Home life was also hectic. I hadn’t noticed but it was brought to my attention that I seemed distant to my family. When I was back in the UK I would engage with family life but I did take time away, mainly to go the pub; not big social sessions, just a quiet boozer to read a broadsheet for a few hours in peace. In the back of my mind I was angry, and the bitterness was growing about the state of my upper arm. I had tried some rehabilitation on my own but since the arm wouldn’t extend fully, I had muscle wastage in the top part, bicep and triceps. What made it worse was the guilt I felt about it. I would replay certain events from Afghanistan over and over again in my mind. It may sound unusual to some, but part of me thought I’d have been better off more seriously injured. Maybe I would have been treated better. I had been blown up three times, and lost count of all the other close calls with bullets and the like.
Yet what ate away at me was could I have done more to help those who didn’t make it or those who were more severely injured than I was? I felt a sense of shame of where I was at. I really didn’t know what was going on or how to deal with it. I didn’t even know where to start in tackling the issue. The solution I came up with, like many men, was to go on the piss and bury it under the mantra, ‘Man the fuck up.’ The seeds of destruction had been well and truly sown. I thought that throwing myself into more work would be the answer, that the issue was only that I had time to think. It would pass. The anger didn’t, so I contacted a few solicitors to sound out a case against the MOD for medical negligence and failure of duty of care. I instructed one solicitor to start putting a case together. I thought to myself, if nobody wants to help me I’ll do it myself. I stood up and was counted on many occasions; I’m not having these bastards get away with it.
A work colleague from Libya called. Was I interested in assisting a media team covertly entering Syria? I said I’d speak to him face to face. I gave an initial yes, but I did have reservations about Syria. I was well up to speed on it from colleagues and journalists that I had contact with. I also went through a lot of reports on it. I knew work may head in that direction so best to be up to speed. My associate and I met up. I received a comprehensive breakdown of the task. I said yes. There’d be two security advisors with medical training assigned to a two-man media team: a cameraman and a reporter. We would be entering Syria from the Lebanese side of the region. Jesus, I thought, they’ll love an Irishman in Beirut. The flights were confirmed. Fly from Heathrow into Beirut. The main issue with Beirut is that it’s a hotbed for foreign intelligence services and has very impressive electronic warfare capabilities, so there’s all the other intel stations working there. No phone. Best option, little or no emails. Keep as low a profile as possible. We stayed close to the hotel, only venturing out to recce certain routes and so on. We were waiting for the fixer, that is, the person who is a go-between with local services and so forth. They usually know most of the dodgy and the non-dodgy people, and speak Arabic and English as well as the local dialect. The other advisor had been in a few times and had a stake in the company I was working for. He and the fixer did a lot of the reconnaissance and organizing. I did med training, sorting kit, maps and so on.
When we finally got the go-ahead and the smugglers were in place I would be travelling north to Tripoli and then on to the north-east to the Lebanese village of al-Qasr. From there, it would be across the mountains on foot, into Homs province in Syria and make our way through the smuggling chain into the town of al-Qasr several kilometres inside the border.
All along the Lebanese border is a military zone and only locals and military get past the checkpoints. No foreign nationals are allowed inside this area. There are military checkpoints on all the mountainous roads. We would be stopping and walking up into the hills to wait to meet with a middleman, who would then take us to a safe house and then another would take us to the border to be passed on to the next link in the chain. There were a lot of unknowns. High risk wasn’t close to it, especially with the fact that Westerners were a commodity in a place ravaged by war and the capture of us by anyone was a real threat as they could cash us in and hand us over to more extreme elements in Syria. It was turning into a bit of a joke; we were circumnavigating the checkpoints and the road below, as we were in the hills above, but our smuggler was lost, even though the road and car lights could be seen only 400 metres below us. He took out his phone and the whole area where we were was illuminated by the backlight. Now I had serious concerns. This guy had never done this before. You could tell he had just been asked or set up to do it. It was a 3km trek handrailing the road a couple of hundred metres up in the hills until we passed the checkpoints and got into vehicles on the other side. We did eventually make it to the safe house in the middle of the night. We got our heads down while one kept watch. It was early morning; it was hot and there were plenty of flies. The plan was to lay up all day until darkness and then make the next leg of our journey to the border and get passed on. As the day went on it became abundantly clear that all the time on recce, the fixers and the other security advisor I was working alongside had decided not to go the professional smuggler way. They’d set the whole thing up themselves. The smuggling fees for entering Syria were big bucks and the media companies would willingly pay. They’d decided to set it up and cream the vast majority between the fixer, the consultant and a few Mickey Mouse locals.
