by Fred Burton
The GRS teams also carried heavier firepower, including the Mk 46 Mod 0 5.56 mm squad-support weapon. The Mk 46 Mod 0 was the U.S. Special Operations Command variant of the M249 Minimi. With an effective range of eight hundred meters and a rate of fire that hovered near a hundred rounds per minute, the Mk 46 was a potent tool that, interestingly enough, had also been adopted by DS/MSD. As a result of the seemingly endless supply of former Soviet-bloc ammunition available in Libya, the GRS operators also fielded one of the most lethal tools ever placed in the hands of the mujahideen, the Soviet-era PKM squad-support weapons.
The Annex was also a banking institution of sorts. Intelligence work in Libya was not a credit-card-driven industry. The spies paid cash, a lot of cash, and most of the cash paid out to informants, assets, and sources was stored at the Annex.
There was one way into the Annex—a twisting narrow roadway that fed off the main road that was met by a security checkpoint and barriers. A small gate, large enough to accommodate a vehicle, was carved out of the perimeter’s eastern wall. The Annex’s rear wall pointed north and was, on a map at least, less than a kilometer from the Special Mission Compound. The real path connecting the two outposts of America’s diplomatic and intelligence efforts was a series of parallel and perpendicular small side roads, a junction, and numerous spots that were ideal for hostile action.
The Special Mission Compound provided the semblance of a diplomatic cover to the Annex—a semblance. While the Special Mission was a small and isolated location, ramped up only when an ambassador or other dignitary made it to the city, the Annex was a 24/7 forward intelligence base. The exact nature of CIA operations at the base remains classified at the time of this book’s writing. The conjecture surrounding its mission has been widespread, ranging from destroying MANPADs left behind by Qaddafi’s military to sending those very MANPADs, as well as other battlefield weapons from Libya, to the Syrian rebels fighting Assad’s forces. Some reports claimed that the Annex staff was trying to locate weapons of mass destruction. Some reports even claimed that the CIA was in Benghazi to round up stray RPGs that had become the jihadist weapon of choice all over Africa—from Mali to Somalia.4
Why the men were there was irrelevant; a whole intelligence and diplomatic front, the face of expeditionary conflict and presence, had been established in Benghazi. And, irrespective of its actual mission, the CIA’s day-to-day operations were vibrant. Nearly twenty people worked there. The Annex had a base commander and a deputy—both answerable to the chief of station (COS) in Tripoli and CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. The Annex was staffed by analysts, communications specialists, linguists, researchers, case officers, and facilitators.
The Benghazi Annex fielded ten members of the agency’s GRS—nearly half of the mini intelligence station’s entire complement. The advent of the GRS is a by-product of the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. CIA analysts and agents, deployed to some of the world’s most dangerous locations, required tactical security to protect their travels and operations in the scorched-earth landscape of the Middle and Near East.
Years into the Global War on Terror, there was an ever-growing market for contractors to assist in the implantation of government operations throughout the war zones. Countless private military companies proliferated throughout the world to provide retired law enforcement and military personnel for service in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the CIA hired the best of the best to serve in the 125-man global force. Virtually all the operators hired by the CIA were retired members of the most covert elements of the U.S. special operations community; the top-tier operators were recruited and ultimately hired to be part of the GRS program. Many were from the SEALs or Special Forces; all had extensive combat experience and exemplary service records. The very best GRS members, those who sometimes are lent out to other clandestine services, are known in the slang as “Scorpions.”5
For the CIA, the use of GRS operators was a natural extension of the paramilitary complexion of counterterrorist work. Before the 9/11 attacks, when the CIA was primarily an intelligence-gathering and data analysis organization, the agency’s operational tradecraft of espionage required anonymity and invisibility. Afghanistan and Iraq redefined the metabolic chemistry of America’s spies. In a region where warlords and militia leaders respected a show of force far more than a deft hand, GRS operators did not have to go to language school, they did not have to handle a bevy of agents, and they were never expected to write up reports, request funding to recruit a double agent, or deal with the bureaucracy of espionage and the backstabbing and office politics that were often the currency of day-to-day life in Langley. They had to come to meetings with a large entourage of heavily armed and commando-skilled shooters. GRS operators were shooters—pure and simple. They were highly skilled A-plus tactical talent designed to secure the spies no matter where they ventured. A CIA case agent with a suitcase full of cash was often accompanied by teams of heavily armed GRS specialists.
