A new email made public Tuesday indicates the Pentagon had military forces at the ready when the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi was under siege, a claim the State Department has repeatedly disputed. Jeremy Bash, then the Defense Department's chief of staff, wrote in an email to top aides to Hillary Clinton the night of Sept. 11, 2012 that Gen. Martin Dempsey and the Joint Chiefs of Staff had "identified the forces that could move to Benghazi."
"They are spinning as we speak," Bash wrote within hours of the start of the attack.While parts of the email were redacted, the message indicates the Pentagon was waiting for approval from the State Department to send the forces in. That help never arrived for the Americans under siege at the Benghazi compound.
A spokesman for the House Select Committee on Benghazi said investigators had received the unredacted version of the email, which was obtained by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act and made public Tuesday, last year but had declined to make it public.
"The Select Committee has obtained and reviewed tens of thousands of documents in the course of its thorough, fact-centered investigation into the Benghazi terrorist attacks, and this information will be detailed in the final report the Committee hopes to release within the next few months," said Matt Wolking, committee spokesman. "While the Committee does not rush to release or comment on every document it uncovers, I can confirm that we obtained the unredacted version of this email last year, in addition to Jake Sullivan's response.
"Wolking was referring to Clinton's director of policy planning, a key aide during her time as secretary of state. He said Sullivan's response to Bash "helped inform the Committee's interview of Sullivan in September, and will help inform the Committee's upcoming interviews with Thomas Nides and others." Nides was another top Clinton aide.
The newly disclosed email chain casts doubt on previous testimony from high-level officials, several of whom suggested there was never any kind of military unit that could have been in a position to mount a rescue mission during the hours-long attack on Benghazi.
