by Scott McEwen
* * *
Meanwhile, attacks on the Libyan government in Benghazi escalated in July. A mob of some two hundred people sacked the offices of the High National Electoral Commission, burning election records and demanding more local control.46
Even State Department officials were sounding the warning bell by July 2012. A July 9, 2012, cable written by Eric Nordstrom concluded: “Overall security conditions continue to be unpredictable, with large numbers of armed groups and individuals not under the control of the central government, and frequent clashes in Tripoli and other major population centers.” The Government of Libya “remains extremely limited in its ability to sustain a security support presence at USG [U.S. government] compounds.”47 In short, any hope of the Libyan government protecting U.S. diplomats in Benghazi was unrealistic.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others on the seventh floor of the State Department, where policy is set, failed to divert from their course. Their position was immovable. The war was won, and more security was an unneeded expense.
* * *
At the same time, the U.S. military was paying close attention to events unfolding in Benghazi.
Gen. Carter Ham, head of Africa Command or AFRICom, read cables from Nordstrom, Ambassador Stevens, and others, urgently begging for more security.
General Ham phoned Stevens on August 16, 2012, and asked if he needed any more security. Stevens said he did not. In a meeting sometime later, Stevens again said that he did not need additional security.
Why would Stevens refuse offers of more security when all of his cables and communications pleaded for more security? A McClatchy Newspapers reporter attempted to decode the bureaucratic struggle inside the State Department: “One person familiar with the events,” wrote Nancy Youssef, said Stevens might have rejected the offers because there was an understanding within the State Department that officials in Libya ought not to request more security, in part because of concerns about the political fallout of seeking a larger military presence in a country that was still being touted as a foreign policy success.”48
In short, Stevens did not want to swim “outside his lane” and alienate his superiors at the State Department, even to get the additional security he desperately needed. He was a career foreign service officer, and he knew how the game was played—even if he didn’t like the rules.
Meanwhile, the little security that Stevens had was being taken away. The contract between the 17 February Brigade, a local militia that guarded the outside of the U.S. diplomatic outpost, expired on August 29, 2012.
The State Department did not renew it, citing budget concerns. A memo from “the principal U.S. diplomatic officer in Benghazi,” whose name was redacted from congressional reports, said the contract had expired “several weeks ago” and that the brigade “has been implicated in several of the recent detentions. We also have the usual concerns re their ultimate loyalties. But they are competent, and give us an added measure of security.”49
Since the contract had expired, the brigade said it would not provide security for U.S. personnel, including Ambassador Stevens.50 The U.S. diplomats lost more security just days before the anniversary of the September 11 attacks.
The perfect storm was gathering on the horizon.
CHAPTER 8
Benghazi 911: When SEALs Answer the Call
On the last day of his life, Ambassador Stevens wrote in his diary: “It is so nice to be back in Benghazi.”1
He meant it. It was September 11, 2012, and the morning dawned beautifully. The rosy skies revealed few clouds, and a breeze off the Mediterranean promised a gentle day—much like the beautiful weather that came before the deadly terror attacks on American soil on that same day eleven years earlier.
At first, the morning kept its peaceful promise. The morning call to prayer, which sounded from the minarets just before dawn, didn’t produce any large crowds outside the diplomatic facility. Instead, Stevens heard birds chattering in the trees, the grumble of trucks and squeak of donkey cart wheels on their way to market.
The ambassador had arrived the day before with information management officer Sean Smith and two Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) agents. There were three other DSS agents already on site. The compound held eleven people that day: seven Americans and four local Blue Mountain Libya guards.
Then, as the morning sunlight was moving down the side of the buildings, a Blue Mountain Libya security guard spotted something suspicious. A wink of something metallic flashed in the sun from the scaffolding of a building directly across the street. It was 6:45 a.m. in Benghazi—a little too early for the construction crews to arrive.
The guard looked more closely. He saw a man, wearing a Libyan Supreme Security Council uniform, taking photos of the U.S. compound from the construction site. The second-story scaffolding gave the man a commanding view of the compound, and the photos would be useful in planning any assault. It was an ominous development.
The guard rounded up a colleague and walked across the street to confront the mysterious photographer. The uniformed man angrily refused to talk to the Blue Mountain Libya guards and, instead, climbed into a parked police car and sped off.2
The incident was reported, but its true importance would not become obvious for hours. By then, it would be too late.
* * *
Meanwhile, the diplomatic staff went through their daily routines. A memorandum drafted by David C. McFarland, later sent by the U.S. embassy in Tripoli to the State Department in Washington, details the official responsibilities that day: Ambassador Stevens planned to open American Space Benghazi, a cultural organization, while staff met with a thicket of nonprofit groups, including the Libyan Society for Industrial Engineering, My Environment Society, and the cancer-fighting Cure Foundation.3 All meetings occurred inside the compound to avoid alerting militias that their number one target had returned to Benghazi.
Somehow, the enemy knew anyway. Did they have a source on the inside?
