13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi

by Mitchell Zuckoff

  As Tig resumed his watch over the northeast area beyond the walls, he spotted two Libyan men walking south toward the Annex down a darkened dirt roadway between the tin-roofed stockyard sheds. He wasn’t sure, but they might have been the shepherds he’d seen earlier. Tig set his laser gunsight to display a visible red beam.

  “If they keep coming, I’m gonna lase them,” Tig told Oz.

  In the dark, the operators couldn’t tell if the men carried weapons, but Tig wouldn’t take any chances. He could still hear chanting from the direction of the Compound, and he couldn’t understand why anyone would approach the Annex on foot after two firefights, unless they intended to start a third.

  Tig took aim and flashed the laser beam on the chest of one man, then moved it to the other. If you keep coming, he thought, I’m pretty much gonna kill you.

  Each man stopped dead in his tracks when he saw a red dot dancing on his chest. Both abruptly turned west and sat down next to a building separated from the Annex by a stand of trees. They never came back, and Tig never learned who they were.

  The sheep in the open pens remained a preoccupation for Oz and Tig. The animals’ heads bobbed up and down, like swimmers in a crowded pool, as they jostled for position. As the operators stared at the sheep’s long faces in the dark, they began to seem almost human. Making matters worse, rams regularly rose up on their hind legs to mount ewes. Each time it happened, Oz and Tig did a double take to be sure it wasn’t a man moving among the sheep toward the wall. Although Tig had retrieved his helmet, his broken night-vision goggles made it particularly hard for him to distinguish between coupling livestock and crouching humans.

  He and Oz called on the radio for stun grenades or flash bangs to toss into the pens. The operators thought the noise would rearrange the animals, allowing them to be sure that attackers weren’t concealed among the livestock. No noisemakers were available, so Tig and Oz considered shining their flashlights, but that would have exposed their position on the tower.

  Finally, Oz had an idea: “Let’s just start killing the sheep.”

  If he and Tig had seen even one man among the animals, they might have done it. But that wasn’t the case, so Oz and Tig put their sheep-slaughter thoughts on hold. Part of their hesitation was the knowledge that they’d spark a bureaucratic nightmare of second-guessing when the animals’ owner demanded restitution and their bosses demanded explanations. Plus, all that sheep shooting would attract more unwanted attention and aggravate their ringing ears. Despite teasing Oz about the gauze bandages he’d used as earplugs, Tig had followed suit.

  They passed the time by joking and talking, telling each other that the United States had gotten its money’s worth for teaching them how to be soldiers. They’d both seen action before, but nothing as extended or intense as this. “Finally,” Tig said with a sardonic laugh, “we get to put our training to use.”

  When Tanto felt certain that the second firefight was over, he returned to his lawn chair and a half-eaten candy bar, washing it down with a gulp of water. We kicked their ass again, he thought. We might get out of this, whether we get help or not. We just need to find a way to exit out of here. But shit, things are going good.

  “Looks like we repelled the attackers,” Tanto told the Team Leader by radio. “There’s nobody out there. They’re gone.” He could have stopped there, but Tanto took pride in his smart-ass reputation. He couldn’t resist needling the T.L. and other base officials about the fact that whoever was watching the video stream from the drone hadn’t warned them about the men approaching on foot before the second attack. “Go ahead and tell the ISR guys the same, since obviously they’re not seeing what’s going on down here.”

  Oz left Tig alone at the tower so he could check the other fighting positions, to see if shooters needed water, ammo, a bathroom break, or anything else. Oz climbed the ladder at Building C and joined Rone at a belt-fed machine gun position at the roof’s northwest corner, while DS agent Dave Ubben stood watch near the northeast corner. The Annex staffer who’d been in Afghanistan climbed down from the roof to collect his personal belongings.

  Rone and Oz stood side by side, scanning Zombieland and the stockyard area for movement. They were silent for long stretches, a product of deep fatigue and not wanting to give away their position. But now and then they spoke in quiet voices. Oz asked Rone how things had gone at the Compound. After walking Oz through the events, Rone told him how proud he was of everyone’s actions.

