Previously on The Sean Ryan Show. They're doing all this training and stuff in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, and all these international terrorists. You think they're going to start coming up through our Southern borders?

They've already started.

Do you know that for a fact?

Yes. How do you know that? I was told several different times about group pockets of terrorists that procured passports from the Afghan government with the sole purpose of coming to our Southern border. The chaotic.

And.

Deadly US evacuation from Afghanistan stunned Americans and the world and cost the lives of 13.

Us soldiers. Now a damning new.

Report blames the Biden administration. Well, there's two different things. There's guys we're ignoring and guys we thought that were dead that aren't. So both of those are in Afghanistan. You think.

We're going to be back there someday?

We have to be. The main AQAP target, his name is Ibrahim Albana. Guess where he is? Afghanistan. Afghanistan being completely ignored. And guess who he hangs out with? Hamza bin Laden. Sources tell CBS News, Osama bin Laden's favorite son has been killed in a military operation.

Hamza bin.

Laden, the son.

Of the former Al Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden, has been killed. Letters captured in the 2011 raid indicated bin Laden was grooming Hamza to be the next leader. Post-gaddafi Arab Spring Timeline-Yes.

-arrived in Libya to no intelligence service was present when it started. Kicked off, captured operations in Libya in 2012. Abu Anas Alibi targeting the mastermind of Kenya and Tanzania, embassy bombings. The beghazi attacks happened on September 2012. How long were you in Libya?

I got there in January of 2012. I left for a few months in the summer to vacation. I went to the London Olympics, and then I went to Egypt and stuff. And then I came back and I went to Benghazi in August. And then I left Libya in the end of November 2012.

Okay, so you were in-country when it went down?

Well, the day of the attack, I was in Benghazi and I flew to London for a meeting. So I went for a meeting, missed the entirety of an attack, came back, and then went to Tripolis. And so I wasn't in Benghazi, and then I stayed a couple more months.

Oh, man. So you just.

Missed it. Yeah. And the funny thing is Congress actually asked me, a staff at Congress, if I found out about the attack and left.

Really? I was like.

What question is that? Maybe you do that stuff here, but we were all family. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, this is what I really want to talk about, is some of the, I don't know what you would call it if it's corruption or just incompetence that happened during the attack, some of the cover-up stuff. I wanted to talk about it with Mark. It's tough to talk about that stuff with somebody that was there that experienced that amount of trauma, so I thought you would be the best thing to bring in. And so could you walk us through some of the stuff that could have really helped the guys on the ground there that we didn't utilize and some of the stuff that happened after Benghzi?

Sure. Maybe I should talk about the size of the attack first. Okay. Because it's really easy for someone who doesn't toe the gun to say, Oh, these things could have helped the guys. But when you talk about the number of attackers, people really need to understand what they were up against, right? Okay. So the attack was directed by the head of Al Qaeda, Dr. Iman Al-Zawahiri. He basically handed off to his North Africa group, right? So AQIM is what we'll go by. And the purpose... The purpose of it was to capture Ambassador Stevens, and they wanted to use him for prison swaps to get other terrorists out. And it was going to be an honor of a couple Libyans that we killed in drone strikes in Pakistan. So Zawahiri's last two deputies, the most recent was Abu Yakael-Libi. His last two deputies died in drone strikes within a year in Pakistan. So when the second drone strike happened, it was June 2011. And that's when he's like, Enough is enough. We're going to take it to the Americans in Libya. And that's what he chose to do. It was actually a kidnapping operation of the ambassador because in 2011, a ton of terrorists got released.

And so by 2012, they were like, Hey. It was almost like this momentum going. And they're like, Hey, let's keep trying to get out who we can get out and save more people. Even Al Qaeda had just also in Benghazi, and this is never talked about which is strange, and within just maybe three weeks before the attacks, they kidnapped the only Cuts Force officers in Benghazi as well. And they're asking for five Al Qaeda in Iraq detainees who were held in Iraq. So five Al Qaeda members in Iraq. So it just happened weeks before. So now they're doing the same thing, but they're capturing the US ambassador because one of the interesting things is one of the names they wanted to put on the plate for the Cuts Force, he didn't make the cut. Out. They weren't good enough. So one of the people they wanted for Ambassador Stevens, his name is Adele Al-Shilali, and he was a Libyan on Death Row in Iraq, and he was a very close friend of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Actually, after his death, he went back to Iraq, and he was a terrorist going to carry out the post-death attack in honor of Zarkhabi.

And he got caught. And that way he was in jail. So he was pretty upsetting to Al Qaeda, right? Because he was the one that was going to do the attack in honor of his death. So that's basically the main Libyan they're going to ask for. They were going to throw in some other names. He's who they wanted. But they were going to, of course, ask for the blind shik. They were going to ask for Abu Farajah Libby, he's in Gitmo. And then they were thinking about maybe asking for Fia Siddique. I want to say she's in maybe Texas. So anyway, he passed it off to AQIM. Aqim's leader, his name is Drewkdaw. He gave it to Mukdo, we're going to call him M-B-M. His expertise is kidnapping operations. So he said, You mastermind this, you carry it out. But I'm going to play a heavy, heavy hand because both of them were very close to Zawahiri, and Zawahiri said, This is super important to me. So Zahir, he asked them. He reached out to AQAP and said, Hey, you guys help fund this. He also AQAP, Oatniyemi, issued the fatwa that made it legal to even do the Benghazi attack.

And then Zawahiri reached back to a bunch of people in Egypt. Hey, you need to support this. One had just got released from prison with Zawahiri's brother, and he at the time was negotiating to set up al-Qaeda in Egypt. Zawahiri is like, Yeah, great. Benghzi is your first operation. So all these Zawahiri people come together to do this operation and they plan it. And the commander on the ground that leads the attack is Omar Al-Shilali, Adele's brother. So that's the attack commander, and he's AQIM's head for Libya in 2012. So that's who's now planning it, right? They brought in 150 terrorists just for the ambassadors kidnapping. So half of them went on the compound and half of them coreded off the streets. So 150 terrorists. I don't even know if I can name any terrorist attack with extra 150 terrorists. And at least in our book, at least 50 of them are Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda, and then the others are Al Qaeda affiliates. So I'm not even sure I can name an attack with 50 Al Qaeda terrorists at the attack. So you need to understand this attack is massive.

And these are well-trained guys. These aren't bottom of the barrel, Minions.

These are- We very painstakingly made that clear, we walked through their entire history. So if they fought in the Afghanistan, Mujahideen time, they're in there as that. If they fought in Iraq, in our Iraq wars, which started around 2003, 2004, they were in that. In between those two, though, that a lot of people forget is the Algerian Civil War, 200,000 civilians were killed on that war. I had no idea. Yeah. It was an insane Jihad thing, and I always gets ignored. But so we had people fighting that war, and that's where MBM was in Afghanistan fighting, and then the Algerian Civil War kicked off and he jumped ship and went there. And that's where he got most of his bonus fetus. They weren't actually in Afghanistan, what a lot of people think. And then the Libyan Revolution. And then after the Benghazi attacks, they went to Syria, as you can imagine. So yeah, well-trained terrorists. Pretty much every senior leader, Zawahiri reached out to either him or Bin Laden or Zawir Khabi had a long-time established relationship with him. There's not even one person that Zawir Heary chose that had no experience, actually, really the only senior leader at the attacks that had no experience is crazy.

