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2012 Benghazi Attack
Lauren Bouma
GOVT 484
Strategic Intelligence
February 18, 2018
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This paper discusses the 2012 Benghazi attack and how it can be considered an intelligence
failure. It covers the time from September 11th to September 12th 2012 from 21:40 to 04:15 and
the events that occurred during that time period. Since the Sept. 11 assault on the U.S. Consulate
in Benghazi, which left Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans dead,
questions have persisted over what happened that night, whether there was adequate security at
the compound and the manner in which the Obama administration initially characterized the
attack. This paper discusses everything that has happened since then.
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Prior to the Benghazi attack there were many security incidents, starting back in
December 2011 going to August 27th 2012. In December 2011 a terrorist plot was thwarted, but
Benghazi emergency plan warned of many Islamic terrorists still operating in the area. In
March 2012 the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli lead security officer, RSO Eric Nordstrom, requested
additional security and later testified that he received no response. On April 10th, 2012 an
explosive device was thrown at a convoy carrying U.N. envoy Ian Martin. On May 22nd, 2012 a
rocket-propelled grenade hit the offices of the International Red Cross. On June 6th, 2012: An
IED exploded outside the Benghazi consulate compound. On June 11th, 2012: An RPG hit a
convoy carrying the British Ambassador, because of that the U.K. closed its consulate. Col.
Wood, military Site Security Team (SST) commander wains Benghazi, and helped with
emergency response. On July 2012: RSO Nordstrom again requested additional security.
On July 9th, 2012: Amb. Stevens sent a cable requesting continued help from military
SST and State Dept. MSD (Mobile Security Deployment team) through mid Sept. 2012, saying
that benchmarks for a drawdown had not been met. The teams were not extended. In early
August the State Department removed the last of three 6-man State Dept. security teams and a
16-man military SST team from Libya. On August 2nd, 2012: Ambassador Stevens sent a cable to
D.C. requesting "protective detail bodyguard positions". On August 8th, 2012: A cable from
Ambassador Stevens to D.C. stated that "a series of violent incidents has dominated the political
landscape" and calls them "targeted and discriminate attacks." On August 27th, 2012: The State
Department issued a travel warning for Libya citing the threat of assassination and car bombings
in Benghazi/Tripoli.
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After two years of investigations that cost almost $7 million, one of the most politically
contentious chapters of Hillary Clinton’s career came to a close on Tuesday June 21, 2016.
House Republicans released their report, which was long awaited on the 2012 Benghazi terror
attacks that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. At that time Hillary
Clinton was the secretary of state. As a result, the investigation into the attack had been
politically charged: It coincided with an election year in which Clinton is was the presumptive
Democratic nominee. House Republicans, however, had repeatedly denounced accusations that
the investigation was a political ploy. On Tuesday, they continued to do so, highlighting their
efforts to make sense of the government’s response to the attacks.
After originally saying that the attack may have been spontaneous, the US authorities
determined that it was a pre-planned strike. Libyan authorities even said that militants probably
used an anti-US protest as cover for the attack, and may have had help from inside the country's
security services. There was a line up of events that United States officials believe led to the
death of US ambassador Christopher Stevens, his state department colleague Sean Smith and
former Navy Seals Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. 2200: Attackers open fire at the consulate,
which has a main building and a smaller annex. 2215: The assailants gain entry to the complex
and the main building is engulfed in flames. 2245: Security staff try to retake the main building
but come under heavy fire and retreat. 2320: A second attempt to retake the main building is
successful. Fighting moves to the annex. 0000: Fighting at the annexe - reported to last about two
hours - results in the deaths of two more Americans, later named by US authorities as former
Navy Seals whose job was to protect the other staff. 0115 Stevens arrives at a nearby hospital - it
is not known who took him. A doctor there has told the BBC that he spent an hour trying to
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revive him, but that Stevens died from smoke inhalation. 0230: Security forces regain control of
the annexe. This was the end of the attack as we regained control and the C-17 carrying
Stevens' body and the other Americans arrives in Ramstein.
Despite the fact that The House Panel at first before the assault found 'No Intelligence
Failure', the board of trustees additionally discovered that the U.S. representatives' Temporary
Mission Facility "was not very much ensured, and that State Department security specialists
knew they couldn't safeguard it from an all around outfitted assault." After over two years, on
June 21st 2016, Republicans conveyed a last Benghazi Committee report that tore the Obama
organization's treatment of the 2012 psychological oppressor assault to bits however Hillary
Clinton's presidential battle rejected the discoveries as "ruined" paranoid notions. This 800 page
report was discharged on Tuesday June 21st 2016, and denoted the summit of an examination
that had frequented the 2016 Democratic leader on the battle field, even as Clinton's crusade has
reliably hammered the test as a political feud. Be that as it may, for all the divided doing
combating over the test, the board's last report with regards to Chairman Trey Gowdy's earlier
proclamations had offered new subtle elements of the assault and the country's reaction yet didn't
center around Hillary Clinton specifically.
