Benghazi

The Definitive Report

JACK MURPHY, BRANDON WEBB, AND THE EDITORS OF SOFREP.COM

Contents

Prologue

1: The Libyan Powder Keg

2: The Secret War in North Africa

3: Sitting Ducks

4: 9/11/2012

5: Myth Busting

6: Conclusion

Appendix I: Bios of the Four American Heroes

Appendix II: A Brief History of Libya

About the Authors

Copyright

About the Publisher

Prologue

THE DEADLY ATTACK on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, symbolically coinciding with the eleventh anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, triggered a confluence of events that spilled into US domestic politics, military covert operations, and a number of classified CIA programs. Because the terrorist strike occurred in the run-up to the US presidential election, it became a foregone conclusion that the truth of the attacks would be swept up and lost in political squabbling as both major parties jockeyed for position and got some cheap digs in on their opponents. Added to the media circus was the fact that various US government institutions and agencies did engage in a very real cover-up: they responsibly tried to keep covert operations secret. But they also sought to limit political liability on the guilty parties whose negligence led to the attack in the first place.

Conservatives claimed that President Obama callously denied military reinforcements to American forces on the ground in Libya who were badly outnumbered and outgunned. The American right sought to portray Obama in the most negative light possible, accusing him of glossing over the attacks to compensate for foreign policy failures. The narrative went, “President Obama: not tough on terrorism and betrayer of US Navy SEALs.”

Liberals decried the Republican persecution, doing damage control by laying blame on forces beyond the administration’s control. According to this narrative, the Benghazi attack happened because of an irresponsible amateur film that defamed the Prophet Muhammad, inflaming the religious fervor of the Islamic world. Soon protests formed outside US embassies across the Middle East, and the series of events rapidly reached its bloody climax in the attack on the US consulate in Libya.

For their part, libertarians announced that the attacks were further proof that America had no business interfering in the affairs of foreign countries. Meanwhile, conspiracy theorists pointed toward a sinister plot by powerful dark forces to liquidate Ambassador Stevens. In fact, every party commenting on or involved in the Benghazi affair seemed to refer to its opposition as conspiracy theorists at some point in order to delegitimize conflicting opinions.

This e-book aims to cut through the static and white noise generated by the media pundits, partisan politics, and unfounded conspiracy theories. The truth does involve some conspiracy. After all, the major players were the CIA, Pentagon, Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), and State Department—institutions synonymous with backroom politics, intelligence gathering, and covert operations. But this report points in directions, and draws conclusions, that have been completely neglected by both the mainstream and alternative media up to this point.

When it comes to the hidden world of terrorists, counter-terrorists, and spies, the truth is usually stranger than fiction. Because of this, many will find the facts unfolded in this e-book to be both uncomfortable and unsatisfying. Obama’s foes will see a picture emerge in which the President is far from being a callous, evil man. Passionate supporters of the President will be angry to see Obama as an aloof and rather ineffective leader. Both political parties will be disappointed to see that this story, the 9/11 Benghazi attack, really doesn’t involve the President all that much one way or the other.

This is the reality of the modern state. The bureaucratic machinery is as extensive and sprawling as it is expensive. Various governmental agencies act under their own authority and make their own decisions. Mid- and high-level officials make decisions and latch on to the levers of power. With the Department of Defense running highly complex operations all over the globe, twenty-four hours a day, there is no way for American power to be projected effectively if every bureaucrat is waiting for the President to bless his actions. The power to act has to be delegated down the chain of command; that is a crucial—and cautionary—aspect of this story.

However, it cannot be overstated that this e-book does not cop out or shy away from the truth by placing blame on the rusty, dulled mechanics of a faulty bureaucracy. We do not accuse some abstract technical detail, saying that bad intelligence or poor communications led to the Benghazi debacle. Americans have heard enough of these types of excuses, from the original 9/11 attacks to the 2008 housing bubble and subsequent economic crash. We name names and hold accountable those who acted cowardly and those who erred by seeking to protect their political careers at the expense of human lives.

We also point to the heroes, men of tremendous character who showed exemplary physical and moral courage the night of the attack.