So the MBM took over this random village, I want to say it was like an Algeria, and he recruited a businessman to be a terrorist during his takeover of the city, and the guy spoke fluent English. And so he said, I want you to be the commander of my attack of my cell of AQIM. Aqim had multiple cells. I don't want to get complicated with that because you speak English, and I want you to talk to the ambassador. And they also recruited two Canadians to the attack. So three people were supposed to be the English speakers to do the shifts to take care of the ambassador when they brought him in. Interesting. Yeah. So anyway, so that's who they're going up against. Resources brought to bear... Let's just first talk about the first two deaths, right? So that's the ambassador and Sean Smith. The only resource to bring that to bear is if CIA would have left the compound sooner. I don't know if you actually know why they didn't leave till 10:05.

Why?

Because Bob lied to them and told them 17th February was responding when he knew they weren't. Even Mark still thinks 17th February, he ran into him during that night, that actually never happened. They thought they were running into 17th February because Bob lied to them and said they were responding, but they never did. On Bob's first phone call to the head of 17th February, his name was Fawzy Bukateef. He said, I don't have any help to send you. I'm not sending you any help tonight. Bob is? The chief of base for Benghazi.

That means Bob is the head agency staffer in the city? In the city? -in charge of Benghazi.

Yes. So obviously, CIA has a Q-R-F, right? Grs. That's how normal places work. Bob viewed he did not believe in our QRF or believe we had a QRF or believe they should be used as a QRF in a weird way. And he only viewed 17th February as his QRF. So there's already a disconnect from how CIA operates in Benghzi just solely because of Bob. So Bob only wanted 17th February to respond. He never wanted his people to respond. So he called 17th February, and 17th February who sent maybe 25 terrorists to the attacks, they're involved. We don't know they're involved, right? He says, I'm not sending anyone. He's not going to send people to go attack his own people. Bob then is taken aback because he doesn't want to send his people. And then the one guy he counted on just said, I'm not sending people. So he lies to his team and says, Hey, we're waiting on 17th Feb to respond. He spends some time begging them, but he knows they're not responding. He was told the first phone call to them. So the guys finally leave when the State Department guy says, If you don't come now, we're going to die.

That's when they left. So it was nothing. They just said, screw it, and they just abandoned the COB. But he could have held them there all night because he could have kept lying that 17th Feb was doing a response. 17-fab never responded with even one body to the Benghazi attacks.

Wow.

Yeah.

Wow. Were there any repercussions for this guy, Bob?

No, they gave him the most senior award in the CIA. And then this was supposed to be his last trip, and he was supposed to retire. And because he got all these accolades, they let him go back to the farm. So he started in the CIA as a medic.

How does this.

Guy live with himself? I know. He started in the CIA as a medic. A lot of people think he has a long story career as a case officer. He started as a medic, and then he got rotated into being a case officer and spent his entire career at the farm. The only other war zone he was in, he went to a war zone in Eastern Afghanistan, and he got his asset killed and then tried to do a money pay cover up and got in trouble for and got sent home. And Benghazi was only a second war zone. So these people that say he's got this long history of serving. He was a trainer at the farm. And so after they let him go back and be a trainer at the farm. Last I heard he was a trainer at.

The farm. Well, you know the old saying, Fuck up, move up, right?

Yes.

What a joke.

So no repercussions for Bob, who lied and basically got people killed. Because if you look at the timeline, the fire was started. So the tax starts at 9:42 and CIA got the call immediately. If you watch the cameras, I have it actually in the book. I think it's 9:48, they're sitting in the cars, okay? And then now just waiting to go. The fire starts about 10:00 PM on the Ambassador of the Villa. A lot of people confuse this, even the FBI. There was a fire started at the guard shack right inside of the consulate right away. But they then go and try to get to the ambassador because they know where he is. They can't get in. They don't start that fire till about 10:00, and then GRS leaves at 10:45. But GRS are sitting in the car to leave at 10:48, and it's a two-minute trip. They took 2-3 minutes when they final left at 10:45, they were already there. So mathematically, if they were to left when they were ready, the terrace wouldn't even have started the fire. They wouldn't even have put out a fire. It was before the fire started. So that's what could have been done for the first two lives.

But I think it's the only thing that could have been done for the first two lives. Unless, to be honest, that had a 17th February, and then the head of Rafallah Al-Sihati, who was the AQ's commander for Benghazi, and then another senior leader, those three within two days, a few days before all this happened, basically told us, We're not helping you with security anymore. I mean, they basically said something's happening. And honestly, at that time, they should have canceled the ambassador's trip. If it's the three most powerful militias in town say, Hey, we're not going to help you anymore. And even 17 Feb said, Oh, yes, you're paying us to protect the consulate, but we're not going to protect you on moves anymore. That's why Boon and Roan and them, they were supposed to be home by then. They extended to do security for the ambassador while he was in town because 17th February said they were going to stop. So they knew these things days before. They should have canceled his trip because it's like, Well, this is weird. The biggest militias don't want to do security anymore. So that's what should.

Have happened. Nobody pieced it together.

Yeah, no one. Yeah, which is crazy. So anyway, for the first two, GRS should have just been able to leave on time when they're ready. The other ones, there's a mix of resources. I'm not really sold on... The military moves slow, the CIF was on a training mission. They didn't even think of sending fighter jets. I honestly think they were just going to drop the ball anyway. I don't want to be rude. I think really where you could have affected something is French Special Forces. They were based in Libya. The Cutaries had 50 Special Forces based in Trippaly. So we had these... The French had obviously fighter jets within the region.

Where was the CIF? They were in Italy, correct?

No, no. The CIF were in... What was it? They were in Croatia on a training mission, though. Remember, they didn't even have their airplane with them. So when they finally were told to deploy the airplane, I kid you not flew to them. Then they took 12 hours of crew rest, they loaded the plane, then they flew to Italy. So that's what I'm saying. We can't even say the CIF is going to get there. Even if they overrode the crew, they did still didn't have their own plane with them. So that's why I said, I just don't see... The DoD was not positioned to respond, and it's sad. They're supposed to be.

It's not 11. I have a good friend, Mike Glover, who I think was in that CIF.

Well, Mike Glover, I thought Mike did the thing after it.

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Well, because remember there was the evacuation from Triple A two years later. Isn't that the one he was on? Mm-mm. Okay. No. But yeah, so.

The sixth-No, because this was pre... So I worked with Mike at GRS. Mike, I believe, was still in the army at this point in the CIF.

Yeah, there was only one CIF at the time, remember, because there was supposed to be a U-com and AFRICOM, and the AFRICOM wasn't set up yet. So the only one that existed was the U-com CIF, and it covered both Ucom and AFRICOM. And that one was on a training mission in Croatia. And then the only other thing that deployed is obviously the team from North Carolina, and they flew also to Italy. And honestly, they both arrived around the same time within two hours of each other, the Croatia one and the North Carolina one.

I'm not sure which one he was with. So he.

Might have been the North Carolina one.

That's a very good possibility.

But even with them, think about it, their plan was... All of them were planned to go to Italy. I mean, it's going on in real time in Libya. I'd be pissed if I was them. If I would land them in Italy, I'm like, Why am I not landing in Libya? Oh, they.

Were.

Pissed. And the other thing is, you know they never planned to send any resources to Benghazi. Even the Fast Teams, they were only deployed to Triple A because around 1:00 in the morning, well, first off, the CIA was not sending accurate information once they got there, how the attacks were ongoing, and that's a huge failure. They weren't really sharing it. So in the State Department, the state guy, every minute, This is happening. This is happening. This is happening, and it's really well shared. They all move over to the CIA compound, attack start, and no one in the CIA is sharing, Hey, we just got attacked. We got attacked. They're downplaying it. Even the GRS team lead for Benghazi called it pop shots. He called it pop shots. The attack, the first attack.

