The Great War of Our Time: The CIA's Fight Against Terrorism--From Al Qa'ida to ISIS

by Michael Morell

  The second attack of the evening was on the CIA base. This attack occurred just after midnight and within minutes of the CIA team’s arrival back from the TMF. My assessment is that some of those who had conducted the assault on the TMF—the best-armed and most highly motivated of the group—followed the State Department officers back to the Annex after they ran the roadblock. The attackers on the Annex were armed with light weapons and rocket-propelled grenades and CIA and State Department security officers drove them off in what was a short firefight. But, unlike at the TMF, this was a more organized attack with the clear goal of killing Americans.

  Three and a half hours after the start of the assault on the TMF, reinforcements arrived in Benghazi in the form of CIA and military personnel who had managed to charter an aircraft from Tripoli and fly to Benghazi to assist their colleagues. After being delayed at the airport in Benghazi for some time, they arrived at the Annex at five a.m. Some of them took up fighting positions on the roof of the main building on the Agency base. They arrived with virtually no time to spare, as the third attack of the night was about to begin. There is no evidence that the final group of attackers followed our officers from the airport to the Annex, as has been alleged in the press.

  It was at approximately five fifteen a.m. that the third, final, and most sophisticated attack of the night occurred. My subsequent analysis is that after the extremists were driven from the CIA Annex the first time, they regrouped, acquiring even heavier weapons and most likely additional fighters. Most important, they returned with mortars. Five mortar rounds were fired and three made direct hits on the roof of the main building, killing Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods and seriously injuring others.

  Long after the attack, I asked myself, “Why did the attackers use only five mortar rounds?” They had time and space to fire additional rounds as they had driven our security officers from their positions. The logical answer to me is clear—they had only five mortars. If this had been an assault with days, weeks, or months of planning, the terrorists would have been much better armed and they would have brought those weapons to the first assault at the TMF as well as the first assault on the CIA base. And they would have had more than just five mortar rounds for the second assault on the Annex. Libya, after all, is a country awash in weapons, including mortars. Instead all three were opportunistic attacks that escalated in sophistication during the night as the extremists had more time to organize.

  As awful as it was, the events of the evening could have been much worse without the incredible heroism of a handful of CIA officers and military personnel. Had CIA officers not responded to the TMF, there undoubtedly would have been more fatalities there. During the fight at the CIA base, the actions of two Special Forces officers stood out. In Tripoli, when the first attacks began, they responded as you would expect our country’s most elite soldiers to respond. They volunteered to go to Benghazi and stand shoulder to shoulder with our officers in a firefight with terrorists. While they were not technically in the chain of command, their training and experience, their excellent judgment, and their calm demeanor under fire effectively resulted in their taking charge at the Annex. Everyone looked to them for leadership, and they provided it. And they were the ones who recovered the dead and wounded officers from the rooftop immediately after the mortar attack.

  One of our injured officers on the roof where Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods were killed was nearly unconscious and unable to move. Fearing that the mortar fire could resume at any moment, the two Special Forces operatives improvised a maneuver in which one of them strapped the six-foot-three, 240-pound man to the other’s back. In a supreme test of strength, focus, and determination, the soldier bearing our wounded officer scaled a wall at the edge of the roof and then worked his way down a rickety ladder—all under the constant threat of enemy fire. Both Special Forces officers received awards for their bravery and heroic actions in response to the tragedy in Benghazi.

  CHAPTER 10

  Stalking Points

  April 2, 2014, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, US Congress. Open hearing on “The Benghazi Talking Points and Michael J. Morell’s Role in Shaping the Administration’s Narrative.” Selected quotes:

  MR. DEVIN NUNES, CONGRESSMAN FROM CALIFORNIA’S TWENTY-SECOND CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT: Mr. Morell… I read your testimony and you have an excuse for everything, right? For everything.

  MS. MICHELE BACHMANN, CONGRESSWOMAN FROM MINNESOTA’S SIXTH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT: Mr. Morell, they [the White House] didn’t have to change, because you made the changes for them. That is the point. That is why you are in front of this committee today. You made significant substantive changes for the White House.

  MR. LYNN WESTMORELAND, CONGRESSMAN FROM GEORGIA’S THIRD CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT: You know, it just seems—I mean if you look at the whole picture that I think the majority of people look at, when those talking points were edited, they were edited in favor of the administration’s philosophy of how they wanted to be portrayed in Libya, you know.

  MR. PETER KING, CONGRESSMAN FROM NEW YORK’S SECOND CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT: Mr. Morell, there are so many questions from beginning to end on this whole issue of the talking points. And to believe your version would require almost absolute faith in your word.

  * * *

  I had many unforgettable experiences as a result of my time at CIA, and it’s odd that one of them came months after I left the organization. It was April 2014 and I was called to appear in open session before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and testify about Benghazi.

