Another Smoking Gun? US Spy Agencies Listened To Benghazi Terrorists Making Calls With Stolen State Dept. Cell Phones

Once again the phony story about an anti-Muslim you tube video gets kicked to the curb. On tonight's special report Bret Baier interviewed Eric Stahl, a retired major in the U.S. Air Force, who piloted the C-17 aircraft that used to transport the corpses of the four fallen heroes  from the Benghazi attacks and the attack's survivors from Tripoli to the safety of an American military base in Germany.

During the interview Stahl reported the terrorists who  attacked the U.S. consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi used cell phones, stolen from State Department personnel during the attacks, and American intelligence agencies listened as they called their superiors to report their success. Multiple sources confirmed this report. 

The stolen phone call report agrees with every CIA report, every military report, two State Department emails from Beth Jones and a phone call from Deputy Chief of Mission Greg Hicks, second in command of our Libyan operations to the late Ambassador Stevens, testimony from General Ham and Leon Panetta... all blamed the attack on terrorism before the attack was over. By the end of the day on 9/11/12 everybody knew it was an act of terrorism perpetuated by al Qaeda affiliate Ansar Al Sharia.

Now this is where Major Stahl comes in.

Stahl said members of a CIA-trained Global Response Staff who raced to the scene of the attacks were “confused” by the administration’s repeated implication of the video as a trigger for the attacks, because “they knew during the attack…who was doing the attacking.” Asked how, Stahl told anchor Bret Baier: “Right after they left the consulate in Benghazi and went to the [CIA] safehouse, they were getting reports that cell phones, consulate cell phones, were being used to make calls to the attackers' higher ups.”

A separate U.S. official, one with intimate details of the bloody events of that night, confirmed the major’s assertion. The second source, who requested anonymity to discuss classified data, told Fox News he had personally read the intelligence reports at the time that contained references to calls by terrorists – using State Department cell phones captured at the consulate during the battle – to their terrorist leaders. The second source also confirmed that the security teams on the ground received this intelligence in real time.

Major Stahl was never interviewed by the Accountability Review Board, the investigative panel convened, pursuant to statute, by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as the official body reviewing all the circumstances surrounding the attacks and their aftermath. Many lawmakers and independent experts have criticized the thoroughness of the ARB, which also never interviewed Clinton nor the under secretary of State for management, Patrick Kennedy, a key figure in the decisions about security at the consulate in the period preceding the attack there.

It gets more incriminating when the passengers got off the Major's plane they were not interviewed by the FBI or some other investigative officer. They were interviewed by  the senior State Department diplomat on the ground.

“They were taken away from the airplane,” Stahl said. “The U.S. ambassador to Germany [Philip D. Murphy] met us when we landed and he took them away because he wanted to debfrief them that night.” Murphy stepped down as ambassador last year. A message left with Sky Blue FC, a private company in New Jersey with which Murphy is listed online as an executive officer, was not immediately returned.

Also according to Stahl he could have rescued some of the Benghazi victims, certainly before the second wave.

"We were on a 45-day deployment to Ramstein air base,” he told Fox News. “And we were there basically to pick up priority missions, last-minute missions that needed to be accomplished.”

“You would've thought that we would have had a little bit more of an alert posture on 9/11,” Stahl added. “A hurried-up timeline probably would take us [an] hour-and-a-half to get off the ground and three hours and fifteen minutes to get down there. So we could've gone down there and gotten them easily.”

Stahl's account was convincing and if true certainly puts holes in the official State Department/ Administration account. But keep in mind while I trust Baier's reporting skills and believe him when he says he verified the account with two other sources, the pain of being burned by 60 minutes still hurts.  Digest this report, allow it to simmer for a few days and wait to see the counter attacks then decide.

To read the full Fox News report, click here.