Under Fire

by Fred Burton

  But the agents liked Stevens; there wasn’t anything not to like. His fuel tank ran on high-octane dedication, and the smile never left his face. His dedication was absolute—even in a place as dangerous as Benghazi. The moment the duck-and-cover alarm sounded, the agents had to rely on their earpieces, their training, and their instincts.

  In sticking to the REACT plan, A. rushed up the landing to round up Ambassador Stevens and Smith and ushered them to the safe haven inside the residence. “Follow me, sir,” A. said in a calming, though immediate, tone. “We are under attack.”

  Both Foreign Service officers were startled by the deafening alarm; the worry was engraved in their faces. There was no time to get dressed or to grab personal items, such as a wallet or cell phone; there was no time to power down laptops or take them downstairs. A. insisted, however, that both Stevens and Smith don the khaki Kevlar body armor vests that had been pre-positioned in their rooms.

  It was critical that the three men make it to the safe haven and lock the doors before the attackers knew where they were. A., in following the room-clearing tactics he had been taught in the training that prepared him for the TDY assignment, carefully turned each and every corner with his M4 poised to engage any threat he saw. He had a Remington 870 12-gauge shotgun slung over his shoulder just in case; the Remington was a no-nonsense tool of ballistic reliability that was an ideal weapon to engage overwhelming crowds of attackers. A.’s service-issue SIG was holstered on his hip. A. heard dozens of voices shouting outside the walls; these voices were interrupted only by the sporadic volleys of automatic gunfire launched outside. The lights in the residence were immediately extinguished. The unmistakable pop of gunfire caused both Stevens and Smith to realize the immediacy of the emergency, and the difficulty they encountered negotiating the darkened path toward the safe haven was exacerbated by the restrictive hug of the heavy vests over their distressed chests and midsections. Every few feet in the progression toward the safe haven, A. would make sure that Stevens and Smith were following close behind him. The fear of being separated was omnipresent in the coordinated dash to the safe haven. The roles were reversed. The special agent was in charge of the chief of mission. Stevens and Smith listened and followed instructions.

  When the three reached the safe haven, the meshed steel door behind them was shut and locked, shielding the three from the assaulting force outside. The two diplomats, their eyes squinting in the darkness to see through the iron grating, expressed great fear. A. took aim with his M4 through the wrought-iron grating over the window, keeping his M4’s sights on the heads of the men he could distinguish in the distance. The door, as well as the window, was supposed to be opened only when the cavalry arrived. When that would happen was anyone’s guess.

  A DS special agent’s radio gear is called a surveillance kit. Each earpiece is custom molded and used for discreet communications. The clear plastic earpiece allows agents to move through crowds while listening to other agents or to keep an eye on a shady character in a crowd. In this case, the TOC was the lifeline to the safe haven. A. depressed the push-to-talk radio button to initiate the conversation.*

  “TOC, A. here.”

  “Go, A.,” said R., manning the TOC.

  “Package and one guest secure, hunkered down.”

  “Roger that. TOC out.”

  A. updated the CIA Annex, the U.S. embassy in Tripoli, and the DS/CC via cell phone calls, with the message “Package and guest secure, hunkered down in the safe haven.”

  The safe haven enabled the three to remain unseen by the terrorists searching for them. Ambassador Stevens requested A.’s BlackBerry so he could start making calls to nearby consulates and to the embassy in Tripoli. Stevens spoke softly and in hushed tones, so as not to compromise their position to anyone outside. His first call was to his deputy chief of mission, Gregory Hicks, who was in Tripoli, at the U.S. embassy. Hicks2 did not recognize A.’s cell phone number and ignored the call a couple of times. On Stevens’s third attempt, Hicks picked up and learned of the attack.3

  Stevens also called local militia and public security commanders in Benghazi pleading for help. Ambassador Stevens had developed a close and affectionate rapport with many of the most powerful men in the city—both the legitimate and the ruthless. He believed in the Libyan people, and he understood wholeheartedly how they had been brutalized and dehumanized by a megalomaniac dictator who terrorized on a whim. Stevens admired how the Libyan spirit had not been broken by a tyrant, but rather emboldened by it. In his years in Libya, Stevens tried to sell the notion of America to just about anyone and everyone he met. He tried to convince them that the Libyan people—and those in power—had a friend indeed in the United States.