On the CIA- Well, we won't over this with Mark.

Right. So they weren't sharing it. So as you can imagine, if they're not sharing it, guess what happens? A threat goes out on Facebook against the Tripoli embassy. Not even from a verified page, nothing the US is really tracking, and all DOD attention, State Department attention shifts to Tripoli. All resources trip to Triple E. So if you actually go read the order that came out at 5:00 in the morning, by the way, they didn't put anything in motion until 5:00 in the morning. Remember, the last attack is 5/17. That's why I said the DOD ain't your... Ain't your heroes on this one. Nothing deploys to Benghazi. It's only to Triple E because I got focused on the Facebook threat. They say no after the fact. They say, No, we actually thought it was a hostage situation and we had more time. But that's not what happened in real time. But the DOD, you go ask them now, they'll say, No, we thought it was a hostage situation. We thought we might have multiple days to deal with this scenario and we're trying to work through it.

Well, that's BS.

Regardless, they weren't positioned to respond. They showed it, and they obviously weren't held accountable.

What was the narrative about this? There was some cartoon that was made.

Yeah. Well, that was... So Jake Sullivan came up with this bright idea. If you know him, he's our national security director, and he's the one working all these beautiful, Iran deals. He came up with the fact that we should blame this video. So it's just a little bit of background. There's a video came out spring of 2011, and then I think maybe in August, a translated version of it came out. In August, there was a planned protest in Egypt. It wasn't to do with the video, but they ended up moving it to September 11th. And so when they did move it, this video came out in the middle and they said, Hey, when we do the protest, we're going to also talk about this video. What a lot of people don't know, though, the people who set up the protest were involved in Benghzi. There was Zawahiri's brother, a really famous commander named Merjan Salim. I don't know if you remember the old days in Afghanistan when they took down the big Bomiain statues. He was standing there overseeing that. Okay. All connected, right? They're the ones hosting this protest in Egypt. They know there's a planned attack in Bangladesh when they're hosting it.

So anyway, part of their big protest that had nothing to do with that video either, the video got wrapped in because it was around the same time. So even that protest was nothing to do with the video. It was supposed to be like three weeks before. So Jake Sullivan decides to use this video as a fake narrative, and they run with it. The problem is it worked. So what happened is they run with it, it became news. It actually ended up making the video go viral. The video went viral, I think September 13th, which nobody even pays attention to. It's like, Guys, the video didn't go viral until two days after the attack, only because of the policymakers. Then even Libyan policymakers started repeating it. And then the intelligence community got really sloppy. One of the most famous things we bring it up in the Benghazi Committee Report is when you're in the government, the best intel usually is SIGINT, right? You're like T-S-S-C-I, whatever. What the NSA did is they wrote a report on the Benghazi attacks, and they wrote a comment on the top that they cut and pasted from the press. And I kid you not, it said at 5:00 PM, there were protests in Benghazi.

They cut this from the press. First off, there was nothing at 5:00 PM in Benghazi. The 5:00 PM was Cairo. So they didn't have that right. And analysts started taking that comment, marking it as top secret SCI. And then obviously when people are reading it like, Oh, that's a top secret evidence that there was a protest. That piece was crappy intelligence. Hopefully it wasn't more sinister. But yeah, so all that was completely made up. And then like I told you, when we went and told them, Hey, we have evidence there was no protest, they didn't change it. So by then, everybodys is marching along with what the administration wanted, and they didn't want to push back on Jake Sullivan and Ben Rhodes and crew. A lot of.

People blame Hillary Clinton. Right. Why is that?

For the protest narrative?

For a lot of this. Yeah.

I mean, for the protest narrative, she helped push it, right? I mean, she knew in real time it was terrorists. We all know that. She sent a daughter, an email to her daughter saying it was Al Qaeda-like protest.

It seemed like she was apologizing for that video after the Benghazi attack. All of the-Instead of standing up for men and women over there, she's over here apologizing.

About this shit. Exactly. So as I was saying, Jake Sullivan made the video narrative, right? And then they all jumped on board, right? So Obama did a statement, Hillary Clinton did a statement. Obviously, we all know about Susan Rice's talk show. Susan Rice's was actually written by Ben Rhodes. A lot of it was Ben Rhodes writing their statements. That's the character in there. But yeah, that. So the main thing she did wrong in that piece was pushing a narrative she knew was fake because she knew in real time it was a terrorist attack. But her issues go so much beyond that. The issue that a lot of people had with Hillary, like if we're going to say we're on September 10th, you know what I mean? Let's pretend the attack didn't happen. The issues people were having with Hillary is as Secretary of state, she was traveling from country to country and meeting with leaders like a Secretary of state does. But in her case, you had to donate money to her foundation to meet with her. And in some places, so many people were meeting with her in the pay-for-play. Some of our military commanders couldn't get time with her.

There were places she didn't even meet, like some of the CIA that thought she'd meet with her. One of the issues with Hillary was a lot of people were really upset that she sold out the office.

Of the Secretary of State. So hold on.

I didn't know this. Yeah. Well, that was the issue a lot of people had at the time with Hillary before the attacks. That's what they felt she was doing.

So as the Secretary of state. She is running around the world forcing-.

It was like a pay for play.

-political leaders to donate money to the Clinton Foundation so that they could get time with the US Secretary of state.

Yeah. So that was a complaint in real time about her. And that's the complaint- Is that legal? I know. Well, that's the complaint. That's the issue with our server. So a lot of people think that Hillary Clinton's server matters because of the Benghzi attacks. I mean, Hillary doesn't talk to Al Qaeda. What's on the Hillary Clinton server is all the economic and financial dealing she had in Libya, of course, and then all those other things that she traveled around. And so that's the server issue. But a lot of people don't actually understand that, and they put the server issue with the Benghazi attacks. But that's what people think is on the server, and they think that she could get tried for what's on the server, if that makes sense, because that would be the evidence of the activities everyone said she did. And that's what got wiped, that info. It's not really... There was probably some emails that night about the Benghazi attacks, but that's not why people cared about what was on the server.

And that just got wiped?

Yeah. Just gone.

I mean, there might have been people who got into it. But yes, it's not with any agency who can prosecute her.

Got you. What could she have done? What could the Obama administration.

Have done? Yeah, because I don't think Hillary could have done anything. Hillary just got in the way that night, right? I mean, as most people know, she made the fast team change four times. The thing is, as the attacks were going on, the head of the Libyan Air Force said, Send in what you want. Do what you want. You have free reign. They gave them blanket authority. So wherever State Department that night argued over changing people's clothes or air clearances, none of that was real because they had immediate clearances to fly in anything they wanted. There was no rules on what you're wearing, what planes you brought in. So all that's just made up. They had full flight clearances to come and do whatever.

They want. They had a hundred % clearance from the Libyan government to come and save.

Our people. The head of.

The Libyan.

Air Force. -any way they want to. Yeah, his name was General Ha-ha-see. He's he said. Do what you need. And this happens a lot in Africa in crisis as Algeria has done it before. Do what you need things. So it's not rare that he said that, right? He's like, Hey, come in with what you want. So, yeah, anybody saying, Oh, no, we had to work through those things and discuss those things. That's not true. They had clearance from the beginning. So she just got in the way when all those negotiations with the fast and the uniforms, I don't know what that was. I mean, Obama, as everybody knows, he did tell the Secretary of Defense, Do use all means to do this. And then he got on a plane to Vegas to go see Beyonce and Jay Z. It's like, Why did he not cancel that trip and stay and make sure his orders are followed up on? That's one thing that wasn't done that surprises me that nobody ever complains about.

