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Ahead of Chuck Hagel, John Brennan nominations, US intel official in Cairo
As Washington prepared for new appointments to the Obama cabinet, the US president dispatched US Undersecretary for Defense Intelligence Michael Vickers to Cairo Sunday, Jan. 12 on a two-day mission to try and revitalize the counter-terror war on two key fronts: post-Qaddafi Libya and Egyptian Sinai.
debkafile’s Washington sources report that President Barack Obama hastened to address these fronts, because he expected the five-month old murder of US Ambassador Christ Stevens in Benghazi by al Qaeda to come up at congressional hearings and hamper the endorsement of ex-Senator Chuck Hagel as defense secretary and John Brennan as Central Intelligence Director. Their appointments were announced Monday, Jan. 7.
Hagel faced a preliminary storm over his attitudes on Israel and Iran, whereas Brennan, as counterterrorism adviser to the president, has been responsible for shaping administration policy in this sphere in Libya, Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula.
The United States has still not taken steps against the Libyan Ansar al-Sharia group, which assassinated the ambassador and three US staffers on Sept. 11. 2012, and numbered Egyptian al Qaeda jihadis who came in from Cairo.
This cross-alliance still functions with impunity as the Libyan group enforces its control over large areas of Benghazi and eastern Libya, funded by the smuggling of arms from Libya and pumping them into the big smuggling pipelines running through Sinai via Egypt.
More: http://debka.com/article/22665/Ahead-of-…l-in-Cairo
2013-01-07 18:02:43
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