The U.S. Embassy attacks - an ongoing investigation

This threads purpose is to gather all information available surrounding the U.S. embassy attacks in on place.
You are invited to participate. Please only post facts and information that are as verifiable as possible and refrain from speculation at this point.


[note: With the vast amount of information flodding the internet right now, it becomes increasingly difficult to determine what the official White House-position was, directly after the assaults on both embassies in Egypt and Libya.
So far, only Ambassador Rice and Press Secretary Jay Carney appear to have stated unambiguously that the attacks were the spontaneous reaction of the anti Muslim movie.]

-planned or not -
contradicting statements:

“Based on the best information we have to date ... it began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo, where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our embassy sparked by this hateful video. But soon after that spontaneous protest began outside of our consulate in Benghazi, we believe that it looks like extremist elements, individuals, joined in that effort with heavy weapons of the sort that are, unfortunately, readily now available in Libya post-revolution. And that it spun from there into something much, much more violent.... We do not have information at present that leads us to conclude that this was premeditated or preplanned.”

— Susan E. Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”


"It's in reaction to a video that 'we have judged to be reprehensible and disgusting."

— Press Secretary Jay Carney, official White House statement


“The way these perpetrators acted and moved — I think we, and they’re choosing the specific date for this so-called demonstration, I think we have no, this leaves us with no doubt that this was pre-planned, determined,”

“It was planned, definitely. It was planned by foreigners, by people who entered the country a few months ago. And they were planning this criminal act since their arrival,”

— President Mohammed el-Megarif, on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

"The idea that this criminal and cowardly act was a spontaneous protest that just spun out of control is completely unfounded and preposterous. We firmly believe that this was a precalculated, preplanned attack that was carried out specifically to attack the U.S. Consulate."

Megarif claims evidence shows that some elements of Ansar al-Sharia, an extremist group in eastern Benghazi, were used as tools by foreign citizens with ties to al-Qaida to attack the consulate and threaten Libya's stability.

— President el-Megarif, exclusive interview with NPR


"I don't know how they found the place to carry out the attack. It was planned, the accuracy with which the mortars hit us was too good for any ordinary revolutionaries. It began to rain down on us, about six mortars fell directly on the path to the villa."

— Captain Fathi al- Obeidi, of the February 17 Brigade

According to one of the Libyan security guards who was stationed at one of the gates armed with only a radio, the assault began simultaneously from three directions.

Heavy machine guns and rocket -propelled grenades were used, according to the guard. He said masked men threatened to kill him at gunpoint for ‘protecting the infidels. He declined to appear on camera for fear of repercussions.

[note: Claim and counterclaim unconfirmed, as it has yet not been determined by whom these statements were made.]

The latest clarification from the administration came in response to an intelligence source on the ground in Libya. "There was no protest, and the attacks were not spontaneous," the intelligence source said. "The Libyan attack was planned and had nothing to do with the movie."

Responding to the account, a U.S. official did not dispute that no major protest was taking place right before the strike. The U.S. official said a small group had gathered outside the consulate between 9 and 10 p.m. local time, but the investigation has yet to determine whether they were demonstrators or armed militants.

[note: The list is incomplete and therefor inconclusive, to later set up a timeline who said what and when is of crucial importance to find out what really happened.]


-pre knowledge?-
contradicting information

The State Department issued a memo five days prior of the attacks, announcing no credible security threats against the USA. The memo was later 'scrubbed' from the OSAC website.

Senior diplomatic sources say the U.S. State Department had credible information, 48 hours prior to the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya and the embassy in Cairo, that American locations may be targeted, however, no warnings were issued, no “lock down” orders given.
— The Independent, UK

On Friday, however, U.S. official told POLITICO that there was “no intelligence indicating that the attack in Benghazi was premeditated.”

Shawn Turner, spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence backed up the official’s claims, emailing: “This is absolutely wrong. We are not aware of any actionable intelligence indicating that an attack on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi was planned or imminent.”


A Libyan security officer has claimed that he warned American diplomats about the possibility of violent unrest three days before the attack on the U.S. consulate which left the ambassador dead along with three others.

Jamal Mabrouk, of the February 17th Brigade, told CNN that he and a battalion commander sat down with U.S. envoys to discuss the economy and security in the country, which has been going through a turbulent transition since the fall of Moammar Gaddafi last year.

Mabrouk added that it was not the first time he has alerted foreigners to safety concerns in the face of the growing presence of armed jihadist groups in the Benghazi area.


Despite President Obama's administration claiming that there was no 'actionable intelligence' before the attack, on June 6th an IED was thrown at the perimeter of the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi and on August 5th, just over a month before the deadly assault an International Committee of the Red Cross building in the city was hit by rocket propelled grenades.

However, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National INtelligence, repeated the claim that U.S. officials in Libya were in the dark about the assault.

"Actionable intelligence would have meant that we either saw or heard something, through intelligence collection, that told us that a specific act was being planned or was imminent."

Intelligence officials are reviewing telephone and radio intercepts, computer traffic, satellite images and other clues from the days before the attacks — the kinds of material routinely gathered in a conflict zone where al-Qaida affiliates are known to operate.

But investigators have found no evidence pointing conclusively to a particular group or to indicate the attack was planned, White House spokesman Jay Carney adding, "This is obviously under investigation."

tbc...

abc-news

the blaze

cbs

daily mail uk

independent uk

politico

The "embassy" siege was as spontaneous as the spontaneous uprising instigated by British special forces and their Al Qaeda terrorist friends at the beginning of the called Libyan revolution in 2011. Oh and the Libyan revolution was only called Libyan revolution, because we THE WEST thought it should be called Libyan revolution, not because the majority for the people in Libya thought it would be appropriate to call it that way.

Apart from that there are a lot of interesting questions to raise:

Why does the US state department not even list a consulate, much less an embassy in Benghazi on their homepage?

Why was the ambassador there, especially on and around "9/11", because even the western media reported that he visited these "offices" only sporadically, and it is not exactly close to Tripoli?

Wouldn't the US embassy in Tripoli have been much safer for him?

And why didn't the terrorists attack the embassy in Tripoli instead?

How did these people who stormed and burned down this consulate know that it is an American consulate in the first place? Most of the time these buildings are anything but fancy from the outside.

Wouldn't it have been more obvious and made more sense (from a terrorist standpoint) to attack the embassy in Tripoli instead of a small office building?

Why have terrorists when they attack the US always better intelligence then the US has itself?



And finally:

Why do I have the feeling that the stories that the US government tells us about terrorist attacks always stink?