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Four United States soldiers were killed, two were wounded, and five Nigerien soldiers were killed during an ambush by Islamic militants on American and Nigerien troops near the Niger-Mali border on 4 October 2017, in an incident most Americans — including high-ranking government officials — still knew little about, two weeks after it occurred. The paucity of details about the attack prompted critics such as Sen. John McCain of Arizona to complain that Trump administration officials were not being forthcoming with the facts. Some, citing incomplete and conflicting accounts of how the attack unfolded and the twelve-day delay between the deaths of the U.S. soldiers and any acknowledgment by President Trump that the incident had even occurred (and who also had questions about the nature of the U.S. military's mission in Niger), even suggested that the administration might be trying to cover up a debacle they said could be worse than the deadly 2012 attack by militants on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya. This might wind up to be Mr. Trump's Benghazi, said Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Florida) during a CNN interview in which she questioned the administration's competence: A widely shared Facebook post and threaded tweet circulating in mid-October (in some cases falsely attributed to journalist Dan Rather) described Niger as Benghazi on steroids: Parenthetically, another highly politicized screed capitalizing on how little information there was about the incident appeared on the left-leaning conspiracist web site Palmer Report, which went so far as to speculate — on the basis of no real evidence whatsoever — that the true explanation for Trump's seeming resistance to acknowledging the Niger attack was that United States troops had actually been involved in a secret Russian-controlled military operation, personally approved by the president: But apart from the fact that Russia did sign a vaguely-defined military-technical agreement with Niger on 22 August 2017 (the same day they signed one with Niger's West Africa neighbor, Nigeria), the web site's claim that U.S. troops could only have been sent to help the Russian military is counterfactual. Far from being deployed as an adjunct to the Russian military, at least 800 U.S. soldiers have been in Niger on an ongoing basis since 2011 to advise and assist in that country's fight against terrorism. President Donald Trump didn't send the troops there; President Barack Obama did. Moreover, air support for the troops attacked in Niger wasn't provided in the form of Russian-flown aircraft (as one would expect if it were a Russian operation), but by the French, whose fighter jets and helicopters were called in after the ambush started. We have seen no reliable reports of any Russian military presence at all in the area. 'Worse than Benghazi'? Circling back to the Benghazi on steroids scenario, what follows is a fact-check of the individual claims based on the limited information thus far provided by U.S. military officials and in national press coverage as of 29 November 2017. Claim: These soldiers went to a meeting in an area near the border with Mali. This is a well known hot spot for ISIS activity. Status: Mixture. A team consisting of 12 U.S. military personnel (an unspecified number of whom were Green Berets) and 30 Nigerien soldiers attended a meeting with local leaders in the southwestern Niger village of Tongo Tongo near the Mali border, and had just departed from that meeting when the ambush occurred. Although two known terrorist groups, al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, have training camps in neighboring Mali, the question of whether Tongo Tongo and the surrounding area is accurately described to as a hot spot of ISIS activity may boil down to semantics. U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford said in a 23 October press conference that the area is inherently dangerous given that those two groups operate there, but according to the Pentagon's Joint Staff director Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, U.S. special forces had conducted 29 patrols in the area during the six months prior to the ambush without once encountering hostile fighters. Contact did occur in this instance, however, with some fifty militants believed to be members of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara. The Pentagon described the attackers as well-equipped and trained with small arms, machine guns, and rocket-propelled grenades. They ambushed the U.S. and Niger troops just after they left the village where the meeting took place. (According to a 20 October report from UPI, American officials suspect the insurgents may have been helped by villagers who purposely delayed the troops' departure from Tongo Tongo; a 21 October Voice of America article said a fake terror attack was staged outside the village to lure the soldiers into a trap, although the Pentagon has not confirmed these details directly.) Claim: Our soldiers were not backed up by U.S. military air support. No, they were backed up by the French, who were not authorized to intervene or even fire a shot. Status: Mixture. Inasmuch as contact with the enemy was thought unlikely, U.S. air support was not planned for this mission. An hour after the attack began, French air support was indeed called in, arriving within 60 minutes in the form of fighter aircraft, armed fighter aircraft, armed helicopter gunships, and a medevac helicopter. However, the French never actually fired on the hostile forces, for which conflicting explanations have been given. Multiple U.S. officials told CNN, for example, that Niger forbids air strikes on its soil, so they were not authorized to engage; Reuters reported being told, on the other hand, that the firefight was at such close quarters that the planes could not engage and were instead left circling overhead as a deterrent. According to a 20 October update from CNN, the latter explanation proved closer to the truth: Claim: Our soldiers did not have armored vehicles. They traveled in pickup trucks. Status: True. Every account we've seen says the soldiers were traveling in unarmored non-military vehicles. Claim: Our soldiers were given faulty intel that said 'it was unlikely that they would meet any hostile forces.' Of course, they walked into an ISIS ambush. Status: Mixture. