13 Hours The Inside Account of What Really Happened In Benghazi (10 page)

BOOK: 13 Hours The Inside Account of What Really Happened In Benghazi
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All the buildings were reinforced with security measures, starting with the largest structure on the property, a split-level yellow concrete building known as Villa C. Stevens’s working and living quarters were there, and it eventually gained an affectionate nickname, “Château Christophe.” Part of Villa C, in the area where several bedrooms were located, was fortified as a safe haven, with locked metal grilles on the windows. At the interior entrance to the safe-haven area stood a heavy metal gate with double locks that looked like the door to a jail cell. Exterior wooden doors were hardened with steel. For added protection, the safe-haven area contained a last-refuge safe room, essentially a windowless closet that contained water, medical supplies, and other necessities.

A second structure, on the east side of the Compound, was Building B, also known as the Cantina, which contained bedrooms and a dining area. Next door to the Cantina was a third building, the Tactical Operations Center, known as the TOC, which served as the security and communications headquarters for DS agents based at the Compound. The fourth and final building on the property was a guesthouse by the front gate that had been converted into a barracks. It typically housed four armed Libyan security guards, all
members of the 17 February militia. Supplementing the militiamen were other locally hired guards, unarmed, who were provided under a contract with a British security company called Blue Mountain Libya.

To the uninitiated, the precautions might have seemed impressive. But in the realm of modern diplomatic protection, the Special Mission Compound in Benghazi was only modestly secure. Some might even say insecure, in light of recent history and relative to other American diplomatic outposts in hostile places.

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.”

Less than six months after Stevens and his team moved into the Compound, Gaddafi was gone and the US Embassy in Tripoli was reestablished under Ambassador Gene Cretz. Stevens returned to Washington, and the Special Envoy post remained unfilled.

In December 2011, a month after Stevens left Benghazi, a memo circulated around the State Department arguing for a continued US presence in Benghazi. One reason for maintaining the Compound, the memo argued, was to reassure residents of eastern Libya that the United States would object if the new Tripoli-based government neglected or abused them as Gaddafi had. Although no new Special Envoy was chosen to replace Stevens, the Benghazi Compound did remain open, overseen by a rotating cast of State Department employees who stayed brief periods and, while there, held the title “Principal Officer.”

In early 2012, Cretz was nominated to become ambassador to Ghana, and Stevens was a natural choice to replace him. At his confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Stevens struck a note of optimism: “There is tremendous goodwill for the United States in Libya now. Libyans recognize the key role the United States played in building international support for their uprising against Gaddafi. I saw this gratitude frequently over the months I served in Benghazi—from our engagements with the revolution’s leadership to our early work with civil society and new media organizations.”

When Stevens was confirmed as ambassador, the State Department featured him in a video that reintroduced him to Libyans. He talked about his upbringing, his education, and his experiences, as photos from his earlier days in Libya
and other parts of the Arab world flashed on the screen. “Now I’m excited to return to Libya to continue the great work we’ve started,” Stevens says on the video, “building a solid partnership between the United States and Libya to help you, the Libyan people, achieve your goals.” He closed by promising that the two countries would “work together to build a free, democratic, prosperous Libya.” Stevens’s priority would be to win trust rather than points, to gain long-lasting respect rather than superficial concessions. He would defy the stereotypical image of the self-important American ambassador; instead, Stevens would radiate humility.

Armed with his new title, Ambassador Stevens arrived in Tripoli on May 26, 2012. He spent the next three months reestablishing relationships from his earlier posting in the capital. But his optimism was tested from the start by instability and violence.

From his office in Tripoli, Stevens observed firsthand the deteriorating security situation in Libya during the late spring of 2012. Beyond his concerns about the fledgling Arab democracy, Stevens worried about his staff and himself. In early June, he sent an e-mail to a State Department official in Washington asking that two six-man Mobile Security Detachments, known as MSD teams, of specially trained DS agents be allowed to remain in Libya through the national elections being held in July and August. Stevens wrote that State Department personnel “would feel much safer if we could keep two MSD teams with us through this period [to support] our staff and [provide a personal detail] for me and the [Deputy Chief of Mission] and any VIP visitors.” The request was denied, Stevens was told, because of staffing limitations and other commitments.

