McKeon questions military operations in Benghazi attack

The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee on Monday questioned why the Obama administration didn’t send forces into Libya in the midst of the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi last month.

Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) sent a letter to Obama asking what orders the president gave the military during the attack, in which U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed.

McKeon said there appeared to be a “discrepancy” between the president’s directive and the actions taken by the military. 

He referenced Obama’s answer in a Friday interview with local Denver area TV reporter Kyle Clark, where the president said that he gave a clear directive to “make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to.”

“As we are painfully aware, despite the fact that the military had resources in the area, the military did not deploy any assets to secure U.S. personnel in Benghazi during the hours the consulate and the annex were under attack,” McKeon wrote.

“I find it implausible that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Commander of U.S. Africa Command, and the Commander of U.S. European Command would have ignored a direct order from the Commander in Chief,” he said.

McKeon asked the president for a “prompt” response to questions about whether he directed the military to move assets into Libya or the authority to enter Libyan airspace, and to describe recommendations provided to top military commanders.

On Thursday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said that the intelligence was too murky to send U.S. troops into Libya to intervene.

Panetta said the attack was over too quickly for the military to “really know what was happening,” and that there was agreement from top military officials that forces could not be sent into Libya.

“The basic principle is that you don't deploy forces into harm's way without knowing what's going on, without having some real-time information about what's taking place,” Panetta said.

“And as a result of not having that kind of information, the commander who was on the ground in that area, Gen. [Carter] Ham, [Joint Chiefs Chairman] Gen. [Martin] Dempsey and I felt very strongly that we could not put forces at risk in that situation.”

McKeon’s letter is the latest in a wide-ranging effort in Congress to investigate the Libya attack that spans across numerous committees in the House and Senate.

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