The story, and the aftermath, of the Benghazi attack is a complex series of events involving insider politics between agencies in proverbial smoke-filled rooms. It features double-dealing political players in Washington. It involves the interaction between different military units and paramilitary organizations. To the outsider, to the American public, it is all very complicated and strange. This is another reason why the full story has not yet been articulated to Americans, but we believe that an informed public is necessary in a functioning democracy.

This e-book was written with the consultation of over a dozen experts, Special Operations personnel (many of them contributing editors of SOFREP.com), and others privy to inside information from the halls of power in Washington, DC. For obvious reasons, their identities cannot be revealed. This is likely to be the definitive account of the Benghazi attack for years to come—until historians can sift through the archives, get documents declassified, and interview all of the participants.

For now, we hope that this e-book tells it like it is. In this account, the actions of those involved speak for themselves. Let the chips fall where they may.

1

The Libyan Powder Keg

THE EVENTS OF 9/11/12 did not happen in a vacuum, something that Ambassador Chris Stevens no doubt would have reminded us of if he had not been tragically killed during the attack. By September 2012, Libya was a ticking time bomb: no strong central government after Gaddafi’s fall; a large population of well-armed and experienced Islamic extremists who had been sending a steady stream of fighters to Iraq and Afghanistan for years; and scores of covert Special Operations and paramilitary units throughout the country, disturbing the local hornets’ nests of terrorists. When the situation eventually exploded, a poorly defended outpost of the State Department would bear the full brunt of the blast. This is the story of the Benghazi tragedy.

We begin by outlining the dangers inherent in Libya’s situation before the fall of Gaddafi. Readers interested in a fuller history of Libya are invited to consult Appendix II at the end of the book.

LIBYA’S HOMEGROWN JIHADISTS

Prior to becoming the United States ambassador to Libya in 2012, Chris Stevens had served in the country twice before. A Foreign Service officer since 1991, Stevens had his first stint in Libya as Deputy Chief of Mission in 2007–2009; he returned as a Special Representative in 2011, when he came in on a Greek cargo ship to establish rapport with the rebels and the transitional Libyan government during the Civil War.

Because of Bradley Manning’s leaked classified documents on WikiLeaks, we now can draw upon a number of diplomatic cables written by Stevens during his 2007–2009 work in Libya. These cables help us understand Benghazi in two ways. The first is that they give us some insight into Stevens’s character and professionalism. Second, because he was a subject matter expert in Libyan history and culture, Stevens’s cables provide an accurate portrait of the country. In particular, they reveal the homegrown forces of Islamic extremism that would explode in Benghazi.

During his tenure as Deputy Chief of Mission, Stevens visited the northeastern coast of Libya—a region known for being a hotbed of Islamic extremism and for supplying Iraq with foreign fighters, including suicide bombers, who targeted American soldiers. The largest city on the northeastern coast, Benghazi—population 600,000—and its smaller neighbor to the east, Derna, were the two leading exporters of Libyan jihadist warriors to global battlefields. (One author can attest to this personally, as he was in Mosul, Iraq, in 2005 with 3rd Ranger Battalion and participated in missions that killed or captured Libyan foreign fighters.)

A large contingent of the citizens of Benghazi and Derna were proud of their sons for conducting suicide attacks in Iraq against the American soldiers there. Forming the eastern edge of the infamous Barbary Coast, these cities have a historical predilection toward refusing any and all forms of occupation going back to their resistance against the Ottomans and the Italian colonists in years past. This also translated into a resistance to the Gaddafi regime, which the Libyan Islamists saw as being allied with the American occupiers in Iraq. Post 9/11, Gaddafi had begun cooperating with the US in the War on Terror, even allowing Libya to become a center in the CIA’s rendition flight network for detained suspected terrorists held by American operatives.

In the 1980s, the Libyan Islamists were similarly opposed to the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, Stevens writes in one cable. Residents of Benghazi and Derna traveled to Afghanistan at that time to fight against the Soviets, and when they returned home they brought with them some of the most radical and extreme religious ideas—such as Wahhabi Islam, originally from Saudi Arabia.

These ideas found a home in and around Benghazi, particularly in the mosques spread throughout the area. These are closed, tightly bound communities, wary of outsiders. Those suspected of ratting others out to security forces were quickly ostracized, making it particularly difficult for Gaddafi’s security services to monitor what the imams were preaching.

