The CIA denied having any role in arming Libyan rebels before the deadly 2012 Benghazi attacks, despite reporting by TheBlaze that the U.S. was covertly involved in providing rebels with weapons during Libya's civil war that ultimately ended up in the hands of Al Qaeda militants.
An unclassified talking points document about the 2012 Benghazi attacks is shown as former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morrell testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, April 2, 2014, before the House Intelligence Committee. (AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Multiple sources, including a former paid informant for the CIA and FBI, told TheBlaze TV's For the Record that Al Qaeda militants benefited from the massive amount of weapons that were being delivered by the United Arab Emirates and Qatar with at least tacit approval of the Obama administration. The season finale of For the Record, "Zero Footprint," airs Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET.
A CIA spokesman denied the allegations that the clandestine agency was aiding the rebels with weapons. For The Record spoke with several sources who said the U.S. created a covert operation that included third-party weapons dealers so not to reveal U.S. involvement. The weapons were financed by the UAE and provided by Qatar, and any shipments going in or out of Libya during that time would be subject to NATO approval, which controlled the air space under the U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973 that established a no-fly zone, sources said.
The spokesman told TheBlaze in an email, “There are so many problems with this story it’s hard to know where to begin."
"First, there was no CIA effort to arm the rebels in Libya," the spokesman said. "Second, anyone with a basic knowledge of recent history knows it was the NATO air campaign that helped change the course of the conflict in Libya. Third, the story implies the U.S. government was to blame for the attacks in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. The only people responsible for the Benghazi attacks were the terrorists who carried them out. Anyone suggesting otherwise is either badly misinformed, willfully ignorant of the facts, or purposely peddling yet another Benghazi conspiracy.”
The former CIA and FBI informant, who said she was a friend of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens’, told TheBlaze that the Obama administration knew that weapons and aid were ending up in the hands of Al Qaeda-affiliated militants in the country before the attacks that left Stevens and three other Americans dead. Going by the pseudonym "Annie" in the episode to protect her identity, she knows this because she said she was tasked with "collecting as much hard information as possible" on the rebels in Libya at the beginning of the uprising.
Annie said she met with Stevens on numerous occasions during her time in Libya and collected information on Al Qaeda militants and extremists giving "names, dates, places, phone numbers, things that could be vetted and verified, for instance, by the CIA or the NSA."
Annie's information, which was corroborated by an arms dealer and numerous other sources, was given to intelligence officials that worked closely with her. She said the rebel groups had been infiltrated by terrorists and warned against aiding them with weapons or support.
She was also closely tied with government and military officials of now-deceased dictator Moammar Gadhafi. She said she provided an intelligence document from Gadhafi's regime to the Obama administration.
"And ultimately what happened on March 24, [2011] that intelligence document was provided by Gadhafi's generals to our government and that information was put into the decision pipeline," she said. "The document that Gadhafi provided, the actual intelligence provided on March 24, was quickly translated and in less than 24 hours put raw on the desk of Obama in the Oval Office. And to my knowledge that's pretty much unheard of action."
She said, however, there was “a disconnect between senior elected officials [and] Obama” as to the reality on the ground in Libya. The rebels were nothing more than terrorists backed by members of the Muslim Brotherhood; the fact that the administration was “very aggressive in promoting support for the rebels was perplexing."
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Programming note: Watch TheBlaze TV’s season finale episode of For the Record, “Zero Footprint,” Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET.
