Dark Forces: The Truth About What Happened in Benghazi (30 page)

While my sources believe Stevens was sent to Benghazi primarily to “clean up the mess” created by the publicity over the unauthorized arms shipments to the Syrian rebels, the revelation that Hillary Clinton also wanted him there so that she could stage a photo op caused a firestorm when whistle-blower Greg Hicks first revealed it at the May 8, 2013, HOGR hearing. Why? Because it contradicted the State Department’s official version in the ARB report that claimed Stevens made the decision on his own, with no prompting from Washington.

Yet another inconvenient truth.

“ME TARGETED”

“Islamist hit list in Benghazi. Me targeted,” Chris Stevens wrote in his diary before departing for his last mission.

The seven-page diary was discovered in the charred ruins of the Special Mission Compound by a CNN reporter one week after the attack. When CNN published portions of it, including Stevens’ comment, the State Department went ballistic. Philippe Reines, identified as a “senior advisor to Secretary Clinton,” called CNN’s actions “indefensible.” CNN countered that Stevens’ fears of a terror attack were newsworthy and “are now raising questions about why the State Department didn’t do more to protect Ambassador Stevens and other U.S. personnel.”
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As the embassy team was nervously preparing his trip, Libyan Interior Ministry officials declared a state of maximum alert following gun battles between local police and militia forces in Benghazi. The only good news: that meant the police had “established a 24/7 police presence at the Mission in response to our long-standing request,” political officer Eric Gaudiosi wrote in the weekly Benghazi update for Washington.
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But that protection never materialized. That was one of the first things Alec Henderson, the regional security officer who had arrived in Benghazi just one week earlier, told Stevens after his flight from Tripoli touched down at Benghazi’s Benina Airport at around noon on Monday, September 10, 2012. Henderson whisked Stevens and the two African-American DS officers who had accompanied him from Tripoli into armor-plated Toyota Land Cruisers for the twenty-minute drive to the compound. Also greeting him was David McFarland, the TDY political officer who was heading back to Tripoli the next morning, who gave him a rapid-fire update in the car. A Toyota Hilux pickup with a .50-caliber machine gun from the 17th February Martyrs Brigade led the small convoy as it rapidly weaved in and out of the mid-morning traffic and around the many traffic circles to the Fourth Ring Road in the upscale Fwayhat district.
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For Chris Stevens, returning to the Benghazi compound, where he had lived for most of the heady days of the anti-Qaddafi uprising, was like coming home. But this time, the atmosphere felt different. What was the deal with the 17th February Martyrs Brigade, he asked? Why had they provided just one gun truck as an escort, and why were they driving like they were afraid of being pursued? During the revolution, they had chaperoned his every movement proudly and openly with several vehicles, honking through the checkpoints, sirens blaring. Now it was as though they were afraid to be caught dead with an American.

They were lucky to have even one gun truck, McFarland told him. The 17th February guys essentially had gone on strike last week to protest salary and working hours. Thanks to Alec, things were getting back on track.
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For an ambassador, visiting a distant outpost in a country as secretive as Libya was the only way of getting a feel for the situation on the ground, unfiltered by politics and make-nice reporting. Chris Stevens was about to get lots of it.

Once Stevens had stowed his gear in the master bedroom of the sumptuous VIP villa, Alec Henderson briefed him and the two DS agents he had brought with him from Tripoli on the emergency
REACT
plan, in case of a terrorist attack. They’d made a number of security improvements since Stevens had last lived here. They’d raised the perimeter wall, installed Jersey barriers to prevent car bombs, and put up guard booths outside protected by sandbags. They now had security cameras covering the inside perimeter wall, which spanned more than three hundred yards along the front and back and nearly one hundred yards on the sides. While some of them were still in boxes, waiting to be installed, they had all three access gates covered, two in the front and one at the rear of the compound. They also had an operational camera showing the outside of the main gate.

