World News

JERUSALEM – Gen. Carter Ham, the former head of U.S. forces in Africa, has admitted that highly trained Special Forces were stationed just a few hours away from Benghazi on the night of the attack but were not deployed to Libya.

Ham’s explanation for why the military assets stationed abroad were not utilized during the attack raises more questions than it provides answers about his decision-making.

During the Sept. 11, 2012 Benghazi attack, command of the Special Forces reportedly was transferred from the military’s European command to Ham’s AFRICOM, or the United States Africa Command.

The Special Forces unit is known as C-110, or EUCOM CIF. It is a 40-man Special Ops force maintained for rapid response to emergencies such as the Benghazi attack.

Ham told the Aspen Security Forum that he first received word of the Benghazi attack from his command post in Stuttgart, Germany. The post is where EUCOM CIF is normally based. The night the of the Benghazi attack, the unit was on a training mission in Croatia, as first reported by Fox News and now reconfirmed by Ham.

Ham stated the EUCOM CIF “happened to be in Croatia at the time, there on a six-hour notice, which is a pretty normal alert time.”

He further conceded that the force had “all their aircraft with them.”

The distance between Croatia’s capital, Zagreb, and Benghazi is about 925 miles.

Asked why no outside forces were deployed to Benghazi during the attack, Ham responded that after the initial assault on the U.S. special mission he believed the attack was finished.

However, his explanation may raise questions about his stated judgment that night, which turned out to be mortally off base. After the initial attack on the U.S. mission, there was a second round of deadly assaults against the nearby CIA annex, the location to which the victims of the first assaults were evacuated.

Further, even after the initial assault on the U.S. mission, Ambassador Christopher Stevens was still missing, as Ham stated, and so the deployment of a hostage rescue team may have been appropriate.

Asked why no forces were deployed to Benghazi after the initial assault, Ham told the Aspen Institute that “in my mind at that point, we were no longer in a response to an attack. We were in a recovery.”

Ham’s statement appears to contradict his next sentence.

“And frankly, I thought, we were in a potential hostage rescue situation, because the ambassador was unaccounted for,” he said. “So all the worst fears as a U.S. ambassador now held hostage.”

Ham stated that what they knew after the first assault “only was that there was some kind of attack.”

“We knew from the embassy in Tripoli how many people and who they were,” he said.

“Pretty shortly thereafter we knew that the ambassador and Mr. (Sean) Smith were unaccounted for. But we didn’t know much more than that.”

If Ham indeed believed Stevens was being held hostage, why was no force deployed to rescue him?

Further, questions may be asked as to how Ham could believe the attack was over after the initial assault on the U.S. Benghazi mission. Ham admitted earlier in his remarks that he possessed no intelligence indicating any specific terrorist attacks were planned for Benghazi on the night of the 9/11 anniversary. Therefore, how could he have known whether the initial assault was a standalone attack or part of a multipronged attack, as it turned out to be?

Special Forces only hours away

Ham is not the first U.S. official to admit EUCOM-CIF was stationed in Croatia the night of the attack but was not called upon to deploy to Benghazi.

As WND reported, in largely unreported remarks in June, Martin Dempsey, chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, conceded that the highly trained Special Forces were on call.

In comments that may warrant further investigation, Dempsey further stated at a Senate hearing that on the night of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack, command of EUCOM CIF was transferred from the military’s European command to Ham’s AFRICOM, or the United States Africa Command.

Dempsey did not state any reason for the unusual transfer of command nor could he provide a timeline for the transfer the night of the attack.

Also, Dempsey’s comments on the travel time between Croatia and Benghazi were incorrect.

His remarks for the first time confirmed an exclusive Fox News interview aired April 30 in which a special government operator, speaking on condition of anonymity, contradicted claims by the Obama administration and a State Department review that there wasn’t enough time for military forces to deploy the night of the attack.

“I know for a fact that C-110, the EUCOM CIF, was doing a training exercise in … not in the region of North Africa, but in Europe,” the special operator told Fox News’ Adam Housley. “And they had the ability to act and to respond.”

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