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In December 2015, conservative commentators called one of Mr. Bash’s emails a “smoking gun” and claimed that it showed that military assets “were awaiting sign off from the State Department and they never acted,” and that the email “seems to contradict testimony from former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta who in 2013 told lawmakers there was no time for an immediate response.”92

Although a redacted version of this email had been produced to a conservative group pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request, the Select Committee obtained the unredacted email, which debunks these allegations. The email, written by Mr. Bash on September 11, 2012, at 7:19 p.m., was sent to State Department Deputy Chief of Staff Jacob Sullivan, Under

Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman, and Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Thomas Nides, and a copy was sent to Under Secretary of Defense for Policy James Miller, Admiral James Winnefeld, General John Kelly, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Martin Dempsey. It stated:

I just tried you on the phone but you were all in with S.

After consulting with General Dempsey, General Ham and the Joint Staff, we have identified the forces that could move to Benghazi. They are spinning up as we speak. They include a SOF [Special Operations Forces] element that was in Croatia (which can fly to Suda Bay [sic], Crete), and a Marine FAST team out of Roda [sic], Spain.

Assuming Principals agree to deploy these elements, we will ask State to secure the approval from host nation. Please advise how you wish to convey that approval to us. Burns/Nides/Sherman to Miller/Winnefeld would be my recommended course.93

The forces described in the email are consistent with the forces described by Secretary Panetta and General Dempsey in their previous public testimony to Congress and described in previous congressional reports by the House Armed Services Committee and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.94

Secretary Panetta had the following exchange with the Select Committee about this email:

Q: And then the email continues with the following sentence: “Assuming principals agree to deploy these elements”—who are the principals that would’ve had to agree to deploy the elements that you had identified? A: No one. I had the authority to deploy those forces. And I ordered those

forces to be deployed. And I didn’t have to ask anybody’s permission to get those forces in place.

Q: Sir, that is my understanding, as well, that the national command authority consists of two people, the President and the Secretary of Defense.

A: That’s right.

Q: And if you, as the Secretary of Defense, ordered the deployment of military assets, that is all it takes.

A: That’s correct.95

Secretary Panetta also had this exchange:

Q: There has been a persistent myth as you probably are aware that

someone ordered the military assets to stand down and not go to rescue the people in Benghazi. Are you aware of any evidence that anyone ordered these military assets to stand down that you had ordered to deploy?

A: Not at all. I was—first of all, I would never have allowed that to happen. But secondly, I was not aware of anyone contradicting the orders to get these units deployed as quickly as possible.

Q: So when my colleagues were asking you about the Jeremy Bash email, I think the implication is that some other principal ordered a stand down, notwithstanding your order to deploy. Are you aware of anyone doing that?

A: I am not.

Q: Did anyone in the Defense Department, Mr. Bash, or anyone else, ever come to you and say, Mr. Secretary, they are ignoring your order to deploy?

A: No. Not at all. On the contrary. They were assuring me that the forces were moving into place.96

Secretary Panetta explained that because he issued his orders directly to military commanders, his Chief of Staff’s email had no impact on the movement of forces that night:

A: I just say, do it. Take the hill. They take the hill.

Q: And their process for taking the hill wouldn’t have been to use your staff or Jeremy Bash. Is that right?

A: That’s correct.

Q: So their process for taking the hill would have been to leave that room and start those forces moving. Right?

A: That’s right. That’s right.

Q: So Jeremy Bash, who was your chief of staff, would have been, is it fair to say, merely informing other people about what was already being ordered to move forward by those generals?

A: That’s correct. He—I mean, he was not in the chain of command in terms of, you know, moving those units. And you know, what happens having been Chief of Staff to the President, is that, you know, once a decision is made, then there is usually a lot of staff communication that goes on between, you know, staff at DOD, the White House, State Department, others that may or may not be involved. But there’s usually staff communication that goes on, so you know this is what’s going on. This is what’s happening. What do you know; what don’t you know. And they try to keep their principals informed as a result of those communications, and I think Jeremy, as my chief of staff, would have been the person to basically do liaison with these other groups.97

Secretary Panetta dismissed the claim that the need for diplomatic clearances may have slowed the response:

Q: And, from your perspective, sir, the action to secure diplomatic approval or country clearance could have been accomplished in parallel—

A: Yes.

Q: —with the action to deploy—

A: That’s exactly right. As far as I was concerned, those teams could be in the air and they could try to get whatever permission they needed.98

General Dempsey, addressed this point during his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on February 7, 2013:

I want to assure you, had we been able to—there’s been a whole bunch of speculation about we were risk-averse, we needed the country’s permission to come in. If we had been able to get there with anything, we’d have gone in there under the command of the Commander of U.S. Africa Command.99

Dr. James Miller, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and senior civilian advisor to Secretary Panetta, also told the Select Committee that the issue of country clearance was

irrelevant to the Department of Defense’s efforts to save American lives: Q: We had a brief discussion about country clearance, diplomatic

permissions to enter the foreign country. Did you view the issue of diplomatic clearances to be a significant limitation on the night of the attacks?

A: No. I recall in reading the email summary of the SVTC [secure video teleconference], that had arose in that conversation. And my view was that it was irrelevant, that if we needed to deploy forces to protect American lives, that we have the legal authority, and we have the, indeed, the obligation to do so. And I don’t have any indication that those concerns slowed down any element of—of the Department of Defense preparations or implementation of its deployments.

Q: Okay. So you don’t believe that a discussion about seeking country clearances, that that, in any way, delayed the response in a way that would have cost lives on the night of the attack?

