Why Did Al-Qaeda Target Ambassador Stevens?

Was he murdered for reasons other than being an American on 9/11?

by Stephen Bryen and Shoshana Bryen, PJMedia

Most of the questions related to the Benghazi debacle are about the mechanics, both offensive and defensive. What did the White House know and when? What assets were available to the military? Did someone order a stand down, and if so, who? Why was “the video” blamed long after the administration knew the truth — and didn’t the administration know the truth from the beginning? If it didn’t, why didn’t it?

All reasonable questions, but a generally unasked one deserves attention: “Why did al-Qaeda want to kill Ambassador Chris Stevens?”

The ambassador had good relations with some of the most extreme Libyan militias, including those with al-Qaeda ties. Did he upset them with something he did, or didn’t do? Was the White House fully apprised of his connections and dealings with the militias? Was he killed because of something the administration told him to start doing or to stop doing?
There are things we know and things upon which we must speculate, including the entry of surface-to-air missiles to the Levant.

Emerging from the chaos is a dim understanding that the U.S. was operating a clandestine arms operation from the CIA post that was loosely — and incorrectly — described as a “consulate.” Before and during the revolution, Ambassador Stevens had helped arm the anti-Gaddafi militias, including the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIF), whose leader Abdulhakim Belhadj later became the head of the Tripoli Military Council.

The LIF’s Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi told an Italian newspaper in 2011 (later reported in the BritishTelegraph) that he had fought the “foreign invasion” in Afghanistan. Captured in Pakistan, al-Hasidi was handed over to the U.S. and returned to Libya, where he was released from prison in 2008. Speaking of the Libyan revolution, he said:

    Members of al-Qaeda are also good Muslims and are fighting against the invader.

Belhadj met with Free Syrian Army representatives in October 2011 to offer Libyan support for ousting Assad. Throughout 2011 and 2012, ships traversed the Mediterranean from Benghazi to Syria and Lebanon with arms for the Syrian rebels. Turkish and Jordanian intelligence services were doing most of the “vetting” of rebel groups; in July 2010, the Washington Post reported that the CIA had no operatives on the ground and only a few at border posts even as weapons were entering Syria. Said a U.S. official, addressing the question of even non-lethal aid:

    We’ve got to figure out who is over there first, and we don’t really know that.

In August, a report by Tony Cartalucci, a supporter of the Syrian nationalist opposition, detailed the extent of Libyan and al-Qaeda involvement in Syria, calling it a “foreign invasion.” In November, theWashington Post noted a $20 million contribution by the Libyan government to the Syrian National Council — of which the Muslim Brotherhood is a member.

Ambassador Stevens would have known all of that; he was the go-to man. He didn’t seem to have a problem with it, so why did they want to kill him?

In 2011, it was reported that the Libyan rebels had acquired surface-to-air missiles from Gaddafi’s arsenal, and smuggled them into their own. They were not used in the revolution because the skies were filled with allies of the militias, but American sources worried that as many as 15,000 MANPADs (man-portable air defense systems — or mobile surface-to-air missiles) might have “gone missing.” Assistant Secretary of State Andrew Shapiro told USA Today

    The frank answer is we don’t know (how many are missing) and probably never will.

He added that the Obama administration took “immediate steps” to secure the weapons, launching an effort to recover them even before collapse of the regime. Which is interesting, because the U.S. claimed to have no “boots on the ground.”

So who was looking for them? And if they found them, what did they do with them?

Some, at least, appear to have emerged in Syria — in August there was a report of a Syrian government plane downed by the rebels. In October, the Russians claimed the rebels had U.S.-origin Stinger missiles. (Stingers are designed to hit helicopters and low-flying planes — they wreaked havoc with Russian aircraft during the war in Afghanistan.) The BBC reported that the Syrians had old Soviet SA-7 missiles that can destroy an airplane flying at higher altitudes.

Whether Russian or American, the introduction of MANPADS into the region would be cause for alarm. The Levant is not isolated to Afghanistan, and the multinational nature of the Syrian rebels puts a number of countries and their interests in harm’s way. A stray shot — or a deliberate diversion — could be used against Israeli commercial or military aviation. Or American aviation. Turkey would have to worry that the Kurdish part of the anti-Assad revolution might divert its energies to assist in the Kurdish guerrilla movement against Turkey; Turkey’s war against the PKK is largely conducted with helicopters. Jordan would have to worry that the Muslim Brotherhood part of the Syrian rebellion could divert its energies to assist the MB in Jordan against U.S. ally King Abdullah II. Russia would worry that missiles could be diverted to the anti-Russian Sunni jihadists of the Caucasus or Central Asia.

In October, the IDF confirmed that a surface-to-air missile, said to be an SA-7, was fired at a helicopter from Gaza. Iran had not provided such weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon, perhaps understanding that such an escalation would produce Israeli retaliation. The fact that Israel struck the Sudanese Yarmouk rocket/missile factory at the end of October may have been a reminder of the consequences of escalation.

So far, only the last bit is speculation.

But what if Turkish, Jordanian, Russian, or Israeli concerns about the appearance of MANPADS close to their borders made the administration decide that it had to exercise more control over weapons shipments to the Syrian rebels? What if the State Department told Ambassador Stevens to clamp down on the shipments or to stop them all together? If Stevens had told his militia allies that he was cutting back or cutting off the CIA-organized shipments to Syria, could they have been angry enough to kill him?

