Benghazi ARB Report Released; Finds Fault, Calls For More Resources

The Department released the unclassified version of the Benghazi Accountability Review Board report tonight. You can read it here.

Many of the report's recommendations come down to calling on Congress to provide more funding for security personnel and secure facilities. See this key paragraph from the report's introduction:

For many years the State Department has been engaged in a struggle to obtain the resources necessary to carry out its work, with varying degrees of success. This has brought about a deep sense of the importance of husbanding resources to meet the highest priorities, laudable in the extreme in any government department. But it has also had the effect of conditioning a few State Department managers to favor restricting the use of resources as a general orientation. There is no easy way to cut through this Gordian knot, all the more so as budgetary austerity looms large ahead. At the same time, it is imperative for the State Department to be mission-driven, rather than resource-constrained – particularly when being present in increasingly risky areas of the world is integral to U.S. national security. The recommendations in this report attempt to grapple with these issues and err on the side of increased attention to prioritization and to fuller support for people and facilities engaged in working in high risk, high threat areas. The solution requires a more serious and sustained commitment from Congress to support State Department needs, which, in total, constitute a small percentage both of the full national budget and that spent for national security. One overall conclusion in this report is that Congress must do its part to meet this challenge and provide necessary resources to the State Department to address security risks and meet mission imperatives.

The report's harshest criticism of the Department comes in two of its findings, this one:

Systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department (the “Department”) resulted in a Special Mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place.

... and this one:

The Board found that certain senior State Department officials within two bureaus demonstrated a lack of proactive leadership and management ability in their responses to security concerns posed by Special Mission Benghazi, given the deteriorating threat environment and the lack of reliable host government protection. However, the Board did not find reasonable cause to determine that any individual U.S. government employee breached his or her duty.

There is a lot to absorb. More to come tomorrow.

Read More

Benghazi Goes Back On The Front Burner

Now that that little interregnum is over, it's back to Benghazi. There are four separate House and Senate hearings scheduled for this week, the last I saw. Maybe more.

State Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Under Secretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy and Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Eric Boswell will provide classified briefings this week to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, as well as to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and the Republican chairmen and top Democrats of House committees.

A/S Boswell was missed at last month's House Oversight Committee hearing, so it's good he'll be able to make the hearings this week.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee asked Hillary to testify at an open hearing this Thursday. That would make for one extremely watchable hearing. But Hillary sent her regrets, as she will be traveling next week. I would not be surprised if Hillary spends even more time than usual on urgent overseas travel from now until the day she steps down.

Will General Petraeus testify at any of those hearings, even though he has stepped down as CIA Director? A couple Senators have said it is essential that he do so, and Representative King, the chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, has said Petraeus will have to have to testify "one way or the other.” As in, either voluntarily or under subpoena.

I don't know if he'll testify or not, but I do know that there is nothing like a still-developing sex scandal to amp up press coverage and public interest. While I'm on that subject, isn't it remarkable that "Paula Broadwell" sounds like a double entendre name for a Bond girl? Could that be more perfect?

And so, Official Washington is off to the next round of congressional hearings on the Benghazi incident. That should hold us over until the Benghazi Accountability Review Board finishes its report, maybe next month. The Holiday Season looks like it will be jam-packed with political delights.  

Read More

A Couple Thoughts About the Benghazi Hearing

Which Assistant Secretary is missing from this panel?

That hearing was everything you would expect from a Congressional show trial on a hot button topic held three weeks before an election. 

Charlene Lamb certainly looked like the chosen sacrifice, someone the Department offered up to propitiate the angry Election Year Gods. The composition of the witness panel said as much. There are two links in the DS chain of command between Ms. Lamb and Under Secretary Kennedy, but those guys were nowhere to be seen. That's a bad sign.

If Ms. Lamb is forced to step down, it will be a travesty of accountability. The buck should stop at the top, not the middle. As Director of DS International Programs she has operational responsibility, meaning that she manages the resources she is given. But strategic responsibility lies above her level, with those two invisible presences that seemed to me to hover over the panel.

I bet Ms. Lamb will be treated much more fairly by the Accountability Review Board than she was by the Oversight Committee. Adults such as Ambassador Pickering understand that program managers must choose between competing needs. They've been there themselves, and I expect they'll empathize with her.

Despite the ineptness of Ms. Lamb's phrase about having "the right amount" of security in Benghazi, she isn't necessarily wrong. The big question is whether other diplomatic missions had a greater need for her limited resources at that same time, in the context of everything the U.S. government knew when she made that decision.    

The only new information to come out about the attack in Benghazi was released the day before the hearing. The details are astonishing: a company-size military attack with small arms, rockets, and mortars that overwhelmed the five armed Americans and four Libyan militiamen on site; arson to force barricaded people out of the buildings on the compound; DS agents escaping in an armored car under heavy rifle and grenade fire, carrying the wounded and the dead to the temporary safety of the mission's annex. The fighting went on for over six hours without effective host country intervention. Good God.

The Department described the attack as "unprecedented" in force and duration, but that language is too mild. I cannot think of another attack on a U.S. diplomatic facility that was remotely similar, or of any diplomatic facility that would have withstood the same attack under the same circumstances.

There are no feasible security countermeasures that could have been in place in Benghazi that would have prevented that tragedy. If anyone thinks the presence of another DS agent or two, or ten, or the retention of that military security support team, would have had any relevance against indirect fire weapons such as mortars, please tell me how.

That point was made a couple times by RSO Eric Nordstrom, the Committee's most valuable witness, and it is crucial. From his written statement:

"Let me say a word about the evening of September 11th. The ferocity and intensity of the attack was nothing that we had seen in Libya, or that I had seen in my time in the Diplomatic Security Service. Having an extra foot of wall, or an extra-half dozen guards or agents would not have enabled us to respond to that kind of assault."