  Appearing before Congress was not a new experience for me. I had done so hundreds of times before—but doing so in public, and on live TV, was new (all but one of my past sessions with Congress had been behind closed doors). But this did not faze me. What did shock me, after standing and swearing an oath to tell the truth, was to hear at that session a handful of members of Congress essentially accuse me of lying. As someone who had always thought of himself as honest to a fault, I was stunned to hear respected political leaders question my integrity. Here is how that came about.

  * * *

  Politics in America should end at the nation’s shores—that is, national security policy should be off-limits for playing politics. Both parties should respect this, as statesmen in both know that making national security policy is difficult enough and should not be made more so by the bare-knuckle brawls of politics and as both know that to be strong in the world the country needs to be united at home—in principle, purpose, and practice. Unfortunately, as our political system has evolved to become more partisan and as almost every issue has become politicized, so has national security and so has the most important issue within that arena—terrorism and our nation’s response to it. Both parties are to blame.

  Benghazi is a poster child for this new dynamic. It is the poster child of the intrusion of politics into national security. It was not the first time, but it was the most significant time that I can remember. This chapter is a detailed look at the politics of the Benghazi issue—from the point of view of someone who found himself in the gunsights of one of the two sides in the debate. I believe Benghazi is an example of what is wrong with American politics—politicians focused on scoring political points rather than working together to advance the interests of our country. I took the time in this book to go through this event largely because I hope it becomes a shining example of how not to respond to a national security crisis.

  I should mention to readers that most of the rest of this chapter is detailed—in fact, very detailed. If you are an “inside the Beltway” kind of person and want to know all the facts, read on. Otherwise, jump to the end of this chapter, where I draw some broader lessons that I believe our nation should learn from the Benghazi tragedy.

  * * *

  While those on the ground in Benghazi during that fateful night did what they do so well—carrying out their mission, protecting each other, watching each other’s backs—the political wheels
in Washington started to turn. Benghazi emerged as a major issue in the 2012 presidential campaign, and will probably remain an issue until the 2016 presidential campaign is completed. The essential question in the 2012 debate was whether the Obama administration had deliberately downplayed the terrorism aspect of the attack to keep intact its campaign claim that Obama had made great progress in the war against al Qa‘ida. And an essential question in the 2016 debate will undoubtedly be what responsibility Secretary Clinton should shoulder for what happened that night in Benghazi.

  In pursuing the first question, a few in the media and a small group of politicians have mounted an assault on me personally. Their narrative is that I “cooked the books” regarding how CIA thought and wrote about the tragedy in Benghazi—particularly with reference to the now-famous talking points that CIA produced at the request of the House Intelligence Committee—and that I did so in conspiracy with senior White House and State Department officials or that I did so on my own with politics in mind. It has been alleged that I did all this with the intent of assisting in President Obama’s reelection in 2012 and protecting Secretary Clinton. It has also been alleged that I lied about all of this to Congress in order to cover up what I had done.

  I thought I had put this narrative to bed before I left government. I testified before Congress three times in closed session—twice before the House Intelligence Committee and once before the Senate Intelligence Committee—and, at the request of the White House, I briefed the media in detail on the unclassified talking points after the White House decided to publicly release internal government e-mails related to the talking points in the spring of 2014.

  The issue reemerged in early 2014 after the Senate Intelligence Committee publicly released a report on Benghazi. One media outlet used one reference in the bipartisan portion of the report to argue that I’d known the talking points were wrong when I edited them (the bipartisan Senate report did not say this) and a second reference in the Republicans’ “Additional Views” section of the report to argue that I’d lied to the committee when I answered a specific question about the talking points (the Senate report did not say this). Interestingly, very few news outlets picked up on the story. In fact, beyond the lead reporter working on the story, no other reporter even called me to ask about the allegations.

  But then a handful of senators joined the scrum, with Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina calling me a liar and Senator John McCain of Arizona questioning why I would violate my oath of office. These public comments got my attention, as I have always respected both senators’ care for and attention to the national security of the United States—and as there was not a single shred of evidence for the allegations being made against me.

  And then the big blow. Two of the senators whom I respected the most spoke out against me. Both Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, a leading member of the committee, publicly questioned my integrity. Senator Chambliss said, “It is really strange. I always thought Mike was a straight up guy.”

  The allegations made by all of these senators were serious ones. The fundamental tenet of an intelligence officer is to call it like you see it—no matter what your audience wants to hear, no matter the implications for policy, no matter the impact on politics, and no matter what the implications for yourself. Intelligence officers must be totally nonpartisan and objective. I was being accused of violating that fundamental tenet. I was also being accused of lying to Congress—a serious accusation against anyone in the executive branch, because misleading Congress undermines the central pillar of our constitutional democracy—Congress’s role in overseeing executive branch activities.