  “You know,” Rone said, “we’ve got some frigging hellish warriors here. These guys are as good as any I’ve ever worked with.”

  Rone had served tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, and had been honored for valor while among elite Navy SEALs. Hearing that Rone felt so strongly about their Benghazi team filled Oz with pride.

  “I think we’re all glad that we’ve got each other,” Oz said.

  Oz asked Rone how the Team Leader had performed at the Compound. The T.L. hadn’t joined the operators at the Annex fighting positions, but Rone had no problem with that or with the T.L.’s work at the Compound. “He did great,” Rone said. “He let us do our thing while he handled command and control.”

  Rone told Oz how he became lost inside the burning villa, and how Tig had led him to safety. “He saved my life because he came back for me,” Rone said.

  They lapsed into silence and continued to watch beyond the wall, listening for noises and occasionally dropping their night-vision goggles over their eyes for a better look. Rone asked if Oz needed medical care for the cut on his nose, but Oz said he was fine. After another silence, they talked about their wives and children.

  Rone told Oz that he was eager to return home to see his family, especially after having extended this trip in Benghazi. Rone found it amusing that he, Oz, and Tig all had infant children, and that Jack’s wife was pregnant. He talked about how happy he was to be a father, and how much he looked forward to ending his operator career and raising his newborn son, Kai. He joked that they’d all be senior citizens by the time their youngest graduated from high school.

  “I think it’s going to be easier for me, having a son,” Rone kidded Oz. “You’re gonna be old when you’re trying to fight off your daughter’s boyfriends!”

  They stood together as the long night continued, still looking out over Zombieland. The staffer who’d been in Afghanistan returned, but Oz told him that he could go back inside Building C. The rooftop was covered with Rone, Oz, and Dave Ubben.

  Tanto climbed down from Building B and went alone atop Building A, near the front gate, to cover the south wall in case their enemies tried from a new direction. He also wanted to keep watch over the unfinished building across the street that Jack worried might be a sniper roost. No chair awaited him, so Tanto stood or took a knee while fighting exhaustion as the night dragged on.

  An Annex staffer came on the radio and asked if anyone on the roofs needed anything. No one answered, so Tanto called out: “You know what, yeah, I could use some food and some water up on Building A. And if anybody knows of a big-titty, blonde-haired stripper, I could use her up here, too.” He looked over to Building B and saw D.B. shaking his head and smiling.

  Tanto’s supplies arrived in the hands of a male, African-American staffer who was a serious weightlifter with bulging pectoral muscles. “Well,” Tanto said, “you’ve got big titties. You’re not blonde-haired and blue-eyed, but you’ll have to do.” The staffer burst out laughing.

  He kept Tanto company for about fifteen minutes, making whispered conversation to pass the time. With his left eardrum blown and his right ear ringing, Tanto knew he couldn’t trust his hearing. For more than an hour, he’d thought he heard voices coming from a field beyond the south wall. He stared into the brush but couldn’t see anyone there. Tanto asked the staffer to listen. He told Tanto that the field was silent. When the staffer left, Tanto again thought he heard voices.

  As quiet settled over the Annex, Rone called on the radio to ask whether anyone else needed medic
al care. Alone again, Tanto took the opportunity to get treated for his injured left arm from when the wall collapsed outside the Compound. Rone climbed to the roof of Building A, where he cleaned and wrapped Tanto’s arm, then rejoined Oz and Dave Ubben atop Building C.

  A short time later, Tanto looked over the south wall and saw a car with several young men inside pull up to the Annex’s front gate. God, here it comes, Tanto thought. Car bomb. And I’m the closest to it. He made himself as small as he could behind the Building A parapet, keeping his eyes open even as he felt his butt cheeks clench. But as quickly as the driver had turned toward the closed gate, he put the car in reverse and drove away. Tanto exhaled but didn’t relax.

