WASHINGTON — The State Department removed a key security detail from Libya before the attack on the Benghazi consulate that killed a US ambassador — who had requested the security team be left in place, the team’s leader said yesterday.
Lt. Col. Andy Wood will be the key witness in tomorrow’s hearing by a House Oversight Committee that is investigating security around the consulate before the terrorist attack on Sept. 11. The hearing comes as President Obama comes under fire for his foreign policy by Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
Embassy staffers approached Wood with their security worries and he expressed his concerns about the reduction to the State Department, he told CBS News. Wood said he felt “like we’re being asked to play the piano with two fingers.”
“We tried to illustrate . . . to show them how dangerous and how volatile and just unpredictable that whole environment was over there. So to decrease security in the face of that really is . . . It’s just unbelievable,” Wood said.
Ambassador Christopher Stevens, who was killed along with three other Americans, requested to the department that Wood’s forces remain in Libya, Wood told ABC News.
The State Department issued a statement yesterday saying that the team was leaving as part of a planned rotation and that diplomatic agents replaced them.
“Their departure had no impact whatsoever on the total number of fully trained American security personnel in Libya generally, or in Benghazi specifically,” the department said.
Members of the team and other State Department personnel would have been in Benghazi with Stevens if they had remained in the country, Wood said, although he added that he didn’t know how many or if they would have made a difference.