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ABC News has learned that Eric Nordstrom, the former Regional Security Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Libya, has told congressional investigators that security at the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, was “inappropriately low” – and believed that State Department officials stood in the way of his attempts to change that.
Nordstrom and the commander of a 16-member Security Support Team, Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Wood, heard that foreign fighters were flowing across the Egyptian border and were making their way across the border to the Libyan city of Derna – which is to the east of Benghazi — and from there were making their way to Benghazi. But State Department officials seemed oblivious to their Benghazi post’s vulnerability.

Nordstrom was worried -he did not know how much the Americans could rely on members of a local Libyan militia in Benghazi that provided security — the “17th of February Martyrs Brigade.” Mostly merchants and shopkeepers before the war, they seemed eager, but they hadn’t much experience and other than a daily $30 stipend for food from the U.S. Embassy, they hadn’t been paid in months.
Nordstrom had “no idea if they would respond to an attack,” he told investigators.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, led by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., will hold hearings on what went wrong today at noon ET. Nordstrom will testify at that hearing.
Nordstrom twice wrote to the State Department – in March and July 2012 — to beef up the presence of American security officers in Benghazi, but neither time was there a response. At no point from December 2011 through July 2012, when he left Libya, were more than three Diplomatic Security Service agents permanently and simultaneously stationed at the Benghazi post.
Nordstrom wanted at least five personnel to be stationed at Benghazi, but the State Department would not allow it. There were American security officers, however, at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, including three Mobile Security Detachments, which were part of the DSS, and a 16-member Security Support Team detailed from Special Operations Command AFRICOM, commanded by Wood. But the State Department would not give him permission to deploy them to be stationed at Benghazi. Deputy Assistant Secretary for international programs Charlene Lamb, in Nordstrom’s view, wanted to keep the number of U.S. security personnel in Benghazi “artificially low,” according to a memo for Democrats on the House Oversight Committee.

Wood, a former Green Beret, told ABC News that he and other members of the Security Support Team wanted to remain in Libya past their deployment was scheduled to end in August, and that Ambassador Stevens wanted them to remain as well. Nordstrom has said that Lamb told him not to request for the Security Support Team to be extended again. (Its deployment had been previously extended in February 2012.)
Lamb will testify before the House committee later today.

“I do recall one conversation with her where she (Lamb) said that since we now had a residential safe haven in Benghazi that she didn’t seem to have a problem with having no agents on the compound because if something happened then personnel could simply go to that residential safe haven,” Nordstrom told investigators.
That safe haven proved a deathtrap. Situated inside the main residence in Benghazi, consisting of three bedrooms and a bathroom set aside from the rest of the building by metal grillwork and several locks, the safe haven is where Stevens and information officer Sean Smith suffered severe smoke inhalation after the attackers set the house on fire.

On Tuesday afternoon, State Department officials acknowledged that despite earlier explanations from the Obama administration, there was no protest outside the Benghazi compound at all. Only an hour before gunmen methodically and deliberately stormed the post, the streets were empty and everything seemed calm. Obama administration officials originally claimed the trouble began with demonstrations against an anti-Muslim video, a protest that, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice told ABC News’ THIS WEEK on the Sunday after the attack, “seems to have been hijacked, let us say, by some individual clusters of extremists.”
Rice and White House officials now say those initial accounts were based on early intelligence, since corrected. State Department officials now call the attack unprecedented given the number of gunman, weapons and lethal force used.
-Jake Tapper
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/20 ... hazi-post/

milosz wrote:This would be more effective if it appeared that you actually gave a shit about any of the people who died.

Blaidd Drwg wrote:The GOP and the Administration certainly don't appear to give a fuck. It reminds of the USS Cole.

Blaidd Drwg wrote:It reminds of the USS Cole.

powerlifter54 wrote: Silly mistake by administration.

Blaidd Drwg wrote:We were supposed to learn from the first world trade center too.....which part of y'all's point is NOT political?

Blaidd Drwg wrote:We were supposed to learn from the first world trade center too.....which part of y'all's point is NOT political?

johno wrote:I hate when our guys get hung out to dry. It infuriates me when the gov't blows smoke to cover up. (I don't recall a cover up re: WTC I & II or the USS Cole.)

There is a political aspect to this and there should be.

We replaced a semi-defanged snake with a ball of Muslim snakes (whom we armed), then sent our guys there as if they were visiting My-Little-Pony Land. When things went bad, the Admin blamed a nutty Christian film maker & the First Amendment.

johno wrote:(I don't recall a cover up re: WTC .

Blaidd Drwg wrote:Nice word parsing, Turd. You know exactly what I mean.

State Dept. assets are now and always have been soft targets. The color of this conversation has everything to do with November 6th and virtually nothing to do with an assessment of how we protect our civilian and military personnel.

Since 2010, Congress cut $296 million from the State Department’s spending request for embassy security and construction, with additional cuts in other State Department security accounts, according to an analysis by a former appropriations committee staffer.

Turdacious wrote:Politicians are gonna be political-- nature of the beast.

“During both the latter years of the Bush presidency and throughout the Obama presidency, the administration has recommended boosting spending on foreign aid and [State Department] foreign operations, including security, and Congress has always cut it back,” said Philip J. Crowley, a former State Department spokesman.

“There is simply not a constituency on the Hill to increase spending on diplomacy and development. Resources do matter.” said Mr. Crowley, now a fellow at the George Washington University Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication.

Read more: Benghazi attack followed deep cuts in State Department security budget - Washington Times http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... z28vl3uyCM
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

State Department officials said Wednesday that security levels at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, were adequate for the threat level on the anniversary of 9/11 but that the compound was overrun by an ‘‘unprecedented attack’’ by dozens of heavily armed extremists.

The officials testified before an election-season congressional hearing on accusations of security failures at the consulate that led or contributed to the deaths of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans. The officials said the number of U.S. and local security guards at the compound was consistent with what had been requested by the post.

‘‘We had the correct number of assets in Benghazi at the time of 9/11,’’ said Charlene Lamb, the deputy secretary of state for diplomatic security in charge of protecting American embassies and consulates around the world.

Turdacious wrote:

‘‘We had the correct number of assets in Benghazi at the time of 9/11,’’ said Charlene Lamb, the deputy secretary of state for diplomatic security in charge of protecting American embassies and consulates around the world.

Nordstrom was worried -he did not know how much the Americans could rely on members of a local Libyan militia in Benghazi that provided security — the “17th of February Martyrs Brigade.” Mostly merchants and shopkeepers before the war, they seemed eager, but they hadn’t much experience and other than a daily $30 stipend for food from the U.S. Embassy, they hadn’t been paid in months.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/20 ... hazi-post/