Dark Forces: The Truth About What Happened in Benghazi (33 page)

The two Blue Mountain guards who had run away earlier managed to sound the alarm right at the start using their VHF radios. That gave the DS agents a few precious moments of advance warning—just enough to get out of the way. In accordance with the REACT plan, Scott Wickland, who was at the pool with the others, rushed into the main villa to take charge of the ambassador and Sean Smith, and relieved the agent who had accompanied Stevens from Tripoli, who was lounging about barefoot in his underwear and a white T-shirt. Without his quick thinking, Ambassador Stevens and Sean Smith most likely would have been slaughtered immediately.

Wickland had his protectees don flak jackets, stored in their bedrooms, and rushed them into the safe haven, leaving all other belongings behind them. As soon as he locked the security grille behind them, he radioed the TOC to tell Henderson that he had the ambassador. The security grille blocked access to roughly half of the ground floor of the large, luxurious residential villa, including multiple bedrooms, a bathroom, and a large walk-in closet with no windows, which was the designated safe haven. Wickland found his own kit, which consisted of body armor, an M-4 carbine, spare magazines, a Remingto
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70 12-gauge shotgun, a ballistic helmet, smoke grenades, a compass, whistle, and emergency medical gear. He would need it all.

The DS agent gave his cell phone to the ambassador, who began making calls to local consulates and to the embassy in Tripoli, as well as to the 17th February Martyrs Brigade. As soon as the ambassador and Sean Smith were secured inside the closet, Wickland “took up a defensive position inside the Villa C safe area, with line of sight to the safe area gate and out of view of potential intruders,” the ARB report states.

Outside was pandemonium, with gunshots and loud explosions from RPGs as the assailants opened a breach in the boundary wall between the two compounds just inside the Bravo-1 gate. David Ubben and the second DS agent who came with Stevens from Tripoli pulled out their sidearms and sprinted down the short driveway connecting Villa C to the DS side of the compound. Initially they went to the Tactical Operations Center (TOC), where Ubben’s battle kit was stored and where the other agent thought he had last seen the ambassador.

The sheer physical challenge of moving from place to place within the large compound, with gunfire rapidly getting closer, is forgotten sometimes in the telling of the events of this night. Former DS agent Fred Burton described the movements of the four ARSOs, relaying one another and sprinting to the other side of the compound to retrieve their kit, as “an elaborate spider web.” I think of it more as a desperate race for home plate. Everyone was running for their lives.

ARSO 3 and ARSO 4—the two men from Tripoli—moved to their own barracks in front of the TOC, which the State Department has called Villa B. Since they were visiting, that’s where their own weapons and battle kit were stowed.

In the meantime, the attackers had driven up from Bravo-1 gate in the gun trucks and taken up blocking positions, while foot soldiers were now moving toward the residential villa where the ambassador, Sean Smith, and Scott Wickland were holed up. They moved silently, carefully, using military hand signals as they checked each corner to make sure it was clear. While surveillance footage viewed by members of Congress showed that many of the attackers were “just milling about, trying to figure out why nobody was shooting at them,” this group knew exactly what they were doing.
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The ARB claims the two visiting ARSOs tried to reach the ambassador’s villa via the lateral driveway but saw they were outnumbered and outgunned so they turned back and barricaded themselves into the DS villa. Later, the five GRS contractors who survived the rescue attempt said they had found the DS agents from Tripoli hunkered down in a closet, still barefoot and unarmed.

Asked if he felt the DS agents had done their jobs, Representative Lynn Westmoreland said, “Absolutely not. I think this will come back to the State Department,” he said after a closed-door Intelligence Committee hearing with the CIA contractors. “They were not armed. One of them was barefooted. I believe they were totally unprepared for any kind of attack.”
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In defense of those two agents, who essentially took themselves out of the fight that night, they would have had to cross the north-south alleyway that cut the large compound into two, with the DS villa on one side and the ambassador’s residence on the other. With nine-foot walls on both sides, that alleyway was a free-fire zone that now belonged to Khalil Harb and his attackers. And they were firing at will.

