The Great War of Our Time: The CIA's Fight Against Terrorism--From Al Qa'ida to ISIS (27 page)

Early the next morning, my assistant banged on my door again to tell me that the CIA base was now under heavy attack. I threw on some sweats and made my way to my command post, just down the hall from my room. In the command post was a security tent that covered two tables holding secure phone lines and computers capable of accessing CIA’s top secret network.

At CIA we make use of an instant messaging program called Sametime for informal quick communications among our personnel worldwide. I “sametimed” the Agency’s chief of station in Tripoli to ask him for an update and to see if I could help him in any way. But I did not want to be a pest. On my mind was the thought that the last thing our senior officer in country needed was to be micromanaged by the Agency’s deputy director.

During our back-and-forth messaging over Sametime, the chief recounted what he knew about the attack on the Annex, which had by that time just concluded. He told me two officers had been killed in a mortar attack on the Annex—I simply typed, “I am sorry”—bringing the total number of Americans killed to four, including
Ambassador Stevens, who had been reported dead at a Benghazi hospital. Stevens was a legend in the diplomatic corps for his understanding of Arab culture and for his ability to work effectively in it. The others were Sean Smith, a State Department communications officer, killed at the TMF, and Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, two security officers, both killed at the Annex.

Over our nearly two-hour on-again, off-again instant messaging conversation, the COS said that he had decided to pull his people out of Benghazi and was working on getting transportation for them and the State Department personnel back to Tripoli. I asked him several times if he needed anything, if I could help in any way. He said he thought he had everything he needed at the moment. I told him that I wanted “to know when everyone is safe,” adding that I was heading to the embassy in Amman and that he could reach me there. I signed off by typing, “Hang in there. I am praying for you.” When I stepped away from the computer, I told my staff that I was very impressed with how the COS was handling a very difficult situation and that I was proud of him. He was calm and determined—and was making all the right decisions.

From the embassy in Jordan, I called Director Petraeus and told him that I thought I should cut my trip short. He agreed. I hung up the phone and told my staff, “We are going home.”

* * *

Dave Petraeus is one of those larger-than-life figures, with a reputation borne of real and significant success on the battlefield as well as a multitude of media stories about him. But to know him—to be his deputy—was a real lesson in leadership. He taught me a great deal. He was effective at driving an organization in the direction he wanted it to go—concerning himself with everything from a large strategic initiative like leadership training to a specific type of weapon he wanted to provide our allies overseas. He accomplished
this through sheer force of personality—he would not stop pressing, he would not stop asking about the follow-through on a directive until it was done.

Like almost all directors, Petraeus came to love CIA. He walked into my office on a Friday afternoon in the fall of 2011, just two or three months after arriving. He shut the door and sat down. He said, “Michael, I’ve been the commander of CENTCOM and the commander of coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I can tell you that this is the best job that I’ve ever had. Bar none. The mission here is critically important, and the capabilities of this place are unique. And the people here are the best I have I worked with anywhere. I am very lucky.” I know he meant every word.

Unfortunately, the organization did not feel the same way about him. He did not connect with most of the people of the organization the way Panetta did. Part of it was that he created the impression through the tone of his voice and his body language that he did not want people to disagree with him (which was not true in my own interactions with him). And part of it was that his expectations of what a staff would do for him—borne of being a four-star general—were inconsistent with the Agency culture. This all improved over time, and he was missed after he departed.

Petraeus was very good to me. He allowed me to manage the Deputies Committee process and the day-to-day operations of the Agency—keeping him fully informed along the way. He also consciously made an effort to mentor me, to make me a better officer. I was sorry that circumstances required his early departure from the Agency, and I know that no one feels more than he does that he let the organization down.

I first learned about his extramarital affair on November 8, 2012, the night before he resigned, just two days after the 2012 presidential election. He had not come to work during the day or
communicated with me—despite visiting with the president in the afternoon and asking, through staff, that I attend an NSC meeting on his behalf. At about nine p.m., he finally called. His tone was decisive, as always. He walked me through the entire story of the affair. He told me, “Michael, I am going to resign,” saying that he had made a terrible mistake and his resignation was a first step toward redemption. He added that his focus now was to save his marriage and his family and that “I cannot accomplish that and run the Agency at the same time.” He read me the note to the workforce that he had drafted. I did not know how to respond, so I kept repeating the phrase “I understand.”

The next afternoon I took a phone call from the president of the United States. He shared with me that Petraeus’s resignation was unfortunate but understandable and he asked me if I would again serve as his acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency, saying, “We need now, more than ever, stability at the top.” I of course said yes immediately. I owed it to both the Agency and to General Petraeus.

* * *

My return to Washington on the morning of September 13 coincided with the beginning of a long process of piecing together what had happened in Benghazi. It took weeks before most of the details were known. My understanding of what happened was shaped in large part by an intelligence community analysis—led by the National Counterterrorism Center and coordinated fully with CIA analysts. This was the best information available to us at the time and was completed a number of weeks after the attacks and shared with the two congressional intelligence committees. This analysis was based on all available sources, most important the video feeds from both the TMF and the Annex.

* * *

There are a number of myths about what happened during the nighttime and early-morning hours of the Benghazi attacks. One misconception is that there was a single four-hour-long battle. Another myth is that the attacks were well organized, planned weeks or even months in advance. In fact, there were three separate attacks that night, none of them showing evidence of significant planning, but each of them carried out by Islamic extremists, some with connections to al Qa‘ida, and each attack more potent than the one before. Since the definition of terrorism is violence perpetrated against persons or property for political purposes, each attack in Benghazi was most definitely an act of terrorism—no matter the affiliation of the perpetrators, no matter the degree of planning, and no matter whether the attack on the TMF was preceded by a protest or not (an issue that would take on enormous political importance in the weeks and months ahead).

