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All right, y'all.
Welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is the Scott Horton Show.
Our next guest is Mel Freitberg from InterPress Service and McClatchy Newspapers.
She's been writing for both lately.
Welcome back, Mel.
How are you?
I'm well, thanks.
And yourself?
I'm doing great.
I really appreciate you joining us on the show today.
Thanks for having me.
Tell us, well, I can't choose.
Here, I'll choose this.
The big political news, of course, is the R's and D's here in America fighting over what happened on September 11th in Benghazi.
And I was just wondering if you could remind me and my audience about McClatchy Newspapers reporting on this subject, because you guys had reporters in-country at the time.
I forget if you were there at the time or not, but I know y'all had people there and came to conclusions that may conflict with both political sides here in America.
I was just hoping you could give us your best lowdown, brief description about what was really going on there.
Well, McClatchy was the first news outlet to actually report that there had been no protest outside the American consulate in Benghazi before it was stormed.
Other media outlets were reporting, and I believe the White House was initially reporting that there was a protest that went awry and people started shooting at the consulate.
But McClatchy, one of our journalists, actually interviewed a security guard in hospital who had been there, obviously, before the attack took place.
And he actually said there was no protest whatsoever outside the consulate.
And when the attack took place, it was very organized, and these guys suddenly descended outside, and they were heavily armed.
And it certainly looked at that point, when he was interviewing the security guard, it was very much a planned attack, and it had nothing to do with a demonstration gone awry.
And now, I don't know, you guys haven't reported about whether or not these stories are true that the CIA and or the military requested backup or requested to be backup and were denied.
That's what I'm hearing from reports in the U.S. as well.
I haven't been following it so strongly on the U.S. side.
Our American security correspondent there follows it more closely than I do.
I'm more concerned with what's actually happening this side.
But from what I've gathered and what I've heard, is that requests for help were turned down.
And I do remember reading a report very early on, just after the attack had taken place, that some military intelligence had intercepted telecommunications and had heard some people apparently linked to al-Qaeda or some Islamist fundamentalists talking about the operation shortly after it had happened.
But that didn't go on to much support at the time, because much of the media was just basically saying that it was a process that had got out of hand.
Okay, and now I'm sorry to waste your time on this, but just one more on this.
One more question.
The New York Times ran a piece sort of splitting the difference a couple of weeks back, saying, well, you know, it was a pre-planned attack, not a protest that got out of hand, but it was still about the film and that the local militia that did it, it wasn't al-Qaeda-ish guys so much as just locals who were anti-American locals and they had heard from Egyptian media about the innocence of Muslims film.
And so that spurred them to go ahead and plan an attack and carry it out that day.
Is there anything to that, do you know?
Does it matter?
I really, I'm not thinking about that.
I can't comment on that.
Okay, fair enough.
Okay, good.
So let's talk about other things.
Most importantly, the town of Bani Walid.
Where is that exactly and where do things stand there?
It's about 100 miles southeast of Tripoli, and we're all actually wanting to know what's happening.
I've been speaking to people in Tripoli who have family there and their family managed to flee.
But what is actually happening is uncertain because the militias that are controlling it are not letting journalists in, they're not letting NGOs in.
And when I actually spoke to the Red Cross, although the Red Cross had managed to coordinate several trips into Bani Walid during the three-week siege, they are still trying to coordinate another trip and it's actually pretty dangerous and they have to get approval from both sides before they can go in.
But the Red Cross has reported that I think 25,000 to 30,000 people had fled Bani Walid.
And what is interesting to point out how the militias are actually controlling the Libyan government is that the Libyan Minister of Defense yesterday said that the Libyan army is unable to control the militias who are actually controlling Bani Walid.
And when a convoy from the Defense Ministry with the Minister of Defense went into Bani Walid a couple of days ago, they were actually fired on by the militias, in particular the militias from Misrata.
Because as you'll recall during the revolution, Misrata and Bani Walid have a lot of bad blood between them because many of the militiamen from Misrata were very anti-Qaddafi and many of the people in Bani Walid are supposedly Qaddafi die-hard loyalists, although that's not completely true as well.
There are people, one of the biggest militias in Bani Walid, the 1993 militia, is actually named after an attempted coup against Qaddafi in 1993.
Now Bani Walid is sort of the home base of the Wafala tribe, which is the largest tribe in Libya.
It has over a million people.
And many of these people are spread all around Libya and living all around Libya.
But basically no journalists are still not allowed to go in.
