The FBI approved a book manuscript in 2023 from its lead investigator in the Benghazi terror attack probe that confirms frontline agents and prosecutors believed politics kept the Justice Department from approving operations to capture several conspirators, supporting a key part of FBI Director-nominee Kash Patel’s account of events that was recently challenged by The New York Times.

In his yet to be published book, retired FBI Special Agent Michael Clarke chronicles the frustrations he and other law enforcement officials experienced at the end of President Barack Obama’s administration when their Joint Terrorism Task Force had identified several conspirators in the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the State Department special mission compound in Benghazi but could not get a memo signed that would have sent the Pentagon in action to round up the alleged suspects.

Specifically, Clarke raised concerns that in 2016 then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe – whose wife had recently run for political office as a Democrat and received large donations from a Hillary Clinton ally – would not approve an “executive memo” clearing the way for the Pentagon to plan the capture of key suspects in the attack on the Benghazi consulate.

The deadly terror attack approved to be a black eye for Clinton during her tenure as Secretary of State.

Only one defendant

The lead agents and prosecutors “could accept a reality where the White House may elect to postpone an operation based on political considerations - this was always their prerogative, however distasteful,” Clarke wrote. “What none of us ever fathomed was that a small number of FBI higher ups would consider politics in making an operational decision.”

Clarke, who led the FBI’s investigation of Benghazi from the start until his retirement in 2020 and received top DOJ and FBI awards for his work in the probe, declined comment when contacted by Just the News, referring reporters to the FBI-approved approved language in his manuscript.

McCabe did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent Tuesday to his email address at George Mason University, where he is a distinguished visiting professor. The FBI declined to comment. 

But in 2017 testimony to Congress, McCabe acknowledged the FBI had managed to bring only one defendant, Ahmed Abu Khatallah, to justice, blaming it on the complexity of the investigation. 

"So Mr. Khatallah was one of the few people that we have been able to hold responsible for the attack on our special mission facility in Benghazi, Libya," he testified. "I oversaw the development of that operation and the very significant and complicated partnership relationships that enabled us to bring Mr. Khatallah to Justice."

"Was that a difficult case?" he was asked.

"Yes, sir, it was," McCabe answered. 

But other government officials told Just the News that Clarke’s team in concert with other U.S. agencies and foreign allies had identified dozens of suspects and potential defendants but only two ultimately went to trial. The current and former officials said Patel, then the coordinating lawyer in main DOJ’s counterterrorism office, supported frontline agents but that others blocked the team from succeeding as Clarke alleged in his manuscript and Patel claimed in the 2024 book titled "Government Gangsters" was accurate.

“By the time the D.O.J. was moving in full force to compile evidence and bring prosecutions against the Benghazi terrorists, I was leading the prosecution’s efforts at Main Justice in Washington, D.C.,” Patel wrote in the book. 

After experiencing lengthy foot-dragging from the leadership, Clarke’s team spent years working with DOD and other agencies to find other solutions for the unpunished suspects, often drone strikes, to ensure some form of justice and ensure Benghazi participants posed no further threat to the Western world, current and former officials told Just the News, stressing the investigation still continues today.

The delays were also criticized by Patel in his book and in media appearances following his service in the first Trump administration. 

“Despite the fact that we had reams of evidence against dozens of terrorists in the Benghazi attack, Eric Holder’s Justice Department decided to only prosecute one of the attackers,” Patel wrote in his book, "Government Gangsters". 

Motivated by politics

He also said bureau and department leadership were motivated by politics in their decision to delay pursuing other Benghazi attack suspects in 2016. 

“I remember this meeting with then-A.G. Holder. And we had a deck of like 19 guys we wanted to prosecute. You know, JSOC had them rolled up and we wanted to get them all. They killed four Americans. You know, it’s a legit terrorist attack. And the basic general response from the F.B.I. and D.O.J. leadership was ‘it’s only politically convenient to get one guy,’” Patel said on The Shawn Ryan Show in September. 

In December, the New York Times challenged Patel’s account of events basing its reporting on several anonymous sources. According to those anonymous sources, Patel’s statements inflated his role and was, in reality, only in a supporting role to the overall investigation. However, in the book and interview excerpts cited by the Times, Patel never claimed that he led the overall, interagency investigation into the Benghazi attacks. 