On the other side of the border were contacts in the Free Syrian Army, a very nice name for a militia. They would be carrying out most of the escorting and logistics from safe house to safe house. They would get some money but they were doing it for the ‘cause’, not the money. So my two associates clicked on to this, just organizing it themselves and pocketing the money.
It was late afternoon and some of the family members involved in the safe house where we were staying, near the border, started arguing among themselves. Others wanted a cut of the money being made by our host. After a while we received incoming small-arms firing from some neighbouring houses. I thought, we’re not even in Syria yet and this is what’s happening. Our cover was blown by greed and by being amateurs. Not long after, a Lebanese military officer stopped his vehicle outside the house and spoke with the owner either about the gunfire or someone had spoken to the military about foreigners trying to cross into Syria. It didn’t matter; they knew we were in the area and would be patrolling on the lookout for us. More importantly, so would others on the other side of the border in Syria, either pro-Assad forces or other groups. We were walking cash cows to the local impoverished people. They would get the equivalent of a year’s wages for us. I spoke with the fixer and my co-advisor; I didn’t trust them either. Well, I said, they had made the decision for us. It was stupid to go forward as all our cover was blown. The best thing was to lay over until darkness and get back down to Beirut as quickly as possible, before we were thrown into a Lebanese cell for a few months as a warning to other media trying to use the Lebanese routes. We were successful in getting back to Beirut. Our four days up in the northern mountains were over as soon as they’d begun, but I was pleased.
I had my departure flight confirmed. Sweet, out of this cauldron. We were supposed to be going out on the town for a few drinks with the media crew. I had my kit packed. I politely declined going on the piss. I hadn’t the stomach to sit there and be fake, smiling. I knew what had happened and I didn’t want to be around it. The news reporter telephoned me, inviting me to join them. I made my excuses and went to bed. I had worked with him in Libya and I was pissed at the way they were treating him and the cameraman. We all like to earn a few quid on top, especially when it’s with a big media company, but being this greedy and putting lives in more danger than they already were when going into Syria was just shameful, particularly the fact that they’d put their own lives in greater danger for being so short-sighted. Just ask the relatives of the journalists captured in 2012 around the same time and same area. You do not fuck about in war zones.
I was back in Blighty and I promised myself I wouldn’t work with people I hadn’t worked with before or had reservations about. Ah well, at least the Olympics were on in London; that would do for entertainment. I took up residency in the local boozer during the afternoons. It was the only peace and quiet I was getting or, more accurately, thought I was getting. I had been chasing up the solicitors and filling out forms and statements. The next stumbling block was getting my military medical records released. The usual shite is even worse if you’re a Special Forces soldier; any excuse not to help. It was just adding to the anger boiling up inside me. The wife and I were not getting on. I was cold at times and never around. I would pay for a helper with the kids and the housework but I wouldn’t be there, and if I was I wouldn’t talk about much, I’d just watch telly and complain about the injustice of austerity and so on. This negativity was growing inside me.
I buried the resentment and other issues deep inside me. I didn’t realize at the time that what I was doing was the worst way to deal with it, but I didn’t know any better and I didn’t actually think there had been any issues. I was fine; it was others that had done wrong to me. The Afghan part of the equation I buried also. I just couldn’t work that out either.
