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Dec. 30, 2012 - Steve Pieczenik
40:22
BENGHAZI ATTACK: What Really Happened
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Hi, this is Dr.
Steve Pachenik and this is Dr.
Steve Pachenik's talk and today we're going to talk about The Omnibus Diplomatic and Anti-Terrorism Act of 1886 and the subsequent Secretary of State Hillary Rodman Clinton's convening of the Accountability Review Board for the Benghazi attack on September 11th, 12th of 2012.
What I would like to talk about is my own personal experience With regard to the State Department, the military, the intelligence service, and all those concerned with our overseas security And bring that in,
my insights alongside of what the document and the review board found, and then to basically share my opinions with you, the audience, and for you to decide what Dr.
Steve Pachenik's talk underlines or scores For you, as opposed to what reality was evidenced in the findings.
First of all, most of you know about the event.
I don't necessarily have to go into it.
Our Ambassador Christopher Stevens, along with three other individuals, were killed in an attack on Benghazi that occurred over an eight-hour period.
And a board was convened at the request of President Obama at the behest of the Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The head of the board is someone I know very well and have known very well, and his name is Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering, who served as the chairman of the board And alongside of them was Admiral Michael Mullen as vice chairman.
I did not know him, but I do know him by reputation.
And additional members were Catherine Bertini, Richard Schinnick, and Hugh Turner, who represented the intelligence community.
That means the collective intelligence community.
And basically the report stated, in effect, that first, which is very interesting for me, is that The mission in Benghazi is called A Special Mission Benghazi, and it had what's called, quote, a non-status, end quote.
As a temporary residential facility, it made allocation for resources for security and personnel more difficult and left responsibility to meet security standards to the working level in the field with very limited resources.
That's a quote from the report.
Now, from my point of view, as a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under Nixon, Ford, Carter, and came back on policy planning under Reagan, and then came back eventually as a Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asia under Bush Sr., a non-status temporary residential facility is really not an embassy.
What it is is basically a site where an ambassador or someone within the Foreign Service can be present, but moreover than not, it's a cutout or what we would consider a security placement for intelligence and covert operations.
As we've known subsequently, and thanks to Fox News under Roger Ailes and Mr.
Riley, who really persisted throughout the past several weeks, we uncovered the fact that during the five to six weeks that we had this temporary residence, what occurred I think the report correctly states it as a non-status.
Embassy, which means basically it was a temporary headquarters, was that we had in the annex contract officers form the intelligence community working on behalf of the intelligence community, be it the CIA, military intelligence, or SEAL team.
But very clearly there was interrogation going on.
Heavy equipment was being supplied.
Through this annex, and it was being distributed to Syria and the Free Syrian Army.
So that is basically what I understand the status of non-status temporary residential facilities.
So from that point of view, the report is not inaccurate.
It's not necessarily correct, but it is diplomatically and legally quite proper.
The second part of what I'm going to selectively take out of the report is another issue which makes it very important, and I think it's not been emphasized enough in the media, and that is the fact that Ambassador Christopher Stevens was an extremely experienced individual Who was considered an Arabist,
which means in shorthand, he was one of the few within the Foreign Service who spoke not only the language of the country and the region Arabic, but he also spoke the dialect.
And spoke many different dialects within that region and was considered within the State Department.
Somebody was an outstanding expert.
And sui generis, meaning unto himself, he was the person to whom eventually Eric Boswell, who resigned, and he was the Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security, would ask the question, are you safe to be in this And his response, his being the Ambassador Stevens, would have said, yes, I do not need protection other than local militia or a very soft cover.
So from that point of view, the report does...
The ambassador did not see a direct threat of an attack of this nature and scale on the U.S. mission in the overall negative trend line of security incidents from spring to summer 2012.
His status as the leading U.S. government advocate on Libya's policy and his expertise on Benghazi in particular It caused Washington to give unusual deference to his judgment.
Now, in diplomatic talk, and quite frankly it's quite correct in terms of the management and in terms of the modus operandi of the State Department, I as a deputy assistant secretary or someone like Eric Boswell, who was the assistant secretary For diplomatic security, he was extremely experienced, extremely well-versed in the Middle East.
The reason I can say that is that I've known him for over 30 years.
We were not intimate friends, but we were colleagues and professional associates who had come in and out of various administrations.
I'm more of a...
A person who would reorganize the State Department and act as a regime changer or basically a strategist, whereas Eric was much more of a career Foreign Service officer, a man of the system.
I was brought into the system, but I was not of the system.
