by Fred Burton
Ambassador Stevens had meetings scheduled with NGOs and educators to talk about Fulbright scholarships. September 13 was to be the only media appearance of the week: a thirty-minute meet and greet, a photo op, and a five-minute speech for the opening of an American Corner in the city (an American Corner is a “public diplomacy” outpost—a library, discussion forum, program venue, and place with Internet access—available for the use of the local population in a host country). And of course, Benghazi being Benghazi, and the city’s nest of spies always up to something, Stevens had a scheduled priority meeting with the CIA research administration officer. The intelligence meet, in fact, was his first meeting of the afternoon.
They met behind closed doors in a quiet room at the compound; the details of their discussions remain open to speculation. The meeting lasted close to two hours.
Later that day, Ambassador Stevens was rushed to the Fadeel Hotel, where he was to meet with the ten members of the local chapter of the National Transitional Council. The Fadeel Hotel, located approximately two miles from the mission, was listed as a four-star Benghazi luxury hotel, but it was more like a spruced-up youth hostel. Much of the building faced the sea, which provided some peace of mind for the DS agents worried about snipers and access for VBIEDs. The meeting, held behind closed doors and in Arabic, was cordial and was a chance for the ten men responsible for transitional government in the war-torn city to provide the American ambassador with a state of the union of sorts. The picture must have been gloomy.
After a dinner, hosted at an off-site location,* Ambassador Stevens was ushered back through the darkened streets and avenues toward Charlie-1 gate in a fully armored Toyota Land Cruiser that bore no registration plates or tags. In cities like London and Paris, diplomatic plates get you out of speeding tickets, but in Benghazi special tags constituted a huge red bull’s-eye. In hot spots like Iraq, agents even carry throw-down plates, to quickly mask the vehicle’s identity. The Blue Mountain Libya guards opened the gate the moment the ambassador’s motorcade neared, and by the time the dust on the road outside the compound had settled from the high-speed entrance, Stevens was already inside his residence preparing for a well-deserved good night’s sleep. D. said good night to the ambassador at 2030 hours. Another long hard day had ended. It was time for lights-out.
Dawn broke brilliantly over Benghazi at precisely 0638 hours on September 11, 2012; it was Patriot Day and National Day of Service and Remembrance, marking the eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks against the United States. The meaning of the day was not lost on Ambassador Stevens or the five DS agents assigned to his detail and the Benghazi Special Mission Compound who stood stoically at dawn’s first light to lower the flag to half-staff. The organism that ultimately metastasized into al-Qaeda originated thousands of miles away from Libya, inside the mosques of Arabia and beneath mountains in Afghanistan, but the reverberations of that malignant jihad were now felt in North Africa and inside Benghazi. Benghazi was a new outpost in the attempt to once and for all excise this presence from the Arab and Muslim worlds. The war that began in Arabia and whose battles were waged in East Africa, at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, inside Afghanistan and Pakistan, and throughout the Arab world was now being waged inside the epicenters of hope that were the Arab Spring—in Tahrir Square in Cairo and in the blood-soaked streets of Aleppo. In this new phase of the war, shock and awe would have to be replaced by finesse and bridge building. It was a different war where diplomacy would guide the required covert forces who used guile and muscle in pursuit of American security and America’s interests.
There were no countersurveillance agents on the perimeter of the facility due to the limited resources and a lack of MSD assets on the ground; this was a critical handicap in observing those who might be watching the compound. Just as dawn broke, Sean Smith reportedly noticed someone in a police officer’s uniform photographing the Special Mission Compound from an observation perch in a building across the street. The security staff was concerned that the compound was being observed as part of a preoperational surveillance sortie. This sort of surveillance, classic terrorist tradecraft, was usually conducted before the launch of an attack.
