On the night of the Sept. 11, 2012, assault, UN Ambassador Rice’s senior air Eric Pelofsky sent an email to Rice in which he expressed concern about a possible kidnap plot.
“Yes – I’m very worried. In particular, that he is either dead or this was a concerted effort to kidnap him,” wrote Pelofsky at 9:06 p.m. Eastern the night of the attack.
The e-mail was sent after the initial assault at the U.S. special mission and just prior to the second assault at the nearby CIA annex, according to administration timelines.
Has the Obama administration been suppressing evidence of a kidnapping or attempted kidnapping of Stevens?
The State Department’s lead Benghazi investigator, Thomas Pickering, refused to deny there was a plan to kidnap Stevens.
Pickering is the author of the 39-page report by the State Department’s Accountability Review Board, or ARB, which largely absolved then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other top State officials of wrongdoing regarding the Benghazi attack.
At a House Oversight and Government Reform committee hearing on Benghazi in August, Rep. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wy., asked Pickering about a potential kidnap plot.
She asked, “Is it true that they were planning to kidnap the ambassador and it went wrong?”
“I can’t comment on that,” Pickering replied, followed by a long pause.
Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., stepped in and changed the subject.
Later in the hearing, Pickering further commented on the kidnap issue.
He stated: “Kidnapping seemed to me to be far-fetched. Because in effect in the testimony that was given and the public report, they did not make a serious attempt to go into the closed area of the villa. It is not even sure in my view that they knew the ambassador was there. So I would say, while I said I didn’t want to touch that, I would say in retrospect it doesn’t seem highly likely. It could be, but I don’t think so.”