Under Fire

by Fred Burton

  It was 0100 hours on September 12, 2012.

  23.

  The Looters

  The C-130 flying from Tripoli to Benghazi traversed its westerly path without even the slightest turbulence. It was a smooth and easy flight, even though the mood on board was one of concern. The aircraft was reported as “wheels down,” having landed, at just before 0100 hours.

  Also at 0100 hours the first curious “visitors” hesitantly walked through Charlie-1 gate at the Special Mission Compound. The entire Benghazi metropolitan area had been alerted to what had happened in Western Fwayhat and knew that an American “consulate” and “spy den” had been overrun and destroyed. The news was spread along the pulsating mobile telephone networks: calls were made throughout the night’s bloodshed, and SMS messages were typed quickly on Samsung and Nokia smartphones; the MMS messages, with their multi-megapixel video and picture high-res detail, showed a complex on fire and the men who seized it waving their AK-47s in victorious rapture. This was what instant messaging was like in Benghazi, and this was how violent acts of murder became nighttime social events in a city bereft of law and order.

  The first curious onlookers who arrived at the Special Mission Compound waited for the shooting to end before wandering inside and seeing what they could steal and plunder; no point, after all, in entering a kill zone unnecessarily. The onlookers were, for the most part, young and bored; most, according to witnesses, and as seen on home movies they filmed with mobile phone cameras, were unarmed. It would, after all, be difficult for someone to steal a television set from the ambassador’s bedroom while struggling with a fifteen-pound RPG launcher slung over the shoulder. Looters had to travel light in order to go home heavy.

  The first looter wandered into a surreal setting of destruction and emptiness. The February 17 command post and the villa were still on fire, and tornado-like plumes of black smoke still bellowed out of control. The sounds of gunfire had been heard for nearly two hours, and the thuds of explosions were still noticeable coming from a mile down the road to the south. Text messages sent out throughout the evening spoke of a vicious and deadly battle that honored the memory of those martyred in the fight, but when the first men entered the grounds looking for some treasure, there were no bodies to be found; there were no wounded men praying to be seen by a doctor. Casualty evacuation was incredibly effective and immediate in the asymmetrical battlefields. Bodies were thrown onto the back of a pickup truck—both the dead and the wounded. Those who moved were taken to an emergency room. Those who didn’t move weren’t. The combined casualty count of wounded and dead was, it is believed, well over one hundred.

  Still, there were the telltale signs of a fight. Bloodstains and shiny chunks of human tissue littered the grass and the paved path leading from Charlie-1. A few bloody AK-47s could be found on the ground, as well as a few spent shell casings. The terrorists sanitized the crime scene as best they could before departing the compound. No one really wanted a thumbprint or some spilled DNA to help the CIA identify any of the attackers.

  For someone looking to steal whatever he could carry, the Special Mission Compound was like a Neiman Marcus outlet. Vehicles, AK-47s, ammunition, MREs, bottled water, furniture, and other military tools of war were available at the February 17 building. The militia was never known for its protocols in the safe storage of weapons, and when the attackers came over the gate, the militiamen simply fled. The DS villa, across the compound, had personal effects of the agents who withdrew—iPods, personal computers, cell phones, photographs, clothing, televisions, cigars, and other items that were worth stealing. There were televisions at the DS residence, and there were running shoes. The looters, many wearing T-shirts and Adidas shorts, looked as if they had been at home, possibly even asleep, when their mobile phones vibrated and invited them to an orgy of theft. Many, however, left with completely new clothes. For people who had lived most of their lives in fear, praying not to fall victim to the brutal reality of a secret-police state, such explosive acts of wanton destructive rage were common. During the civil war, this rage materialized in heinous acts of street justice and cold-blooded killing. On a September night in Benghazi, this rage materialized in the form of an animal-like pillage of a compound that had, for the most part, been burned to the ground.

