The Great War of Our Time: The CIA's Fight Against Terrorism--From Al Qa'ida to ISIS (26 page)

But a week before the proposed meeting I received word that Senussi would not attend. I later learned that Qadhafi had refused to let him travel to the border—perhaps correctly guessing my intent, fearing that his intelligence chief was looking for a way out of the crisis.

Of course, I never lost sight of the fact that Senussi was far from a good guy. That’s not a surprise when you’re dealing with the intelligence chief of a totalitarian dictatorship. My interest in talking with him at this point was to speed the demise of a brutal regime and minimize the loss of life in the process.

Since I’d failed to lure him to a face-to-face meeting, my next-best option was to have my discussion with him over an open phone line and hope for the best. “Abdullah,” I said, “you must know that the Leader’s days are numbered. You must know that it is just a matter of time now. The most important thing now is to think about your country and what will be best for you and your family.” He knew exactly what I was saying, and he said, “No, Michael, I could
never leave the Leader’s side in difficult times like these.” He was holding firm, so I played my trump card.

“Abdullah, my friend,” I said, “think about your daughter. Think about her future. By choosing the right side, you can save her, she can have a future in Libya.” What he said next sent chills down my spine. “Michael,” he said, “the Leader is more important to me than my family.” From the tone of his voice I could tell that this was not something meant for anyone listening in—he was deadly serious. The discussion was over. Senussi wasn’t going to change. It was the last time I ever spoke with him.

Qadhafi’s regime collapsed in August 2011, and Senussi went on the run. He was arrested in Mauritania in March 2012. The International Criminal Court in The Hague sought custody so that he could be tried for crimes against humanity. But on September 5, 2012, he was returned to Libya instead. Subsequently his daughter Anoud was also arrested—later released, and then kidnapped by gunmen just as she stepped outside of the prison gates after a visit to see her father. She was eventually freed by her captors. In December 2013 she publicly called for her father to be tried by the ICC in The Hague—not because she knew him to be guilty, she said, but because he faced a show trial and almost certain death if he was tried in Libya. Nonetheless, Senussi and thirty-six other former Libyan officials were placed on trial in Tripoli in the spring of 2014. (As of this writing there has been no verdict.)

* * *

The aftermath of the fall of Qadhafi was chaotic. The institutions of the state withered away—most important, the security services responsible for dealing with terrorists. A power vacuum swept the country, and it was filled by militias that could not agree on anything beyond getting rid of Qadhafi. Some of those militias had
extremist views of the world—giving al Qa‘ida an opportunity. The defeat of the Libyan military also resulted in the spread of a huge number of conventional weapons not only in Libya but also around the region, strengthening al Qa‘ida affiliates from Mali to Egypt.

With our concerns about al Qa‘ida growing, the White House sent me to Libya in January 2012 (I took with me Mike Vickers, the under secretary of defense for intelligence; Vickers was a frequent traveling companion of mine due to the critically important collaboration between CIA and DOD). My objective was to convince the new Libyan prime minister of the urgent need for him to build an intelligence service capable of dealing with the al Qa‘ida problem (the previous Qadhafi-era service had collapsed and no longer existed). I was only in the country from nine a.m. to five p.m. For safety reasons my security detail would not allow me spend the night.

With the ambassador and Vickers at my side, I made my argument, pointing out that al Qa‘ida had its sights set on Libya and that an intelligence service was an absolute must for dealing with it. I explained to the prime minister that a leader of al Qa‘ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) was at that very moment in Tripoli purchasing as many weapons as he could get his hands on. The prime minister pushed back—saying that he was only leading an interim government, that he had a lot to do, and that it would take time to figure out how to build a service the “right way.” I told him that if he was referring to the excesses of Qadhafi’s former service, he needed to know that there were many democracies in the world with intelligence services that operated within the law and upheld human rights and that this could certainly be the case in Libya.

Still nothing. In frustration I emphasized to the prime minister that I was certain al Qa‘ida’s growing strength in Libya would result in attacks against Libyan interests, European interests, and American
interests. The meeting ended—with only the vaguest of commitments to building a service. I knew it was not going to happen.

My warning would become a tragic reality in less than a year.

* * *

In both Libya and Egypt there were important lessons to be learned.

The day that the Egyptian military moved against President Morsi, I received a call from a senior Arab ambassador to the United States. He simply said, “Michael, what do you think about Egypt?” I said, “This is a good thing. Morsi was leading the country to ruin, to instability, and to extremism. Now Egypt has a chance again.” I knew that I was being inconsistent with US policy, but I had been trained all my life to speak the truth as I saw it. The ambassador said to me, “I have made similar phone calls all morning. You are the first to say that this is a good thing. You are right.”

Not every country is ready for democracy, and democracy—to work effectively—is much more than free and fair elections. It certainly includes those—along with the freedom to form political parties, compete for political support, and vote—but it also includes freedom of expression, the availability of multiple sources of information, and institutions that make and carry out the preferences of the electorate as expressed in elections. And to force democracy on countries that do not have these characteristics, and cannot develop them quickly, is almost always a recipe for instability and a set of outcomes that are inimical to US national security interests. The poster child is Gaza, where, in 2006, voters elected a terrorist group to lead them. And Hamas has led its fellow Gazans exactly where you would think a terrorist group would—to ruin.

CHAPTER 9

9/11/2012

E
ight months after my hurried visit to Tripoli to warn the Libyan government about the dangers within its borders, tragedy struck in the country’s second-largest city. I want to stress that much of what transpired in Benghazi became fully known to us only some time later—with some things still not known with certainty. As is so often the case in crisis situations, it was only after the smoke cleared—literally, in this case—that one could understand what had happened. And while Benghazi would ultimately unleash a political firestorm, the most important context for understanding the incident has largely been missed—it was the first manifestation of the Arab Spring–induced spread of al Qa‘ida’s ideology and franchise.

