US Withdraws All Personnel From Benghazi

No US Government Employees Remain in City

Three weeks after the attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi left the ambassador and three others dead, the State Department says today that it has pulled every single government employee out of the city.

State Dept. spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that as far as she knows there is not a single US government employee left in the city, and that all diplomatic contacts with the powerful Libyan city are being done “remotely.”

Exactly how many people were effected by this order to vacate the city is unclear, but it means that the US still hasn’t managed to get a single investigator into the city to check on the burned-down consulate.

How much they’ll be able to learn at this point is unclear, as the consulate has sat unguarded for weeks now, and the compound of Ansar al-Sharia, the group supposedly to blame, has also been looted and burned by pro-government protesters.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.