  For an unknown reason, Stevens didn’t call the Libya Shield Force, a group of relatively moderate fighting brigades that was, perhaps, the closest thing in the country to a conventional military organization. The Libya Shield Force did have Islamist-leaning ideology, but it wasn’t jihadist. Under the command of Wisam Bin Ahmid, it answered to the Libyan Defense Ministry; Ahmid led a well-equipped and disciplined force in Benghazi called the Free Libya Martyrs. The Free Libya Martyrs fielded ample assets in the city; the militia even maintained a presence on social media, like Facebook, and was involved in numerous charitable endeavors. Reportedly, Wisam Bin Ahmid could have responded, but he was never asked.4

  But perhaps Stevens feared that members of the militia were participating in the attack. Several reports linked this militia with al-Qaeda.

  The Libya Shield militia, and concerns about its objectives and intentions, were part of the contents of a cable dispatched to the State Department early in the day by the ambassador. In the secret communications, there is mention of how two militia leaders, Muhammad al-Gharabi and the Libya Shield commander Wisam Bin Ahmid, would not continue to guarantee security in Benghazi, “a critical function they asserted they were currently providing,” because the United States was supporting Mahmoud Jibril, a candidate for the office of prime minister. The report discussed the city of Derna and linked it to an outfit called the Abu Salim Brigade, which was beginning to enforce a harsh version of Islamic law that prohibited any commingling of men and women at a local university.5

  Stevens, as close to an all-knowing expert on Libya as existed anywhere, understood that the country lacked the many moments of clarity it would need to muster from revolutionary chaos to a petrodollar-fueled vibrant democracy. Armed elements, with one foot in a pro-Western foothold and the other firmly fixed inside the jihadist camp, were turning the country into a failed state.

  At just before 2200 hours on the eleventh anniversary of one of the darkest days in American history, Ambassador Stevens was hunkered down in a blacked-out basement, desperately seeking aid. The list of contacts whom Stevens phoned remains classified, but they included militia commanders who were quite proud to parade the president of the United States’ personal representative in front of their ragtag armies but did not feel it wise or worthy to commit these forces for the rescue of a true friend.

  * * *

  C. had initially rushed to the TOC but then redirected back to the agents’ quarters to grab his gear and back up D. It was procedure, and tactical prudence, for the remaining agents at the compound to work in teams of two. B. and R. were inside the TOC, which was locked down behind secured fire doors.

  C. and D. rushed out of the barracks with weapons in hand, hoping to reach the residence on the western side of the compound, but the two young agents immediately found themselves seeking cover from an endless stream of armed men. Moving slowly, and peering around corners, the two men tried to crisscross the alleyway that separated the two halves of the Special Mission Compound, but they feared the connecting path would turn into an exposed kill zone. There were just too many gunmen racing about and screaming to one another in Arabic. Some were talking on smartphones; a few of the men barked orders on handheld field radios. The scene looked like something out of a science fiction film, in fact;
small dots of light, the lit screens of mobile phones, vibrated in the darkness as the attackers moved into position. The DS agents realized that they were cut off. Hurriedly, they made their way back to the barracks. Some of the attackers carried RPGs slung over their shoulders, apparently to be used on the armored doors of the safe haven and the TOC or to repel any counterattack. The DS agents knew they were facing superior firepower. C. radioed the TOC of their predicament and waited for the chance to attempt a breakout.

