The Siege

by Damien Lewis

  Tyrone Woods and his team must have had balls of steel, for they were initially up against one hundred Shariah Brigade fighters. However, the number of attackers was increasing at an alarming rate, and the highest number I heard on the ground was five hundred to six hundred, and those numbers were reliably confirmed. To attempt such a rescue mission under those circumstances was suicidal—but they did it anyway, and I knew for sure they would be on their way just as soon as they got the call.

  They would have had one advantage over the enemy: they would have known the layout of the Mission compound and would have known where the staff had barricaded themselves in and taken up defensive positions. However, the villas would have been well ablaze by the time they arrived, and they went in taking heavy fire—from PKM light machine guns, AK-47s, RPGs, and very possibly Dushkas. To have got in and out as they did and to have recovered and rescued all the surviving Americans except one is an incredibly brave and courageous achievement.

  One of my main fears while trying to gain access to the U.S. Mission that night was bumping into the Annex team, for I knew they’d be dropping any bad guys that came anywhere remotely near them. I was on my own carrying the terrorist weapon of choice—an AK-47—and I knew that if they spotted me I’d be finished. I’d met only a few of the Annex guys briefly, so in the heat of battle and the darkness they would have been unlikely to recognize me—and I would have been finished.

  Needless to say, they are the true heroes of the Benghazi 9/11 story.

  EPILOGUE

  The September 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi was not the first time such a catastrophic event had occurred in that city. On June 5, 1967, a mob had laid siege to, taken control of, and burned down the then–U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. A quote from a first-person account of that event is chillingly reminiscent of what took place forty-five years later.

  “The mob finally battered its way in. They pushed themselves in through broken windows and came at us cut and bleeding . . . Dropping tear gas grenades we fought our way up the stairs and locked ourselves in the second-floor communications vault. There were ten of us in there including two women. The mob set fire to the building.”

  That testimony is from the lead Diplomatic Security agent at the time, John Kormann, paratrooper and a World War II veteran of behind-enemy-lines missions, who had joined the State Department Foreign Service in the 1950s. The ten Embassy staff remained locked in the vault, as the flames and heat drove the attackers out of the building. They set about burning secret documents, as a British armored column tried to get through to them, but it was beaten back by gasoline bombs.

  At one stage the attackers were on the Embassy roof and tried to tear down the U.S. flag. Kormann ordered the flag raised again, which an American Army captain managed, to the rage of the attackers. Fearing that the Americans were being burned alive in the building, a British armored column eventually did get through to the Embassy building and all were rescued.

  The main difference between the 1967 attack on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi and that of 2012 is that no Americans lost their lives in 1967. But there are other key differences. The 1967 attack was a spontaneous uprising by a mob, one that had become enraged by false reports that the U.S. Navy was attacking the Egyptian capital, Cairo. That which occurred forty-five years later was a carefully planned assault by a group of battle-hardened fighters.

  The 1967 attackers were largely unarmed: they hit the embassy with rocks and boulders and firebombs. The attackers of 2012 were heavily armed—wielding assault rifles, light machine guns, grenade launchers, and vehicle-mounted heavy machine guns. The 1967 mission wasn’t relying on a Libyan militia for its armed security as was that in 2012. And while the 1967 siege was broken by a column of (British) armored vehicles, no such major armored force was able to come to the aid of those in 2012. That rescue was mounted by six extremely brave and principled former elite forces operators.

  The makeup of Libya in 2012 was also markedly different from that of 1967. In 1967 there was a strong central government and rule of law, with a functioning military and police force. In 2012, especially in eastern Libya—the birthplace of the revolution—central government held little sway. The city of Benghazi, like much of the east, was controlled by a mishmash of militias. Those militias—which were nominally government-aligned and -controlled—supposedly carried out most of the duties that the military and police would do in a normal, functioning state, but they did so following their own often violent and lawless agendas, and in some cases driven by Islamic extremism.