  Some of the looters brought spray paint cans with them so that they could forever leave their mark on the crime scene. Such catchy Benghazi slogans as “Be Fierce” and “Together!” were painted on the main gate, as well as on the DS residence and the ambassador’s villa. For effect, those who found weapons on the ground or came with a firearm of their own raised their arms to the sky and fired a few rounds toward the moon. If Arabs could fire into the sky to celebrate a wedding, then they could certainly launch a few rounds to celebrate the destruction of the American presence in their midst.

  The ambassador’s residence was still on fire when the looters made their way inside. The looters used water from the pool to partially extinguish the flames inside the vast rooms and hallways so that the building could be searched and whatever wasn’t smoldering or nailed down could be stolen. The residence was already an absolute mess. Debris was everywhere, the smoke was horrific, and the furniture was charred and eviscerated. The looters used their phones as makeshift flashlights. They examined each room and crevice as they searched for whatever items were abandoned that could be valuable—both on the black market and, perhaps, to the men from Derna who would pay a premium for any raw intelligence that could be exploited operationally or for propaganda purposes on the Web. The looters were confident that whoever had lived inside the building was dead; it was unlikely that anyone could have survived the fiery rampage of the terrorists’ initial attack.

  The men searching for the rewards of picking through the remains of the dead looked through Ambassador Stevens’s clothes, his effects, and his luggage. They ransacked rooms already devastated by rage and fire. Some, eyewitnesses reported, urinated on the floor; others became riot-inspired Cecil B. DeMilles and made home movies of their postattack rampage. It was a despicable sight to behold.

  The looters were soon joined by the curious and the concerned. A large segment—believed to be a sheer majority—of Benghazi residents passionately appreciated the efforts invested by the United States and the NATO powers to free Libya from Qaddafi and to create the template for a democratic state to flourish on the ashes of a brutal civil war and an ugly history written by a despot. The Arab Spring, from their perspective, offered hope and change. These native sons and daughters watched the chaos and the “meet the new boss, same as the old boss” hypocrisy that had resulted in elections in Egypt and Tunisia; in Egypt, after all, a brutal dictator was replaced by a brutal Islamist regime. These sons and daughters of the overthrow were all familiar with the nightly reports of maiming and massacres from Syria. These men and women wanted none of it. So when word disseminated that the U.S. mission had been attacked and that the ambassador had been killed, the city’s embarrassed and fearful population also made their way to the Special Mission Compound. The residents of Western Fwayhat now came out as well. Most had hunkered down once the first shots and jihadist screams were heard; when the real shooting started, they fell flat on their marble floors hoping that stray ordnance would not strike them down. They had seen the British diplomats flee. They didn’t want the Americans to follow suit. Most Libyans feared the Islamists just as they feared Qaddafi. All had known of Chris Stevens. News, emanating through the grapevine of chatter and SMS messages, that Ambassador Stevens had been murdered caused great shame and pain.

  The looters made several attempts to break through the metal gate separating the safe haven from the rest of the rooms inside the villa. The fact that this section of the building was separated from the rest heightened their sense of curiosity and determination to make it through. The looters, like the attackers before them, had tried to smash and bang their way through the locked door but were unsuccessful in their attempts. A crowd had gathered outs
ide the egress window and helped to pry it open; another crowd ventured in, seeking whatever prizes they could carry home.

  The DS agents, in their search for Ambassador Stevens, were certain that he had succumbed to the debilitating smoke and had collapsed on the ground. The agents scoured the floor, on their hands and knees, in multiple attempts to search for him and bring him out and save his life. The agents—and later the GRS team—went inside the area on numerous occasions, too many to count, in order to locate the ambassador, but their attempts yielded nothing. ***** ** ***** *** ** ****** *** ****** ******* ** *** **** ********* ** *********** The looters were looking for stuff to steal and went straight for the drawers, cupboards, and the closet. ******* ** *** ******* ****** * ***** ************ ****** ** ****** ** ******** ******* *** ******* *** ***** ** ******* ********** ******** ********* ** * ************ ******* it is believed that during the initial chaos of the attack and horrific blaze that followed the assault on the villa, Ambassador Stevens was separated from A. and Sean Smith and, overcome by smoke, became disoriented; seeking shelter and some air to breathe, ** ****** ****** ****** *** ******* ** ** ***** ** ***** ****