The Defense Ministry has admitted that the army can't control the militias in Bani Walid.
And information that is coming out is that there's been quite a lot of revenge attacks, looting, destruction of property.
Some of the Misrata militias commented to journalists who were trying to get in that they were going to teach the people of Bani Walid a lesson and they were going to flatten the place.
And just a reminder that the Misrata militias have a very bad reputation for abusing people in their various detention centers, which are all over Misrata.
Because during the actual revolution, Misrata was under siege.
And many of the people that had laid siege to Misrata were people from Bani Walid.
But it's a site that goes back to the 1920s when the Italians were occupying the place.
But basically we're trying to find out what's going on.
There's different reports coming from both sides with the government saying only about 25 people dead and people in Bani Walid saying 600 people have died.
So we're not sure what the true figures are.
There's been an assassination of a guy in Benghazi who was organizing protests against the siege of Bani Walid.
He was shot dead by a masked gunman.
So definitely some abuses have taken place there.
But what exactly is happening, we'll have to wait and see.
Wow.
You know, it almost feels like Iraq 2003.
I'd better learn the names of some of these clerics and whose side they're on, because, you know, they're going, you know, who's this Muqtada al-Sadr guy?
He might be important to the future of Iraq, that kind of thing.
How many different major militias are there still in Libya?
Is there anything like a monopoly government there?
Well, actually the government, a new government has just been approved in the last hour.
You'll remember that a month ago the Congress tried to form a new government and the former prime minister-elect, Mustafa Abu Shada, was dismissed, and so was his attempt at forming a government.
And now the new prime minister, Ali Zaydan, has formed a new cabinet of 32 ministers.
Twenty-seven of them are ministers.
Three deputy prime ministers and two ministers of state, as opposed to the previous attempt at a cabinet which was about 10 ministers.
But while the Congress was discussing the formation of a new cabinet yesterday, members of the militia stormed into the Congress and disrupted proceedings because they weren't happy about the formation of a new cabinet.
Now, although the new cabinet has successfully passed through, there's already protesters outside the parliament, and the security has started shooting into the air.
Some of the militias are Salafists who are upset that the new minister of religion is a Sufi Muslim, which is kind of a mystical sect of Islam.
And you remember the Salafists were behind this destruction of a whole group of Sufi mosques and shrines and graves in Tripoli and around the country several months ago.
So, you know, it will be interesting to see what happens in the next few days because although it's managed to pass through, there are still many people that are dissatisfied.
And, again, this underlines how powerful the militias are, that they're able to continue doing what they please in Bani Walid, and the army can't bring them to suit.
Another incident is in the town of Derna, which has a very strong Islamist base.
A lot of the fights are from Derna, which is northeast of Benghazi, in the east of the country, having gone to Syria to fight there.
There's about 300 Islamists holed up in the mountains there with heavy arms.
They have anti-aircraft rockets.
They have all sorts of things.
And the military is unable to dislodge them because they're not powerful enough, and they complain that they're not getting support from the government in Tripoli.
And I don't know if you're interested in what's happened in that there's been...
Some of the Libyans have now been coming to Cairo, and there was a shootout in the suburb of Nasser, which is not far from where I am.
There was a Libyan guy shot dead.
He was part of about a seven-man cell, and apparently they are linked to the attack on the Benghazi consulate, and the FBI has been monitoring them.
And when they arrived in the country, the Egyptian security forces were given a tip-off.
When they tried to raid the apartment, there was a shootout, and this guy died in it.
But now they've subsequently arrested two other cells of jihadists, one in the Sinai just yesterday was planning to carry out attacks on tourist targets there, and they've arrested another one somewhere, I can't exactly where in the country, also linked with Libya.
Were these men part of the so-called Ansar al-Sharia, or whatever local militia that's being kind of blamed for the attack?
I'm not sure about that.
All the authorities are saying is that they're connected with the Benghazi attack, because a lot of these militia groups seem to be quite fluid.
Like-minded members in different militias identify with al-Qaeda's ideology, but they're not always in the same group.
So I'm not actually sure about that.
All right, now I also wanted to ask you, Mel, about this incredible article that you've written with Jonathan Landay, also in McClatchy Newspapers.
People can find it at KansasCity.com, for one example.
Their title is, Egypt Seizes Libyan Weapons, Suspects in Further Sign of Spreading Terrorist Influence.
And this goes far beyond just these guys wanted for that attack.
That's just what I was talking about.
They went to this suburb about four or five days ago and tried to get this guy out.
