There was a report of real-time video being viewed in the white house. Unconfirmed, it’s a claim made by a retired lt. col., based on what he says he was told. There has been no corroboration, nor has the source, if he does in fact exist, been identified.
Pentagon has denied it. As has the CIA.
The requests for support being denied seems more possible. But before jumping to any conclusions, consider why this might be. The requests for support would not go to the White House. They would go to up the chain of command in the CIA and Africa centcom. That is where they were likely denied.
I think what I’ve read is that the two that did respond were former seals, working for the CIA, responding from an agency safe-house in the vicinity of the consulate.
Support being an hour or hours away (a couple hours is what I’ve read) does not by itself create a feasible plan to deploy. They weren’t in country. If there was a plan that would have a high likelihood of success, without further casualties, it would have gone up the chain of command, and it would have been approved. The Pentagon reported that based on intel at the time, the guy in charge of Africa centcom agreed that no such plan existed. So it wasn’t that they didn’t want to provide support, they couldn’t figure out how to do it and succeed. They had almost no time for planning, no time for training, no time for a walk through. Special ops takes time. There was none.
