13 Hours

The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi

By Mitchell Zuckoff

with the Annex Security Team

Previous accounts of these events, in books, magazines, and other media, have disturbed and even disgusted the men whose story is told here. Versions with fictionalized dialogue, imaginary incidents, false or exaggerated claims, and sensationalized allegations serve no purpose other than to inflame and obfuscate. The goal of the real security team members is to recount the Battle of Benghazi through as transparent a lens as possible. They and the family of a sixth operator have a financial stake in this book, but their only editorial demand was that the story be told truthfully.

It would be folly to think that this or any other account would be the last word on events with such wide-ranging implications. But after so many words have already flowed, with many more to come, consider it the first word directly from the battlefield, from men who know from hard experience and seared memories what actually happened during those harrowing thirteen hours.

– Mitchell Zuckoff (A Note to the Reader)

(Zuckoff 2014, pp.xi-xii)

The date was June 5, 1967.

War had just begun between Israel and Egypt, and morning radio reports in Benghazi were filled with false claims that US military planes had provided air cover for Israeli attacks or had bombed Cairo, less than seven hundred miles away. Hundreds of Benghazans swarmed into the streets and rallied at the consulate of the United Arab Republic, as Egypt was then called. The demonstrators’ ranks swelled with some of the two thousand Egyptian construction workers then in Libya to build an Olympicstyle stadium. Soon they turned violent. The throng grabbed cobblestones from the torn-up streets and headed toward a former Italian bank building that housed the American consulates.

… Several climbed up to the roof to continue burning documents, but returned inside when a group of men dropped a ladder down from an adjoining roof and rushed toward them. Unable to reach the consulate workers, the attackers cut the halyard that hoisted the American flag on a rooftop pole, allowing it to hang limp down the front of the building. A US Army captain asked Kormann’s permission to re-raise the flag. Kormann refused, but later he relented. “I had been a combat paratrooper in World War II,” he wrote. “I knew what defiance and a bit of bravura could do for soldiers under mortal stress. A display of courage can be infectious and inspiring, just as an act of cowardice can be demoralizing.” Dodging rocks hurled from below, the captain dashed onto the roof and restored the Stars and Stripes to its rightful place.

State Department officials in Washington discussed rescue options, including sending a Marine unit and using paratroopers. But executing those plans would take more time than the Americans had. Meanwhile, the trapped Americans got sporadic phone calls through to their British counterparts, who had a battalion stationed outside Benghazi under a treaty arrangement. Four attempts to reach the Americans by fifty British soldiers were repulsed or delayed, and the mob set fire to a British armored car.

With no rescue in sight, Kormann took down from the wall a photo of President Lyndon Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird Johnson. He broke it from its frame, flipped it over, and wrote on the back that, whatever happened, they had done their duty. Everyone in the smoky vault signed the farewell note.

As night approached, a garbled message gave State Department officials the misimpression that the Americans were near death. Secretary of State Dean Rusk appealed again to the British. Two hours later, a British armored column made another attempt. This time, the British broke through to the consulate and brought all ten Americans to safety.

(Zuckoff 2014, pp.1-4)

It was August 2012, and Jack was about to join the Benghazi team of a secretive US government organization called the Global Response Staff. Created after the 9/11 attacks, the GRS consisted of full-time CIA security staffers, supplemented by former military special operators like Jack, who were hired on a lucrative contract basis. GRS officers served as bodyguards for spies, diplomats, and other American personnel in the field. The more dangerous a posting, the more likely GRS operators were nearby in the shadows, protecting America’s envoys and covert intelligence gatherers. Few if any postings were more dangerous than Benghazi, Libya.

(Zuckoff 2014, pp.5-6)

Their destination was a CIA-rented property known as the Annex, which was the agency’s secret headquarters in Benghazi. Less than a mile from the Annex was the United States’ public presence in the city: a walled estate known as the US Special Mission Compound, which served as a base for State Department diplomats.