Whatever requests the Embassy in Tripoli made, and however Washington answered them, would have made little or no difference to how things happened in Benghazi. The fact that our compound was overrun does not by itself mean that the security measures were inadequate. It just isn't that simple. By that logic, Camp Bastion in Afghanistan had even worse security when it was attacked on 14 September, and it had 30,000 military troops compared to Benghazi's dozen or so armed civilians.

That crucial point seemed to get lost in all the Congressional noise over the Administration's inconsistent stories about whether there was or wasn't an angry mob in Benghazi before the assault began.

And speaking of that noise, this guy must be the loudest individual in Washington since Chris Matthews. I can hear his voice even with the video muted, I swear. He needs a media adviser to tell him to dial it down a couple hundred decibels.

Even worse than the noise is his histrionic posturing. He spent one of his five-minute question periods working himself up in a riff about Susan Rice and the White House spokesman that would have embarrassed Elmer Gantry.



Here's hoping the ARB sessions will produce something much more serious than we got from our elected representatives this week.

Read More

Benghazi - Not The Worst Place On The Planet

Representative Jason Chaffetz, Chairman of the Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, Homeland Defense, and Foreign Operations, has been hitting the news shows hard today, giving us a preview of tomorrow's committee hearing on the security failures of Benghazi.

Rep. Chaffetz is evidently a hands-on kind of investigator, since he is just back from a fact-finding trip to Libya. He didn't get to Benghazi during that trip, however, as he related to Andrea Mitchell, he did visit the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli "for most of the day on Saturday." So, expect him to bring a bulging overloaded suitcase full o' facts to tomorrow's hearing.

I won't take issue with his facts. But I do question one thing he's been saying. In several interviews today, such as this one, he used the same line to emphasize how uniquely dangerous the environment in Benghazi was.

“Twice in the six-month lead-up to this attack and death of the four Americans — twice the British ambassador had an assassination attempt and twice our facility in Benghazi was bombed! No other place on the planet had that happen!”

Two attacks? Only two? Rep. Chaffetz should book his next fact-finding trip for Pakistan, and especially the U.S. Consulate in Peshawar, if he wants to see U.S. diplomatic facilities that have experienced multiple attacks.

-- It was on September 3, barely one month ago, that four Consulate employees in Peshawar were very nearly killed by a suicide bomber who drove his bomb-laden vehicle into theirs. How soon we forget.

-- In May of 2011, two other Peshawar employees survived a roadside bombing that targeted their vehicle.

-- In February of 2010, three U.S. military personnel were killed by a suicide bomber at a girls school in in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province outside Peshawar.

-- In April of 2010, the Consulate office compound in Peshawar was attacked by a six-man Taliban team that employed RPGs, small arms, grenades, explosive charges, and three bomb-laden vehicles. That's three bombs in a single attack. And it happened on this planet.

-- In August of 2008, the Consul General in Peshawar survived an ambush on her vehicle.

And there is much more. In fact, almost every Pakistani government or military target in Peshawar worth attacking has been destroyed. For a summary of some recent attacks see this.

I won't even get started on the full history of attacks against the U.S. Consulate in Karachi. Suffice it to say that there were suicide bomber attacks against it in 2002 and 2006, plus a failed bomb attack in 2004.

None of this is to say that Benghazi is not a very dangerous place. However, some context is called for. We have even worse threat environments, and we haven't closed the U.S. missions in those places.

I assume our national authorities have determined that in those places, as in Bengahzi, our missions are serving vital interests that outweigh the danger of  keeping them in operation.

Read More

How Many Fortress Embassies?

Consumer Notice: This post is certified 100% free of Matters of Official Concern that are not referenced from publicly available sources of information.

Let's talk Fortress Embassies. First, how many U.S. Embassies are fortresses?

Judging by most of the news stories about the attack in Benghazi, and all of the congressional questions about presumed waivers of security standards, anyone would get the impression that every place except Benghazi is a big ol' fortress.

However, if you read the 2010 GAO Report on New Embassy Compounds, you will learn otherwise:

State has located nearly one-quarter of overseas staff in NECs [New Embassy Complexes], which posts said are an improvement over older facilities.

What about the other three-quarters of our overseas staff? Evidently, they occupy something other than fortresses, for better or worse. Many fans of architecture and open diplomacy would say it's for the better. Whichever it is, it is a reflection of the unchanging reality that we have more needs than resources.

The best commentary I have seen recently on this subject came in a newsletter from the business intelligence firm Stratfor - Diplomatic Security in Light of Benghazi:

So while it is understandable that the U.S. government would want to base diplomats and intelligence personnel in Benghazi [due to having important national interests there], it encountered a problem: It simply did not have a facility in the city that met security standards. Instead, the personnel had to occupy a temporary facility until a suitable building could be funded and then constructed. While the U.S. State Department has adopted a modular design program that has made this process a little easier, the construction of a new office building is nonetheless an expensive undertaking and something that the department cannot do under its current operating budget without the U.S. Congress allocating funds to pay for the construction project. Anyone who has dealt with the U.S. government should not be surprised, then, that the 11 months since the fall of the Gadhafi regime were not enough for Congress to fund, and the State Department to build, a new secure facility to house the consulate in Benghazi.

-- snip --

But the issue of temporary facilities is not just confined to Tripoli and Benghazi. It comes up frequently when there is a rapid change in a nation, or even in the case of a natural disaster. For example, the U.S. recognition of the new nation of South Sudan in July 2011 necessitated the rapid establishment of an embassy in the country's capital, Juba. If the environment continues to improve in Somalia, it is possible that the United States will increase its presence in Mogadishu, and establishing an embassy in Mogadishu will also pose a problem until a secure facility can be constructed.  ["Diplomatic Security in Light of Benghazi" is republished with permission of Stratfor.]