A: I’m confident that it did not.100

Vice Admiral Leidig also explained that obtaining country clearance did not delay or in any way slow the military’s response on the night of the attacks: “I was never waiting for anything.” He also stated: “But I’m telling you, in this deployment, there was never an issue with country clearance. There just wasn’t. It never became an issue. You have to ask, it’s routine to ask, but it was never a problem. It never held up anything.”101

The Select Committee questioned Mr. Bash extensively about this email, and he rebutted the claim that Secretary Panetta was waiting for the State Department’s approval:

Q: And Judicial Watch, which released the email, stated that it, quote, “leaves no doubt military assets were offered and ready to go and awaiting State Department signoff, which did not come,” end quote. When you wrote the email, did you intend to state or imply within it that the State Department needed to approve or sign off on the deployment of military assets?

A: Of course not. I think the Secretary has written about this and has testified about this, and the Chairman’s testified about this. The assets were identified, they were deployed, and they went. They—we now know, in hindsight, how far they got.

Q: And sometimes Principals, in a capital, refers to the Principals

Committee, which is obviously an interagency group, when you wrote the email, did you intend to state or imply within it that members of the President’s Principals Committee needed to approve or sign off on the deployment of military assets?

A: That’s not the way—no. The answer to your question is no.102

Mr. Bash explained in an exchange with Chairman Gowdy that Secretary Panetta was meeting with his military commanders at the time Mr. Bash wrote the email:

elements”—what principals were you referring to?

A: Secretary Panetta, Chairman Dempsey, Vice Chairman Winnefeld, and the relevant combatant commanders. General Ham was there that

evening. Other combatant commanders would be affected, obviously the commanding general of U.S. Special Operations Command, the

commanding general of U.S. European Command, and Lieutenant General John Kelly, was, as I noted, probably in those discussions as well.

…

Q: Well, let’s try it this way, then. Did you have to go back to Secretary Panetta and get further permission before any of these things went into motion?

A: Did I? Q: Did anyone?

A: Well, it wouldn’t be me that would have to go back to him. But once the deployment orders were given, no.

Q: So there was nothing to assume at the time you wrote this email because you didn’t have to go back to him and get him to agree to deploy because you didn’t go back and get him to agree to deploy.

A: Well, as I stated previously, this email was sent while the meeting was going on, and the meetings were still happening in the Secretary’s office. So the meeting hadn’t—the meetings hadn’t concluded in the Secretary’s office about the deployment decisions.

Q: So your testimony is at 7:19 p.m. the Secretary of Defense had not instructed you to deploy at that point?

A: He wouldn’t instruct me. I’m a staff element supporting the Secretary. I’m not in the chain of command. And I think if you’re saying did he instruct any—that he did not instruct anybody, that’s not my testimony. I didn’t say he didn’t. I’m saying I was in and out of the meeting, and at the time I wrote this email the meetings in the Secretary’s office about deployment decisions were still going on. And the way I characterized it was to state—and, again, operating in a hurry, banging out a quick email, although I don’t recall exactly why I capitalized a word or not—my sense was that decisions were still—issues were still being discussed in the Secretary’s office. And I think exercising appropriately the proper humility of not announcing decisions of the chain of command, which was not my job to do, it was appropriate to characterize it as the

Secretary and his principal military advisers are making these decisions.103

Mr. Bash addressed other questions raised by the email in the following exchange with Chairman Gowdy:

Q: Next paragraph: “After consulting with General Dempsey, General Ham, and the Joint Staff, we have identified the forces”—“we” being whom?

A: The senior leadership of the United States Department of Defense. Q: Would it include any names that you did not list in that series, Dempsey,

Ham, and Joint Staff?

A: Admiral Winnefeld, and General Kelly, as I said, probably was there as well.

Q: “—forces that could move to Benghazi. They are spinning up as we speak.” What does the phrase “spinning up” mean?

A: Preparing.

Q: Why not use the word “preparing”?

A: I don’t know, sir. It was a crisis situation. I was banging out an email pretty fast. I don’t know that I spent too much time choosing every word carefully. But “spinning up” is a phrase that I tended to use a lot when I referred to people preparing to do something. I want to make clear, I don’t think I was referring to—because it wouldn’t have made sense— you know, a rotor of a helicopter spinning, like, I think, physically spinning through space. I think it was more of a colloquialism of “spinning up” meaning preparing, getting ready.

Q: Do you understand how somebody might take it that that’s how you meant it?

A: Yes, except, obviously, as the committee knows, though, you can’t fly a helicopter unrefueled from Rota, Spain, to Benghazi. It’s l,500 miles. So that wouldn’t make any logical sense.104

The exchange continued:

Q: “They include an SOF element that was”— A: Yeah.

A: “Is” would’ve been correct. My understanding from everything I recall about the event and everything that’s been discussed is that at the moment the email was written they were physically in Croatia. So I think your—the premise of your question, is “is” more accurate than “was” is true.105

Mr. Bash explained:

You know, when you’re operating in a crisis and American lives are on the line, I don’t think people stop and make their emails as polished as can be, nor would we want them to. And I actually didn’t even remember this email until it was surfaced in the public domain and started trending on Facebook. And I got calls from my siblings and nieces and nephews saying, Hey, what is this? And I didn’t even remember having this. I mean, the events of that night were kind of a blur in many respects. I remember some fundamental elements of it, which I’ve talked to the chairman about, and certainly remember that—the key points that Secretary Panetta has written about and talked about publicly. So it shocks me no[t at] all that—that email I wrote contained errors, misspellings, incorrect capitalizations, and words that may not have—be totally precise.106