Benghazi: The Definitive Report

This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," February 18, 2013. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

SEAN HANNITY, HOST: And now a new e-book claims that the attacks may have been retaliation for some off-the-books counter terror operations that were run by John Brennan, and that's the president's nominee for CIA director.

And joining me now are the authors of that new book, "Benghazi: The Definitive Report," former U.S. Army ranger Jack Murphy and former Navy SEAL Brandon Webb.

And by the way, on the floor of our studio, we projected a map of Benghazi. Now before we get to the book, we're going through a timeline of the events of that night. Guys, welcome to the program. Good to see you both.

JACK MURPHY, AUTHOR, "BENGHAZI," FORMER U.S. ARMY RANGER/GREEN BERET: Thank you for having us.

HANNITY: This is important because we're seeing that events that we don't know about could have precipitated these attacks, a good summary?

MURPHY: Yes, it's absolutely accurate.

HANNITY: OK. All right. Let's start with the timeline of events.

MURPHY: It began approximately 9:40 at night when the attacks initiated with RPG's hitting the consulate, actually the temporary mission facility that we know now, we call the consulate. At that point the local militia guards were unarmed, they fled, they were only armed with bats, essentially. So, when they see the mob coming, they take off, they cut and run.

The attackers breached the main gate, they overrun the compound, at this point Ambassador Stevens is going into the safe room inside the consulate and DSS agents are retrieving their tactical gear and making a call up to higher to say they're getting hit.

So, by 10:05, what you have is --

HANNITY: Can I stop you there?

MURPHY: Yes.

HANNITY: And for those who said this was in retaliation for a YouTube video and this was a spontaneous demonstration, they had mortars, rocket propelled grenades, this was not spontaneous.

MURPHY: No, it's not spontaneous and in the State Department's own report, they talk about arresting or detaining a Libyan policeman who's taking pictures of the consulate with his cell phone that morning. So, there were people planning this attack ahead of time.

HANNITY: All right. Back to the time line.

MURPHY: So, by 10:55 -- 10:05 p.m., excuse me, Ty Woods and other Global Response staff members from the nearby annex about a half mile away were preparing to go to the consulate and rescue the State Department personnel who are tied up there. And Ty Woods was really instrumental in putting together that rescue effort and insisting that it go forward and go in there.

HANNITY: Now, he was told to stand down, and I interviewed his father and his family.

MURPHY: By --

HANNITY: And we still don't have answers to that question.

MURPHY: It was actually the person who is in charge of the annex that initially said, no, it's not our job to go in there. But Ty actually convinced him otherwise, and to his credit, that person actually reversed course and agreed with Ty.

HANNITY: Either convinced him or did he disobey orders?

MURPHY: I think he convinced him.

BRANDON WEBB, AUTHOR, "BENGHAZI," FORMER U.S. NAVY SEAL: Yes, I think, you know, Ty showed a lot of initiative. He was a senior guy, years in the special operations and he just said, look, knowing, being overseas and being in these conflicts before, he said we need to act now to save these Americans, if we don't move now and go, more people are going to die.

HANNITY: OK. Back to the timeline.

WEBB: By 11 p.m., the attackers had completely overrun the compound, and the team from the annex is making their way to the consulate to conduct this rescue operation.

Once they're at the annex, basically the attack slowly followed them back. And so, the one -- the one difference between the State Department compound and the CIA annex, the CIA had a very heavily fortified position. I mean, they had their act together when it comes to security. So, you know, throughout the night, they were fending off small attacks.

And then, you know, 5 a.m., the team from Tripoli comes up, and it is important to -- the team from Tripoli is important because here you have a group of CIA JSOC operators and -- which included Glen Doherty, who were trying desperately to get up to Benghazi. You look at why it's important is because ultimately, the two JSOC Joint Special Operations guys, they had a device called a rover which essentially it beams down the predator drone footage onto this device and now they have increased situational awareness on the ground at the CIA annex and they ultimately made the call, when they saw that more and more attackers were amassing outside of the gates.

Glen went up to the roof, saw Ty, they embraced and they were still engaged in the fight, then they got bracketed by three mortar rounds. The first one hit Ty, killing him. Second one hit Glen and the third one injured one of the other security guys on the rooftop.

Just before 7:30, they made the decision, hey, we've got to get out of here. Without those guys coming up from Tripoli and having that rover device to get the predator footage, the decision to evacuate everyone may not have been made and they may have been overrun themselves.

HANNITY: And then we he learned through Leon Panetta's testimony that he briefed the President only when it began and the president never asked for an update throughout the rest of the night.

WEBB: Yes.

HANNITY: These guys were all under fire and we didn't send anybody to help them. Now, let me get the last question in, the premise of your book, the definitive report beyond the timeline that we're going here. You claim that there were incidents that the American public had never heard about where we attacked them?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

HANNITY: And that we might have precipitated this and that then puts, I think, a lot more clarity on maybe why it happened and also, then it does - - there's no explanation at that point why we didn't at least abide by the request by Ambassador Stevens to give him more security.

MURPHY: I think one of the big takeaways from all of this is that the State Department didn't have any visibility on these operations. They didn't have the wherewithal to even know that this counterattack, that this blowback from other operations was coming and they couldn't have known.

However, there was an escalation of terrorist attacks against American assets inside Benghazi over the summer and that alone should have been enough to elevate their security.

WEBB: I think we saw the State Department really not prepared in Benghazi. The requests were going up the chain of command and they weren't being responded to, so the State Department was in a very poor situation when it comes to security.

HANNITY: Before the security was denied, during, no help came except for Ty and the other guys, and after they lied, true?

WEBB: Yes, I think there's no accountability, people are, you know, they're in this political game of musical chairs. But you know, it's important to us to really, to get the truth. I mean, our bias in this whole thing is to make sure that these heroes are represented, their story is told and if there's any bias, it's towards the truth.

HANNITY: Guys, thank you very much, appreciate your good work here.

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