In a world of limited resources, not even the U.S. government can have everything it wants and it must make choices. Such as, should it build a new embassy in Juba before one in Mogadishu? And if it builds them both, which other two posts won't get new embassies because the money for them was spent on urgent unscheduled needs elsewhere? Someone in authority must decide. No business or government can afford to fully meet all of its needs, much less meet all of them at the same time, so priorities must be set.

The Department's Congressional budget justification for 2013 has this statement about prioritization in the section on "Effective and Efficient Risk-Based Security:"

DS is challenged more now than ever to provide security in environments where threats are increasing and implement the most cost-effective solutions within its current budget constraints. The locations require a more agile approach to provide resources beyond those outlined by the Overseas Security Policy Board (OSPB) standards when necessary, and quickly provide common-sense waiver and exception relief in situations that other OSPB standards cannot reasonably be met due to exigent circumstances in these locales. The Bureau will act on recommendations in the Secretary’s QDDR report to reassess the global standard for risk management. DS will assess its collective resources to formalize and house individual security programs developed to address the ever-changing threat. DS will make a concerted effort to call on the skills of its partner agencies in the design and implementation of joint security efforts. [Worldwide Security Protection, page 64]

That brings me to my next question about Fortress Embassies. How many more of them is the Department planning to build?

The above-linked budget justification for 2013 contains a section on "Embassy Security, Construction, and Maintenance" that addresses the Capital Security Construction program, which is the source of money for Fortresses. That program is the result of a recommendation in the report of the Accountability Review Board that convened after the East Africa embassy bombings in 1998 (here) whose key sentences read:

We must undertake a comprehensive and long-term strategy for protecting American officials overseas, including sustained funding for enhanced security measures, for long-term costs for increased security personnel, and for a capital building program based on an assessment of requirements to meet the new range of global terrorist threats. This must include substantial budgetary appropriations of approximately $1.4 billion per year maintained over an approximate ten-year period ... Additional funds for security must be obtained without diverting funds from our major foreign affairs programs.

It is now more than ten years later, and I see that the Department still has a capital building program based on security needs, so I have to hand it to Congress. They did indeed provide that sustained stream of new embassy construction money, as recommended.

According to the figures for "Embassy Security, Construction, and Maintenance" the Department has built 88 new overseas diplomatic facilities since 2001. From that, we may assume that the usual pace of construction has been around nine projects a year. The Department has 260-some embassies and consulates, so it will be quite some time before it gets around to them all at the present pace.

Moreover, the pace of new embassy construction seems to be slowing. Again according to the 2013 budget justification, the Department anticipated awarding six more contracts for new facilities in Fiscal Year 2012, and only three more in FY-2013.

Let's see ... if an average of nine projects per year have been awarded for the past ten years, but only six were awarded in the current year, and three are projected for next year ... Is it just me, or do you get the sense of a program winding down?

This will be something to watch when the Benghazi ARB makes its report. Will it recommend continuing the Capital Security Construction program as it is, or doubling down on its budget, or even ending it?

One last question about Fortress Embassies. How many more ought there to be?

It would be easy to say that Congress should increase funding beyond the 1.4 billion per year that was recommended in 1998. It would be easy, but overly optimistic.

The new construction recommendation made by the East Africa ARB in 1998 has been carried out. Maybe 88 or so new facilities is enough to meet the emergency needs that existed then, and it is now time to return the construction program to the non-emergency practices under which it operated before 2001.

Maybe it would be more useful to redirect that capital funding to hasty security upgrades for our many non-fortressy overseas facilities, the ones that three-quarters of our overseas staff currently occupy, rather than apply it to a handful of future new construction projects. There is a utilitarian argument that the best course of action is to do the greatest good for the greatest number, and that argument would seem to favor security upgrades over new construction. 

It's just as well that Ambassador Pickering will not be asking for my advice, since I'm not sure how I would respond.

Read More

Serious Questions About Inadequate Security

Camp Bastion - crime scene or military base?

Our Congressmen have been so preoccupied with getting to the bottom of what happened at our Not-a-Consulate in Benghazi on September 11 that they are overlooking an even juicier scandal that happened in Afghanistan three days later.

On September 14, fifteen Taliban insurgents attacked Camp Bastion, killing two U.S. Marines and destroying somewhere around $200 million worth of Harrier jump-jets and refueling facilities. Camp Bastion is the largest coalition military base in Afghanistan, and houses 28,000 troops and contractors inside a 40-mile long perimeter. It adjoins Camp Leatherneck with its Third Marine Aircraft Wing and associated units on another 1,600 acres of land.

According to press reports, interviews with troops who were there, and video released by the Taliban itself, the attackers entered the base perimeter undetected by cutting through chain link fencing. Once inside, they used RPGs and explosive charges to destroy six Harriers and damage two more, and then engaged a British response force in a four-hour long firefight in which more coalition troops were wounded.

How in the world could that Taliban attack have been so successful? The only possible answer is that Camp Bastion must have had inadequate security.

Here's the BBC report on this shocking security failure:



And here's an interview with one of the U.S. Marines at Bastion:



That incident ought to have sent our Congressional oversight committees into a frenzy of fact-finding and witness-calling. They should be demanding answers to such obvious questions as:

-- Was a security assessment conducted before putting Prince Harry in Camp Bastion?

-- Was the force protection posture at Camp Bastion raised before September 11?

-- Did ISAF really consider a chain link fence - a measure that seems more suitable for a junkyard than a military base - adequate for perimeter security?

