administration’s explanation for why no air support or special forces were deployed to Benghazi. The WhiteHouse and State officials said they believed the attacks to have been over but were later taken by surprise by the continuation of the assaults. The new accounts cast a shadow of uncertainty not only over the timeline provided by the Obama administration but over every claim it made about Benghazi. If the administration lied about a “lull,” how can anything else they told us about the assaults be trusted?
Benghazi witnesses further contradicted another central Obama administration claim. The State Department’s ARB report specifically claims U.S. security personnel inside the compound were armed during the attacks, and the report even details how some security officers retrieved their weapons at the start of the assault. Witnesses, on the other hand, reportedly told a House Intelligence Subcommittee investigating the attacks that “none” of the security officers were armed. 6
And so we see that we must question every aspect of the official narrative while attempting to divine the
real
Benghazi story. So much misinformation and disinformation is floating around about the Benghazi onslaught that to this day many in the mainstream news media continue to wrongly refer to the attacked facility as a “consulate,” when it was something else entirely, as we will investigate.
I start this book by exploring the unprecedented “security” set up at the U.S. special mission. I will provide shocking new details about the withholding of critical protection at the facility while also investigating the mind-blowing decision to hire armed members of the al-Qaeda–linkedFebruary 17 Martyrs Brigade as the official quick reaction force to “protect” the facility – essentially ushering the enemy inside the gates.
We will blow the lid off of the secretive activities transpiring inside the doomed facility, exposing a scheme to arm the jihadist Mideast rebels in what essentially amounts to the Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal of the Middle East, the Iran-Contra of the Obama administration. I will examine how these and other activities, including a separate weapons collection effort, may have been the motivating factor behind the September 11, 2012, assaults in the first place.
In one of the most devastating chapters, we will probe how a nonsensical decision made by Obama himself essentially sabotaged an operation in which Special Forces were just hours from capturing one of the most important terrorist figures charged with carrying out the Benghazi murders. An entire chapter is dedicated to investigating not only jihadist groups but also possible state actors behind the attack.
This book will shed new light on one of the persistent questions plaguing the Obama administration and its military command – why were no Special Forces or air support sent the night of the attacks? Not only will I offer new reasons for the lack of reinforcements, but we will also explore what our special forces were
really
doing the night of the assaults.
Of special interest are the details of what really happened to murdered ambassador Chris Stevens the night of the Benghazi attacks. The official State Department storylineregarding Stevens’ fate has some glaring, but until now largely unchallenged inconsistencies. Again, this prompts questions about the official version of events. Foremost in our line of inquiry is whether at any point, alive or dead, Stevens was held hostage – and if so, by whom? I will show it is likely that the rebels were in control of Stevens’ body at least for a period that disastrous night. If that was the case, how was the corpse eventually released? Were there negotiations to secure the remains? What promises did we make for Stevens’ body, and to whom? If Stevens’ body were held hostage, why do we not know about it? These details are important in comprehending the scope of the Real Benghazi