Ambassador Stevens’s last scheduled meeting ended at 7:20 p.m., as he walked Turkish Consul General Ali Kemal Akin to the main gate.4 In his diary, Stevens noted that Akin “helped me land in Benghazi last year.” The Turks had some one hundred thousand citizens working in Libya as oil engineers, electricians, and technicians. They often use these informal networks to alert Americans to developing threats. But the Turkish consul issued no warnings that day.
By 8:30 p.m., the last British security team drove its armored cars through the main (or C1, or “Charlie 1”) gate.5 They were returning borrowed equipment as previously arranged. The British quickly left the compound as night fell. The only guards left outside the gate were two local Benghazi police in a marked car. (Five other guards remained inside the compound, along with four local guards.)
Then the police mysteriously sped away at 9:42 p.m. Why? Did the police know that something was about to happen? A local Libyan newspaper quoted a Supreme Security Council official saying that the car was ordered to leave “to prevent civilian casualties.” A guard interviewed by Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, a London-based Arabic newspaper with unusually good sources in the region, said that “my colleague guards and I were chatting and drinking tea. The situation was normal.”6 The disappearance of the local police was never fully explained.
Within a minute of the police car’s departure, masked men appeared at the main gate. They were members of Ansar al-Sharia and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, two known al Qaeda affiliates.
The masked men carried a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. They fired it at the main gate, shouting “God is great!” in Arabic. The RPG exploded in a thunderclap, blasting open the gate. More masked men emerged from the shadows and swarmed into the compound.7
The local guards, perhaps knowing what was coming, ran off into the night. They were armed only with clubs, not guns. They knew that they were no match for an army of armed men. Two guards were captured and beaten. After pleading for their lives and reassuring the invaders that they are observa
nt Muslims, they are released.
Compound guards interviewed by Al-Sharq Al-Awsat estimate that some fifty attackers flooded into the compound in the first wave, led by four men who wore masks and “Pakistani clothes.”8 The turbans and long shirts worn by Pakistanis are markedly different from clothes usually worn by Libyans, especially to Arab eyes.
The invaders fired their AK-47s into the air—a rolling growl of automatic fire.
The Americans were now alone. State Department staff methodically locked doors and windows. The compound’s Tactical Operations Center coolly notified the State Department in Washington, the embassy in Tripoli, and the Annex (a facility operated by the CIA, also called Villa A) within four minutes of the blast at the main gate.9 The DSS officer in charge of the Tactical Operations Center radioes Scott Strickland, another DSS officer. Find the ambassador, Strickland was told, and bring him to safety.
Moments later, Strickland forcefully knocked on Ambassador Stevens’s door. Stevens noticed that the man was carrying an M-4 automatic rifle and a 9 mm pistol. The ambassador’s quarters were far enough from the main gate that he likely didn’t hear the blast over his television set.
Strickland told Stevens and Sean Smith, who was nearby, to put on their body armor and to follow him. He led them to a safe room in a single-story concrete structure, in the rear of an office building. Strickland bolted the door.
Moments later, the jihadis broke down an exterior door and looted the office outside the safe room.
Inside the safe room, the Americans heard angry shouts in Arabic and the sounds of smashing furniture. How long would it take before this fury shattered the safe-room door?
* * *
In Tripoli, Libya’s capital city across the Gulf of Sidra from Benghazi, Gregory Hicks was at home watching television. He was finally off duty after a long day. Hicks was second only to the ambassador in the Libya delegation and was the highest-ranking State Department officer in Tripoli that night. A foreign service officer knocked on his door and said, “Greg, Greg, the embassy’s under attack.”
He meant the facility in Benghazi.
Hicks saw that he had received a call from an unknown phone number on his cell phone and returned the call. It was Strickland’s cell phone. Ambassador Stevens answered and said, “Greg, we’re under attack,” before the phone call is cut off.10 These turned out to be the ambassador’s last known words.
Hicks notified Washington.
The State Department requested that military assets be deployed to gather intelligence on the emerging emergency in Benghazi. A drone plane over Libya was retasked to fly over the U.S. compound in Benghazi.
The unarmed surveillance aircraft was directed to reposition over Benghazi and arrived on station by 9:59 p.m.—less than ten minutes after the ambassador’s call.11
The images that the drone transmitted were frightening. Armed men were thronging the compound, and some vehicles were on fire.
* * *
Ambassador Stevens, information security officer Smith, and DSS officer Strickland were holed up in a safe room in Villa C, the diplomatic portion of the U.S. compound. This was where they were trained to run in the event of an attack. They had locked themselves in, behind steel-bar gates, in the inner room.
Inside the single-story concrete structure, on the other side of the safe-room door, the attackers set the office furniture on fire. The militants quickly located the diesel fuel drums, which were to be used to power new generators that hadn’t been installed yet, and rolled the barrels toward the safe house. They beat them open with tools found in the equipment shed. They poured the fuel on the walls and doors of the ambassador’s safe house. Then they set it ablaze. In seconds, the house was a howling inferno.
