Report Implicates Iran in 2011 Attacks on US Consulate in Benghazi

Iran

August 25th, 6:54am

Washington - Hiba al-Qudsi

A protester reacts as the US Consulate in Benghazi is seen in flames during a protest by an armed group said to have been protesting a film being produced in the US September 11, 2012. (Reuters)

US intelligence agencies are sitting on a treasure trove of documents that detail Iran’s direct, material involvement in the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that cost the lives of four Americans. But until now, deep state bureaucrats have buried them under layers of classification, often without reason, reported the New York Post. From CIA officers, military contractors, and sources within US Special Forces, the writer of the report, Kenneth R. Timmerman, learned of the existence of at least 50 briefing documents that warned of Iranian intelligence operations in Benghazi. Some specifically predicted an Iranian attack on US diplomats and US facilities. Those documents have remained inaccessible, including to the Select Committee on Benghazi chaired by former US Representative Trey Gowdy. The CIA, the NSA, and Joint Special Forces Operations Command operatives in Benghazi and in Tripoli were actively monitoring Iranian operations in Benghazi in the months leading up to the attacks. Indeed, according to a private military contractor who contacted Timmerman from Benghazi in February 2011, Quds Force operatives were openly walking the streets of Benghazi in the early days of the anti-Gaddafi uprising. At the time, their presence was an open secret. By the summer of 2012, US intelligence and security officers in Benghazi and Tripoli warned their chain of command — including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens — that the Iranians were preparing a terrorist attack on the US compound in Benghazi. These increased Iranian preparations prompted the head of security for Stevens, Green Beret Colonel Andy Wood, to send a cable to his commanding officer in June 2012 that the Iranian-backed militia — Ansar al-Sharia — had received their funding from Iran and were now sending their wives and children to Benghazi. Until now, the government has released just a handful of heavily redacted documents relating to Iran’s Benghazi operations. Throughout the Obama administration, officials with knowledge of the Quds Force presence in Benghazi, including security contractors who defended the CIA Annex in a 13-hour battle with the extremists, were repeatedly threatened with prosecution if they revealed what they knew. Among them was the then-director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Gen. Michael Flynn. But financial documents provided by an Iranian source, and thus not subject to US classification efforts, shed significant new light on the extent of Iranian government involvement in the attacks. The documents, which include a wire transfer for 1.9 million euros from a known Quds Force money-laundering operation in Malaysia, have never before been made public. Only recently did the Iranian source give Timmerman permission to release the documents, which clearly show how Iran used the international financial system to funnel money to its Benghazi operations. The person the Iranians put in charge of recruiting, training and equipping the Ansar al-Sharia was a Lebanese man named Khalil Harb. He was a senior Hezbollah operative, well-known to Western intelligence agencies. Not long after the Benghazi attacks, the State Department issued a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture — not because of his role in Benghazi, but for what seemed like plain vanilla terrorist operations in Lebanon. Early on, Harb set out to identify and recruit Libyan extremists. Timmerman’s Iranian source says that a courier arrived in Benghazi carrying the equivalent of $8 million to $10 million in 500 euro notes around three weeks before the attacks. The money came from Quds Force accounts in Malaysia at the First Islamic Investment Bank, an IRGC front proudly operated by Babak Zanjani, a 41-year-old billionaire who called himself a “financial bassiji” [militiaman]. In interviews with Iranian and Western reporters, Zanjani boasted that he was laundering oil money for the regime so they could slip the noose of international financial sanctions. He claimed to be worth $13.5 billion, and bragged that he was blending Iranian oil on the high seas with oil from Iraq then selling it as non-Iran origin. New York Post New York Times best-selling author Kenneth R. Timmerman has published two books on the Benghazi attacks.

from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/2468036/report-implicates-iran-2011-attacks-us-consulate-benghazi