(Credit: State Department)
The UK’s Independent just published a potential bombshell story on the 9/11 anniversary assassination of US Ambassador Chris Stevens, reporting that the US was warned 48 hours prior to the attacks and did nothing.
Not only did the attackers manage to kill the US Ambassador on the anniversary of 9/11, they also discovered the location of the State Department’s safe house in the city and stole documents related to locals working with the United States.
As the press has been focused on making this attack a story about Romney’s criticism, we hope they continue down that path. If all of this reporting holds up, we wouldn’t want to be on the side of defending the Obama administration.
The killings of the US ambassador to Libya and three of his staff were likely to have been the result of a serious and continuing security breach, The Independent can reveal.
American officials believe the attack was planned, but Chris Stevens had been back in the country only a short while and the details of his visit to Benghazi, where he and his staff died, were meant to be confidential.
The US administration is now facing a crisis in Libya. Sensitive documents have gone missing from the consulate in Benghazi and the supposedly secret location of the “safe house” in the city, where the staff had retreated, came under sustained mortar attack. Other such refuges across the country are no longer deemed “safe”.
Some of the missing papers from the consulate are said to list names of Libyans who are working with Americans, putting them potentially at risk from extremist groups, while some of the other documents are said to relate to oil contracts.
According to senior diplomatic sources, the US State Department had credible information 48 hours before mobs charged the consulate in Benghazi, and the embassy in Cairo, that American missions may be targeted, but no warnings were given for diplomats to go on high alert and “lockdown”, under which movement is severely restricted.