So Obama, this is while the attacks are happening?

Yeah, he flew to Vegas while the.

Attacks are happening. So we have an embassy and a CIA annex under attack, and the President of the United States is flying to Vegas to meet with Beyonce. Yep. Do you hear that, everybody?

So the problem is way bigger than Hillary. I don't like to focus on Hillary because she's like the scapegoat, and she's done a million things wrong. But God, there's so many other people. Jake Sullivan is in a super senior role in our government who had a way bigger role than Hillary, and people just ignore it. And like I said, they don't care that Obama went to Vegas. It blows my mind. And then the fact that the Department of Defense, they could not respond. They weren't even close to responding that night. Like pure failure. And yeah, all that stuff got pushed. You just say it's Hillary, and everyone's like, Yeah. And then nobody else had to be held accountable.

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You can sign up right now for $1 a month at Shopify. Com/shon, that's all lower case. Go to Shopify. Com/shon now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in. That's Shopify. Com/shon. Thank you for listening to the Sean Ryan Show. If you haven't already, please take a minute, head over to iTunes and leave the Sean Ryan Show a review. We read every review that comes through, and we really appreciate the support. Thank you. Let's get back to the show. All right, sir, we're back from the break. So I want to talk a little bit about the committee that you got recruited on. So in 2015, you got recruited from the CIA by Trey Gaudie to be an executive appointment on the Select Committee onthe different targets in Benghazi. How did that come about?

Like most things, I think some of the guys from Benghzi gave Trey my phone number, and he called me. So we just had initial discussions. He was just asking basics, like how things worked in Benghazi, the different terrorists, just atmospheric that he didn't know or understand. And then he liked what I had to say, and he said, How about you join my committee? And I said, Hell no. I was confused, though. I didn't pay much attention to Congress like most humans. And there had just been a Benghazi report that came out from another committee that was run by Mike Rogers, and it was horrible. I actually had read it and commented all over it, and so I thought it was his. And so it was funny. So I said, Hell no. And then I told Boon, and he's like, You said that to a congressman? That's super rude. And I said, They wrote that crappy report. He's like, I think that was someone else. I was like, My bad. So Boon's like, Well, if he comes around, maybe have a discussion, at least see what they're working on, see if they're doing anything you're interested in.

You should at least sit down. I said, If it comes around again. And then the funny thing is I was considering proposing to the CIA to let me go work on a red team in Afghanistan because I thought Mullah Omar was in Afghanistan at the time. And so I was working on a proposal to pitch it to see if I'd go to Afghanistan for a year. And then Trey called me back and he said, Will you come up and just sit with my staff? And I said, Fine, I'll come sit with your staff. So I fly up to DC and I find the office, finally. I thought it was in the basement. Apparently, it's not. There's multiple basements in the capital. Who knew? And I'm in a conference room with his staff, and the staff director is sleeping during the meeting. Anyway, we get done with it. And Trey already calls me and he's like, Hey, what did you think? I said, I just don't think this is for me. And he said, I'll let you live in Tampa because I was living and wanted to stay in Florida time. And I said, Okay, now we're speaking.

So we had a little negotiation and a little discussion, and then I decided to join the committee. So I basically transferred from the CIA, in the government process, over to the Benghazi Committee. The interesting thing.

Though-what were those discussions like? That was easy. When you left CIA to go to the committee?

Cia was easy, but I'll circle back and give you a different response, though. Okay. So I went to the committee, and how Trey wanted the committee, he wanted all the Republicans and Democrats to sit together and work together. So he never asked me my political party, and I wasn't political anyway. But on paper, I was a Democrat. So the Democrats realized Trey hired a Democrat, and they came at me like, There's no tomorrow. So the Democrat side of the Benghasa Committee.

They came at you?

Yeah. Why? Because I was a Democrat joining the Republican side of the committee, apparently, but I was apolitical.

So was there motivation to get to the bottom of what happened or just to make their people look good?

No. Their motivation was to make sure Hillary didn't look bad. And then they had this weird conspiracy, it seemed, that I knew stuff that didn't exist, that I knew covert action stuff, and Trey hired me to cover it up so it wouldn't come out. But that's all that crazy stuff that the Benghazi annex was moving weapons to Syria. It's like, Guys, if we're going to move weapons to Syria, we don't need to ship them through some crappy little State Department and CIA Annex in Bangladesh to get them all the way to Syria, right? We would just take them to Turkey and bring them in. So all that's a conspiracy, right? But a lot of people at that time were still thinking, Oh, you were attacked for your weapons or whatever. And it's like we had zero weapons. And we weren't bringing in weapons, so there is no stingers. So a lot of people get confused. So stingers are US-made, and we gave them to the Afghan Mujahideen. There are zero stingers in all of Libya. What Libya had is Russian SA-7s, SA-9s, so they're also manpads. But they came out of Gaddafi, stockpiles, and then they proliferated everywhere as you can imagine.

But a lot of people get confused that those manpads in Libya are there because the US brought them in like stingers. And it's like, no, these are Gaddafi's manpads, and now we're just trying to get rid of them so the terrorists don't get them. So it's a huge confusion among people because they confuse what we did, I think, Charlie Wilson's war or something, and they think that's what we did. It's like the Libyan Revolution, we were air support, right? We drop stuff from planes. That's how we helped them win. It was nothing like the Soviet war. So anyway, back to wherever I was. So that was their theory. I knew covert action stuff that really didn't exist. So what they first did is they barred me from doing anything. I couldn't even go on the systems, so I couldn't work. My first two months I could do no work. I don't even think I could get in the email. Who barred you? The base of the Dems put something in to stop me from being able to work. So then they went to the CIA to have the CIA remove me from the committee. So I had to go over to the CIA with the CIA lawyers.

And it was funny because the CIA lawyers were going to the Dems. It's odd she's on the committee, but she's the advisor, so it's completely logical that he would hire someone who worked in Benghazi as his advisor on Benghazi. So the CIA said, We see no conflict. Because I think they saw that weird COVID action theory. So the CIA lawyers were confused, right? Because everything was baseless. So the CIA said she can stay because we see no conflict. So then they were going to do this weird thing where they're going to release a report on me that talked about some of my time in Africa that was an issue. And I'll say what I think it maybe was. I have no idea. Maybe it was made up. But it ended up being I was undercover when I was in Africa. So luckily, our lawyers on our side went back and said, Hey, you can't just release stuff on the CIA without getting the CIA to approve it. If you want to put some on Sarah, send it to the CIA for a review, and you can put it out. And we did that, and they backed away.

But Elijah Cummings got really involved, and he said to his staff What is this? So he stepped in and said, This is foolish, too. So he was the Dem leader of the committee. So he wasn't in... I wouldn't call Elijah Cummings an issue. It was like the people under him. So he stopped that. But there is one thing. So when I was in Trippley in the spring, I was there going after MBM, who then did the attacks. But also the main target in Tripoli was Abu Al-Nassal, Libby, who had done the Kenyan-Tansania attacks. And so when I first left for Libya, I went to the CIA and said, Hey, I'm going out. The COS wants me to come and do capture operations. They're like, There's no legal approvals for capture operations. We're not going to give you any approvals. You're not going to capture anyone. And then I went out and we put it all in motion. We got drones, we got approvals, and then they're like, Holy crap. So they circled back around and said, Hey, now that you have the whole infrastructure, go capture Abu Anas. And I refused to capture Abu Anas because the issue with Abu Anas Al-Libi is he was detained all these years and I ran, and he was released because he was about to die.