(Zuckoff 2014, pp.8)

A North African nation roughly the size of Alaska, Libya is a vast desert with a tiny fringe of fertile soil at its northern coast. To its west are Tunisia and Algeria, to its east is Egypt, and to its south are Niger, Chad, and Sudan. The country is divided into three regions: Tripolitania, to the west, with Tripoli as its capital; Cyrenaica, to the east, with Benghazi as its capital; and Fessan, to the arid south. A majority of the six million Libyans live in or around Tripoli and Benghazi, at the edge of the Mediterranean Sea. Some 97 percent of the population is Sunni Muslim.

A brief history of Libya is an inventory of invasions by outside powers. If an empire had ships and armies in the Mediterranean, its to-conquer list included Libya’s two major ports, Tripoli to the west and Benghazi to the east, separated by the Gulf of Sidra. Over the millennia, occupiers included the Poenicians, the Persians, the Romans, the Byzantines, and the Ottomans. Sometimes competing empires split the baby. The Greeks claimed the area around Benghazi in 630 BC, while the Romans settled near Tripoli. Historians say the Greeks even named Libya, using it as a term to describe all of northern Africa west of Egypt.

By 74 BC, the Romans had conquered eastern Libya, temporarily uniting east and west. Then came the Vandals, a Germanic tribe that drove out the Romans and earned their namesake reputation by plundering the east. The Ottomans invaded Tripoli in 1551 and ruled Libya for more than three centuries, with limited success controlling the ever-restive eastern tribes around Benghazi.

While successive conquerors were vanquishing and bleeding Libya, two Arab tribes flowed onto its sands from Egypt. Starting in the eleventh century, the Bani Hilal tribe settled near Tripoli, while the Bani Salim tribe settled in the east. The Bani Salim freely mixed with and married the native Berbers around Benghazi. As generations passed, the result was a homogeneous ethnic and religious region, what one historian called the “total Arabization” of eastern Libya.

During the 1800s, the Ottoman Turks gave up hope of controlling Benhazi. The Turks allowed eastern Libya to exist as a semi-independent state ruled by the Senussi Muslim sect, which preached a pure form of Islam under which followers conducted all aspects of their lives by the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. While Tripoli and western Libya matured into a relatively modern region, eastern Libya retained its old ways, governed by tribal bonds and religious laws. That divide made it impossible to understand present-day Libya without contrasting Benghazi with its larger, richer, better-looking, and worldlier sister, Tripoli.

In 1912, the exhausted Ottoman Empire signed a secret pact that gave Italy control of both west and east Libya. Tripoli adapted to Italian rule, but eastern Libya fought colonization, especially by a Christian nation. By 1920, the Italians had had enough. Drained by the First World War, Rome ceded autonomy over eastern Libya to Idris al-Senussi, head of the strict Senussi religious order.

When Benito Mussolini rose to power in Italy two years later, the fascist dictator wanted Benghazi to be part of his empire. Years of fierce fighting lollowed. In September 1931, Italian forces finally captured and hanged the leader of the opposition guerrillas, Omar al-Mukhtar, a Senussi sheikh who became a martyr to Libyan independence. Even with Mukhtar gone, Mussolini set out to destroy any entrenched opposition around Benghazi. He built a two-hundred-mile fence along the border of Egypt and by some estimates deported one-third of eastern Libya’s civilian population to concentration camps. He executed twelve thousand more.

With Benghazi under Italian control, waves of workers arrived from across the Mediterranean. The Arab natives were forced into menial jobs, deprived of schooling, and excluded from politics. World War II made matters worse, as Benghazi was bombed hundreds of times as the Axis and Allied powers traded control over the rubble. British pilots adapted a popular song to reflect the carnage, with a lyric that included the line, “We’re off to bomb Benghazi.” Like a long-abused animal, Benghazi grew mean and wary.

After World War II, Libya was divided among the British, French, and Americans. Oil had yet to be discovered, so no one wanted colonial responsibility for an impoverished, bombed-out Arab sandbox. In 1951, the Allies helped to establish the United Kingdom of Libya, an independent, constitutional monarchy ruled by the Muslim leader Idris al-Senussi. The title was better than the job: King Idris had dominion over the world’s poorest country and one of its least literate.

