Sept 2012: U.S. Ambassador in Libya and two others killed in attack of consulate

[Rifleman62]

Three times they asked for help.

EXCLUSIVE: CIA operators were denied request for help during Benghazi attack, sources say

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/26/cia-operators-were-denied-request-for-help-during-benghazi-attack-sources-say/#ixzz2AQCIlcc1


Fox News has learned from sources who were on the ground in Benghazi that an urgent request from the CIA annex for military back-up during the attack on the U.S. Consulate and subsequent attack several hours later was denied by officials in the CIA chain of command -- who also told the CIA operators twice to "stand down" rather than help the ambassador's team when shots were heard at approximately 9:40 p.m. in Benghazi on Sept. 11.

Former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were part of a small team who were at the CIA annex about a mile from the U.S. Consulate where Ambassador Chris Stevens and his team came under attack. When they heard the shots fired, they radioed to inform their higher-ups to tell them what they were hearing and requested permission to go to the consulate and help out. They were told to "stand down," according to sources familiar with the exchange. An hour later, they called again to headquarters and were again told to "stand down."

Woods, Doherty and at least two others ignored those orders and made their way to the Consulate which at that point was on fire. Shots were exchanged. The quick reaction force from the CIA annex evacuated those who remained at the Consulate and Sean Smith, who had been killed in the initial attack. They could not find the ambassador and returned to the CIA annex at about midnight.

At that point, they called again for military support and help because they were taking fire at the CIA safe house, or annex. The request was denied. There were no communications problems at the annex, according those present at the compound. The team was in constant radio contact with their headquarters. In fact, at least one member of the team was on the roof of the annex manning a heavy machine gun when mortars were fired at the CIA compound. The security officer had a laser on the target that was firing and repeatedly requested back-up support from a Specter gunship, which is commonly used by U.S. Special Operations forces to provide support to Special Operations teams on the ground involved in intense firefights. The fighting at the CIA annex went on for more than four hours -- enough time for any planes based in Sigonella Air base, just 480 miles away, to arrive. Fox News has also learned that two separate Tier One Special operations forces were told to wait, among them Delta Force operators.

Watch "Special Report Investigates: Death and Deceit in Benghazi" on Fox News at 1 p.m. ET on Saturday, 3 p.m. on Sunday and 10 p.m. on Sunday.

A Special Operations team, or CIF which stands for Commanders in Extremis Force, operating in Central Europe had been moved to Sigonella, Italy, but they too were told to stand down. A second force that specializes in counterterrorism rescues was on hand at Sigonella, according to senior military and intelligence sources. According to those sources, they could have flown to Benghazi in less than two hours. They were the same distance to Benghazi as those that were sent from Tripoli. Specter gunships are commonly used by the Special Operations community to provide close air support.

According to sources on the ground during the attack, the special operator on the roof of the CIA annex had visual contact and a laser pointing at the Libyan mortar team that was targeting the CIA annex. The operators were calling in coordinates of where the Libyan forces were firing from.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters at the Pentagon on Thursday that there was not a clear enough picture of what was occurring on the ground in Benghazi to send help.

"There's a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking going on here," Panetta said Thursday. "But the basic principle here ... is that you don't deploy forces into harm's way without knowing what's going on."

Fox News has learned that there were two military surveillance drones redirected to Benghazi shortly after the attack on the Consulate began. They were already in the vicinity. The second surveillance craft was sent to relieve the first drone, perhaps due to fuel issues. Both were capable of sending real time visuals back to U.S. officials in Washington, D.C. Any U.S. official or agency with the proper clearance, including the White House Situation Room, State Department, CIA, Pentagon and others, could call up that video in real time on their computers.

Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, were part of a Global Response Staff or GRS that provides security to CIA case officers and provides countersurveillance and surveillance protection. They were killed by a mortar shell at 4 a.m. Libyan time, nearly seven hours after the attack on the Consulate began -- a window that represented more than enough time for the U.S. military to send back-up from nearby bases in Europe, according to sources familiar with Special Operations. Four mortars were fired at the annex. The first one struck outside the annex. Three more hit the annex.

