Two years after the attack on the U.S. special mission in Benghazi, Libya, numerous questions remain unanswered. Why didn’t the U.S. send marines to rescue Ambassador Christopher Stevens? Why was an Al Qaeda-linked group guarding the mission? Why did the government blame an obscure anti-Muslim YouTube video for the attack when it almost certainly knew the video had nothing to do with it?
These questions are the subject of the recently published book The REAL Benghazi Story: What the White House and Hillary Don’t Want You to Know. WorldNetDaily Jerusalem bureau chief, radio talk show host, and Jewish Press columnist Aaron Klein authored the work, but his 31-year-old brother, Joshua Klein, was its chief researcher.
Joshua – who is also editor-in-chief of KleinOnline.com and news video editor for WorldNetDaily – recently spoke with The Jewish Press.
The Jewish Press: How is it that two years after the attack in Benghazi, we still don’t know the whole story of what happened that day?
Klein: Because the scandal really is that huge.
What is the government trying to hide?
From day one, they have been covering up the fact that this was an attack by a terrorist organization. The attack took place about a month before the U.S. presidential election, and Obama at the time was talking about Al Qaeda being on the run, so he didn’t want this information getting out.
Another thing they have been covering up is the nature of the building that was attacked. To this day people refer to it as a consulate or an embassy, but it wasn’t.
What was it?
The government refers to it as a “special mission.” In fact, it was so “special” that it was even hidden to higher ups in the government. General Carter Ham, who was the head of AFRICOM and responsible for coordinating the U.S. response in the region, wasn’t even aware there was a CIA annex located a mile away. That’s how secretive this location was.
And the mission was actually being guarded by terrorists. Literally. The February 17th Martyrs Brigade was hired by the State Department to provide internal security for this facility and they were directly connected with Ansar al-Sharia – the group that ultimately took responsibility for the attack.
Why would the U.S. government hire terrorists to provide security at its special mission in Benghazi?
We have to go back in time before Christopher Stevens became the ambassador to Libya. During the uprising against Khaddafi, Stevens was sent to Libya to arm the militia trying to overthrow Khaddafi even though these people openly admitted they had fought the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan. This was actually when the special mission compound was set up.
About a year or so later – after Khaddafi was overthrown – Stevens came back to Libya as the official U.S. ambassador and ended up in the same compound. It seems there was a two-pronged operation going on there. First, the U.S. was trying to buy back weapons they had flooded into Libya to help overthrow Khaddafi. That would explain why U.S. hired terrorists to provide security for the building. They were on the payroll to help collect weapons from different militias.
The second thing going on in this U.S. special mission had to do with the uprising in Syria. The U.S. was trying to essentially copy the same exact template that had worked in Libya to overthrow Khaddafi. They wanted to arm militias/terrorists to overthrow Bashar al-Assad.
Why would the U.S. want terrorists who hate America to replace Assad?
It was a terrible idea in retrospect. But you have to remember that the Arab Spring was being romanticized at the time. The Muslim Brotherhood was coming to power in many difference countries, so it seems the U.S. [envisioned something similar for] Libya and Syria. It may have been part of a larger policy to isolate Iran.