by Damien Lewis
They pressed onward for the Annex, completing the last stage of that desperate journey having crossed the central dividing line of the highway and driving against the traffic as a way to escape from vehicles in pursuit. By the time they were nearing the Annex, the two vehicles that had been following them, both with their lights off, had been lost. On arrival at the Annex, they made it safely inside the gates, which were closed and secured behind them.
Those who were able joined the force manning a security perimeter around the Annex to repel any attackers who might target this complex. Back at the Mission the team led by Ty Woods was embroiled in an intensive firefight as the enemy targeted them with machine-gun fire and repeated rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) strikes. Sharp stabs of fiery tracer pierced the darkness above the burning buildings. In danger of running out of ammo, and having made repeated attempts to find Ambassador Stevens, they were forced to abandon the search.
Carrying Sean Smith with them, they conducted a fighting withdrawal, using fire and maneuver tactics to retrace their steps to their vehicles, fighting off more of the enemy as they went. The team from the Annex left the Mission at around 11:30 P.M., with all of their number still alive and having evacuated all the Mission personnel—apart from the Ambassador.
They came under fire as they exited the compound, and they basically had to fight their way out through the streets they had used as they fought their way in. They were driving armored SUVs and as they exited the area of the Mission they were hit by crowds of Shariah fighters gathered in ambush and blocking positions. Despite this they made it back to the Annex with no loss of life.
At just after 11:00 P.M. an unarmed American drone had been placed over the location of the attack on the Mission, and it was able to relay live imagery to Washington of the drama unfolding below. The then CIA director, General David Petraeus, was apparently in the CIA Operations Center overseeing the rescue for the entire duration of the Benghazi siege, and until all Americans were accounted for.
The Annex itself now came under serious assault from fighters wielding AK-47s, RPGs, and heavy machine guns. Dave Ubben and the Ambassador’s two CP guys joined those mounting the defense at the Annex—a defense that was again going to be led by Tyrone Woods, the ex-SEAL. Scotty was in a bad way due to all the smoke he had inhaled, and he was being treated for his injuries.
However, the Shariah Brigade attackers were taking on a very different target at the Annex than they had at the Mission. There were thirty Americans based there, including many battle-hardened elite operators. There was also a sizable Libyan guard force that was highly paid and motivated. Most important, that force was properly armed, presumably because those at the Annex didn’t think that having an unarmed guard force was a very sensible idea. The Annex itself had good defensive positions, complete with the type of heavy weaponry required to defend such a compound.
While the fighting was every bit as intense as it had been at the Mission, the defenders killed scores of Shariah fighters and weren’t yet in serious danger of being overrun. They also had high-intensity floodlights illuminating the scene, which proved blinding to the attackers and helped the Americans to pick them off. The fighting continued for a good hour, by which time the Shariah Brigade commanders must have realized they needed heavier weaponry to stand any chance of taking out the Annex. There was an ominous lull.
By now it was well after midnight, and Dr.Saif Eddin al Zoghbia, a general surgeon at the Benghazi Medical Center (BMC)—the formal name of the “Twelve-Hundred-Bed Hospital”—was the duty doctor working the 8 P.M.–2 A.M. shift in the ER. From the outside, the desert-brown BMC building looked like a modern, efficient hospital complex, complete with all the various wards and departments that such a facility should possess. In reality it was woefully ill-equipped and understaffed at all levels. Only one of the three wings functioned properly, and of the twelve hundred beds only a third were being used. A surgeon such as Dr.Zoghbia earned eight hundred Libyan dinar a month, the equivalent of six hundred dollars. The ER lacked the basic necessities of such a unit—including proper sterilizing equipment, lifesaving drugs, and oxygen and respiratory equipment.
There is no emergency medical service in Libya, so no ambulances or ambulance crews. Any injured are normally brought into the hospital by distraught relatives or bystanders. The ER department was receiving a lot of road accident victims, due to the chaotic nature of the city after the downfall of dictator Muammar Gaddafi, plus a lot of gunshot victims due to lawlessness and killings on the streets.
