Facts and Fears

by James R. Clapper

  At those meetings Hillary Clinton pushed for military intervention in pursuit of regime change, while Bob Gates pushed back, pointing out that we already had two Middle East wars to prosecute, and because of Gaddafi’s formidable air defenses, setting up a no-fly zone would require extensive strikes, drawing resources from the other wars. I could see the reasoning on both sides of that argument, and I could tell that President Obama did, too. I didn’t envy his having to decide on a course of action.

  On March 3 the president addressed Libya in a public statement: “The United States and the entire world continues to be outraged by the appalling violence against the Libyan people. The United States is helping to lead an international effort to deter further violence, put in place unprecedented sanctions to hold the Gaddafi government accountable and support the aspirations of the Libyan people.” He committed US military planes to help refugees return home, particularly Egyptian citizens who’d fled west into Tunisia, and he pledged humanitarian assistance. Later in his remarks, he said, “The violence must stop. Muammar Gaddafi has lost legitimacy to lead, and he must leave. Those who perpetrate violence against the Libyan people will be held accountable. And the aspirations of the Libyan people for freedom, democracy, and dignity must be met.” He stopped just short of committing the US military to make that happen. The following week, with the United States and NATO still on the sidelines, Gaddafi’s forces pushed east toward Benghazi as Libya became entrenched in a full-blown civil war.

  On March 10 I again gave televised testimony in presenting the IC’s worldwide threat assessment to the Senate Armed Services Committee. I knew that the intelligence update on Libya was going to be controversial. While the president had called for Gaddafi to step down and the press and public supported the forces that opposed him, we still weren’t doing anything. The day before the hearing, French president Nicolas Sarkozy had officially recognized the National Transitional Council in Benghazi as the true government of Libya. We had not.

  During the hearing, when I was asked whether the United States should officially acknowledge the government in Benghazi, I demurred, saying that that question was in the policy lane, not intelligence. But congressional questions about the status of the civil war in Libya and how the opposition to Gaddafi was faring did require “truth to power” answers. I couldn’t deflect them or paint the picture as rosy—neither for Congress nor for the American people. So, in response to Chairman Carl Levin’s and Vice Chairman John McCain’s opening questions, I replied, “Gaddafi is in this for the long haul. I don’t think he has any intention—despite some of the press speculation to the contrary—of leaving. From all the evidence we have, which I’d be prepared to discuss in closed session, he appears to be hunkering down for the duration.” Later in the hearing, in response to a question from Senator Joe Lieberman, I went further in assessing what might happen without outside intervention. “It’s a stalemate back and forth, but I think, over the longer term, that the regime will prevail.” I was again lambasted in the press for speaking intelligence truth that went against the more appealing narrative that policy makers in Congress and executive departments were pushing. That afternoon, National Security Adviser Tom Donilon undercut my assessment, calling it a “static and one-dimensional assessment,” and Senator Lindsey Graham called for me to be fired. That night, back at the office, I took a call from John McCain, who said that I had his support to keep “telling it like it is.” He offered that, while he and his close friend Lindsey often agreed on issues, he thought Senator Graham had “shot from the lip” on this one.

  Nine days after the hearing, with a UN resolution in hand, the US military began taking out Libyan air defenses, first with cruise missiles, and then with escorted bombing runs. With help from the British, French, and Canadian air forces, and drawing on targets identified by multinational intelligence efforts, the US military established a safe no-fly zone in four days and turned the mission over to NATO control. Gaddafi pleaded for the United States and then NATO to stop the attacks, citing his cooperation with weapons inspectors, his voluntary disarmament of his nuclear program, and his restraint from using chemical weapons in his current civil struggle. It was far too late, and no one in the West paid attention. However, I believe North Korea and Iran took careful note of what happens when you give up your nuclear program, and Bashar al-Assad in Syria saw what happens to dictators who show restraint.

  Under the NATO airspace umbrella and with some limited close-air support, the opposition forces in Libya took the initiative. In June, realizing he could no longer prevail, Gaddafi offered a cease-fire to hold elections, promising to step aside if he didn’t win. The war continued, and on August 22, the opposition penetrated Tripoli. By then Gaddafi had escaped the city and was nowhere to be found. Within days the opposition announced they had control of the capital. However, no one was in charge, and pro-Gaddafi troops still roamed the streets, firing on fighters and demonstrators alike.

  On October 20, the last of Gaddafi’s forces was pinned down in the port city of Sirte as the opposition closed in, unaware that Gaddafi was with them. Attempting to flee, Gaddafi raced out of the city in a convoy of seventy-five cars, but was spotted and fired on by NATO aircraft. He took shelter in a storm-water culvert, where he was found by opposition fighters. The jubilant group dragged him off, and within hours, the National Transitional Committee announced his death, although they couldn’t agree on how he died. One member said he was captured alive and executed. Another claimed he was caught in crossfire and found dead. Soon, several cell-phone videos posted on the internet told a different story. In one, his captors slowly tortured him with a bayonet as he screamed and pleaded for his life. For US intelligence, it was a chilling reminder that we had no idea who or what was going to replace Gaddafi in Libya. At the moment, no one was in control.