And as being part of a system which I oversaw and had to reorganize, I must say that this particular paragraph is a very important paragraph to understand that, in effect, Eric Boswell, the highest ranking officer in the diplomatic security, did defer to Ambassador Christopher Stevens, who felt that there was really no significant danger at that particular point in time.
And in all due fairness to the Secretary of State, she also had to defer to the expertise of Christopher Stevens.
So the notion that he was abandoned and in many ways was left adrift is not correct.
It is correct to say from the report that he was considered the expert in the area and he himself determined that For himself, he did not need the necessary security, and that's often correct for ambassadors who want to leave the embassy or their particular special mission in order to allow themselves to meet the local environment,
to assess the dangers, and to be able to negotiate informally different aspects of diplomacy, which they could not do with an entourage of diplomatic security.
So, so far the review is quite accurate and appropriate.
One wouldn't have thought that, but I'm offering my insights from my own experience and knowing the various characters.
So, Ambassador Stevens, according to the report, was responsible and empowered to make decisions both on policy and security considerations.
Now, this is very important.
He literally was able to say that, look, I'm the one in charge, and despite there may be different bureaus, particularly the Bureau of what we call Near East Affairs of the Middle East and the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, they may have seen different perspectives and they may have said, look, Mr.
Ambassador, we have a problem.
This is the problem.
These are the issues concerned.
He had the right to override them both formally and informally and I suspect that he was strong enough and had a large enough prestige and strong enough personality to convince them that he did not need the requisite security.
That, however, does not speak for the issue of an annex which had covert operations and was totally separate from really the oversight of the United States Department of State.
That annex was a proper...
Area 4, covert operation.
It was what we call a black ops operation, which involved all kinds of off-site, wet works, interrogation, material assessments, material distribution, as I said before, of heavy arms to Syria.
So it was a potential and serious target for those workers People, adversaries in Libya who knew what that annex was.
And they knew very well, both Al-Qaeda and the other organizations in Libya, that this annex was being used for interrogation, possible torture, as we would say in the government, enhanced interrogation of adversaries, as well as the sequestering of heavy equipment for the Syrian Free Army.
Then the report goes on to say, this is where I differ, and this is important to understand.
The board members believe every possible effort was made to rescue and recover Ambassador Stevens and Sean Smith.
Now, that is blatantly wrong.
That's where I differ with the report, and so does Fox News, and that would also mean the military, the army.
General, who was in charge of AFRICOM, and Rear Admiral, who was in charge of the naval fleet at the time, both were immediately decommissioned, as were Special Operations Forces and CIA operatives who saw what was going on over the eight-hour battle in Benghazi.
As you know, most of you have already I've seen or heard the tapes of eight hours of conflagration or fighting with very heavy equipment, RPGs, machine guns, and the sacrifice of incredible SEAL teams or contract officers who were SEALs being sacrificed at the expense of the civilian politicians who were involved.
Namely, Hillary Clinton.
The DNI would be James Clapper and Brannon, who would have been the Deputy National Security Advisor, and Tom Donilon, and of course, eventually, POTUS, or the President of the United States.
So that particular sentence is really quite incorrect and outright a lie.
Then I will read the next part of that report.
The interagency response was timely and appropriate, but there simply was not enough time for armed US military assets to have made a difference.
Now, there was not enough time for armed US military assets to have made a difference.
We know from the records, we know from past experience, and I in particular know from my own international crisis management of hostages, black ops, and using equipment that was far, far more...
It's antiquated than what we have presently that we did not do everything possible to save our brave American heroes, including Ambassador Stevens and the other operatives who were involved in the embassy.
Now, why do I say that?
Number one, we have a formidable military and civilian capacity to monitor well over eight hours or eight and a half hours in real time what transpired in Benghazi.
We have the satellites, we have drones.
In fact, I understand two drones were used over an eight-hour period so that there was real-time activity and real-time assessment.
In general, in my past history, because I had to use the phone and we had to use much more primitive communications, I still could respond very quickly by either asking my appropriate counterparts in the special forces or the CIA or various elements in other intelligence communities to respond to the crisis as a standby.
I did that with Idi Amin, who took 250 nuns, hostages, and we had the naval, our U.S. Navy, on standby.
Now, that was using a phone 20 to 30 years ago, and presently in Benghazi, we were not using phones, we were using literally cyber space, we were using drones, we were using incredibly advanced technology,
and we know from the subsequent actions that A rear admiral was immediately decommissioned because he decided that he might attempt a rescue, and he was charged of a carrier group, which really consists of 10 to 20 vessels and is quite impressive.
And at the same time, a general in charge of AFRICOM was immediately dismissed.
And then I subsequently learned that 14 naval officers were decommissioned.
So what you had at that particular point in time is really an attempt by both our military and civilian covert operatives as well as paramilitary units.