A motorcade of dozens of Libyan vehicles, some mounted with 50 caliber machine guns, belonging to the February 17th Brigades, a Libyan militia which is friendly to the U.S., finally showed up at the CIA annex at approximately 3 a.m. An American Quick Reaction Force sent from Tripoli had arrived at the Benghazi airport at 2 a.m. (four hours after the initial attack on the Consulate) and was delayed for 45 minutes at the airport because they could not at first get transportation, allegedly due to confusion among Libyan militias who were supposed to escort them to the annex, according to Benghazi sources.

The American special operators, Woods, Doherty and at least two others were part of the Global Response Staff, a CIA element, based at the CIA annex and were protecting CIA operators who were part of a mission to track and repurchase arms in Benghazi that had proliferated in the wake of Muammar Qaddafi's fall. Part of their mission was to find the more than 20,000 missing MANPADS, or shoulder-held missiles capable of bringing down a commercial aircraft. According to a source on the ground at the time of the attack, the team inside the CIA annex had captured three Libyan attackers and was forced to hand them over to the Libyans. U.S. officials do not know what happened to those three attackers and whether they were released by the Libyan forces.

Fox News has also learned that Stevens was in Benghazi that day to be present at the opening of an English-language school being started by the Libyan farmer who helped save an American pilot who had been shot down by pro-Qaddafi forces during the initial war to overthrow the regime. That farmer saved the life of the American pilot and the Ambassador wanted to be present to launch the Libyan rescuer's new school.

 

[a_majoor]

Looks ike Hillary is getting up off her sword. I wonder if anyone realy thought the Clintons were going to go down with the ship or allow the Administration to throw them under the bus. The blame game will become very heated indeed:

http://nation.foxnews.com/hillary-clinton/2012/10/26/report-hillary-asked-more-security-benghazi-obama-said-no

Report: Hillary Asked For More Security in Benghazi, Obama Said No

Clinton asked for more security in Benghazi, Obama said no

BY CHRISTOPHER COLLINS

Last night, it was revealed that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had ordered more security at the U.S. mission in Benghazi before it was attacked where four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens were murdered by Al-Qaeda but President Obama denied the request.

The news broke on TheBlazeTV’s “Wilkow!” hosted by Andrew Wilkow, by best-selling author, Ed Klein who said the legal counsel to Clinton had informed him of this information.

Klein also said that those same sources said that former President Bill Clinton has been “urging” his wife [Hillary] to release official State Department documents that prove she called for additional security at the compound in Libya, which would almost certainly result in President Obama losing the election.

Read more: http://nation.foxnews.com/hillary-clinton/2012/10/26/report-hillary-asked-more-security-benghazi-obama-said-no#ixzz2AQPlnywP

 

[Journeyman]

Klein also said that those same sources said that former President Bill Clinton has been “urging” his wife [Hillary] to release official State Department documents that prove she called for additional security at the compound in Libya, which would almost certainly result in President Obama losing the election.

Ri-iiight.  :not-again:

 

[observor 69]

Hey we are talking Fox News and "TheBlazeTV " here. You can't get more credible sources then those two.
Very heavy :sarcasm:

 

[Haletown]

Round 1 *** covering begins.  Petraeus has his eye on the 2016 Democratic nomination.

Petraeus Throws Obama Under the Bus

Breaking news on Benghazi: the CIA spokesman, presumably at the direction of CIA director David Petraeus, has put out this statement: "No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate. ”


So who in the government did tell “anybody” not to help those in need? Someone decided not to send in military assets to help those Agency operators. Would the secretary of defense make such a decision on his own? No.

It would have been a presidential decision. There was presumably a rationale for such a decision. What was it? When and why—and based on whose counsel obtained in what meetings or conversations—did President Obama decide against sending in military assets to help the Americans in need?


http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/petraeus-throws-obama-under-bus_657896.html

Story is still being buried by the MSM, but sooner or later . . .

 

[Haletown]

Maybe this is the later moment.  A father speaks out.

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/10/father-of-slain-benghazi-seal-they-murdered-my-son-video/

 

[tomahawk6]

Alot of info is coming out now. A caller to Rush Limbaugh' show laid out for his audience how information is transmitted to the decision makers in Washington. Evidently C-130AU gunship was available as well as armed Predators and Obama called it off !!