  Along the way, C. and D. encountered a bewildered member of the February 17 militia who appeared panic-stricken and overwhelmed by the magnitude of the attack. They found him, weapon in hand, standing in front of the DS villa seeming to await the order of what to do. The man was frightened out of his wits. He had heard the screams of “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great,” and he had heard the word kafir, or infidel, uttered by the gunmen as they raced about. Even though the February 17 Brigade espoused an Islamic agenda, and even though it was customary for members of the force to wear lapel pins with Libyan and Qatari flags, one of the hundreds of thousands of paraphernalia tossed about during the civil war to show Islamic solidarity with the tiny Persian Gulf oil-rich kingdom, the men inside the compound would cut the militiaman’s throat if they had the chance for working with the Americans.

  C. and D. ushered the guard into their living quarters and sealed the heavy doors behind them. It was going to be a long and difficult night.

  The TOC was perhaps the most fortified spot on the compound. Just barely large enough for two or three individuals, it was bristling with communications, video surveillance, and other emergency gear. Hardened Pelican cases, the Louis Vuitton of the deployable and tactical, were stacked atop shelves, on tables, and laid out on the floor. Dell laptops were up and still running. The TOC was a logistics hub for the Special Mission Compound—complete with stationery and office supplies (including seals and labels for diplomatic pouches) and other tools to facilitate the day-to-day exchanges of diplomacy. A safe, complete with enough gear to hold off a determined adversary, was secured to the wall and floor; the TOC also housed the weapons that the British security specialists had dropped off less than an hour before.

  As bad as it was, the TOC RSO had things in hand. Like an air traffic controller, he knew the stakes were high and that mistakes could lead to disaster. Ambassador Stevens was hunkered down, and so were the agents. The Scorpions and the QRF were gearing up and mustering the cavalry. Everyone just needed to hold tight. The TOC had visual surveillance of the “tangos,” the slang for terrorists, and could update the agents. With notifications to Washington, D.C., he knew there must be other things happening behind the scenes.

  The TOC was never designed nor intended to be a bunker, even though a heavy door separated it from dangers that could be lurking outside. Instead, as the eyes and ears of security operations at the compound, it was designed to serve as a command-and-control center. It was supposed to direct and coordinate the activities of the local guard force and the February 17 militiamen, but the Libyans paid by the Special Mission had fled the moment the attack commenced. Several Libyan guards were injured in the assault. Abdulaziz Majbiri, a Blue Mountain Libya guard, was ordered by the DS agents to assemble at the pool for REACT instructions, but he claimed that his comrades were incapable of defending themselves in light of the coordinated attack. “I was separated from the others and couldn’t get anywhere near the swimming pool,” he claimed, “before I was shot.”6 According to other reports, a terrorist grabbed one of the Blue Mountain Libya guards and beat him. “You are an infidel protecting infidels who insulted the prophet,” the militant scolded the guard member as he beat him savagely.7

  With pinpoint MOUT, or military operations on urban terrain, tradecraft, the terrorists assaulted the February 17 Brigade command post at the western tip of the northern perimeter by lobbing a grenade inside and then, before the smoke and debris would clear, firing dedicated bursts of AK-47 fire into the main doorway. Several militiamen, along with one or two Blue Mountain Libya guards, were seriously wounded in the exchange, though they still managed to use an escape ladder to climb up toward the rooftop, where they hid. The command post floor was spattered with blood.

  As they watched the attack on the mission unfold in real time on the video monitors, R. and B. attempted to count the men racing through Bravo-1 and Charlie-1 gates. However, the men had rushed through the two entrances in such a quick and coordinated push, and flowed through the northern part of the grounds in such alarming numbers, R. and B. could not ascertain their numbers or armament. It was only later, when reviewing the attack via the high-resolution DVR system, that the DS discovered there were thirty-five men methodically and systematically attacking the Special Mission Compound.

