One of the most surprising (or least depending on your level of cynicism, admittedly me) aspects of the Benghazi attack is the notion it took place because of a need for revenge by the attackers. We might now have more evidence that notion is true.
CNN is reporting the number of CIA agents around at the time was in the dozens and the possible reasons they were around support the idea of a revenge attack when coupled with some other info. From the article:
Speculation on Capitol Hill has included the possibility the U.S. agencies operating in Benghazi were secretly helping to move surface-to-air missiles out of Libya, through Turkey, and into the hands of Syrian rebels.
What’s the real story?
So, there was a likely relationship between the CIA and the groups in Libya. Some more info from a Democracy Now! interview with former elite members of the U.S. military:
JACK MURPHY: Sure. There’s a number of different contributing factors that led to these attacks. When we start to talk about the blowback effect, we do also have to understand that this was a group of people, the Ansar al-Sharia militia, that wasn’t particularly fond of Americans to begin with. There was a large number of foreign fighters, these international jihadists, who were amongst that group the night of the attack. But what hasn’t been talked about very much in the media is that there were covert operations being run inside Libya, targeted killings against militia members, al-Qaeda-affiliated personnel, also involving securing weapons that had fallen into the militia hands, that we didn’t want them to have in the post-war Libya that was destabilizing the Libyan transitional government. But there were a series of operations over the course of the summer and even that week of September in the run-up to the attack.
AMY GOODMAN: U.S. government allies were also assassinated, were killed…
JACK MURPHY: Well, allegedly, there was even a CIA asset that was targeted and killed in that first week of September prior to the attack.
AMY GOODMAN: By who? Killed by?
JACK MURPHY: By the United States military, by special operations personnel.
AMY GOODMAN: A CIA asset killed by U.S. personnel.
JACK MURPHY: Allegedly. And this phenomena has happened previously in Iraq and Afghanistan. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to prove for certain that this individual was an asset, but you can only imagine what’s going through the heads of the militia members as they feel that they’re working hand in hand with the Americans and then all of a sudden the Americans kill one of their people. And this was—this was definitely one of the events that led to the special operations forces actually kicking up the hornets’ nest in Libya, and it was a contributing factor that led to the attack in Benghazi. (Emphasis mine)
Add all that to the reality that members of Ansar al-Sharia are fighting in Syria and the picture becomes potentially quite nefarious.
It is still a rather loose connection but it seems possible the CIA was dealing weapons to these militias for use in Syria, for reasons unknown killed one of the people they were dealing with, and the militia reacted very violently when they were betrayed.
We may never know if this is true since the government would have to acknowledge a very explosive action it was involved in to confirm this possibility. But the evidence emerging is beginning to suggest this could be reality.