  As the Libyan revolution had gained momentum during 2011, there was an ever more worrying trend witnessed on the front line of battle. Bit by bit, the frontline units were being taken over by jihadists, most of whom were Salafist in orientation—ultra-hard-line Sunni Muslims who sought to turn Libya into an Islamic state ruled by Shariah law. In effect, an uprising that had been born out of the desire for freedom and democracy had been hijacked by those with a very different agenda. Fellow Islamists flocked to the cause in Libya from all over the world.

  With many being international jihadists—ones hardened in battle in Iraq and Afghanistan—they had a natural ability to command frontline units. They began to transform amateur revolutionary fighters into jihadi fighting units. The turning point in the struggle for control of the revolution between the jihadists and the secular revolutionaries came with the assassination of rebel leader and former Libyan Army general Abdul Fatah Younis. During the 1990s General Younis had conducted Libyan Army campaigns against the rising forces of Islamism in the east of the country. Consequently he was hated by the Islamists, but revered by the people of the revolution.

  As the revolution gained pace, General Younis realized the extremists were receiving the bulk of the weaponry that was arriving in covert air shipments from Qatar, Abu Dhabi, and Saudi Arabia, ones being flown into Benghazi or Derna airports. General Younis raised his voice to complain about this: sophisticated weaponry was falling into the wrong hands. An attempt had already been made on the general’s life. During one frontline operation his vehicle had been hit by RPGs.

  In response to his opposition to the covert weapons drops, General Younis was seized by Islamists in Benghazi and taken to a 17th February Militia/Shariah Brigade base. General Younis was a highly experienced Special Forces soldier and a man of bravery and principle. He was tortured and shot to death. His body was dumped outside the city. His eyes had been gouged out; his body was partly burned and was riddled with bullet holes.

  After his assassination the front line changed radically—with the Islamists seizing ever more iron control. The Islamists made up only 10 percent of the frontline fighters, but with their battle experience and hard-line fanaticism they exerted far greater influence than their numbers alone warranted. Many of these Islamists hailed from outside Libya: they came from Sweden, Norway, and the United Kingdom. Some spoke fluent Pashtun—a result of having lived and fought in Afghanistan on the side of the Taliban and Al Qaeda for many years.

  They were fanatical and proved extremely aggressive toward Westerners even as the revolution was ongoing. A French ex-commando was captured by Islamists in Benghazi and killed by them. It was 17th February Militia and/or Shariah Brigade fighters who captured and killed him. Two British ex–Special Forces operators were very lucky to escape from Benghazi with their lives.

  After Gaddafi was toppled, the Shariah Brigade in particular began to exert its control on the streets of Benghazi. Citizens were terrified of their marauding bands of militiamen. They would beat people if they were caught drinking alcohol, or if a man was caught on the streets in the company of a woman. One person was whipped eighty times on the soles of his feet for being caught drinking. Another was cut twenty times on his back for being caught with a bottle of whisky in his car.

  This was akin to some of the worst excesses of the Taliban, once they had seized control of Afghanistan. It gave the lie to exactly who the Shariah Brigade were, their back
ground, beliefs, and intentions.

  On the morning of the 2012 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, twenty to thirty Shariah Brigade gun trucks reportedly left the coastal city of Derna, some 125 miles to the east of Benghazi. Derna was known by Libyans to be a hotbed of Islamic extremism and to be a stronghold of such forces, one more or less completely under the control of the Shariah Brigade. Those Shariah Brigade gun trucks headed to Benghazi to reinforce those fighters already in the city preparing to hit the U.S. Embassy.

  Twenty to thirty gun trucks generally hold some 160 to 240 fighters—a good proportion of those who assaulted the U.S.Mission and the Annex that September evening. This is yet another indication of how carefully planned and premeditated was the entire assault. Moreover, the attack took place on the symbolic anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks on America, and Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens had only just arrived at the Mission.