The man in law enforcement tactical kit was taking pictures of the compound with a smartphone. He belonged to the Libyan Supreme Security Committee, or SSC. The SSC was to provide a routine presence in front of the Special Mission Compound as a show of deterrent force, but it was just one of many militia organizations whose motives were suspect and intentions possibly hostile. Numerous police organizations within the Benghazi security apparatus were nothing more than neighborhood militias that used a mosque as their center of power and spent their days settling age-old scores and chasing their small percentage of Libya’s riches that were long reserved for those inside the Qaddafi sycophant circle whose loyalty was absolute and family and political connections certain.
The SSC was known as the Libyan militia that battled militias—a semiofficial force to measure and restrain the influence and armed presence of the lawless. They were anything but. The SSC was accused of numerous crimes and abuses of human rights. One such instance involved Salem Forjani, a heart surgeon working for the Ministry of Health. He was kidnapped on May 17, 2012, when he went to the Tripoli Medical Center on orders of the health minister to remove the director, who was accused of links with the Qaddafi regime. He was kidnapped, beaten without mercy. The SSC had also been admonished for its role in the extrajudicial killings of former Qaddafi regime security officers, and even the kidnapping of Iranian Red Crescent humanitarian workers. “The SSC were gangsters,” an intelligence source in Libya proclaimed. “They were definitely not in tune with the interests of the United States in Benghazi.”1
Dauntingly, there were eighteen thousand heavily armed and unsupervised members of the SSC wandering about in Libya. The SSC was far more organized than most militias. It had its own logo, a black shield with the new Libyan flag inside its crest, and its fighters were issued black baseball caps, black T-shirts with the logo above the left breast, and black military surplus trousers. Its fighters were, perhaps, the only fashionably correct semiofficial instrument of violence meandering through Libya.
Two Blue Mountain Libya guards tried to question the photographer, but he claimed no wrongdoing and drove off with several others without offering much further elaboration. In a country with an organized security apparatus, such an instance would have sparked diplomatic outrage. Benghazi wasn’t the precinct for law enforcement accountability.
Ambassador Stevens’s schedule that bright Tuesday was low-key; it was the most easily managed of the entire week’s itinerary. There was a meeting with the commanders of the February 17 Brigade and some commercial interests to discuss with the Arabian Gulf Oil Company and the head of the Al-Marfa Shipping and Maritime Services Company. One of the directors from Al-Marfa, in keeping with the all-important gestures of Arab hospitality, invited Chris Stevens to his home for dinner. The offer was respectfully declined. Stevens had a previous engagement. He was scheduled to sit down with the Turkish consul general, His Excellency Ali Sait Akin, at the Special Mission Compound for a behind-closed-doors meeting.
Their meeting had no time limit to it in the itinerary—scheduling slang for there was a lot to discuss.
Part Two
ATTACK
9.
The Cool of Night
There is a soothing relief that overruns a desert landscape once darkness falls. The moment the unforgiving sun retreats for the brief respite of night, the cruel heat dissipates with a welcome anticipation. Visitors to the desert, the dreaded salibiyeen, or crusaders, never respected the preciousness of night. They raced about, perspiring madly in their blue blazers and khaki trousers, loosening their ties as they tried to show their hosts that the stifling heat didn’t matter to them. The masquerade was foolish. Those who dwell in the desert, people who have endured the skin-searing scorch of the sun, awaken once darkness falls. Throughout the Middle East
, daytime is for shelter and incubation. Darkness is when life begins. The sun set at 1851 hours on the evening of September 11, 2012.