That changed radically in 1959 with the discovery of immense oil reserves, enough to eventually account for 2 percent of global supplies, or more than a million barrels exported daily in 2012. Suddenly King Idris had money to lavish on friends and pet projects in his native east, leaving Tripoli and Libya’s west to decay. In east and west alike, the elite grew rich while everyone else remained poor.

In 1969, while the eighty-year-old King Idris was abroad, the timing was ripe for a bloodless coup led by a power-hungry twenty-seven-year-old army officer: Muammar al-Guddafi. Over the next forty-two years, the erratic, brutal, egomaniacal Gaddafi earned the sobriquet bestowed on him by Ronal Reagan: “[M]ad dog of the Middle East.”

From the start, Gaddafi worried about Benghazi’s rebellious bent and its ties to the exiled King Idris. So he squeezed the region dry. Previously, the Libyan capital had alternated between Tripoli and Benghazi; Gaddafi made Tripoli the permanent capital. He moved the National Oil Corporation from Benghazi to Tripoli, despite the fact that most of the country’s oil is in the east. He relocated a memorial that had been erected in Benghazi to honor Omar al-Mukhtar, fearing the Benghazans would rally behind the rebel martyr’s legacy, as eventually they did.

(Zuckoff 2014, pp.9-12)

He’d remember it as one of the most traumatizing and motivating moments of his life. Instead of going through the legendary SEAL training program and becoming an elite special operator, Jack spent the next two years as a Navy airman on an aircraft carrier. When his next chance came, Jack destroyed every category of the SEAL screening test. By the time he finished SEAL training, Jack came to appreciate the yin and yang of what he’d experienced the previous two years. The humbling failure and its consequences gave him the strength and willpower to push through the brutal selection process and earn his Trident, the prized SEAL insignia, while scores of other world-be warriors quit.

(Zuckoff 2014, pp.15)

Twenty-first-century CIA case officers, or COs, were more likely to be Ivy League valedictorians than licensed-to-kill Jason Bourne types. That meant they needed GRS operators, even if the COs often acted as though they’d handle danger fine on their own. The Benghazi operators felt that the COs treated them as excess baggage, slowing them down and getting in the way. Yet every operator in Benghazi had a story about young, inexperienced case officers walking blithely into trouble or failing to perceive a threat, only to be steered clear of danger by a GRS escort.

(Zuckoff 2014, pp.36)

Married to his high school sweetheart, D.B. had a son and two daughters. His biggest worry was that he might let someone down who relied on him, so he remained on permanent guard to prevent that from happening. His favorite author was Joseph Campbell, who wrote famously about mythmaking and the hero’s journey. D.B. considered one of Campbell’s maxims especially apt: “A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.”

(Zuckoff 2014, pp.40)

As the American ambassador to Libya in the post-Gaddafi era, Stevens considered it essential to promote and protect US interests by working hand in hand, literally and figuratively, with the nascent Libyan government and the people it was supposed to represent. Trust-based bonds and personal connections, Stevens believed, led to successful diplomacy.

“The reopening of our Consular Section will create new opportunities for deepening ties between our two countries,” he told the gathering. “Relationships between governments are important, but relationships between people are the real foundation of mutual understanding. That’s why the reopening of our Consular Section is such an important milestone in relations between our two countries. So, my message to Libyans today is ahlan wasahlan bikum. You are welcome to visit America, and there’s the door!”

(Zuckoff 2014, pp.53-54)

There are generally two kinds of American ambassadors: high-profile business or civic leaders sent to glamour spots like France or Britain as payback for contributions or political support, and workhorses sent to hostile places like Libya as a reward for experience and know-how. Chris Stevens exemplified the latter.

(Zuckoff 2014, pp.55)

Stevens returned to Washington to run the State Department’s Office of Multilateral Nuclear and Security Affairs. But when the Libyan revolution began in early 2011, the Obama administration wanted an experienced hand to reach out to the rebels. In March 2011, Stevens became the United States’ Special Representative to the anti-Gaddafi rebels’ umbrella political organization, the Libyan Transitional National Council, the TNC, based in Benghazi.

