consulate in  Benghazi.

Broadwell told a Denver audience in  October: “Now I don’t know if a  lot of you heard this, but the CIA annex [to the consulate] had taken a couple of Libyan militia members  prisoner and they think that the attack on the consulate was an effort to try to  get these prisoners back.”

The CIA adamantly  denied her the claim, which would have been a violation of laws prohibiting  CIA detention. It has also been suggested  that Broadwell was confused when she made that statement.

A  source of Fox News, however, corroborated Broadwell’s claim today.

If there were ever a motive to attack Americans, it would be the  disappearance of friends.

But it’s important to note that the CIA operation was unknown to  anyone else until it was exposed on the night of the  attack and publicly  acknowledged in congressional hearings on October 10. The  consulate, on the other hand, was the official front  for local CIA operations. If there were an original target to strike  Americans, it would be the consulate, rather than the safe  house.

Broadwell also said in her speech  that intelligence shows “the militia  members in Libya were watching the  demonstration in Cairo and it did sort of galvanize their  effort.”

The following timeline is according  to the CIA:

Once the fired up Libyans attacked the consulate at  9:40 p.m., the lives of Stevens and his colleagues were in immediate danger  because the ostensibly pro-American police force, the February 17th Brigade  militia, disappeared  during the attack.

CIA “security“  at the annex received reports of the attack and were “in  the car revving the engine,” waiting for permission to go as the CIA base  chief tried to reach the February 17th Brigade to get “heavy  weapons and other assistance“—a logical attempt to get outside support if the aim is  to protect  knowledge of the annex and the CIA operations.

Twenty minutes later, with time running out and no better options, the lightly-armed security personnel got the order and left to  confront attackers at the consulate with the hopes of saving  whomever they could. They eventually arrived at 10:20 (after trying to get heavy  weapons from other militiamen) and at 11:15 they left Ambassador Christopher  Stevens for dead and shuffled remaining State Department personnel—including the  body of information  management officer Sean Smith— into the vehicles and left, but not  alone.

According to NPR, they  soon got lost in the streets and militia members shot at their tires as they  made it back to the annex.

It wasn’t until the CIA personnel blew their cover when they led the  attackers back to the hidden annex that the focus of the fighting  turned to the annex, which was attacked by rockets and small arms from around  midnight to 1:00 a.m. before a lull in the fighting.

CIA backup, including former  Navy SEAL Glen Doherty, arrived at about 5:15 a.m. Soon after that the  attackers began shooting mortars at the annex—one of which killed Doherty  and former SEAL Tyrone Woods. At 6 a.m. Libyan forces from the  military intelligence  service arrived and subsequently took 30 Americans—mostly CIA—to the  airport.

The critical question remaining is what the highly secretive U.S.  mission in Benghazi was all about (besides being a detention and  interrogation center). One theory we’ve discussed before is  that both Stevens  and CIA personnel may have been were involved in transporting  heavy weapons from Benghazi to Syrian rebels.

SEE ALSO: How  US Ambassador Chris Stevens May Have Been Linked To Jihadist Rebels In Syria >

SEE ALSO: Was Obama gun-walking arms to jihadists?  http://crocodileslament.com/?p=658