Al-Qaeda operatives knew of the ambassador’s presence in Benghazi — either because they had operatives in Tripoli or because they had them in Benghazi. They knew where he was and they attacked after the Turkish ambassador left the compound. This raises the question of why Stevens and the Turkish ambassador were meeting in Benghazi at all, when both are stationed in Tripoli.

Another “what if” involves the administration response to the attack, both initially and when senior members — including the secretary of State, the president’s press secretary, and the U.S. ambassador to the UN — all insisted that the attack was the result of “the video.” Two full weeks later, President Obama pounded the lectern at the United Nations and denounced “the video.”

What if they needed for Ambassador Stevens’ death to be part of a larger event, unrelated to the specifics of arms, militias, al-Qaeda, and Syria?

Remember, we’re speculating here. But if the truth of an arms relationship came out, the administration would have been caught in a major falsehood right before the election — that’s not speculation. Mrs. Clinton had flatly told CBS News in February that the U.S. would not arm Syrian rebels, specifically because of the potential for arming radicals with which the U.S. would not be associated:

    What are we going to arm them with and against what? We’re not going to bring tanks over the borders of Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. … We know [al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri] is supporting the opposition in Syria. Are we supporting al-Qaeda in Syria?

It may still fall into the realm of speculation, but it seems we were, and if we were there would be a price to pay.

In what appears to be a related event, in early November Secretary Clinton withdrew U.S. support from the Syrian National Council and proposed a differently comprised coalition that would reduce the SNC’s influence. She said it was needed in part because:

    We need an opposition that will be on record strongly resisting the efforts by extremists to hijack the Syrian revolution. There are disturbing reports of extremists going into Syria and attempting to take over what has been a legitimate revolution against a repressive regime for their own purposes.

She didn’t mention their American interlocutors.

That appears to be the final backing-away from an American relationship with al-Qaeda-related militias in Libya that ultimately resulted in the deaths of Ambassador Stevens, former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Greg Doherty, and State Department computer specialist Sean Smith.

November 13, 2012 | 5 Comments »

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5 Comments / 5 Comments

  1. Let’s see.

    Stevens asked for protection for weeks or months and received none.

    Stevens was attacked by al Qaeda.

    The attack lasted 7 hours and the white house saw it on tv for the entire time, yet refused to send help, which could have been there in 60 minutes.

    Clearly, obama wanted stevens gone. The question is “why”.

    There are many rumors about Stevens floating around the net right now that he was about to dish on Obama.

    There has to be a valid reason – at least to Obama – for letting him get killed.

  2. Nothing here related to stand down orders. It has also been published that there were 2 jihadi prisoners which prompted the movement of attack to the 2nd location at CIA annex, as if to retrieve or kill the witnesses. Or it could have been set up as a false flag hostage taking that went wrong when the SEALS did not stand down. The jihadists might have thought that Stevens had been rescued and taken to CIA annex and were trying to retrieve him and then Obama could have had a false rescue of Stevens. There are various scenarios which can be offered: one on the opposite hand is that it was a scheme to embarrass and depose Obama as a pre election surprise(as in Reagan contra). Knowing the arms trade was going and taking advantage of the pre known meeting to set up a symbolic attack on 9-11. I’m sure that oil company security firms,or the mormon mafia(remeber H.Hughs and CIA), have contacts through the saudis, qataris etc to set up an attack by a rival group. All the players would have known about the US involvement in the arms trade and probably the meeting also. Has anyone noticed the very willing European participation in the ghadaffi overthrow and in the nato intervention in syria on behalf of Turkey? I think there is much we do not know. The Petraeus and Allen situation are 2 exploitable blackmail targets for anyone. One thing I think we definitely can conclude: something is rotten with US obama admin but there also might be more

  3. in July 2010, the Washington Post reported that the CIA had no operatives on the ground and only a few at border posts even as weapons were entering Syria. Said a U.S. official, addressing the question of even non-lethal aid: We’ve got to figure out who is over there first, and we don’t really know that.

    They were all in Israel counting Israeli settlements.

  4. Why Was Security Stripped in Benghazi?

    by: Clare Lopez

    Benghazi Staffed by CIA Operatives: What Was Their Role?

    According to media reporting, Benghazi was staffed by CIA operatives whose job may have been not just to secure and destroy dangerous weapons (like RPGs and SAMs) looted from former Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi’s stockpiles during and after the 2011 revolution, but also perhaps to facilitate their onward shipment to the Al-Qaeda- and Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Syrian opposition.

    Read More

    Redux Iran Contra?

  5. Only ONE thing is clear.

    As the Benghazi plot thickens, one thing is clear: Very smart people do very stupid things. People with families, with years of university and decades invested building up a great career – they risk it all motivated by emotions.

    Or greed. How many times have we seen reputable politicians in their seventies or eighties engaged in dirty business so as to have a few more thousands or millions of dollars they can’t possibly take with them?

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~

    My point is that whenever we (me too) devise perfect plans to solve the world’s problems, we rarely take into account variables such as the irrational, the emotional, the corrupt, or the plain stupid in leaders’ motivations.

    Middle-aged professionals with impact on other people’s lives (families, entire countries), and who should be concerned with their reputation and their legacy, are not necessarily guided by rationality and noble principles, but by their REPTILIAN BRAIN!

    ~~~~~~~~~

    The rest is as clear as mud.

    http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/11/13/General-investigated-for-emails-to-Petraeus-friend