During a speech in Denver in October, Paula Broadwell, the alleged mistress of former CIA Director David Petreaus, made some eyebrow raising remarks about the attack on our facilities in Benghazi.

Eli Lake:

The woman at the center of the alleged adultery scandal that led CIA Director David Petraeus to resign on Friday gave a speech last month asserting otherwise unreported information about the Benghazi attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

Speaking on Oct. 26 at the University of Denver, Paula Broadwell-the married author of the highly favorable biography of Petraeus All In-was asked about the 9/11 anniversary attack.

"Now I don't know if a lot of you heard this," she replied, "but the CIA annex had actually-had taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner and they think that the attack on the consulate was an effort to try to get these prisoners back. So that's still being vetted." 

(It's possible Broadwell was confusing details broadcast ealier that day by Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffen, who'd reported that three of the Libyan attackers were briefly held at the annex-not the consulate-before being turned over to a local militia.)

Broadwell also said that Petreaus was aware of the pleas for help from the CIA annex:

Broadwell confirmed the reports on Fox News that the CIA annex asked for a special unit, the Commander in Chief's In Extremis Force, to come and assist it. She also said that the force could indeed have reinforced the consulate, and that Petraeus knew all of this, but was not allowed to talk to the press because of his position in the CIA.

"The challenge has been the fog of war, and the greater challenge is that it's political hunting season, and so this whole thing has been turned into a very political sort of arena, if you will," she said. "The fact that came out today is that the ground forces there at the CIA annex, which is different from the consulate, were requesting reinforcements.

"They were requesting the - it's called the C-in-C's In Extremis Force - a group of Delta Force operators, our very, most talented guys we have in the military. They could have come and reinforced the consulate and the CIA annex. Now, I don't know if a lot of you have heard this but the CIA annex had actually taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner, and they think that the attack on the consulate was an attempt to get these prisoners back. It's still being vetted.

"The challenging thing for Gen. Petraeus is that in his new position, he's not allowed to communicate with the press. So he's known all of this - they had correspondence with the CIA station chief in Libya, within 24 hours they kind of knew what was happening."

If Broadwell is speaking the truth, this throws the entire CIA timeline out the window. No doubt during the hearing before the House intel committee on Thursday, Petreaus's replacement, Mike Morrell, will be on the hot seat as he tries to account for the discrepancy.