-- Did the Secretary of Defense grant a waiver of security standards?

-- Is ISAF aware of the long history of terrorist incidents in Helmand Province, Afghanistan?

-- Did ISAF request additional resources for security before the attack? If so, were the requests denied?

-- Why were British troops - who are foreigners - responsible for the security of a facility that houses U.S. troops and critical assets?

-- Does ISAF believe that the vital task of security should be outsourced?

-- Didn't Camp Leatherneck have Marine guards? Aren't all Marine facilities, like all U.S. Embassies, supposed to have Marine guards???

-- Were all the guards at Camp Bastion armed?

-- Were any of the troops at Bastion unarmed or carrying weapons without rounds in the chamber, and if so, on whose authority?

-- Why has the FBI not yet arrived at Camp Bastion to conduct an investigation of this terrorist attack?

-- Has the crime scene at Camp Bastion been preserved? If not, why did ISAF allow it to be contaminated before the arrival of the FBI?

And the most serious question of all: does the Defense Department have adequate resources for security of its overseas facilities, or could it use a few billion dollars more? Just say the word and it's yours. 

Really, I am amazed at how perceptions differ between the two incidents. In Benghazi, 100 or more attackers (according to witnesses interviewed by the news media) swarmed over a few residential villas using small arms, RPGs, and mortars before the host government could bring enough force to intervene. That amounted to a spectacular failure of security, according to various Congressmen who evidently expect diplomatic missions to be protected like military bases.

At Camp Bastion, an actual military base was invaded by fifteen insurgents who inflicted enough damage to have a strategic impact upon our operations there, but that incident seems to have made no political impact whatsoever. The congressional attitude appears to be that things like that happen in war, so no one is to blame.

Fun fact: the replacement cost of the six Harrier AV/8B aircraft destroyed at Camp Bastion is likely to be, according to my best internet source, $23.7 million each or a total of $142 million. That much money would easily cover the cost of a small Fortress Embassy, according to this publicly available source of information.

What are the odds that Congress will drop any extra money in State's overseas facility construction budget next year? Much lower than the odds that it will buy more Harriers, I think. I will be delighted if it turns out I'm wrong.

Read More

Former RSO Tripoli Called To October 10 House Hearing

According to ABC News (here) tonight:

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has written to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to call two witnesses for its October 10 hearings on what went wrong at the diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya.

Per the committee, they are:

· “Regional Security Officer Eric Nordstrom was stationed in Libya from September 2011 to June 2012. The Department of State provided Mr. Nordstrom to the Committee for a briefing, where he confirmed for the Committee the security incidents cited in the letter, and confirmed that the mission in Libya made security requests.

· “Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Programs Charlene Lamb is an official in Washington is involved in reviewing security requests.”

Read More

A Futile Exchange of Letters On Benghazi, But A Bit Of News About The ARB

Well, that was fast. The Department has already responded to Chairman Issa's letter of earlier today with his several questions about security matters in Benghazi.

True, Hillary sent a non-answer answer, but that's all you would expect at this point. Things won't get real until Issa's committee holds hearings with Department witnesses.

One bit of news (to me, anyway) in her letter was the identification of the members of the Accountability Review Board. They include Richard Shinnick, a retired very senior management officer who served as Interim Director of the Office of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO) a few years ago, where he picked up the pieces after General Williams marched off to do whatever it is he's doing now.

Mr. Shinnick (it is a mark of my regard for the man that I always think of him as "Mister" Shinnick) was a New York City firefighter before he became an FSO, and I remember him as a pillar of commonsense and good judgment back in the era of the first big push to increase security of our overseas missions during the late 80s and early 90s. 

I was a callow youth working as a contractor in DS then, and was often sent to handcarry policy memos around to Department big-shots for their clearance. I got a frosty reception from many of them, since they tended to see the emergence of security standards as a zero-sum game in which any Diplomatic Security gain was a loss for their Office or Bureau. But Mr. Shinnick was always polite and reasonable, and he would spend his valuable time discussing whatever the issue at hand was while he read and initialed my bundle of memos. He gave me a candid education in how the Department and its interoffice politics worked, especially as regards DS and OBO. You don't forget that kind of thing.

I already thought Ambassador Pickering was an excellent choice for Chairman. Now, with Mr. Shinnick on board, I think this ARB might actually come to some useful conclusions about how we should proceed with overseas security in the aftermath of the Benghazi incident.

Read More

About That Non-Standard, Un-Fortress, Not-A-Consulate In Benghazi

Consumer Notice: This post is certified 100% free of Matters of Official Concern that are not referenced from publicly available sources of information.

Maybe it's none of my business, but, if I were a State Department spokesman I'd be working up a reply to some recent news reports about presumed waivers of security standards and legal requirements for the mission facilities in Benghazi.

To cite only two examples, both CNN and Fox News are quoting unnamed officials who sound to my bureaucrat ear to be somewhat confused about what those requirements actually are.

CNN tells us that Benghazi had "less than standard security" when it was attacked:

The U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, was operating under a lower security standard than a typical consulate when it was attacked this month, according to State Department officials.

The mission was a rented villa and considered a temporary facility by the agency, which allowed a waiver that permitted fewer guards and security measures than a standard embassy or consulate, according to the officials.

There was talk about constructing a permanent facility, which would require a building that met U.S. security and legal standards, the officials said.

Fox News interviewed an unnamed former Regional Security Officer who gave some specific details about what security measures he believed were unmet:

There had been four attacks or attempted attacks on diplomatic and western targets leading up to the Sept. 11 strike on the U.S. Consulate.

Based on that information, a former regional security officer for diplomatic security told Fox News, the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi had to have been classified or assessed by the State Department as a "critical threat terrorism or civil unrest posting."

