Under Fire

by Fred Burton

  Originally, the High-Threat Training, or HTT, as it was known, was a prerequisite for agents en route to Baghdad and Kabul and ultimately grew into mandatory instruction for all DS personnel heading to critical-threat posts around the world. The thirty-two days of instruction are pressure filled and intense—much like the hot spots the agents will soon find themselves operating in. The curriculum, a speed/low-drag mixture of tactical, medical, survival, navigational, and driving, includes advanced tactical protection skills (which include how to shoot from a well of a follow car to how to conduct a twelve-man advance, using four-point ******* ************ and shooting *******); small-team room clearing (which came in handy in 2008 when DS agents helped to clear the Serena Hotel in Kabul after it had been seized by Taliban terrorists); enhanced combat medicine (the ************** ******); field navigations (including use of GPS); tactical and covert communications; escape and evacuation training (similar to the SERE, or Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape, training offered to U.S. military Special Forces); and advanced driving skills (agents had to know how to change a run-flat tire, are tossed around in a mechanical spindle to experience disorientation in a vehicle rollover, and learn to drive Humvees in soft sand). Agents destined for the Middle East also receive intelligence briefings on the terrorist threat awaiting them. The instruction culminates with an intensive three-day practical exercise. The DS instructors are all veterans of extended tours of critical-threat posts or subject matter experts like former 18-Delta medics and doctors from the Johns Hopkins Hospital. In advanced MSD training, agents are taught how to be Dedicated Defensive Marksmen, better known ** ******** ******* ** ******* * ********* ** * ******** ******

  One of the primary objectives of the training focuses on driving; indeed, much of the training is carried out at the Bill Scott Raceway, a facility in West Virginia, about seventy miles from Washington, D.C. The facility, one of the most unique driving training tracks in the world, enables students in the course to focus on practical, hands-on driving skills in realistic settings at the hands of some of the most experienced evasive and counterassault driving instructors in the world.

  By 2012, though, the instruction had morphed into a training regimen with a much higher level of octane. Known as the Tactical Combat Casualty Care training, or TCCC, the instruction was intended to keep personnel alive in the field—alive after they had encountered a suicide bombing or IED event; alive after they had been involved in a catastrophic event; and alive if they found themselves, and their protectee, in the center of a swarm attack. Great emphasis was placed on providing the special agents with advanced tactical trauma instruction so that they could keep others alive, even after the most horrific of casualties, until help would come and evacuate them out of the danger zone.*

  The training is absolutely dynamic and designed to leave a permanent imprint. “We have a number of individuals that serve overseas and around the world in some of the most hostile environments, and it’s incumbent on us to give them the training to increase their chances of being a successful tour overseas in a safe fashion,” commented the DS Assistant Director for Training Mark Hipp.5 Hipp, who had spent a good portion of his career in MSD crisscrossing the globe from danger zone to danger zone, and members of his staff with similar backgrounds were able to impart their knowledge and experience to new generations of DS agents.

  TCCC was designed for preparing DS agents—young and old alike—with the tools for dealing tactically with the worst locations on the planet. DS agents were never intended to be full-time operators like members of the U.S. Navy SEALs. “Not that we are incapable of such a task,” a former agent with years of overseas assignments in crosshair capitals like Beirut and Baghdad reflected, “but it’s not our primary mission. We don’t have the in-depth training of armament. And if we do, it’s a small portion of our careers. If need be, we must sit down with an ambassador, a personal representative of the president of the United States, and tell him ‘NO! NO! NO!’ when the ambassador is pushing an issue. WE can. We have. I have. I did it many, many times! Fighting terrorists and negotiating with ambassadors, shows the breadth of our duties and abilities.”6

  That ability—to make the switch from Colt M4 vests and ceramic inserts to Ralph Lauren suits and SIG-*** and **** semiautomatic pistols, to change gears from a warlord sit-down in Anbar Province to working a NATO summit in Brussels—was a fiber in the DNA of these agents that made DS truly unique. So, too, was the fact that their mission was multifaceted and their precinct truly global. They traveled to the most amazing cities in the world and to the very worst.

  The Department of Defense, realizing that DS was stretched thinly throughout the world and especially at diplomatic posts inside the new and emerging realities of the Arab Spring, created, through the National Security Council, regional and nation-specific site security teams, or SSTs. Dubbed a traveling circus, twenty such teams crisscrossed the world visiting some of the most dangerous capitals and regions.

  The Libyan SST was commanded by the Utah National Guard lieutenant colonel Andrew Wood, a veteran and well-respected Special Forces soldier, and consisted of sixteen spec ops personnel; these operators came from various units inside the conventional Special Forces community (Green Berets and SEALs) and the covert end of the spectrum (Delta and DevGru). The SST worked for the RSO and was answerable to the deputy chief of mission, or DCM. The SST split its time between the embassy in Tripoli and the Special Mission Compound in Benghazi.

