The recently released Senate report on the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the CIA annex contains a detail that is likely to escalate into “bombshell.” According to the report, the commander of U.S. forces in Africa was not aware about the existence of the CIA annex.
This detail is nothing short of disturbing, and undoubtedly there’ll be many questions arising from it. According to Stars and Stripes, command of the elite unit, C-110, or the EUCOM CIF, was reportedly transferred from the military’s European command to AFRICOM during the middle of an attack. Page 28 of the 85-page report states:
With respect to the role of DoD and AFRICOM in emergency evacuations and rescue operations in Benghazi, the Committee received conflicting information on the extent of the awareness within DoD of the Benghazi Annex. According to U.S. AFRICOM, neither the command nor its Commander were aware of an annex in Benghazi, Libya. However, it is the Committee’s understanding that other DoD personnel were aware of the Benghazi Annex.
Page 77 of the report notes that Gen. Carter Ham, who was in charge of AFRICOM, “was not even aware there was a CIA annex in Benghazi at the time of the attacks,” adding:
We are puzzled as to how the military leadership expected to effectively respond and rescue Americans in the event of an emergency when it did not even know of the existence of one of the U.S. facilities.
Ham was put in charge of the C-110, which is a 40-man Special Ops force used to respond to emergencies. The force was especially trained to handle situations such as the one that erupted in Benghazi. Reportedly they had been training in Croatia at the time of the attack but where not deployed to Benghazi. They were instead ordered to return to their forward operating base located in Italy.
Will we ever learn the full truth about why units were told to stand down on that fateful night? Will we ever find out why four Americans were allowed to perish when units could have easily responded in time to rescue them?