Fox News was told that State Department standards for diplomatic missions overseas dictate physical security standards for this classification. There are two sets -- classified and unclassified requirements. The unclassified standards include a 100-foot setback for the buildings from the exterior walls which should be three meters high, in addition to reinforced ballistic doors and windows which can withstand an hour of sustained assault.

Based on the video and photos, none appear present at the consulate.

The former regional security officer, who has worked in the Middle East, told Fox News that the standards are designed to give an ambassador, his or her team and diplomatic security that "golden hour" to burn classified dockets [sic] and call in military help for an emergency evacuation.

Those news reports ought to be answered, especially now that members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have called on the Secretary for more details about the security measures taken or not taken in Benghazi.

The news media is doing a lot of heavy breathing about its unnamed sources, but I haven't seen any of them cite that publicly available source of information known as 12 FAM-300 which definitively spells out the requirements for the Department's overseas physical security program, including when waivers must be obtained.

That's a pity, because if you go through enough of that dry FAM language you could find out that the legal requirements of the Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act might not have applied to Benghazi in the first place:

U.S. diplomatic facilities are defined for purposes of the SECCA [Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act] to include any chancery, consulate, or other office notified to the host government as diplomatic or consular premises in accordance with the Vienna Conventions on Diplomatic and Consular Relations. It also includes offices subject to a publicly available bilateral agreement with the host government that recognizes the official status of the U.S. Government personnel present in the facility. [12 FAM-313, b.]

That makes it quite simple. Were the facilities in Benghazi declared diplomatic or consular premises, or were they not? I don't know. But, if the State spokesman would answer that one question, it would clarify whether or not there was any legal requirement for a waiver of security standards in the first place.

On a related matter, I've seen some good and some bad discussions this past week about what kinds of physical security countermeasures are achievable for leased buildings of typical residential-type construction. I plan to comment on them in a later post, after I can carefully cite the publicly available sources of information - and there are many - whose existence permit me to discuss this stuff in a blog.

Read More

Dear Colonel Qaddafi ... Your Friends, Gordon and Tony

Well, this is embarrassing for someone. The UK Daily Mail has the story, with photos, of a "devastating stash of documents" that was left behind when the British Ambassador's residence in Tripoli was evacuated four months ago.

The revelations come in documents – some marked ‘UK secret: UK/Libya Eyes Only’ – found strewn on the floor of the British Ambassador’s abandoned residence in Tripoli.



Many of the papers demonstrate the warmth of the relationship between Britain and Libya and, in particular, the extraordinarily close links between the Blair Government and the Gaddafi regime.



The notes show how:



• Tony Blair helped Colonel Gaddafi’s playboy son Saif with his ‘dodgy’ PhD thesis while he was Prime Minister.



• British Special Forces were offered to train the Khamis Brigade, Gaddafi’s most vicious military unit.



• MI6 was apparently willing to trace phone numbers for Libyan intelligence.



• Gordon Brown wrote warmly to Gaddafi in 2007 expressing the hope that the dictator would be able to meet Prince Andrew when he visited Tripoli.



• MI6’s budget (£150 million in 2002) was readily disclosed to Libyan officials, along with details of how Britain’s Downing Street emergency committee Cobra operates.



• Britain’s intelligence services forged close links with Gaddafi’s brutal security units.

Those sensitive documents had been lying there in the vacated Ambassador's residence all this time. Evidently, no one tidied them up when the UK reopened its Tripoli embassy a week or so ago, and visiting journalists were allowed to make off with them.

The incriminating documents were found in the wreckage of the British ambassador’s home in Tripoli, a three-storey house vandalised in April by Gaddafi loyalists.



There were several booklets filled with the faces of suspected terrorists, scores of personally signed letters sent from Downing Street and detailed intelligence data on the Gaddafi regime.



Incredibly, all this had lain amid the debris for four months, with no attempt made to secure the papers even in the week after the rebels ousted the dictator from the city.



Mountains of shredded paper showed British diplomats tried to destroy many documents before fleeing.

The U.S. counterparts of those British diplomats can surely empathize, because they've been there before. Like in Tehran, 1979. It's not so easy to ensure you've destroyed everything that needs to be destroyed when you're under attack and have only a skeleton staff to bag n' drag all those files to the shredder. And then you never know when the paper shredder will jam.



Here's a tip for the UK Foreign Ministry, from the bottom of my governmental heart. Next time, spend the money to get really fast, durable, crosscut paper shredders. Here's a list. When you need to evacuate in a hurry, accept no substitutes.

Read More

U.S. Embassy Tripoli, The Sequel

ABC News knows a guy who knows a guy who told them that we are beginning to re-establish a diplomatic presence in Tripoli:

US officials tell ABC News the United States plans to begin re-establishing its diplomatic presence in Tripoli over the coming weeks now that rebel forces have taken control of much of the Libyan capital.



The first step comes this weekend when the State Department will send a small team of technical staff to Tripoli to assess the security situation on the ground and to assess the condition of the US embassy, which sustained significant damage since being shuttered in February.



Depending on the team’s findings, American diplomats could return to Tripoli as early as next week, officials said, though they suggested that perhaps that timeline was too optimistic given security concerns and what is believed to be extensive damage to the embassy compound. The United States is under diplomatic pressure to show support for the rebel leadership by re-establishing its embassy in Tripoli, especially since several European countries already have, or are preparing to do so.



[TSB note: Those countries include France and Britain.]



It’s unclear whether the Obama administration would send its ambassador to Libya, Gene Cretz, with the first group to re-open the embassy, though the State Department has said Cretz will eventually return to Tripoli. One official suggested that Chris Stevens, who has been the U.S. liaison to the Transitional National Council in Benghazi for the past several months, could go first with a small team of diplomats.



