US tracks killers in raid on Benghazi consulate

WASHINGTON—The United States is laying the groundwork for operations to kill or capture militants implicated in the deadly attack on a diplomatic mission in Libya, senior military and counterterrorism officials said Tuesday, as the weak Libyan government appears unable to arrest or even question fighters involved in the assault.

The top-secret Joint Special Operations Command is compiling so-called target packages of detailed information about the suspects, the officials said. Working with the Pentagon and the CIA, the command is preparing the dossiers as the first step in anticipation of possible orders from President Barack Obama to take action against those determined to have played a role in the attack on a diplomatic mission in the eastern city of Benghazi that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three colleagues three weeks ago.

Potential military options could include drone strikes, Special Operations raids like the one that killed Osama bin Laden and joint missions with Libyan authorities. But administration officials say no decisions have been made on any potential targets.

Spokespersons for the defense department and CIA declined to comment.

The preparations underscore the bind confronting the White House over the Benghazi attack. Obama has vowed to bring the killers to justice, and in the final weeks of the presidential campaign Republicans have hammered the administration over the possible intelligence failures that preceded the attack—including a new accusation that repeated requests for strengthened security in Benghazi had been rejected.

But any American military action on Libyan soil would risk casualties and almost certainly set off a popular backlash at a moment when gratitude for American support in the revolt against Col. Moammar Gadhafi has created a measure of appreciation for the United States in the region.

Reflecting a surge in nation- alism, the Libyan government has opposed any unilateral American military action in Libya against the attackers. “We will not accept anyone entering inside Libya,” Mustafa Abu Shagur, Libya’s new prime minister, told the Al Jazeera television network. “That would infringe on sovereignty and we will refuse.”

At the same time, the Libyan government still depends almost entirely on autonomous local militias to act as the police, complicating any effort to detain the most obvious suspects. Libyan and American officials acknowledge the possibility that some of the perpetrators may have fled the country, perhaps across the porous southern border.

“It is a kind of hypocrisy really,” said Fathi Baja, a liberal former member of the Transitional National Council from Benghazi. Despite promises of swift retribution, he said, the government had not taken any steps to confront or interrogate those most widely believed to bear responsibility.

Both American counterterrorism officials and Benghazi residents are increasingly focused on the local militant group Ansar al-Shariah as the main force behind the attack. Counterterrorism officials in Washington say they now believe that Ansar al-Shariah had a rough attack plan for the American diplomatic mission “on the shelf” and ready for some time just in case, as one official put it. Then, the officials said, reports of the breach of the US Embassy in Cairo, on the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks provided the impetus.

In the hours after the Benghazi attack, the American official said, spy agencies intercepted electronic communications from Ansar al-Shariah fighters bragging to an operative with al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, an Algerian insurgency that has made itself a namesake of the global terrorist group founded by Bin Laden. Another intercept captured cell phone conversations by militants on the grounds of the smoldering American Mission in Benghazi that suggested links to, or sympathies for, the regional Qaida group.

In Benghazi, Ansar al-Shariah’s role in the attack has been an open secret since it began. The group’s leaders had boasted of their ability to flatten the US Mission compound.