  Tripoli was the primary recipient of the SST focus. When, in February 2012, the SST first arrived in country, the situation in the Libyan capital was tense but easing slowly toward normalcy—Arab Spring normalcy. The sounds of gunfire that resonated at night as part of the revolutionary soundtrack soon reverted to the vibrancy of other North African cities: car horns blaring, eateries blasting the latest techno-Arab tunes, police sirens wailing, and the calls to prayer coming from the muezzin five times a day. Still, the security situation in the capital was volatile. At given times there were three eight-man MSD teams posted to the embassy. The SST operators greatly enhanced the embassy’s deterrence and counterattack capabilities. But the threats were inescapable. Jihadist groups, conducting surveillance of the embassy grounds, knew that Ambassador Stevens was an avid runner, and they expressed their desires to kill him while he jogged. Stevens never ran alone again.

  The SST also traveled to Benghazi. Lieutenant Colonel Wood was, in fact, in the city in June when the British ambassador Asquith’s motorcade was targeted in an RPG attack; with its combat medics, or 18-Deltas, in tow, the SST provided emergency medical care and security support to the wounded British security agents; it also assisted the British, and the local authorities, with their investigation into the attack. Special Mission Benghazi, the lesser post, inexplicably usually staffed with only one agent, always needed more hands and more guns to stand at the ready. RSO Tripoli, Eric Nordstrom, regularly struggled with headquarters, often with the help of Ambassador Stevens, to get additional agents to bolster the garrison.

  DS headquarters ultimately assigned three agents to Benghazi in August 2012. Benghazi was clearly a unique post, and considered a frontline outpost, more than the standard fixture of a critical-threat facility—such as the consulates in Pakistan (Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar) and Iraq (Basra, Kirkuk, and Erbil). Because Benghazi was ad hoc, there was a temporariness to the Special Mission Compound that impacted staffing and physical security measures. More significantly, the three agents assigned to Benghazi were TDY—dispatched to the post on temporary duty. Benghazi wasn’t a city on the official bid list for postings overseas, and even if it was, it is doubtful that many in DS, if any at all, would volunteer for such an isolated and critical-threat assignment. Because of the Special Mission Compound’s unmistakably temporary footprint, the RSOs assigned to it were never able to establish long-standing personal relationships with the local security heads; not only were the DS agents in charge never on the ground long enough to schmooze and win over a
local police commander or a responsible militia leader, but, thanks to the internecine violence, there were no police commanders or local militia leaders who were around long enough to schmooze. When Ambassador Stevens’s plans for Benghazi were revealed—from a particularly DS perspective—the challenge the agents on the ground faced was greatly amplified.

  The agents were therefore forced to rely on their wits and training. They had to reconnoiter all the venues the ambassador planned to visit and prepare contingency plans just in case. No matter where any of the agents were in the city, no matter what time of day, they had to know the driving distance and the shortest possible route between their location and the closest medical trauma center; it didn’t matter if their protectee was choking on a pretzel or suffering from a gaping chest wound, the agents involved in the detail had to have every worst-case scenario painted in their minds and responses preplanned. Agents were always hopeful to be on the right side of Murphy’s Law on a detail—especially one that was high threat. There was never complacency on a detail. No lapses of judgment or focus were permitted. Even the smallest of items contained the explosive potential to become catastrophic; the assassinations of presidents, prime ministers, and kings defined preventable moments in time that forever scorched the logbooks of history.

  There were two additional components laid out in advance of Ambassador Stevens’s arrival. The first involved the February 17 Brigade. On September 9, 2012, the militia had solidified an agreement with the State Department concerning the establishment of a special force from within its ranks, called the Quick Reaction Force, or QRF, that would respond to any worst-case scenarios at any of the two American outposts in Benghazi but especially when Ambassador Stevens, or the “principal officer,” was in the city. The QRF was to be on call 24/7 with at least three armed members. QRF members were to man the main Charlie-1 gate from 0800 to 0000 daily and conduct roving patrols throughout the compound from 0000 to 0800. There was one stipulation to these preset hours of operation: the QRF was to make personnel available at “all hours of the day and night” to prepare for any movements or operations outside normal business hours.*

  At least one QRF member was to accompany DS agents on their trips to and from the Benina International Airport for their meet and greets with Ambassador Stevens or other notable diplomats or military and intelligence officials coming or going to Benghazi. DS demanded that the QRF hone their tactical skills and required that the force train at least once a week; the regimen had to be approved by the RSO, though it was a far cry from the standards of most third-world forces. The militia was responsible for providing the QRF members with their uniforms, though there was no standardization expected or supplied; the militia wore what can best be described as guerrilla chic: soccer jerseys and camouflage trousers. The QRF had to supply its own weapons and ammunition, but in post-civil-war Benghazi an AK-47 and a truckload of 7.62 mm ammo were as easy to come by as a Starbucks coffee in midtown Manhattan.

  For the all-important task of security at the Special Mission Compound, QRF members earned 35 Libyan dinars a day—roughly $27.

  The DS crew in Benghazi had to be ready to react and respond to any and all contingencies, ranging from suicide truck bombs to even CBRNE (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and high-yield explosives) events; protocols, in such an event, included the compound’s staff hunkering down in sealed rooms and donning pre-positioned chem-bio suits.

