Benghazi: What Really Happened

White Phosphorus - Fun.

CALLER: I'm a retired lieutenant colonel special operations planner for 15 years -- the personal security detail for the ambassador notified the communications room in Tripoli who then, on the top secret side, sent a message to the White House Situation Room that the ambassador was in peril, okay? 

And they did that by code word and it would have been within minutes of the attack commencing.

The White House Situation Room has a list of what's called Essential Elements of Friendly Information. That's the military's acronym for it, but they would have a similar thing, a critical information list. 

Certain things go right to the person that's standing next to the president, both military and civilian leadership. 

(General Ham got the flash message from Benghazi)

So he would have known within minutes or it's supposed to be informed within minutes because an ambassador is a four-star equivalent, very high, very important person, you know, represents the president and essentially is the president's -- you know, is the surrogate of the president in that country. 

I'm giving you some inside baseball information --

RUSH: Look, I believe you. You're talking about watch desks. That tells me you know what you're talking about.

CALLER: Well, it's even a little more frustrating than that. 

So when that message, that code word goes out, flash traffic, that an ambassador is in peril, okay, the --

RUSH: We have heard this. In our parlance, the way we heard this, Doug, was essentially the panic button was hit.

That's how this was explained to me the first time. 

Somebody who knew what they were talking about referenced this as a panic button essentially was hit, and that once that happens, everybody that receives it knows what's going on. 

There's no doubt about it. 

(General Ham DEFINTELY got the Flash Message from Benghazi)

So that's pretty much true, right?

CALLER: Right. But it's even more detailed than that, Rush. 

What it means is when a code word goes out, there's standard operating procedures. 

(General Ham had his Standing Orders)
(His duty in this situation was clear)

Launch ready aircraft

He didn't.

The geographic combatant commander that's responsible for Libya would have been part of that message traffic, and his CINC's In-Extremis Force, which is, you know, a Special Forces unit --

(Chuck Norris)

CALLER: Well, there's three networks, Rush. The e-mails that have been released are unclassified e-mails. 

The emails don't tell you what was really going on and are not useful.

And you're not allowed to see the Flash Traffic
(which Ham of course realises)
because they contain information liable to compromise operational security elsewhere in the world.

On the top secret side, a flash traffic message from the embassy Tripoli to the White House Situation Room, it's like an IM. I mean, it's immediately responded to. 

(This applies to Washington AND Signonella)

You have to acknowledge receipt of it. Okay? So it's immediate. It gets to the person, the watch officer sitting there, boom, flashes on his screen, he has to acknowledge receipt. 

 And then there's a protocol for who he then sends it to.

He physically turns to someone, the senior guy on watch, "This is a critical element of information. POTUS needs to hear this," and that's what would have happened.

The protocol says someone marched their happy little ass up to the senior guy standing next to POTUS and said, "Sir, ambassador in Libya is in peril."

And if he was missing, that is even a higher precedence. 

 And then the chain would have also gone out automatically to the geographic combatant commander, AFRICOM, and he would have then turned to his special operations commander and said,

"I want the In-Extremis Force, you know, strip ready in five minutes." 

(This did not happen)

 And evidently they were strip ready in Sigonella 

(According to standing orders for AFRICOM, they were supposed to be, but they weren't there.)

and they would have the assets to penetrate the airspace, you know, an MC-130 papa, which is a C-130 specially equipped with electronic countermeasures. 

(This did not happen)

They didn't need permission to enter Libyan airspace, okay?

(They did not try)

I'm giving you a lot of Inside Baseball stuff, and maybe putting myself in a little peril by doing it, but 

the In-Extremis Force, they would have been chomping at the bit to do this.

(They weren't, because they weren't in Silicly on the airstrip, where Standing Orders said they were supposed to be)

...the In-Extremis Force is required to be prepared to do In-Extremis non-combatant evacuation operations for its geographic responsibility, the entire continent of Africa. 

(They certainly are)

 So there's always somebody ready to go, and the aircraft are always prepared to go. 

(There wasn't, and they weren't)

(Which is a breach of Standing Orders)

RUSH: What about the story we've been told that not only was there so much traffic coming in that it was impossible to find the right stuff, which you've now explained, 

but they're also telling us that the president wasn't told for a while, and even now, as recently as today, they're saying that the three most recent e-mails -- it sounds like we're talking about -- flash traffic's not e-mails, right?