  Despite sporadic fighting as mercenaries and pro-Gaddafi groups continued to clash with the new government’s forces in the shadows of the capitol, the United States had reopened its embassy in Tripoli on September 22. Violence was prevalent throughout the country, as massive numbers of people tried to return home. Tunisia and Egypt reported that they had received some five hundred thousand Libyan refugees in 2011, and many more had gone south or been evacuated via flights and ferries into Europe. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimated another two hundred thousand people were displaced internally, having abandoned their homes without leaving Libya. In a nation of just six million people, those were huge numbers.

  The National Transitional Council nominally remained the national governing body, but its focus was on drafting a national constitution and preparing for elections, not governing. The Libyan people hadn’t governed themselves in 2,800 years, and in the six decades since the Allies had made Libya its own kingdom in 1951, they’d had one king and then forty-two years of autocratic rule. Self-governance was a novel idea, and while representative democracy seemed, through an American lens, to be the obvious, best end-state, the Libyan people weren’t united behind the council’s efforts. In January 2012, its headquarters in Benghazi was attacked by protesters who wanted the country to become an Islamic caliphate, governed by Sharia law. No one was hurt, but the incident demonstrated that the council was not in control.

  On Friday, April 27, I met with Chris Stevens, who was slated to replace Gene Cretz as the US ambassador to Libya. Chris had an affinity for the Libyan revolution. When during the worst of the war—from March until November of 2011—the United States had closed its embassy in Tripoli and evacuated its diplomats, including Ambassador Cretz, Chris had been the US special representative to the National Transitional Council in Benghazi. During our brief meeting, he struck me as an American patriot and a true believer in democracy. He was elated that he would be present for Libya’s first free elections.

  Before he left my office, we discussed the deteriorating security situation in Libya and the very real dangers posed by local militias, some of which held ex
treme Islamist ideologies. Security was reliable for the embassy in Tripoli, but he could not be as certain about conditions elsewhere in the city or around the country. He had no illusions about the danger he was going back to, but he indicated that he felt a US presence could make a difference to the birth of democracy in this new, independent nation, and so it was worth calculated risks. We talked about working with the CIA and about where to draw the line between intelligence and diplomacy. My last words as he was heading out the door still haunt me. As he glanced back I told him, “Stay safe.”

  Chris arrived in Tripoli on May 22, 2012. Libyan national elections were held on July 7, and the National Transitional Council handed power to the General National Congress on August 8 in a ceremony on Martyrs’ Square. Intelligence reports noted that the government still had little control of the security situation, and that al-Qaida was attempting to establish a foothold in the country, which they’d been unable to do while Gaddafi had ruled. Local militias with heavy military equipment, remnants from the war, controlled the streets, particularly in places like Benghazi, where a dozen or more militias were rivals for power. Some supported the government; others didn’t. In June a group called Ansar al-Sharia had paraded through Benghazi with artillery, demanding the National Transitional Council abandon the planned elections and instead impose Sharia law. We in the IC knew that Chris was facing an uncertain and dangerous situation.

  Meanwhile, US policy focus had shifted back to Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood had—as we’d assessed they would—taken control of the government through elections and appointed Mohamed Morsi as president. We were also watching Syria, where the International Committee of the Red Cross had declared that Arab Spring hostilities had devolved into a civil war. Opposition to Assad grew as he exhibited no restraint when attacking protesters, but the situation was much more complicated for US intelligence and diplomacy than Libya had been under Gaddafi. Syria shared borders with Israel (a close friend), Turkey (a NATO ally), Iraq (where 47,000 US troops were still fighting an insurrection), Jordan, and Lebanon. Assad was backed by Iran’s government and Russia. The Russians certainly wouldn’t allow the UN Security Council to pass a resolution authorizing the use of force in Syria, and—apart from the cost and risk attached to it—establishing a no-fly zone wouldn’t necessarily enable the resistance to take Assad down.

  Because 2012 was an election year in the United States, politicians were weighing in with calls to “arm the rebels” in Syria, particularly Senators McCain and Graham. The Republican narrative held that President Obama simply refused to do the “right thing” and support the opposition to Assad. But from an intelligence standpoint, there were simply no good choices. There wasn’t a united opposition force, and many of the resistance fighters were as unsavory as Assad. Some were even affiliated or allied with the Islamic State in Iraq—not exactly whom we wanted to arm.

  On Tuesday, September 11, the eleventh anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, a local militia attacked a low-security diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya. In the course of the next several hours Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans lost their lives. It took weeks to record many eyewitness accounts—which varied wildly—and acquire, analyze, and correlate video from security cameras, intercepted cell-phone transmissions, and an unarmed Predator drone that arrived on scene an hour and a half after the initial attack. The Predator filmed the buildings burning and the final escape of the survivors from the diplomatic facility. In the coming months, NCTC director Matt Olsen and I briefed what happened that night again and again, to all of our congressional oversight committees and several of the eight—eight—congressional investigations. In the course of all those briefings, I became intimately familiar with the consolidated intelligence picture of what we knew, what we thought, and what we didn’t know.