The FBI apparently had tipped off the Egyptian security forces, and this is the cell that apparently has links with the people that carried out the attack on the U.S. consulate.
Oh, it is the same group of people.
Yes.
Oh, I see.
But they've now just arrested two other cells.
That happened last week, that shootout.
They've now arrested another cell in the Sinai, who were planning attacks on terrorist targets.
And there's now been another group arrested, too, who they think have links with the cell that was stormed last week and this Libyan guy that was shot.
But the Egyptian police also intercepted two truckloads of weapons in Masa Matruh, which is about 100 miles from the Libyan border.
And those were weapons coming in from Libya.
And apparently there's now movement between Libya and Egypt of these Islamists because of the security void.
And some of the Islamists who managed to escape from prison during the 2011 revolution, they've slipped into Libya.
So there's movement coming all backwards and forwards.
And I was just speaking to a guy on the street the other day, and he said he was offered weapons in central Cairo that originated in Libya.
So the weapons and the men are flying backwards and forwards.
So I'm confused.
And it was, or at least the authorities said, that these two trucks were tied to those same guys?
Or this is just another thing that happened?
No, no, no, that was a separate incident of just weapons coming in from Libya and easily being smuggled in.
But the group that was stormed, the Libyan guy that was killed in the shootout with Egyptian security forces last week in Cairo, he is part of a group, this is what the Egyptian security forces allege and intelligence allege, that was involved with, they think that was involved with the attack on the consulate in Benghazi.
And their information and their tip-off comes from the FBI who had been monitoring this group's movement.
Now they've discovered another cell linked to this group as well, and they've made arrests.
I read one report, and I'm sorry, I forget where it was now, but it was about how perhaps Ambassador Stevens was working hard on trying to track down all of those missing weapons from Qaddafi's weapons stores.
And I don't remember anymore the first digit, but I remember that there were at least four zeros, that is tens of thousands of these shoulder-fired missiles are apparently missing.
Now I don't know if that just means RPGs or if that means real surface-to-air missiles or what, but, I mean, even just an RPG could be really dangerous near an airport, right?
And these things are just on the loose.
Well, apparently it's a whole selection of different kinds of weapons, from rockets to automatic weapons, and they have all gone missing.
And some of the reports coming from Bani Walid have said that there was possibly some sort of chemical gas fired at the people in Bani Walid as well.
And there have been rumors that maybe the Misrata militias got hold of some of Qaddafi's stockpile of chemical weapons.
So he had chemical weapons, he had a whole gamut of things.
And now a lot of these Islamist militias have gone underground because, as you'll recall, after the attack on the consulate, Libyan storms took part in another process against these extremists.
And as a result of that, the government said it was going to try and disband militias.
And so many of them just have gone underground with their weapons and one doesn't know where they are.
Okay, now here's something that McClatchy, of course, was the best on.
David Enders did the reporting on the mass rapes at a refugee camp near Tripoli for McClatchy.
And there was a lot of other reporting about anti-black pogroms, especially right after the fall of Tripoli.
But then again, just I think it was, what, three, four months ago, Russia Today showed footage of blacks being held in a zoo with Libyan flags forced down their throats.
And, of course, the theory being if you're black and in Libya, then you must be a mercenary working for Gaddafi or somehow related in a way, whatever.
That was the excuse.
And I just wonder whether anybody's got a handle on that?
Is anybody doing any more journalism on that?
Is it over?
Did anybody put a stop to that?
Is it getting worse?
Do you know at all?
I don't think the militias, and again, it's the Misrata militias, are often the worst culprits because they were against a lot of people from Tawarga, which is a town of Libyans, black Libyans, who fought with Gaddafi.
And we're not certain whether many of those people fought with Gaddafi because they supported him or because they were forced to support him.
But they apparently took part in the siege of Misrata as well, which was very brutal.
And so a lot of the Misrata militias are targeting any blacks.
And a lot of sub-Saharan blacks actually use Libya as a transit point in trying to get to Europe.
They're just merely economic refugees passing through the country.
And a lot of them are also finding work in Libya.
I don't know that the situation would have suddenly stopped and that these Misrata militias would have suddenly read the Human Rights Report and decided to mend their ways if one's looking at the vengeance that they're wreaking on Bani Walid at the moment.
There's still been reports filtering through from Human Rights watching the odd newspaper report of blacks being targeted as well.
But I certainly have no information that all of this has suddenly stopped, especially with the security situation being so unstable at the moment.
