Turkish PM Tayyip Erdoğan and Barack Obama (Photo: Cihan)
Clare Lopez is an intelligence expert with a focus on the Middle East, national defense and counterterrorism. She served for 25 years as an operations officer with the CIA and now writes for RadicalIslam.org. I’ve been linking to her reports not only because they’re intelligent and informative but in some cases, like this one – breaking news. I don’t know of anyone else who’s noticed that Turkish Consul General Ali Sait Akin, who had been meeting with Ambassador Stevens the evening of the attack, was able to leave the consulate without incident even though the area outside the compound was swarming with jihadis setting up checkpoints.
If reporting from the Washington Times is accurate, it looks like the Turkish Consul General Ali Sait Akin was in on the plot to attack the U.S. mission in Benghazi. According to an October 27, 2012 report, Libyan witnesses from the Benghazi neighborhood where the U.S. compound was located told reporters from the Associated Press (AP) that “150 bearded gunmen, some wearing the Afghan-style tunics favored by Islamic militants began sealing off the streets” leading to the facility “around nightfall.”
The Department of State “Background Briefing on Libya,” provided by telephone to reporters on October 9, 2012 states that Ambassador Christopher Stevens held his last meeting of the day on September 11 with the Turkish diplomat from 7:30pm to 8:30pm and then escorted him out to the compound gate to bid farewell. At that point, the briefing states, “Everything is calm at 8:30 p.m. There’s nothing unusual.”
But the AP witnesses said that, “The neighbors all described the militants setting up checkpoints around the compound at about 8 p.m.” The checkpoints were described as being manned by bearded jihadis in pickup trucks mounted with heavy machine guns and bearing the logo of the Al-Qaeda terror franchise, Ansar al-Shariah.
That means that the Turkish Consul General would have had to pass out through the blockade as he departed the American compound and left the area. There is no record that he phoned a warning to his American colleague, the one he’d just had dinner with, Ambassador Stevens. Given the description of the blockade around the American compound and of the jihadis and their trucks that were manning it, it seems unlikely that the he somehow just failed to notice. “[N]o one could get out or in,” according to one neighbor interviewed by the AP.
Except for the Turkish Consul General, it would appear.
Keep reading. The implication here is the Turkish government is at least somewhat complicit in this attack.
And Obama, it should be noted, describes the Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan as one of the five foreign leaders with whom he is most friendly.
Michael Rubin of Commentary made note of the oddity, last July:
Given Erdoğan’s anti-American and anti-Semitic rants, and his repeated support for not only Hamas terrorists, but also an Al Qaeda financier, perhaps it is time for Obama to describe why he embraces Erdoğan above most others.
Yes, indeed.
Doug Ross has more on this story: FAST AND FURIOUS IN BENGHAZI: Timing of Attack Hints at Double-Cross of White House Gun-Running Operation by Turkey:
What was the subject of the discussion between Stevens and Akin? Malta Today offers some context that hints at some strong possibilities.
A Libyan-flagged vessel which last year was used by a Malta-based humanitarian organisation in supplying a lifeline to rebels in Misurata, has been implicated in a covert US arms smuggling operation to Syrian freedom fighters, which may also be linked to murdered US ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi last month.
The ship ‘Al Entisar’ which was chartered last year by I-Go Aid Libya, then run by businessman Mario Debono, has been reported to be linked to last September’s attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.
A Fox News investigation revealed that shipping records confirmed that the Al Entisar entered the Turkish port of Iskenderun, some 35 miles from the Syrian border, just five days before Ambassador Chris Stevens, and three other US officials were killed during an assault by more than 100 Islamist militants on the US Consulate compound in Benghazi.
Another report, this time appearing on the Times of London, said that the Al Entisar was carrying 400 tons of cargo. Some of it was humanitarian, but also reportedly weapons, described by the report as the largest consignment of weapons headed for Syria’s rebels on the frontlines…
SEE ALSO:
Radical Islam: Why Was Security Stripped in Benghazi?
Data points continue to accumulate about the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya. The picture that is beginning to emerge from connecting those dots is deeply concerning on multiple levels. Two related issues dominate this analysis: The stripping of security protection from the Benghazi mission prior to the 9/11 anniversary attack and the refusal to send or even permit local help on the night of the attack.