* * *

Muammar Qadhafi’s departure from the scene in Libya in 2011 was a good thing in that it prevented the slaughter of thousands of his own citizens. But what followed was a failed state that provided room for extremist groups to flourish. At the end of the day, are the Libyan people better off after their revolution than before? I’m not so sure. Certainly what occurred in Libya was a boon to al Qa‘ida
all across North Africa and deep in the Sahel, which includes parts of Mauritania, Mali, and Niger. The fledgling government that replaced Qadhafi’s lacked even a rudimentary ability to govern, militias with various ideologies reigned in large parts of the country, and much of Qadhafi’s stockpiles of conventional weapons were openly available throughout the country and, because of poor or nonexistent border security, the region.

Because of this lack of governance, during the spring and summer of 2012, the security situation across Libya, particularly in the eastern part of the country, was deteriorating and extremism was on the rise. CIA analysts accurately captured this situation, writing scores of intelligence pieces describing in detail how the situation in Libya was becoming more and more dangerous. One of them from July was titled
Libya: Al Qa‘ida Establishing Sanctuary
. These pieces were shared broadly across the executive branch and with the members and staff of the intelligence committees in Congress. This was not welcome news to some of those senators who had supported the overthrow of Qadhafi. A senior DOD official told me that at one closed-door hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, he was taken to task for being too pessimistic about developments in eastern Libya.

Normally I would not be able to confirm the existence of a CIA base overseas, let alone describe its mission. But because of the tragic events in Benghazi on September 11, 2012—and the controversial aftermath—the Agency’s role there has since become declassified, which allows me to discuss it here.

The city of Benghazi was vitally important in Libya. It had been the center of much of the opposition to Qadhafi for years, and it remained a key outpost used by the United States to understand developments during the revolution and to influence key players in eastern Libya after Qadhafi. CIA had established a presence there with the mission of collecting intelligence in eastern Libya,
to include on terrorists there, which had long been a hotbed of extremism as well as the birthplace of many key Libyans in the leadership of al Qa‘ida. The CIA base in Benghazi performed this mission well. Contrary to some press reporting, the CIA base in Benghazi did not play any role in moving weapons from Libya to the opposition in Syria—and neither did any other CIA officer or facility in Libya.

The State Department facility in Benghazi has been widely mischaracterized as a US consulate. In fact it was a Temporary Mission Facility (TMF)—a presence that was not continuously staffed by senior personnel and that was never given formal diplomatic status by the Libyan government. The TMF included a large plot of land that housed numerous buildings. The CIA base—because it was physically separate from the TMF—was simply called “the Annex.”

In the months leading up to the September 11 attacks, many assaults and incidents directed at US and other allied facilities occurred in Benghazi—roughly twenty at the TMF alone—and CIA analysts reported on every significant one, including an improvised explosive device (IED) that was thrown over the wall of the TMF, an attack on the convoy of the UN special envoy to Libya, and an assassination attempt against the British ambassador to Libya.

As a result of the deterioration in security, we at CIA at least two times reevaluated our security posture in Benghazi and made a number of significant enhancements. It was only later—after the tragedy of 9/11/12—that we learned that only a few security enhancements had been made at the TMF. CIA does not provide physical security for State Department operations. Why so few improvements were made at the TMF, why so few State Department security officers were protecting the US ambassador, Chris Stevens, why they allowed him to travel there on the anniversary of 9/11, and why they allowed him to spend the night in Benghazi are unclear (I would like to know the conversations that took place between Stevens and
his security team when the ambassador decided to go visit Benghazi on 9/11/12). These were all critical errors. The reader will remember from the previous chapter that my security detail would not even allow me to spend the night in Tripoli, and the leader of my security team brought what seemed to me like a small army to Libya to protect me.

With the anniversary of 9/11 on the horizon and the security situation throughout much of the Arab world in flux, in early September CIA sent out to all its stations and bases worldwide a cable warning about possible attacks. I don’t want to imply that there was any particular intelligence regarding planned attacks. There was not. We routinely sent such cables each year on the anniversary of 9/11—but we did want our people and their US government colleagues to be extra vigilant.

We also sent an additional cable to Cairo because we had picked up specific intelligence from social media that there might be a violent demonstration there in reaction to an obscure film made in the United States that many Muslims believed insulted the Prophet Muhammad. The social media posting encouraged demonstrators to storm our embassy and kill Americans. It turned out that our embassy in Cairo had independently picked up the same social media report and had already taken precautions. The ambassador and most of her staff were not at the Cairo embassy on 9/11/12 when a mob breached the walls of the compound, setting fires, taking down American flags, and hoisting black Islamic banners. Eventually Egyptian security forces restored order, although the news of what the protesters had accomplished in Cairo spread quickly through Arab media, including to Benghazi.

On September 11, 2012, I was in Amman, Jordan, in the middle of meetings with intelligence counterparts in the region. I had already been to Israel and was due the next day to depart for Saudi Arabia. Earlier in the day I had seen reports about the incident in
Cairo that, although troubling, seemed to have ended without too much damage and with no injuries. I had dinner with the head of the Jordanian military and the head of Jordanian intelligence, and upon returning to the hotel I checked in with Washington and caught up on e-mail before going to bed. I was woken from a sound sleep by a knock on the door from one of my assistants, who told me that another incident had taken place, this one at the State Department facility in Benghazi, and that CIA security officers had responded in order to assist. My assistant told me that one State Department officer had been killed and the ambassador’s whereabouts were unknown. She said that everyone else had relocated to the CIA base in Benghazi and was believed safe, adding that our chief of station (COS) in Tripoli was sending security officers as reinforcements from Tripoli to Benghazi.