So, they radioed Henderson in the TOC to tell him they were safe, but immobilized. That left Ubben and Henderson in the TOC, and Wickland with the ambassador and Sean Smith, versus somewhere between sixty to a hundred heavily armed attackers. As the ARB noted, there was “no line of sight” between the two halves of the compound, so all Henderson and Ubben knew was what they could see on the security cameras.

The first sign that things were getting really bad were the flames.

THE INITIAL RESPONSE

Greg Hicks was relaxing in his villa in Tripoli after what he described as a “routine day” when John Martinec ran in at around 9:45 PM. “Greg, Greg, the consulate’s under attack!” he yelled.

Hicks picked up his cell phone, which was on mute, and saw that he had two missed calls: one from Ambassador Stevens and the second from an unknown number. When the ambassador’s number didn’t answer he punched the unknown number and Stevens picked up. “Greg, we’re under attack,” he blurted out. Then the line went dead.
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The Embassy Compound in Tripoli also had residential villas, barracks, and a Tactical Operations Center within its walls. As Hicks went over to the TOC, he kept trying to call Stevens back on both numbers, without success. Martinec was on the phone with Alec Henderson in Benghazi, who told him that the Special Mission Compound had been breached by “at least 20 hostile individuals” with weapons. Hicks next called the CIA chief of base at the Benghazi Annex, to see if he had already dispatched reinforcements to evacuate the mission, as required in the REACT plan. The CIA chief said he was “mobilizing” reinforcements, but that they hadn’t yet moved out.

It was now about 10 PM in Benghazi, and 4 PM in Washington, D.C. Hicks then phoned the State Department Operations Center with the information. Five minutes later, the Ops Center sent out a brief notice to the secretary of state, the White House, the secretary of defense, the national security advisor, the director of national intelligence, the FBI director, and their operations staff, with the subject line: “U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack.”

(SBU) The Regional Security Officer reports the diplomatic mission is under attack. Embassy Tripoli reports approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well. Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and four COM personnel are in the compound safe haven. The 17th of February militia is providing security support.

The Operations Center will provide updates as available.

Hicks was moving quickly, and hadn’t had time yet to discuss all the details with Henderson in Benghazi. The important thing was, Washington was now in the loop, and Henderson was patched into the State Department Operations Center, where Deputy Assistant Secretary Charlene Lamb was able to follow events in Benghazi through a live audio feed.

Meanwhile, Hicks started to work the phones, just as Stevens was trying to do from the closet in the safe haven. He began by calling President Magariaf’s chief of staff to report the attack and request immediate assistance. Then he called the prime minister’s chief of staff and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to make the same request. Hicks also told the CIA chief of base in Benghazi that he was organizing a response team from Tripoli via a chartered plane for additional backup, while they kept pressing the Libyan government to get the Benghazi SSC or the militias to respond.

Glen Doherty, the former Navy SEAL who had spoken to ABC News in Southern California just two weeks earlier, was the first to volunteer.

THE FATWA

As the cars in front of the 17th February bungalow were burning, a crowd of attackers was attempting to storm Villa C, pounding on the massive, reinforced front door, trying to break in. Some ran around to the side of the villa, smashing windows with their rifle butts, but were unable to get through the security grilles. Finally, at around 10 PM local time, they backed off, and someone blew the front door open using an RPG. The explosion rocked the walls where the three Americans were huddled. They could hear bits of wood and metal slam into the walls, and then in the brief silence, a pattering like rain as small chunks of masonry fell back onto the marble floor.

And then, utter chaos erupted. The intruders swarmed inside, shouting and hooting
Allah-o Akbar!
Some of them began ransacking the elegant reception and dining area, slicing the overstuffed furniture, smashing vases, mirrors, picture frames, and everything else in sight. In their fury, they even ripped the kitchen cabinets from the walls. Former DS agent Fred Burton said their rampage had “all the charm of an urban America blackout and the bloodlust of tribal genocide.”

But Khalil Harb was not motivated by anger or revenge. He had a plan, and that was to get the ambassador and kill him.