The willingness and the desire to enter to save our beleaguered and besieged embassy and annexed And there was very clear evidence that that was the case.
But the report is 180 degrees different from that particular point of view.
So we know this part of the report is an outright lie.
The question is why?
And why would they lie on this particular issue?
Now, I've known Eric Boswell, as I said, since I was appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary under Lawrence Eagleburger, who was the Undersecretary under Henry Kissinger in the 1970s.
And Eric is a very distinguished individual, polymath, multi-talented, multilingual, who was, to me, the The personification of the best of the Foreign Service.
And alongside of him was another young man by the name of Patrick Kennedy, who was probably one of the most brilliant administrative officers I have ever met in the Foreign Service and ironically was on the board working with Ambassador Thomas Pickering, whom I've also known.
For well over 20 years.
And all three of these gentlemen, to me, represented the finest that the Foreign Service had, as well as they will continue to have.
They were talented, dedicated, committed servants of the United States government.
They were the finest.
Now, why do I bring that in?
So I bring that in because, number one, I've known the chairman of the board, Tom Pickering, when he was my ambassador or the ambassador to both Israel and Egypt at a time when I was working for Secretary of State Schultz and we were working on peace treaties with the Israelis after my involvement in the Arab-Israeli peace treaty under President Carter and we were working with Prime Minister Shamir of Israel.
Thomas Pickering was an incredible ambassador of Very dignified, very understanding, very professional.
And that was one of two posts.
He was the ambassador of Israel, he was the ambassador of Jordan, he was the ambassador in Africa, he was the undersecretary for technology, and he was the ambassador to the UN. I had a subsequent occasion to work with him.
When I had to bring a young homeboy from Zimbabwe on behalf of the State Department, and Thomas Pickering, our ambassador to the UN, assisted me in the most effective way.
So I've known the chairman exceedingly well.
I've known Eric Boswell quite well, and I knew Patrick Kennedy exceedingly well because he would write my administrative orders whenever I had to go offline or I went into Panama.
I went overseas.
It was Patrick Kennedy who would sign my papers and allow me to travel.
I've had a respect for all three.
And so when this occurred, the Benghazi episode occurred, I wanted to see what the fallout would be.
So I've talked a little bit about the military fallout and, of course, about the CIA and the intelligence fallout, but the more serious fallout for me is the fact that Eric Boswell, the Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security, had resigned voluntarily along with his Deputy Assistant Secretary and others from the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.
And they did that because in the assessment of the...
Committee, they felt there was a mismanagement that occurred, although no one was to blame.
And they felt that was the proper thing to do.
Now, from my point of view, what Eric had done, and I can only speak from my impression of Eric Boswell, was basically to take the sword once again on behalf of the Foreign Service.
He fell on the sword without any regrets, complaints, or any outcry.
And as you may recall, he was the civilian counterpart to General Petraeus, who I knew about and also had a lot of respect, who was our DCI or director of the CIA during the Benghazi episode.
And he was subsequently compromised.
By some type of emails and an alleged involvement with some woman in an affair, a sexual affair, which of course had nothing to do with his competence as the DCI or General of CENTCOM. So what we have here in an overview is we have one General Petraeus,
who I knew about his actions since he was a major general, Due to my involvement with our own military for over ten years, we have the resignation of Eric Boswell, the Assistant Secretary of Diplomatic Security.
We have the involvement and chairman of Tom Pickering, who oversaw the committee, and we have the involvement indirectly of Patrick Kennedy, who I knew to be the administrative officer.
All of whom were sacrificed in the name of, to put it bluntly, civilian politicians.
And in this case, without being too harsh or too malicious or vitriolic, we would say that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Who astoundingly had a flu and a subsequent concussion because of dehydration, as she explained it, was not able to go before the committee and present a valid case for what really happened.
She, of course, bears the ultimate responsibility as the Secretary of State.
Now, why do I say that?
My feelings to Secretary of State Hillary is one that I never thought she was competent, either Secretary of State.
She really had never done anything of significance as a secretary of state, except for putting in a lot of miles, flew around the world and never really negotiated a peace treaty, never really accomplished anything comparable to either what Nixon had done in China never really accomplished anything comparable to either what Nixon had done in China or what Cyrus Vance and Jamie Carter had done between
And she, like Condoleezza Rice and Madeleine Albright and Colin Powell, were really the most, the least functional and most dysfunctional secretaries of state I'd ever seen.
Of all of them, I would say she was the worst, even though I heard that the morale at the State Department was great.
I felt that she had neither the strategic nor tactical capability to really be anything other than what she was.