The CIA paid for the proper talent. A GRS tour of duty ran between 90 and 120 days; the salary for the contractors could be as high as $140,000 for the year; those on full-time contracts earned slightly less but received benefit packages—including death benefits. It was demanding work, and it required enormous physical stamina, absolute mental vigilance, and the ability to withstand fear and the longing for home. Teams operate in the most explosive locations inside the crosshairs of the Middle East and Africa; GRS operators have earned their share of scare and frequent-flier miles crisscrossing the globe to hot spots like Djibouti, Somalia, the Sudan, Mali, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.
The work was also quite deadly. Of the twelve CIA members killed between 2009 and September 11, 2012, three were GRS members; one GRS operator, Raymond Davis, was jailed in Pakistan for a lengthy period after killing two men in Lahore who he claimed were trying to rob him.6 It is, however, widely believed that Davis’s true mission was countersurveillance for a case officer meeting a clandestine informant without the knowledge of the ISI, Pakistan’s notorious Inter-Services Intelligence.
Although the Annex and the Special Mission Compound answered to different masters and were subject to the rules and restrictions of very different bureaucracies, the security staffs of both the diplomatic and the intelligence facilities realized that their fates and survival were intertwined. The GRS personnel, together with heavily armed members of the February 17 militia, constituted what was classified as a quick reaction force. The QRF’s mission was to respond to any active asset at the Annex out and about in Benghazi in need of support and rescue. One of GRS’s primary missions was to assist the Special Mission in time of need. The handshake agreement between the intelligence community and the DS was how things rolled in expeditionary democracy posts; it was the currency of day-to-day life in volatile nations where the host government was incapable of providing support. The Scorpions were the backup plan. Their tactical skill sets and dynamic deterrence power would have to do. For the most part it worked. In June 2011, Special Envoy Chris Stevens had been prompted to seek shelter at the Annex due to credible threats against his personal safety that had reached the U.S. intelligence community via its networks in the city.
* * *
One of the GRS operators at the Annex was Tyrone “Ty” Woods. Born Tyrone Snowden Woods on January 15, 1971, in Portland, Oregon, Ty grew up in a religious home where doing the right thing was entrenched in the actions and visions of the family’s children. Ty was reared in a setting straight out of central casting for the all-American hero—a five-thousand-acre cattle farm in Long Creek, Oregon. “He was the type of child that was fearless and could spend all day outdoors and tackle everything and anything that he put his mind to,” his father, Charles Woods, remembered.7 An avid hunter (he would spend days out in the woods with his .22 rifle, his father recalled), by the time he was thirteen years old, Ty Woods had earned an Oregon hunter’s safety card and was also a certified PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) diver. He was an all-sta
te wrestler, and he was the kind of young man who would not quit until he achieved the goals he had set for himself—even if they were beyond the grasps of most men.