Benghazi’s Western Fwayhat neighborhood was eerily quiet on the night of September 11. Most of the homes in Western Fwayhat were villas, and neighborhood residents were still behind their walls and gates once darkness fell; the sun had to stay hidden for several hours before the neighborhood awoke and people emerged to their lemon-tree-covered patios to grill meats and entertain or visit friends and family. Dusk was the time to enjoy one of the several dozen cups of eye-squinting diabetic sweet tea that was a staple for Libyans, or, for the less pious, some black-market vodka; Libya, officially, is a dry country, though spirits from all over the world are plentiful in the markets of Tripoli, Benghazi, and the border regions. The main roads, both the Third and the Fourth Ring arteries, saw the usual Tuesday evening traffic. The odd SUV or Mercedes sedan raced along the dimly lit roadways, ignoring any semblances of speed laws, but that didn’t matter; few of the drivers had licenses, and virtually none had insurance. Many of the drivers, expressing an absolute disdain in the face of both the Qaddafi loyalists and the Salafists, shouted out their sense of liberation by raising the volume on the car sound systems to window-shattering levels, so that the heavy bass beats of Lebanese songstresses singing the usual fare of ten-minute-long ballads with the words habibi (my dear) and ya-albi (my heart, or “apple of my eye” for a truly romantic Arabic colloquial) were heard coming and going throughout the darkened landscape. The smaller roads, some that were paved and others that just connected the main roads to the villas and the square lots of barren real estate, were quiet.
Pedestrians were few and far between in Western Fwayhat—one of the trappings of an affluent area where Mercedes sedans and satellite dishes outnumbered residents. Many of the homes were abandoned, and many residents were absentees; wealth had afforded those with means and with links overseas to flee the city when the civil war began. Occasionally, though, people did use the side and back streets to walk to the homes of friends and relatives, or for a stroll to work off the gut-busting breakfasts of hummus, eggs, and fava beans that were the Libyan staples that usually parked themselves inside one’s belly for most of the day. Sometimes two or three men, cigarettes in one hand and prayer beads in the other, walked slowly in their flip-flops and gowns as they discussed their affairs. People also sometimes walked to the Venezia Café for an escape.
Darkness brought a beguiling eeriness to the neighborhood. The thick rows of foliage and beautiful desert flowers—some manicured in meticulous shapes and heights just outside the walled barriers separating homes—became blackened shapes that twisted in the shadows. The local streetlights cast a flickering fluorescent whitish glow to parts of the street and provided a diffused haze to others. There was the sound of the odd car engine zooming away and, of course, the nerve-punctuating shrill of feral cats at play in the dark. The quiet was occasionally interrupted by the unmistakable clank of a security gate opening or closing; this meant someone was leaving his grounds for a night out inside the medina, the dangerous old city, or that he was returning home for the evening and putting his property on lockdown.
The security crew at the Special Mission Compound was pleased when, at 1940 hours, Ambassador Stevens escorted his Turkish guest outside the residence, on foot, to the Charlie-1 gate. Chris Stevens was the central-casting Californian—full of energy and great enthusiasm. Ali Sait Akin possessed a bookish aspect. He had a narrow face and wire-rimmed headmaster glasses and could have, a hundred years earlier, played the part of a stern Ottoman governor. Both men seemed truly out of place under a calm night’s sky inside the most dangerous city in North Africa. Stevens, the gracious host, walked his Turkish guest out the front door and down the marble steps and then slowly toward the front gate. The two men spoke in a deep and flowing conversation as they made their way toward Charlie-1. Two members of Stevens’s detail, and the lead agent of the consul general’s protective detail, followed faithfully one step behind; the two DS agents scanned the surroundings, and the local guard force, suspiciously as they walked to the main gate. As the two diplomats reached the gate, Stevens offered his hand to Ali Sait Akin in a warm and friendly embrace. “Good night,” Stevens said to his guest. “Iyi geceler,” the Turkish diplomat replied with a smile.
Stevens, the gregarious person who never shied away from a chance to meet and greet and make new friends, engaged the Blue Mountain Libya guards at the gate in flawless colloquial Libyan Arabic. The conversation was brief yet very respectful and made it clear that Ambassador Stevens appreciated the work of the men, wearing their light blue uniforms, who helped protect the compound.