You should have seen this guy. He couldn't even... His brother took care of his family. He couldn't carry stuff. He was on desk doorstep, right? And I said, I can't capture him. He's going to die in our custody. And as you know, we were going to use militias. An intelligence service was just set up. And I said, He's going to 100 % die in our custody. I said it to COS. I said, If we capture him, he will die before he goes to a courtroom. I promise you. And so he backed me and we refused to do the capture. So after we both left, they did the capture. He died in custody before he went to court. But a lot of people had issues with the fact that I refused to capture him. But it's like, What are you going to do with a dead terrace on your hands? That's even worse. And it was really bad because when he died in custody, they even tried keeping him alive. They gave him a liver transplant that could have to an American. So basically another American died for him. It was really messy. It's like they never should have touched him.

He was on death's doorstep. But anyway, so that was my entry into the Benghazi Committee. Finally, they agreed that I would sit down and have a one-on-one with the dams, and they asked me a trillion questions, and then they let me work. So then I finally worked on the committee. But it was then a month later, because remember, the first two months I didn't even work. So the third month I'm finally working and I go over to CIA to do real work. And I get in an elevator with me and other people from the Benghazi Committee, and an analyst steps on the elevator that I knew was an analyst in the shop that should be working in Benghazi, and he was good, one of the best analysts I knew in the agents and he comes in and he said, What are you working on now? And I go to the Benghazi Committee and he goes, I won't touch that with a 10-foot pole. And this guy was the best, right? And I was like, Huh, if the best guy who's got great integrity, hard worker in the shop that would be working in Benghazi won't touch it, they're not doing it.

So when I left CIA that day, I called Boon and I said, The CIA is not going after the Benghazi attackers. He's like, What are you talking about? It's been a few years. They must be. I said, No, that's why we haven't seen anything. They're not going after them. And that's the day we decided to do our own investigation and track them down ourselves.

Sam, did you learn anything in that committee?

I learned Congress doesn't have a lot of teeth. I don't know what teeth they have now that they're locking people up, but at least when I was there, they put all these committees together, they write great reports. Our report is excellent, but what's it do? They don't use the carrots and sticks they need. Congress holds all the money, but they never actually go make the threats or force people to make the change. And so I don't know what the solution is to that. They're going to make this big Afghanistan war commission, right? Is their teeth at the end? I don't know. I guess I felt from that it was interesting working in Congress, but I'm not sure that's the place for me because I'm a doer. I need.

To like-Would you do it again?

I would do the Benghaza Committee again only for the fact it was the only way I realized CIA wasn't working on the Benghaza attackers 100 %. It was worth that one minute in the elevator.

Man. So other than that, it was just a waste of time.

Kind of. I liked to some of the people I worked with. It was interesting to learn how Congress works or doesn't work. Those type of things, obviously, for any just to have an understanding of your career. Trey Gaudie is a very interesting person. We actually had a good mix of interesting Congress people that I learned from them and saw how they did their work. But you want to work in something that has an effect on the end, right? I mean, that's the person I am. Yeah.

Well, let's get into some of the attackers that were out there. What's going on with these guys? Who do you want to start with?

Gosh. I think the one we should start with first is maybe we just talk about the masterminds really quick because a lot of people get confused by that. Okay. So I explained how Al Qaeda planned the whole attack to kidnap the ambassador, right? So that's pretty clear. It's understood, and MBM was the mastermind. Well, there is a separate terrorist named Wasan bin Hamid who during that night took advantage and attacked the CIA Annex. So that wasn't part of Al Qaeda's plan, nor did any of the Al Qaeda attackers go to the CIA Annex. That's completely separate. And that one is a lot of work, just FYI, if you're trying to track these people down. So the craziest thing happened. So he was hanging out outside watching the attack on the consulate, and he got a phone call. And it was a guy in Tripoli saying, Hey, I just got a call from the Americans here. Which was actually, J. S. S. He's referring to the two J. S. Guys. Hey, I just got a call from the Americans. They're sending a rescue force from here to Benghazi, and they want you to help. He's like, What the fuck?

There's more Americans coming to Benghazi, and he lost it on the phone. So he was the one called to go pick up Team Triplee, okay? By a crazy random guy, J. Sug had a relationship with, which probably wasn't a solid relationship as we now know. So he hangs up the phone and someone nearby hears him say, I'm going to kill all the Americans tonight. So that then is when he puts the whole plan in motion to do the mortars. So he sends a commander to the airport to now interdict Team Triplee when they come and hold them up. So Team Triplee arrived, I don't have the exact time, maybe 1:30 in the morning, and they held them at the airport till almost 5:00 in the morning. And then that commander, was some called him and said, Hey, let them go. And the crazy part is one of the CIA officers heard that in real time. So he heard him say, Hey, Wasom bin Hamid said we can go now. So luckily we caught that piece of the conversation too. So the commander, though, is completely unwitting, which is crazy. So the commander moves Team Triple to the CIA Annex, and then he goes inside the building where the Skiff is.

So Bob's in there and all the CIA personnel and then the GRS team lead. So they're all in this one building. And Wasom bin Hamid calls this guy's fighters outside and tells them to leave. And the guy calls says, I can't leave. My commander is inside. And then he sounds like, I don't care about your commander. Leave. So the forces that took Team Triple E abandoned the building, and then the first mortar hits. So that's how quick it was. They arrived at 5:05 PM, that first mortar hit at 5:05 AM, and the first mortar hit at 5:17 AM. So the whole holding up at the airport was just for the mortar strike setup, and Wessom did it. The crazy part is, so Wessom is the one I said early on that was killed by the Limeon National Army, but he did so well in this attack, he eventually became the AQ head for the Bangladesh.

No.

Kidding. Yeah. And the crazy part is, so there is a huge war in Benghazi with the terrorists. It went from 2014 to January 2017. He took over, I want to say late 2014, early 2015, and they started losing. And so the head of AQIM actually did a whole call out to international terrorists of AQ all over the world and basically said, Go to Benghazi and fight with Wasom. Go save our base in Benghazi. And it actually worked, and they survived another 14 months until the mortar strike on Wasom. So it was the Libyan National Army and the Emirates that did the strike. And he got hit and he suffered, may I say, about 10 days and died. Yay. So Al Qaeda was afraid when the rest heard Wasom was dead, they'd give up fighting. So they lied about it. And so they lied about it for a few weeks until they couldn't lie about it anymore. And then Benghazi fell and Al-Qaeda lost its base there, and they haven't gotten it back since.

How many countries are Al-Qaeda operating in?

Oh, gosh.

Do you have any idea?

In most countries, they at least have clandestine officers. You know, Al-Qaeda is so entrenched in places. They have people working like Visa lines at embassies in Europe, for example. Think about it. How many years they've been in operation? There are plenty of people behind Al-Qaeda that don't shoot guns. They just get ignored. How many people involved in the finances? They're pretty global.

Do you think they're bigger than Cartel?

I think it would depend. If we're talking if they bring in as much money, that's where you get tough. But I think in bodies, they're bigger than a cartel.

How much bigger?

