Under Fire
Page 7
Half the house, in keeping with the most rudimentary of security requirements, was outfitted with a safe haven that could provide temporary protection in case the facility came under attack. In Inman-era embassies, FE/BR, or forced-entry and blast-resistant, doors and windows were to enable the safety of personnel inside a post that was under assault and provide them with the time to wait for rescue and to destroy classified materials; SY had learned its lessons about the destruction of classified materials during the 1979 seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, after Iranian operatives had pieced together single-cut shredded cables line by line.
The FE/BR concept was time based; the doors and the transparent armor, depending on their classified thicknesses and properties, were designed to delay attackers, even those armed with sledgehammers and battering rams, by fifteen, thirty, or sixty minutes. There was no classified material inside the residence, however: just the ambassador. Security, therefore, was enhanced by safe rooms and emergency egress windows—both a primary and a secondary—that were designed to keep attackers out. The safe haven was not fireproof, however. There was no emergency high-volume air system to remove suffocating smoke in case the building was set ablaze; there were no smoke hoods stored inside the safe haven, as such emergency gear was not part of such a standardized specification. An iron gate with a lock sealed off the safe haven from possible outsiders who breached the residence’s sculptured wooden doors. Ground-floor windows were reinforced with security bars; primary and secondary egress windows in the safe haven were fitted with metal bars and security shutters.
The residence was situated some 150 feet behind the main security fence. The standoff was just enough to protect someone inside the building should a sedan crammed with explosives be detonated right at the main gate. Sandbags were hastily positioned to the right of the main entrance as a means to safeguard the security force from ordnance should it be involved in a battle to prevent a takeover of the residence. A flak vest was pre-positioned in the safe haven just in case. To enhance security at the Special Mission Compound, drop bars were added to the main gates to control vehicular access and to provide anti-ram capabilities. The State Department classifies such physical security items depending on the type of threat they can mitigate; a K12 rated drop gate, for example, must be able to stop a fifteen-thousand-pound vehicle traveling at fifty miles per hour at a ninety-degree point-of-impact angle, and not penetrate more than thirty-six inches from the point of impact.
Special Mission Benghazi’s grounds were roughly six hundred feet long by six hundred feet wide. A redbrick driveway split the grounds in two and ran all the way from the main Charlie-1 gate south, approximately two hundred meters toward the rear wall that bordered the Fourth Ring Road to the south. The northern half of the compound consisted of immaculately groomed grounds and Libyan shrubs and trees; the greenery would have made a sultan proud. The southern half of the diplomatic portion was more spartan, with rows of olive trees planted recently into the rich reddish earth.
A small swimming pool enabled the ambassador and possible guests to enjoy some cooling waters to defeat the relentless Libyan sun. A water tower, perhaps a remnant of the Italian occupation, stood idly along the northeast corner of the diplomatic half of the compound.
A smaller gate, code-named Charlie-3, provided special access—and emergency egress—toward the Fourth Ring Road. The gate was small and could only accommodate one direction of traffic. It was not meant to be a security gate.
Adjacent to the residence was the area where the DS contingent ate and slept; the building, in fact, looked like a miniaturized copy of the diplomatic residence and resembled servant quarters. The gardens and grass around the diplomatic security quarters were well-groomed and typical of Libya’s upper class; gardeners from the nations below the Sahara Desert, the migrant green thumbs of the Qaddafi regime, were the regulars who crouched on their knees to make the desert—or at least the grounds of lavish estates of Qaddafi loyalists and those who thrived economically under the dictator—bloom. A carpet of gray bricks covered much of this half of the modest grounds.
Access to this part of the overall landscape was made through Bravo-1 gate, which faced the main road on the northern envelope of the grounds. A man gate, a smaller cast-iron doorway that could be dead bolted from inside, positioned adjacent to Bravo-1 gate, enabled access for visitors without having to open the main vehicular entrance.
The windows on the main floor of the DS residence were all reinforced by steel gates. In case it came down to a firefight, chest-high rows of white burlap sandbags were tactically positioned outside the building near where the special agents occasionally parked their vehicles.
The agents’ residence had bedrooms, a recreation room, and a small cantina. The kitchen was equipped with the spartan trappings one would find in a corporate office. There was a sink, a stove, a communal table, a coffee machine, and, of course, a fridge. The kitchen had all the trappings of Americans abroad—especially armed Americans on a tactical protective assignment. The fridge was stocked with bottled water and Gatorade. A Price Club’s worth of PowerBars and soft drinks were warehoused in a corner; there were also enough Meals Ready to Eat, or MREs, to feed a hungry army. And, of course, where there were cigars, there was television: a dish made sure that the comforts of American security personnel abroad—Fox News and ESPN—could be followed.
