CHAPTER 7

Benghazi, Libya: SEALs Alone

Benghazi is a city of high walls and narrow streets perched on Libya’s Mediterranean coast.

Once the capital of Libya, where Arabs gathered to trade fish and gossip on its shores while sheikhs and captains plotted intrigue on its leafy terraces, whatever charm the city once had was stolen away by World War II, when the Allies and General Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps fought over the coast roads that were the city’s lifeline. After the war came waves of migrants from Libya’s hot, poor interior. By the time Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s bloody coup succeeded in 1969—driving out a pro-American king—the city was a crowded slum, and all economic and political power had shifted to its longtime rival city, Tripoli.

Benghazi briefly reverted to relevance when it became the center of the anti-Gadhafi rebellion in 2010. The tribes that called Benghazi home never liked Gadhafi. With the help of U.S. air power overhead and special forces on the ground, the Arab world’s longest-serving dictator was driven from power and ultimately killed in October 2011.

The new Libyan government, the Transitional National Council, was temporarily based in Benghazi, but it had little control over the city or the country.¹ The police had shed their uniforms and were hiding in the homes, fearing retribution. A welter of competing militias had taken control of the streets, often setting up roadblocks to demand “taxes.” Criminal mafias moved in, and radical Islamic militants soon followed. As night fell and the call to prayer drifted away, gunshots echoed.

This was the cauldron of chaos that the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, called home in April 2011. He helped coordinate with Libyan officials during their long fight with Gadhafi’s forces in the spring and summer of 2011. While the security situation remorselessly worsened over the next twelve months, senior officials in the State Department’s Washington headquarters kept reducing Stevens’s security detail. They did this for budgetary reasons (the Benghazi station was temporary and therefore bureaucratically difficult to assign security personnel and equipment to) and for political reasons (the State Department wanted to present the Libyan war as “won” and downplay any risks that might smudge the banner of victory). This proved to be a miscalculation.

While the war against Gadhafi was over and Libyans overall remained very pro-American (in polls, Libyans had a higher opinion of Americans than citizens of any other Arab country), the war weakened the central government and invited opportunistic interlopers, including al Qaeda.

* * *

Stevens, a debonair Arabic-speaking career foreign-service officer, put up a brave front.² He kept extending his stay throughout 2011 and 2012, knowing that few would volunteer to take his place.³

He set up temporary headquarters in April 2011 at the Tibesti Hotel, which the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel describes as “a monstrous concrete tower on the shore road” that is home to representatives from nine European countries, with the European Union renting an entire wing.⁴ The guest list made the hotel an obvious target for terrorists.

Stevens was still registered at the Tibesti Hotel on June 1, 2011, when a car bomb exploded and rocked the hotel.⁵ Stevens was unharmed. But the bombing vividly showed that even interlocking sets of security agents couldn’t safeguard foreign diplomats in the rebel capital from terror attacks.

The attacks would continue to escalate over the next fourteen months, while Washington repeatedly reduced security forces in Benghazi because, officials told us, they “thought the war was over.” In fact, a new war on America and her allies was just beginning.

* * *

Stevens tried appealing directly to Washington-based policy makers at his only in-person appearance at the State Department press briefing on August 3, 2011. He was emphatic about the rising dangers in Benghazi: “There was a security vacuum when the regime fell, and they [the rebels] had to stand up very quickly to this organization called the TNC [Transitional National Council]. The police, for the most part, just left their posts because they were afraid of popular reaction against them because they had committed abuses in the early days against the people. So there’s hardly any police around, and because of that vacuum, militias started to form and step in. And so looking after the security of Benghazi and eastern Libya, you’ve got a lot of militias and a few police. And this had led to some security challenges that you’ve already read about and know about.”⁶

Later that month, American diplomats moved into a walled compound. The compound was surrounded by concrete-block walls and set back almost three hundred yards from the main road. “We need that much room to provide the best possible setback against car bombs,” Stevens said.

By December 2011, the perimeter wall was raised to nine feet and topped by three feet of concertina wire. Large lights were hung to flood the street with bright light. Jersey barriers, long concrete blocks reimbursed with rebar, were positioned outside and inside the main gate to slow vehicular traffic into the compound and deter car bombs.⁷ Yet all of these security measures are backward looking—they are designed to stop the car bombs that bedeviled diplomats at the Tibesti Hotel. They weren’t designed to defeat new types of attacks, such as an armed invasion.

