In Libya attack, forces too late
New Africa Command not yet set, units too far for quick help
WASHINGTON — About three hours after the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, came under attack, the Pentagon issued an urgent call for an array of quick-reaction forces, including an elite special-forces team that was on a training mission in Croatia.
The team dropped what it was doing and prepared to move to the Sigonella naval air station in Sicily, a short flight from Benghazi and other hot spots in the region. By the time the unit arrived at the base, however, the surviving Americans at the Benghazi mission had been evacuated to Tripoli, and Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were dead.
The assault, on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, has already exposed shortcomings in the Obama administration’s ability to secure diplomatic missions and act on intelligence warnings. But this previously undisclosed episode, described by several U.S. officials, points to a limitation in the capabilities of the American military command responsible for Africa, including the North African countries swept up in the Arab Spring.
Africa Command, established in 2007 as the Pentagon’s newest four-star regional headquarters, did not have on hand what every other regional combatant command has: its own force with the ability to respond rapidly to emergencies — a Commanders’ In-Extremis Force, or CIF.
To respond to the Benghazi attack, the Africa Command had to borrow the emergency force of the European Command, because its own force is still in training. It also had no AC-130 gunships or armed drones readily available that night.
As officials in the White House and Pentagon scrambled to respond to the torrent of reports pouring out from Libya — with Stevens missing and officials worried that he might have been taken hostage — they also took the extraordinary step of sending the elite Delta Force from its base at Fort Bragg, N.C., to Sicily. Those troops also arrived too late.
“The fact of the matter is these forces were not in place until after the attacks were over,” a Pentagon spokesman, George Little, told reporters on Friday. “We did respond. The secretary ordered forces to move. They simply were not able to arrive in time.”
At the heart of the issue is the Africa Command, which was spun off from the European Command. At the time it was established, the Pentagon thought it would be mostly devoted to training African troops and building military ties with African nations. Because of African sensitivities about an overt U.S. military presence in the region, the command’s headquarters was established near Stuttgart, Germany.
While the other regional commands, including the Pacific Command and the Central Command, responsible for the Middle East and South Asia, have their own specialized quick-reaction forces, the Africa Command has had to borrow the European Command’s force when trouble has struck on the continent. Africa Command has been building its own team from scratch, and its nascent strike force was training in the United States on Sept. 11, a senior military official said.
The Africa Command is led by Gen. Carter Ham, an infantryman who commanded a brigade in Mosul during the Iraq war and took charge of the headquarters last year, just before American, British and French air power helped topple Moammar Gadhafi in Libya.
On the day of the attacks on the mission and a nearby annex in Benghazi, Ham and other regional commanders were in Washington for a series of long-planned meetings. The Pentagon national military command center distributed a report around 4:30 p.m., 50 minutes after the assault started, that there had been violence in Benghazi and the ambassador could not be located.
President Barack Obama was informed about the attack by his national security adviser, Thomas Donilon, at the start of a meeting at the White House with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Libya was not the only worry. There were also protests at the United States’ embassies in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen.
In the meeting, Obama ordered the Pentagon to begin “mobilizing all available military assets to respond to a range of contingencies in Libya and other countries in the region,” said Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for the National Security Council.
Two military officers working at the embassy in Tripoli volunteered to join CIA reinforcements who arrived in Benghazi early the next morning, just before mortar rounds struck the agency’s annex in Benghazi and killed two CIA security contractors.
But other military forces were too far away or could not be mobilized in time. The closest AC-130 gunship, a devastating and accurate weapon against insurgents in urban areas, was in Afghanistan, a senior official said.
Acting on Obama’s order, the staff of the Joint Chiefs presented the options; around 6:30 p.m. oral instructions were given for the units to get ready to deploy. The formal deployment orders were issued after 8:30 p.m. The early reports in Washington noted that Stevens was missing, and a major worry was that a hostage-rescue mission might be needed.
The Pentagon sent the Delta Force to the Sigonella base in Sicily, to put it in position to deploy to Libya. Two Marine platoons, 50-strong units of specially trained Marines, from Rota, Spain, were ordered to get ready to deploy, too.
Another option that was approved was to send the European Command’s quick-reaction force, which consists of about four dozen Special Forces soldiers and other specialists. But it was in the middle of a mission in Croatia. Elements of the team began leaving for Sigonella by 9 p.m., and the unit completed its deployment to Sicily shortly after noon the following day, a Pentagon official said. By then, the 30 or so surviving Americans in Benghazi, and the bodies of their four colleagues, were in Tripoli.
With the region still in turmoil, European Command’s quick-reaction team was sent on to Tunis. One of the Marine platoons was sent to Tripoli to protect the U.S. Embassy there. The Delta Force, having arrived too late to help, flew back home, Pentagon officials said.
Now, the administration has quietly begun a major interdepartmental review of security requirements in North Africa and the Middle East, officials said, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of ongoing State Department and FBI investigations.