According to Sean Smith, one of the men killed during the 9-11-2012 attack with Ambassador Stevens a man wearing a police uniform was seen photographing the Annex from a building across the street prior to the attack in Benghazi, Libya. Pictured here a Libyan police officer in uniform near Benghazi talks on a two way radio.
According to Fred Burton and Samuel M. Katz, authors of the book “Under Fire – The untold story of the attack in Benghazi” security personnel noticed sophisticated surveillance being conducted prior to the September 11, 2012 attack.
A possible indicator of pre-planning.
“Just as dawn broke Sean Smith reportedly noticed someone in a police uniform photographing the special mission compound from an observation perch in the building across the street. The security staff was concerned that the compound was being observed as part of a pre-operational surveillance sortie. This sort of surveillance, classic terrorist tradecraft, was usually conducted before the launch of an attack” pg 87.
“There were no counter-surveillance agents on the perimeter of the facility due to the limited resources and a lack of MSD assets on the ground, this was a critical handicap in observing those who might be watching the compound” pg 87.
This begs the question if someone inside the Libyan police department were in on the pre planning of the attack against the Annex compound.
As far as I know the CIA, FBI and State Department have never really investigated this angle of the investigation.
Repeated attempts to get officials at the State Department and CIA to comment on this aspect of the case or admit that the attack was pre planned and well coordinated have been unsuccessful.
According to an ABC news report, dated October 2012 quoting “unnamed intelligence officials” that there was no pre planning involved in the attack:
“Right now, there isn’t any intelligence that the attackers pre-planned their assault days or weeks in advance,” said a U.S. intelligence official. ”The bulk of available information supports the early assessment that the attackers launched their assault opportunistically after they learned about the violence at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo” (source: Intelligence shows no planning fro Benghazi Consulate attack http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/10/intelligence-shows-no-planning-for-benghazi-consulate-attack/).
Either officials were unaware of the details involved in the attack or intelligence analysts purposefully lied or skewed the assessment in favor of what officials already mistakenly believe was a protest of some kind that got out of control resulting from a youtube movie deemed offensive to Muslims that depicted the prophet Muhammad as a vicious killer and pedophile?
See book “Under Fire” on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Under-Fire-Untold-Attack-Benghazi/dp/1250041104