No one, in Washington at least, worried about the growing threat of an armed assault on the tiny piece of American real estate in Benghazi. After all, the war was over.

* * *

In addition, throughout 2011, angry demonstrations become a daily occurrence. Fifteen commanders of the Protective Security Brigade protested in front of the Transitional National Council headquarters, saying they weren’t getting proper gear, and the menace of the militias made their jobs impossible.⁸ Several hundred other protesters demanded the removal of “climbers,” survivors from the Gadhafi era who were still working for the Libyan government.⁹

Belatedly, the State Department hired Blue Mountain Libya, a British security outfit, to guard the American compound in Benghazi. The firm used its $783,284 contract to hire twenty Libyans to act as guards.

Embassy staff flagged problems with the Blue Mountain Libya guards almost immediately. Eric Nordstrom, former regional security officer for the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, told congressional investigators: “It’s my understanding that there was a very high turnover with those people.” This is diplomatic understatement. Some guards lasted only a few weeks.

Two former Blue Mountain employees told Reuters they had “minimal training,” and they described “being hired by Blue Mountain after a casual recruiting and screening process.”¹⁰

Then the kidnappings began. An American running a nonprofit humanitarian group in Libya was attending a friend’s bachelor’s party when armed men stormed into the room on December 1, 2011. They called themselves the Zintan Martyrs Brigade. They claimed the power to arrest the revelers and held everyone for thirty-six hours. Finally, after a botched attempt to secure ransoms from family members of the Libyans present, the police arrived. The Martyrs Brigade agreed to turn over their captives in exchange for the police investigating the “crimes” of those that they held. The police soon released everyone due to “lack of evidence.”¹¹

This may have been a test run for a larger attack. The Brigade was learning just how quickly authorities would respond and what arms they would bring to the fight. The seizure of the American embassy in Tehran in 1979 was preceded by months of minor attacks as a way to test America’s resolve and to devise countermeasures to local police and American firepower.

In another parallel with Iran in 1979, demonstrations increased. Three thousand young people protested in Benghazi’s Shajarah Square on December 12 and 13. The activists were angry that opening a business still required bribes and that large numbers of former Gadhafi-era officials were still on the government payroll. Members of the Committee of Wise Men, a pro-TNC group, joined a second demonstration on the second night.¹² The demonstrators eventually went home. But it was clear that the public was splintering into factions, undermining the unity that would be needed to keep extremists at bay.

Behind the scenes, darker forces were relaxing for a fight.

In a surprise raid, Libyan police and military seized 150 rocket launchers and arrested scores of suspects in a warehouse hideout. A government spokesman said that the group claimed loyalty to the deposed Libyan dictator and were plotting to attack embassies and oil fields over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. The operation, according to the government, was code-named Papa Noel¹³—a reference to Santa Claus. They wanted to drive all Westerners from Libya and rule it as an Islamic dictatorship.

* * *

By January 2012, militant radicals were operating freely in the city. One extreme group invaded the Sufi cemetery of Sidi Ubaid in Benghazi. The group considers Sufi Muslims to be heretics. They dug up some thirty-one corpses and carried away the bodies.¹⁴

The new year, 2012, brought more brazen assaults. Azza Ali Orfi, a political activist, was attacked and beaten by two men in broad daylight as she left the Al-Fadhel Hotel in Benghazi on January 12, 2012.¹⁵ The hotel was considered a safe place for Westerners to meet with Libyan activists. She was pro-democracy and pro-American, making her a double enemy to Islamic extremists.

The following week, protesters assaulted Transitional National Council vice chairman Abdul-Hafiz Ghoga after he attended a memorial service at Garyounis University for victims of the Libyan civil war. Ghoga subsequently resigned from the transitional government, saying he did not want to contribute to an “atmosphere of hatred” surrounding the government.¹⁶ In reality, he feared for his life.

The Libyan government was coming dangerously close to losing Benghazi to the forces of anarchy.