  Those militants assaulting the compound were not members of a ragtag force. It was observed that the attackers were split into small groups, advanced throughout the compound methodically, and employed military-style silent hand signals to direct their progression toward their objectives.8 At this stage of the attack it was impossible to assess if this was a spontaneous outburst of violence or a premeditated professional assault. To the agents inside the compound, these facts were irrelevant: the assailants were heavily armed and out for blood. They were under attack. Some were dressed in civil war chic—camouflage outfits, black balaclavas. Some wore white undershirts and khaki military trousers that were once worn by, or seized from, the Qaddafi military. A few wore Inter Milan soccer jerseys; Italian soccer was popular in Libya, even though Al-Saadi Qaddafi, the dictator’s son—and former commander of the Libyan military’s Special Forces—had purchased his way as a player onto several Italian professional teams.

  Some of those who barked the orders wore mountaintop jihad outfits worn by Taliban warriors in Afghanistan. Virtually all of the attackers had grown their beards full and long. According to reports and shadowy figures on the ground in Benghazi, there were foreigners—organizers and commanders from nearby and far away—mixed in with the local contingent of usual suspects. Many were believed to have come originally from Derna, a city on the Mediterranean coast situated between Benghazi and Tobruk. Derna had been the traditional hub of jihadist Islamic endeavors inside Libya and beyond. It was also the birthplace of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG);* in the hopes of strangling it and once and for all choking the jihadist elements dead, Qaddafi’s forces surrounded the town for nearly twenty years. Most of the fighters, though, fled to the mountains and waged a lethal and highly organized guerrilla campaign against the regime. The LIFG command cadre had maintained lifelong relationships with their counterparts in Egypt, many of whom went on to become the core leadership of al-Qaeda. Hundreds of the most hard-core fighters from Derna traveled to Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan to earn their spots on the front lines of the jihad. In 2007, allied forces in Iraq captured a list of foreign fighters working together with Sunni insurgents and jihadists. There were one hundred and twelve Libyan names on the list; fifty-two of the men were from Derna.9 When they returned to Libya, many brought their international combat comrades back with them.

  The men from Derna, as many of the jihadists were known, were specialists at asymmetrical warfare. They had waged an unforgiving campaign against the Soviets and then later the Americans in Afghanistan; they fought in Africa, in bloody conflagrations in the Sudan and Somalia. They were proficient in military hardware and in urban tactics. They were a lethal force to contend with, and they were social media and chat room savvy—using underground and ever-evolving sites to recruit, promote, and plan.*

  It was clear that whoever the men assaulting the compound were, they had been given precise orders and impeccable intelligence. They knew when, where, and how to get from the access points toward the ambassador’s residence and how to cut off the DS agents as well as the local guard force and the February 17 Brigade militiamen on duty that night. As is standard procedure, in the days leading up to the arrival of the ambassador (and thus the assau
lt), the RSO and his team made a series of official requests to the Libyan government for additional security support to the mission. These communiqués included requests for an extra police and militia presence to coincide with the arrival of Ambassador Stevens, roving patrols at the front and rear of the compound, and bomb-sniffing dogs.10 It appears that the attackers either intercepted these requests or were tipped off by corrupt Libyan officials. According to one European security official who had worked in Benghazi, “The moment notifications and requests went out to the NTC and the militias in advance of Stevens’s arrival, it was basically like broadcasting the ambassador’s itinerary at Friday prayers for all to hear.”11 The terrorists also had had sufficient time to map out the terrain. They owned the geography.

  The attackers had known that there were new, uninstalled generators behind the February 17 command post, nestled between the building and the overhang of foliage from the western wall, as well as half a dozen jerry cans full of gasoline to power them. One of the commanders dispatched several of his men to retrieve the plastic fuel containers and bring them to the main courtyard. A gunman opened one of the cans and began to splash the gasoline on the blood-soaked floor of the February 17 Brigade command post. The man with the jerry can took great pains to pour the harsh-smelling fuel into every corner of the building before setting fire to one of the DS notices and launching an inferno.

  A. watched from between the metal bars inside the safe haven as the eruption of the building caused a fiery clap followed by bright yellow flames. He updated the TOC with what he could see and, more ominously, what he could smell.

  “A. here, I see flames and smoke.”

  “Roger that, me too, A.,” said the agent in the TOC.

  He keyed the microphone again and said, “Backup en route.”