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/10/26/are_some_in_the_chain_of_command_still_haunted_by_carter_s_failed_rescue_in_1979

 

[Rifleman62]

So who in the government did tell “anybody” not to help those in need?

David Axelrod  (he's not "in government". He is the government.)

 

[tomahawk6]

Axelrod was an advisor and now he runs the campaign. If Obama wants to stop efforts to support the embassy he simply calls Panetta.

 

[Rifleman62]

I realize that. I was being a smart ass. Axlerod is not a nice humanoids. Do you really think the current President is not being told what to do every day?

Its like they arm him with today's talking points and launch him.

Would love to see how much was spent by this President on travel. Billions, and billions.

 

[tomahawk6]

The President wants fore more years. ;D

 

[vonGarvin]

The President wants fore more years. ;D

I see what you did there

 

[observor 69]

HUFF Post Media


How a Real News Story Became the 'Obama Watched Them Die' Meme

Posted: 10/26/2012 8:43 am


I have now several times encountered dramatic images of the attack in Benghazi accompanied by oversize text that tastefully accuses American officials of watching idly while Americans were murdered in an opportunistic terror assault during the 9/11 anniversary and Innocence of Muslims demonstrations.

The idea is absurd on its face to even the most casual observer. Firsthand accounts of the harrowing events of that night are completely at-odds with the claim. Ambassador Stevens either died or his body was left behind because nobody could see through the smoke. Reinforcements from Tripoli were on the scene. The CIA was, we have come to strongly suspect, just about a mile away. Libyan police died on the scene, alongside American personnel. The accusation just doesn't jibe with what we know.

But because Internet memes apparently now pass for fact checks at Forbes, I suppose somebody must respond. That's where this piece comes in, I suppose. So, let's talk about how a CBS report about a rescue effort amid a fury of confusion became an Internet meme about no attempted rescue while everyone watched on the big screen.

On Oct. 24, CBS news ran a story about the Benghazi attack. Ironically enough, its focus was a special response team that was dispatched from Europe -- but never made it -- to the CIA building where embassy personnel, Libyan police and backup from Tripoli had taken up shelter. We have come to believe that it was a CIA building not from that story but because Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah,) told the whole world as much live on C-SPAN while his Republican colleagues coolly tried to carry on exploiting the tragedy for political gain without revealing that inconvenient -- and quite classified -- truth. And we know that other backup had arrived because, unlike people who create these graphics, you and I read the news and have decided to acquaint ourselves with the horrific chain of events before firing up Photoshop.

The story concluded with the following:

Meanwhile, CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan reports that the FBI and State Department have reviewed video from security cameras that captured the attack on the consulate.

The audio feed of the attack was being monitored in real time in Washington by diplomatic security official Charlene Lamb. CBS News has learned that video of the assault was recovered 20 days later from the more than 10 security cameras at the compound.

The government security camera footage of the attack was in the possession of local Libyans until the week of Oct. 1. The video will be among the evidence that the State Department's review board will analyze to determine who carried out the assault.


Forbes' Larry Bell rather quickly managed to twist that into:

Just one hour after the seven-hour-long terrorist attacks upon the U.S. consulate in Benghazi began, our commander-in-chief, vice president, secretary of defense and their national security team gathered together in the Oval Office listening to phone calls from American defenders desperately under siege and watching real-time video of developments from a drone circling over the site. Yet they sent no military aid that might have intervened in time to save lives.


More at  LINK

 

[vonGarvin]

"I see your Fox  News and raise yiu a Huffington Post".....

 

[Haletown]

and I call on the MSM journalists . . .

Sandy may slow it down, but this story is not going away. 

 

[Brad Sallows]

This will probably come down to a simple explanation: the decision makers had all, or mostly all, seen "Rules of Engagement"; the thought of sending armed people in aircraft to an embassy under siege triggered overactive imaginations, resulting in a catastrophic defecation of spinal columns and collective stampede to avoid risk.