At 1:30 A.M. Dr.Zoghbia was taking a break by the exit to the ER unit when he heard frantic shouting. A group of young men came running toward him carrying a makeshift stretcher. They were panicking and he could hear them shouting: “This man is going to die! We found him at the Embassy!” The first thing Dr. Zoghbia did was check the man’s carotid pulse. There was none that he could detect. He took the man inside and started to do cardiopulmonary resuscitation while yelling out “Code Blue!”
“Code Blue” was the alert for any spare doctors or nurses to come to the ER and lend assistance in a life-threatening emergency. Dr. Zoghbia had no idea who the man on the stretcher might be. He couldn’t even tell if he was a foreigner or a Libyan. The man was clothed, but he was smoke-blackened and some of his clothes seemed to be singed and burned. He was wearing running shoes, and one of the young men commented again that he was a “foreigner from the U.S. Embassy.”
Dr. Zoghbia ignored him and concentrated on trying to save the patient. A nurse connected a monitor to check his vital signs and applied an oxygen mask. One of the young men who had brought the patient in said they had found him at the Embassy, and that he believed he was the U.S. Ambassador. Dr. Zoghbia didn’t believe him: it was inconceivable that this man whose life he was trying to save could be the American Ambassador to Libya. He continued to give CPR, compressing the man’s chest in an effort to get him to start breathing again.
He was joined by two other doctors, and together they worked on trying to revive the patient. They tried to intubate him—to open his airway by placing a tube down it, to enable oxygen to enter the lungs—but the airway was completely swollen and constricted. They switched to using a bag valve mask—a handheld ventilator that pumps air into the lungs—with additional oxygen. They continued to give CPR for nearly twenty minutes, but there was no response from the patient.
Dr. Zoghbia was greatly frustrated at their failure to revive him. It was then that he checked the man’s pupils, and realized that he had gray-blue eyes—suggesting he might well be a foreigner and from the U.S. Embassy, as the young men had claimed. He still could not believe that this man could be the U.S. Ambassador.
The man’s pupils were dilated and fixed and showed no reaction to the light at all. The doctor then checked his entire body for any signs of trauma or injury, but there were none. He concluded the patient had died from smoke inhalation, and very likely before he reached the BMC. He noted the time of likely death, disconnected the monitor, and signed off on the paperwork.
Ambassador Stevens’s body was then covered in a sheet and wheeled out for transfer to the morgue. After his ER shift was done, Dr.Zoghbia spoke to one of the young men who had brought the body in. He learned that he was one of a group of young Libyan men who had seen the Mission on fire and had gone to try to help. They had found a locked and barred room. They’d gone around to the rear of the building and found a window they could force open. One of them had jumped into the room, which was hot and filled with smoke.
That man had stumbled upon a body, which he and others had proceeded to pull out of the burning villa. At that moment they believed the man still to be alive. They carried him across to the nearest private car and that was how they had got him to the hospital. Dr.Zoghbia heard the young man’s story but still could not believe that the man now lying dead in his hospital might be the American Ambassador to Libya.
Some three hundred miles to the west of Benghazi, a Quick Reaction Force h
ad been mobilized at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli. It consisted of five Americans, including ex–Navy SEAL operator Glen Doherty, who was on contract to the CIA as one of their Global Response Staff (GRS), plus two Delta Force operators. Doherty was a close friend of Tyrone Woods, having served alongside him in SEAL Team Three, and he was determined to get to the aid of those at the Annex.
When serving as a SEAL, Doherty had responded in October 2000 to the terrorist attack on the USS Cole in a harbor in Yemen, and he had completed tours of duty in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Doherty had left the military in 2005 and had since served as a private security operator. He was in Libya as part of the U.S. team hunting down MANPADS—shoulder-launched missiles that had fallen into militia, and hence perhaps terrorist, hands.
A hastily rented private aircraft—the pilots were reportedly paid thirty thousand dollars in cash to undertake the flight—carried the Tripoli QRF down to Benghazi. Their aim was to reinforce the defense at the Annex, where some thirty Americans were now holed up. The five-man team touched down at Benghazi airport sometime between 11:00 P.M. and 1:00 A.M. (CIA and Pentagon accounts differ over this timeline).