Other factors that contributed to northeastern Libya’s becoming a center for Islamic extremism include poverty and a perception that Gaddafi was deliberately keeping eastern Libya poor by not investing in jobs and infrastructure projects so that the people of Benghazi would be unable to gain political power in Tripoli or work against him in any way. With few economic and educational opportunities, young men were not able to marry until later in life (early to mid-30’s), and many felt that they had nothing to lose by striking out at Americans in Iraq, seeing it as the only avenue to imbuing their lives with meaning. The families of these martyrs were rewarded with payments from radical mosques, but the payments were no more than 150–200 Libyan dinars, which is approximately half of what their sons could have been making by working typical government jobs.

In one cable, Stevens references documents seized during Objective Massey on the Iraq-Syria border in 2007 that pointed to Derna as the second-largest pool of foreign fighters flowing into Iraq. This operation was conducted by 3rd Ranger Battalion of the 75th Ranger Regiment, which hit Objective Massey in 2007. The Rangers were on standby for Time Sensitive Target (TST) missions in Mosul, Iraq, when they got the call that they were to intercept a High Value Target (HVT) at a small compound near the city of Sinjar where a group of terrorists were having a meeting. Donning their kits and loading rifles, they headed to the airfield to fly out to the objective.

When the Rangers hit the ground in Black Hawk helicopters, they immediately came under fire from an enemy ambush. Maneuvering on the terrorists with an AC–130 gunship providing fire support, the Rangers killed two Saudi foreign fighters. Some of the Rangers cleared the trench line that the terrorists had been firing from while the others chased down several who were trying to escape.

With the objective secure, the Rangers began conducting Sensitive Site Exploitation, or SSE, a method of evidence collection that would hopefully lead them to other targets. SSE lasted about two hours, and there was so much material at this terrorist way station that it couldn’t all be brought back, so it was photographed before being burned.

Among the materials found were dossiers on hundreds of foreign fighters who had been pouring into Iraq. These jihadists were equipped with Glock pistols and Night Vision goggles and carried travel documents from Saudi Arabia and Syria. The CTC white paper shows that the majority of foreign fighters flowing into Iraq were coming from Saudi Arabia, with Libya trailing in second place; however, when we look at how many foreign fighters per capita made their way to Iraq, Libya is clearly in the top spot. When CTC broke down the numbers as to how many fighters originated from each city, they found that Derna, Libya, was nearly tied with Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Third and fourth place belonged to Mecca and Benghazi, respectively. CTC found that 60.2% of the Libyan terrorists came from Derna and 23.9% came from Benghazi.

BENGHAZI AND DERNA have traditionally been the home of jama'ah Al-libiyah Al-muqatilah, the “Libyan Fighting Group,” which includes Libyan veterans of the Afghan insurgency against the Soviets. The group’s emir was Abu Layth Al-Libi until he was taken out by a Predator drone strike in Pakistan in 2008.

On November 3rd of 2007, Abu Layth Al-Libi and Al Qaeda (AQ) leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri announced that the Libyan Fighting Group and Al Qaeda were officially joining forces. This coalition also helped unify the United States and the Gaddafi regime in the shared interest of fighting terrorism. Stevens wrote in a cable at the time that while the Libyan elite saw emerging Islamic fundamentalism as a threat to their streams of income, many Libyan civilians welcomed the merger. While not fundamentalist in nature, they saw the Libyan Fighting Group as a challenge to the corrupt Gaddafi regime.

While Stevens commented on the difficulty faced in dealing with Gaddafi in regard to African regional issues, he did state outright to General Ward (AFRICOM commander prior to being removed for misconduct) and Secretary Rice that Libya (pre-Civil War) was a strong ally in the fight against terrorism. He reiterated that Gaddafi feared a “terrorism belt” that stretched through the Sahel on his southern border from Mauritania to Sudan and was proud of the fact that he’d convinced the tauregs in the south to cease smuggling weapons and terrorists through the desert in exchange for economic incentives. Stevens made it clear that Libyan security services took the threat of the Libyan Fighting Group and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) very seriously. So long as Gaddafi remained in power, these elements were kept in check internally by the dictator.