My Iranian sources revealed that Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdeh, a senior cleric in Tehran who had been the mentor of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, issued a written Sharia law decree, or fatwa, authorizing the murder of Ambassador Stevens a few days before the attack.

Some jihadis believed they didn’t need a religious edict in order to kill American civilians. American-born imam Anwar al-Awlaqi famously told his al Qaeda followers in 2010, shortly before he himself was killed by a U.S. drone strike, that they didn’t need to consult with anyone to “fight the devil.” For Muslims, he said, “it is a question of ‘us or them.’ ”
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But the Iranians still did. The fatwa gave Ibrahim Joudaki, Khalil Harb, and the Quds Force team the certainty that if they died in this battle, they would soon be transported to paradise where they could drink from rivers of wine and enjoy the ministrations of seventy-two virgin girls.

Khalil Harb’s intelligence on the compound was detailed and accurate. While the Ansar al-Sharia pickup boys ransacked the main room of the residence, his team went to verify the location of the ambassador. From the REACT plan, they knew exactly where he was supposed to be.

At a few minutes after 10 PM local time, his men reached the steel grille blocking off the residential quarters and the safe haven from the reception areas of the ground floor. Scott Wickland saw them coming and moved back around a corner, so that they couldn’t see him. They banged their rifle butts against the steel bars. They grabbed furniture and anything they could find in a futile effort to break the locks. Wickland slipped into the closet and told Ambassador Stevens and Sean Smith to “prepare for the intruders to try to blast the safe area gate locks open.” He most likely gave his shotgun to Sean Smith, who had been trained to shoot in the military. Perhaps he offered his SIG Sauer P229 semiautomatic pistol to the ambassador. If they were going down, they might as well take some of the bad guys with them.

And, then, a miracle happened. Someone gave an order, and the attackers went away.

TY WOODS SADDLES UP

Ty Woods, a twenty-year veteran of the Navy SEALs, was chomping at the bit. As soon as the alert that the diplomatic compound was under attack came over the dedicated VHF frequency the men at the Annex used to communicate directly with the TOC at the compound, he began throwing his kit—always at the ready—into one of their armored SUVs.

The Annex had an impressive armory, and Woods, Mark G—, and the five other former SpecOps guys who were working as babysitters for the CIA in Benghazi plunged right in, pulling out their HK 416 assault rifles, a M249 Minimi light machine gun, sniper rifles, web kits, body armor, and more.

Within minutes, the seven Global Response Staff had suited up and began running back and forth to stow their gear in two of the armored Mercedes G-wagons in the courtyard. They commandeered a translator, just in case they encountered trouble along the way.

Ty’s former wife, Patricia Ann So, was not surprised that he was first to volunteer. “He was balls to the wall,” she said. “He loved life, loved adrenaline.” Rescuing hostages and responding to emergencies with highly focused violence what he had done for most of his adult life.
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As they were loading up, the CIA chief of base intercepted him, cell phone glued to his ear, and told him to hold off. Woods couldn’t believe it. They could hear the explosions at the compound less than a mile away.

The chief was a former U.S. Army officer who had been recruited into the agency after 9/11 as the CIA became increasingly focused on paramilitary operations, so he wasn’t some Ivy League desk jockey who had never fired a weapon in anger.
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He said he wanted backup. He wanted the 17th February boys to rally the troops. The situation at the compound was way out of control. He wanted gun trucks with .50 calibers. And Libyans out in front. And he wanted one of the GRS shooters to stay behind just in case. Mark G— got the short straw and remained at the Annex, where he was critically wounded later.

Woods and his fellow operators continued loading up. When they were finished, he went back to the chief to get the okay to depart and was told a second time to wait.

Ty’s father, retired attorney Charles Woods, was instrumental in setting up a Citizens Commission to investigate the Benghazi attacks and the U.S. government’s failure to protect or rescue the Americans who were posted there. “Three times Ty and several of his fellow defenders asked for permission to run to the gun,” he told me at the first public session of the commission, “but they were told to stand down.”