  Ambassador Stevens was a veteran diplomat who joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1991. He had expressed his “extraordinary honor” at being appointed the U.S. Ambassador to Libya in May 2012. He had held two previous posts in Libya, as Deputy Chief of Mission between 2007 and 2009 and then the American envoy to Libya’s Transitional National Council (TNC) during the uprising in 2011.

  Ambassador Stevens was reported to have facilitated “nonlethal military assistance” to the TNC during the Libyan revolution. A speaker of French and Arabic, he had previously been posted to Jerusalem, Damascus, Cairo, and Riyadh. In Washington he’d acted as the director of the Office of Multilateral Nuclear and Security Affairs; as a Pearson Fellow with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; and as an Iran desk officer and a staff assistant to the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.

  Ambassador Stevens was an old Libya hand. As early as August 2, 2012, he was making his concerns regarding security in Libya clear to the State Department and requesting additional security. In cables to Washington he described the security situation in Libya as “unpredictable, volatile and violent” and requested further “protective detail bodyguard positions.” Throughout August 2012 he sent further alerts, outlining how “a series of violent incidents has dominated the political landscape,” referring to “targeted and discriminate attacks.”

  By August 27 the State Department had gone as far as issuing a travel warning for Libya, citing the threat of assassination and car bombings in both Tripoli and Benghazi. On September 11, 2012—the day of the Embassy attack—Ambassador Stevens had sent cables to Washington including a weekly update on Benghazi security incidents, which reflected ordinary Libyans’ “growing frustration with police and security forces who were too weak to keep the country secure.”

  Bearing in mind the makeup of the armed groups at large in Benghazi post-Gaddafi, the American Embassy should have been provided with a level of security befitting a Mission in a postconflict zone menaced by America’s foremost enemies. Extremely reliable and well-placed sources involved in constructing the Benghazi Embassy’s physical defense and security measures have told the authors of this book how they warned the Americans that they needed far greater physical security measures in place if they were to ensure the security of the Benghazi Mission.

  Those sources—who have asked to remain anonymous due to worries over their security—pointed out to U.S. authorities that the security measures that were recognized as standard for a U.S. diplomatic mission had not been put in place in Benghazi. They were stunned when no further security measures were undertaken at the Benghazi Mission, and they raised this with the State Department, warning that the Mission remained vulnerable to attack.

  Other “outsiders” also warned those at the Mission what was self-evident to any moderately experienced Benghazi watcher—that the U.S. Embassy was woefully underprotected. Veteran New Zealand ex–elite forces soldier Mike Mawhinney—a private security operator widely experienced in Libya—provided security for Al Jazeera and other news crews during the height of the fighting to topple Gaddafi forces, plus for a number of other private contractors.

  He visited the Benghazi Mission and general vicinity on two occasions, and on both he was shocked to witness the woeful lack of proper security measures and manning at the Mission. “I visited the Mission twice between March and September 2012,” Mawhinney remarks. “I could not believe how poorly it was protected, to such a degree that I could not at first believe it could be a U.S. Diplomatic Mission.”

  Mawhinney was shocked to discover that the 17th February Militia had been retained as the Mission’s Quick Reaction Force. “Both I and my Libyan friends knew immediately that they had entirely the wrong people supposedly protecting the Mission. The female RSO in charge at the time seemed dynamic, capable and smart, and I presumed the inability to get anything changed at the Mission had to come from on high.”

  If there was sensitivity about providing U.S. Marines to safeguard the Benghazi Mission—as has been suggested in some quarters—any number of private military contractors (PMC) could have provided such a force. A PMC could have provided a dozen top operators—as indeed the British diplomatic mission in Benghazi had a security team made up of six to eight private contractors. Of course, when a PMC was contracted to assist with security at the Benghazi Mission, the British firm Blue Mountain was contracted to provide a local, Libyan guard force who were at all times to remain unarmed.