LIBYA’S WEAPONS CACHE

What’s also clear from Stevens’s cable is the astonishing amount of arms and ammunition flooding into Libya during Gaddafi’s last years in power—a vast weapons cache that could potentially outfit internal extremist elements should the dictator fall. Indeed, behind the scenes, numerous weapons deals were being made between the Gaddafi regime, arms manufacturers, and various foreign governments, in some instances in violation of international law. In one cable Stevens describes how York Guns of the United Kingdom was brokering a deal between Libya’s People’s Committee for Defense and an unknown Ukrainian arms manufacturer for 130,000 Kalashnikov pattern rifles. Stevens also notes that the Italian media reported in 2007 that several weapons traffickers had been arrested for arranging a deal that would have delivered one million Chinese-made T–56 rifles to Libya, with a further ten million rounds of ammunition. At the time, Libya had a standing army of just 60,000 troops.

The media coverage of the Benghazi attack often overlooked Chris Stevens’s previous experience in Libya in 2007—and again during the 2011 civil war. Stevens likely had extensive knowledge of Libyan weapons stockpiles, perhaps making him the foremost expert on the subject in the US government. As Deputy Chief of Mission and later Special Representative to Libya, he knew much of Libya’s efforts to procure weapons and of the various re-exportation schemes that the Gaddafi regime implemented across Africa. He was also aware of various back-channel agreements that the Libyan government had struck with arms dealers in the Ukraine, Romania, and other Eastern Bloc nations.

After the civil war, the White House recognized the gravity of the fact that Gaddafi’s millions of arms were now left unprotected. The administration more than likely capitalized on Stevens’s knowledge and used him to help reconsolidate many of the weapons—a project sometimes carried out by Western Private Military Companies (PMCs). But whatever weapons were collected must have been a drop in the bucket. Libya’s rebels, including the Islamic extremist faction from Benghazi and Derna, were now armed to the teeth.

WHILE IT IS an open secret that the United States has been facilitating, or at the very least allowing, large weapons transfers from Libya to rebel fighters in Syria, it is unlikely that Stevens was involved in these activities, as they do not fall under the purview of a Foreign Services officer in the State Department. Furthermore, Ambassador Stevens did not see eye to eye with White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan when it came to unilateral military action, which Stevens saw as counterproductive to his mission in Libya.

Stevens was trusted and respected by the Obama White House for his high levels of talent, confidence, and skill. However, John Brennan also ran a highly compartmentalized program out of the White House in regard to weapons transfers, and Stevens would not have been trusted with that type of information. Stevens likely helped consolidate as many weapons as possible after the war to safeguard them, at which point Brennan exported them overseas to start another conflict.

In this case, Stevens was probably not excluded from the program because of his ideological differences with Brennan as much as for the sake of maintaining a need-to-know around the classified project. With the left hand not talking to the right, it was impossible for Stevens to see or predict the JSOC expedition into Libya in late summer of 2012, which ultimately led to the attack on the consulate.

2

The Secret War in North Africa

DURING THE REBELLION against Gaddafi and in the aftermath of his death, Libya and North Africa became a staging ground for a dizzying array of operations by SpecOps, paramilitary forces, and international private military contractors working for everyone from European nations to multibillion-dollar oil corporations. At the same time, militant Islamic groups began taking advantage of the power vacuum across North Africa and consolidated their strength in places like Benghazi instead of sending their homegrown fighters abroad to Afghanistan and elsewhere. These groups were keeping JSOC in business. Meanwhile, CIA operatives fanned out across Libya, searching for Gaddafi’s stores of chemical weapons and yellow cake uranium. Amid this caldron of (often violent) covert activity, diplomats like Ambassador Chris Stevens were in-country attempting to practice statecraft and establish relationships with the new leaders of Libya. This chapter aims to provide a sense of the scale and scope of the “secret war” raging in Libya that created the conditions for three of the major players mentioned above—State Department diplomats, CIA and JSOC covert operators, and militant Islamist groups—to collide on 9/11/12.

ON DECEMBER 17TH, 2010, Tarek Al-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi was immortalized when he set himself alight in protest of harassment by local officials in Tunisia. Tarek’s self-immolation and the disclosure of documents that showed evidence of government corruption by WikiLeaks fueled a revolutionary movement in Tunisia that ultimately unseated the government in early 2011.