  He puzzled over who the men were and what they were doing there in the early morning hours. Could they have been part of the militia? he wondered. A bunch of college kids? Tanto learned that around the same time, D.B. saw a man walking outside the Annex with a phone. Phones have GPS readings. Was he getting GPS coordinates of our compound? Latitude and longitude coordinates could be used for targeting, but Tanto didn’t want to get caught up in speculation, and he couldn’t do anything about it anyway.

  Soon after, D.B. radioed Tanto to say that he was heading to their room. His black polo shirt was drenched with sweat, so he stripped it off and put on a black button-down. When D.B. returned, Tanto asked if he’d heard any news. “Sounds like the guys from Tripoli, our guys, are on their way,” D.B. said.

  At around 4:00 a.m. Benghazi time on September 12, 2012, or 10:00 p.m. the previous night in Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a statement condemning the attack and confirming Sean Smith’s death, although he wasn’t yet identified publicly. The statement said: “[O]ne of our State Department officers was killed. We are heartbroken by this terrible loss. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and those who have suffered in this attack.”

  Clinton’s brief statement also suggested a possible motive, or at least a tentative explanation: “Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet. The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. But let me be clear: There is never any justification for violent acts of this kind.”

  Later, as controversy erupted over the Obama administration’s actions before, during, and after the attack, critics called Clinton’s statement a smoking gun. They said it marked the start of a politically motivated conspiracy to mislead the public by falsely implying that the attackers were outraged by the Innocence of Muslims video, and that the video had caused Benghazi residents to spontaneously set upon the Compound in protest. The theory behind the Obama critics’ allegation was that, in the midst of a reelection campaign, the president didn’t want to admit that his administration had failed to anticipate or adequately respond to a terrorist attack timed to coincide with the 9/11 anniversary.

  Administration officials rejected those claims as false and politically motivated. They said Clinton’s statement reflected the incomplete understanding they had about the attack as it unfolded. They also said that their top priority through the night wasn’t untangling claims and counterclaims about the attackers’ possible motives, it was finding Chris Stevens and organizing the rescue of Americans under siege. They also pointed out that embassies in Cairo and elsewhere did experience spontaneous attacks sparked by the YouTube clips, and that there continued to be mixed signals about whether the videos played a role in Benghazi, as well. Later reporting by several news organizations, notably The New York Times, suggested that the Innocence of Muslims video fueled the Compound attacks. But that, too, was hotly disputed, as was the Times’s conclusion that al-Qaeda played no direct role in the attack. As one media critic put it, more than a year after the attacks, the events in Benghazi remained shrouded in shades of gray and mired in a “political and ideological maelstrom.”

  Within an hour of Clinton’s statement, the Libyan man sent to the hospital by the US Embassy in Tripoli released American officials from one of their two most pressing tasks. He confirmed that the Arabic caller using Scott Wickland’s cell phone had told the truth. The white man pronounced dead at the Benghazi Medical Center at roughly 2:00 a.m. on September 12, 2012, was indeed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

  The operators’ early speculation that Stevens had been kidnapped was mistaken. He’d been inside the villa since the start of the attack, hidden somewhere deep within the safe haven where the DS agents and operators couldn’t locate him through the fire and smoke. The bloody handprint Rone and Jack saw must have come from someone else, possibly Dave Ubben after he injured his forearm during one of his searches. The discovery of Stevens inside the safe-haven area also made it unlikely that the BlackBerry that Tanto gave to Bob belonged to the ambassador.

  When they learned that Stevens was inside the villa the entire time, the operators doubted Libyan claims that the ambassador had been alive when found, even if only briefly. Considering the smoky inferno they’d experienced during their searches, the lack of any response when they’d repeatedly called Stevens’s name, and how quickly Sean Smith had succumbed, the operators felt certain that Stevens had died of smoke inhalation before they’d left the Compound. None of the video or still images of Stevens that have surfaced since he was found contradict that conclusion.

