Gregory Hicks, the deputy of former U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, claims that a team preparing to relieve the Benghazi, Libya diplomatic mission was told to stand down by the military, according to testimony obtained by CBS News on Monday:
According to excerpts released Monday, Hicks told investigators that SOCAFRICA commander Lt. Col. Gibson and his team were on their way to board a C-130 from Tripoli for Benghazi prior to an attack on a second U.S. compound “when [Col. Gibson] got a phone call from SOCAFRICA which said, ‘you can’t go now, you don’t have the authority to go now.’ And so they missed the flight … They were told not to board the flight, so they missed it.”
Hicks added that had Special Operations Command Africa (SOCAFRICA) ordered aircraft over Benghazi as a show of force from a U.S. base an hour away, it might have saved the lives of four American diplomats, including Stevens. The Obama administration has maintained that military resources would not have made it in time to aid the mission.
“I believe if we had been able to scramble a fighter or aircraft or two over Benghazi as quickly as possible after the attack commenced, I believe there would not have been a mortar attack on the annex in the morning because I believe the Libyans would have split,” Hicks reportedly testified. “They would have been scared to death that we would have gotten a laser on them and killed them.”
Hicks and two other witnesses will testify on the attacks before a House panel on Wednesday. Read more testimony excerpts from CBS here.
Update: As CNN notes, “the C-130 left between 6 and 6:30 a.m., so the four Special Forces troops would not have arrived in time to fend off the 5:15 a.m. attack on the CIA annex in Benghazi.”
(AP Photo)