What became known as the Arab Spring then jumped to Egypt in a campaign of civil disobedience against authoritarianism that much of the Arab world had waited nearly fifty years for. The leadership of both Tunisia and Egypt was soon toppled while protests were breaking out all across the Middle East.

With movements directed against authoritarian regimes springing up throughout the Middle East, Libyan protestors took to the streets and quickly gained control of Benghazi before moving into Tripoli. Security forces attempted to fight back against them.

By March of 2011, NATO nations—joined by Sweden, Qatar, the UAE, and Jordan—enforced a no-fly zone over Libya and began bombing Libyan military and pro-Gaddafi targets. Many questions remain as to why the Western elites shifted from a policy of accommodation and even cooperation with Libya to one of providing airstrikes for the Arab Spring movement. While the Arab Spring represented a real movement by people with legitimate grievances against their government, to what extent Western intelligence services exploited this movement to their own ends remains unknown.

What we do know is that the British Special Air Service (SAS) landed in Libya at some point—probably the secretive intelligence gathering component of the SAS called “The Increment,” which works alongside MI–6. Elite counter-terrorist operators from America’s Delta Force were deployed to Libya as “analysts,” which allowed President Obama to declare that America did not have any boots on the ground but was simply providing air support for the rebels. The reality was that Delta Force had a small contingent instructing the rebels in the finer points of weapons and tactics. However, they probably took a backseat role when it came to combat, allowing the rebels to fight and die for their country rather than putting themselves in a position where they could be killed or captured by Gaddafi’s forces.

Any Americans who chose to take an active role in the fighting faced some very real risks. Matthew VanDyke made friends with a number of Libyans while traveling through the country on a motorbike tour in 2008. When he talked to his Libyan friends over the phone during the uprising in 2011, he decided to join the fight. Not long after his return home from the civil war, SOFREP interviewed Matthew about his experiences in Libya—including his capture by enemy forces.

There were front lines. Thanks to NATO intervention the sides were evenly matched enough on the ground that it never really devolved into a guerrilla war, at least not in eastern Libya where I was fighting. The terrain on the eastern front lines was flat, open desert, which also limited the ability to use guerrilla tactics. We didn’t really have night vision gear and the enemy had very little, ruling out night operations. The rebels also didn’t have enough time to train, or enough experience, to be effective with guerrilla warfare. We also had an appalling lack of intel, and very little communications equipment which made coordinating attacks difficult. The enemy did hit us at Ra’s Lanuf with a hit and run attack while I was in the city, and I was part of the mission to search the desert for the attackers afterwards.

At the beginning of the war we mostly had small arms. The heaviest thing I saw before my capture was the DShK machine gun, although I do know that rockets were being used by our side at that time. When I escaped prison and returned to the front lines things had dramatically changed. There were a variety of rocket launchers, AA guns, and 106s mounted on technicals, GRAD trucks, and tanks. The artillery, GRADs, and tanks operated as organized, coordinated units, but the majority of rebels were small militias consisting of technicals, and many rebels and militias operated largely independently.

As a result, the front lines were basically both sides throwing an incredible amount of rounds at each other day after day, often without visual confirmation of the enemy, and often from great distances which meant a sometimes constant whizzing of bullets over your head fired from unknown positions. There were a lot of snipers, a lot of mortars and rockets, and a lot of seemingly random firing in the general direction of the enemy by both sides. Life or death was largely a matter of luck.

Often times you would just see muzzle flashes of the enemy, or nothing at all. Eventually the gunfire from the other side would die down because a few were killed or were flushed out and retreated, and we would advance. It was town to town, treeline to treeline, street to street, and building to building. Usually they’d put up a good fight for the day, withdraw a bit at night, take up new defensive positions, and be waiting for us as we advanced the next day. They did a good job of predicting where our rally points would be, and had zeroed on them to hit us with mortar and rocket fire when we arrived.

Most of the combat was along the coastal highway, so the front lines were predictable and well-defined. Once inside of Sirte the situation changed somewhat and several fronts opened up, and the lack of intel and communications equipment (some rebels had radios or satellite phones but most did not, and our jeep did not) made it extremely dangerous in terms of not knowing where the enemy was at any moment, and the danger of friendly fire. Friendly fire was always a major concern given the lack of intel and communication, and the fact that very few rebels had enough training with firearms and firearm safety.

