In the months leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, the Obama administration received intelligence reports that Islamic extremist groups were operating training camps in the mountains near the Libyan city and that some of the fighters were “Al Qaeda-leaning,” according to American and European officials.
The warning about the camps was part of a stream of diplomatic and intelligence reports that indicated that the security situation throughout the country, and particularly in eastern Libya, had deteriorated sharply since the United States reopened its embassy in Tripoli after the fall of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s government in September 2011.
By June, Benghazi had experienced a string of assassinations as well as attacks on the Red Cross and a British envoy’s motorcade. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, who was killed in the September attack, e-mailed his superiors in Washington in August alerting them to “a security vacuum” in the city. A week before Mr. Stevens died, the American Embassy warned that Libyan officials had declared a “state of maximum alert” in Benghazi after a car bombing and thwarted bank robbery.
(Eastern Libya)... was also known as one of the major sources of militants who traveled to Iraq in 2007 to join the main terrorist group there, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
The number of State Department security agents at the compound in Benghazi fluctuated, sometimes dipping to as few as two. Five American security agents were at the compound on Sept. 11 — three stationed there and two traveling with Mr. Stevens.
In addition to the Americans, there were several armed Libyans who served as a quick-reaction force. The Americans were also able to call on the February 17 Martyrs Brigade, a militia supportive of the Libyan government. Yet another small group of Libyan guards stood watch at the gates and perimeter of the compound, but this group was unarmed and equipped with only whistles and batons.
When it came to weapons, the American security team was outgunned. The Americans were equipped with M4 rifles and side arms. But Libya was rife with rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns, mortars and AK-47s.
Much of the security depended on maintaining a low profile.**
On June 6, a bomb was planted near the American Mission’s outer wall, blowing out a 12-foot-wide hole.
On June 11, the lead vehicle of the British ambassador’s convoy was hit by an armor-piercing rocket-propelled grenade, wounding a British medic and driver.
...the Red Cross in the city pulled out after it was attacked a second time. “When that occurred, it was apparent to me that we were the last flag flying in Benghazi; we were the last thing on their target list to remove,” said Lt. Col. Andrew Wood, the head of the military security team in Tripoli.
Ansar al-Shariah, a local militant group some of whose members had ties to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, a local Qaeda affiliate, operated a militant training camp whose location was well known to Benghazi residents.
American intelligence agencies had provided the administration with reports for much of the past year warning that the Libyan government was weakening and had little control over the militias, including Ansar al-Shariah.
By early September, some Libyan officials in Benghazi were echoing the same security warnings as Mr. Stevens was relaying to Washington.
after the initial security teams began rotating out of Libya months later, he said, “there was a complete and total absence of planning.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/30/w...ngs-in-benghazi-attack.html?pagewanted=3&_r=0