  News of the discovery sparked a mixed reaction from the crowd outside the egress window. One eyewitness, a videographer interviewed by CNN, recalled that at first the men in the crowd believed the body belonged to a Libyan. Then, as the videographer, who identified himself as Fahed al-Bakush, commented, “We thought he was a driver or one of the security people. We didn’t know that he was the ambassador.” However, in video footage of the men pulling Stevens out of the safe haven, some of the men inexplicably began chanting, “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great.” The religious connotation of invoking God’s name was all too often irreligious; it was the Middle Eastern version of “U.S.A.!” as was expressed following news of the death of bin Laden. But right after the looters praised God’s greatness, some were heard shouting, “Ho ajnabi,” or “He’s a foreigner,” before increasing the ferocity and the frequency of their praise of the Almighty. Once it was established that the lifeless body was that of a dreaded crusader, yells of “Allahu akbar” became a hypnotic rave.

  The looters—most of them, anyway—were not believed to have been jihadists. But still, several of the men who emerged from the safe haven with Stevens’s body were carrying AK-47s (the telltale front sight of the weapon was seen on several video snippets filmed at the villa during the removal of Stevens’s body). One of the men, wearing a white T-shirt and a red-and-white checkered keffiyeh headdress as a scarf around his neck, dangled a cigarette in his lips and had an AK-47 clutched in his left hand.

  Blood splatters, ******** ** **** **** **** *** ** *** ******* ** ****** *** *** ******* ***** ** *** *** ** *** ****** ******** ** ** ********* ** **** *** **** **** *** *********** ********* ****** ** ****** ********* were found on the walls near the window. A bloody palm print was also evident.

  One unidentified man, believed to be in his late twenties or early thirties and wearing a white button-down blouse and brown slacks, emerged from the egress window clutching the tan body armor that was issued to ********** ******* so that he could wear it in case the compound was under attack. ** *** ****** **** ******* *** ******* *** **** **** ********** *** **** *** ******* ****** ** **** *** *****

  When Stevens was brought out, his body was laid out on the bricked walkway in front of the villa and photographed. It is believed that someone in the crowd checked Stevens for a pulse, and when none was found, members of the crowd rolled him to the side; it is doubtful that any of the men in that wave of looters had the medical training to determine a pulse or any other vital signs. A man, wearing a Manchester United training polo and holding his Sony Ericsson smartphone between his teeth, sat him up to be photographed.

  There were no apparent marks on his body to indicate trauma, but his eyes, nose, ears, and mouth were all black and blue. Stevens’s attire spoke of the sudden surprise of the terrorist attack. He wore blue slacks and a white T-shirt. His black leather belt was unbuckled. It was evident that he had been in his room, kicking back and reviewing work or just relaxing, **** *** ************** ***** ******** *** ******** ******** warning came over the public address system, and the agent retrieved him to take him to the safe haven. *** ***** *** ********** ***** ** ****** ******** * **** ** ******** *** ********** **** ********* *** ******* ** *** ******* *** ** *** ************ ***** *** ***** ********* ** ******** *** ****** ***** ********** The inhaled combustion gases and ambient heat within the residence replaced oxygen with toxins such as cyanide gas and carbon monoxide, worsening his plight. The irritation of his airway ensued, causing reflex constriction, engorgement of the surrounding tissues, and leakage of fluid and mucus into the airway. Attempts at taking a small breath would have become a monumental task for the ambassador. Delirium would have set in as the blood oxygen content continued to decrease. In moments the ambassador’s fight for life would have given to unconsciousness. Finally, functionality of the heart would have been lost as initial tachycardia was replaced with a lethal arrhythmia degrading into a systolic cardiac arrest.1

  The horrific pictures that the looters shot of a lifeless ambassador were quickly broadcast around the globe, shocking the world.

