JERUSALEM – Did the State Department scrub information about a dramatic incident the night of the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attack in which U.S. Embassy staff 400 miles away in Tripoli evacuated their residential compound under possible terror threat?
The threat was taken so seriously that, according to a key embassy staffer, communications equipment was dismantled and hard drives were smashed with an ax.
The scene was first brought to light in congressional testimony last week by Gregory Hicks, the former U.S. deputy chief of mission in Libya, but it remains largely unreported by news media.
The incident also was not mentioned in the State Department probe nor was it previously reported in news accounts of the attack, which the Obama administration first claimed was a result of popular protests about an anti-Muhammad video.
In his testimony, Hicks said that about three hours after the attack began on the U.S. facility in Benghazi, the embassy staff in Tripoli noticed Twitter feeds asserting that the terror group Ansar al-Sharia was responsible. Hicks said there was also a call on the social media platform for an attack on the embassy in Tripoli.
"We had always thought that we were … under threat, that we now have to take care of ourselves, and we began planning to evacuate our facility," he said.
http://www.wnd.com/2013/05/did-state-dept-hide-this-dramatic-evacuation/
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