From offices at secret locations, American intelligence officers have helped the Arab governments shop for weapons, including a large procurement from Croatia, and have vetted rebel commanders and groups to determine who should receive the weapons as they arrive, according to American officials speaking on the condition of anonymity.
So the CIA was acting as a kind of personal shopping assistant. But
according to an unnamed former official the network itself was the
result of prodding by CIA director David Petraeus who encouraged various
nations to work together toward the goal of arming the Syrian rebels.
The flow of arms increased substantially throughout 2012 and really took
off in the fall. But all of the shipments were still being transported
and paid for by other nations.
That changed in June of this year the Obama administration convinced
members of the intelligence committee to allow the CIA to begin
contributing weapons directly to the existing arms pipeline. The
decision was reported in the Guardian with Rep. Mike Rogers expressing doubt
whether Obama's policy would work. Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff was also
concerned saying "It's too late to affect the outcome with a small
amount of arms."
The WSJ reported at the time "The Central Intelligence Agency has begun moving weapons to Jordan from a
network of secret warehouses and plans to start arming small groups of
vetted Syrian rebels within a month, expanding U.S. support of moderate
forces battling President Bashar al-Assad, according to diplomats and
U.S. officials briefed on the plans."
To sum up, the CIA encouraged the creation of a multi-national arms
pipeline, helped shop for weapons to fill it, vetted the groups who
would receive those weapons in Syria and, since June of 2013,
contributed U.S. weapons to the mix. With that backdrop in place we can
now return our attention to Libya.
The Failed Libyan Arms Embargo
During the U.S. involvement in overthrowing Libyan dictator
during 2011, the Obama administration became aware that shipments of
weapons were making their way to Qaddafi's troops, allowing them to
resupply themselves and pose a greater threat to civilians. So in
February the US and other allied nations including the UK and France
pushed for a package of international sanctions which became UN Security
Council resolution 1970.
Resolution 1970
condemned the bombing of civilians, imposed travel restrictions on
Qaddafi and his inner circle, froze assets and, importantly, banned any
transfer of arms to or from Libya. In addition, Res. 1970 requires member states, upon discovery of such arms, to destroy them.
A second resolution, number 1973,
was passed a month later in March 2011. Resolution 1973 created a
no-fly zone and reaffirmed that Member States were expected to help
enforce the embargo by inspecting any sea or air vessels believed to be
shipping weapons to or from Libya. If discovered, such weapons were to
be destroyed.
But despite resolution 1970, the NY Times reported in April 2011 that shipments of arms were reaching the Libyan rebels from Qatar.
Another in-depth story published in Dec. 2012 describes how the U.S.
winked at these shipments despite concerns that some weapons were
falling into the hands of extremists. In fact, the nature of our
military strategy in Libya made partnering with Qatar necessary:
the Obama administration wanted to avoid getting immersed in a ground war, which officials feared could lead the United States into another quagmire in the Middle East. As a result, the White House largely relied on Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, two small Persian Gulf states and frequent allies of the United States...
After discussions among members of the National Security Council, the Obama administration backed the arms shipments from both countries, according to two former administration officials briefed on the talks...
“The U.A.E. was asking for clearance to send U.S. weapons,” said one former official. “We told them it’s O.K. to ship other weapons.”
For its part, Qatar supplied weapons made outside the United States, including French- and Russian-designed arms, according to people familiar with the shipments.
But the American support for the arms shipments from Qatar and the emirates could not be completely hidden. NATO air and sea forces around Libya had to be alerted not to interdict the cargo planes and freighters transporting the arms into Libya from Qatar and the emirates, American officials said.
This pattern of winking at violations of the UN arms embargo of
Libya was repeated after Qaddafi's ouster. With the war in Libya at an
end and the one in Syria ramping up, the direction of the arms pipeline
simply
reversed itself. Whereas weapons had been coming into Libya from Qatar,
they
now headed out of Libya back to Qatar and from there on to either Mali
or to Syria by way of Turkey.
A June 21, 2013 NY Times story points out that local militias
were organizing these shipments--including flights this year
from Tripoli and Benghazi. But these shipments out of Libya are said to have been taking place for a
year, i.e. beginning several months before the 9/11 attack in Benghazi:
The Libyan shipments principally appear to be the work of armed groups there, and not of the weak central state, officials said. Mr. Bukatef, the Libyan diplomat, said Libyan militias had been shipping weapons to Syrian rebels for more than a year. “They collect the weapons, and when they have enough they send it,” he said. “The Libyan government is not involved, but it does not really matter.”
To sum up, the U.S. approved and cleared a path for a pipeline of
weapons into Libya during the revolution in 2011. That pipeline would
eventually reverse course to provide the same spare weapons to rebels in
Syria. Both efforts seem to violate the UN resolutions (1970 and 1973)
which the U.S. helped pass in early 2011.