In 1990, Woods joined the U.S. Navy SEALs. He did not make it through the grueling, bone-breaking Basic Underwater Demolition selection process the first time out but was undeterred by the minor setback and tried again, going through the notorious Hell Week twice. He received his Trident, the iconic badge of the U.S. Navy SEALs, in October 1991. West Coast handsome, with a permanent look of righteous energy, Woods could have served as a recruitment poster for all that was unique about a close-knit brotherhood like the SEALs. Although much of his service record in the SEALs remains classified, he served as a medical corpsman and paramedic in SEAL Team ONE, SEAL Team THREE, and SEAL Team FIVE. He wore the Trident for nearly twenty years and served multiple tours of duty in Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. “I never really knew where he was,” his father remembered, “and I didn’t think it was my place to ask. If they were sending Ty somewhere, I knew, though, that it was because he was needed.”8
Although a trained marksman and an operator with an endless repertoire of tactical skills and combat experience, Woods was a dedicated lifesaver. His medical training was extensive, and it was reinforced by emergency room and paramedic real-world experience with the San Diego Fire Department. He was a licensed registered nurse and worked at his wife’s dental practice in La Jolla, California. But with twenty years of active service on the teams, Woods still felt a duty to serve and to live the encapsulated reality of being the go-to guy on assignments in critically dangerous locations that required go-to men. In 2010, he took on the contract of serving the Central Intelligence Agency as a GRS operator. He traveled to various points of interest in South America, the Middle East, and Africa to support CIA operations.
As the primary 18-Delta at the Annex in Benghazi, Woods realized that the American presence in the city could go from threatened to full-scale catastrophic in the flash of a truck bomb detonating through the main gate. Days before September 11, he drove to the Special Mission Compound to provide a hands-on refresher class in emergency trauma care.9 The DS agents at the Special Mission Compound had been through the rigors of the blood-and-guts classes during their high-threat training, but Woods was determined to keep them up to date and ready with techniques and suggestions in case they suddenly found themselves under fire and in need of treating a gaping chest wound. Everyone hoped that there would be no need to break out the medical kit or to have to apply the QuikClot agents for real.
Woods, as well as the other GRS team members at the Annex still awake, did not need to ask one another if the noise in the distance had been a gunshot. These men were expert enough not only to discern the difference between a car backfiring and a weapon being fired but also to identify the caliber of the round fired and in which direction the muzzle of the weapon was pointed.
There was absolutely no doubt when the percussive sound of the hand grenade exploding was heard. An attack was under way.
12.
Overrun
R. sounded the duck-and-cover alarm the moment he realized, by looking on the camera monitors, that the post had been compromised by hostile forces. The duck-and-cover alarm was a very loud warning device, reminiscent of the wailing European police sirens, that blared endlessly throughout the compound; the volume was eardrum pounding, and it continued without respite; each agent also carried a James Bond–like wireless switch to activate the alarm at a moment’s notice. In the aftermath of the first explosive hit of the attack, it was not clear who sounded the duck-and-cover alarm first. Was it one of the agents outside the villa? The working theory was R. from the TOC. Regardless, the duck-and-cover alarm gave the agents a two-step lead on the terrorists. R., just to reinforce the severity of the situation at the Special Mission Compound, yelled “Attack, attack, attack!” “The order to retreat to the safe haven resonated throughout the sprawling facility.
From his command post, R. could observe a 360-degree panoramic view of the compound due to a bank of strategically placed interior surveillance cameras and the horizon painted what in the business is best described as an “oh shit” moment. He could see men swarming inside the main gate, and he noticed the Blue Mountain Libya guards and several of the February 17 Brigade militiamen running away as fast as they could; they had, though, radioed the TOC to inform the RSO that the compound was under attack. The RSO’s command of the video cameras gave the agents on the compound something of a tactical edge. Even though they were overrun and outnumbered, the TOC could identify where the terrorists were, and the RSO could provide the attackers’ coordinates to the ARSOs. He immediately alerted the QRF at the Annex and at the embassy in Tripoli by cell phone. His message was short and to the point: “Benghazi under fire, terrorist attack.” Nothing more needed to be said. The many REACT drills had become reality. This was any agent’s worst nightmare.
* * *
A. was the agent on duty that night who, according to the Special Mission Compound’s emergency protocols, or REACT plan, would be responsible for safeguarding Stevens and Smith in case of an attack. A. rushed into the residence to relieve, or “push,” D., who rushed back to the barracks to retrieve his tactical kit through the access point in the alleyway connecting the two compounds. D. had to assemble his tactical kit and communications gear, as well as his M4 assault rifle. He was wearing a white T-shirt and his underwear when the alarm sounded. The terrorists had achieved absolute surprise. D. went into REACT mode without shoes or pants, but the duck-and-cover alarm gave him a few steps, which is all he needed.