* * *

Lt. Col. Andrew Wood arrived in Benghazi in February 2012. His account was sobering and clear-eyed. “Shooting instances occurred; [and] many instances involved the local security guard force we were training,” he later told CBS News. “Constantly, there were battles going on between militias, criminal activity, and that became [an] increasing danger as time went on as well.”

Wood said that Ambassador Stevens “was constantly concerned about the threats to not just himself but the entire staff there.”¹⁷

No additional security measures were announced.

* * *

American diplomats were driving in marked vehicles from Benghazi’s Benina Airport in April 2012, when a militia group blocked their way. As they pulled off the road, armed men surrounded the car. One asked for identification, but it seemed clear he wasn’t part of the rebel police force. Perhaps he wanted a bribe or hostages. After a few tense minutes, the Americans were allowed to drive on.

Soon diplomats were running a dangerous gauntlet of militia checkpoints. One diplomat compared it to toll-booth stops on I-95, except, he said, people don’t shoot you at toll booths in America. One diplomat later reported there were now twelve checkpoints between the airport and the embassy, with militia members aggressively trying to open doors and check contents of diplomatic vehicles.¹⁸

By appearance alone, there was no way to know if militias were friendly or hostile to Americans. Diplomats wondered: Who was running Benghazi anyway? The men moving paper in downtown offices or the armed ones commandeering the streets as private fiefdoms?

Despite this and other reports, the number of security personnel assigned to the diplomatic facility in Benghazi continued to plunge. By April 2012, the number of American diplomatic security agents in Benghazi fell to one person.

The State Department cited “visa problems” for security personnel but the Libyan government continued to insist that it would supply visas for any security personnel that the U.S. government required. Instead, it appears that the State Department simply did not forward the paperwork to their Libyan counterparts in time.

(Eventually, the “visa problems” were resolved. At the time of the attack on September 11, 2012, there were five diplomatic security officers—three at the compound and two accompanying Ambassador Stevens.)¹⁹

* * *

Explosions rocked the U.S. compound on March 8, 2012. The bombs detonated less than 400 meters (437 yards) from the diplomatic compound. There were no injuries or damage reported at the ambassador’s complex.²⁰ But it was a warning sign.

Meanwhile, demonstrations and armed attacks continued to roil Benghazi.

Pro-federalism demonstrators marched in Benghazi on March 16, 2012, demanding that Benghazi and Tripoli be declared Libya’s co-capitals and that seats in the Libyan parliament be evenly divided among all regions of the country.²¹

Two days later, six gun-wielding thugs wearing ski masks and military fatigues broke into the British School in Benghazi, terrifying teachers and stealing handbags, wallets, watches, and cars.²²

On March 22, 2012 at 2:27 a.m., seven militia members arrived at the main gate of the U.S. diplomatic compound. They kicked the gate and demanded to be let inside. The local guard fled, but set off a silent internal security alarm that alerted security personnel and members of the 17 February Martyrs Brigade, a friendly, pro-democracy militia. They came quickly. The militia was part of the El Awfea Brigade of the Libyan Ministry of Defense; the militia members said they were investigating a fire. No one bought their story. The El Awfea Brigade left without incident.²³ It was another sign that local security guards could not protect the Americans inside their Benghazi outpost, and that the goodwill of friendly militias was vital. Meanwhile, the number of new “police forces” continued to multiply.

Shortly thereafter, on March 28, 2012, Eric Nordstrom cabled the State Department in Washington to request five Diplomatic Security Service agents for Benghazi on forty-five-to sixty-day rotations, as well as four drivers. They would be slow in coming, and the original contingent would be gone before the attacks on September 11, 2012.

Nordstrom’s cable said there was a problem with the Libyan government, which would issue gun permits only for periods no longer than seventy-two hours.²⁴ The Libyans deny that the regulation was applied to U.S. personnel. The CIA, and its contractors, certainly didn’t have any trouble with Libyan gun permits, one Libyan official told us. Nor were most Libyans bothered by any kind of gun restrictions. More likely, said one American official familiar with embassy security in Libya, Nordstrom was complaining about the State Department’s interpretation of an old, Gadhafi-era restriction on gun possession.