 

[tomahawk6]

An AC-130 or two would have been perfect for taking out the 150 jihadists that had attacked the consulate/annex. A QRF of sorts made it to the consulate to save the other staff members.Marines or SEALs could have been dispatched from the 6th Fleet.

 

[a_majoor]

I think we arer all aware of the various mutually contradictory sotires coming out of the Administration and various intelligence and military organs as to what happened and when. Here (for people keeping score) are the points that will be answered one way or another. I'm pretty sure the CYA crew(s) are terrified that someone will pre emptively leak damning information/transcripts/videos in order to protect themselves; destroying the credibility and possibly the careers of everyone else around them:

http://weeklystandard.com/articles/mysteries-benghazi_660184.html?nopager=1

Mysteries of Benghazi
Nov 12, 2012, Vol. 18, No. 09 • By STEPHEN F. HAYES

November 6 is not only Election Day, it's also the eight-week anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Regardless of which candidate wins, the American people deserve answers to the many unanswered questions about the attack—and the events that preceded and followed it. The Benghazi debacle is a drama in three parts: the lack of security before the attacks, the flaccid response during the attacks, and the misleading narrative after the attacks. There are unanswered questions about each part. Here are some of the most important.

Part One

Before the attack, a wide array of U.S. officials provided stark warnings about inadequate security in Benghazi. They include Eric Nordstrom, former regional security officer for the State Department in Libya; Lt. Col. Andrew Wood, a site security commander in Libya from February to August 2012; the unknown author of letters dated the day of the attack and found on the consulate floor; and, of course, the late Ambassador Christopher Stevens himself. Why didn’t they receive the assistance they requested?

During the vice presidential debate, Joe Biden claimed: “We weren’t told they wanted more security there.” National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor later clarified that Biden was speaking “for himself and the president.” In fact, an August 16 State Department cable summarizing an emergency meeting at the U.S. mission in Benghazi was circulated to White House and NSC officials just three weeks before the attack. It reported that the regional security officer “expressed concerns with the ability to defend Post in the event of a coordinated attack due to limited manpower, security measures, weapons capabilities, host nation support and the overall size of the compound.” Does the administration maintain that no one at the White House or NSC was aware of these urgent requests?

More by Stephen F. Hayes

    Papers Blast Obama Over Benghazi
    The Omertà Administration
    Romney Plays It Safe, Misses Opportunities
    W.H. Tries to Write Al Qaeda Out of Libya Story
    Twenty Questions

Several officials with responsibility for security in -Benghazi spoke of a “normalization” directive that included a conscious effort to reduce the security posture at the consulate. Who proposed “normalization” and who issued the directive to reduce security?

Part Two

Citing sources on the ground in Benghazi, Fox News reported that Tyrone Woods was “painting” mortar sites with a laser from his rooftop position shortly before he was killed. A subsequent CIA timeline provided to Washington Post columnist David Ignatius contradicts this, saying that “the rooftop defenders never ‘laser the mortars,’ as has been reported.” Can the CIA make this claim with certainty? If Woods was painting the mortar sites as eyewitnesses claim, presumably at considerable personal risk, why was he doing so? Did he have reason to believe that reinforcements were coming?

President Obama says that he gave “three very clear directives.” They were: “Number one, make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to. Number two, we’re going to investigate exactly what happened so that it doesn’t happen again. Number three, find out who did this so we can bring them to justice.” To whom was the first of those directives transmitted and when?

A CIA statement claims that no one in the CIA chain of command denied requests for help. A statement from NSC spokesman Tommy Vietor claims no one at the White House denied requests for assistance. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said that the military did not have “real-time information” to act on. Did military officials not communicate with top State Department officials such as Charlene Lamb, who testified under oath that she and others were following the attack in real time from their post at the State -Department? Was President Obama aware of requests for assistance from the men under attack in Benghazi? Panetta also said: “You don’t deploy forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on.” Does this statement imply that there were requests for help from the field that senior defense officials judged it imprudent to act on? In any case, isn’t going into harm’s way without complete information precisely the job of our most highly trained military personnel? Does the president agree with Panetta? Doesn’t announcing that the U.S. military needs perfect intelligence before engaging an enemy encourage similar attacks in the future?