They have so much of a reach in a cartel. Their cartels are regional. They might have some international tie. Al Qaeda can go anywhere and they have a power broker to help them do something.

Okay. They're almost like an embassy. They're almost like, Right? We have embassies. Us has outreach all over with embassies. Al Qaeda has that in a form.

Okay. What about ISIS? Some of these other organizations. I'm just trying to paint a picture of how prevalent these organizations actually are because I think a lot of people think Al Qaeda, Afghanistan.

Oh, yeah.

No. Isis, Syria, Iraq. This isn't a centralized network.

No. And remember, Al Qaeda is the main vein of terrorism, right? So if you talk about other groups like Al-Shabab, Hezballah, whomever, Al-Qaeda links in with all of those main groups. So they're like the godfather of terrorism, and everyone else is like, Oh, Al-Qaeda. So all those people are going to places like Afghanistan because now it is Al-Qaeda's hub. But Al-Qaeda has branches everywhere. So ISIS wanted to be Al-Qaeda, and they did a pretty damn good job. And ISIS is way scarier than Al-Qaeda if they were ever Al-Qaeda size. They just could not get there because luckily, people went after them harder, I feel. I feel people targeted ISIS probably better than Al-Qaeda. So they're mostly known for Syria and Iraq, but they still keep popping up. Just even a couple of years ago, they did a lot of damage in Mozambique. They keep trying to make their inroads. Really now, though, you're mostly hearing about the ISIS branch in Afghanistan, but I think a lot of that is our press and our narrative are trying to say, Oh, no, the Taliban or our counterterrorism partner. So we're talking up ISIS-K in Afghanistan to make ISIS the threat.

So you ignore the Taliban, it's working with al-Qaeda. Does that make sense? So al-Qaeda is the bigger threat in Afghanistan than ISIS. But the US government is saying ISIS is a bigger threat than Al Qaeda. And so that's super frustrating because it's actually not a fact.

Wow.

Oh, I do have one point though I was trying to make really quick. So he had two operational deputies the night of the attack, and so we're super interested in both of them. One was a long-time friend of Zawir Herys that basically brought in a bunch of Al Qaeda people to fight during the Libyan Revolution. A lot of people don't understand this. The Libyan Revolution was not some democratic movement. It was terrorists taking it to Gaddafi because he locked him up forever, and most of the people fighting it, or at least leading militias were terrorists. And Al Qaeda brought in lots of terrorists to fight the Libyan Revolution. So there seems to be a really complete disconnect that it's all Libyans who I was a barber and now I'm a warrior. It's like, Yeah, but you work for the terrorists that ran your group. So he's one of the big targets that was involved then in the Annex because we focus a little on the when we can because of the CIA. But the other one is with some of the brother, and the crazy part is he lives in Turkey, and in 2018, he applied for a visa to the United States, and it got granted, 2018.

They granted with Sam Benhameid, who attacked the CIA Annex and killed Ronan Bob a damn visa. Thank God he went to the airport and he must have been on some Turkish list or something, and the Turkey didn't let him fly to America.

Are you serious?

He was granted a US visa.

When?

In 2018? 2018. So this wasn't some long super time ago. So it's super frustrating. It's really frustrating working in Benghazi, as you can imagine, because people don't care and stuff like this happens, and he almost got to the United States. So that's a really big.

Thing then. This even says he joined ISIS in 2015.

Yeah, he's basically like...

So this guy was Al Qaeda, ISIS, and we're known and we're granting him a visa.

Well, the brother is a big funder of ISIS even. So the one in Turkey, he's a huge... He's a millionaire. He's a multimillionaire, and he's a terrorist financeeer, and he also he finances Al Qaeda and ISIS. The really interesting part is when Wasand bin Hamid died, all these people called him, the head of Hamas called him. But you know who called him that people ignore? Remember Abdul Azam? He's the godfather of Al Qaeda. His son called Wasand bin Hamid's family and said, Sorry for your loss. These things are so much bigger than we just talk about an attack on the consulate in Benghzi. And people are so lost that it is this big thing and it's all connected, right? They want to ignore that. And they want to make Binghazi this little thing on the side that randomly happened when it's a piece of the whole pie.

They want to compartmentalize everything.

Exactly. Okay.

Where are these guys now?

Well, we could talk about one that just in July, we luckily, he ended up finally getting watchlisted after 11 years. And again, it was in Turkey. And he'd been traveling back and forth to Turkey because he lost his leg and he goes their first treatment. So luckily, he was finally watchlisted. His name is Ziyad Ballam, and he's Al Qaeda. He's pretty much right now, probably one of our top three or four senior Al Qaeda members at the Benghazi attacks. So the Turkish authorities at the Istanbul airport capture him, and then they plan to deport him to Benghazi because that's where he's a wanted terrorist. In Libya, there's two different governments, an East government and a West government. The East government is where the LNA is, General Hoffdaar, if you've heard of him. And then the other government is the one the US is aligned to. So the government the US is aligned to, that Prime Minister basically gets involved and he tells the Turkish, No, you're not sending him to Mangasi. You're sending him to Trippoli. He was having him sent to Trippoli so he can release him. No one believed me he was being sent to Tripoli to be released.

He sends him to Trippoli. He held him for 10 days and guess where he is? Released. That's the US ally. That is our one point of contact in Libya. He released Ziyad in July. A captured terrorist involved in Bingadazie attacks. And the thing is, Ziyad is our emotional top target because he stole a weapon the night of the attacks, a saw. And the CIA had two saws and were 99.9 % sure it's our saw. And so he actually stole a CIA weapon the night of the attacks too.

A saw is a Belfeid machine gun for those that don't know.

Why did they release him? He could get him for looting.

-why did they... Why why would they.

Release him? The problem is... So the general that I've talked about, he's the one fighting all the terrorists. He's the one that took the war in 2014 against the terrorists in Benghazi in the east. And then as he beat the terrorists and killed them, they moved and they moved, they moved and they moved to Trippley. Trippley is their safe haven. They're protected by the government of Libya. Remember, that's a separate government. So when Libya formed after Gaddafi fell, and the government in Libya stayed with the terrorists because the terrorists kept them in power. So you know the old LIFG guys, Al Qaeda. So they stayed aligned with the terrorists, and they still are. So yes, the US ally in Libya is the same side Al Qaeda is on.

This makes zero sense.

To me. Yeah, and we've been that way for 10 years.

What do you think this guy's out doing?

I don't know. He was pretty spook from what I heard, and he actually thinks it's a whole big operation against Al Qaeda in Libya, which could be good and bad, right? He could go full extreme, or he could go into hiding and maybe not do anything for a while. But it actually did spook him.

How about Pazma Al-Darnaway.

Yeah, Hamza al-Darnaway. Yeah, so we talk about a terrorist that Boon interacted with a couple of times in his career. And so lately we've been bringing up Hamza because Hamza is super interesting. So back when we were in Pakistan, when I met Boon, Hamza was one of the top targets at the time. You know how I said we had the top 10 Taliban list? We had a top 20 al-Qaeda list and Hamza was on it the entire time we were in Pakistan. I go to Libya, and then I told you I go to Benghazi in August and basically the top Alqaeda target in Benghazi, the day I got there was Hamza Al-Darnaoui. So Hamza Al-Darnaoui ends up being involved in our attacks. The really interesting thing is when he was wanted to Pakistan, it's because he was running an electronics workshop for Bin Laden. Bin Laden took him under his wing, and he was Bin Laden's guy that... You know how they kept wanting to try to find a new way to attack? Like a new innovative way to attack? Hamza was Bin Laden's guy to where Bin Laden gave him a whole scientific research laboratory.