As if to underscore the need for additional security, a British diplomatic armored vehicle was attacked a few days later. Some 150 members of the Traffic Police Force, or Murur, opened fire on local militia members.

Caught in the crossfire, a British vehicle was shot up, as each side believed the vehicle belonged to the other side. A third security force called (variously) Al-Nayda or Al-Shorta swept in and broke up the fighting, allowing the diplomatic convoy to proceed.²⁵ If not for this timely rescue, the British diplomats would likely have been killed.

Next, the American diplomatic compound was bombed on April 6, 2012. A homemade bomb was launched over the concrete wall of the embassy compound. The bomb type, known to Libyan intelligence officials as a “fish bomb” or “gelateena,” exploded in an empty parking area. No one was harmed. But the bombing showed that the American outpost could be attacked without any fear of consequences.

Libyan investigators traced the bomb to two men. Ominously, one was a current security guard at the U.S. complex and the other was a former security guard. Both were Blue Mountain Libya employees—the very firm hired to protect the American officials.

The former guard had been fired for “gross misconduct,” including covering the inner walls of the compound with anti-American graffiti.²⁶ Could the other Blue Mountain Libya guards be trusted? As doubts deepened about the security firm, no one in Washington moved to replace the firm with American forces or, even, another security firm. It was as if the State Department was on autopilot.

* * *

Another “fish bomb” was thrown at a U.N. convoy carrying the U.N. special envoy to Libya on April 10, 2012. The bomb exploded twelve feet from the convoy.²⁷ Again, no injuries. But the attackers were getting bolder.

The cemetery attackers moved to Western targets later in April 2012. The Commonwealth Graves cemetery holds the bodies of British, South African, Australian, and other British Commonwealth soldiers killed in Libya during World War II. They died to keep Libya free from the Nazis. Over two hundred tombstones in this cemetery were desecrated.²⁸ It was seen as another message to the British delegation: leave Libya now.

* * *

Security guards at the International Medical University shoved and punched guards protecting a U.S. trade delegation visiting Benghazi on April 26, 2012. The fistfight lasted only a few minutes. A senior U.S. diplomat, accompanying the trade delegation, realized that anti-American sentiment was worsening.

Terrorist attacks on the Libyan government were increasing, too. Three bombs exploded at the main Benghazi courthouse on April 27.²⁹ If the new government couldn’t protect itself, how could it safeguard American diplomats?

That same day, a militia kidnapped two white South Africans working for the United States in Benghazi as part of an American-funded effort to secure weapons and dismantle land mines. The hostages insisted for hours that they were not Americans. When they proved that they were South Africans, they were released.³⁰ It was yet another clue that anti-American forces operating freely in Benghazi were looking to kill or capture Americans.

Terror attacks continued against Libyan government officials in Benghazi. A hand grenade exploded in the Libyan Military Police headquarters in Benghazi on May 15, 2012.³¹ That same day, the director of the Benghazi Medical Center, the city’s most prestigious hospital, Dr. Fathi Al-Jhani was shot in the chest as he was leaving work. He survived, largely because he was attacked only steps from his own facility’s emergency room.³² He may have been targeted because he had met briefly with American officials in the hopes of getting new equipment for his hospital. Even casual encounters with Americans were enough for jihadis to target someone.

Other government officials were luckier. Two Benghazi-based members of the Transitional National Council, Khaled Saleh and Fathi Al Baaja, dodged bullets at Benghazi Airport on May 17. Neither man was hurt.³³

But the pattern was clear: both the American officials and the Libyan government officials that they supported were now in the crosshairs of terrorists.

Terror strikes designed to drive Westerners out of Benghazi soon became even bolder. Two rocket-propelled grenades were fired at the headquarters of the International Committee for the Red Cross/Red Crescent on May 22, 2012. One hit a shipping container and the second missed entirely. The Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman Brigades claimed responsibility, saying the Red Cross/Red Crescent was allegedly converting Libyan ethnic minorities to Christianity.³⁴ The name of this heretofore-unknown group (the Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman Brigades) is telling. It is named after the blind Egyptian cleric, who is now held in a New York prison for plots to bomb in the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels leading in to Manhattan as well as plans to murder civilians at a number of New York landmarks. Freeing the blind cleric had been a goal of radical Islamists since the mid-1990s.