Part Three

State Department officials in Washington followed the attacks as they happened and knew instantly, in the words of Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy, that the assault in Benghazi was “an unprecedented attack by dozens of heavily armed men.” A CIA timeline provided to reporters late last week notes that at 1:15 a.m. on the night of the attack, less than five hours after it began, CIA -officials attempting to rescue Ambassador Stevens reported that terrorists from Ansar al Sharia had surrounded the hospital in Benghazi. On September 12, the day after the attack, the CIA station chief in Libya cabled Washington to report that the assault had been a terrorist attack. By September 13, the FBI was interviewing CIA officials who were on the ground in -Benghazi, several of whom described a sophisticated terrorist attack on the compound.

Yet when CIA director David Petraeus briefed members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on September 14, he suggested that the attack was triggered by a YouTube video. Two days later, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice made the same claim about the video on political talk shows. Two days after that, President Obama blamed the video in an interview with David Letterman. And a week after that, the president cited the video six times in his speech at the U.N. General Assembly. Why all the misleading information from senior administration officials?

While President Obama and other administration officials misleadingly tied the attack in Benghazi to an anti-Islam film, they have been reluctant to discuss al Qaeda’s very real ties to the assault. We know that Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a terrorist organization that has sworn loyalty to al Qaeda’s senior leadership, was involved. So was Ansar al Sharia, which has al Qaeda ties. CNN has reported that members of Al Qaeda in Iraq, another terrorist organization that has sworn loyalty to Ayman al Zawahiri, are suspected of taking part in the attack. And then there is a terrorist named Mohammed Jamal, an Egyptian with longstanding ties to Zawahiri, whose fighters, according to multiple reports, assaulted the compound. Instead of a “spontaneous” attack that grew out of a protest, the assault on the U.S. consulate was carried out by a consortium of al Qaeda allies. To date, the administration has not identified the terrorists responsible for killing four Americans. When will the administration present the American people with an accurate description of the terrorists responsible, including their al Qaeda ties?

Whether Barack Obama remains president or not, he owes the American people a full accounting of the Benghazi fiasco.

 

[a_majoor]

And the Legacy Media finally begins to cover the story (when it is far too late to materially change the election, giving you some idea of where the priorities really lie). Like Fast and Furious, the economy and many other things, the media has sacrificed their credibility by ignoring or downplaying anything which might have hurt the Administration. Payback has been in the form of ever decreasing readership and viewers, resulting in decreasing revenues and the extinction of brands like Newsweek and the sharp decline of news outlets like CNN.

It will be a long time (if ever) before the Legacy Media regains its position in society:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/media-discover-benghazi-notice-obama-stonewalling/2012/11/01/7cdf9d1e-2480-11e2-ac85-e669876c6a24_blog.html

Media discover Benghazi, notice Obama stonewalling
By Jennifer Rubin

Well, it finally happened. The mainstream media have figured out that Benghazi is a big story and potentially a serious national security scandal. After weeks of silence, a plethora of mainstream media news stories have popped.

As he has from the get-go, Eli Lake makes news, writing: “On the night of the 9/11 anniversary assault at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, the Americans defending the compound and a nearby CIA annex were severely outmanned. Nonetheless, the State Department never requested military backup that evening, two senior U.S. officials familiar with the details of military planning tell The Daily Beast.” Lake observes that although assets likely would not have arrived in time to save Ambassador Chris Stevens, “military backup may have made a difference at around five the following morning, when a second wave of attackers assaulted the CIA annex where embassy personnel had taken refuge. It was during this second wave of attacks that two ex-SEALs working for the CIA’s security teams — Glenn Doherty and Tyrone Woods — were killed in a mortar strike.”

However, Lake is no longer the only reporter hammering away at the case.

CBS News reports: “CBS News has learned that during the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, the Obama Administration did not convene its top interagency counterterrorism resource: the Counterterrorism Security Group (CSG). ‘The CSG is the one group that’s supposed to know what resources every agency has. They know of multiple options and have the ability to coordinate counterterrorism assets across all the agencies,’ a high-ranking government official told CBS News. ‘They were not allowed to do their job. They were not called upon.’ ”

As conservative critics have pointed out for weeks, the White House cover story didn’t match the information held by intelligence agencies:

    In the days after the assault, counterterrorism officials expressed dismay over what they interpreted as the Obama Administration’s unwillingness to acknowledge that the attack was terrorism; and their opinion that resources which could have helped were excluded.