(Zuckoff 2014, pp.56-57)

After the 1983 bombings of the American Embassy and Marine Barracks in Beirut, and the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Congress established and strengthened security standards for embassies and consulates. Buildings needed to be engineered to withstand attacks by rocket-propelled grenades, and properties required deterrents to prevent hostile forces from entering en masse. The buildings also had to be invulnerable to fire.

But the Special Mission Compound in Benghazi was never an embassy or a consulate. Leased at a cost of about a half-million dollars a year, it was officially only a temporary residential outpost for American envoys and their DS protectors. The strictest security standards mandated by Congress didn’t apply, so the fortifications at the Compound were essentially judgment calls. In hindsight, those calls were grossly inadequate. A December 2012 government review concluded that the Compound “included a weak and very extended perimeter, an incomplete interior fence, no mantraps and unhardened entry gates and doors. Benghazi was also severely under-resourced with regard to weapons, ammunition, [nonlethal deterrents] and fire safety equipment, including escape masks.”

(Zuckoff 2014, pp.61)

Operators have two words to describe unknown persons photographing secure locations without warning or permission: “surveillance,” to gain information, and “reconnaissance,” to gain tactical advantage. Surveillance of an American diplomatic site was worrisome, to be answered at a minimum by countersurveillance to determine the observer’s identity and intent. Reconnaissance was worse, as it anticipated offensive military or militant action.

(Zuckoff 2014, pp.73)

By all accounts, the Cairo demonstration was sparked by Egyptian media reports about an amateurish movie trailer posted on YouTube for an anti-Islamic film called Innocence of Muslims. The video, made by a Christian Egyptian-American with a history of bank fraud and multiple aliases, defamed the Prophet Muhammad by depicting him as a bloodthirsty, womanizing buffoon, a homosexual, and a child molester.

Fueling the anger among Egyptian Muslims, erroneous reports suggested that the US government was somehow involved in producing the film. The US Embassy in Cairo might have unwittingly contributed to that impression by issuing a noontime statement awkwardly disavowing the video. As Gregory Hicks told Ambassador Stevens, the Egyptian protesters had scaled the embassy wall and burned the American flag. They replaced it with a black jihadist flag with white lettering in Arabic that read: “There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is His messenger.”

(Zuckoff 2014, pp.76-77)

As the protests continued at the US Embassy in Cairo, media reports described turmoil spreading to other Muslim countries throughout the region. The GRS operators had been told about the events in Egypt, but they neither saw nor heard anything to suggest that anyone in Benghazi was upset about an offensive YouTube video clip from an anti-Muslim movie. From all appearances in the quiet neighborhood around the Compound and the Annex, September 11, 2012, would soon pass into history as an unremarkable day in Benghazi.

(Zuckoff 2014, pp.81)

When Jack saw Henry jocked up and ready, he felt a flush of admiration. Here’s a guy, Jack thought, who’s an administrative guy, and somebody gave him body armor and a helmet and a pistol. He volunteered to come basically on a suicide mission. For us, it’s our job to do stuff like that. His job is to sit behind a desk and interpret Arabic into English. But he’s doing what he thinks is right.

(Zuckoff 2014, pp.100-101)

Tanto didn’t know it, but one part of his demand was already being fulfilled. Within the first half hour of the attack, at 9:59 p.m., the US military’s Africa Command ordered a drone surveillance aircraft to reposition itself over the Special Mission Compound. It would take more than an hour to reach Benghazi, but once there the drone could monitor events and beam live images to Washington.

But a request for close air support wouldn’t be so easy to fulfill. A Pentagon spokesman would say later that none of America’s punishing AC-130 gunships were anywhere within range of Benghazi on the night of September 11, 2012.

(Zuckoff 2014, pp.101)

As the attack continued, Panetta later testified to Congress, two Marine security platoons stationed in Spain were ordered to prepare for deployment, one to Benghazi and the other to Tripoli. A Special Operations force in the midst of a training exercise in central Europe was ordered to prepare to deploy to a staging base in southern Europe. A US-based Special Operations team was told to get ready to travel to the same staging base.

But in the end, none of them was sent to Benghazi.

