In 2013 the Air Wing established an air base on the island of Cyprus. The expressed purpose of the facility, which housed five helicopters and approximately 40 State Department and contractor personnel, was to provide flexibility to support evacuations throughout the middle east in the wake of the 2012 Benghazi attack and the Syrian civil war spillover in Lebanon. The Office of the Inspector General in 2017 determined that the base represented "nearly $71 million dollars in potentially unnecessary expenditures", and that it was established without the approval of the Department’s Aviation Governing Board. OIG wrote that the Department was unable to produce any records from the time the base began operating that “explained the purpose of the base, the anticipated cost of any evacuation services or the likely extent of its usage. Similarly, no documentation could be found addressing potential alternatives to this facility.” Patrick Kennedy, a State Department official who made the decision to establish the base, defended the decision as a necessary precaution after criticism of the response to the attacks on the embassy in Benghazi, asking a reporter from ABC News "If you buy insurance and never use it, did you make a mistake?" Use of the facility in Cyprus was ultimately discontinued in 2017.