A carport adjacent to the building was covered by a white-and-gray awning that kept the armored SUVs—Toyota Land Cruisers—protected from the harsh Benghazi sun. The vehicles were outfitted with run-flat tires—special “tactical” tires that are designed to perform while deflated; they enable a vehicle to drive at a top speed of fifty miles per hour for up to fifty miles. They were also equipped with tow straps, fire extinguisher, binoculars, sledgehammer, medical kit, bottled water, MREs, spare tourniquets, and ballistic soft-armor vests with plates. The vehicles were always fully gassed and ready to deploy immediately; they were equipped with Motorola radios for communications with the U.S. residence and the TOC—the tactical operations center.
The TOC was the security nerve center and common hub of the facility and was always manned by one or two DS agents. Situated south of the residence, the TOC was a small and constricting structure of gray cement and small windows sealed in by iron bars. An agent’s battle rattle, on such an assignment, was not a Jos A. Bank suit, but rather a ballistic helmet, body armor, Colt assault rifle, spare magazines, a tourniquet, pressure bandage, pen flares with a launcher, SureFire flashlight, whistle, compass, Leatherman multi-tool, and Spyderco folding knife. An open radio link existed between the TOC and the Regional Security Office at the U.S. embassy in Tripoli.
An alleyway, a ten-foot-wide and four-hundred-foot-long walkway between the two nine-foot-high walls that separated the residence and the DS half of the compound, enabled access between the two halves of the sprawling estate. The alley, however, in case of attack, was a kill zone. If enemy forces scaled the outer wall and gained the high ground, if they managed to zero in on the complex with a mortar or an overhand weapon such as the Soviet-era RKG-3 antitank grenade, anyone in the alleyway link would be decimated. The RKG-3 was a handheld shaped-charge grenade that became the most prolific and successful weapon in the insurgent campaigns in Iraq. When its pin was pulled and it was thrown overhead, a parachute emerged, forcing the grenade to land at a ninety-degree angle, maximizing the impact of the shaped charge. Tens of thousands of RKG-3s were in the hands of militiamen and jihadists in Libya.
It appears, though, that the DS contingent was poised for worst-case eventualities and swarm attacks from all angles. Sandbag emplacements dotted the rooftop of the agent barracks. They had been tactically placed by MSD agents on previous trips into Benghazi, to provide cover for anticipated fields of fire.
The sandbags would soon prove invaluable.
6.
The Special Agents
Benghazi wasn’t that long-coveted temporary assignment position that DS agents c
ompete for. The temporary slots that opened for Benghazi every three months were not equivalent to a stint in Rome or Paris; wives would not go on the pilgrimage to Neiman Marcus to prepare for the few months inside the bosom of fashion and cuisine. Wives and children couldn’t even go. Benghazi was a hardship post—no spouses or children permitted. It was a spartan post inside the hell of a raging inferno. There was a bright side, though. Unlike a stretch in Baghdad, Sana’a, Peshawar, or Kabul—to name a few—a trip to Benghazi promised to be a short one. Still, the agents assigned to the Special Mission Compound had to persevere. They had to survive.
There was a revolving-door churn of TDY, or temporary duty, agents coming in and out of the post. “They [the DS agents] served on average less than forty days, many for thirty days or less, with similar rotations at the U.S. embassy in Tripoli,” the former U.S. ambassador Thomas Pickering indicated in an interview with Reuters. “Into a very dicey environment,” he added, “came security officers who had high-threat training, no State Department overseas experience, and there was no continuity. Getting on top of your job in a difficult situation obviously takes more than thirty days. And so these really good officers were disadvantaged by the fact they had no memory beyond thirty days of what was going on and what happened except what their predecessors left them.”1
Many of the men—and women—in this churn could shoot like top-tier commandos and drive like NASCAR champions, but they lacked even the most basic of Arabic and Islamic cultural awareness skills. Most agents, upon being assigned to an embassy or consulate as an RSO or ARSO, would embark on intensive language instruction to prepare them for their particular country; sometimes, in fact, language school could take as long as a year to complete, and agents, after many years in the field, could boast three or four languages, as diverse as Russian, Japanese, and Spanish, in their repertoire. The investment that the DS would make in these special agents would be reflected in the lengths of their tours in a particular country. But in the reality of the new world of critical-threat posts that DS had to safeguard, there was no continuity of agent personnel in Benghazi. The RSO and ARSO were so understaffed and temporary that they didn’t have time to get to know the local security chiefs; they didn’t have the opportunity to host parties, visit these men and their families in their homes, and create human bonds of friendship that could one day be crucial. Benghazi even lacked an interpreter, or an experienced Foreign Service National Investigator. The FSNIs, as they are known, are often retired local police or military men who are subject matter experts (SMEs) on their country’s inner workings; they have a Rolodex of contacts, and they are a buffer between the security needs of a U.S. diplomatic post and the day-to-day limitations of the host nation. RSOs consider their FSNIs to be an inseparable piece of the security package they are responsible for maintaining.
On August 15, the temporary security staff at Special Mission Benghazi convened an emergency meeting to address the deteriorating security reality in the city. The exchanges at the meeting were direct and ominously honest. The TDY RSO expressed his concerns that the DS contingent would be unable to defend the post if it was subjected to a coordinated and serious terrorist attack. They cited a lack of manpower, insufficient physical security infrastructure, limited weapon systems at their disposal, and the lack of any reliable host-nation support.