That's what we call the Electronics Lab. So very close friend of Bin Laden, super involved in external planning, obviously was involved in the Menghazi attacks. Where do you think he is now?

Back in Libya.

Oh, no. We wish.

Where?

Afghanistan? Yes, U-S.

Go figure.

Yeah. Again, we know he has been a talk target of the US government for, gosh, who knows how many years. He's sanctioned by the US. And it's like, Hey, it's just another big al-Qaeda guy who's Libyan in Afghanistan. Why the hell is he there? He's there training terrorists to come attack the United States, and they're not doing anything about it.

I mean, where do you... I don't know.

And we've shared. It's been shared. It's not just on the Sean Ryan show. I have provided to the US government that he is.

There, just FYI. What is their response? When you say that, when you say this guy is in Afghanistan training terrorists to come attack us, what is the response?

I really just get thanks for your info. And then nothing happens? Yeah. A year ago, I did provide something really good, and it actually did go up to the White House level and they decided they didn't want to do anything with it.

Can you go into that at all or no?

Probably not in this forum without talking to all the other people involved, as you can imagine, who would be at risk. Because the negative is, right? If you don't go after info, you still want to keep your people in play who can collect that info in the hopes that maybe the US will finally come around and go after the terrorists. You don't want to obviously lose the people who can report that info.

Why do you think they're not going after these guys?

Because they want you to believe Al Qaeda does not exist in Afghanistan. So how can you kill a Libyan Al Qaeda member in Afghanistan? Why do they.

Want us to-Why do they want us to.

Believe that? Because they want us to forget about Afghanistan and move on.

I've heard this from congressmen. I'm hearing this. They really think this is just going to.

Go away. Hundred %. The only reason Afghanistan hasn't gotten away is all these pesky volunteers like me, like Scott, whomever, still trying to save their Afghans. And we've gotten in their way and they're sick of it, and they're just waiting to plow through us until it's not in the press anymore and it's ignored and they can move on. They never wanted to go on for two more years. We're annoying them at this point.

Do you think there's going to be any recourse towards you or Scott or anybody?

Since there's a thousand of us helping Afghans, I doubt it. In some government agencies, people were gone after for actually helping with the EVACs. My job, very different. My bosses were super supportive of me being involved in the Afghan evacuation. A large number of people in my office actually supported it. I think the majority of actually worker bees in the US government were supportive of helping Afghans. It's the senior-level stuff that we all stay out of right. But I think normal everyday people who have worked counterterrorism in the whole career are very concerned about Afghanistan.

Yeah, I bet. I mean, how many of these top-level guys are out there that we're just ignoring? Do you have an estimation on that?

Well, there's two different things. There's guys who are ignoring and guys we thought that were dead that aren't. So both those are in Afghanistan. I'd say if you're asking me people who had over million dollar bounties on their head, maybe this is a good way to do it. Okay. They had a million, $5 million, or $10 million bounty, and they're in Afghanistan right now. I'd say there's 15 of them, and I'm not saying Taliban. Fifteen that aren't Taliban because people will be like, Oh, Taliban. We put a million on Beraday. I'm talking Al Qaeda or other very known.

Terrorist groups. You think we're going to be back there someday?

We have to be. They're coming down. The thing is, remember, they're on offense now, and they are coming for us. And a lot of them... Remember, a lot of these guys we locked up for 20 years and we didn't lock them up in a nice prison in the United States. They were in poly-charky prison. It's this really shitty prison outside Kabul. There are terrorists very, very upset and they want revenge.

What do you think the probability of another Line-11 attack is? Did I already ask that on here?

No, you haven't asked me that. Okay. I think exactly how it's done. It is hard to replace Khalid Shaik Mohammed, KSM, who planned, and I'm not going to lie, he was a genius. But do they want to do something at that level? Yes. Do I think that they will do something more innovative than 9/11? Definitely. Remember, they tried it with obviously the liquids on the airplanes. I think the next attack will probably be something more innovative. I don't think it's going to be 3,000, but I don't think it's going to matter if it's 3,000, right? Because they want to hit here and they want to show they can do it and they want to do something spectacular.

How do you know that they want to hit here?

Because we're their top enemy. And we always will be. It's never going to change. And remember, are.

We picking up traffic from them that are saying this?

Do you know? I have no idea if we're even collecting traffic anymore. Oh, man. It's funny because a month or two ago, I found one of our newest-Benghazi attackers, the one I told you it was in Gitmo. And he's the one talking to Kanis. And the funny part is the Libyan that was telling me that, he said, Well, I hope your country is collecting what he's saying to the Kanis. I said, My country is not even... They don't even know this Gitmo guy was involved in Benghazi, let alone he's still a terrorist, right? Think of it. We haven't even collected on what happened to the Gitmo guy's release. Can you imagine what we're doing to anybody else?

We're not collecting on these guys?

They don't know that he's been a terrorist for 11 years. Honestly, I actually went to look what they... Even when he was in Gitmo, they didn't even know he was Al-Qaeda. So let's not even call out Gitmo debriefings done well because he was Al-Qaeda when they picked him up and put him in Gitmo, and none of his Gitmo files say he was Al-Qaeda. Zero.

This is not painting a good picture, Sarah.

I know it's not.

Do you think they're going to come through the Southern border?

I think the Southern border is the easiest place to come through, but if they can get in a refugee pipeline, they can come straight in. So the refugee pipeline is very dangerous. What a lot of people... Here's an argument you'll get, and people need to understand this. They'll be like, Well, there's been terrorist attacks all around the world, and Afghans weren't involved in them, right? It's because the Afghan passport was so weak. Now the Afghan passport is extremely powerful because a lot of humanitarians are like, We need to save these Afghans from the terrorists. So Afghans are being brought in all over the world, and Al Qaeda is like, Holy crap.

So they don't even need this other border.

This is a coup. They don't. Our terrorists in Libya, they were given official Libyan passports and fake names. It's the exact same thing the Taliban is doing. The terrorists can get passports for other countries even now, right? So they don't have to come over the border, but there are some still doing the border to actually even just to see if they can do it and to test it and to learn about our weaknesses. Because remember, terrorists are always looking at our weaknesses. I used to detainee briefings, and I'm trying to learn about them, but you pay a lot of attention to what they're trying to learn about you, right? And they are going to find our weaknesses, and our Southern border is probably our biggest weakness right now.

Yeah. And you think we're their number one priority.

Hundred %.

Even though we're gone.

We're.

Still their number one priority.

100 %. Remember, we killed their family. Remember, this isn't just Afghanistan. We killed their family members in Afghanistan, the Tariffs family members. We killed the Tariffs family members in Iraq, right? We killed a bunch of them when they did spend a little bit of time they did in ISIS and Libya. There is a lot of revenge. Yemen. Yeah, exactly. Yemen is a really good example. People always ignore how powerful AQAP is. You know how we talked about you said, Who's in Afghanistan? And I said, Hey, let's go one million over. The main AQAP target that I think they thought was dead. His name is Ibrahim Albana. Guess where he is? Afghanistan. Afghanistan. So AQAP, senior leader in Afghanistan as well. Being completely ignored. And guess who he hangs out with? Hamza bin Laden. Do you.

Think that the resistance has any... Hope of taking their country back? I think-For in their people.

