A former U.S. security official in Libya testified Wednesday that the State Department withdrew security officers from the country as violence from armed militia groups grew worse over the summer.”
The security in Benghazi was a struggle and remained a struggle throughout my time there,” Lt. Col. Andrew Wood said in testimony at a hearing of House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
The Republican-led committee was meeting to investigate the deaths of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three other Americans on Sept. 11 at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. Among the testimony’s revelations was that Stevens had requested additional security due to the danger and according to a former chief of security was denied more help.
“The security conditions in Libya remains unpredictable, volatile and violent,” Stevens wrote.
The hearing followed assertions Tuesday by the State Department that it never concluded that the attack arose from protests over an American-made video ridiculing Islam.
Even so, administration official U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice gave a series of interviews five days after the attack in which she asserted the attack was a spontaneous reaction to the film. White House spokesman Jay Carney also blamed the video days after the incident.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland also refused for days afterward to say the assault on the compound was a terror attack, saying the matter was still being investigated. The administration now says it was a terrorist attack.
State Department officials said Wednesday that security levels at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, were adequate, but the compound was overrun by an “unprecedented” attack by dozens of heavily armed extremists.”We had the correct number of assets in Benghazi at the time of 9/11,” said Charlene Lamb, the deputy secretary of State for diplomatic security in charge of protecting American embassies and consulates around the world.
Five security agents were on the compound at the time of the attack, Lamb said.
But Carney told reporters Wednesday that in hindsight, “there is no question that the security was not enough to prevent that tragedy from happening.”
“There were four Americans killed,” he said.According to documents made public at the hearing, Stevens sent a cable Aug. 2 to the State Department asking for a team of 11 additional bodyguards to be added to the roster of 24 to replace temporary-duty officers who would be leaving within the next month.
“Due to the level of threat in regards to Crime, Political Violence and Terrorism, Post feels this is an appropriate number of LES security personnel needed to further Embassy diplomatic outreach missions,” Stevens wrote.
“Violent security incidents continue to take place due to the lack of a coherent national Libyan security force and the strength of local militias and large numbers of armed groups,” Stevens wrote. “Host national security support is lacking and cannot be depended on to provide a safe and secure environment.”
Wood, the former head of a 16-member U.S. military team in Libya, testified that the attack was “instantly recognizable” to him as terrorism. A former Special Forces soldier who commanded the Site Security Team in Libya from Feb. 12 until Aug. 14, Wood said the attacks on the nearby British Embassy and International Red Cross made it apparent that, “we were the last target on their list.”
“The security in Benghazi was a struggle and remained a struggle throughout my time there,” Wood said. “The RSO (regional security officer) struggled to obtain additional personnel there but was never able to attain the numbers he felt comfortable with.”
Eric Nordstrom, the former chief security officer for U.S. diplomats in Libya, testified that it was clear when he arrived in Libya that the transitional government was too weak and fragmented to provide consistent diplomatic security. The State Department, he said, recognized this weakness.
“Libyans wanted to help, but they had very limited capabilities to do so,” Nordstrom said, adding that his pleas for more security were ignored.
Nordstrom said his requests for more security were blocked by a department policy to “normalize operations and reduce security resources.”
Nordstrom said he sent two cables to State Department headquarters in March and July requesting additional diplomatic security agents for Benghazi, but he received no responses. He said Lamb wanted to keep the number of U.S. security personnel in Benghazi artificially low even as the State Department recognized the increasing hazards.