Judicial Watch has obtained more emails through their FOIA request to the State Department, and have turned up a particularly damning one.

! @JudicialWatch-obtained email: DoD had forces ready on 9/11/12 "assuming principals agree." Guess they didn't. pic.twitter.com/Z8HHrLVPvj

— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) December 8, 2015

It appears that Greg Hicks, who testified initially to the House Oversight Committee, was right in saying that assets could have been deployed in a timely manner once the attack on the compound was underway. As this new email reveals, the State Department was in contact with the Department of Defense talking about a response.

Jacob Sullivan was Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the time of the terrorist attack at Benghazi. Wendy Sherman was Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, the fourth-ranking official in the U.S. Department of State. Thomas Nides was the Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources.

The timing of the Bash email is particularly significant based upon testimony given to members of Congress by Gregory Hicks, Deputy Chief of Mission of the U.S. embassy in Tripoli at the time of the Benghazi terrorist attack. According to Hicks’ 2013 testimony, a show of force by the U.S. military during the siege could have prevented much of the carnage. Said Hicks, “if we had been able to scramble a fighter or aircraft or two over Benghazi as quickly as possible after the attack commenced, I believe there would not have been a mortar attack on the annex in the morning because I believe the Libyans would have split. They would have been scared to death that we would have gotten a laser on them and killed them.”

Ultimately, Special Operations forces on their own initiative traveled from Tripoli to Benghazi to provide support during the attack. Other military assets were only used to recover the dead and wounded, and to evacuate U.S. personnel from Libya. In fact, other documents released in October by Judicial Watch show that only one U.S. plane was available to evacuate Americans from Benghazi to Tripoli and raise questions about whether a delay of military support led to additional deaths in Benghazi.

So, who decided that those assets should NOT be used?

Hello @HillaryClinton Explain please. https://t.co/BLd9lAkngD

— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) December 8, 2015

Hillary should answer that question. And so should Leon Panetta, General Ham, and now-retired General Dempsey. If we had the resources immediately available, then who were the “principals” who pulled the plug? Trey Gowdy had better be paying attention. Judicial Watch is doing yeoman’s work for him.