I think the good thing about the resistance is, what I'm saying to you, they know all that, right? So the resistance aren't naive, right? They are the experts, right? They know their enemy, which is the most valuable thing, right? Because we really don't know our enemy most of the time. Thank God the resistance knows their enemy. The resistance has to build a very powerful coalition. That's how they win. And if they keep separated or keep anything ethnic, it's just not going to be enough because the Taliban is so big and so powerful. They have to hit back with the same strength. And so I don't even know what percentage of bodies the Taliban is, but I don't know if they're 40 or 50 % of the population, then your resistance has to be 40 to 50 % of the population. And that's what they have to get to. And I think they can win, but it's going to be a lot of guerrilla stuff, right? Because the Taliban are the better armed. But I'm positive that they can win, but they all have to come together, and there has to be a catalyst to bring them all together.

And we haven't seen that happen yet.

A couple more people I want to talk about. We got two Benghazi prisoners in US prisons, Ahmed Abu Katala, convicted of terrorism charges, not murder charges currently in a Colorado prison. And Mustafa Al-Iman, sentenced to 19 years in prison. Why don't these guys have death penalties?

Why don't they have life? They're not even attackers.

They're just low level?

No, they're not even low level. So Abu Katala is a little messed up in the head. So Al Qaeda never shared the attack with Abu Katala. The US actually lies to everybody. So during the revolution, Al-Qatala had a little militia of all. Katala lived in Compton, okay? It's the best way to put it. Shittiest neighborhood in Benghzi. And so 20 of the guys got together and they had a militia. It was a pretty good militia, right? Because they are the toughest, roughest guys. After Gaddafi fell, they disbanded the militia. So in 2012, Katala was not in a terrorist group. And he's a little bit crazy. Some people say it was Gaddafi tortured him, whatever reason. So Al Qaeda never shared the attack with Katala. Oh, God. So Qatala is sitting at home drinking tea. He gets a call from Mustafa, our imam, who just found out there's an attack and said, Hey, there's an attack going on in the US consulate. Let's meet there. And they went down and met there. The crazy part is Qatala stayed outside the entire attack. So the whole time Al Qaeda was in, he stayed outside. And then if you understand anything about the timeline, he didn't even go into the compound until after GRS and State Department left.

So a whole another hour. Then he went into the entire compound and did a little looting. So he's a fake mastermind the US lied to so they didn't have to tell you it was Al Qaeda. The good part is the jury saw through it, and that's why your other part of the question, he didn't get the death penalty because they were like, There seems to be no evidence that he really was much of an attacker, let alone the mastermind. But yeah, they are a low hanging fruit. Mustafa was basically, I'm assuming, only detained to back up the Qatala one because they went to Ms. Rodder and got Mustafa. And within a half a mile of Mustafa was at least three senior Benghazi attackers. Right where he was.

Man. What? So these guys are just scapegoat.

Yeah, and worse, they have no Al Qaeda background. So Mustafa and Emaar, he's really weird. His father maybe did a little extremist stuff. He was in Palestine, maybe had some relationships with Hamas, but he wasn't some known Hamas fighter. And then the family emigrated to Libya and he got in some trouble and he got put in Abu Salim Prison. That's Gaddafi's big prison. In prison, he makes best friends with Katala. So then they all get broken out during the Libyan Revolution and he moves to Benghzi. So honestly, you know how long it took me to find anyone in who knew Mustafa, Imaam. And then when I did they're like, That idiot? He's a dude buddy. He was a terrorist for a few weeks or something. So yes, I think they captured Mustafa Al-Imaam to strengthen the Katala piece of their fake narrative. Of.

Oh, man. It's just... I'm going off on a tangent here, but it really irks me that people still... I mean, the news, the false narratives, the scapegoats, I mean, the media has really turned into just a state megaphone.

I know. And the part that really frustrates me, though, is they put him on trial knowing... Boon refused to testify. He's not the mastermind. So they knew there was people in Benghazi who didn't knew he wasn't the mastermind, and they still put him on trial. And I feel like that's a real big lack of integrity too. And remember, we sent a team to go get him, so we risked American lives to pick up some low-hanging fruit that wasn't even attacker. What if some of them would have got killed?

I wish I could just get through to people to not buy off on everything they see on the news. And this is another example. You are the type of person that briefs the White House.

And.

People are still going to go to news. I don't know how to get through to them. I know. But I don't want to beat a dead horse. But how fast do you think these terrorist organizations are going to get back up to what they were before we started taking them out? What is the regeneration process for Al Qaeda? Is it already back up?

Well, if we just look, I like to compare to Libya because it was a real example, right? So Gaddafi fell the end of October. So beginning of November, Al Qaeda started setting up a base. They were actually doing a real base in Benghazi, right? They did our attacks in September. And I told you General Hofftar had that war against them. Guess how many soldiers they killed from 2014 to 2017?

I have no idea.

8,000. And then you add 20,000 civilians on top of that. That's how powerful Al Qaeda got from the end of 2011 to basically 2014. So Al-Qaeda is a year away from that in Afghanistan.

Right back up to what it was.

Oh, and a thousand times bigger. Because remember, Al-Qaeda had little pockets of training. Obviously, everybody knows about Tarnaq Farms down in Kandahar. There was a sorobi camp outside of Kabul, et cetera. They had little pockets in Afghanistan. Now there's a training center in every province being built in Afghanistan. The level isn't even... The Al-Qaeda that is coming is so much bigger than the Al-Qaeda on 9/11. They're already probably bigger than 9/11.

That's.

Scary. Yes. We have no progress on Al-Qaeda at this point.

We have, from a geopolitical standpoint here, we've got Russia-Ukraine going on. We have major beef with China, Taiwan. We've got, and now we have the ISIS, we have Al Qaeda, which is just massing incredible amounts of people. And we're enemy number one.

And don't forget, Africa has become coup country. Like every country, coup, coup, coup, coup, coup. We're losing all access in Africa. Yeah, and China. It's all going to China and Russia.

China and Russia are taking it all.

Yeah, they have it all. They're not even taking it at this point. Do you.

Have any positive news?

Oh, is that what I came here for? No.

I tried to- I thought.

This was a.

Sean Ryan show. I tried to end every show with something positive, but I'm drawing a blank right now.

I think the positive is there's a lot of good Americans who've spent 20 years working counterterrorism, who are trying to get the word out, focus on this threat, make this a priority. And honestly, when they're not getting answers, they might work in parts of the government. They're going and collecting it themselves. They are trying to do something, and it's better than... I feel like after Benghazi, nobody did anything, right? I feel now, I'm hoping now, after Afghanistan, people were like, We're not going to let this happen. No, not on my watch. And that's what we need to come together.

Yeah. Well, Sarah, I just want to say I really appreciate you coming out and educating me and the audience. And what's happening in your future?

My future is I want to get the mortar team. So it's a 10-man mortar team that hit the CIE Annex. We recently named one, and we got nine more to go, and that's our near-term focus.

Good for you. Thank you. Well, how can people get in touch with you? How can they find you? Where do they get the book?

The book's easy. You can just get it on Amazon or Barnes and Noble. We have an Instagram page where mostly we make fun of terrorists. So if you don't like humor around us, then maybe don't come to it. But otherwise, it's askaremediagroup. Com. I mean, askaremediagroup. So it's A-S-K-A-R-I-Media Group. Right on.

Can't spell at this point. We'll link it at the bottom in the description. Perfect. And whenonce again, I just want to say best of luck to you. Thank you for coming. Thank you.

Cheers. Cheers.