A very self-serving politician who goes back to the days of the malignant and malicious activities of Arkansas and her less-than-functional husband's President Clinton.
And I see that played out in her both cowardly and dysfunctional behavior of not really discussing the issue of avoiding any responsibility for the Benghazi attack and allowing Thomas Pickering to really Blend over the accountability issues and taint, in my opinion, his reputation.
What this report did was to really define, for me, several aspects.
One, it really besmirched the careers of Foreign Service officers who I had a very high regard for and still have, Eric Boswell, Patrick Kennedy.
Unfortunately, my regard for Tom Pickering as chairman has been diminished.
Where he had been an outstanding, proactive man of conscience, I felt he fell short on this committee and seriously compromised his past integrity.
To the future career of Hillary Clinton and to CYA people like Clapper, Donlan, Biden, and of course Obama, who usually has lied absolutely throughout this administration more often than I would care, starting with the Osama bin Laden nonsense and then the Osama bin Laden raid and the fact that he killed Osama bin Laden.
And you've heard my comments about that.
That's fictitious, nonsensical and pathetic that a president has to resort to lies and deceits in this incredible sequence of lying and deceits that started with Bill Clinton and went on through Bush Jr.
and Cheney and right through Obama.
So we have the Foreign Service that's besmirched and basically 7,000 Korean Foreign Service officers who have to account for the fact that they are now basically nothing more than automatons to the civilian control system.
John Kerry will come in.
He speaks a foreign language.
I really don't know whether he's going to be a very good Secretary of State or not.
He's been on many missions, but like every other civilian who was a politician and inspired to be a president, he has many, many serious faults, including a great sense of narcissism, self-aggrandizement.
And as the issue came up in his election of really promoting himself at the expense of others when he brought a camera into Vietnam to show his combat action or alleged combat action.
So we have a civilian that has been compromised, Hillary Clinton, and we have a potential civilian that will be compromised, Secretary of State John Kerry.
And what do we have?
We have 7,000 Foreign Service officers who are basically held as cannon fodder, as far as I'm concerned.
Now, for the most part, some of them could stand up and say, we would not take this, or some of them could protest it.
There are channels in the State Department where they could have done this.
There's some of them who could have resigned.
But basically, I hadn't seen that.
Now, that's not usual for me over the past 30 years.
In the past 30 years, certainly 20 years ago, I had a Foreign Service that was very active, very aggressive.
I had unusual Foreign Service officers who were really outstanding and at the same time were able to articulate their feelings and disagree with the civilians, in particular Chaz Freeman, Frank Wisner, and many others.
They were career Foreign Service officers.
And even Patrick Kennedy, he would often disagree with what I did.
And one case where I was in Panama and I was chased all around by General Noriega, and I could not get receipts...
While I was being chased all around by his Panamanian forces, I had to come back and was considered a persona non grata.
Patrick even asked me for receipts for my food overseas, and I said, Pat, I was being chased, and I had to buy some food, but I spent this amount of money, I think it was $1,500.
I said, well, I'm sorry, Steve, but you're going to still have to pay for it.
So that kind of assertiveness within the administrative system made it very interesting for me and quite proud.
But in retrospect, I look at the 7,000 or more Foreign Service officers and I really ask the question, and I think the American audience, and you in particular who are listening to me, have to really ask the question, do we really need the Foreign Service?
And overall, quite frankly, I have to say no.
In a time when we're in the 21st century, where we have concepts like virtual diplomacy, teleconferencing, we do not need people who are sequestered in concrete castles, secured by all types of contract officers, For their ability, the Foreign Service officer's ability, to possibly go out and meet with others and develop relationships.
It's an antiquated system.
But be it as it may, that's a whole other issue for another time, but for the present, I am really ashamed of the Foreign Service.
No one stood up.
The Foreign Service Association made no comment, no criticism of the report, did not make a counter statement.
And so from my point of view, I feel that they deserve what they got, which was a reprimand that was inappropriate.
They were treated like cannon fodder, and they acted like cannon fodder.
So the Foreign Service, if you're listening to me, you will be treated accordingly if you don't stand up and act as a professional and make believe that you really do have integrity and some sense of credibility.
The second aspect for me is a much more serious aspect, and that is the fact that the military did do something.
And from my point of view, they were the most courageous, along with the intelligence community, the CIA. And what do I mean?
I knew of Petraeus.
I cannot say I've known him personally, but I've known of him quite well for over ten years.
And I've known of the CIA operatives that may have been involved.
And I know our military.
I particularly know our Navy.
I had a rank as a Navy captain.
And I know our army.
I've worked with our special forces.
