House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told Breitbart News Thursday she was not “confirming nor denying anything” regarding whether she was briefed in advance by the White House about the existence of a CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya.
She also would not say if she was briefed by the White House on activities the CIA in Benghazi may have been involved in prior the deadly attack on the U.S. consulate and CIA base in the same city Benghazi last year.
“I can’t tell you what I was briefed on,” Pelosi said of the classified briefing at her weekly press conference. When pressed by Breitbart News if she was notified by the White House if a CIA annex existed in Benghazi before the attacks, she answered, “I’m not going to answer that question. I’ve been to Libya. I was to Tripoli. I did not go to Benghazi, but had some idea of what was going on there.”
“So you knew there was a CIA annex was there?” asked Breitbart news.
“I’m not confirming nor denying anything on that score,” she responded.
The White House is required to give top-secret classified briefings to eight members of Congress–the two top leaders in the House and Senate of both parties, as well as the chairs and ranking members of both chambers intelligence committees, who are known as the “Super 8.” These briefings include secret CIA operations and military missions.
CNN and the UK Telegraph reported in August that a complex arms operation was happening in Benghazi prior to and during the attack.
However, over the past year, Breitbart News has spoken to different members of the “Super 8,” and all have denied knowing anything about an arms running operation in Libya.
Fred Rustman, a 24-year now retired veteran of the CIA and a leader of OPSEC, told Breitbart News it would be impossible for members of the Super 8 not to know what was happening in Benghazi at the CIA Annex before the attack.
“They knew. Absolutely,” Rustman asserted. “I no longer have access to classified information, but I strongly suspect that from reading the reporting, that the CIA was there to kind of police up all the MANPADS in [Libya], certainly in the area, and then they had all those MANPADS within the base and when they were evacuated after Sean and Ty were killed, those MANPADS were not evacuated with the rest of them.”
Rustman explained, “[The MANPADS] were left there for the insurgents to get back. So that’s probably one of the things [the U.S. government] is pretty embarrassed about and they don’t want to get out. However, many of those MANPADS they policed up over those past two months that were sitting in that annex, are now out on the streets. I think that’s one of the things they’re trying not to let out.”
He added, “[The Super 8] would know that. Those are classified briefings. They are top secret. They would know what the CIA was up to in Benghazi. Whatever they were doing was legal and the right thing.”
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