"Obviously, the president didn't view this as a priority that required him to stay in touch with his secdef (secretary of defense) or the chairman of his Joint Chiefs of Staff," said Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. "You'd think that an act of terrorism would have been something he'd want to be engaged in."
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On the night that the U.S. consulate was attacked in Libya, the U.S.military had a rapid reaction force of Marines in Spain, two Navy destroyers off the Libyan coast, and U.S. fighter jets parked on the nearby Mediterranean island of Crete.
But Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey on Thursday told the Senate Armed Services Committee that none of it could've stopped the attack. The "rapid reaction force" would've taken at least 12 hours to get to the scene, they said.
Furthermore, when asked who was in charge of making decisions and ordering up assistance, Panetta said no one in particular.
"It's not that simple," Panetta said. Asked again, he said: "We all were."
The testimony of the top Pentagon leaders answered some of the questions surrounding the Sept. 11 attack but not all. One question above all others that was answered is sure to generate controversy.
The engagement of President Obama during the evening of the attack has been a question for months. In the hearing room, Panetta testified that he was up all night monitoring the situation and that he never heard from the president, nor the president from him.
Panetta said he and Dempsey briefed Obama in the White House for 15 to 20 minutes shortly after the outset of the attack on Benghazi and also discussed unrest outside the U.S. embassy in Cairo.
"Do whatever you have to do to protect our people out there," Panetta said he was told by the president.
He and Dempsey also said they did not confer directly with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was in charge of the embassy and its staff and responsible for their safety. They did participate in at least one meeting that included people from the White House and State Department.
"Obviously, the president didn't view this as a priority that required him to stay in touch with his secdef (secretary of defense) or the chairman of his Joint Chiefs of Staff," said Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. "You'd think that an act of terrorism would have been something he'd want to be engaged in."
Dempsey's rationale for why no military assets in Crete, Italy, Spain and elsewhere across the Mediterranean could arrive in Benghazi in time "seems not credible" and "almost ridiculous," Pletka said.
"The truth is these are ex post facto excuses. The reality is they had no intention of scrambling any forces because they weren't taking this seriously enough."
Invaders armed with rifles and rocket propelled grenades attacked the consulate in Benghazi and a safe house nearby that night. Video of the event was being provided in real-time by a drone that had been dispatched to the scene. U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and State Department information management officer Sean Smith died in a fire at the consulate.
