The White House, under political
pressure to respond forcefully to the Sept. 11 attack on theU.S. Consulate in
Benghazi, is readying strike forces and drones but first has to find a target.
And if the administration does find a target, officials say it still has
to weigh whether the short-term payoff of exacting retribution on al-Qaida is
worth the risk that such strikes could elevate the group's profile in the
region, alienate governments the U.S. needs to fight the group in the future
and do little to slow the growing terror threat in North Africa.
Details on the administration's position and on its search for a
possible target were provided by three current and one former administration
official, as well as an analyst who was approached by the White House for help.
All four spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to
discuss the high-level debates publicly.
In another effort to bolster Libyan security, the Pentagon and State
Department have been developing a plan to train and equip a special operations
force in Libya, according to a senior defense official.
The efforts show the tension of the White House's need to demonstrate it
is responding forcefully to al-Qaida, balanced against its long-term plans to
develop relationships and trust with local governments and build a permanent
U.S. counterterrorist network in the region.
Vice President Joe Biden pledged in his debate last week with Republican
vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan to find those responsible for the Sept. 11
attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris
Stevens and three others.
"We will find and bring to justice the men who did this," Biden
said in response to a question about whether intelligence failures led to lax
security around Stevens and the consulate. Referring back to the raid that
killedOsama bin Laden last year, Biden said American counterterror policy
should be, "if you do harm to America, we will track you to the gates of
hell if need be."
The White House declined to comment on the debate over how best to
respond to the Benghazi attack.
The attack has become an issue in the U.S. election season, with
Republicans accusing the Obama administration of being slow to label the
assault an act of terrorism and slow to strike back at those responsible.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday night that the security
of State Department operations was her responsibility.
The White House is "aiming for a small pop, a flash in the pan, so
as to be able to say, 'Hey, we're doing something about it,'" said retired
Air Force Lt. Col. Rudy Attalah, the former Africa counterterrorism director
for Defense Department under President George W. Bush.
Attalah noted that in 1998, after the embassy bombing in Nairobi, the
Clinton administration fired cruise missiles to take out a pharmaceutical
factory in Sudan that may have been producing chemical weapons for al-Qaida.
"It was a way to say, 'Look, we did something,'" he said.
On the subject of developing a special operations unit, U.S. officials
received approval from Congress well before the Benghazi attack to reprogram
some funding in the budget that could be used for the commando program in
Libya. But the details are still being discussed with the Libyans and also must
get final approval from Congress, according to the defense official, who spoke
on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter
publicly.
The initial cost is estimated at about $6.2 million.
The defense official said U.S. leaders have recognized the need to train
Libyan commando forces, but details such as the size, mission and composition
of the forces are still being finalized.
A Washington-based analyst with extensive experience in Africa said
administration officials have approached him for help in connecting the dots to
Mali, whose northern half fell to al-Qaida-linked rebels this spring. They
wanted to know if he could suggest potential targets, which he says he was not
able to do.
"The civilian side is looking into doing something and is running
into a lot of pushback from the military side," the analyst said.
"The resistance that is coming from the military side is because the
military has both worked in the region and trained in the region. So they are
more realistic."
Islamists in the region are preparing for a reaction from the U.S.
"If America hits us, I promise you that we will multiply the Sept.
11 attack by 10," said Oumar Ould Hamaha, a spokesman for the Islamists in
northern Mali, while denying that his group or al-Qaida fighters based in Mali
played a role in the Benghazi attack.
Finding the militants who overwhelmed a small security force at the
consulate isn't going to be easy.
The key suspects are members of the Libyan militia group Ansar
al-Shariah. The group has denied responsibility, but eyewitnesses saw Ansar
fighters at the consulate, and U.S. intelligence intercepted phone calls after
the attack from Ansar fighters to leaders of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb,
or AQIM, bragging about it. The affiliate's leaders are known to be mostly in
northern Mali, where they have seized a territory as large as Texas following a
coup in the country's capital. The Maghreb is a region of northwest Africa that
stretches from Libya to Mauritania.
But U.S. investigators have only loosely linked "one or two
names" to the attack, and they lack proof that it was planned ahead of
time or that the local fighters had any help from the larger al-Qaida affiliate,
officials say.
If that proof is found, the White House must decide whether to ask
Libyan security forces to arrest the suspects with an eye to extraditing them
to the U.S. for trial or to simply target the suspects with U.S. covert action.
U.S. officials say covert action is more likely. The FBI couldn't gain
access to the consulate until weeks after the attack, so it is unlikely it will
be able to build a strong criminal case. The U.S. is also leery of trusting the
arrest and questioning of the suspects to the fledgling Libyan security forces
and legal system still building after the overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.
The burden of proof for U.S. covert action is far lower, but action by
the CIA or special operations forces still requires a body of evidence that
shows the suspect either took part in the violence or presents a
"continuing and persistent, imminent threat" to U.S. targets, current
and former officials said.
"If the people who were targeted were themselves directly complicit
in this attack or directly affiliated with a group strongly implicated in the
attack, then you can make an argument of imminence of threat," said Robert
Grenier, former director of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center.
But if the U.S. acts alone to target them in Africa, "it raises all
kinds of sovereignty issues ... and makes people very uncomfortable," said
Grenier, who has criticized the CIA's heavy use of drones in Pakistan without
that government's support.
Even a strike that happens with permission could prove problematic,
especially in Libya or Mali, where al-Qaida supporters are currently based.
Both countries have fragile, interim governments that could lose popular
support if they are seen allowing the U.S. unfettered access to hunt al-Qaida.
The Libyan government is so wary of the U.S. investigation expanding
into unilateral action that it refused requests to arm the drones now being
flown over Libya. Libyan officials have complained publicly that they were
unaware of how large the U.S. intelligence presence was in Benghazi until a
couple of dozen U.S. officials showed up at the airport after the attack,
waiting to be evacuated — roughly twice the number of U.S. staff the Libyans
thought were there. A number of those waiting to be evacuated worked for U.S.
intelligence, according to two American officials.
In Mali, U.S. officials have urged the government to allow special
operations trainers to return, to work with Mali's forces to push al-Qaida out
of that country's northern area. AQIM is among the groups that filled the power
vacuum after a coup by rebellious Malian forces in March.
U.S. special operations forces trainers left Mali just days after the
coup. While such trainers have not been invited to return, the U.S. has
expanded its intelligence effort on Mali, focusing satellite and spy flights
over the contested northern region to track and map the militant groups vying
for control of the territory, officials say.
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