    Counterterrorism officials from two agencies said they concluded almost immediately that the attack was by terrorists and was not spontaneous. “I came to this conclusion as soon as I heard the mortar rounds were impacting on top of the building our people were occupying,” says one. “The position of the mortar must be plotted on a map, the target would have to be plotted, computations would be calculated that would result in the proper mortar tube elevation and the correct number of powder bags to be attached to the rounds.”

ABC’s Jake Tapper says that the White House is stalling, refusing to come forward with a clear explanation of the president’s role:

    In the place of a detailed description from the Obama administration about what happened more than six weeks ago comes the drip-drip-drip of stories about the failures of the Obama administration to provide those Americans on the ground in Libya with all the security assets they needed.

    ABC News broke some stories on this, ranging from a security team being denied continued use of an airplane its commander wanted to keep in country to better do his job; to the security team leaving Libya before Ambassador Stevens wanted it to.

    Fox News Channel’s Catherine Herridge last night reported on a newly discovered cable indicating that in August, less than a month before the attack, the diplomatic post in Benghazi convened an “emergency meeting” concerned about local Al Qaeda training camps. Said the cable: “RSO (Regional Security Officer) expressed concerns with the ability to defend Post in the event of a coordinated attack due to limited manpower, security measures, weapons capabilities, host nation support, and the overall size of the compound.”

The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, reveals the heavy presence of the CIA in Benghazi, painting a picture of confusion and lack of coordination between CIA and the State Department. It raised the question of why Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, rather than CIA chief David Petraeus, stepped forward to take the blame for the Benghazi fiasco.

The Post’s David Ignatius is out with a similar account and timeline, arguing, “While there were multiple errors that led to the final tragedy, there’s no evidence that the White House or CIA leadership deliberately delayed or impeded rescue efforts.”

All of this raises the question: What was the president doing and was he even involved throughout the crisis? The president still hasn’t explained why he clung to the anti-Muslim video as the trigger for the attacks long after the intelligence community had determined it was an organized jihadist attack. (Given the heavy presence of CIA operatives at the scene, it makes it even more obvious that senior officials knew the attack was a coordinated assault, not a spontaneous reaction to the film.) President Obama still has not explained how it could have escaped notice that Libya had become a haven for terrorists. In fact, the president has behaved throughout as a candidate trying to avoid blame instead of a commander-in-chief and chief executive who is transparent in his actions and accountable to the American people.

Obama would no doubt like us to think of him strutting around disaster areas in New Jersey and New York, brow furrowed and telling people to answer their phones. But the job there is for the governors and local authorities. His job is not Sandy cleanup but national security. It is not a job he has fulfilled sufficiently, so no wonder he’d rather don his leather jacket (presidential seal-embossed, naturally) and hang out with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Briefings! Reports! On-site investigations!

Meanwhile, who was answering the phone at the White House on 9/11/2012? Who was briefing Obama , and how did he get the facts wrong for so long? Why did he go to Las Vegas after Benghazi but cancel campaigning after Sandy (hint: proximity to Election Day)?

We’ll have to wait for a special investigator, a bipartisan commission, a Senate investigation or a new president, I suspect, to get to the bottom of it. Obama will never cough up the facts voluntarily.

 

[tomahawk6]

Blue Mountain Security was a complete fiasco. They didnt setup the saferoom properly. Hired unarmed guards and did not coordinate with other allies that had assets in Benghazi.The Brits are wondering why they werent called in as they had sizeable assets in Benghazi.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/11/03/exclusive-security-officials-on-ground-in-libya-challenge-cia-account/

Despite a carefully narrated version of events rolled out late this week by the CIA claiming agents jumped into action as soon as they were notified of calls for help in Benghazi, security officials on the ground say calls for help went out considerably earlier -- and signs of an attack were mounting even before that.

The accounts, from foreign and American security officials in and around Benghazi at the time of the attack, indicate there was in fact a significant lag between when the threat started to show itself and help started to arrive.

