AP Benghazi story challenges Fox News ‘stand down’ scoop

By Erik Wemple, WashPost, Updated: December 16 at 11:28 am

Twentieth in a marathon series about Fox News’s Oct. 26 story on Benghazi, Libya.

The news that Fox News’s Jennifer Griffin laid before the public more than a year ago was explosive. It came on Oct. 26, 2012, not long before a presidential election. It brought seismic allegations to the set of facts that voters possessed in regard to the Sept. 12, 2012, attacks on the U.S. diplomatic installation in Benghazi, Libya.

Most seismic:

Fox News has learned from sources who were on the ground in Benghazi that an urgent request from the CIA annex for military back-up during the attack on the U.S. consulate and subsequent attack several hours later on the annex itself was denied by the CIA chain of command — who also told the CIA operators twice to “stand down” rather than help the ambassador’s team when shots were heard at approximately 9:40 p.m. in Benghazi on Sept. 11.

Former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods was part of a small team who was at the CIA annex about a mile from the U.S. consulate where Ambassador Chris Stevens and his team came under attack. When he and others heard the shots fired, they informed their higher-ups at the annex to tell them what they were hearing and requested permission to go to the consulate and help out. They were told to “stand down,” according to sources familiar with the exchange. Soon after, they were again told to “stand down.”

The CIA at the time issued a rare and emphatic denial of that allegation, saying that “no one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate.”

(More here.)