But in late 2011 the Unites States realized its
revolution-on-the-cheap in Libya had a worrisome downside. Thousands of
dangerous anti-aircraft weapons were loose in Libya, attracting
militants who might wish to use them to commit terrorist acts against
civilian air traffic. Something had to be done.
Surface-to-Air Nightmare
After the fall of Qaddafi, the Obama administration gradually became
concerned about the thousands (the figure 20,000 was often used) of
Russian-made surface-to-air missiles loose in the country. In October
2011, ABC News' Brian Ross reported on the "nightmare" these missiles
could represent in they were to fall into the wrong hands.
One of the people eventually sent to Libya to stop the spread of
these surface-to-air missiles was Glen Doherty. In August 2012 Doherty
told ABC News that he was working with the "State Department" to track down the loose missiles:
Doherty said that he traveled throughout Libya chasing reports of the weapons and once they were found, his team would destroy them on the spot by bashing them with hammers or repeatedly running them over with their vehicles. When ABC News spoke to Doherty in late August, he was enjoying a short time off in California before heading back to Libya just days ago.
Of course we now know that Doherty was working for the CIA. Was he
tracking down and destroying lost missiles? The answer is almost
certainly yes. The danger these missiles represent to civilian air
traffic is real. The United States does have resources devoted to
destroying such weapons wherever they can be found. And yet some of
these missiles eventually made their way from Libya to Syria.
In August 2012, NBC reported a possible game-changer in the Syrian
revolution. A small cache of Russian surface-to-air missiles had made
their way to rebels. NBC's report identifies the weapons as precisely
the type of Russian-made missiles which had gone missing in Libya. The
fact that, according to NBC, they turned up in Turkey suggests they
might have been part of the Libya-to-Qatar-to-Turkey arms pipeline which
the CIA had been involved with since January 2012.
A month later, just three days after the 9/11 attack in Benghazi, the Times of London reported
that a Libyan ship carrying 400 tons of weapons including "SAM-7
surface-to-air anti-aircraft missiles" docked in Turkey. This was the
largest known shipment of weapons to Syria at the time. The ship's
captain, Omar Mousaeeb, was from Benghazi.
As CNN reported
in August, there were 21 people, presumably CIA, at the Annex in
Benghazi the night of the attack. It is possible that they missed the
surface-to-air missiles being delivered to Syrian rebels. And it is
possible that when the shipment arrived in Turkey the CIA agents working
there again missed them (as they had the smaller shipment a month
earlier).
An alternative explanation is that the CIA was, as the Times has
reported, shopping for weapons to fill the pipeline. With the Russians
continuing to sell attack helicopters to the Assad regime, surface-to-air missiles would represent a much needed game-changer on the ground.
When asked by CNN the State Department maintained
its personnel were there to help the new Libyan government destroy
dangerous weapons. However State pointedly refused to speak for "other
agencies." In other words, take it up with the CIA. But the CIA did not
respond to inquiries.
Phony Scandal?
CNN also reported that agents who survived the Benghazi attack were being
"subjected to frequent, even monthly polygraph examinations." A source
with knowledge of the situation told CNN "You have no idea the amount of
pressure being brought to bear on anyone with knowledge of this
operation."
Rep. Frank Wolf claimed
that sources had told him Benghazi survivors were being pressured to
sign additional non-disclosure agreements to enforce their silence. Rep.
Trey Gowdy told Greta van Susteren that the some survivors
were being given aliases to prevent the media from contacting them. Why
clamp down so hard on something the administration has dubbed a phony
scandal?
Under UN resolution 1970 (and 1973), shipping weapons in or
out of Libya was prohibited. Indeed, after
the June NY Times report about weapons shipments from Libya to Qatar, the Russian
Foreign Minister
went to the UN Security Council and asked for a full investigation saying "If this information is correct, it means a severe violation of international embargo imposed on Libya."
While many Americans are just learning about the President's desire
for a military strike against Syria the CIA has been involved in covert
arms shipments there since early 2012 (first in an advisory capacity and
more recently as a direct provider of arms). To the degree any of these
arms have come from Libya, as we know for certain some have, our
participation in these shipments tacit or otherwise could constitute a
violation of the UN embargo.
None of this indicates the 9/11 attack in Benghazi a year ago was
connected to what the CIA was doing there. However it may help explain
why the US stayed in the city when so many other nations decided to flee
the escalating threat of terrorism. Had we been there as diplomats
perhaps we would have left as well. But if the real goal was to clean up
a mess we helped create and also to monitor and stock a pipeline of
arms heading to Syrian rebels, Benghazi was the place to be.
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