The summer in the south-east of England was a big buzz, with the weather and the Olympic gold fever; that took my mind off it and I enjoyed the time with the family. Then I received an urgent call asking how quickly I could get to Heathrow. ‘Hour and a half from now,’ I said. I always had a holdall packed, ready to go. I had been on short notice ready for contract work for a considerable time. The only items to add were clothing that was hanging up to prevent creases. I received another call within minutes: ‘Get to Chiswick west London with your passport.’ I needed a visa sorted to fly with the client, CBS News. I arrived within the hour, handed my passport over and collected some medical kit and body armour from the company I was contracted to. On my return to the CBS News London bureau I was made aware of the task and the urgency of it. The passports would not be ready until the morning so I returned home and awaited confirmation. All sorted. I would meet with the cameraman and receive my passport and visa at Heathrow. I’m well used to rush affairs and making deadlines by the skin of your teeth. It’s not that I don’t plan ahead; if you work within the media field, especially in conflict zones, it’s all reactionary and you’re chasing the story to stay ahead of the pack. That’s why they call it exclusive. The US Consulate building was attacked on 11 September 2012 and there were dead and injured in Benghazi in Libya. I was frantically getting the cameraman and the camera kit through Tripoli customs to try to get an internal Libyan Airways flight over to Benghazi.
There may have been a change of regime but the customs bureaucracy was still the same. To be fair, the amount of camera and editing kit we had in cases was a lot for just one cameraman. He said better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. I’ve used this phrase plenty at times so I was on side. Customs, however, were on the other side. I called a British Airways local Libyan representative I had befriended on a previous trip. I knew the man would come in handy in the future. Fair play to the British Airways rep, he squared the whole thing like magic. The next hurdle was to try to get on a tin can with propellers. I used my extensive Irish charm on two Libyan Airlines ticket-desk saleswomen. Oh, being Irish is a godsend at times. After some fluttering of their eyelashes, hey presto, two tickets appeared on a flight that was already full. We must have taken up half the hold with our kit alone. The plane was vibrating and the pilot hadn’t even switched the engine on; people were sweating and shaking and that was just the trolley-dollies. Jesus, I wasn’t sure if we would make it to the end of the runway, never mind to Benghazi. The man across the aisle smiled. ‘Inshallah,’ he said and so did I and I bloody well meant it.
I was laughing as we roared down the runway; this thing was about to disintegrate with the vibration. Overhead compartments opening, people praying and I was gritting my teeth: stay goddam airborne. I was preparing myself to be jumping out of a plane, except I had no parachute this time. Sod it, I thought, airborne all the way so up, up and away. We landed at Benghazi; the landing was all right. Soon as it landed the vibrating went berserk again. I didn’t care now; we were ahead of the news pack. No time to waste: through the airport to a waiting van and straight to the Tibesti Hotel, Benghazi. This place had been like a home away from home over the last eighteen months or so.
Surprisingly the hotel was quiet and there weren’t as many Westerners frequenting it as usual, neither media-, NGO- nor oil industry-related. Even out and about in Benghazi itself it was quieter. Women with headscarves or full burkas were more prevalent than ever before. The one other giveaway was that I didn’t see nearly half as many women drivers as before. Even Gaddafi, despite his madness, was a liberal in a lot of ways. The city had a dark feel to it but not all was lost. The younger generation were still on the internet; they hadn’t given up on their revolutionary values. I met up with the rest of the news team, Charlie D’Agata and Agnes, the producer. We went straight to the US Consulate compound to go over the scene. We were the first Westerners at the Consulate building and over the next few days we would be the only ones. As soon as we arrived, suspiciously, eastern Libya airspace was closed down. That slowed any other journalists attempting to arrive. The buildings and area inside the walled compound were still warm from the fires started during the attack. The local Libyan guards and police were friendly. I don’t think anyone high up in Libya or beyond, especially in Washington DC, expected such a substantial and detailed journalist coverage and investigation from our team.
As I was the only military man with experience on the ground, I pieced together much of the attack. Most of the facts were verified by witnesses we found and interviewed. We even found the separate building that was to be called the Annex, on which much of the news and darker side of the attack was concentrated. My detective work started to pay off big-time. When I searched the Annex and the surrounding area, I put together the weapons used in the attack. We even identified that the place was a CIA black ops site; not from paperwork or anything, just good old-fashioned experience in war. Everything I put together for CBS News was reluctantly admitted to by the US State Department, after previous denials. It wasn’t only the US Consulate that was a mess; it was the whole set-up, the security procedures, the rescue mission, but most of all – for me painstakingly walking those grounds and the roof of the Annex where two US security men gave their lives protecting the US civilian staff hunkering down below them in the building – the carnage of blood, medical supplies and spent ammunition on the rooftop. They’d been calling for help using a technique I’ve seen used by Special Forces worldwide; it’s basic but it works. I thought to myself, here is the might of the US military and these men were reduced to the basics to survive. Whatever they were trying to communicate to in the sky over Benghazi that fateful night, it abandoned them in their darkest hour, that much was evident. It reminded me of many of the tight corners I had been in over the years. Same story: good men fighting for their lives and to save lives while the machine does bugger all to assist.
