U.S. framing action in Libya
Officials taking first step in plan against militants
WASHINGTON — The United States is laying the groundwork for operations to kill or capture militants suspected in the attack on a diplomatic mission in Libya that led to the death of the U.S. ambassador three weeks ago, senior military and counterterrorism officials said Tuesday, as the weak Libyan government appears unable to arrest or even question fighters directly implicated in the assault.
The U.S. military’s topsecret Joint Special Operations Command is compiling so-called target packages of detailed information about the suspects, the officials said. That would constitute the first step in a process the Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency are taking in anticipation of possible orders from President Barack Obama to carry out action against those determined to have played a role in the attack in the eastern city of Benghazi that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three colleagues.
Potential military options
could include drone strikes, Special Operations raids such as the one that killed al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden and joint missions with Libyan authorities. But administration officials say no decisions have been made on any potential targets.
Defense Department and CIA spokesmen declined to comment.
The preparations underscore the multiple difficulties confronting the White House over the Benghazi attack and Mr. Obama’s vows to bring the killers to justice. Mr. Obama and his advisers, eager to counter Republican criticism over a possible intelligence failure in Benghazi that has emerged as a presidential election campaign issue, have not indicated how the response might be carried out.
A ny U.S. military action on Libyan soil would risk casualties and almost certainly trigger a popular backlash at a moment when gratitude for U.S. support in the revolution that toppled Moammar Gadhafi a year ago had opened a singular beachhead of U.S. affection in the region. At the same time, the Libyan government has presented a further issue by opposing any unilateral U.S. military action in Libya to apprehend the attackers.
“We will not accept anyone entering inside Libya,” Libyan Prime Minister Mustafa Abu Shagur told Al-Jazeera television. “That would infringe on sovereignty, and we will refuse.”
The Libyan government still depends on autonomous local militia to act as its police, complicating any effort to detain the most obvious suspects and leaving open the possibility that, in the three weeks since the attack, they might have fled the country — perhaps across the porous southern border.
Both U.S. counterterrorism officials and Benghazi residents are increasingly focused on the local militant group Ansar alSharia as the main force behind the attack. Counterterrorism officials in Washington say they now believe Ansar al-Sharia had a rough attack plan for the U.S. diplomatic mission “on the shelf” and ready for some time. Then, a U.S. official said, reports of a protest crowd breaching the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, on the 11th anniversary of 9/11, provided the impetus to put the Benghazi attack in motion.
In the hours after the Benghazi attack, the U.S. official said, spy agencies intercepted electronic communications from Ansar al-Sharia fighters bragging to an operative of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, an Algerian insurgency that has made itself a namesake of bin Laden’s global terror group.
U.S. officials say that since the Benghazi attack, special operations planners have sharply increased efforts to track the location and gather information on several Ansar al-Sharia members, as well as other militants with ties to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.
It is unclear precisely how many “target packages” are being prepared. But military and counterterrorism officials said Libyan authorities had helped U.S. intelligence agencies by at least identifying suspected assailants based on witness accounts, video and other photos from the scene.
“They are putting together information on where these individuals live, who their family members and their associates are, and their entire pattern of life,” said one U.S. official briefed on the planning under way.