Free Benghazi by Brandon Webb Page B

material in Libya and had no way of knowing what was coming. In the days after the attack, even GRS employees thought that the consulate was hit because Ansar Al-Sharia was upset over some YouTube video.
    The problem is exacerbated by the poor communication between different agencies. There has always been some bad blood between the CIA, the State Department, and the Department of Defense, but this has only gotten worse because of the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden in Abbotabad, Pakistan.
    SEAL Team Six executed the raid and conducted the SSE on the objective; however, they were technically operating under the auspices of the CIA at the time, to skirt around the Title 10/Title 50 distinctions. Because of this, the CIA got the SSE materials off the objective and has been analyzing them. Even though it was SEALs who recovered the information, the CIA has only shared a very small percentage of the intelligence windfall that resulted from the raid with DOD. DOD in turn has decided to stop sharing information with the CIA, creating a frustrating situation for those trying to carry out sophisticated counter-terrorist operations around the globe.
    The issue of operations not being properly deconflicted is likely to escalate as we move into the next phase of the War on Terror. Season 1 of the GWOT is just about over as America begins to withdraw from Afghanistan. Season 2 of the GWOT will be premiering soon, and it will be even more global in nature, with an optempo previously unseen.
    Ambitious bureaucrats like John Brennan need to be reined in or fired if these operations are to be successful, or we will see plenty more Benghazis happen. This occurs on a fairly regular basis in Afghanistan, where JSOC will raid a terrorist compound and kill the enemy, and the conventional units who patrol the area end up paying the price. Long after JSOC takes off in their black helicopters, the conventional forces are getting IED-ed along the roads by angry jihadists who are retaliating against any Americans they can find.
    This is what really happened in Benghazi, and this is why the Obama administration is more than happy to have the media fixated on red herrings like poor security at the consulate or wound up in an intellectual Gordian knot about some YouTube video.
    In 1987, Seymour Hersh wrote an article titled “Targeting Gaddafi,” which detailed how the White House’s National Security Council was exploiting a legal loophole in order to kill the dictator. He wrote in the aftermath of the Iran-Contra scandal that, “Oliver North would emerge in the public’s perception as a unique and extraordinary player inside the National Security Council, a hard-charging risk-taker who was different from his colleagues. It is now apparent that North was but one of many at work in the White House who believed in force, stealth and operations behind the back of the citizenry and the Congress. He was not an aberration, but part of a White House team whose full scope of operations has yet to be unraveled.”
    From Oliver North to John Brennan, this is just the way that the system works regardless of the administration. The dead bodies they leave in their wake—men like Glen, Ty, Sean, and Chris—are, at the end of the day, just collateral damage in a war waged by those with political ambitions.
    Nothing changes after Benghazi. The State Department claims to have disciplined several employees, but in truth they just shuffled personnel around a little. The politically powerful remain in power, and the fun and games continue. As the Global War on Terror enters the next phase in North Africa and elsewhere, we can only hold our breath and wonder which of our friends will be killed in the next debacle.

 
    Appendix I: Bios of the Four American Heroes
    CHRIS STEVENS was born and raised in Northern California. He earned his undergraduate degree at the University of California at Berkeley in 1982, a J.D. from the University of