State Dept. and CIA Had Secret, Botched Deal for Benghazi Security
WSJ: State Dept. and CIA Had Secret, Botched Deal for Benghazi Security
Of all of the questions surrounding the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, one that has seemed especially puzzling is the apparently insufficient security there. A new report from the Wall Street Journal sheds light on this, revealing what the paper says was a secret and possibly confused arrangement between the State Department and Central Intelligence Agency.
The CIA is said to have been the dominant U.S. presence in Benghazi, where it had a “symbiotic” relationship with the State Department consulate that served as cover for its staff. “The State Department believed it had a formal agreement with the CIA to provide backup security,” the Journal says, “although a congressional investigator said it now appears the CIA didn’t have the same understanding about its security responsibilities.”
But, on Sept. 11, the arrangement for the CIA to provide “emergency” security to the consulate apparently did not unfold as the State Department had expected:
Congressional investigators say it appears that the CIA and State Department weren’t on the same page about their respective roles on security, underlining the rift between agencies over taking responsibility and raising questions about whether the security arrangement in Benghazi was flawed.
The CIA’s secret role helps explain why security appeared inadequate at the U.S. diplomatic facility. State Department officials believed that responsibility was set to be shouldered in part by CIA personnel in the city through a series of secret agreements that even some officials in Washington didn’t know about.
Two questions immediately strike me about this. The first: what is the gap between what the State Department expected from the CIA force and what it got on Sept. 11?
