For conservatives,
the Benghazi scandal is a Watergate-like presidential cover-up. For liberals, it is a
fabricated Republican witch-hunt
— aimed squarely at Susan Rice, a candidate to succeed Secretary of
State Hilary Clinton. For me, Benghazi is something else: a call to act
on an enduring post-9/11 problem that both political parties ignore.
One
major overlooked cause of the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and
three other Americans is the underfunding of civilian agencies that play
a vital role in our national security. Instead of building up cadres of
skilled diplomatic security guards at the State Department, we have
rented security personnel from the lowest bidder, trying to acquire
capacity and expertise on the cheap. Benghazi showed how vulnerable that
makes us.
I’m not arguing that this use of contractors was the
sole cause of the Benghazi tragedy, but I believe it was a primary one.
Let me explain.
The slapdash security that resulted in the death
of Ambassador Stevens, technician Sean Smith and CIA guards Tyrone Woods
and Glen Doherty started with a seemingly inconsequential decision by
Libya’s new government. After the fall of Muammar Qaddafi, Libya’s
interim government barred armed private security firms – foreign and
domestic – from operating anywhere in the country.
Memories of the
abuses by foreign mercenaries, acting for the brutal Qaddafi regime,
prompted the decision, according to State Department officials.
Once
the Libyans took away the private security guard option, it put
enormous strain on a little-known State Department arm, the Diplomatic
Security Service. This obscure agency has been responsible for
protecting American diplomatic posts around the world since 1916.
Though
embassies have contingents of Marines, consulates and other offices do
not. Moreover, the main mission of Marines is to destroy documents and
protect American government secrets. It is the Diplomatic Security
agents who are charged with safeguarding the lives of American
diplomats.
Today, roughly 900 Diplomatic Security agents guard 275
American embassies and consulates around the globe. That works out to a
whopping four agents per facility.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, the
State Department relied on hundreds of security contractors to guard
American diplomats. At times, they even hired private security guards to
protect foreign leaders.
After President Hamid Karzai of
Afghanistan narrowly survived a 2002 assassination attempt, the State
Department hired security guards from DynCorp, a military contractor, to
guard him. Their aggressiveness in and around the presidential palace,
however, angered Afghan, American and European officials. As soon as
Afghan guards were trained to protect Karzai, DynCorp was let go.
But the State Department’s dependence on contractors for security remained. And Benghazi epitomized this Achilles’ heel.
Unable
to hire contractors, the Diplomatic Security Service rotated small
numbers of agents through Benghazi to provide security, on what
government officials call temporary duty assignments, or “TDY.” Eric
Nordstrom, the Diplomatic Security agent who oversaw security in Libya
until two months before the attack, recently told members of Congress
that when he requested 12 additional agents he was told he was asking
for “the sun the moon and the stars”
After his request was turned down twice, Mr. Nordstrom replied bluntly to his superiors in Washington.
“It’s not the hardships,” he testified he
had said. “It’s not the gunfire. It’s not the threats. It’s dealing and
fighting against the people, programs and personnel who are supposed to
be supporting me. And I added it by saying, ‘For me, the Taliban is on
the inside of the building.’”
Other State Department officials
also say the reliance on contracting created a weakened Diplomatic
Security Service. They say department officials, short on staff and
eager to reduce costs, nickeled-and-dimed DS security requests.
“That
is not a DS-centric issue,” said a State Department official, who spoke
on condition of anonymity. “That is a Department of State issue.”
Democrats
have blamed Republicans for the lack of funding. They point out that
House Republicans rejected $450 million in administration requests for
increased Diplomatic Security spending since 2010. They say Senate
Democrats were able to restore a small part of the funding.
But
these partisan charges and counter-charges ignore a basic truth.
Resource shortages and a reliance on contractors caused bitter divisions
between field officers in Benghazi and State Department managers in
Washington.
State Department officials confirmed complaints from
Lieutenant Colonel Andy Wood, the former head of a U.S. Special Forces
“Site Security Team” in Tripoli, that Charlene Lamb, the Diplomatic
Security Service official who oversees security in Washington, urged
them to reduce the numbers of American security personnel on the ground
even as security worsened across Libya. Mr. Wood and his team left the
country the month before the attack.
In equivocating and evasive
testimony before Congress in October, Ms. Lamb at first said she
received no formal requests for additional security from Libya. She then
claimed, “We had the correct number of assets in Benghazi.”
Ms.
Lamb’s superior, David Kennedy, has defended her. He argued that a
handful of additional Diplomatic Security guards in Benghazi – or the
Special Forces team in Tripoli – would not have made a difference.
To
date, no evidence has emerged that officials higher than Ms. Lamb or
Mr. Kennedy were involved in the decision to reject the requests for
additional security from Libya. Both are career civil servants, not
Obama administration appointees.
Ms. Lamb has declined all interview requests.
There
is a broader issue beyond the political blame game. Benghazi is a
symptom of a brittle, over-stretched and under-funded State Department.
Without being able to hire private contractors, the department provided
too few guards and hoped a nearby CIA base or friendly Libyan militia
would help them.
An excellent recent report in the New York Times found that the U.S. military’s Africa Command was under-resourced as well as unable to help.
The
investigation by the Senate and House intelligence committees into
whether or not the Obama administration misled Americans after the
attack or altered intelligence should continue. But the core issue
before the attack was a lack of resources and skilled management, not
shadowy conspiracies.
