Email Shows State Department Rejecting Request of Security Team at US Embassy in Libya

                                                                             (Image Credit: Ibrahim Alaguri/AP Photo)

ABC News has obtained an internal State Department email from May 3, 2012, indicating that the State Department denied a request from the security team at the Embassy of Libya to retain a DC-3 airplane in the country to better conduct their duties.
Copied on the email was U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was killed in a terrorist attack on the diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya,  Sept. 11, 2012, along with three other Americans. That attack has prompted questions about whether the diplomatic personnel in that country were provided with adequate security support.
No one has yet to argue that the DC-3 would have  definitively  made a difference for the four Americans killed that night. The security team in question, after all, left Libya in August.

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Obama orders CIA and Navy SEALS to hunt down terrorists who attacked US consulate in Libya

Deadly attack: The consulate, located in the city of Benghazi, was reportedly bombed twice in the months leading up to the attack, which occurred on the 11th anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks

President Barack Obama has ordered the CIA and the Pentagon to hunt down the terrorists who attacked the US consulate in Libya.
It's unclear what the president plans to do once the perpetrators of the September 11 assault in Benghazi are found, but he has mobilized the military's Joint Special Operations Command to help carry out the mission.
JSOC and the CIA teamed up to send Navy SEAL commandos into Pakistan in 2011 for a raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
The White House plans for retaliation come after it was revealed that security officials missed key signs that the consulate and US Ambassador Chris Stevens were in danger. 

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U.S. had early indications Libya attack tied to organized militants

By Mark Hosenball and Tabassum Zakaria

WASHINGTON | Wed Oct 3, 2012 1:01am EDT

(Reuters) - Within hours of last month's attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, President Barack Obama's administration received about a dozen intelligence reports suggesting militants connected to al Qaeda were involved, three government sources said.
Despite these reports, in public statements and private meetings, top U.S. officials spent nearly two weeks highlighting intelligence suggesting that the attacks were spontaneous protests against an anti-Muslim film, while playing down the involvement of organized militant groups.
It was not until last Friday that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's office issued an unusual public statement, which described how the picture that intelligence agencies presented to U.S. policymakers had "evolved" into an acknowledgement that the attacks were "deliberate and organized" and "carried out by extremists."

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Hunt For Ambassador Chris Stevens Killers

Hunt for US ambassador’s killers complicated by overstretched CIA, untested Libyan spy agency

WASHINGTON — The U.S. is sending more spies, Marines and drones to Libya, trying to speed the search for those who killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans, but the investigation is complicated by a chaotic security picture in the post-revolutionary country and limited American and Libyan intelligence resources.
The CIA has fewer people available to send, stretched thin from tracking conflicts across the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Much of the team dispatched to Libya during the revolution had been sent onward to the Syrian border, U.S. officials say.

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US Budget Cut Including Embassy Protection

US government spending cuts include $129m a year for embassy protection

 

The automatic spending cuts called sequestration will start in January if Congress cannot find a compromise. Photograph: J. Scott Applewhite/AP

 

 

The US government will slash spending targeted for the protection of embassies around the world as part of a $100bn program of automatic spending cuts set to be start this January if Congress can not find a compromise.
The news comes after ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans died following attacks the US consulate and a safe house refuge in Benghazi on Tuesday night. US embassies across the Muslim world are now being targeted by protesters angered by a video that denigrated the prophet Muhammad.
According to a 400-page White House report released on Friday, automatic spending cuts to be made at the end of the year will include $129m a year earmarked for the next nine years to go to maintaining and protecting US embassies.

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Alarming Situation At US State Department Over Embassy Attack

State Department sets up 24-hour monitoring team for embassy crisis

 

The State Department has gone into full-blown crisis mode, organizing a round-the-clock effort to coordinate the U.S. government's response to the expanding attacks on U.S. embassies in the Middle East and North Africa.

"The State Department has stood up a 24-hr monitoring team to insure appropriate coordination of information and our response. In addition, our consular team is working with missions around the world to protect American citizens and issue appropriate public warden information," a senior State Department official told reporters Friday afternoon.
"We have been monitoring events in the Middle East and North Africa intensively today, and working with our personnel and missions overseas and host governments to strengthen security in all locations and to respond effectively where protests have turned violent," the official said.

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Was Al Qaeda Behind US Consulate Attack In Libya?

Al-Qaeda says attack on U.S. consulate in Libya ‘revenge’ for death of its 2nd man

Tuesday’s attack by armed men in the eastern city of Benghazi came amid a wave of protests in the Muslim world against a U.S.-made amateur Internet film deemed insulting to the Prophet Mohammed. (Reuters)

 

 

Al-Qaeda said the deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya was in revenge for the killing of the network’s number two Sheikh Abu Yahya al-Libi, SITE Intelligence Group reported Saturday, as Libyan authorities have identified 50 people who were involved in the attack.

“The killing of Sheikh Abu Yahya only increased the enthusiasm and determination of the sons of (Libyan independence hero) Omar al-Mokhtar to take revenge upon those who attack our Prophet,” al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula said in a statement, quoted by the U.S.-based monitoring group, according to AFP.

Al-Qaeda’s Yemen-based offshoot did not claim direct responsibility for Tuesday’s attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans.

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