The building filled with noxious smoke. Strickland opened a window to draw in breathable air, but more smoke surged in. So the trio crawled to a bathroom in the rear of the safe room.
Now they had to make a life-or-death choice: stay and die choking on the bathroom tile, or climb out the window and take their chances in the open compound. Strickland shouted for Stevens and Smith to follow him. He couldn’t see them in the dense smoke.
Strickland leaped out a back window, but amid the acrid black smoke he lost contact with Stevens and Smith, both of whom seemed to have separated in the smoke. They were last seen by Strickland crawling on the floor, desperate for clean air to breathe.
Boldly, Strickland reentered the building several times, but he failed to find Stevens or Smith.12 The smoke was too thick, and he knew the fire would be through the door in minutes. Coughing from the thick smoke, he plunged from the window and, dodging gunfire, made his way across the darkened compound.
* * *
Six minutes after the arrival of the surveillance drone, the State Department Operations Center transmitted an “Ops Alert,” notifying the White House Situation Room, senior department officials, and others that Benghazi was under attack: “approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well.”13 (The actual number of attackers would prove to be far higher.)
The Tactical Operations Center on the Benghazi compound was a concrete structure with steel-barred windows and doors. Most of the DSS officers were using the makeshift fortress as their Masada, a place to make a last, desperate stand against enormous odds. Then, they heard knocking. The Americans exchanged surprised glances. After peeking out, one saw Strickland. Relieved, he opened the door to let Strickland inside.
Strickland reported that both Stevens and Smith were missing and that the terrorists had overrun their last known position. The two men were now either casualties or captives. They could do nothing to help either man now.
Everyone in the room knew one more thing: They would be next. And soon.
The DSS officer in charge placed an urgent call to the CIA Annex roughly five hundred yards away: “We’re under attack, we need help, please send help now…” Then the line went dead.
* * *
At the CIA Annex, Tyrone Woods discussed the call with the Global Response team leader. Together, the two men walked over to see the CIA’s chief of base, who was adamantly opposed to mounting a rescue. Woods persisted, saying, “If we don’t act, people will die.”
It was clear that Woods would go against orders if he was ordered to remain. He and the chief of base argued.
People who knew Woods knew how hardheaded he could be. He refused to back down when he believed he was right.
Tyrone Snowden Woods, known as “Ty” in the teams, was born in 1971 and served for twenty years in the U.S. Navy SEALs. He was awarded the Bronze Star, with combat “V” device, for leading a series of dangerous raids and reconnaissance missions that captured thirty-four enemy insurgents in the volatile Al Anbar province of Iraq. That province proved to be the turning point in the Iraq war. When tribal leaders switched their support from insurgents to Americans, the enemy was soon routed in that large, lawless province. The surge in 2007 built on the SEALs’ success in Al Anbar. Woods served multiple tours in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other battlegrounds. He retired from the SEALs as a chief petty officer in 2007, but he didn’t retire from dangerous assignments. He joined the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service and, ultimately, was sent to Libya.
* * *
Woods, who didn’t like to take no for an answer, gathered six other heavily armed men. They climbed into two Toyota Land Cruisers and raced over to the embattled compound, arriving at 10:07 p.m.
Woods’s plan was to avoid a suicidal frontal assault through the compound’s main gate. Instead, he and his men parked their vehicles along the diplomatic facility’s outer perimeter wall. They radioed the men trapped in the Tactical Operations Center (TOC) not to open fire on their position, a wise precaution. Using their own Land Cruisers as ladders, they scaled the wall.
The jihadis soon spotted them and opened fire. Woods and his team were running and gunning, shooting at attackers while moving toward the ambassador’s last known location. The CIA
team, composed largely of former special forces (including SEALs) were more accurate shots, and they drove back the attackers. They gained entrance to the burning building and dragged out Smith’s body.14
Ambassador Stevens remained missing. Could he still be alive?
* * *
The U.S. National Military Command Center notified the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the situation at 10:32 p.m. Benghazi time.15 At this stage, the attack had been underway for more than forty minutes.
Another half hour passed before Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey discussed the Benghazi situation with President Barack Obama during a regularly scheduled weekly meeting. That meeting started at 11:00 p.m. Benghazi time.16
It is unclear why the defense secretary was unable to see the president sooner. Yet, based on the timelines made public by the Obama administration, it seems likely that the president either denied the secretary’s request for an earlier meeting or didn’t acknowledge his request. It is mind-boggling that the president did not convene an immediate meeting, given the nature of a direct attack on an ambassador of the United States. By the time the defense secretary and chairman of the Joints Chiefs sat down with President Obama, the attack in Benghazi had been raging for more than one hour and fifteen minutes.
* * *
At the same time, Gregory Hicks asked the defense attaché at the Tripoli embassy if any military help was forthcoming. The attaché said that it would take two to three hours for the nearest fighters to get on-site from Italy—and that there would be no refueling aircraft available for the fighters to return to their base. Hicks said: “Thank you very much.”17