As Fox News Bureau Chief of Intelligence Catherine Herridge suggested on the “Mike Huckabee” show on Oct. 27, both of these critical subjects may have been driven by a perceived need to cover up the existence of the role being played by the U.S. mission in Libya to serve as a command hub for the movement of weapons out of Libya to Syrian rebels fighting to bring down the Bashar Al-Assad regime.
Flopping Aces: Why the AC130s were grounded: Obama didn’t want voters to find out that he had armed the jihadists with SAMs:
It’s simple logic. In Libya there is only one possible threat to an AC130 gunship: surface to air missiles. Thus this is the only way Panetta wasn’t lying when he said that it was lack of information about the threat environment that kept him from sending defenders into “harm’s way” in Benghazi. He must have been afraid that the jihadists were lying in wait with surface to air missiles, and he had good reason to suspect such a ploy.
A primary task of the Libyan mission was to round up the war materiel of the deposed and decomposing Moammar Ghadaffi and funnel it to chosen opponents of Assad in Syria. Which part of the Syrian opposition has Obama been choosing to supply? Al Qaeda:
“Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups that the West wants to bolster, according to American officials and Middle Eastern diplomats,” the Times reports.
The paper quotes one U.S. official as saying, “The opposition groups that are receiving the most of the lethal aid are exactly the ones we don’t want to have it,” adding that “officials, voicing frustration, say there is no central clearinghouse for the shipments, and no effective way of vetting the groups that ultimately receive them.”
According to Adm. James A. Lyons (retired), the Libyan arms that have been funneled to the jihadists include substantial numbers of surface to air missiles:
Blackfive: Rumors of General Officers Arrested, Relieved, or Resigning in Protest:
On back channel, there has been talk that GEN Ham is actually being relieved for another mission – one that was denied airspace access by a sovereign nation, and that GEN Ham intentionally violated airspace rules/laws in order to complete a mission (not Benghazi). There is also talk that GEN Ham is resigning in disgust of the chain of command – literally, with the Commander in Chief – and that he is trying to do so as apolitically as possible (and Ham is seen as being one of “the President’s guys”). One would think that someone would wait for an election just days away to be over before resigning in protest (because you might have a new CinC), but who knows? On Monday, GEN Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declared that GEN Ham’s departure was part of a planned rotation in the works since July. Hhmmm…
Then, we have an up and coming Rear Admiral being relieved of command of the Stennis carrier group. This is significant as it is not due to conduct unbecoming, personal conduct, or for incompetence, but for “inappropriate leadership judgment“. What?!
Jihad Watch: Libyan Leaks: Secret Document reveals Al-Qaeda ‘brother’ put in control of U.S. Embassy in Tripoli:
The Benghazi scandal just keeps getting worse. Clearly Obama wanted to protect the illusion that the U.S. had supported a democratic uprising in Libya, but even Obama keeps saying the al-Qaeda is the enemy — and now this. “Libyan Leaks: Secret Document reveals Al-Qaeda ‘brother’ put in control of U.S. Embassy in Tripoli,” by Walid Shoebat and Ben Barrack, October 31:
A treasure trove of secret documents has been obtained by a Libyan source who says that secularists in his country are increasingly wanting to see Mitt Romney defeat Barack Obama on November 6th. This charge is being made despite Muslim Brotherhood losses in Libyan elections last Julywhich resulted in victory for the secularists. One of those documents may help explain this sentiment.
It shows that in supporting the removal of Gadhafi, the Obama administration seemed to sign on to an arrangement that left forces loyal to Al-Qaeda in charge of security at the U.S. embassy in Tripoli from 2011 through at least the spring of 2012.
The National Transitional Council, which represented the political apparatus that opposed Gadhafi in 2011 and served as the interim government after his removal, made an extremely curious appointment in August of 2011. That appointment was none other than Abdel Hakim Belhaj, an Al-Qaeda ally and ‘brother’. Here is a copy of that letter (translation beneath it)…
Gateway Pundit: Classified August Cable Signed By Ambassador Stevens Warned Benghazi Consulate Couldn’t Withstand ‘Coordinated Attack’:
A classified cable on August 15 warned the Obama Administration that the Benghazi consulate could not withstand a “coordinated attack.”
The cable was signed by Ambassador Chris Stevens who was later murdered on 9-11.
Also Via Gateway Pundit”:
FOX News foreign policy analyst Catherine Herridge told Greta Van Susteren Wednesday,
“From what I see the State Department has culpability in the death of the US Ambassador and three Americans.”
Linked by Michelle Malkin, thanks!
Nice Deb 