A month later, on July 9, 2012, Stevens and the embassy’s security staff, led by DS agent Eric Nordstrom, asked
the State Department to extend the presence of a Site Security Team, or SST, that consisted of sixteen active-duty military special operators. The Defense Department’s Africa Command, which oversaw the unit, was willing to extend the team’s stay in Tripoli. But State Department officials decided that DS agents and locally hired guards could do the job, and that the SST operators weren’t needed. In the weeks that followed, General Carter Ham, head of Africa Command, twice asked Stevens if he wanted the SST to remain in Libya. Despite his earlier request to extend the team’s stay, Stevens wouldn’t buck the decision of State Department officials in Washington. He declined Ham’s offers and the SST left Libya, even as Stevens moved forward with plans to visit the restive city of Benghazi.

However worried he might have been about security, to his staff Stevens remained outwardly upbeat, even inspirational. He posed for so many photos with Libyan children, grandmothers, local officials, and shopkeepers that embassy staffers half wondered whether anyone in Tripoli
didn’t
have a picture of himself with the American ambassador.

On the day in late August 2012 that Stevens sat on the floor for dinner in a Berber home, his companion was a young Foreign Service Officer named Hannah Draper. Several weeks earlier, she’d written a starry-eyed blog post about him: “Ambassador Stevens is legendary in Libya for spending almost the entire period of the revolution in Benghazi, liaising with the rebels and leading a skeleton crew of Americans on the ground to support humanitarian efforts and meeting up-and-coming political leaders. Several Libyans have told me how much it means to them that he stayed here throughout the revolution, losing friends and suffering privations alongside ordinary Libyans. We
could not ask for a better Ambassador to represent America during this crucial period in Libyan history.”

If Draper sounded like an awestruck underling, her blog post reflected a widely held belief among diplomats and officials in Libya and Washington: Chris Stevens had the brains and courage that made him the right man for a monumental job. A dangerous job, too.

Two days before Stevens and Draper ate their meal of
bazeen
, the State Department issued a severely worded travel warning for Libya, cautioning that “political violence in the form of assassinations and vehicle bombs has increased in both Benghazi and Tripoli.… Inter-militia conflict can erupt at any time or any place in the country.”

Still, Stevens refused to abandon his optimism. “The whole atmosphere has changed for the better,” he wrote in an e-mail to friends and family in the summer of 2012. “People smile more and are much more open with foreigners. Americans, French, and British are enjoying unusual popularity. Let’s hope it lasts.” At least that was his view from Tripoli.

When Stevens arrived in Benghazi on September 10, 2012, more than nine eventful months had passed since he’d last set foot in the city. The public highlight of his visit was scheduled to be yet another ribbon cutting, this one at a local school. The ceremony would celebrate the opening of an “American Corner,” a US-government-sponsored “friendly, accessible space” stocked with bilingual books, magazines, films, posters, guidebooks, and other materials for Libyans to learn about the United States. The Libyan man who ran the school had rescued an American F-15
fighter pilot who ejected from his doomed plane when it was shot down during the 2011 revolution.

Outside public view, Stevens intended to reconnect with old friends and contacts, and to solidify relationships with local government officials, business leaders, and fellow foreign diplomats in Benghazi. He seemed to have a clear-eyed view of the dangers he faced. “Militias are power on the ground,” he wrote in his diary on September 6, according to
The New York Times
. “Dicey conditions, including car bombs, attacks on consulate,” Stevens continued. “Islamist ‘hit list’ in Benghazi. Me targeted on a prominent website (no more off compound jogging).”

For security, two DS agents accompanied Stevens from Tripoli. Three other DS agents were already stationed at the Special Mission Compound, bringing the DS contingent in Benghazi to five.

Also at the Compound to greet Stevens was a State Department political officer named David McFarland, who’d been serving temporarily as the Benghazi Principal Officer. With Stevens’s arrival, McFarland would return to Tripoli early the next morning. The final American at the Compound was a State Department computer expert who’d arrived a week earlier to ensure that the ambassador would enjoy secure communications. His name was Sean Smith, though many of his friends knew him best as “Vile Rat.”

At thirty-four, Smith had been a State Department employee for a decade, after spending six years in the Air Force. Married with two young children, he had a close-cropped goatee, a wry smile that turned his eyes into narrow slits, and a legendary reputation in a far corner of the online gaming community.

BOOK: 13 Hours The Inside Account of What Really Happened In Benghazi
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