Rather than concentrating on the legislative issues of the issue, the report concentrated
more on new insights about how Clinton's State Department neglected to secure the conciliatory
station in Libya. The report additionally said that the Central Intelligence Agency or the CIA
missed the approaching risk regardless of different notices and composed flawed knowledge
reports after the assault. What's more, GOP staff said their discoveries show that the Defense
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Department did not meet its reaction times to convey military advantages for Benghazi and
follow up to guarantee that all Americans were saved in a convenient manner.
The report included new specifics about a United States video chat gathered by White House
head of staff Denis McDonough amid the assault. As indicated by the report, a few members on
the videoconference were uncertain about what every office was doing to save Americans.
The State Department authorities on the call additionally raised worries about whether
Marines who may have been sent to Benghazi were wearing outfits, the report found —
something authorities beforehand said could hurt discretion in the district. One officer told the
board of trustees he and his men through the span of three hours continued changing from garbs
to regular citizen garments. In any case, the military never sent to Benghazi. As far as it matters
for her, Clinton said he would "abandon it to others to portray this report however I think it is
truly clear the time has come to proceed onward." Earlier, Brian Fallon, representative for the
Clinton crusade, was significantly more straightforward, rejecting the report as a repeat of
"ruined" "paranoid notions." "After over two years and more than $7 million in citizen finances,
the Committee report has not discovered anything to repudiate the finishes of the numerous,
prior examinations," Fallon included. "This report just affirms what Majority Leader Kevin
McCarthy and even one of Trey Gowdy's own previous staff members conceded months prior:
this present Committee's central objective is to politicize the passings of four overcome
Americans keeping in mind the end goal to attempt to assault the Obama organization and hurt
Hillary Clinton's battle."
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At last, the report's discoveries are probably not going to change the political stories
encompassing the assault. Republicans will unquestionably utilize it to increase their assaults on
Clinton's administration while Democrats, who discharged a reply Monday, keep on dismissing
the entire procedure as a political charade. Still, the report itself does not center around the
previous secretary of state as Gowdy has demanded it wouldn't. Or maybe, the record offers a
sequence of the occasions of the assault and new data assembled from interviews with in excess
of 100 government authorities and a huge number of pages of archives, as indicated by the report
and in addition interviews with sources comfortable with the report.
Actually, two traditionalists on the board, Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Mike Pompeo
(R-Kans.) didn’t feel that the report went sufficiently far to condemn Clinton and the
organization. They discharged their own expansion to the cover Tuesday morning that said
particularly that Clinton "neglected to lead" and the organization "misdirected general society"
in light of the up and coming presidential decision.
In all honesty, intelligence failures are inevitable. Maybe the State Department could
have avoided potential risk heretofore, or maybe Stevens ought to have remained out of Libya on
such an important date. In any case, the divided verbal confrontations that ejected after his death
concentrated such a great amount on relegating obligation that they diverted from a definitive
point. What truly matters in the outcome of a catastrophe is recognizing and tending to the basic
or procedural issue behind the disappointment. Also, in that lies the more profound issue raised
by the Benghazi assault: Controversial and prominent as it might have been, it has not driven the
State Department to take off since a long time ago required inside changes.
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After Stevens' death the Foreign Service came under intense pressure to step up security
at all United States Embassies. In 2013 the State Department hired 151 new security personnel,
they then added 20 new Marine Security Guard detachments and implemented stricter threat
reaction requirements for embassies and consulates. Officials introduced more comprehensive
fire training and reexamined deployment schedules in an attempt to build cohesive teams that
can be more effective in emergencies.
These changes included locking the DSS which was the office that bears sole
responsibility for the safety of all State Department employees which is deep within the
management bureau. The security service's inability to report directly to the Secretary of State
will continue to inhibit both the fast and free flow of information and quick, effective decision-
making in emergency situations. The organization needs to either raise the head of the DSS to
the level of undersecretary or make the DSS more like the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
which has a single Director reporting to the Secretary of State. And until the State Department
makes internal reforms, the country is not at all optimistic that it will make any real progress
toward transforming its organizational culture into one that takes matters of security issues
seriously.
The main thing to focus on is the true story of Benghazi and the exceptional heroism and
courage of the United States personnel that was on the ground in Benghazi. There is no doubt
that the State Department definitely needs to devote more resources to hiring and training
security personnel in addition to making internal structural reforms. In 2012 Stevens and his
staff paid the price for that aspect of neglect. But the DSS agents and Central Intelligence
Agency operatives in Benghazi executed their training brilliantly, shielding the ambassador as
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they
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escorted him to safety while calling for help and backup. In recognition of their service, the State
Department bestowed the Richard C. Holbrooke Award for Diplomacy on Stevens, and the
Thomas Jefferson Award to the personnel who gave their lives, the Secretary's Award to one
officer who was seriously injured and the Secretary's Award for Heroism to 12 personnel who
fought to defend the Benghazi facilities. There is no doubt that each one made a noble sacrifice;
now it is up to those who remain to make future sacrifices unnecessary.