  Use of PMCs deploying teams of private operators is far from unusual. In 2006 there were at least one hundred thousand contractors working for the U.S. Department of Defense in Iraq, which equates to a force larger than the entire British military. That amounts to a tenfold increase in the use of PMCs since the Persian Gulf War just over a decade earlier. Today PMCs are contracted to supply security for U.S. military bases; they provide live ammunition and training packages, they maintain complex weapons systems, they escort convoys, and they provide close protection teams for VIPs. They would have been well capable of securing the Benghazi Mission.

  A cable quoted in the U.S. media indicates that a meeting was held at the U.S. State Department on August 15, 2012, to discuss security failings at the Benghazi Mission. The cable is quoted as stating: “RSO expressed concerns with the ability to defend Post in the event of a coordinated attack due to limited manpower, security measures, weapons capabilities, host nation support, and the overall size of the compound.” The Mission was also aware of “the location of approximately ten Islamist militias and AQ training camps within Benghazi,” AQ standing for Al Qaeda. Due to the date of this cable, it would seem likely this was a summation of the issues raised by the Mission’s then lead RSO. Of course, nothing was done to address those concerns.

  Some have suggested the Annex was the hidden extra layer of security for the Mission. I never went to the Annex, but it seems as if it had up to thirty operators based there, making it a far larger setup than the Mission itself. That raises the question of whether the Mission was a cover for the Annex. No more than seven State Department officials—RSOs and diplomatic staff—were ever based at the Mission, whereas the Annex appears to have had more than four times that number of personnel. It stands to reason that the Annex was therefore a key focus of U.S. activity and interest in Benghazi.

  The mass of weaponry that fell into militia hands—both “liberated” from Gaddafi’s armories, and provided by the Gulf states and Western nations—was a genuine concern after Gaddafi’s fall. Much of that weaponry had disappeared off the radar and was controlled by extremists; some of that weaponry had already fueled conflicts in West Africa and as far afield as Gaza. Hunting down that weaponry was a legitimate and worthwhile aim, and so the U.S. effort in Benghazi may well have been first and foremost a CIA-led operation—the Mission itself being something of a sideshow, providing a veneer of diplomatic legitimacy.

  But that in turn raises the question of who was really in charge in Benghazi—the State Department or the CIA? It seems likely that the Annex was somehow “contracted” to provide an added layer of security to the Missio
n, although few were made aware that this was so. If the RSOs knew of this backup agreement they certainly didn’t mention it to me, and they weren’t reassured by it, for they shared my concerns and worries over the lack of appropriate security at the Mission.

  In any event, whatever security support the CIA-run Annex agreed to provide to the State-run Mission, the policy was a flawed one, as the events of the night of September 11, 2012, proved. Four Americans, the U.S. Ambassador to Libya included, lost their lives, many more were injured, and the U.S. Mission was reduced to a smoking ruin. America was humiliated by a mass of Islamist militiamen. By anyone’s reckoning, the policy of having a secret Annex providing covert security backup to the Mission—if indeed there was such a policy in place—was flawed and resulted in catastrophic failure.

  Some U.S. officials have claimed that the Shariah Brigade fighters stumbled upon the existence of the Annex, having followed the QRF back to its base. This seems unlikely. The mortar team that hit the Annex rooftop position with several highly accurate rounds would have needed either a set of accurate coordinates—GPS grids—to pinpoint such a small target in a busy, built-up urban environment, or detailed recces and target rehearsals beforehand, to be able to get mortar rounds directly on target. This necessitates having prior knowledge of the existence of the Annex.

  In much of the media reporting following the Benghazi siege the Blue Mountain guard force were criticized for running away. The guards were five unarmed men facing fifty-plus heavily armed Shariah Brigade fighters. If they hadn’t run away all of them would have been captured, injured, or killed. As it was, two were taken captive and one was shot through both kneecaps. More to the point, their training and their orders were that they were to sound the alarm and then save themselves if the Mission was attacked by an armed force.