The QRF who had flown down from Tripoli had been told there would be “fast movers” over Benghazi by the time they got there—fast movers referring to American military fast jets (F15s, F16s, or F18s). However, no U.S. airpower was deployed over Benghazi to assist U.S. forces in the defense of either the Embassy or the Annex during the long night of the siege—apart from the two drones (one replacing the other) that were put over the scene and held there until the battles were over.
The five-man QRF were detained upon arrival at the Benghazi airport—presumably by whichever militia were running “security”—and held for a good five hours. The Libyans maintain that this was because of the need to assemble a Libyan Army force powerful enough to escort the Tripoli QRF to the Annex, and this may well be true.
While held at the airport the Tripoli QRF tried to verify where Ambassador Stevens was, as he was now the lone American missing. Learning that he was very likely dead and at the BMC, the decision was made not to go and retrieve his body, but to go to the aid of those at the Annex. This was made in part because they believed security at the hospital to be uncertain, especially since the Shariah Brigade had taken their wounded there.
Either way, as a result of the delay at Benghazi airport the QRF did not get to the aid of those at the Annex until around 5 A.M.—more than seven hours after the attack began. They reached the Annex safely and joined the defenders. With the Shariah Brigade having ransacked the U.S. Mission and driven the Americans out, the full focus of their attack now shifted to the Annex. The defenders at the Annex racked up dozens of kills as the Shariah Brigade tried to overrun it—as they had done the Embassy—by sending scores of their fighters to scale the walls.
Tyrone Woods led a bunch of elite operators—now including fellow ex-SEAL Glen Doherty—plus Dave Ubben, in a fierce defense from the Annex roof. Scotty was apparently already out of action, due to smoke inhalation and other injuries suffered at the Mission. Having realized they couldn’t storm the Annex, the Shariah Brigade brought up what is believed to be a French 81mm mortar—one that had very likely been airdropped to the “rebels” during the fight to topple Gaddafi.
At around first light the enemy mortar team started to rain down mortars onto the Annex, targeting the rooftop position occupied by the main body of defenders. Very quickly they had their target “bracketed”—with a mortar round dropped to either side of the rooftop defensive position. The mortar tube was zeroed in on its target, and ready to hit those rooftop defenders.
It would take a British or American mortar team many months to learn to fire a mortar with such accuracy in such a busy urban environment. To get accurate mortar rounds onto such a small target as the Annex roof so quickly was a major feat of gunnery. It suggested several things. One, that the Shariah attackers must have recce’d the Annex and worked out a set of GPS coordinates and grids for their targets. Two, that they had a highly trained mortar team in-country—most likely a foreign team, one with widespread battle experience and probably from Iraq or Afghanistan.
The first accurate mortar round dropped on the rooftop position and fatally wounded Tyrone Woods. His body shielded much of the blast from a second GRS agent, but that man was nonetheless seriously injured from shrapnel and blast. Glen Doherty tried to reposition himself and take cover, but a second round dropped in quick succession and killed him instantly.
Dave Ubben was hit in the same mortar strike, suffering shrapnel injuries and broken bones. It was only due to the heroic actions of the medic-trained operators based at the Annex—who sprinted up to that roof to give first aid—that Dave’s life was saved. Tyrone Woods did not die immediately as a result of being hit, but apparently bled out over several hours and died from his injuries.
The wounded—Dave Ubben, Tyrone Woods, and the GRS agent—were taken down from the roof using ladders. The American MQ1-Predator drone now orbiting above the Annex was relaying live feeds to those based at the Annex, and to headquarters and command. Via the feed to their Rover terminal—a small computer-like screen that played live video feeds from the orbiting Predator—those in the Annex could see large numbers of Shariah Brigade fighters converging on their position for what appeared to be a major assault. At that moment the decision was made to evacuate the Annex completely.
The Annex had taken an absolute pounding. The one thing the American operators based there had in their favor was combat experience and tactical awareness. Their weapons were also far superior to those of the Shariah fighters. Still, it was a numbers game now, and there were simply too many enemy massing to attack. The decision to evacuate the Annex was without doubt the right one.