The Red Cross/Red Crescent, a humanitarian group, was named as an official enemy of al Qaeda in Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri’s autobiography Knights under the Prophet’s Banner. Zawahiri became al Qaeda’s global leader immediately after the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011. The Red Cross responded by withdrawing all personnel from Libya. While the Red Cross attack may or may not have been the work of an al Qaeda cell, it was a complete victory for the terrorists.

* * *

The U.S. Mission in Benghazi was bombed a second time on June 6, 2012. Local guards said they saw a man wearing “Islamic” clothes place a suspicious package three feet from the mission’s front entrance, then they saw him run away in a flurry of long robes. The package exploded six minutes later, blowing a large forty-foot hole in the mission’s front wall. No one was injured.³⁵

The Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman Brigades subsequently claimed responsibility, the same group that claimed responsibility for the Red Cross attack.³⁶ This group seemed to be testing the resolve of Western interests to respond and seemed emboldened when no armed response was forthcoming. Unfortunately, they were learning a lot about Ambassador Stevens’s defenses.

* * *

Over the next two days, militants held an open-air conference at Liberation Square in Benghazi. Some fifteen militias, or “kalibas,” attended the conference, which, according to a report from the U.S. Library of Congress’s research branch, “probably make up the bulk of al-Qaeda’s support in Libya.” Al Qaeda held an open conference in Benghazi, and no one dared to stop them.

According to the Arabic-language newspaper Libya al-Youm, the conference was sponsored by the al Qaeda affiliate group Ansar al-Sharia and included the Free Libya Martyrs, the Abu Salim Martyrs, and the Revolutionaries of Sirt.³⁷ A report from another Arabic-language paper said its reporter on the scene “witnessed gunmen out riding scores of cars and military vehicles, demanding the implementation of the rules of Islamic Sharia and raising black and white flags with ‘There is no deity but God and Muhammad is the messenger of God’ on them.” These are the flags of al Qaeda. The meeting “was a message to the many intelligence apparatuses which had entered into Libya, including Syrian, Iranian, and Israeli and American, were attempting to sabotage, peddle drugs, and spread false beliefs in the country.”³⁸

NPR reporter Steve Inskeep saw some of the demonstrators at this meeting, and one said his goal was “to kill the infidels,” or kofar.³⁹

Ansar al-Sharia commander Mohammed Ali el-Zahawi told the Washington Post that while his organization disapproved of attacking embassies, “if it had been our attack on the U.S. Consulate [sic], we would have flattened it.”⁴⁰ He was talking about the May 2012 bombing of the U.S. diplomatic compound—not the massive attack that burned the U.S. facility on September 11, 2012. That larger attack had not yet occurred. Yet the State Department never mentioned this terrorist conference to the press or the public.

Given the wide variety of Arabic and American press reports, it is hard to believe that State Department senior officials were unaware that al Qaeda affiliates had just held a massive rally less than a ten-minute drive from the U.S. compound.

The day after the terrorist conference, Islamic militants fired a rocket-propelled grenade at an armed convoy carrying British Ambassador Sir Dominic Asquith. Two security officers were wounded, but the ambassador somehow survived. Reporters saw a white diplomatic car with its windshield destroyed and blood on the car’s front seat.⁴¹ The driver was gravely wounded.

The British retreated from Benghazi.⁴² All employees of the British government were evacuated from Libya within days. A lifetime ago, the British ruled one-third of the globe. In 2012, a single rocket attack sent them home.

With the British diplomatic presence gone, the stars and stripes became the last Western flag to wave over Benghazi. Still, America announced no new security measures. America was alone and wasn’t adding guards. In fact, the security had been reduced and was never replenished as repeatedly requested by Ambassador Stevens. The perfect storm was brewing, and no one was doing anything to prepare for it.

