Foreign Affairs
Related: About this forum"Killing of US ambassador is likely to have been planned"
Killing of US ambassador is likely to have been plannedhttp://www.independent.co.uk/hei-fi/news/killing-of-us-ambassador-is-likely-to-have-been-planned-8139005.html?origin=internalSearch
"SNIP.......................................
The killings of the US ambassador to Libya and three of his staff were likely to have been the result of a security breach, i can reveal.
Chris Stevens had been back in the country only a short while and the details of his visit to Benghazi, where he and his staff died, were meant to be confidential, but American officials believe the attack was planned. The US administration is now facing a crisis in Libya. Sensitive documents have gone missing from the consulate in Benghazi and the supposedly secret location of the "safe house" in the city, where the staff had retreated, came under sustained mortar attack. Other such refuges across the country are no longer deemed "safe".
Some of the missing papers from the consulate are said to list names of Libyans who are working with Americans, putting them potentially at risk from extremist groups, while some of the other documents are said to relate to oil contracts.
According to diplomatic sources, the US State Department had credible information 48 hours before mobs charged the consulate in Benghazi, and the embassy in Cairo, that American missions would be targeted, but no warnings were given for diplomats to go on high alert and "lockdown", under which movement is severely restricted.
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HooptieWagon
(17,064 posts)I can't imagine "sensitive" documents and lists of Libyan contacts would be held at a consulate, rather than a more secure embassy. Consulates generally only handle routine paperwork-requests for visas and the like.
applegrove
(118,612 posts)the place in Bengazi trying to make sure al Qaeda doesn't grow there. I would think that would be the main thing they are doing there right now. I would put it ahead of trade in importance to the American foreign policy in Lybia.
HooptieWagon
(17,064 posts)But not at a consulate. Consulates aren't as secure as an embassy, often they're just an office. And they aren't US soil, as an embassy. Any local official can drum up a pretext to search a consulate-they cannot at an embassy. If there was sensitive papers and intelligence being stored at the consulate, then the ambassador and staff were stupid and reckless.
brush
(53,764 posts)I agree. We have to consider the source of this story.
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)Libya is still in a civil war. It is surprising security was so lax.
Still, from all indications the attack was by trained and heavily weaponed soldiers. Only a large group of Marines would be able to turn back such an attack.
This was no hastily organized plain-citizen revolt. And we will never know just how much intelligence was lost.
bloods vs crips
(17 posts)I can't believe the administration and the media is giving the video producer so much airtime. It's obviously a bogus political ploy to keep everyone from questioning our stupid ME foreign policy. Why haven't people been spending more time in intelligence briefings, who knew about the security threats before the attacks, why was Amb. Stevens going to meetings without a single member of a security detail?
And finally, why is all of this happening if Obama was supposed to be able to change the narrative in ME relations due to his "unique" background?
Thankfully journalists are finally starting to ask a few decent questions.