Panetta said consideration also was given to sending armed aircraft, along with refueling tankers and other support. But, he added, it would have taken at least nine hours for them to get there. Panetta described it as “a problem of distance and time.” Embassy officials in Tripoli took part in those discussions. Gregory Hicks, the embassy’s deputy chief, testified to Congress that the embassy’s defense attache talked with officials at AFRICOM and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Hicks said he asked the defense attache: “Is anything coming? Will they be sending us any help? Is there something out there?” Hicks testified that he was told that the nearest help was at the US air base in Aviano, ITaly, where Air Force fighter planes were two to three hours away. But no tankers were available for them to refuel, so hours longer would pass before any fighters could take off.

“And I said, ‘Thank you very much,’” Hicks testified, “and we went on with our work.” In the end, no American warplanes were sent to Benghazi.

The nearest and most likely help from American ground forces remained the seven-man, Tripoli-based GRS team, which included two active-duty Delta Force operators, former SEAL Glen “Bub” Doherty, and a linguist who’d act as translator.

As minutes passed and the Compound burned, talk of response options and available assets continued in Washington, Tripoli, at AFRICOM headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, and elsewhere. Later in the night, a global conference call would include representatives from AFRICOM, the European Command, the Central Command, the Special Operations Command, the Transportation Command, and the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines.

(Zuckoff 2014, pp.147-148)

None of those discussions mattered to the operators already on the ground in Benghazi. The members of the Annez’s GRS security team had long since concluded that they couldn’t wait for outside help. They couldn’t wait for drones or gunships or Marines stationed in Spain. They couldn’t wait for Special Ops teams in central Europe or the United States, or even their fellow GRS operators and Special Ops soldiers en route from Tripoli. They couldn’t wait for action by the presidents of the United States or Libya, or the secretaries of State or Defense. They couldn’t wait for the United Nations, the United States Army, Air Force, Marines, or Navy, the Libyan Air Force, or anyone else.

The Special Mission Compound in Benghazi was overrun. Buildings and cars were on fire. Armed enemies of the United States roamed freely inside the walls. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and communications expert Sean Smith were missing inside a burning villa. Five other Americans also were in danger.

The operators’ only option was to act. At the Annex, Oz prepared to withstand and repel a possible second wave. At the Compound, Tanto and D.B. headed toward the back gate. Rone, Jack, and Tig rushed through the front gate.

None had any idea what would happen next.

(Zuckoff 2014, pp.148-149)

As the Annez’s defenders steeled themselves for whatever lay ahead, midnight passed and September 11 ended. Minutes after the start of the new day, the State Department’s Operations Center in Washington sent an e-mail to the White House, Pentagon, FBI, and other government agencies. The e-mail, sent at 12:06 a.m. Benghazi time, September 12, 2012, had the subject line, “Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility For Benghazi Attack.” The message said: “Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli.”

When the e-mail was revealed, weeks later, it set off a firestorm about when the Obama administration knew that the Compound attack wasn’t simply a disorganized, spontaneous protest over the anti-Muhammad Innocence of Muslims video on YouTube, as several administration officials initially suggested. But the issue became muddied further when an investigation by a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy found no evidence that the radical militia group had made any such statements on social media.

Around the same time the e-mail was sent, the gates of the embassy in Tripoli opened, and out rode the reinforcement security team for a private charter flight to Benghazi. The seven-member force consisted of former Navy SEAL Glen “Bub” Doherty; two Delta Force members; the top GRS Team Leader in Libya; two other GRS operators; and a linguist.

(Zuckoff 2014, pp.197-198)

Tig couldn’t be certain, but based on the sight and sound of the blast, and the absence of shrapnel, he believed that the improvised explosive device lobbed over the wall was a small “jelly” or “gelatina” bomb. An easy-to-produce favorite of radical Libyan militias, gelatina bombs were cheap, moldable explosives made from gelignite, a material similar to dynamite but more stable and abundant. Benghazi fishermen used gelatina bombs to ease their labors, tossing them into the Mediterranean, waiting for the geyser, then collecting the fish that rose to the surface. The attackers seemed to be using the bomb for a similar purpose, to stun or distract the Americans before swooping in for the kill.