  At about 9:40 P.M., a group of men, some affiliated with Ansar al-Sharia and some armed, pushed past the main gate of the compound and ran into it, firing guns into the air. The local militia that had been hired as guards immediately fled or dropped their weapons, or both. On the security tapes I’ve seen, the invaders run right past the building in which most of the Americans are hiding, gleefully skipping around the compound. They don’t hunt for hostages. They don’t secure diplomatic materials or posts. They don’t take up military positions to secure the compound. Instead, they start looting and vandalizing, spray-painting graffiti and stealing Xboxes, clothes, and anything of value they can find. One guy is seen running out of a building with a bottle of ketchup. Other random people stroll in through the gate, joking around or trying to take part in the looting while they could. At some point, the intruders stumble onto cans of gasoline beside a generator. They spread the gasoline around and light the main building on fire.

  As soon as they realized there had been a security breach, Chris Stevens, information management officer Sean Smith, and a security officer locked themselves in a safe room in the main building. When looters couldn’t break into the room, they moved on to areas more easily accessed. The Americans were safe until the building was set on fire, at which point the security officer said they needed to leave. He became separated from Chris and Sean as they evacuated and, after reaching safety, went back in for them several times, diving through windows with black smoke pouring out.

  Calls for help went out from the compound to other local militias, who served as security from time to time. None of them responded, either because they didn’t want to incite a militia turf war, as some claimed, or because Ansar al-Sharia had placed its own calls to other militias, claiming the ongoing riot had started because the Americans had fired on protesters at the gate. Accounts vary. Either way, help was not forthcoming from the militias. However, there was a small, covert CIA compound half a mile away that did respond. The CIA operatives geared up, armed themselves, and were ready to go within five or ten minutes, and then waited another five or ten minutes while their boss was on the phone and radio, trying to determine precisely what kind of situation he was sending his men into. Those minutes must have been agonizing. Finally, they boarded two trucks and headed out the gate of the CIA annex, just twenty or twenty-five minutes after the gate of the State Department facility was first stormed, and eighteen minutes after they’d been notified. Knowing they would be outmanned and outgunned, they stopped several times, either in an attempt to recruit formerly friendly militia members to join them or to avoid those appearing hostile. It took thirty minutes to travel a little more than a mile, and they were unable to enlist any help.

  The handful of CIA officers hit the compound as hard as they could, exchanging gunfire and scattering the looters. They quickly rallied the State Department security officers and began to search for Chris Stevens and Sean Smith, the only two people not accounted for. They found Sean inside the main building, having succumbed to smoke inhalation, but couldn’t locate Chris. After about an hour of searching, they came under gunfire again. Recognizing they could be overwhelmed quickly and that they were unlikely to find Chris alive, the CIA and State Department officers all left to return to the CIA annex. It was then about 11:30, not quite two hours after the incident began. When the Americans left, the looting and vandalism resumed. At some point, a few of the Libyans came across Chris, who had also succumbed to smoke. They rushed him to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

  At around 10:30 Benghazi time, less than an hour after the gate was breached and about when the CIA annex team was reaching the State Department facility, the first word of what was happening in Libya reached Washington, where it was approximately 4:30 in the afternoon. At 5:00 P.M. Washington time, as the CIA team in Benghazi was searching the State Department facility for Chris Stevens and Sean Smith, President Obama met with Leon Panetta, who’d replaced Bob Gates as secretary of defense, and JCS chairman General Marty Dempsey—a meeting that had been previously scheduled. At that point, buildings at the State Department facility were on fire, but t
he gunfire had stopped, and it seemed that the attack was over. The president and his two top DOD leaders discussed options for military intervention if violence resumed or escalated. Back in the Pentagon after the meeting with the president, Leon would order Special Operations teams to stage in Italy and Spain and be ready to go.

  I was at a dinner banquet to receive an award from an industry association when my security detail pulled me aside to take an urgent phone call from Matt Olsen. I knew there had been a series of demonstrations across the Islamic world that day, related to the release on YouTube of an amateurish film that mocked the prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam. With all the terrible content out there on the internet, I will never understand how this particular YouTube video gained so much traction and caused so much unrest. The US embassy in Cairo had been overrun by protesters of the film, who’d hauled down and burned the US flag and vandalized the facility. The CIA had warned the American ambassador in Cairo of the impending protest, and she had evacuated the embassy, so while there had been some damage, no one had been hurt. Thinking the phone call might be related to that incident, I stepped away to take it. Matt told me that a US diplomatic facility in Benghazi had been attacked, and that Chris Stevens was missing. That was all the information he had at the time. I recalled my meeting with Chris just four months earlier, and I wondered what in the world he was doing in Benghazi on the anniversary of 9/11 while anti-American protests were taking place all over the Middle East. Matt said he’d update me if he received more substantial information, but I didn’t hear from him again that night.