Pakistan-based al Qaeda is secretly setting up sleeper cells and a clandestine network of jihadists to destabilize and take over Libya while hiding under a new cover name to prevent exposure and attacks, according to an internal Pentagon report.

“Al Qaeda has established a core network in Libya, but it remains clandestine and refrains from using the al Qaeda name,” according to the report produced jointly by the Library of Congress and the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office’s Irregular Warfare Support Program, a unit under the assistant defense secretary for special operations.

The report concludes that al Qaeda poses “a significant threat to the state-building process in Libya.”

The 54-page unclassified report describes al Qaeda -- which Pres. Obama recently declared to be in decline -- as “seeking to create an al Qaeda clandestine network in Libya that could be activated in the future to destabilize the government and/or to offer logistical support to al Qaeda’s activities in North Africa and the Sahel” -- the Sahara desert region stretching across northern Africa.

The report is dated August 2012 and was published before the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the US consulate in Benghazi that killed US Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

Intelligence officials have said since shortly after it occurred that the assault appeared to have been an al Qaeda attack. The Obama administration is currently under fire from Congress for initially claiming the Benghazi attack was the result of a spontaneous uprising by Muslims angry over an Internet video.

Several US intelligence officials said the Obama administration sought to hide intelligence that exposed the al Qaeda links to the Benghazi attack because doing so undermined Obama’s statement at the Democratic National Convention that al Qaeda was on “the path to defeat.”

Intelligence reports related to the attack showed that the al Qaeda front Ansar al-Sharia discussed the Benghazi attack with al Qaeda operatives outside Libya, which the Daily Beast reported on Sept. 28. The FBI currently is investigating the consulate attack.

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Editor's Note: Yup...war is in decline because the jihadists are winning...


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