According to the CIA, the first calls for assistance came at 9:40 p.m. local time from a senior State Department official at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, to the CIA annex about a mile away.

But according to multiple people on the ground that night, the Blue Mountain Security manager, who was in charge of the local force hired to guard the consulate perimeter, made calls on both two-way radios and cell phones to colleagues in Benghazi warning of problems at least an hour earlier. Those calls allegedly went to local security contractors who say that the CIA annex was also notified much earlier than 9:40 p.m. U.S. military intelligence also told Fox News that armed militia was gathering up to three hours before the attack began.

One source said the Blue Mountain Security chief seemed "distraught" and said "the situation here is very serious, we have a problem." He also said that even without these phone and radio calls, it was clear to everyone in the security community on the ground in Benghazi much earlier than 9:40 p.m. that fighters were gathering in preparation for an attack.

Many of these security contractors and intelligence sources on the ground in Benghazi met twice a week for informal meetings at the consulate with Blue Mountain and consulate staff, and at times other international officials. They were all very familiar with security at the consulate -- and said the staff seemed "complacent" and "didn't seem to follow the normal American way of securing a facility."

Both American and British sources say multiple roadblocks set up by fighters believed to be with Ansar al-Sharia were in place in Benghazi several hours before the 9:40 p.m. timeline and that communications also alluded to "heavily armed troops showing up with artillery." Fox News was told by both American and British contacts who were in Benghazi that night that the CIA timeline rolled out this past week is only "loosely based on the truth" and "doesn't quite add up."

Fox News was also told that the local guard force meant to protect the consulate perimeter "panicked" and didn't know what to do as the attackers took up positions. Sources say other guards simply "walked away".   

One former Special Op now employed by a private company in Benghazi said that even the safe room wasn't properly set up. He said "the safe room is one of the first measures you take" and that he is "not sure how you can set a safe room without fire suppression and ventilation in case of fire." He also said, "Ambassador Stevens would likely be alive today if this simple and normal procedure was put into place."

As details emerge of serious security issues before the attack on Sept. 11, Fox News is also beginning to hear more frustration from sources both on the ground in Benghazi and in the U.S. Multiple British and American sources insist there were other capabilities in the region and are mystified why none were used. Fox News was told there were not only armed drones that monitor Libyan chemical weapon sites in the area, but also F-18's, AC-130 aircraft and even helicopters that could have been dispatched in a timely fashion. 

However, George Little, a spokesman from the Pentagon, denied their presence in the area.

"On the night of the attack on American personnel and facilities in Benghazi, there were no armed unmanned aerial vehicles over Libya, and there were no AC-130s anywhere close," he said. 

British intelligence sources said that unarmed drones routinely flew over Benghazi every night in flight patterns and that armed drones which fly over chemical sites, some a short flight from Benghazi, "were always said to be on call." American sources confirmed this and questioned "why was a drone armed only with a camera dispatched?"

Another source added, "Why would they put a ragtag team together in Tripoli as first responders? This is not even what they do for a living. We had a first responder air base in Italy almost the same distance away." Despite the team arriving from Tripoli that night, sources said sufficient American back-up never came.

British sources on the ground in Benghazi said they are extremely frustrated by the attack and are still wondering why they weren't called for help. “We have more people on the ground here than the Americans and I just don't know why we didn't get the call?" one said.

Both American and British sources said, at the very least, the security situation on the ground and the lack of proper response were the result of "complete incompetence." The covert team that came in from Tripoli was held up at the Benghazi airport for more than three hours by Libyan officials. Sources said the team notified officials in Washington that they were being delayed within 30 minutes of their arrival.

They also point out that these questions "don't even address the military capabilities of our United Nations ally Turkey, who (has) forces available a similarly short flight away." Fox News has learned that Turkey had a number of embassy staff in town the night of the attack and that the Turkish consul general met with Ambassador Stevens in Benghazi the night he and the three other Americans were killed.

One source asked, "Were the Turks not warned? What forces were available from our ally Turkey? Especially since they had officials there in Benghazi also and had to be concerned … and where was the U.N. in all of this?"