So when the general in AFRICOM is decommissioned immediately because he's trying to preposition soldiers and special forces right next to Libya and en route to Libya, and he's told to stand down,
and when the rear admiral who's in charge of a Navy carrier fleet is told to stand down, And then subsequently, naval intelligence officers and navy intelligence boats that were in that area prior to that communication and prior to the attack knew full well what was happening.
They attempted to do something about it, and they were immediately decommissioned.
From one of the blogs, I call it the third soft coup.
Now, why do I say that?
I say that because the military, unlike civilians, will be pushed only so far.
And I don't think this president, who has never served in the military but has served in our intelligence system along with his family, really understands the military mentality.
You can only push it so far before it will start to react.
And one thing that the audience has to understand more than anything else is that we are a republic.
We are a republic, not a democracy, which is literally controlled by the President of the United States, not by Congress or Senate, or least of all by the Supreme Court.
It is literally controlled by our centurion guards who literally are splayed all over the world.
What do I mean?
If you are going to take a naval officer or a rear admiral who decides to enact or be proactive, unlike our Foreign Service, then you will have to think, you, the President of the United States, or Mr.
Donlan, or Mr.
Biden, or any civilian or subsequent president, will have to remember That our CENTCOM, the commander in charge of Iraq, of Afghanistan, someone who had been like General Petraeus or other generals who were involved, really control a far greater force than any president of the United States.
When you want to engage in Asia, and you, the President of the United States, it becomes disrespectful or overrides the commander in charge of the Pacific, SYNC PAC. You bear in mind that this commander is far more powerful than the President of the United States, because this commander of SYNC PAC controls not only the air...
The waters and the submarine, he controls an entire system that is self-contained in terms of intelligence, strategy, tactics, policy, and anything else that he or she may want as commander of the Pacific.
It is a formidable position and we have these commanders in SOCOM, SOUTHCOM, and everywhere else.
For the most part, our commanders in SOCOM have been very compliant.
That is, Rear Admiral McRaden has been very compliant with our civilian overlords, Panetta.
But Panetta's leaving, and I think Secretary Hagel or whoever comes in will be a different animal who understands the military.
But I do warn civilian politicians who believe that they really are more powerful than they are, which they are not, they will have to remember that we have centurion guards that literally are protecting this republic and that the president is only a minor,
minor Figure in a much greater picture that involves the military-industrial complex, Centurion Guards, and congressmen and legislators that are held hostage to a military-industrial complex where every single congressional district is within the purview of the military or the intelligence community.
This is not a warning.
This is simply a statement of fact from somebody who respects the military, who respects the intelligence service.
And then the other part that I speak about in the Benghazi affair is that the CIA had been seriously affected by the downgrading or the elimination or the denigration of the DCI. You do not,
you being the President of the United States or any other civilian who thinks that he or she can play with the director of the CIA, the likes of General Petraeus, or in my case it would have been William Casey or George Bush Sr.,
they would make a very big mistake to think that in some way they could compromise the integrity What happened in Benghazi is a turning point from my point of view.
That our Foreign Service, our military, our Army, Navy, Air Force, Special Operations, our CIA, military intelligence, and our Cyber Command were all placed on notice.
That they were to be ready and be under the control of civilian control, i.e.
the President of the United States.
Under the Constitution, that may look appropriate, that may look correct, that may be legal, but in the real world, I will quote Stalin, who once asked, the Pope is criticizing my actions.
But ask the Pope how many divisions does he have in contrast to my 50 million soldiers?
And the answer is that the President of the United States, in and of himself, has no military divisions, has no intelligence units, has no foreign service capacity.
But if he finds that he's going to abuse this and he's going to use our intelligence in our military and our foreign service for his own political purposes, i.e.
now Mr.
Obama, you will find that you will have compromised your administration, compromised your integrity, and your own well-being, quite frankly.
And no amount of protection will protect you from the subsequent reaction Of a distraught, disaffected, and angry profession such as our military, our intelligence community, and hopefully our foreign service.
So I leave you all with a cautionary warning that we live in a republic, and that republic is serviced by primarily the military and the intelligence community, and secondarily by foreign service officers.
The military is indispensable, but the civilian rulers are quite dispensable.
And I preach no revolution, I preach no overthrow, but I do preach a certain amount of caution to our president and to our civilians in the White House that if they overreach too far,
that if they continue to lie, betray, and deceive our civilians, For the purpose of maintaining power in the White House and in Washington, D.C., they are treading on very, very dangerous grounds.
So I bid you all a farewell, good night, good luck, and when I talk, it's up to you to decide which parts of my talk you would like to really understand and explore further, and I invite you to visit my blog at stevepachenik.com.
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