13 Hours The Inside Account of What Really Happened In Benghazi (11 page)

Smith was a master player in EVE Online, a science-fiction
video game in which characters pilot customized spaceships through thousands of digital galaxies. Although the futuristic fantasy is ostensibly about mineral mining throughout the universe, EVE is a game within a game: The most intense action flows from the political machinations of tens of thousands of paying subscribers arranged into alliances. Smith’s online persona and call sign was “Vile Rat,” a diplomat and spy who manipulated complex relationships on behalf of his alliance, called GoonSwarm. In his real life, Smith was soft-featured, clever, and humble. In his fantasy life, his gaming avatar was cunning and looked like Smith’s evil doppelgänger, with a hawkish nose and a perpetual scowl. The one thing Smith and his avatar had in common was a shaved head. To fill his downtime while in Benghazi, Smith kept in regular touch not only with his family but also with his fellow EVE players.

In addition to the seven Americans, also on the Special Mission Compound were three members of the 17 February militia who lived in the guesthouse/barracks near the front gate. A fourth militiaman who normally lived among them had been absent for several days, citing a family illness. The guards’ trustworthiness was suspect, at best. During the months prior to the ambassador’s visit, a US government review revealed, the Compound “had been vandalized and attacked… by some of the same guards who were there to protect it.”

In addition, on-site was a rotating cast of unarmed Libyan guards supplied under the contract with Blue Mountain. Five were on hand at any given time, working on-and-off eight-hour, around-the-clock shifts. They opened and closed the gates, operated the metal detector, and checked bags at the entrance gate. Their most
important role was to patrol the grounds, to provide early warning in the event of an attack.

Upon Stevens’s arrival at the Compound, the resident DS agents showed him the improvements and security enhancements at Villa C since he’d last been there nine months earlier as Special Envoy. The tour by Stevens’s personal security escort, DS agent Scott Wickland, also gave the ambassador a chance to reacquaint himself with the layout of his temporary home in Benghazi.

The main area of the spacious villa had an open floor plan of perhaps two thousand square feet. Beyond the entrance foyer were a modern kitchen and formal dining room to the left, a large entertaining or living room in the center, and a breakfast nook area toward the right. The well-appointed residence was decorated in a modern, if stodgy, Middle Eastern style, with cushy upholstered chairs and couches, and thick Persian rugs spread out on sparkling beige-and-black marble floors. Oil paintings and ornate sconces graced the walls, and fancy crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling. Heavy, walnut-colored drapes framed the windows, complementing polished dark-wood tables and other expensive furnishings. Out back was a swimming pool and a cabana, remnants of the Compound’s former incarnation as an upscale home.

Ultimately Wickland led Stevens to the most important part of the villa: the safe-haven area. While there, the DS agent instructed the ambassador how to unlock and open the emergency escape windows in his bedroom.

Afterward, the DS agents drove Stevens the short distance to the CIA Annex, where everyone on the property crowded into Building D’s living room to meet the
ambassador. Stevens launched into a standard talk about the political and security status in Libya, the progress being made, and the challenges ahead. Jack and several other GRS operators said hello to the ambassador then zoned out. They found him affable and approachable, friendlier than many of the stiff diplomats and government officials they’d encountered. But they didn’t need to be told how unstable Benghazi was or to be reassured that the situation would eventually improve. When the meeting ended, Stevens and the DS agents returned to the diplomatic Compound.

At that moment, Benghazi was home to nearly thirty Americans in official capacities: seven at the Special Mission Compound and the rest at the CIA Annex.

That night, Stevens was scheduled to meet with Benghazi’s mayor and city council at the El Fadeel Hotel. The meeting was supposed to be private, but council members were so excited by Stevens’s presence that they alerted local reporters. That multiplied the security threat exponentially. One of the DS agents protecting Stevens called the Annex for backup, telling the operators that the DS didn’t have enough agents on hand to protect Stevens at such a high-profile public event.

The need for added security from the Annex operators was especially acute. At the time of Stevens’s visit, the 17 February militiamen at the Compound were staging a partial work stoppage. The disgruntled militiamen had refused to accompany the American diplomats’ vehicle movements through the city, to protest low pay and long working hours. Nevertheless, US officials still officially considered the 17 February Martyrs Brigade to be a Quick Reaction Force in the event of an attack on the Compound. A memo dated one
day before the ambassador arrived in Benghazi outlined the understanding between the US diplomatic post and the militia. “In the event of an attack on the US Mission,” according to the document, obtained later by
The Washington Post
, the Americans “will request additional support from the 17th February Martyrs Brigade.” The document said the militiamen would be paid the Libyan equivalent of about twenty-eight dollars per day, and militia fighters would provide their own weapons and ammunition.

