Under Fire

by Fred Burton

  Shortly after 1600 hours, the protesters and the police clashed in Khartoum; it quickly erupted into a free-for-all. The police used truncheons and tear gas. When those measures failed, the police simply used their vehicles as people movers. Two protesters were killed when a police truck ran them over. By 1700 hours, the demonstration had turned into a full-scale riot. The protesters began throwing incendiary devices at police, and they torched police trucks; they overwhelmed the riot police with sticks, gardening tools, and rocks; the policemen, underpaid and outnumbered, simply fled back into the center of town. The embassy was on its own.

  There were now more than five hundred protesters surrounding the embassy. They progressed around the embassy grounds with moves choreographed to overwhelm the compound’s defenses and the defenders inside the fortified perimeter. In precise military-style probing actions, the protesters scaled a row of outer fences that controlled access to the compound and attempted to breach the embassy’s outer defenses. The embassy was now under attack. According to reports, some of the attackers were non-Sudanese—visitors from country’s northern neighbor or the Arabian Peninsula—and there was also a “clean skin,” a white European or American, mysteriously moving about with parts of his face concealed by a keffiyeh scarf.

  Inside the embassy, the duck-and-cover alarm sounded. S., the RSO, and his team of ARSOs donned body armor and grabbed their sidearms; each had a job to do, a responsibility and sector to look after. S. and the MSG Gunny coordinated the tactical placement of security personnel. The RSO was in constant communication with the DS Command Center; the Gunny was on an unbreakable radio loop with his men in the embassy. The RSO ordered Joseph D. Stafford III, the chargé d’affaires, and the deputy chief of mission to hunker down; they were in their offices, along with the political officer, calling contacts inside the Sudanese government to send reinforcements and to end the siege. The RSO was juggling several cell phones, talking to the DS Command Center on one and seeking aid from the head of the Sudanese preventive security intelligence service on his local telephone. It was organized chaos that had been rehearsed to perfection. The embassy had been on heightened alert after Benghazi, bracing for some sort of storm or attack.

  As the RSO scrambled to make sure the staffers and inside perimeter of the embassy were secure, S. and the MSGs went into full RESPONSE mode. They donned their combat kits and grabbed their M4s and Remington 870 12-gauge shotguns. Some were sent to tactical positions to provide the RSO with eyes-on intelligence; surveillance cameras at several access points had been knocked out by the protesters.

  The mob tried to gain access at two access-control points—entry vestibules that had layers of steel and transparent armor embedded in the architecture to keep threats out, whether it was an explosive parcel or a mob of protesters armed with sledgehammers. FSNs manned these access points. They were the first layer of security that safeguarded the embassy. But they weren’t a match for the throng of men pounding the glass until it was compromised. By the time the riot gained strength and speed, like a tornado cutting a path of destruction, the police had fled. The rioters set fire to their vehicles and then used the flaming hunks of steel as battering rams to try to punch a hole in the outer walls. Over the next few hours, several nonessential locations on the outer wall were compromised, and the protesters, now officially deemed attackers, tried to set fire to the compound. According to AFP Khartoum, the MSGs fired warning shots from their rooftop perches once the protesters began to successfully puncture the outer perimeter to the compound.2

  Some of the protesters had jerry cans filled with gasoline. They poured the gasoline onto the doors and walls and set the highly flammable puddles alight. Eerily, a black Toyota Hilux pickup was set on fire near the front entrance of the embassy, as the attack took on a very Benghazi appearance. But the outer walls of the embassy held. The protesters would be stymied in their attempts to replicate the murderous success of Benghazi two days earlier. Tired, frustrated, and realizing that it was time to call it a day, the protesters simply grabbed their signs, prayer rugs, garden tools, and jerry cans and went home. The outer access-control booths looked as if they had withstood an artillery barrage. The outer walls were aflame, and the police trucks and even a few embassy vehicles burned wildly in the darkening skies. The U.S. embassy in Khartoum had been spared. The upgraded physical security standards kept the mob from taking the embassy.* It was 1900 hours in Khartoum.

  The following day, the government in Khartoum rejected a request by the U.S. government to send a platoon of FAST marines to the country in order to bolster security at the embassy.3 Even inside the smoky choke of terror, the niceties of diplomacy overruled necessity. The embassy’s contingent of MSGs would have to suffice for possible future attacks.