The State Department is also weighing whether to send Jeffrey Feltman, it’s top diplomat for the region, to Tripoli. He would be the highest-ranking American official to visit the capital since the uprising began earlier this year. Officials considered sending him there on Friday, after a big international conference on Libya in Paris, but decided to postpone the visit, in part for security reasons.



A video posted on YouTube in early June, which officials say appears to have been shot inside the American embassy, shows evidence of significant damage and looting.



ABC News’ Jeffrey Kofman in Tripoli tried to visit the embassy Thursday, but was turned away by rebels who were guarding the compound. He saw evidence of damage, including windows blackened by fire. Kofman also obtained exclusive cell phone footage shot from a nearby rooftop on May 1 showing huge plumes of black smoke rising from the embassy after it was ransacked and looted. Neighbors told him Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s soldiers were the ones who stormed the embassy grounds, not a spontaneous mob like the regime claimed at the time.



According to the Washington Post [here], which also interviewed Libyans who live near the embassy, it appears the regime encouraged busloads of people to storm the empty embassy on May 1 after reports that one of Gadhafi’s sons had been killed in a NATO strike. Witnesses told the newspaper they saw massive looting and that parts of the building were eventually set on fire.



The Obama administration pulled all of its diplomats out of Tripoli in late February just hours before the Gadhafi regime was hit with strong sanctions that froze billions of dollars of the longtime dictator’s assets.



Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in Paris for the Friends of Libya conference, where she announced that the U.S. has already released about $700 million of Gadhafi’s frozen assets for the rebels to pay fuel bills, operational costs, and salaries. That is part of roughly $1.5 billion the UN authorized the US to release last week to pay for fuel, UN humanitarian relief efforts, and other emergency needs.



The U.S. government hopes to hear from the rebel leadership about their plans for a post-Gadhafi Libya and to see what their needs are. The Obama administration has expressed its hope the United Nations will play a large role in the rebuilding effort.

Our vacated embassy compound was described by the former DCM as having "not the best security." And that was before it was looted and burned. Let's hope we don't stay there any longer than it takes to find a more secure place for our diplomats to live and work.

Read More

Libya: "What If It Turned Out Good?"

I second The War Nerd in his summing up of the Libyan revolt:

Well, that was a quick takedown. One of the strange things about Libya was the pacing. It needed a good editor, because it started fast, then bogged down, and then just when everybody’d given up and gone to get some caramel corn, the credits started rolling.



--snip --



So I’m gonna say here: Just maybe, the whole thing ended pretty well. Not that expensive, money or lives; gotta be better for the Libyans if anybody actually cares about them; can’t see any risk for the big picture—only 6 million Libyans to start with, for God’s sake, and I don’t see the Berber going on a global jihad any time soon. Jeez, what a thought: What if it turned out good?

Read More

Turning Full Circle

The rebel leader has just issued an inspiring Communique Number One over Libyan radio:

"People of Libya! In response to your own will, fulfilling your most heartfelt wishes, answering your incessant demands for change and regeneration and your longing to strive towards these ends; listening to your incitement to rebel, your armed forces have undertaken the overthrow of the reactionary and corrupt regime, the stench of which has sickened and horrified us all." -- 1 September 1969.

H/T to Opinio Juris, where you can find the full text of Qaddafi's first communique.



Years from now, someone will probably be ransacking National Transitional Council Chairman Mustafa Abdul Jalil's compound and taking his gold-plated AKs as souvenirs.

Read More

Qaddafi's Misty Watercolor Memories Of The Way They Were

I knew that Qaddafi was hopelessly smitten with ex-SecState Condoleezza Rice. See this post from 2009. He gave her presents, and gushed to Al Jazeera about his infatuation with her:

"I support my darling black African woman," he said. "I admire and am very proud of the way she leans back and gives orders to the Arab leaders ... Leezza, Leezza, Leezza ... I love her very much. I admire her, and I'm proud of her, because she's a black woman of African origin."

Okay, we all loved Leezza. But that wasn't going to happen for him, so you would think that Qaddafi would forget her and move on. But, no.



Now that rebels have sacked Qaddafi's home and pawed through his photo albums, it turns out the poor fool has been carrying a torch for his Leezza, Leezza, Leezza all this time. Talk about misguided affection.



The thought of a lovestruck dictator mooning over photos of an old would-be girlfriend is simply embarassing.



As the Godfather would advise Qaddafi, "you can act like a man! (Slap!) Whatsa matter with you?"

Read More

Qaddafi's #1 Son Drops By Rixos Hotel, Talks To CNN

Saif Qaddafi was looking pretty good for someone who was reported by the Chairman of the Transitional National Council to have been captured by the rebels a day ago.



Posted one hour ago (around 8:30 tonight EDT, 11:30 PM Tripoli time) by a CNN correspondent:

Read More

Libyan TNC: No Islamic Extremists Here

The Chairman of the Transitional National Council, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, held a press conference this morning. Here are some of the highlights, via Al Jazeera Libya Live Blog:

"I can't say that the revolutionaries have complete control over Tripoli. Bab al-Azizyah and the surrounding areas are still outside our control, so we have no knowledge of whether he is there.



"As for cities currently under siege such as Sirte and Sabha, they will rise up from within as the stranglehold that Gaddafi's forces have them under eases."

Jalil repeatedly stated that a strict Islamist regime is not on the rebel's agenda:

"We are on the threshold of a new era ... of a new stage that we will work to establish the principles that this revolution was based on. Which are: freedom, democracy, justice, equality and transparency. Within a moderate Islamic framework.