(Zuckoff 2014, pp.211-212)

During a quiet period, the DS agent spoke on his cell phone to someone who Jack believed was from the State Department. The DS agent said the attack on the Compound was already on the news back home, and the media reports suggested that it escalated from a street protest over an anti-Islamic film. Jack knew there had been no such demonstrations in Benghazi, so he wondered what else was wrong about how the story was being told. But he had bigger worries, so he set that thought aside.

(Zuckoff 2014, pp.236)

At around 4:00 a.m. Benghazi time on Septmeber 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. Out 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 counter-claims 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 Time’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.”

(Zuckoff 2014, pp.243-244)

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 native, is completely ignorant.

(Zuckoff 2014, pp.247-248)

Jack wasn’t one to wallow in anger, so his thoughts shifted from Benghazans rising to pray, to his wife and children inside the home he hoped to see again. Here I am, all the way across the world. I’ve barely survived the night. And my wife is probably at home getting ready to go to bed, completely clueless as to what’s going on right now. That thought led Jack to reflect on the fortunate lives led by many Americans, particularly in contrast to innocent people in places like Benghazi where armed militias roamed the streets, buildings burned, and foreigners huddled inside high-walled compounds awaiting resume or the next attack. People in America get up and go to their nine-to-five jobs every day and are oblivious to all these battles and wars and people dying every minute all over the world. This is life. This is how other countries live. This is a daily occurrence in some places.

(Zuckoff 2014, pp.248-249)

Oz collected his bomb-scattered senses and focused on his training. He knew that before he could help anyone else, he needed to make sure they weren’t overrun. His first move would be to step up into Rone’s place, to prevent their enemies from thinking that the American defenders were beaten and the Annex was defenseless.

(Zuckoff 2014, pp.261)

This is going to be a complete massacre, Jack thought. If somebody starts shooting, there’s no cover, everyone is just standing around. He held tight to his assault rifle as the argument raged. Jack said an operator’s silent prayer: Please, nobody shoot.

Tanto watched the showdown and predicted the future: The militia that runs the airport has, like, two cars here. Our militia has fifty cars. There’s no diplomatic solution here. Whatever has the biggest guns or the most guns is going to win.

When tensions seemed highest, a militiaman inadvertently fired his AK-47 into the ground near his feet. The operators braced for action, suspecting that the accidental discharge would trigger jumpy militiamen to start shooting. Instead it seemed to defuse the situation, as thought the single careless shot reminded everyone how easily they could all be killed.

As the Americans filed onto the plane, Bob the Annex chief again objected to leaving. He was in Benghazi as an intelligence officer, yet he was being told to evacuate with an endless list of unanswered questions about what had just happened. Bob began a new shouting match, this time with the country GRS Team Leader from Tripoli. The Tripoli T.L. exercised his authority as the ranking American security official in Libya. “You are relieved of duty!” he yelled. “You will get on that plane or I will put you on that plane.” Finally Bob complied.

(Zuckoff 2014, pp.288)

When the Libyan C-130 took flight bearing the last operators and the four bodies, the Battle of Benghazi ended as a combat engagement between Americans and their enemies. But that was only the beginning. Even before the survivors returned home, controversies exploded over how officials in Washington behaved prior to, during, and after the attack. The acrimony can be divided generally along three fronts:

ᐧ Prior to the attack: Who, if anyone, deserves blame and potential punishment for security flaws at the Compound, and did those flaws contribute to the deaths of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and Sean Smith? Four State Department employees were placed on paid administrative leave, but all were reinstated and given new jobs at State. Two later retired voluntarily.

ᐧ During the attack: Was the US military response appropriate, and if not, why not? A related question is whether more aggressive US military action was possible, and if so, might it have prevented the deaths of Tyrone “Rone” Woods and Glen “Bub” Doherty, and the serious injuries to Mark “Oz” Geist and David Ubben?

ᐧ After the attack: Did the Obama administration mislead the public for political reasons, by erroneously linking the attack to protest triggered by clips from the Innocence of Muslims movie? A related question was whether the administration downplayed a possible role by al-Qaeda.