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis did state in a 19 October press conference that contact [with militants] was considered unlikely. As noted above, no hostile forces had been encountered in the area during the six months prior to the attack, according to the Pentagon. But although the judgment that U.S. troops were given faulty intel would seem premature based on those considerations, an unnamed senior congressional aide allegedly briefed on the events told NBC News the ambush was the result of a massive intelligence failure. Claim: Finally, a rescue helicopter arrived, but it was not a US military helicopter. No, we apparently outsourced that job to 'private contractors.' So, these contractors landed and loaded the remaining troops, the injured and the dead. Status: Mixture. There have been conflicting reports about whose aircraft transported whom. Sec. Mattis stated in his 19 October press conference that a French medevac helicopter picked up the wounded, and those killed in action were transported in a contractor's helicopter, but according to a 20 October report in the Washington Post, all rescue and transport services were provided by a private company, Berry Aviation. On 23 October, Gen. Dunford confirmed Sec. Mattis's version of events, however, stating that the two wounded U.S. soldiers were evacuated in French helicopters, which he said was consistent with the casualty evacuation plan that was in place for this particular operation. Claim: Because they were not military, they never did a head count. That is how Sgt. La David Johnson was left behind. That's right .... they left him behind. According to the Pentagon, his locator beacon was activated on the battlefield, which indicates that he was alive when they left him there. They recovered his body 48 hours later, but are refusing to say where. Status: Mixture. This is one of the more perplexing components of the incident, given that the Pentagon initially reported on 5 October that only three U.S. soldiers and one Nigerien had been killed in the attack: No mention was made of U.S. personnel missing or unaccounted for. According to a timeline of events published by CNN, the first time the Pentagon mentioned the missing Green Berets, Sgt. La David Johnson, was on the afternoon of 6 October: A press release issued that day by U.S. Africa Command (Africom) gave more detail on the recovery of the missing soldier: Despite the fact that Johnson hadn't previously been reported missing, DoD officials vehemently denied he had been left behind. During his 19 October press conference, Sec. Mattis stressed: Lt. Gen. McKenzie said U.S. forces never left the battlefield until Sgt. Johnson's body was found: According to Gen. Dunford, Africom didn't initially publicize the fact that Sgt. Johnson was missing so as not to compromise the search-and-rescue effort. A 20 October CNN report said Sgt. Johnson's body was found nearly a mile from the scene of the ambush. No information has yet been provided about the circumstances of his death. As to the claim that no head count was conducted, therefore no one knew until the evacuation was over that Johnson was missing, no information has been released or reported confirming that. In answer to a question about whether or not head counts were taken, Gen. Dunford said during his 23 October press conference: Regarding reports of a tracking beacon which may have indicated Sgt. Johnson was still alive, a CBS Evening News report on 19 October said: But CNN reported that as of 20 October 2017, officials still did not know whether the beacon had actually been in Johnson's possession or whether it was elsewhere, perhaps attached to one of the vehicles. Claim: According to his widow, she was told that she could not have an open-casket funeral. This indicates that he was mutilated after being left behind on the battlefield. Status: Mixture. The report that Sgt. Johnson's widow, Myeshia Johnson, was told she wouldn't be able to hold an open-casket funeral for her husband originated from Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Florida), who was also the source of the revelation that President Trump told Mrs. Johnson during his bereavement call to her (which Wilson was party to via speakerphone) that her husband knew what he signed up for. Regarding Johnson's funeral, Wilson told CNN: She was just told that he cannot have an open casket funeral, which gives her all kinds of nightmares how his body must look, how his face must look. When Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dunford was quizzed about this claim on 23 October (two days after Sgt. Johnson's funeral), he said: During a 23 October interview with ABC News, Myeshia Johnson confirmed certain statements previously made by Rep. Wilson, including the claim that she was told her husband couldn't be laid to rest in an open-casket funeral. In fact, Johnson said, neither she nor other family members were allowed to see or identify Sgt. Johnson's body at all: As of 10 November, the military's investigation was still underway and officials had released no further details about the circumstances of Sgt. Johnson's death, but the Washington Post reported that two Tongo Tongo villagers credited with finding the remains said it appeared he may have been executed: The Post also cited an anonymous military official who confirmed that Sgt. Johnson's body appeared to have been viciously battered, though the official said his hands were not tied. The Post's source cautioned against reaching any conclusions until the probe is completed. On 21 November, a press release from Pentagon spokeswoman Dana W. White said tests showed that additional human remains investigators found at the site where the body was recovered were Johnson's. A 17 December 2017 Associated Press report citing anonymous U.S. officials said the still-yet-to-be-released military investigation had found that Sgt. Johnson was neither bound, nor taken prisoner, nor shot at close range: Claim: The Niger ambush and the Trump administration's handling of it amount to Benghazi on steroids. Status: Undetermined. With so many details still unknown, questions unanswered, and the Pentagon's own investigation into the attack still underway, it seems premature, as of this writing, to liken the Niger incident to the 2012 Benghazi attacks, which were used as a launchpad for partisan accusations of malfeasance on the part of the Obama administration and minutely dissected in a series of dozens of separate Congressional hearings which ultimately came to the conclusion, essentially, that mistakes were made. Stay tuned.
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