I don't know how much influence America even has in this situation, but the politics of that question seem to be, that's a secret and you shush about it.
And so Hillary Clinton is not going to do anything.
I don't know if she could do anything, but she's not even going to try to put pressure on anyone to, geez, would you guys quit with the anti-black pogroms?
Because that's just bringing it up.
And right now, no one really wants to report about it or talk about it.
It's not an issue.
And even bringing it up would make it an issue.
And so politically, it's better to just do nothing at all.
I don't know if they even could put pressure on anybody about it.
Well, I don't know if they could either.
I mean, the government can't control the militias and it doesn't seem that interested even if it could.
And I think there's been a lot of silence from the Western media on Bani Walid, not only because one of the aspects was the journalists were refused entry and they're not being allowed in still.
But that's basically those people are sympathetic to Gaddafi and nobody in the West has much sympathy for them.
And the Libya situation is a deal already done.
NATO has got rid of Gaddafi.
The West has access to the oil supplies again.
I think the rest is kind of secondary, even if they wanted to do something about it, which I'm not sure that they do.
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, they've got a whole narrative here about how quick and easy and simple it was.
You know, like Bill Clinton's war in Kosovo.
You just do it from the air, outsource it to locals and this kind of thing.
And isn't it easy?
And, yeah, it was undeclared and even in violation of the will of Congress, against the will of the Congress.
But, you know, hey, look how quick and easy and clean it was and what a great victory and Gaddafi's gone and they don't want to talk about it any more than that.
The Republicans don't either, you know, because it would only lead them into their only answer could be, well, we'll have to, you know, put the 3rd Infantry Division on the ground there to shape everything up.
And they know people don't want to hear that, so they just stay silent about it too.
And so it's not a political issue.
It's not a news issue.
It's not anything.
Well, I think also because the situation is kind of repeating itself and playing out again in Syria.
And I think, you know, they have to admit that what they have done in Libya is not a good idea vis-à-vis foreign policy.
Right.
Yeah.
It was great, wasn't it?
And I'm sorry to talk about politics with you here, but really I think it's very telling and important that in the foreign policy debate, Mitt Romney attacked Barack Obama for allowing the Muslim Brotherhood to put in power in Egypt, I guess implying that Obama should have had Mubarak just massacre everyone in Tahrir Square.
I don't know exactly what he thought the solution to that was.
Maybe just, you know, send in the B-52s or something.
But then in the very same sentence, in the very same argument, he was saying that he's not doing enough to put the Muslim Brotherhood in power in Syria right now, and that he's spreading the influence of jihadists from Libya down into, or from wherever they're from, down into Mali, which was, of course, a direct consequence of the war in Libya that he supported at least half the time.
But the thing is, from what I recall, this whole thing of bringing a lot of these Islamists into power, al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and in Iraq, wasn't that the Republicans under Bush who supported the invasion of Iraq, which supported the, you know, the Mujahideen in Afghanistan and then brought them to power.
So the Republicans did it before, and that's all what happened there, and how it destabilized the region there.
So maybe Mitt Romney's not remembering what happened under his own party some years ago.
Yeah, well, and it was the veterans of the other side in the Iraq war, the Libyan veterans of the Sunni-based insurgency against the American-slash-Iranian project to install the Dala Party in there.
Those are the guys we just fought for in Libya, the very same men.
Iran apparently has just approached the Libyan government, and Iran now wants to get involved in the reconstruction of Libya and establish closer ties with Libya.
You know what it means when a country wants to get involved in the reconstruction and get closer to a country that's just come out of a war and there's lots of ideological fighting going on in place.
So that's just happened recently.
Yep, well, and of course the suicide bomber types in Syria are talking more and more about how there's no such thing as Syria or Iraq, and what they want is to reestablish what they call the caliphate in whatever parts of Syria that they can win, if not the whole state, and the Sunni parts of Iraq.
So there's some effects of the Iraq war that are going to keep flowing onward.
In fact, Jason Ditz at Antiwar.com is reporting that Shiite militias from Iraq are going to Syria to fight on the side of Assad, while the Sunni militias in Iraq are going to fight on the side of Obama and Al-Qaeda.
Lots of fun.
All right, I'm sorry I've kept you over time.
Thank you so much for your time, Mel.
All right, nice talking to you.
That's Mel Freikberg, everybody, from Interpress Service.
That's IPSnews.net, and also McClatchy Newspapers.
That's McClatchyDC.com.
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