With the militiamen refusing to protect the ambassador as he moved through Benghazi, Rone and Jack volunteered to accompany Stevens to the September 10 hotel meeting. Their only condition was that they’d act as a shadow security detail, out of sight of reporters and cameramen. Even if they weren’t publicly identified as CIA contract operators, a photo of them in a local newspaper would potentially make them targets afterward.

It occurred to Jack that if al-Qaeda sympathizers or a radical Islamist militia wanted to kill the ambassador, neither he nor Rone would make much difference. It wouldn’t be a gunfight, Jack thought, but a massive explosion that would take out the El Fadeel Hotel and everything else within a half-block radius. But Jack’s fears proved unwarranted, and the event went smoothly.

Afterward, Stevens ate dinner with a prominent hotelier and caterer named Adel Jalu. Then the ambassador and his protectors returned safely to their respective lodgings in the Compound and the Annex.

Before turning in, Stevens jotted a few notes in his diary, excerpts of which were later published by the special-operator website SOFREP.com. In his lefty scrawl, Stevens wrote: “Back in Benghazi after 9 months. It’s a grand
feeling, given all the memories.” Of the officials he met at the El Fadeel, Stevens wrote: “They’re an impressive and sincere group of professionals—proud of their service on committees, all working as volunteers.… There was a little sourness about why it had taken so long to get to Benghazi, and about ambassadors who came to talk but didn’t do anything to follow up. But overall it was a positive meeting.”

Stevens also noted an exchange of “heated words” between his dinner companion Adel Jalu and the ambassador’s friend and translator, Bubaker Habib, director of the English Language Skills Center in Benghazi. The subject of the dispute was the Muslim Brotherhood, the political organization determined to see Arab states ruled by strict Islamic law, or Sharia. Stevens didn’t tell his diary where he stood on the matter during the dinner debate.

Late that same night, September 10, 2012, Jack and Rone sat together in the living room of the Annex’s Building D, watching the spears-and-sandals movie
300
on a big-screen TV. The GRS operators enjoyed repeated showings of the blood-soaked story of fearless King Leonidas and his tiny force of Spartan soldiers, outnumbered ten thousand to one by the Persian army at Thermopylae in 480 BC.

Jack noticed the sculpted beard sported by the actor Gerard Butler, who played the warrior king: closely cropped on the sides, long and full at the chin. He looked at Rone, then at the screen, then back at Rone.

“You’re trying to grow the
300
beard, aren’t you?” Jack asked.

Rone kept his eyes on the screen but smiled broadly: “Yup.”

FOUR

September 11, 2012

I
N THE FIRST HOURS OF
T
UESDAY,
S
EPTEMBER 11,
2012, Benghazi stirred from sleep as the muezzins’ call to the
Fajr
prayer echoed across the ancient city. “
Allahu Akbar!
[God is Supreme!],” they proclaimed. “
Ashadu anna Muhammadan Rasool Allah!… Hayya ‘ala-s-Salah!
[I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God!… Come to prayer!]” The first of five daily devotions by pious Muslims resounded then faded. Soon after, the sun edged over the horizon. Minutes later, at 6:43 a.m., three men in a car with Libyan police markings slowed to a stop on the gravel street on the north side of the US diplomatic Compound.

One man, dressed in a police uniform, climbed to the second floor of a half-finished building next door to the Venezia restaurant that overlooked the Compound. His uniform bore the insignia of the Libyan Supreme Security Council, known as the SSC, a coalition of militias that
organized a rudimentary police force for the rough city. The other two men waited inside the idling car. The car displayed SSC emblems, in the red, black, and green colors of the Libyan rebel movement.

The elevated vantage point of the construction site gave the uniformed man a clear view over the wall and into the Compound. He could see the buildings and fortifications, including Château Christophe, the villa where Ambassador Chris Stevens slept. The man also could see a flagpole where the American flag would fly throughout the day at half-staff, to honor the eleventh anniversary of 9/11. The man recorded what he saw with a cell phone camera.

In the days before the ambassador’s visit, DS agents had asked that a marked SSC car be posted outside the Compound around the clock when Stevens was on the property. Normally, when they arrived at the Compound, SSC officers would check in with the locally hired guards. Yet neither the Libyan guards nor the American DS agents had been told that anyone from the SSC would be visiting the Compound that morning, much less surreptitiously taking photographs of the layout.