* * *

Violent attacks continued to plague Benghazi. The Tunisian consulate in Benghazi was stormed by twenty young men on June 17, 2012. The invaders burned the Tunisian flag inside the building. The men claimed that the consulate was displaying anti-Islamic art.⁴³ Islamic radicals, including those in al Qaeda, believe that any images of any living things defy the laws of Islam. Thus, even pious portraits of the prophet Mohammed are forbidden, as are television broadcasts and movie screenings. Of course, this doesn’t stop al Qaeda from releasing videos on al Jazeera. To veteran State Department officials, the Tunisian consulate attack showed that the militants feared no one, that they could attack even Arab governments with impunity.

That same month, another Libyan government official was gunned down in Benghazi. Juma Obaidi al-Jazawi, a military prosecutor who ordered the arrest of former Libyan rebel commander Abdul Fatah Younes for human-rights abuses, was killed as he left his mosque.⁴⁴ Once again, the Libyan government couldn’t protect their own officials.

Alarmed by the rising violence, even U.S. government contractors began warning their paymasters in Washington. Reports began to flood in about dangerous developments in Benghazi. The Navanti Group, a U.S. military contractor firm, concluded: “Benghazi has seen a notable increase in violence in recent months, particularly against international targets. These events point to strong anti-Western sentiments among certain segments of the population, the willingness of Salafi-jihadi groups in the city to openly engage in violence against foreign targets, and their capacity to carry out these attacks.”⁴⁵

None of these developments seemed to shift the State Department’s view on increasing security in Benghazi. They didn’t want to send more guards to a country that was supposed to be a diplomatic triumph of democracy and peace. The complicated reality—that the new democratic government was pro-American and committed to making Libya a “normal country” but that its new institutions were too weak to counter the waves of radical Islamists crossing the border from neighboring Egypt—was seen as too hard to sell in an election year.

* * *

Meanwhile, attacks on the Libyan government in Benghazi escalated in July. A mob of some two hundred people sacked the offices of the High National Electoral Commission, burning election records and demanding more local control.⁴⁶

Even State Department officials were sounding the warning bell by July 2012. A July 9, 2012, cable written by Eric Nordstrom concluded: “Overall security conditions continue to be unpredictable, with large numbers of armed groups and individuals not under the control of the central government, and frequent clashes in Tripoli and other major population centers.” The Government of Libya “remains extremely limited in its ability to sustain a security support presence at USG [U.S. government] compounds.”⁴⁷ In short, any hope of the Libyan government protecting U.S. diplomats in Benghazi was unrealistic.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others on the seventh floor of the State Department, where policy is set, failed to divert from their course. Their position was immovable. The war was won, and more security was an unneeded expense.

* * *

At the same time, the U.S. military was paying close attention to events unfolding in Benghazi.

Gen. Carter Ham, head of Africa Command or AFRICom, read cables from Nordstrom, Ambassador Stevens, and others, urgently begging for more security.

General Ham phoned Stevens on August 16, 2012, and asked if he needed any more security. Stevens said he did not. In a meeting sometime later, Stevens again said that he did not need additional security.

Why would Stevens refuse offers of more security when all of his cables and communications pleaded for more security? A McClatchy Newspapers reporter attempted to decode the bureaucratic struggle inside the State Department: “One person familiar with the events,” wrote Nancy Youssef, said Stevens might have rejected the offers because there was an understanding within the State Department that officials in Libya ought not to request more security, in part because of concerns about the political fallout of seeking a larger military presence in a country that was still being touted as a foreign policy success.”⁴⁸

In short, Stevens did not want to swim “outside his lane” and alienate his superiors at the State Department, even to get the additional security he desperately needed. He was a career foreign service officer, and he knew how the game was played—even if he didn’t like the rules.

Meanwhile, the little security that Stevens had was being taken away. The contract between the 17 February Brigade, a local militia that guarded the outside of the U.S. diplomatic outpost, expired on August 29, 2012.

The State Department did not renew it, citing budget concerns. A memo from “the principal U.S. diplomatic officer in Benghazi,” whose name was redacted from congressional reports, said the contract had expired “several weeks ago” and that the brigade “has been implicated in several of the recent detentions. We also have the usual concerns re their ultimate loyalties. But they are competent, and give us an added measure of security.”⁴⁹

Since the contract had expired, the brigade said it would not provide security for U.S. personnel, including Ambassador Stevens.⁵⁰ The U.S. diplomats lost more security just days before the anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

The perfect storm was gathering on the horizon.