Always go back to the contemporaneous reports.  The reports which come out in the early days of such an event. The word floating at the time was: Stevens was in Benghazi negotiating with the local stinger recipients to purchase the weapons we GAVE them and transfer them to the then-newly forming Syrian operations.  Presumably, it was a gun-running deal gone bad.  That is why they would not commit military response.  THAT would have resulted in deep DIA investigations and after action reports which would blow up in the faces of the RATS who planned and executed the botched deal. Specifically, Stingers were mentioned in those early reports. The whole Libyan deal from the time that Ghaddfi 'gave up' his nuclear ambitions to GWB, through the "We Came, We Saw, He Died" (a very Cesarean comment, on reflection) and then ultimately to the Cluster-Fuck (or murder plot) in Benghazi and even now as the DS tries to save the final shards of control that they've worked so hard for in Tripoli...the whole thing stinks like a rotting whale beached on the Mediterranean shore.    CLEARLY - THEY (The A-hole DS) needed a wild, uncontrolled, corrupt Libya to effectuate the AFRICAN INVASION of EUROPE!   HOW can anyone NOT SEE THIS? These Creeps use whole nations for their power-grubbing goals. Can we PLEASE start proceedings on them and UNRAVEL all the crap THEY have been involved in these many effing DECADES?