The agents scrambled in an elaborate spiderweb to grab their M4 assault rifles, helmets, and battle kits, with a backdrop of explosions and automatic weapons fire rattling. The DS agents ran like sprinters toward their stowed weapons and equipment. Their hearts rushed up their chests to the back of their throats, causing their mouths to dry up in the surge of adrenaline. The agents attempted to stick to the plan, draw on their training, and keep their minds focused and fluid, as they hoped to avoid an encounter when outnumbered and outgunned. The sounds of guttural Arabic, noises that emanated from the back of the throat that were propelled forward, which to the Americans sounded like angry mumbling, grew more unintelligible and numerous each stride they took toward the TOC and their villa; the odd angry shot was fired into the September sky. The night’s clean and refreshing air was now polluted with a harsh and bitter smell of cordite, like a stagnant cloud left behind following a Fourth of July fireworks display. Numerous figures, their silhouettes barely discernible in the darkened shadows, chased the agents from behind, chanting unintelligibly and angrily.
The agents held their sidearms firmly as they raced across the compound to where their weapons and kits were stored. They were ready to engage any threat they encountered but hoped that they wouldn’t have to yet. It was too early in the furious chaos to make a last stand. Each agent asked himself the basic questions: How many gunmen were inside the perimeter? What weapons did they have? “Combat was like a pickup game in the Arab world,” a former DS agent with service in Yemen and the Gaza Strip commented. “When the gunfire begins, the terrorists and their supporters start sending text messages, and Facebook notifications follow. Soon it becomes a beach party, sans the beach and the party. And, of course, no one brings beer or hot dogs, but each will bring an AK to make the party interesting.”1 The DS agents knew that it didn’t matter how many attackers were inside the post. Word of a dead militiaman would spread wildly, and soon there would be a thousand armed attackers inside the compound. One thing was absolutely certain, though, in the minds of each and every one of the agents in those early and crucially decisive moments, and that was that the U.S. ambassador, the personal representative of President Barack Obama, was the ultimate target of the attack. They knew they had to secure him and get him out of the kill zone.
Unlike an RSO whose tour at an embassy could last as many as three or four years, or an agent
on the secretary of state’s detail, the TDY agents in Benghazi hadn’t had the time with Ambassador Stevens to get to know him properly. Agents assigned to an individual for an extended period of time get to know all the secrets of an ambassador or a secretary of state. The personal dynamics that develop between the agent and the man or woman he is tasked with protecting are a complex mixture of tactics, authority, personal bonds, and adherence to mission. The textbook requires that an agent never engage in protracted conversations that are unrelated to security and never develop emotional links to a protectee. The agents’ emotions are irrelevant to the requirements and deadly realities of dignitary protection. But the agents are human. There have been secretaries of state and ambassadors whom the agents in the service—and the agents on their details—have absolutely adored. These principals made it their personal business to concern themselves that the agents who protected them were looked after and took the time to inquire about their families; some would celebrate the sacrifice agents made on a detail by inviting them to their homes for a summer’s barbecue. Madeleine Albright was such a secretary of state. The men and women on her detail thought the world of her and affectionately gave her the nickname Fireball. Other secretaries of state did not treat the agents as kindly; one, the rumbles went, would never let the agents use the bathroom at his sprawling ranch and would charge them for food and water. Special agents on TDY details didn’t have time to develop a personal rapport with their principals. At a UN General Assembly, or UNGA, as they are known, for example, a foreign minister or an Arabian prince could maintain a bizarre and reprehensible lifestyle as he ricocheted across the Manhattan nightlife, but it didn’t matter; the DS agents were responsible for protecting these individuals in their temporary care from harm.