CALLER: Flash traffic is digital from station to station.... 

(Again, everyone got this)

(General Carter Ham, Commander of AFRICOM in his command Sicily, got this)

(It's HIS job to scamble his planes)

He didn't.

the bottom line is a flash traffic saying that the ambassador is in peril, or, worse, missing, you know, the protocol is for someone to physically contact with a person in the chain that's supposed to determine what happens next. 

(In Sigonella, at AFRICOM, this did not happen)

This is a breach of Standard Operating Proceedure.

It's also a violation of Standing Orders and a Dereliction of Duty

This is a Court Martial Offence.

RUSH: Let me ask you, the question came up yesterday that I couldn't answer, and I need to ask you, just from what you're saying. This is unreal, but let's assume they can't find POTUS, let's assume he's just not engaged.

This is built into the system as double-redundancy and an aspect of both Macro-management and basic common sense.

This allows  commanders in the field to respond when under fire without having to ask permission from Washington.

It also allows for a workaround to the possibilty that the US performance in the event of World War III  would not be fatally disadvantaged by the nuclear holcaust being launched while POTUS is asleep or on the John.

Who has trigger authority on a response to something like that?

I mean, you say we don't need permission to send a C-130 in there to disrupt.

Who orders it in there, in a situation like this?

Who has the authority to order the C-130s wherever they are, Italy, wherever they are, to take action?

If you can't find the president -- is the president the only guy that can give that order?

CALLER: No, sir. 

Okay?

Basically in the absence of permissions, okay, you have standing orders.

And one of the standing orders to geographic combatant commander is to observe life of American citizens --

RUSH: Exactly. Precisely.

CALLER: And he's a four-star, you know, he's in Germany.

[Actually, General Ham's AFRICOM Command has now been moved to Sigonella Naval Station in Sicily and Ham was in his command centre throughout this incident, start to finish]

AFRICOM headquarters is in Germany, and their op-center would have been monitoring this in real time, 'cause it's part of their geographic responsibility.

And they would have been going through the different permutations of courses of action of who can get there the quickest.

Now, in their geographic area they have Combined Joint Task Force, Horn of Africa, which is in Djibouti. I served there when it was the Joint Special Operations Task Force Crisis Response Element, and we have responsibility for all of CENTCOM and AFRICOM in Africa because at the time there was no AFRICOM. 

And we had the capacity to get from where we were in Djibouti to Benghazi in about three hours, four hours, depending on what we wanted to take. 

Now, if we wanted to go in there with a lot of operators, and at the time we had about a hundred operators, it would have taken us probably five hours.

Now, at the lieutenant colonel level, at the colonel level of the In-Extremis Force of all these different headquarters, State Department, everybody was saying, 

"Let's go! Let's get boots on the ground and kick these people's asses and get our people."

Well, sir, I hate to break it to you, but the people that are-four-stars right now, okay, were young officers, and they saw what happened to the leadership, okay? I'm not saying on the Special Ops side. You know, Special Ops guys --

Yes I do.

They hate Democrats.

October Surprise: Chuck Norris Hates Carter from Paul Coker on Vimeo.

"To what degree should a President have confidence in the professional judgement of his military advisors and to what extent should he question it?

John F Kennedy was widely criticised , especially in military circles for insisting on civilian control over military operations during the Cuban Missiles Crisis down to the most minute detail.

Lyndon Johnson was similarly criticised for asserting presidential authority down to the unit level during operations in Vietnam.

President Carter consciously attempted to avoid these extremes. He spent many hours with military planners and members of the rescue ream, educating himself about the plan in advance. Once the decision was taken to proceed with the mission, he left the details in the hands of his military specialists.

Yet, the post-mortem of the operation by Admiral Holloway and his military colleagues was quite critical of the planning, coordination and training for the operation on apurely military, professsional level.

Two of those criticisms concerned elements of fatal importance... But they could have been overcome"

Assistant National Security Advisor for Iran,
(1975 - 1981)
Professor Capt.. Gary SIck (US Navy, Ret.)

- All Fall Down: America's Fateful Encounter with Iran