I was proud of my contribution to that news story. I certainly did those men who died proud by making sure the world knew how they held on and fought with courage beyond duty, and how they were abandoned. The rescue from Benghazi in the early morning was also haphazard. I’m not criticizing the people carrying out the role; they did what they could with the time, information and tools at their disposal and that is the crux of it, the tools at their disposal. The might of the US military and the rescuers were having to scrape together a local militia to assist them: the February 17th Brigade again; recall that lot from General Younis’s death. That’s why the whole debacle was shrouded in mystery and denial. Various US security, political agencies and so on were protecting their own interests and there was no communication from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It was an exercise in arse-covering.
A few days later, I even spoke with some members of the February 17th Brigade who had been part of the rescue team that went to the consulate and then constructed an outer perimeter cordon well outside the Annex. The attack came from within the cordon itself, from the only high building overlooking the CIA Annex. As soon as I went onto the roof I figured that out. How the attackers managed to get inside the cordon is one thing, but not to be apprehended after launching the mortars and rocket into the building? It would have been visible for all to see. Unless, and it’s a strong possibility, the February 17th Brigade, who were under CIA mentorship, turned on their paymasters, as they had the best available opportunity to run US forces out of Benghazi and let the east of Libya descend into jihadi and extremist control. It wasn’t Cameron who lost the plot; it was the Yanks themselves back in 2012. CBS News genuinely did an excellent job on reporting the worst attack since 9/11 on US soil. We interviewed many suspects and even had ice cream and juice with the supposed ringleader. It really was the most bizarre event I’ve seen in some time.
Charlie D’Agata had been replaced by Liz Palmer, another charming reporter. I was impressed; she had these so-called extremist leaders under her spell. They would not go on camera, but they openly talked about the protest aspect of the attack and were walking around Benghazi without a care in the world. Even members of the police came into question for the inadequate response. I figured a lot of it out, but I declined to release my conclusions to the news team without concrete evidence. Yet I knew this was not just the work of some fevered-up extremist wannabe warlords. The accuracy of the Annex attack was impressive. I even said it was very accurate, even by Western forces’ standards, especially with the fact that there was no evidence of corrective fire with the mortars and so on. They hit it first time. That means the kit used to determine distance, elevation and so forth most likely had infrared capability. This is all high-end and not what the fighters in the back of a Toyota pick-up have in their fighting order. The whole affair stank of a pre-planned and pre-emptive attack on the US. The worst thing is that there were most likely people in the know in the US that knew it was going to happen and they let it happen; for what purpose, who knows.
We returned to the UK and only a few weeks later I received a call to go back and assist CBS News again. I did. There’d been a mini-revolution in Benghazi but the dark side was back in control. We spent a few days on the story again, as there were hearings in the US Senate about the attack. The official US investigation never really did much in Benghazi. It seemed no one was interested in stirring up trouble in Washington over the deaths of a few of their citizens and the evacuation of their staff. It was like Vietnam all over again; another mess.
I was glad to be finished on that task. I knew it was over in Libya. The place was on the verge of full-scale conflict again between these armed militia or extremists. It was going to be very unsafe for Westerners for the foreseeable future. Also, no one wanted to report on the sham revolution and what a mess it had descended into, otherwise all the people eating their dinner back in the West might start asking questions about the whole Middle East, like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya; all that I had witnessed had a common thread. The innocent civilians pay the heaviest price for the greed of the power-hungry and the few. These people deserve so much more. The hospitality and warmth I received in all these areas from many, many people showed that we are all the same underneath. Same loves, same fears, same hopes, irrespective of creed, colour or anything else. We should look for our similarities, not our differences.