WASHINGTON — The U.S. military couldn’t send armed drones, gunships and jet fighters to stop the September attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi because the planes were too far from Libya to get there in time, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Thursday.
“Armed UAVs, AC-130 gunships, or fixed-wing fighters with the associated tanking, armaments, targeting and support capabilities were not in the vicinity of Libya and, because of the distance, would have taken at least nine to 12 hours if not more to deploy,” Panetta said in testimony prepared for the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“This was, pure and simple, a problem of distance and time.”
Before the same committee, Panetta also said the Pentagon had supported a planto arm Syrian rebels that was developed last year by David Petraeus, the CIA director at the time, and backed by Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was then secretary of state.
President Barack Obama has expressed concern that arms sent to the rebels might fall into the hands of Islamic radicals.
Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were asked by Sen. John McCain,R-Ariz., if they had supported the recommendation that weapons be provided to the Syrian resistance.
“We did,” Panetta said.
“You did support that?” McCain asked again.
“We did,” Dempsey added.
“That was our position,” Panetta said to Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who has been a leading critic of the Obama administration for failing to do more to help the Syrian rebels who are heavily outgunned by President Bashar Assad’s forces. “I do want to say, senator, that obviously there were a number of factors that were involved here that ultimately led to the president’s decision to make it nonlethal.”
This means the president “overruled the senior leaders of his own national security team, who were in unanimous agreement that America needs to take greater action to change the military balance of power in Syria,” McCain said in a statement after the session.
“I urge the president to heed the advice of his former and current national security leaders and immediately take the necessary steps, along with our friends and allies, that could hasten the end of the conflict in Syria,” McCain said.
A U.S. defense official confirmed that Panetta and Dempsey “supported looking into the idea last year” of directly arming Syrian rebels. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the two Pentagon leaders “understand the difficulties” of supplying weapons to the Syrian opposition and currently back Obama’s policy of giving nonlethal aid.
Asked about disagreement over whether to arm the rebels, State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland said at a briefing Thursday that she won’t comment on “internal policy discussions.” White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said he had no comment.
Administration officials such as Nuland have said the U.S. assistance to the Syrians is limited to humanitarian aid and nonlethal equipment for the rebels, while some other nations may be providing weapons.
U.S. officials have said publicly that sending U.S. weapons risks increasing the bloodshed in Syria, where the United Nations estimates more than 60,000 people have been killed in the two-year uprising.
At Thursday’s hearing, Panetta laid out additional steps that the Pentagon and the State Department are taking after the attack in Benghazi, which killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.
The steps include evaluating potential improvements in security at 19 vulnerable diplomatic compounds and adding more Marine Corps security detachments for embassies.
Panetta, who is preparing to retire, agreed to testify after Republican lawmakers led by Graham threatened to hold up the nomination of former Sen. Chuck Hagel as the next defense secretary unless Panetta went to the Capitol to explain why the military didn’t do more as the Benghazi attack unfolded.
The assault has been blamed on militants, some of whom may have had links to al-Qaida terrorists.
“The United States military is not and should not be a global 911 service capable of arriving on the scene within minutes to every possible contingency around the world,” Panetta said, even as he spoke of improving intelligence and expanding resources to protect diplomatic outposts.
Panetta’s appearance followed congressional testimony on Benghazi last month by Clinton, whose appearance also was demanded by Republicans before they agreed to move forward with the confirmation of her successor, John Kerry.
Within 17 minutes of initial reports of the assault in Benghazi, the Pentagon sent an unarmed surveillance drone to be stationed over the compound, Panetta said in his testimony.
The only team to arrive on the scene was a six-member security unit, including two U.S. military personnel based in Tripoli who arrived in a chartered aircraft, Panetta said.
Within 15 minutes of arriving at a CIA annex, they were under fire and provided emergency medical assistance, Panetta said.
Panetta cited the findings of an independent five-member panel commissioned by the State Department, which found that “there simply was not enough time given the speed of the attacks for armed U.S. military assets to have made a difference.”
Additionally, Dempsey said he’s surprised that Clinton wasn’t alerted to a cable he knew about warning of threats to the U.S. mission before the deadly attack.
He told the committee that the U.S. Africa Command had informed him of a cable from Stevens citing security risks at the Benghazi mission.
“I would call myself surprised that she didn’t” know of the cable, Dempsey said. He said the military didn’t provide more security for the Benghazi consulate before the attack because the State Department never asked for it.
While Clinton has said she took responsibility for security failings in Benghazi, she told Congress last month that she hadn’t seen any diplomatic cables before the attack requesting heightened protection.
The independent review board appointed by Clinton found that the State Department showed “a lack of proactive leadership and management ability,” though it said no government employees violated their duties.
Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire questioned why Dempsey didn’t himself alert Clinton to the cable from Stevens.
Panetta suggested to the Senate panel that the reports of risks in Benghazi were far from unique.
He said that the National Counterterrorism Center had identified more than 200 facilities “that were under a threat of one kind or another.”
McCain, who called Dempsey’s testimony “bizarre,” criticized Pentagon leaders for not anticipating the need for greater resources on the basis of intelligence reports and the warning from Stevens.
“Our posture was not there because we didn’t take into account the threats to our consulate,” McCain said. “We could have had aircraft and other capabilities a short distance away.”
Since the Benghazi attack, the Pentagon has worked with the State Department to assess security at “19 vulnerable diplomatic facilities, including our embassy in Libya,” Panetta said.
The Pentagon will add 35 Marine Security Guard detachments over the next two to three years, in addition to the 152 units already in place, Panetta said. The Defense and State departments are working to identify locations for the new Marine units, he said.
The Pentagon is also working with the State Department on expanding the role of the Marine units, whose primary job has been to protect classified information at embassies, Panetta said.
The U.S. depends on security personnel of host nations to safeguard diplomatic compounds, Panetta said. To prevent such attacks in the future in countries with fragile governments unable to protect U.S. assets and personnel, the Pentagon is studying ways to beef up the capabilities of security forces and stepping up intelligence collection to be alerted to potential crises, he said.
Panetta also warned that the United States is at risk of becoming a second-rate power if automatic budget cuts go into effect.
He said if the reductions are allowed to stand, he would have to throw the country’s national defense strategy “out the window.”
But Panetta also assured lawmakers that the Pentagon would take the steps necessary to deal with possible threats in the Persian Gulf after he approved the Navy’s request to halve its aircraft carrier presence in the area.
Anticipating that the Defense Department will have less money to spend, Panetta said, the Pentagon has already imposed a freeze on hiring and cut back on maintenance at bases and facilities. Those moves are reversible, he said, as long as Congress acts quickly to head off the cuts, known as sequestration, and approves a 2013 military budget.
The potential for the cuts to kick in on March 1 is the result of Congress’ failure to trim the deficit by $1.2 trillion over a decade.
The Pentagon faces a $42.7 billion budget trim in the seven months starting in March and ending in September.
The automatic cuts would be in addition to a $487 billion reduction in defense spending over the next 10 years mandated by the Budget Control Act passed in 2011.
Information for this article was contributed by Gopal Ratnam, Laura Litvan, David Lerman,Terry Atlas and John Walcott of Bloomberg News; by Michael R. Gordon of The New York Times; by Craig Whitlock, Karen DeYoung and Julie Tate of The Washington Post; and by Richard Lardner and Donna Cassata of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/08/2013