US Embassies Weren’t Warned About Alleged Threat

The Washington Post reports:

“I can reveal I believe it probably would’ve been four embassies,” he said in an interview Friday with Fox News Channel. Based on what is known so far, Trump’s statement was at best an unfounded theory and at worst a falsehood. At each turn in the commander in chief’s rapidly evolving narrative of why he authorized the Jan. 3 drone strike that killed Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the machinery of government scrambled to adapt and respond.

Despite Trump’s claim that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was one of four facilities under threat of attack, some embassy officials there said they did not receive an alert commensurate to the threat Trump described, said people familiar with the situation, who were not authorized to comment publicly. When officials in Washington or in a diplomatic outpost receive specific, credible information about threats to an embassy, warnings are typically sent to the U.S. personnel in the post to be vigilant and take precautions.

State Department officials involved in U.S. embassy security were not made aware of imminent threats to four specific U.S. embassies, two State Department officials said, further undermining Trump’s claims that Soleimani posed an imminent threat. https://t.co/sG9ZXyxOa3

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 13, 2020