  Some sources have estimated that hundreds of looters swarmed over the Special Mission Compound in their attempt, like vultures, to pick the flesh off the bones of an installation that was left to burn in the Benghazi night; other sources believe that the number was far greater. No fewer than twenty-five men lifted Stevens’s lifeless body off the ground and carried him outside the compound to a commandeered car. The men were all wearing Western dress—certainly not the dark shirts and fatigues that were the fashion of the day for the jihadists. Virtually all the men wore blue jeans and T-shirts and soccer jerseys; FC Barcelona was the popular team, and while stars like Lionel Messi and David Villa would have been the players most revered, the men at the compound proclaimed their loyalty to Zlatan Ibrahimović, the Swedish international superstar who was born to a Muslim father (and Catholic mother) and was revered in the Arab world; the jihadists, as a rule, were not big fans of international soccer. Nearly all the men wore sneakers, while a few wore brown leather sandals. Only a handful of the men who rushed Ambassador Stevens to the car that had pulled up to the front of Charlie-1 sported beards that could be construed as “somewhat” Islamic.

  According to one international correspondent who witnessed the compound shortly following the terrorist strike, “It is likely the intent of the men who found their way onto the U.S. mission was initially criminal, or less than proper, but once the body was found, they tried to become Good Samaritans.”2 There were a dozen or so all-night medical clinics open throughout Benghazi—many situated near the mosques that were headquarters to local jihadist militias and gangs. These impromptu clinics by day and patch-up centers by night were already filled to capacity tending to the gunshot wounds that were so common once darkness fell in the city. They were now bursting at the seams when the casualties from the battle at the Special Mission Compound were thrown on the examination room tables, chairs, or floors of these human-tissue fix-it shops. The slabs at the nearby mosques were also filled to capacity, preparing the dead from the night’s battle for a burial befitting a martyr. If the intent of the Good Samaritans was to kidnap or bargain off the body to the highest bidder, there were countless locations where they could have brought Stevens. They could have buried him altogether in some nondescript grave; both Hamas and Hezbollah, as a macabre game of taunting Israeli governments, held the Jewish state hostage while using corpses as bargaining chips. Instead, the men in the crowd drove the two miles, speeding down the Third Ring Road, to Benghazi Medical Center—the finest hospital in the city.

  It was 0145 hours on September 12, 2012.

  24.

  The Terminal

  Benina was a small and poor-looking hamlet nineteen miles east of Benghazi’s city center. A backward town with, curiously, an inordinate number of brand-new Me
rcedes and BMWs in many driveways, Benina had dirt roads, several corner stores, and numerous mosques. Benina boasted a state-of-the-art soccer stadium that could seat 10,550 people and had at first been named after the Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez by his close friend Muammar Qaddafi; after the revolution, the pitch was renamed Martyrs of February Stadium. Benina was also the home of an international airport, the second largest in Libya. There was a lot of history surrounding the airport. During World War II, the airfield was home to the U.S. Army Air Force’s Ninth Air Force during the eastern desert campaign against the Desert Fox, General Erwin Rommel; B-24 Liberators from the 376th Bombardment Group flew hundreds of sorties against Axis forces from what was then known as Soluch Airfield. It had also been bombed by the U.S. Air Force in 1986 when President Reagan decided to retaliate against Libya for the La Belle discotheque (a nightclub frequented by U.S. service members) bombing in Berlin, which was attributed to Libyan intelligence agents.

  Little, though, has changed at the airport in the seventy years since the last B-24 took off from the narrowly paved path of its tarmac, and the patchwork from the 1986 bombing was still evident. The terminal, the grounds, and the pace of activity have all remained provincially backward. The terminal was a run-of-the-mill sand-colored building with the departures and arrivals sharing the same space; the building houses offices and a customs and immigration hall.