  At his death, Chris Stevens was a fifty-two-year-old career diplomat who had dedicated his life to improving relations between the United States and the Arab world. President Obama eulogized Stevens as having died “in the city he helped to save.” Obama would tell the United Nations General Assembly: “He acted with humility, but he also stood up for a set of principles—a belief that individuals should be free to determine their own destiny, and live with liberty, dignity, justice, and opportunity.”

  With Stevens confirmed dead, the team of Tripoli operators had no reason to venture into potentially hostile territory around the Benghazi Medical Center. Arrangements would need to be made to retrieve Stevens’s remains, but only if that could be accomplished without putting anyone else in danger. With transportation and a security escort finally arranged by the Libyan government, the seven-member Tripoli squad headed from the airport directly toward the Annex. Roughly five hours had passed since they’d left the embassy.

  When they reached the Annex, one of the Tripoli operators, Glen “Bub” Doherty, might yet have a chance to enjoy an impromptu reunion with his former SEAL friends Jack and Rone, and his newer friend, Tanto.

  Glen was forty-two but looked a decade younger, a divorced, charismatic mix of free spirit and fierce self-discipline, a man who approached hard work and hard partying with equal vigor. A gifted athlete and a voracious reader, Glen was as comfortable among his fellow surf and ski bums as he was alongside elite special operators. In fact, “comfortable” was a word that defined how Glen fit into the world and into his own skin.

  Raised in the affluent Boston suburb of Winchester, Massachusetts, Glen was the middle child of a stockbroker/boxing-enthusiast father and a candy-store-owning mother. He learned to fly at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Arizona, but didn’t stick around long enough to graduate. For several years he bounced around as a ski instructor and white-water rafting guide. Glen was a ripe twenty-four years old when he met a group of Navy SEALs and found his purpose. With Glen as a paramedic and a sniper, his SEAL team responded to the USS Cole attack in Yemen in 2000, among other missions. His plan to leave the service changed with 9/11, after which Glen served two tours during the war in Iraq. His team led some of the first Marine contingents moving north to Baghdad and took control of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces.

  Glen began working as a contract operator after leaving the SEALs in 2005, traveling from his home in California for trips to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and most recently Tripoli, where he’d worked alongside Tanto. In between, he alternated between working out and
drinking beer, kicking back and coauthoring an authoritative book on being a sniper. Along the way he collected an astonishing number of people who considered him their best friend. The nickname “Bub” fit a self-assured man who believed that every job was worth doing right and no party should end the same day it began.

  To Jack, Glen was a natural, good at everything he did, a guy who drew people to him with magnetic warmth and a megawatt smile. Jack knew plenty of former SEALs who were macho and abrasive. Bub was neither. As Jack kept watch atop Building D, he didn’t know if his old SEAL buddy was among the operators en route from the airport. But he hoped so. In a tight spot, Jack could think of few people he’d rather have on his team.

  Regardless of what occurred the night before, whether revolutionary or routine, murderous or mundane, a new day in Benghazi always began the same way. As daylight drew near on September 12, 2012, the muezzins switched on the loudspeakers in the minaret crowns of the city’s mosques and beckoned the faithful to the Fajr prayer. Listening to the amplified chants from atop Building D, Jack grew edgy.

  A casual Roman Catholic, Jack considered himself respectful of all cultures and religions. Everybody has their own idea of who and what God is, he thought. Nobody is right, nobody is wrong. The simple truth is, nobody knows, so you have faith. If you grew up in China, your idea of how things happened and how they are is different than if you grew up in South America or in the Middle East. For someone to say that my religion is the right one and everybody else is wrong or naïve, is completely ignorant.

  But it had been a long night. Jack didn’t feel tolerant toward the people who’d been trying to kill him, and he wasn’t in the mood to hear chanting in Arabic. His muscles ached, his eyes stung, his skin and clothes were caked with sweat and dirt. Two good men were dead, and the ordeal wasn’t over. Certain that their attackers were Islamic radicals, Jack blamed all that he and his fellow Americans had endured on terrorists who tried to mask their hunger for power by claiming to be defenders of their religious beliefs.