The unarmed Blue Mountain guards at the main gate were there to verify the identity of visitors only, not to provide actual defense in the event of an attack. They controlled the drop-down steel pole and the double-steel doors to allow authorized vehicles to enter the compound. In the event of an emergency, they were supposed to activate the Imminent Danger Notification System and get the hell out of the way. If that ever happened, they would know it, Henderson said. Wailing sirens would go off all over the compound. If he was in the Tactical Operations Center (TOC), which was housed in a separate villa across a narrow interior driveway from the ambassador’s residence, they’d probably hear his voice as well over the loudspeakers.

They called it the duck-and-cover alarm. If you hear that, he told the DS agents from Tripoli, it is not a drill.

The most important thing was to get the VIP package (in this case, the ambassador and facility manager Sean Smith) into the safe room, where they were supposed to shelter in place until reinforcements arrived. Scott Wickland, one of the DS agents who had arrived in Benghazi a few weeks earlier, had the keys and would relieve whoever was with the ambassador to make sure he was secure. Then they would evacuate to the more heavily fortified CIA Annex. Another DS agent, David Ubben, gave them the tour and showed them how the security grille with its heavy steel bars was designed to prevent entry into the living quarters, where the safe room was located, then he demonstrated how to operate the special emergency release windows so that they could escape to the roof if need be. If things got really bad, and they had to abandon Benghazi altogether, or if they were attacked on the road, their standing instructions were to head for the Egyptian border by road—eight hours by the coastal highway.

It was a sobering briefing. Everyone who spent the night at the Special Mission Compound got it. If they were ever attacked, God help them.

Stevens, ever the diplomat, wanted to meet the whole team at the Mission Compound, so after a brief lunch in the sumptuous living-dining area of the VIP residence with Smith and McFarland, he walked over to the canteen in the commons villa. There he briefly met Dylan Davies, the British contractor who managed the unarmed security guards at the gate.

In his somewhat confused account of these events, Davies says that Stevens asked him what he thought of the security arrangements at the compound. “Put it this way, sir—more could be done,” Davies said. Then he repeated what he had been telling the various RSOs for several months: They needed more physical barriers, more DS agents, and especially, they needed to get rid of the 17th February Martyrs Brigade as the QRF, because they were unreliable. They simply wouldn’t come if needed.

Stevens went outside and chatted in fluent Arabic with the Blue Mountain guards, asking them about their families and making small talk about Benghazi. They were impressed, Davies recalled.
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What Davies didn’t know was that, just the night before, Henderson had emailed John Martinec, his boss in Tripoli, warning that the 17th February Martyrs Brigade had told him they “would no longer support U.S. movements in the city, including the Ambassador’s visit.” They were flying by the seat of their pants.
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At two in the afternoon, Henderson and the full complement of DS officers saddled up and drove the ambassador a kilometer down the road to the CIA Annex for a two-hour briefing. Stevens was met by the CIA chief of base, who picked up where Henderson and Ubben had left off.

The Annex was their Fort Apache. Although it was just over half the size of the diplomatic compound, it contained four large villas set at diagonals around an inner courtyard and parking area. It had much higher walls and much, much better security. For starters, they had fewer neighbors. With a warehouse complex and empty lots on one side, walled villas on two others, their main vulnerability was the street side, and that was protected by impenetrable blank walls with no telltale sign of what lay behind them. Plus, they had a height advantage. From the rooftops, they dominated the entire neighborhood and no one could look down on them. Anyone trying to approach from the street was dead meat.

The chief of base introduced some of his GRS operators, including former Spec Ops warriors Tyrone Woods and Mark G—, and had them give a brief display of the firepower they had at their disposal in case something went down. (Mark G—’s full name, which is known to the author, had not been released at the time this book went to press.) He repeated the evacuation plan Henderson had sketched out back at the compound. If anything happened, they were supposed to hightail it to the Annex. Once they got there, the GRS guys could hold off the bad guys until more serious help arrived. Or they evacuated by road to Egypt.