Like much else in Washington, most answers have fallen on one side or the other of a partisan divide. Republicans and conservatives have been the harshest critics of President Obama, then-Secretary of State Clinton, and the administration’s handling of the Benghazi attacks. Democrats and liberals have been the stoutest defenders of the president, Clinton, and the administration. Media reports have run the gamut on who, if anyone, in Washington deserves blame and punishment, and whether the attacks should be considered a tragedy, a scandal, or both.

However, by early 2014 one conclusion had gained considerable traction across partisan lines: The attacks could have been prevented. That is, if only the State Department had taken appropriate steps to improve security at the Compound in response to numerous warnings and incidents during the months prior. That conclusion featured prominently in a bipartisan report by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

That same committee also confronted the controversial issue of a “stand down” order, exploring whether the Annex team was delayed from responding to the attacks at the Compound. Its final report concluded: “Although some members of the security team expressed frustration that they were unable to respond more quickly to the Mission Compound, the Committee found no evidence of intentional delay or obstruction by the Chief of Base or any other party.” In a footnote, the committee revealed that “informal notes” obtained from the CIA indicated that the security team left for the Compound without approval from the base chief, Bob. But the committee accepted Bob’s testimony, quoting him as saying: “We launched our QRF [Quick Reaction Force] as soon as possible down to the State [Department] Compound.” Nevertheless, the Annex security team members stood by their account of being told repeatedly to “stand down” before deciding on their own to leave.

In a memoir of her tenure as secretary of state, published in June 2014, Hillary Clinton gave her most detailed account of her actions to date. She denounced what she called “misinformation, speculation, and flat-out deceit” about the attacks, and wrote that Obama “gave the order to do whatever was necessary to support our people in Libya.” She wrote: “Losing these fearless public servants in the line of duty was a crushing blow. As Secretary I was the one ultimately responsible for my people’s safety, and I never felt that responsibility more deeply than I did that day.” Addressing the controversy over what triggered the attack, and whether the administration misled the public, she maintained that the Innocence of Muslims video had played a role, though to what extent wasn’t clear. “There were scores of attackers that night, almost certainly with differing motives. It is inaccurate to state that every single one of them was influenced by this hateful video. It is equally inaccurate to state that none of them were.” Clinton’s account was greeted with praise and condemnation in equal measure.

As Clinton promoted her book, a new investigation was being launched by the House Select Committee on the Events Surrounding the 2012 Terrorist Attack in Benghazi. Chaired by former federal prosecutor Rep. Trey Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican, the committee’s creation promised to drive questions about Benghazi into the 2016 presidential campaign and beyond.

(Zuckoff 2014, pp.295-298)

The Ansar al-Sharia militia also denied participating, but praised the attack in a statement read on television on September 12, 2012. In January 2014, the State Department formally designated Ansar al-Sharia of Benghazi and the separate but allied Ansar al-Sharia of Derna as terrorist groups, largely for their alleged involvement in the compound and the Annex attacks. Also designated a terrorist was Sufian bin Qumu, a leader of Ansar al-Sharia of Derna, who spent several years as a Guantanamo Bay detainee; he was identified previously by US officials as a “probable member” of al-Qaeda . Nevertheless, a State Department spokes-woman maintained that “we have no indications … that core al-Qaeda directed or planned the Benghazi attack.”

(Zuckoff 2014, pp.299)

Although the operators fought the battle and by all accounts saved about twenty American lives, because they were neither CIA staffers nor active military personnel they were deemed ineligible for even higher awards, awards that went to other men who played smaller roles and never fired a shot. As an agency staffer, the Benghazi GRS Team Leader received the Distinguished Intelligence Cross, the highest honor bestowed by the CIA. The award goes to clandestine service members for “a voluntary act of or acts of extraordinary heroism involving the acceptance of existing dangers with conspicuous fortitude and exemplary courage.” Bob, the CIA chief in Benghazi, also reportedly received a prestigious intelligence service medal, according to The Daily Beast. One Delta Force member, a Marine, was given the Navy Cross for heroism; the other Delta Force member, an Army master sergeant, was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army’s second-highest honor, according to The Washington Times.

(Zuckoff 2014, pp.301)

References

Zuckoff, MItchell. 2014. 13 Hours. N.p.: Grand Central Publishing.

ISBN 978-1-4555-8227-3