The first attack was on the State Department’s Temporary Mission Facility. We know from having monitored social media and other communications in advance that the demonstration and violence in Cairo were sparked by people upset over a YouTube video that portrayed the Prophet Muhammad negatively. We believe that in Benghazi—over six hundred miles away—extremists heard about the successful assault on our embassy in Egypt and decided to make some trouble of their own, although we still do not know their motivations with certainty. Most likely they were inspired by the prospect of doing in Benghazi what their “brothers” had done in Cairo. Some may have been inspired by a call Ayman al-Zawahiri—the leader of al Qa‘ida in Pakistan—had made just the day before for Libyans to take revenge for the death of a senior al Qa‘ida leader of Libyan origin in Pakistan. Still others might have been motivated
by the video—although I should note that our analysts never said the video was a factor in the Benghazi attacks. Abu Khattala, a terrorist leader and possibly one of the ring leaders of the attacks, said that he was in fact motivated by the video. Khattala is now in US custody and under indictment for the role he played in the assault.

I believe that, with little or no advance planning, extremists in Benghazi made some phone calls, gathering a group of like-minded individuals to go to the TMF. When they attacked, at about 9:40 p.m. local time, the assault was not well organized—they seemed to be more of a mob that had come to the TMF with the intent of breaching the compound and seeing what damage they could do. This was my interpretation of what I saw on the video feed from the cameras at the TMF and the Annex. And it was also the interpretation of the intelligence community analysts who watched the video.

When you assess the information from the video, there are few signs of a well-thought-out plan, few signs of command and control, few signs of organization, few signs of coordination, few signs of even the most basic military tactics in the attack on the TMF. Some of the attackers were armed with small arms; many were not armed at all. No heavy weapons were seen on the videotape. Many of the attackers, after entering through the front gate, ran past buildings to the other end of the compound, behaving as if they were thrilled just to have overrun the compound. They did not appear to be looking for Americans to harm. They appeared intent on looting and conducting vandalism. They successfully broke down some doors but failed to do so with others, often in what would appear to be a farcical fashion, if you did not know that tragedy was about to take place. When they did enter buildings, they quickly exited with stolen items. One young man carried an Xbox, another had a suit bag stolen from an American’s quarters. The rioters started to set fires, but there was no indication that they were targeting anyone.
They entered one building with Americans hiding inside, did not find them, and quickly departed. Through it all, none of the Department of State security officers at the TMF fired a weapon.

Clearly, this was a mob looting and vandalizing the place—with tragic results. It was a mob, however, made up of a range of individuals, some of whom were hardened Islamic extremists. And it was a mob that killed two Americans by setting fires to several buildings. After reviewing the information in the video, I was in favor of releasing it publicly. Doing so would have helped Americans better understand the nature of the attack. I do not know why the White House did not release the information—this despite urgings to do so from Jim Clapper, the director of national intelligence, and from other senior intelligence officials, including me. The videos, at this writing, still have not been declassified.

The ambassador and Sean Smith were in the main building when a fire was set there, and the thick black smoke that quickly enveloped the building suffocated them. There is no evidence that the attackers were targeting the ambassador specifically or US officials generally when they set that fire or any of the other fires that night.

About an hour after the mob stormed the compound, officers from the CIA base came to the aid of their State Department colleagues. The Agency security team fired the first American shots of the night, exchanging gunfire with the attackers, pushing them back, and then helping the State Department security officers search (unsuccessfully) for the ambassador. They recovered the body of Sean Smith, and unable to find the ambassador, organized a retreat to the Annex. The State Department officers had to fight their way to the CIA base, speeding past a roadblock just down the street from the TMF. Our officers took a different route and returned to the CIA base without incident.

The second attack of the evening was on the CIA base. This
attack occurred just after midnight and within minutes of the CIA team’s arrival back from the TMF. My assessment is that some of those who had conducted the assault on the TMF—the best-armed and most highly motivated of the group—followed the State Department officers back to the Annex after they ran the roadblock. The attackers on the Annex were armed with light weapons and rocket-propelled grenades and CIA and State Department security officers drove them off in what was a short firefight. But, unlike at the TMF, this was a more organized attack with the clear goal of killing Americans.

Three and a half hours after the start of the assault on the TMF, reinforcements arrived in Benghazi in the form of CIA and military personnel who had managed to charter an aircraft from Tripoli and fly to Benghazi to assist their colleagues. After being delayed at the airport in Benghazi for some time, they arrived at the Annex at five a.m. Some of them took up fighting positions on the roof of the main building on the Agency base. They arrived with virtually no time to spare, as the third attack of the night was about to begin. There is no evidence that the final group of attackers followed our officers from the airport to the Annex, as has been alleged in the press.

It was at approximately five fifteen a.m. that the third, final, and most sophisticated attack of the night occurred. My subsequent analysis is that after the extremists were driven from the CIA Annex the first time, they regrouped, acquiring even heavier weapons and most likely additional fighters. Most important, they returned with mortars. Five mortar rounds were fired and three made direct hits on the roof of the main building, killing Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods and seriously injuring others.

Long after the attack, I asked myself, “Why did the attackers use only five mortar rounds?” They had time and space to fire additional rounds as they had driven our security officers from their positions.
The logical answer to me is clear—they had only five mortars. If this had been an assault with days, weeks, or months of planning, the terrorists would have been much better armed and they would have brought those weapons to the first assault at the TMF as well as the first assault on the CIA base. And they would have had more than just five mortar rounds for the second assault on the Annex. Libya, after all, is a country awash in weapons, including mortars. Instead all three were opportunistic attacks that escalated in sophistication during the night as the extremists had more time to organize.