Ambassador Christopher Stevens’ former deputy Gregory Hicks is contradicting the Obama administration’s narrative as to why no help arrived in Benghazi in time to prevent the deaths of Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans, according to a CBS News report.
The administration has repeatedly said no assistance could have made it to Benghazi in time to prevent the deaths, and that all available resources were utilized throughout the roughly eight-hour attack.
But Hicks has reportedly told congressional investigators that a Special Forces team was ready to fly in from Tripoli, but that U.S. Special Operations Command South Africa forbade them from going.
CBS News’ Sharyl Attkisson has the story:
According to excerpts released Monday, Hicks told investigators that SOCAFRICA commander Lt. Col. Gibson and his team were on their way to board a C-130 from Tripoli for Benghazi prior to an attack on a second U.S. compound “when [Col. Gibson] got a phone call from SOCAFRICA which said, ‘you can’t go now, you don’t have the authority to go now.’ And so they missed the flight … They were told not to board the flight, so they missed it.”
Hicks told congressional investigators that if the U.S. had quickly sent a military aircraft over Benghazi, it might have saved American lives. The U.S. Souda Bay Naval Base is an hour’s flight from Libya.
“I believe if we had been able to scramble a fighter or aircraft or two over Benghazi as quickly as possible after the attack commenced, I believe there would not have been a mortar attack on the annex in the morning because I believe the Libyans would have split. They would have been scared to death that we would have gotten a laser on them and killed them,” Hicks testified. Two Americans died in the morning mortar attack. [Emphasis added]
Hicks became the highest-ranking American diplomat in Libya after Stevens’ death, and was in Tripoli at the time of the attack.
Hicks said Stevens called him at the onset of the attack shouting: “We’re under attack! We’re under attack!” Hicks immediately called Washington and, according to excerpts of his testimony, said he was “in communications with Washington all night long…reporting all night long what was happening to Washington by telephone.”
“I never reported a demonstration; I reported an attack on the consulate,” he said in excerpts released on CBS over the weekend, also contradicting the administration’s original narrative that the attack was the outgrowth of a protest related to a YouTube video.
“Chris — Chris’s last report, if you want to say his final report, is, ‘Greg, we are under attack.’”
Hicks is scheduled to speak publicly for the first time before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday.
Tomorrow we’ll finally hear from a few of the people involved who want to tell the truth about what happened in Benghazi 8 months ago.
I doubt we’ll ever learn where our president was during the hours and hours that Americans were under fire. The same for our Secretary of State. No effort will be spared to protect them, especially by their devoted media members. Any attempt to hold them responsible for what they’ve done, or more accurately, what they failed to do will be met with cries of politics as usual, racism, misogyny and right-wing hysteria.
I don’t know if they or the others involved in this massive failure and cover-up will every pay any price. But we will learn the truth and it will probably be very close to what so many of us have thought it was all along.
That truth includes the death of four Americans as the cost of winning an election.
-Kathy
I wonder why Stevens’ and the American soldiers’ lives were expendable to the current WH administration? What did they gain in return?
They gained nothing. But those deaths were the direct result of the line that Al Qaeda was “on thier heels.”
“Osama is dead – GM is alive!”
That was their slogan. Sadly, the jihadists didn’t cooperate with narrative.
-Kathy
The safety of the Ambassador was not on the administrations list of priorities. It may not be fair to say that the lives were considered expendable, let’s just say that because the situation in Benghazi was about Islam that the perceived political outcome was much much more important to them.
The Obama administration does not lead, govern, or work to improve the country. Their only goal is to embed their ideology so deeply that it will insure long term change that can’t be undone. They only do what benefits the administration in their quest to fundamentally change America.
@Cebur19; did I read this correctly? According to what you wrote it sounds like a contradiction. The lives weren’t expendable, BUT the gov. goal was to embed their idealogy. Sounds to me as though the lives were expendable. I prefer to call a spade a spade and I’m not so naive to know that the gov. doesn’t sacrifice people for their agendas. Harsh perhaps, but so is reality.
The end result was that they were expendable yes, but my opinion is that as the incident was happening that the safety of the four was not even considered. They didn’t give it a thought. All they considered was how it would look if they took any action at all against a pack of Muslims or by taking any action that made it look like there was unrest in a Muslim country . As I mentioned, the safety of the four was not on their list.
I hear you. Thanks for clarifying.
I have heard and read, on three different occasions, the first being back in December, that the only person in the world who had the authority to authorize US military forces to operate in Libya was President Obama, and he refused the authorization. There is more than one speculation as to why he refused. Perhaps we will finally find out soon.