Why did Paula Broadwell think the CIA had taken prisoners in Benghazi?

Paula Broadwell, the former military intelligence officer whose alleged affair with CIA Director David Petraeus culminated in the end of his career, had earlier made some startling, now-revealed claims about the agency’s role in the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi.

In an Oct. 26 speech at the University of Denver, she said that Libyan militants had attacked the post to retrieve some fellow fighters who’d been taken prisoner at the nearby CIA annex. She also seems to suggest that Petraeus himself knew about it, implying that he may have been her source. Here’s the relevant passage from the speech, transcribed in full here by Foreign Policy’s Blake Hounshell.

Now, I don’t know if a lot of you heard this, but the CIA annex had actually, um, 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.

The challenging thing for General 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, in Libya. Within 24 hours they kind of knew what was happening.