  * * *

  As the acrid black smoke from the embassy fire darkened the skies over Khartoum, a blanket of light bathed the gray tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base, located five miles east of the seat of power in Washington, D.C., in the plush expanses of Prince George’s County, Maryland; the sunshine falsely presented a hopeful sense of optimism on a day that was purely somber. Andrews Air Force Base—or Joint Base Andrews, as the sprawling facility is known—is home to several U.S. Air Force transport wings and, as headquarters for the Eighty-ninth Airlift Wing and the Air Mobility Command, is the launch for Air Force One, the two highly customized Boeing 747-200Bs that, because of their in-flight refueling capabilities, have unlimited range and take the president wherever he needs to travel. Andrews has been the parade ground for foreign leaders visiting the United States, with all the pomp and ceremony such state visits entail, and it has hosted heartwarming reunions and homecomings, such as the return of POWs from Vietnam and the return of the American hostages from Iran. Andrews has also been the first touch on American soil, on the final journey home, for those American soldiers and diplomats who have been killed on distant shores in some of the most horrific terrorist attacks of modern times. The remains of the American intelligence community killed when the U.S. embassy in Beirut was obliterated by a Hezbollah car bomb in 1983 were first brought to Andrews in a somber ceremony of honor and remembrance. The ten Americans killed in August 1998 in the simultaneous truck bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, were respectfully brought back to American shores by way of Andrews. And on September 14, 2012, the four Americans killed in Benghazi, Libya, arrived at Joint Base Andrews for what the air force calls the dignified transfer of remains.

  The next of kin had been told of the deaths of their loved ones by phone. Charles Woods, Tyrone Woods’s father, received the call early in the morning the day before at his home in Hawaii. “It was real early in the morning,” Mr. Woods remembered, “and a female voice said that she was calling from the government and that she was calling to inform me that Ty had been killed.” There was little explanation offered as to the details of Ty’s death, just straightforward information of what, when, and where. “I knew never to pry into Ty’s work,” his father recalled. “I knew better than to ask him where he was going or what he was doing. I used to worry about Ty a lot when he was on active duty, but I never prayed. When he took this job and went to the Middle East, I prayed for him.” The Woods family, especially his sister, prayed regularly for him. They would now watch a U.S. military honor guard, their brass polished and their uniforms pressed perfectly, carry his flag-draped coffin to the vast expanses of a hangar where the dignitaries would speak.

  The families were flown to Washington, D.C., and sheltered in a hotel in Georgetown, far from prying eyes or outside threats. “We were told that this hotel was the safest place to be in Washington, D.C.,” Mr. Woods stated.4 The following day, the families were ushered on an air force bus to Joint Base Andrews and directed to a large room, plain and isolated, that was well lit and contained several banks of sofas, each separate from the other, where families could assemble and meet the president and the nation’s leaders. Each of the officials would have private t
ime with each of the bereaved families to pay his or her respects. The notes played in one last rehearsal by the USAF band were muffled by the earth-rumbling roars fired from Pratt and Whitney F117-PW-100 turbofan engines lifting the gargantuan C-17 Globemasters to the skies.

  Vice President Joe Biden was the first person to greet the families. Undeterred by the solemn mood of the event, the vice president, Charles Woods recalled, lived up to his folksy blue-collar image, talking of Woods’s heroism and amazing courage.

  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was next to meet with the Woods family. The events of the previous forty-eight hours had physically drained the sixty-four-year-old secretary of state. “She looked tired,” Mr. Woods said. “The events had apparently taken their toll on her.”5

  President Barack Obama, in addressing the solemn crowd at the hangar, offered his sorrow-filled gratitude to each of the men who perished that fateful night in Benghazi. He said:

  Scripture teaches us “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Glen Doherty never shied from adventure. He believed that, in his life, he could make a difference—a calling he fulfilled as a Navy SEAL. He served with distinction in Iraq and worked in Afghanistan. And there, in Benghazi, as he tended to others, he laid down his life, loyal as always, protecting his friends. Today, Glen is home.

  Tyrone Woods devoted twenty years of his life to the SEALs—the consummate “quiet professional.” At the Salty Frog Bar, they might not have known, but “Rone” also served in Iraq and Afghanistan. And there, in Benghazi, he was far from Dorothy and Tyrone Jr., Hunter and little Kai. And he laid down his life, as he would have for them, protecting his friends. And today, Rone is home.

  Sean Smith, it seems, lived to serve—first in the Air Force, then, with you at the State Department. He knew the perils of this calling from his time in Baghdad. And there, in Benghazi, far from home, he surely thought of Heather and Samantha and Nathan. And he laid down his life in service to us all. Today, Sean is home.

  Chris Stevens was everything America could want in an ambassador, as the whole country has come to see—how he first went to the region as a young man in the Peace Corps, how during the revolution, he arrived in Libya on that cargo ship, how he believed in Libya and its people and how they loved him back. And there, in Benghazi, he laid down his life for his friends—Libyan and American—and for us all. Today, Chris is home.

  Four Americans, four patriots—they loved this country and they chose to serve it, and served it well. They had a mission and they believed in it. They knew the danger and they accepted it. They didn’t simply embrace the American ideal, they lived it. They embodied it—the courage, the hope and, yes, the idealism, that fundamental American belief that we can leave this world a little better than before. That’s who they were and that’s who we are. And if we want to truly honor their memory, that’s who we must always be.6