The meeting, held inside the small cantina at the agents’ residence on the compound, was conducted without anger—just genuine foreboding. The next day, in a cable marked “SECRET,” the RSO in Tripoli dispatched the conclusions of the Benghazi sit-down to his superiors in Washington, D.C. The TDY RSO emphatically stated that he did not believe the mission could be adequately defended. The cable struck a resonant chord with Ambassador Stevens, who, along with other elements of the U.S. intelligence and defense community, agreed with the DS in-country assessment that the security for the Benghazi Special Mission Compound was tenuous.
It wasn’t the first time that such a stark statement of security was transmitted to the State Department.
In 1976, a young special agent named Al Golacinski, working for the old SY, sent a similar cable to headquarters, after being temporarily assigned to the U.S. embassy in Beirut as a replacement for the then RSO Sid Telford. Telford was allowed a brief home leave in order to get a much-needed break from dealing with the rapidly deteriorating security environment in Beirut; Telford performed tirelessly and heroically on an almost daily basis, rescuing American citizens from the chaos that was then Beirut. Civil war had broken out in Lebanon pitting Christian and Muslim forces against each other; heavily armed Palestinian groups were in the center of most of the violence. Adding to the chaos were the intra-religious rivalries that, taken together, made Beirut one of the most dangerous cities on earth. This was a civil war of massacres and random deadly violence. Young Christian militia women kept the ears of the people they killed in designer handbags they wore off their shoulders. Telford and Golacinski made almost daily visits to the morgue in an attempt to identify missing American citizens. Unfortunately, the U.S. embassy was located on the very dividing line between Muslim and Christian fighters; this became known as the Green Line. Incoming sniper and artillery fire from the Christian side regularly impacted the embassy building. Embassy personnel were forced to come and leave work in surprise high-speed, serpentine rushes in lightly armored vehicles. Outgoing tank and mortar rounds launched from just in front and behind the embassy building by Muslim forces drew additional fire and sometimes resulted in airbursts impacting the building. This was by no means a safe environment for embassy personnel. Golacinski and the marines joked that they slept under their mattresses, not on them.
During one particularly heavy artillery exchange one night, the embassy building took numerous hits. Golacinski was on the phone with the State Ops Center and repeated that “our position is untenable.” He was duly advised that the embassy must remain open in spite of the clear dangers faced by the personnel. Secretary Henry Kissinger stated that the continuing presence of the United States in Lebanon served a higher purpose, so the embassy remained open. Unfortunately, a short time later, the newly appointed U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, Francis E. Meloy Jr., was abducted by Palestinian terrorists as he traveled to the presidential palace, along with the U.S. economic counselor Robert O. Waring, to present their credentials to the new Lebanese president. Both men were shot dead; their bodies were later dumped on a nearby beach.
Golacinski had no illusions that working for SY was akin to working for the FBI or the Secret Service, organized as separate agencies but under the supervision of Justice and Treasury. In spite of its law enforcement mandate and high-stakes responsibilities for protection of life and U.S. interests abroad, the SY mission was viewed by the State Department as anathema to the conduct of diplomacy, and the department was therefore committed to not granting the authorities and resources necessary for SY to carry out its responsibilities. SY agents quickly recognized this and learned to do the best they could with the limited resources available. The job attracted a certain type of individual who thrived on dealing with these kinds of challenges. “At the end of the day we [the agents] signed up for the risks associated with our positions with our eyes open.”2
Three years later, while serving as the RSO in Tehran, Golacinski would send cables to the State Department warning of the dangers to U.S. personnel; these cables, of course, were similar in language and concern to the messages sent from Benghazi to Foggy Bottom in August 2012. The decision to grant the Shah of Iran entry to the United States prompted a cable and numerous phone conversations warning that the situation would be untenable if the embassy were attacked; months earlier, in February 1979, the embassy had already withstood an attack. Even before the admission of the Shah, the embassy faced a progression of dangerous attacks on its compound ranging from frequent automatic gunfire directed at the compound to grenade attacks and an RPG attack on the newly completed consulate building (located on the compound). Incursions by armed i
ntruders occurred on various occasions, including once when two marine guards and the chargé d’affaires were held at gunpoint in the ambassador’s residence. Large-scale demonstrations took place in front of the embassy common; embassy personnel were evacuated to other locations when there was advance warning of trouble. These circumstances were the norm, and it was left to the RSO and his limited staff to deal with them. Washington was aware of these occurrences, but, not unlike Beirut earlier and Benghazi much later, the State Department failed to accept the possibility that tragedy would follow.
On November 4, 1979, the embassy was stormed by radical elements of the Iranian regime. Efforts to negotiate a way out of the attack, as Golacinski had done previously, were to no avail, and Washington finally ordered the embassy to surrender. “Our personnel were held hostage and subjected to unspeakable horrors for 444 days,” Golacinski reflected, “and eight U.S. military personnel lost their lives at Desert One during the course of an aborted rescue attempt.”3