  In response to these allegations, I sat down to write my side of the story. I wrote it as a letter to my children—to explain why what they were hearing in the media and from a handful of senators about me was not true. I wanted them to know the truth. And that is what I am going to do in this chapter. In fact, this chapter began as that letter to my children. Some will not like what they read here, but I am only doing what I was trained to do—put the facts and analysis on the table and let the chips fall where they may.

  As I was finishing the letter to my children in late February, I met with Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Rogers and I had seen each other one recent Sunday on the set of CBS’s Face the Nation and decided to get together and catch up.

  Rogers is smart, tough, and interested in doing what is right for national security—an interest that was drilled into him when he served our country in a different way, as an FBI agent. His retirement from Congress was a loss for the country, and it speaks volumes about the dysfunction on Capitol Hill when Congress loses it best people.

  I asked Chairman Rogers what he thought I should do about the small but vocal chorus about Benghazi and me. “What would you do if I asked you to testify again?” he asked. I responded immediately, “If you want me to testify in the open, before the American public, I would jump at the opportunity.” He said, “I will get back to you,” and two days later we agreed that I would testify on April 2, 2014.

  It was not lost on me that I was doing the chairman a favor by testifying (even though he never asked me for the favor). I knew from friends on the Hill that Rogers had been under pressure for months from his leadership to be “tougher on Benghazi.” But Rogers was trying to stick to the facts. He even told me, “Michael, I have looked at Benghazi from every possible angle, looking for something, anything that would demonstrate political influence on the intelligence process, but it’s just not there.” Still, bringing me before his committee to testify in open session would certainly help the chairman with certain members of his caucus.

  During my testimony I explained in detail the views of CIA’s analysts about what had happened in Benghazi and how those views had evolved, I explained in detail the process by which the talking points had been produced, including my own role, and I took on directly the allegations that had been made against me. The session lasted for three and a half hours, with many questions being asked, some multiple times. The hearing got testy at times—perhaps in part because Speaker of the House John Boehner before the hearing had told one of the members of the committee to, in short, “Go after Morell”—but when the dust settled there was not a shred of evidence that politics, in any way, had influenced the production of CIA’s classified analysis or the unclassified talking points. Not a shred. No such evidence exists because it simply never happened.

  * * *

  Those arguing against me believed that by saying there had been a protest, CIA and I—in conspiracy with the White House—were trying to hide the hand of al Qa‘ida in the attack and thereby protect President Obama’s campaign theme that he was tough on terrorism. Here is what actually happened.

  The initial intelligence reporting on what had transpired in Benghazi was understandably limited. The analysts’ job was to tell the president and his national security team what they thought based on the information they had at that moment. Intelligence analysts do not have the luxury of waiting for all-knowing clarity. That is just not how the process works.

  While I was flying home from Amman (I was on a trip to see our partners in the Middle East and not involved in any way with the initial production of the Benghazi analysis), the analysts were completing their first full report on what had happened, a piece that would be published and shown to senior policy-makers and to Congress on the morning of September 13.

  A short item was published in the early-morning hours of September 12, but it was largely a summary of the few facts we had in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. That update contained a crucial error that would come back to haunt us. In a single sentence, the September 12 item characterized the attack as an organized military assault. When this characterization was not included in the piece the next day (the thirteenth), many critics saw the change as evidence that
the intelligence community was politicizing the analysis. Nothing could be further from the truth.

  The real story behind the September 12 report involves nothing nearly as nefarious as changing analysis for political purposes. What really happened is that the critical sentence was not written by the analysts. It was added after the analysts had finished their work and gone home for the night. It was written by a senior CIA editor with expertise in military matters but no expertise in Libya or what had just happened in Benghazi. This editor added the sentence because she thought the early-morning update on the twelfth needed a bottom line. She never showed the sentence to the analysts; had she done so, they would have removed it. When the analysts came in the next morning, they complained vehemently about the edit. This is how a simple bureaucratic screw-up became fodder for allegations of a political cover-up.

  The September 13 piece—the first piece to go beyond a simple factual update—said four things. First, that the assault on the TMF had been a spontaneous event that evolved from a protest outside the TMF. Second, that the protest and subsequent attack had been motivated by what had happened in Cairo earlier in the day (there was no mention in the piece of the YouTube video defaming the Prophet Muhammad). Third, that there was evidence of extremist involvement in the attack, and by “extremists” the analysts absolutely meant terrorist involvement, because extremist and terrorist are synonyms to terrorism analysts. Indeed, the piece reported that people with ties to al Qa‘ida had been involved in the attack. The bottom line here is important: the analysts thought Benghazi was terrorism from the beginning. And whether or not the assault evolved from a protest, it was still very much a terrorist attack. Fourth and finally, the September 13 piece said that there was no evidence of significant planning on the part of those responsible—not days, weeks, or months ahead of time. Hours perhaps—but no longer than that.