LEAKING FOR POLITICAL ADVANTAGE SEEMS TO BE THE RULE RATHER THAN THE EXCEPTION
When will politicians and politicized military officials learn to shut up. Something may be common knowledge in the political, intelligence and military communities, but it does not have to be widely publicized to provide a heads-up to our enemies.
One would consider that the United States, for political, prestige and operational reasons, will track down those who participated in the Benghazi attack and bring them to justice. That is, unless they are members of a “protected” class of people who the United States routinely engages for their own covert activities. In that case, dupes and patsies might be substituted and the matter closed. With the public none the wiser.
So it angers me when I see that “Secret U.S. military commandos are deployed on foreign soil – technically a violation of a nation’s sovereignty.
Pentagon: Secret U.S. military commandos deployed to Libya
Classified United States military units are operating in the region near Libya since the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, according to the director of operations for the Pentagon’s Joint Staff.
The disclosure that secret U.S. military forces were dispatched to Libya recently was revealed in a letter sent Wednesday to the House Armed Services Committee by Vice Adm. Kurt Tidd, director of operations for the Pentagon’s Joint Staff. Tidd said that after the attack in Benghazi, the U.S. European Command sent a Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team (FAST) platoon to reinforce security at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli.“Additional classified capabilities were deployed to the region,” Tidd said, in what other defense officials said was a reference to the deployment of special operations commandos.
How secret can it be when I am reading about it in the mainstream media? How stupid is Vice Admiral Tidd is explaining “who, what and when” to our enemies. Tidd does not get a pass for not revealing sources and methods.
Tidd was responding to a letter from Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R., Calif.) about whether the military recommended bolstering security in Libya prior to the Sept. 11 attack that killed U.S. ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three other Americans.
Responding publicly to a letter from a politician which has been sent in “open format” to the media is a sucker’s play.
A U.S. official would not provide details on the classified unit in the region but said it includes elite U.S. special operations commandos trained for counterterrorism missions, like the Navy’s Seal Team Six, known formally as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group. The CIA also is said to be secretly setting up covert armed aerial drone units in the country.
It appears that we now know one of the methods include drones, giving a heads up that meetings might be best accomplished in Mosques, hospitals and other targets seemingly immune from drone strikes.
The U.S. military also has been working with the remnants of the Libyan military’s special operations forces as the new provisional government seeks to set up a central military and reduce the control of the large number of heavily armed militias, many of them Islamist-run, around the country. On Sept. 12, President Obama vowed to “work with the Libyan government to bring to justice the killers who attacked our people.”
Doubling down on stupidity? It was the Obama Administration who first thought that they could work with the emerging Libyan government – which we now know includes embedded al Qaeda operatives.
Former Libya-based security officials have said the threat environment was extremely dangerous and Stevens himself had written cables back to Washington stressing the worsening conditions and heightened extremist activity. And documents found at the site six weeks after the attack indicate that consulate employees noticed a local Libyan police officer taking photos of the consulate from a building across the street on the morning of Sept. 11, according to Foreign Policy magazine. <Source>
The fact that a self-serving politician will release information that fits their agenda should be assumed.
The comments regarding classified forces were included in several letters that Tidd and two other senior military officials, including the commander of the U.S. Africa Command, sent to McKeon stating that they did not recommend increasing military forces for the security of U.S. diplomatic and intelligence personnel in Libya after a Pentagon Site Security Team ended its mission in Libya on Aug. 3. Army Gen. Carter F. Ham, the Africa Command commander, stated in his letter to McKeon that no one from his command recommended bolstering military forces in Libya in response “to the threat environment.”
“While the Accountability Review Board continues in its work reviewing any and all requests made by the Department of State, I can state with certainty that U.S. Africa Command did not receive any direction to provide U.S. military forces to augment security for U.S. personnel in Libya beyond the expiration of the Site Security Teams’ mandate through Aug. 3, 2012,” Ham stated in the Oct. 31 letter.
However, the four-star general said all email accounts of U.S. military personnel in Libya after Aug. 4 were frozen “to assess if any informal communications with personal recommendations were sent during that timeframe in which they were under my command and no longer under Chief of Mission authority.” “To date, our due diligence has revealed no such information,” Ham said.
Tidd said in his letter that no one in his office urged the State Department or other agencies to increase security, nor did the Pentagon seek better security for U.S. officials in Libya.
Tidd also said no one in the Joint Staff operations directorate recommended adding forces to Libya before last month’s attack.
Adm. William McRaven, commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command, sent a similar letter to the House committee chairman.
Bottom line …
While all of the leaked information is putting greater pressure on the Administration to reveal why they lied to the American public is noteworthy journalism, there is an official time and place for such responses. Responses that will not result in the deaths of additional intelligence or military special operations people on the ground.
Additionally, publicly advising the people of a host nation that a foreign sovereign is operating with moral authority and relative impunity in their neighborhood is not a good thing. Especially when such interventions can be used to recruit homeland resistance fighters.
Until there is an official hearing, I suggest that the hyper-politicized administration, intelligence and military people STFU! You are harming America’s cause while attempting to feather your own nest or disclaim responsibility for the Benghazi 9/11 attack. There is enough blame to go around and from my viewpoint: it was a team failure. Individual team members should be held responsible and accountable.
-- steve
Reference Links …
Free Beacon - Pentagon: Secret U.S. military commandos deployed to Libya
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