It wasn’t a bad plan, all things considered. But Ibrahim Joudaki and Khalil Harb, the Quds Force operatives in charge of the attack, had already analyzed it inside and out and identified its inherent weaknesses. And they intended to exploit those weaknesses to the fullest. Their men had been conducting surveillance on both American compounds for nearly three months by this point. As for the REACT plan itself, security at the compound was so lax that copies of it had been left lying around, so the Quds Force men had had no problem acquiring it for a fee from a disgruntled local security guard.
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WAS STEVENS INVOLVED IN GUN-RUNNING?

The CIA chief of base next got down to the real business that had brought Ambassador Stevens to Benghazi: their ongoing effort to track down chemical weapons, SCUD missiles, and other WMD; and the hunt for the missing MANPADS from the Qaddafi regime.

The contractors working on MANPADS collection had left Benghazi in June, so now the effort was focused on keeping tabs on the Libyans who were buying weapons and sending them to Syria. The
Al Entisar
deal was an absolute mess. As more news on that shipment came out, it was bound to attract wannabe arms dealers who would make Abdul Basit Haroun and his guys look like pros. They had to shut this thing down before it went completely out of control.

Stevens had two meetings the following day, September 11, that were highly unusual for an ambassador, and that contributed to rumors that the main purpose of his trip to Benghazi was to facilitate arms shipments to the Syrian rebels.

The first was with Mahmoud El-Mufti, the marketing director of the Al Marfa Shipping and Maritime Services Company, a private Libyan shipping company. El-Mufti was coming to meet him at the compound in the afternoon, according to Stevens’ official schedule. The subject was not mentioned.

Why would an ambassador meet with an official from a local shipping company? Was he seeking a better, more discreet shipper for the weapons the White House had publicly stated it wanted to see reach the Syrian rebels? Someone who could maintain control over the goods, and make sure they reached their authorized destination?

El-Mufti appeared to have the credentials. Already in March 2011, at the start of the rebellion, he attracted the attention of a
USA Today
correspondent for his political enthusiasm. “We are Arabs. We are Muslim,” he told the reporter as they drove through the main gate of the Benghazi port to greet a Turkish and Emirati aid ship as it docked. “We continuously support the Palestinian cause.” Then he caught himself and added, “But Israel is not our priority. We’re not interested in war. We want to see prosperity first. We can be the Dubai number two.”

Those aid ships arriving in Benghazi in early 2011 were undoubtedly bringing weapons to the Libyan rebels. Al-Marfa Shipping advertises its services as a “port agent” engaged in “drawing up, initiating and delivery the required documents (booking lists, shipping permits, delivery orders) related to the cargo.” They would be qualified to organize arms shipments to the Syrian rebels. But why would an ambassador engage in such discussions? If the president had authorized covert arms shipments to the Syrian rebels from Libya, wouldn’t that be a task for the CIA chief of base?

Lieutenant Colonel Andy Wood mentioned in our conversations that the embassy in Tripoli had encountered difficulties in getting military supplies and even containers with personal belongings cleared through customs in Tripoli and Benghazi. But again, would the U.S. ambassador travel all the way from Tripoli to discuss such a mundane subject with a midlevel shipping company official? Unlikely.

Ambassador Stevens’ diary includes a brief note about this meeting. In it, Stevens identified al-Mufti as “shipping Co. owner & broker of PM contender Dr. Moh Mufti.” The State Department has never concealed Stevens’ close ties to political power brokers in Libya, or that he intended the Benghazi trip as an opportunity to reconnect with some of them. Libya was, in fact, in the throes of selecting a new prime minister at precisely this time, and Dr. Mahmoud El-Mufti—a relative of the Benghazi shipping company official—was considered a “minor contender.”

Mahmoud El-Mufti still works at the shipping company and speaks good English. When I reached him on his cell phone and told him I was writing a book on Benghazi, and understood he met with Ambassador Stevens on the day he died, he cut me off. “No comment. No comment, please,” he said and hung up. Despite his nervousness, I believe that this meeting was one of Stevens’ planned political consultations. It’s inconceivable that the ambassador didn’t take the opportunity to pick El-Mufti’s brains on the
Al Entisar
, and what he would have done to keep the whole thing from coming unglued. That was simply part of his job, and part of his character. But it wasn’t his primary mission in meeting El-Mufti.