As I noted in the previous post, this is mind boggling.

“The State Department took nearly three weeks to formally request U.S. military protection for FBI agents assigned to investigate the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which killed the U.S. ambassador to that country and three other Americans, according to a senior U.S. official and a person familiar with the matter.

A State Department spokesman denied that the request took that long, but the fact that the FBI team arrived only Thursday in Libya’s second largest city while journalists have been there since the day after the assault has added to what lawmakers and others criticize as a disorganized response by the Obama administration to the deterioration of security there.

U.S. officials apparently took few steps to fortify the Benghazi consulate, despite growing signs that the city had become a dangerous place. The consulate was the target of a bomb in June, and Great Britain and the International Committee of the Red Cross withdrew their representatives from the city over the summer after they were targeted in separate incidents. After the Sept. 11 attack, the Obama administration offered a version of what took place that was sharply at odds with that offered by the Libyan government and witnesses to the attack.

Benghazi remains perilous. The Islamist militants blamed in the attack have returned to the city after being driven out by tens of thousands of demonstrators in the days after the consulate assault, and they have attacked police and soldiers in recent days.

The senior U.S. official said that “U.S. military assets” were moved into the Libya region “very soon after the attack” to support “whatever other U.S. agency” sought assistance, but the State Department didn’t make its request to the Pentagon for protection for the FBI investigators until recently.

Those assets included two U.S. destroyers and U.S. troops with Operation Juniper Spear, a counterterrorism effort against al-Qaida in the Maghreb, according to the person familiar with the matter. The group is an al-Qaida affiliate that has seized control of the northern half of Mali and is branching out into other parts of North Africa.”

Again, it wasn’t that dangerous that it would take three weeks to secure the ground around the embassy to allow the FBI to get in. According to my sources the State Department delayed at every turn, throwing up paperwork jams and red tape, frustrating even the most seasoned investigators involved.

“Someone was trying to hide something”, one told me, “It’s just inconceivable that it would take this long”.