Referencing the main text and the author, Dahl, the author is a former naval intelligence
officer and is a professor that is currently teaching homeland security at the Naval Postgraduate
School. His insider status shows through, as he examines the complexity of preventing an
intelligence failure. Dahl looks at four steps that need to be accomplished to prevent a failure:
intelligence collection, analysis, dissemination, and the policymakers’ willingness to accept the
intelligence provided. This fourth step is a unique contribution of his work. Dahl expects a lot
from intelligence producers. To avoid being blamed with a failure, CIA must not only collect
sufficient, specific information to provide for both strategic and tactical warning, it must also
shepherd this information through an analytic production process that results in timely
dissemination to the policymakers who need it, and convince them of the accuracy of the
intelligence—even though the message is likely not one the policymakers will want to hear. If
policymakers refuse to accept the intelligence, then Dahl lays the blame back on CIA, insisting
that the rejection must be due to a lack of clarity or specificity.
The author ascribes this inability to the Central Intelligence Agency's "personality and
culture" and declare that these variables drive the examiners' observations and inquiries, bringing
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about their missing related data or disposing of it since it neglects to comply with their
impression of reality. The creators, the two teachers in European business colleges, endeavor to
present the defense that personality and social issues (which they additionally characterize as an
absence of decent variety in the workforce, an overreliance on "scientism" in examination, an
obsession with privileged insights, an interest for agreement in completed investigation, and a
servile demeanor to policymakers as "clients") are the underlying foundations of CIA's
disappointments.
While the Central Intelligence Agency has promptly recognized that it keeps on building
a more diverse workforce, the creators' first declaration, that the organization, and especially the
systematic workforce, is made out of white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant men who originated from
Ivy League schools and never voyaged or lived abroad is peculiar. Dr. Check Lowenthal,
previous senior CIA examiner and supervisor, tended to this claim in a joint appearance with
Milo Jones at the Spy Museum on 3 September 2014. According to Lowenthal, the workforce
Jones depicts looks not at all like what he was a piece of and, on the off chance that it existed by
any stretch of the imagination, it would have been the workforce of the 1960s, not that of the
21st century.
Lowenthal likewise took solid special case to the creators' depiction of "scientism" as a
reason for investigation. While on one hand the creators criticize the substantial number of
political science majors among the investigator positions, they additionally prescribe acquiring
more anthropologists and sociologists—as though one type of sociology would adjust another.
The creators get minimal right with regards to examination. They expect CIA investigators give
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careful consideration to open source items and just depend on "privileged insights." They
advocate "instructing" examiners as opposed to "preparing" them—disregarding the way that
examiners come in too taught people who are regularly chosen due to their demonstrated
scholastic mastery in a territory, and are then "prepared" in the written work style and the scope
of grouped items that they would now be able to use, notwithstanding the open source items they
depended on as understudies.
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References
Books
Dahl, E. (2013). Intelligence and Surprise Attack. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press
13 Hours: the Inside Account Of What Really Happened in Benghazi
Mitchell Zuckoff
Under Fire: the Untold Story Of the Attack in Benghazi
Fred Burton-Samuel Katz
Dark Forces: the Truth About What Happened in Benghazi
Kenneth Timmerman
Real Benghazi Story: What the White House and Hillary Don't Want You To
Know Aaron Klein – 2014
Benghazi-bergen-belsen
Yossi Sukary-Yardenne Greenspan
The Benghazi Report: Review Of the Terrorist Attacks on U.s. Facilities in Benghazi, Libya, September
11-12, 2012 Roger Stone - Skyhorse Publishing – 2014
Deception: the Making Of the Youtube Video Hillary & Obama Blamed For
Benghazi Kenneth Timmerman
Websites
2012 Benghazi Attack
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Benghazi_attack
Benghazi Timeline: How the Attack Unfolded - CBS News - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/benghazi-timeline-how-the-attack-
unfolded/
The Benghazi Investigation: What You Need To Know - Mary Troyan -
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/10/21/benghazi-committee-timeline-clinton-gowdy/74261098/
Benghazi Timeline - Eugene Kiely - https://www.factcheck.org/2012/10/benghazi-timeline/
Benghazi Mission Attack Fast Facts
https://www.cnn.com/2013/09/10/world/benghazi-consulate-attack-fast-facts/index.html
House Panel Finds 'no Intelligence Failure' Before Benghazi Attack
Bill Chappell - https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/11/21/365803171/house-panel-finds-
no-intelligence- failure-before-benghazi-attack.