Jalil has called on the rebels to show that Libya is a country of "religiously moderate" people, and has called upon "everyone to take care and guard properties both public and private."



Jalil has congratulated the rebels on taking Tripoli, and says that Gaddafi tried to "scare" the international community by saying that Islamic extremists were part of the rebels' movement.

How silly of Qaddafi to say that Islamic extremists were part of the rebels' movement!



But, maybe Qaddafi was referring to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an Islamic extremist organization that was named as an affiliate of al-Qaeda by the UN 1267 Committee, and which is part of the Libyan rebel movement.



Last March, the leaders of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group gave an interview about their relations with the Council of which Jalil is Chairman:

“We told [the Libyan National Council] that we are happy to work under you to help you. We are happy to put all our knowledge and experience under your control and we don’t have any separate strategy for our group. We are happy to fight under the [rebel] army’s command and we don’t ask to have a place in the leadership,” says Mansour.



The two men also disclosed that the LIFG had changed its name to Al Harakat al-Islamiya al Libeeya (Libyan Islamic Movement). Some 500-600 of its members have been released from jail in recent years. About 30 remain in Tripoli’s notorious Abu Salim prison. Mansour says there is full agreement within the group regarding its position on the LNC.



The Libyan National Council responded positively to the LIFG’s approach, Mansour says. “They said the first thing they wanted to be sure of is that we are not linked with any other group so we confirmed this point. They also wanted to make sure that there were not any other people coming from outside Libya to help – they said this is a red line. In the end, they said if you try to help our people, to help the army, and co-operate and work together, we will be happy.”

In other words, 'you domestic extremists are okay but the foreign types will cause NATO heartburn, so keep them at arms length, please.' Message understood.



Or, it could be that Qaddafi read the interview in Le Figaro on June 24 in which the head of media relations for the National Transitional Council estimated that about 15 percent of the rebels are what he would call Islamic extremists:

Q: Some in the West are concerned about infiltration of the rebellion by al-Qaida. Is there reason to fear extremism?



A: [T]hey represent only a small portion, no more than 15% of the rebels, and are not, in our view, a threat.

Maybe the head of TNC media relations didn't get the press guidance before he gave that interview. Or else, Chairman Jalil just forgot that there are some Islamic extremists among the rebels, after all.



But then, what's extreme or moderate is all a matter of definition anyway. The TNC's draft constitution establishes in Article 1 that Islam will be the religion of the post-Qaddafi state and Sharia law will be the principal source of legislation, just as it was under Qaddafi's regime. That is as per usual in the constitutions of all Muslim states, e.g., Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and so on, and nothing extreme happens in those places, does it?



Now, once the mopping up of Qaddafi strongholds is done, Libya will move on to it's moderately Islamic future and "freedom, democracy, justice, equality and transparency" will rain down from the sky. In so far as they are not incompatible with Sharia law, of course.

Read More

Has The Qäddaferdämmerung Begun At Last?

Libyan news presenter Hala Masrati had a meltdown on the al-Libiyah television channel early this morning, Sunday August 21.







Source: Al Zajeera Live Blog.

"With this weapon, I either kill or die today, you will not take al-Libiyah channel. You won't take Jamahiriyah channel, Shababiyah channel, Tripoli or all of Libya, and even those without a weapon are willing to be a shield in order to protect their colleagues at this channel. We are willing to become martyrs."

The video is being run by various news outlets this morning, however, they report that it was originally posted by an unidentified social media source, so take that into account.



The news presenter, Hala Masrati, is a well-known Qaddafi loyalist of the over-the-top sort (google her), so I think the video is genuine.

[ Download ]

Read More

Senior State Department Official One: What We've Got Here Is Failure To Communicate

There is a member of the press who needs to get his mind right before he attends another Background Briefing by Senior State Department Officials On Libya Contact Group Meeting.

This troublemaker just didn't know when to stop asking a question of Senior State Department Official One. He kept on pressing SSDO1 about what has changed recently to cause us to recognize the Transitional National Council as the legitimate governing authority of Libya when we had not done so for the past five months, until SSDO1 snapped at him.

One possible answer to the question is that diplomatic recognition allows us to pass megabucks in seized Libyan assets to the TNC. That's also the WaPo's explanation of our motive - "The decision ... paves the way for the rebels to access some of Libya’s frozen U.S. assets, which total more than $30 billion."

But The Captain SSDO1 had no answer to the question. In fact, he or she claimed not to know what the questioner was talking about.

QUESTION: So you think today [meaning, our announcement that we now recognize the TNC] is a big deal?

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: We think it’s --

QUESTION: I mean, in terms of sending this message to Qadhafi --

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: We think it’s important. We think it’s important. We think it’s --

QUESTION: -- and in terms of support for the TNC.

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: Yeah. We think it’s important diplomatically and practically.

QUESTION: So, then can I ask why, for months, whenever we would ask why aren’t you recognizing them, one of the – everyone from Gene and you and, God, even, I think P.J. Crowley when he was still there, well, diplomatic -- yeah, it doesn’t matter, it’s just a kind of a sideshow; you guys aren’t affecting us.

QUESTION: And you said it wouldn’t come until the election, until all Libyans are able to --

QUESTION: So – but that’s not my question. My question is why, if this is such a big deal, I mean, you think it would be the turning point, why didn’t you do it earlier?

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: Well, that --

QUESTION: I mean, why were you saying it wasn’t a big deal before when it so clearly is?

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: I guess I’d have to understand --

QUESTION: You were among people saying, oh, why do you guys keep asking about recognition all the time?

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: Well, it may be that I said why do you keep asking about recognition all the time. But I think what I’ve described as being the tangible and symbolic benefits of recognition are things that have been apparent to all from the get-go. And all I can say is those are – I can lay out for you what we see the benefits as being and explain why we think that, which is what I’ve done here today. And really, I think that’s the only way I can answer that question.