At around 6:30 A.M. Libyan Army vehicles escorted the thirty-odd American personnel out of the Annex and the siege was finally broken. The Predator followed that convoy as it made its way to the airport to evacuate. At 7:30 A.M. a number of evacuees, including all the wounded, were flown out of the Benghazi airport on a chartered jet and landed in Tripoli, where they were met by Embassy staff, including medics. The wounded were transferred to a Tripoli hospital, where the rapid access to full medical care doubtless saved the lives of the two most seriously injured Americans—Dave Ubben and the wounded GRS agent.
A Libyan Air Force C-130 Hercules transport aircraft was made ready to carry the remainder of the Mission and Annex staff from Benghazi airport to Tripoli. Alex and others present worked with local contacts to get the Ambassador’s body retrieved from Benghazi Medical Center. It arrived at the airport at 8:25 A.M. under escort from Libyan Army personnel, whereupon Alex was able to verify that it was indeed Ambassador Stevens’s body.
At around 9:00 A.M. all surviving U.S. personnel in Benghazi—that’s everyone from the Mission and all from the Annex—evacuated the city on that C-130 Hercules headed to Tripoli.
At that stage I was the last Westerner from the Mission or Annex remaining in the city.
The Annex was actually about a ten-minute drive from the Mission—so less than a kilometer away. My mission once all the Americans had pulled out of Benghazi was to check the Mission for the bodies of my friends and to document the scene at which the American Ambassador to Libya had been killed.
At 7:15 that evening the wounded from the Benghazi attacks were airlifted out of Tripoli in U.S. Air Force C17 and C130 aircraft, along with most of the Benghazi Embassy and Annex staff. They were flown to Ramstein Air Base, in Germany, on aircraft equipped with military doctors and nurses providing medical care en route. The aircraft touched down at Ramstein at approximately 10:30 P.M. (Libya time)—so some twenty-four hours after the attacks in Benghazi had begun.
At least two elite American military teams had been readied to fly into Benghazi the night of the siege, but neither actually made it. One was a contingent of some fifty U.S. Marines, forming up a FAST—Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team—force, based at Rota, in Spain,
a short flight across the Mediterranean from Benghazi. That team was hindered in its response because it lacked “dedicated airlift”—in other words, air transport—at its location (air transport was in Germany). Even if airlift had been available, it’s unlikely the FAST force would have been able to arrive in time to save the lives of those killed in the attack.
A team of Special Operations forces was sent out from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and one was on standby in nearby Croatia—but neither team was given clearance to enter Libya, even though at least one was only a short flight away in Europe. There were also U.S. warplanes based at Aviano Air Base, in Italy—again just a short flight away across the Mediterranean—but the only U.S. air assets deployed over Benghazi the night of the Mission and the Annex attacks were the Predator drones.
The Libyan surgeon who treated Ambassador Stevens learned of the man’s true identity only when he saw it revealed on the TV news later that morning. Dr.Zoghbia still could not believe that the American Ambassador to Libya had been killed and ended up on his treatment table. He wondered then, if there had been a properly equipped ambulance at the scene—one with oxygen and breathing apparatus—could Ambassador Stevens’s life have been saved? He felt frustrated that he’d been unable to save him and angry that this could have happened.
While the doctor found it hard to comprehend how the American Ambassador had ended up in his hospital dying or already dead, he, like many Benghazians, had known that security at the U.S. Mission was lacking, that the Mission was inadequately protected. Moreover, employing the 17th February Militia as the Embassy’s guard force was seen as nonsensical—for the Militia was known to be connected to extremists like the Shariah Brigade. Most Benghazians were mystified as to why the U.S. Embassy would have hired such people to “protect” their diplomatic mission.
One thing that I have learned over the years working with Americans is that they do not leave their fellow countrymen to perish. How those from the Annex managed to get to the Mission compound at all amazes me—for the attackers would have spotted them immediately and hit them hard, and as I knew from my own experience, there were scores of gun trucks surrounding the Mission sporting Russian-made 12.7mm Dushka machine guns. The team from the Annex may have been driving armored SUVs, but the Dushka fires armor-piercing rounds: it would have torn apart their vehicles like a can opener.