Part 2 of the interview is below. Scroll down for Part 1
Glenn invited Clare Lopez, a former CIA officer, onto his TV show Monday night to discuss the attack on the U.S. embassy on Benghazi. Lopez has written extensively on the situation in Libya, as well as on Ambassador Stevens's connections to jihadist groups in Libya and Syria.
"What went on in Benghazi had it's roots much further back," Lopez told Glenn.
Lopez believed, much as Glenn does, that Ambassador Stevens was in Lybia for reasons still not known publicly to the American people.
"It was to act as official U.S. government liaison to Al Queda linked jihadist militias. And they would include some of the same people now trying to overthrow Assad in Syria," Lopez said.
She wrote of the events:
During the 2011 Libyan revolt against Muammar Qaddafi, reckless U.S. policy flung American forces and money into the conflict on the side of the rebels, who were known at the time to include Al Qaeda elements. Previously the number two official at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, Christopher Stevens was named as the official U.S. liaison to the Libyan opposition in March, 2011.Stevens was tasked with helping to coordinate U.S. assistance to the rebels, whose top military commander, Abdelhakim Belhadj, was the leader of the Al Qaeda affiliate, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). That means that Stevens was authorized by the U.S. Department of State and the Obama administration to aid and abet individuals and groups that were, at a minimum, allied ideologically with Al Qaeda, the jihadist terrorist organization that attacked the homeland on the first 9/11, the one that’s not supposed to exist anymore after the killing of its leader, Osama bin Laden, on May 2, 2011.
Lopez, who was a CIA officer for twenty years, told Glenn that she had seen agents come under heavy fire in the past, but there were always people and assets who assembled to come to their aid. She found it unusual that with all the surveillance the White House and the administration had on the embassy that more was not done to provide aid.
"I have never seen a situation where a facility was under attack like that and nothing happens."
Lopez added that Stevens knew he was a potential Al Queda target and lacked the security he needed to be in the country. Requests for increased security were denied by the State Department prior to the attacks on September 11th.
She also said it was her opinion that James Clapper, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and General David Petraeus are all aware of what really happened in Libya.
"This has to be brought out. This has to be made known to the public. That this is going on and that our administration was not only working with the bad guys. Was working with Al Queda linked militas and jiihadis to overthrow Assad in Syria but that they let our mission go down. They let our ambassador and others die. In real time, watching it happen, and they didn't do anything about it," Lopez said.
