A former US Special Forces commander in Libya said he pleaded more security in the weeks and months, leading up to the consulate attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens.
Lt. Col. Andy Wood, who is set to appear this week before a House Oversight Committee hearing, told CBS News that 34 security personnel had been removed from Libya in the six months before terrorists bombed the US consulate in Benghazi on Sept. 11, killing Ambassador Stevens and three others.
“[It felt] like we were being asked to play the piano with two fingers,” Wood told CBS. “There was concern amongst the entire embassy staff.”
The deadly raid in Benghazi was originally blamed on protesters, angry over a clownish anti-Islamic movie made by a Coptic Christian in California.
But it’s since emerged that attack was more likely carried out by blood-thirsty terrorists, out to mark the 11-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in New York.
“They [embassy staff] asked if we were safe” in the wake of security reductions, Wood said.
“They asked … what was going to happen, and I could only answer that what we were being told is that they’re working on it — they’ll get us more (security personnel), but I never saw that.”
“We felt we needed more, not less,” he told CBS.
Asked what response their repeated pleas got from the State Department in Washington, Wood says they were simply told “to do with less. For what reasons, I don’t know.”
But Wood stopped short of saying if any additional security forces would have saved lives in the deadly Benghazi attack.
“That’s way speculative; I don’t even know the facts of what happened” that night, Wood told ABC News.
Wood also told the network that Stevens also wanted the SST team to stay after their deployment was set to end in August.
The “first choice was for us to stay,” Wood said.
State Department officials said today that Wood’s Security Support Team was deployed in Tripoli this summer to help reopen the US Embassy there — and once they left, other security personnel took their place.
“The SST was enlisted to support the re-opening of Embassy Tripoli, to help ensure we had the security necessary as our diplomatic presence grew,” the State Department said.
“They were based in Tripoli and operated almost exclusively there. When their rotation in Libya ended, Diplomatic Security Special Agents were deployed and maintained a constant level of security capability.
“So their departure had no impact whatsoever on the total number of fully trained American security personnel in Libya generally, or in Benghazi specifically.”