QUESTION: But you just can’t explain why it was that you would refuse – that you weren’t willing to say that this was a big deal beforehand when you hadn’t done it and then all of the sudden you do it --

SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL ONE: I’ll be totally honest with you; I’m not sure what you’re referring to exactly. I’m really not.

Whichever member of the press it was who so annoyed SSDO1 is just lucky that he doesn't have to spend a night in the box. There are so many rules to follow with these background briefings.

If SSDO1 isn't willing to answer an uncomfortable question on background, then he should simply say so. Or not hold a background briefing at all.

Read More

Dismal Report On Libyan Rebel Coalition

That rather devastating report from France on the composition of the Libyan rebel coalition is now available in English on the website of the Centre Français de Recherche sur le Renseignement, one of the two organizations that produced it last month. Read it here.

This is the introduction:

It is hardly necessary to emphasise the nature of the dictatorship imposed, since 1969, by Muammar Gaddafi upon his populace. In the light of such a situation, nothing is more understandable than the wish to have more freedom and democracy.

Nonetheless the study undertaken of the facts leads us to confirm that the Libyan ‘revolution’ is neither democratic, nor spontaneous. It consists of an armed uprising in the Eastern part of the country, driven by revenge and rebellion, which attempts to pass itself off as part of the ‘Arab Spring’ which it in no way derives from. The Libyan insurgency cannot therefore be compared to the popular uprisings of Tunisia and Egypt.

More alarmingly, the TNC (Transitional National Council) is found to be a coalition of disparate elements with divergent interests, whose only common viewpoint is their
opposition to the existing regime.

The true democrats therein are only a minority and must live alongside ex members of Colonel Gaddafi’s government, those who want the return of the monarchy and those who want to implement radical Islam.

Consequently the TNC does not offer any guarantee for the future in spite of the democrats wishes, since the other factions will definitely steer the Council towards their own objectives.

Overall Libya is the only country of the ‘Arab spring’ in which the Islamic risk is increased. The Cyrenaica is an area of the Arab world that has sent the most jihadists to fight the Americans in Iraq.

It seems therefore that the Western powers have demonstrated a shameful adventurism by involving themselves in this crisis, unless it results from a completely cynical Machiavellianism. That which was supposed to be an easy victory has turned into a semi-­failure, that only the media conceal, because of the inconsistency of the rebels. The stalemate of the actions of the insurgents leaves the western nations only two possibilities; an inglorious retreat or an intensified involvement in the conflict, that involves sending in ground forces.

The Western intervention is in the process of creating more problems than it solves. It risks destabilising all North Africa, the Sahara, the near east, and assisting in the emergence of a new type of radical Islam or even terrorism in Cyrenaica.

The coalition may succeed perhaps in removing the Libyan leader. But the West must beware that his replacement may result in a more radical and even less democratic regime.

The original title of the report is Libye: un avenir incertain. Evidently, that translates into English as "a bucket of cold water thrown on humanitarian interventionist romanticism."

Read More

Libyan Rebel Coalition: One Part Democrat, Two Parts Islamicist, One Part Opportunist

National Review Online has a very informative post by John Rosenthal that quotes a French study on the extensive connections between Al-Qaeda and the Libyan Rebellion:

A new report from two French think tanks concludes that jihadists have played a predominant role in the eastern-Libyan rebellion against the rule of Moammar Qaddafi, and that “true democrats” represent only a minority in the rebellion. The report, furthermore, calls into question the justifications given for Western military intervention in Libya, arguing that they are largely based on media exaggerations and “outright disinformation.”

The report identifies four factions among the members of the eastern Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC). Apart from a minority of “true democrats,” the other three factions comprise partisans of a restoration of the monarchy that was overthrown by Qaddafi in 1969, Islamic extremists seeking the establishment of an Islamic state, and former fixtures of the Qaddafi regime who defected to the rebels for opportunistic or other reasons.

There is a clear overlap between the Islamists and the monarchists, inasmuch as the deposed King Idris I was himself the head of the Senussi brotherhood, which the authors describe as “an anti-Western Muslim sect that practices an austere and conservative form of Islam.” The monarchists are thus, more precisely, “monarchists-fundamentalists.”

The most prominent of the defectors, the president of the NTC, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, is likewise described by the authors as a “traditionalist” who is “supported by the Islamists.” The authors point out that Jalil played an important role in the “Bulgarian nurses affair,” so called for five Bulgarian nurses who, along with a Palestinian doctor, were charged with deliberately infecting hundreds of children with AIDS in a hospital in Benghazi. As chair of the Appeals Court in Tripoli, Jalil twice upheld the death penalty for the nurses. In 2007, the nurses and the Palestinian doctor were released by the Libyan government following negotiations in which French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s then wife, Cecilia, played a highly publicized role.

The report describes members of the al-Qaeda-affiliated Libyan Islamic Fighting Group as the “main pillar of the armed insurrection.” “Thus the military coalition under NATO leadership is supporting a rebellion that includes Islamic terrorists,” the authors write. Alluding to the major role played by the Cyrenaica region in supplying recruits for al-Qaeda in Iraq, they add, “No one can deny that the Libyan rebels who are today supported by Washington were only yesterday jihadists killing American GIs in Iraq.”

The information about King Idris, the Senussi Botherhood, and the "monarchist-fundamentalist" faction, was surprising news to me.

The full report is here, but only in French. Interesting that it was French researchers who did this work, given that the French government was the primary actor in starting this NATO intervention, and the first - I believe - to extend diplomatic recognition to the National Transitional Council.

Read More