Report: Benghazi Attackers Communicated via State Dept. Cell Phones During Attack

The Islamist terrorists that were responsible for attacking the American Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and killing four including Ambassador Chris Stevens were overheard by multiple US spy agencies communicating by means of State Department cell phones they seized during the attack, according to a Fox News report.

The report, put together by Fox’s Bret Baier and James Rosen, concludes that the newly uncovered information shows the Obama administration knew the events unfolding in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 were nothing short of a terrorist attack the very day they unfolded. The report adds to the stack of evidence that the attacks were not a spontaneous demonstration caused by a poorly made YouTube video, as the Obama administration had claimed for weeks.

In an interview with Fox, retired Air Force Major Eric Stahl, who piloted the aircraft that took the attack’s survivors and victims’ corpses from Benghazi, said CIA personnel were “confused” by the administration’s strategy to blame the YouTube video. He said they knew very well, the same day, that the Islamist assault was a planned attack. Stahl said, “They knew during the attack… who was doing the attacking.” He continued, “Right after they left the consulate in Benghazi and went to the [CIA] safehouse, they were getting reports that cell phones, consulate cell phones, were being used to make calls to the attackers’ higher ups.”

Another source confirmed Major Stahl’s account, requesting anonymity because the nature of the conversation required disclosing classified information. The second source also confirmed that the American intelligence agencies were aware of the Islamists’ cell phone communications on the same day of the raid on the Consulate.

Stahl had another starting revelation: the first individual to question the survivors after the attack was not an FBI agent, but instead the senior State Department diplomat on the ground. “There were taken away from the airplane. The U.S. ambassador to Germany [Phillip D. Murphy] met us when we landed, and he took them away because he wanted to debrief them that night,” said Stahl.

Stahl continued, saying that he believed he could have established a crew to intervene in Benghazi during the attack. He noted that his task force in Germany was specifically designed for such a mission: “We were on a 45-day deployment to Ramstein air base. And we were there basically to pick up priority missions, last-minute missions that needed to be accomplished.”

He continued, “A hurried-up timeline probably would take us an hour-and-a-half to get off the ground and three hours and fifteen minutes to get down there. So we could’ve gone down there and gotten them easily,” said Stahl.