D. walked back to the residence with Stevens as the Turkish consul general’s bullet-resistant sedan sped off into the darkness. A Blue Mountain Libya guard watched as a February 17 militiaman shut the main gate. A lone dog was heard barking in the distance. The grounds looked majestic at night as the well-placed night lights illuminated the garden to its full glory. It was time to call it a night. D. walked step in step with Ambassador Stevens inside the majestic home and retreated to his room to watch a video. Sean Smith was in his room, immersed in his online gaming forum, and Ambassador Stevens wrapped up some paperwork and checked in with his staffers at the embassy in Tripoli. He had been trying to keep up with developments in Cairo, Tunis, and at his own post in Tripoli concerning the rioting and the breach of the perimeter in Egypt, but the news in North Africa was fluid and violent. Stevens was sending out e-mails and trying to assemble a clear picture of what had happened and what the next day might bring. It had been a long day, and even though the cooling breeze was ideal for a blissful night of sleep, there was still work to be done. It had been a tremendously busy day for Stevens. Earlier, in fact, he had cabled Main State over his growing concern with the problem of security in Benghazi and his sense of absolute frustration with the local militias and the so-called Libyan police. According to reports, the cable specifically addressed Stevens’s worry that these forces were too weak to keep the country secure.
At the outer gate, there was still some activity at Charlie-1, though. Members of a British specialist protective detail arrived at Charlie-1 to drop off their vehicles, Heckler and Koch MP5 9 mm submachine guns, M4s, and their personal sidearms at the Special Mission Compound. The British, in the wake of their immediate pullout from the city following the attempt on the life of their ambassador in June, had called upon their American allies to assist them with special security considerations and arrangements when they had personnel moving about through Benghazi; they also had left behind one of their armored SUVs following the assassination attempt. Such arrangements were common in critical-threat locations and, as explained by a former DS agent who spent time at the U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, critical to emergency contingency planning. “One of the jobs of an RSO is to get to know the local police commanders and internal security heads, as well as the security staffs at friendly posts. We knew our counterparts at the British, Australian, New Zealand, French, and other consulates, and we all knew if and when the shit would hit the fan that we would have one another’s backs.”1 There were friendly consulates in town—the Turks, the Italians, the European Union representation, and the Qataris—but no mutual aid agreement existed between the Special Mission Compound and any other government. The Brits were in town for just the day, and they departed Charlie-1 at precisely 2030.
With no more visitors scheduled that night, the last security protocols were attended to. One agent was responsible for securing the grounds one last time the night of September 11. He suited up for his patrol on foot, harnessing himself inside the standard DS critical-threat uniform—oversized blouse concealing his holstered SIG. The security walkabout was never carried out alone; an armed member of the February 17 Brigade always walked shotgun next to the watch commander. The militia member was brought along for tactical support, as well as to serve as translator if an intruder was found in
side the wire or milling about the outer perimeter in a suspicious manner. R. checked in via radio with the Blue Mountain Libya guard at Charlie-1, as well as with the personnel at Bravo-1. It was, seemingly, just another night. There was nothing suspicious to report. The four guards on duty that night, identified as Nasser, Ubayd, Abdullah, and Anwar,2 thought that they were in for a routinely boring midnight shift.
The militiaman retreated to his headquarters on the compound near the northwest corner of the perimeter wall for his evening prayers; they would be operating on a skeleton crew that night, as one of the February 17 troopers had called in sick, leaving only three armed Libyans on the compound for that shift. R. removed his tactical kit when he returned to the TOC and quickly hydrated himself with bottled water. It had been a stress-filled, danger-strewn day on the ambassador’s detail, and the time had come to unwind.
High-threat tours drained an agent of his strength and lowered his alert levels; the Benghazi heat didn’t help much, either. It was impossible to live off the adrenaline of threat for more than a few days. “Sleep was a welcome respite from the exhaustion of dignitary protection work,” the retired agent Scot Folensbee reflected, referring to his countless danger tours to Africa, the Middle East, and South America. “Sleep was a tool by which an agent could deal with the mind-numbing exhaustion, the fear, and the sense of being so isolated, so very alone, in the heart of such danger. Sometimes, though, it was just impossible to let down your guard to properly rest. You always slept when you could, but in reality you weren’t really sleeping. Some places are just too dangerous to sleep.”3