  In case of an immediate emergency, such as full-scale war or massive civil unrest, the Special Mission Compound security team was to evacuate the country by any and all means possible. The plan, known as E&E, or escape and evacuation, involved the initiation of a REACT plan that warranted the destruction of any classified or sensitive documents or material with the exception of the DS personal weapons, or ***, for special-purpose equipment, as the SIG *** and **** * mm semiautomatic pistols were referred to. The preferable evacuation route from Benghazi for fleeing diplomats was by air. If the airports were closed, though, the consulate staff was to try to escape via the Mediterranean and notify the National Security Agency, the NSA, and the RSO’s office in Athens, Greece. An overland escape, to the Egyptian frontier, was the last resort. At the Egyptian border crossing, the evacuees were to present their diplomatic passports and request consular notification; they were also supposed to dispose of their SPE prior to reaching the frontier. The RSO at the U.S. embassy in Cairo was to be notified immediately.

  The State Department and the Department of Defense had a long-standing agreement to provide support for evacuation and security at diplomatic facilities. For Libya, primary responsibility rested with AFRICOM, based in Stuttgart, Germany. AFRICOM is one of DOD’s six global geographic commands and maintains a single base on the continent in Djibouti. In a perfect world, DOD would have had noncombatant evacuation operation plans in place to evacuate the post. A myriad of bureaucratic reasons, logistics, distance, and balls dropped caused neither government agency to have emergency evacuation plans in place for Benghazi. AFRICOM had no visibility into the number of total U.S. government personnel stationed in Benghazi during the week of September 10. It lacked a dedicated Commander’s In-extremis Force: a specially trained force capable of performing no-notice missions. There was also no marine expeditionary unit, carrier group, or smaller group of U.S. battleships closely located in “the Med” that could have provided aerial or ground support. The leash stopped with DS.7

  Even the briefest of visits by the ambassador required weeks of tireless work. Communications were critical for Stevens’s diplomatic missions from Benghazi, which also required the presence of an information management officer. The position, mysteriously known as a “communicator” in the Foreign Service vernacular, was responsible for facilitating the transmission and receipt of encrypted communications—primarily e-mails—through a system known as the Secure Internet Protocol Router Network, or SIPRNet. SIPRNet, a closed system that connected computer networks used by the Department of State—as well as the Department of Defense—was the primary mover of all information and items marked as “Secret”; top secret information was relayed by JWICS, or Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System, pronounced, in that special world of U.S. government acronyms, “JayWicks.” Sean Smith was the man selected to assist Ambassador Stevens in Benghazi with communications.

  Smith, an always-smiling thirty-four-year-old U.S. Air Force veteran and radioman, was ideally suited for the sensitive task of communicator. The married father of two girls had served in The Hague, Pretoria, and Baghdad. Smith was one of those many go-to guys in the Foreign Service who would be summoned for such assignments because of talent and past performance. Benghazi wasn’t Smith’s regular post; it was a brief TDY assignment so that he could serve as Ambassador Stevens’s lifeline back to civilization—the embassy in Tripoli and Washington, D.C. Benghazi was probably an odd and frightening reality for Smith, who was suddenly shipped to a war zone and thrown together with a group of armed men, strangers, whose schedule was dictated by the movements of a highly energetic ambassador who was running around performing a mixture of diplomatic and intelligence-related activities. Such, however, was the reality of American diplomacy in a post-9/11—as well as post–Iraq and Afghanistan and post–Arab Spring—world. It was clearly the reality of America’s diplomatic pursuits in a Libya trying to survive its postrevolutionary convulsions.

  8.

  From Wheels Down to Lights-Out

  Ambassador Chris Stevens arrived in Benghazi at about noon on September 10; his protective detail, Special Agents A. and B., was with him at all times. It was bright and hot in Benghazi—it always was—and he was quickly ushered from the gate to his awaiting dark gray armored Toyota Land Cruiser by A. and B. and driven straight to the Special Mission Compound by one of the ARSOs; the motorcade was led by a team of February 17 militiamen cutting through the vehicular and pedestrian traffic with their heavily armed Toyota pickup truck. Stevens was accompanied by another individual, identified
only as a “principal officer” from the U.S. embassy in Tripoli, who was supposed to remain in Benghazi for only one night; the principal officer could have been a member of the intelligence community from the CIA or he could have been a commercial officer. His identity remains unknown.

  The convoy moved as fast as the traffic would allow, twisting and turning in and out of the Benghazi gridlock through junctions, traffic lights, and traffic circles. The convoy used an unannounced route—a quick and unobstructed route—that potential threats couldn’t anticipate that would bring Ambassador Stevens to the mission without incident. The ride took twenty minutes.

  Ambassador Stevens had prepared an intensively busy dawn-to-dark itinerary for his week in Benghazi. His meetings ranged from sit-downs with the local council to top secret briefings. He had meetings set with local political leaders, civic organizers, and top executives from the Al-Marfa Shipping and Maritime Services Company and the Arabian Gulf Oil Company, a former subsidiary of the state-owned National Oil Corporation, involved in crude oil and natural gas exploration. AGOCO, as it was known, had roots dating back to 1971, following the implementation of Law No. 115, issued by the Libyan Revolutionary Command Council nationalizing shares held by British Petroleum.