  In closing his remarks, knowing full well that the event was coordinated by the U.S. Department of State for the Department of State, President Obama made it clear that the United States would not be deterred from its global mission as a result of Benghazi. He stated, “That’s the message these four patriots sent. That’s the message that each of you sends every day—civilians, military—to people in every corner of the world, that America is a friend, and that we care not just about our own country, not just about our own interests, but about theirs; that even as voices of suspicion and mistrust seek to divide countries and cultures from one another, the United States of America will never retreat from the world. We will never stop working for the dignity and freedom that every person deserves, whatever their creed, whatever their faith.” President Obama continued, “To you—their families and colleagues—to all Americans, know this: Their sacrifice will never be forgotten. We will bring to justice those who took them from us. We will stand fast against the violence on our diplomatic missions. We will continue to do everything in our power to protect Americans serving overseas, whether that means increasing security at our diplomatic posts, working with host countries, which have an obligation to provide security, and making it clear that justice will come to those who harm Americans.”7

  Following the solemn movement of remains and the eulogies rendered, the bodies of the four Americans killed that night in Benghazi were quietly taken by the FBI for forensic autopsies.8 The tedious and procedural work of a criminal death had just begun. The bodies were evidence of a crime. There was every intention to bring the perpetrators—somehow and someday—to justice.

  The remains were later released to their families for burial.

  * * *

  Lost in the political eye gouging that would eventually erupt over Benghazi was something that Secretary of State Clinton said in her remarks at the dignified transfer of remains. “There will be more difficult days ahead,” the secretary stated, “but it is important that we don’t lose sight of the fundamental fact that America must keep leading the world.”

  The linchpin of America’s ability to lead the world, from around the world, even in locations and war zones where the intelligence community drives the diplomatic engine, is the courage, dedication, and sacrifice of the men and women of the Diplomatic Security Service who find themselves in harm’s way, driving a follow car or maintaining security programs at fortresslike embassies, and those that are not fortresses, in locations that few Americans would be able to locate on a map. American diplomatic interests—and the realities of day-to-day expeditionary diplomacy—could never be protected if this intrepid force of federal agents were not on post and on guard. The true story of the Benghazi attack is not one of failure or cover-up. The true story of Benghazi is that men and women volunteer to place themselves between a bullet or a bomb and America’s diplomats and interests inside the crosshairs, inside the most dangerous and volatile locations in the world. In that sense the story of the attack was nothing new at all.

  * * *

  On the morning of Thursday, January 31, 2013, on her last day in office, Secretary of State Clinton summoned four of the five DS agents who were in Benghazi that night to her office. The seventh floor at Main State, the bastion of decision making, was quiet and empty; it was a far cry from the usual high-octane activity that followed such an energetic secretary of state. Mainly, staffers who weren’t remaining behind at Foggy Bottom were in their offices and cubicles, loading personal items into Staples storage boxes. The four agents were called to Foggy Bottom for a low-key presentation of the U.S. Department of State’s Award for Heroism. The award is presented to State Department and USAID personnel, as well as Marine Security guards, assigned to diplomatic and consular posts in recognition of acts of courage and outstanding performance while under the threat of physical attack and at a risk to one’s personal safety. Each of the four men was being decorated for his acts of heroism and self-sacrifice in Benghazi that fateful night. One of the agents had already returned to the Middle East following the attack to continue his assignment, not wanting the attack to be something that scarred his career as well as his mind. He traveled from the Middle East to receive his commendation. He returned to his post after the ceremony to face his demons. Only the agents and senior DS leadership attended the presentation.

  The press was often invited to cover these types of award ceremonies, though DS agents being decorated for valor was not usually the breaking-news item that an editor or a program director felt was worth the time and cost of a reporter’s carfare and the parking fees for a camera crew. DS wasn’t news that Main State often promoted. In any event, it didn’t matter as far as this incident was concerned. The press was never informed about this ceremony, though the room wouldn’t have been large enough to accommodate all the journalists and cameras that would have rushed to cover the event or any event concerning Benghazi. They wouldn’t have been allowed in the building, regardless. In keeping with the agents’ adamant requests to remain anonymous, the press was never invited.

  The following day
, in perhaps his first official act as the new secretary of state, John Kerry traveled to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. In a display of great reverence and respect to a combatant wounded in action, Kerry presented the agent severely injured in the attacks on the Special Mission Compound and the Annex with his Award for Heroism. The ceremony was low-key and personal. His visit resonated loudly through the rank and file; the agents were grateful for his show of compassion and kindness. It was unprecedented for the secretary of state to make such a gesture, and it was important for DS agents everywhere to see. His visit was without fanfare and without any leak to the media. The new man on deck realized that the world was only going to get more dangerous and that a lot would be asked of them. It was important that the agents in the field, and those at the far-flung outposts, see that their boss had their backs.

  As the special agents on the Secretary’s Detail stood outside their fellow agent’s hospital room, Secretary Kerry, who himself was no stranger to combat, talked face-to-face with the wounded hero, to hear for himself the story of death and determination under fire that night in Benghazi.

  Glossary

  AFRICOM:

  U.S. Military’s Africa Command

  AK-47:

  Soviet-produced select-fire gas-operated 7.62 × 39 mm assault rifle developed by Mikhail Kalashnikov in 1947. Robust, easy to operate, and ever reliable, the AK-47 is one of the most widely proliferated weapons in history and is the favorite of terrorists and third-world armies.