Petraeus replacement to testify CIA never requested military assistance in Benghazi

[Valin]

Hot Air:

 

Ed Morrissey

11/15/12

 

So says Eli Lake of The Daily Beast, getting tips from his sources within the intelligence community. Michael Morell, who became acting Director of Central Intelligence following the surprise resignation of David Petraeus, will appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee today to discuss the agency’s response to the attack on the Benghazi consulate. Morell will testify that no one at the agency requested military assistance during the seven hours of the terrorist attack that killed four Americans, including two CIA operatives:

 

(Snip)

 

Morell will testify that the CIA team received two forms of military assistance, apparently on the CIA’s request, although that’s not clear — an unarmed surveillance drone and a medevac team when the CIA squad on the ground was able to extract the remaining Americans to the airport. It’s certainly possible that this is true, and that Griffin got it wrong, even though Griffin claimed multiple sources who were on the ground during the attack.

 

But Morell’s explanation, as related by Lake, doesn’t make a lot of sense. If the consulate and the CIA annex was under heavy and deliberate attack by forces using mortars and RPGs, why wouldn’t they ask for the military assistance that they knew was on standby for just this sort of contingency? Why just ask for an unarmed surveillance drone rather than something that could potentially offer a diversion for the extraction of personnel from the consulate? It’s difficult to imagine that the intelligence unit under fire off an on for seven hours would never have requested military assistance to save the lives of the people in the compound — not impossible, perhaps, but certainly implausible.