The Times also challenged Patel’s contention that the government had “rolled up” 19 suspects in the Benghazi attack, citing the government’s failure to capture a vast majority of the suspects. 

But Patel’s account about frustrating efforts to take into custody and prosecute the several suspected attackers is supported by Clarke’s manuscript, which chronicled how senior FBI leadership delayed the Pentagon to begin its planning to locate and capture the remaining individuals. 

The Times did not respond to a request for comment from Just the News.

According to Clarke, in March of 2016 both the Department of Defense and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington, D.C. were supportive of the plan. The Pentagon began to draw up plans to apprehend the suspects immediately and identified a small window of opportunity that would allow U.S. forces to apprehend the suspects in war-torn Libya. 

Clarke wrote, because of the risk of employing U.S. forces in the war zone, the Pentagon wanted a reassurance from the FBI and DOJ that the suspects would be prosecuted in the form of an “executive memo.” 

The memo, according to Clarke, was delayed by McCabe at the senior level. After repeatedly asking for updates and an explanation, the then-Special Agent in Charge of the New York counterterrorism division indicated that the memo was being held up for political reasons. 

Clarke wrote that his FBI boss “pulled me aside and with a disgusted look on his face said, ‘nothing is going to happen until after the election in November.’”

“The Benghazi Team should focus strictly on the upcoming trial of Khatallah and stop looking at capture options. ‘It was politics,’” Clarke wrote. 

He also stated a top federal prosecutor also confirmed to him that McCabe was part of the holdup.

The criminal division chief at the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C. “advised me the log jam regarding the issuing of an executive session memo remained between the Deputy Assistant Attorney General at DOJ National Security Division and with FBI Deputy Director,” Clarke wrote.

In his manuscript, Clarke raised concerns about the former FBI deputy director’s political ties. Multiple news reports confirmed McCabe’s wife had received financial assistance in 2015 from then-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a close Clinton ally, to run for state Senate. Just the News reported that internal FBI documents showed the financial and political ties between McAuliffe and the McCabe family raised red flags.

Clarke wrote he shared in those concerns, especially as it related to Benghazi.

“In late October 2016, the Wall Street Journal reported Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime Clinton confidant, helped steer hundreds of thousands of dollars to the election campaign of the wife of Deputy Director Andy McCabe who was heading the probe into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email system,” he wrote. “The political action committee of McAuliffe, a Clinton loyalist, gave the contribution to the state Senate campaign of Jill McCabe, the wife of the Deputy Director. The report stated Jill McCabe received an additional two-hundred-thousand-plus from the Virginia Democratic Party, which is heavily influenced by McAuliffe.

“When the article broke in the Wall Street Journal, the obvious questions immediately surfaced. From the beginning of the case in 2012, Andy McCabe had an influential role to the Benghazi investigation while serving at a variety of positions at FBIHQ,” he added.

McCabe has acknowledged the donations his wife received but insisted they did not affect his work decisions.

"Did you or your wife ever solicit or receive any funds as a quid pro quo for any action that you might have taken running or running any quid pro quo for that -- her running, you being her husband?" he was asked at at 2017 House hearing.

"No, ma'am, never," McCabe answered. 

Nothing moved forward under McCabe

But over time, Clarke wrote, agents became suspicious politics was infecting the Benghazi decisions.

“As the months rolled on towards the 2016 Presidential election, despite the Benghazi Team’s best efforts to restart the dialog, it became clear nothing was moving forward. It was also clear, despite the constant pushing of NYO and CTD, a select few in Washington at the FBI and DOJ were the cause of the delay,” his manuscript stated. “All the Benghazi Team could do was hope for a change in the bureaucratic stone walling after the 2016 election. There was a general belief that whoever won the race would take politics out of operational decisions and move forward with bringing BAN subjects to justice."

“Our greatest fear was that in the meantime, the BAN subjects would drop off the grid and change their pattern of life, disappearing into the night. Or worse, the real possibility these terrorists could resurface in another attack on the West. Unthinkable,” he added.