A recently-released and heavily redacted copy of a Sept. 12, 2012, Defense Intelligence Agency memo
to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Leon
Panetta, the White House National Security Council and the Joint Chiefs
of Staff said "the attack was planned 10 or more days prior on
approximately 01 September 2012. The intention was to attack the
consulate and to kill as many Americans as possible to seek revenge for
U.S. killing of Aboyahiye ((ALALIBY)) in Pakistan and in memorial of the
11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center buildings."
According to the memo, the attack "was planned and executed by the Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman (BCOAR). BCOAR is also responsible for past attacks on the Red Cross in Benghazi and the attack on the British Ambassador, they have approximately 120 members." Rahman is serving a life sentence in a federal prison for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center which killed six people in New York.
The leader of al-Qaeda in Libya and alleged mastermind of the attack on the US consulate and CIA Annex in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, Abd al-Baset Azzouz, was arrested in Turkey on November 13, 2014 by Turkish National Police in the city of Yalova, acting on intelligence supplied by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Turkey's National Intelligence Directorate (MİT). On November 24, 2014, Azzouz was deported to Jordan before being transferred to the United States, where it is believed he is currently being held.
Azzouz was born in Libya, immigrated to Manchester, England in 1994, but left Britain in 2009 for Pakistan, where he became a close lieutenant of al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, before being sent to Libya to run al-Qaeda's operations there.
It is important to note, that Azzouz's al Qaeda operational headquarters was the al Tawhid (or al Tawheed) College in Derna, Libya, a city long known as a haven for radical Islamists. Azzouz's "college" had been authorized by Libyan Under Secretary of the Ministry of Education Fathi Akkari, who was, at the time of the Benghazi attack, one of the eight candidates for the post of prime minister and a hard core member of the Muslim Brotherhood.