Combat was exactly what you’d expect in a popular revolution fought by citizen soldiers. It was like something you’d expect to see after the apocalypse. Motley crews of freedom fighters in pickup trucks with a lot of weapons and little training, firing a ton of rounds in the direction of the enemy and trying to gain some ground each day. We fought with mostly 1970s and 80s Soviet weaponry. There wasn’t much body armor—I only got a used vest a few days before the war ended and it didn’t have any plates in it. I only wore it for some protection from shrapnel. I never had a helmet. The only protective gear that I had consistently were ballistic shades.

It really was just like in the media reports. And at times strange. I saw dead camels in the street in Sirte, and camels standing around calmly in the middle of combat.

I had around 40 engagements during the war. I kept notes of each one to keep track.

Matthew was captured while conducting a reconnaissance patrol to the town of Bregna. His patrol was ambushed, and he was knocked unconscious in the process. He woke up in a Libyan jail cell and was imprisoned by the Internal Security Agency and placed in Maktab Al-Nasser Prison. He remained imprisoned for 165 days. Finally, rebels advanced toward the prison, and other escaping prisoners freed Matthew, allowing him to link back up with his rebel friends and continue to fight Gaddafi’s forces.

Private Military Companies (PMCs) were also on the ground during the Libyan civil war. British oil companies dispatched military contractors to Libya to help extract their workers and secure expensive pieces of oil-drilling equipment—echoing the actions of Executive Outcomes in Soyo, Angola, during the ’90s.

Other PMCs were working for various intelligence agencies.

Private Military Contractors in Libya. Courtesy of SOFREP.

Among the PMCs in Libya at this time were SECOPEX of France, led by Pierre Marziali; Blue Mountain Group of the UK; Canada’s Garda Security Group; Control Risks Group, HIS, and the Olive Group, also out of the UK; AKE, run by former SAS operator Andew Kain; and Galice Security out of France, led by former GIGN commando Federic Gallois. MVM, a company that had a large number of CIA contracts at the time, also had people on the ground in the aftermath of the civil war. Rumor has it that they may have been hunting down and destroying Gaddafi’s weapons stockpiles. The possible involvement of other American PMCs with known agency links—such as Xe (Select), Triple Canopy, and SOCMG—is something that needs further investigation.

(One curious event involving a Private Military Company in Libya happened when the CEO of SECOPEX was executed in Benghazi. Something that often escapes the public and the media alike is that PMCs are often used as proxy forces by their home countries, giving policy makers at home a certain amount of protection from their electorate when things go wrong. Keeping with the theme of “no boots on the ground,” France allegedly dispatched SECOPEX into Libya to serve their interests. In May of 2011, The New York Times reported on vague information coming out of Libya about the company’s co-founder Pierre Marziali. The initial reports sounded strange because the CEO had been killed at a rebel checkpoint, but the other SECOPEX employees in the vehicle had been left unharmed. SOFREP sources report that the CEO was removed from his vehicle, taken aside, and killed. The other French contractors were then sent on their way. It seems that someone saw Pierre as an obstacle.)

Since the rebels announced soon after the war began that they would be opening a central bank and were ready to begin oil exports, it seems likely that various intelligence services that wanted to see Gaddafi thrown out of power may have used PMCs to avoid putting soldiers on the ground. They may even have given money to the rebels under the table, with which to pay their own PMCs.

The South African press has reported that white South African mercenaries were recruited by an oil corporation employee named Sarah Penfold to save the Gaddafi family. These mercenaries provided close protection for Gaddafi and also evacuated his sister to Algeria. Some speculation holds that these South Africans were recruited to be double agents. First they would build trust with Gaddafi by getting his sister out of the country, but later they would turn on him. What the truth is behind these rumors we may never know.

We do know that the South Africans were protecting Gaddafi when his convoy came under air attack from NATO aircraft. After the bombing, a large group of rebels attacked the convoy. The South Africans cut their losses and ran while the rebels moved in and killed Gaddafi. At least one South African mercenary died in the process.

SOFREP corresponded with former SAS Officer Simon Mann in the days after Gaddafi’s execution. Mann, the architect behind the failed 2004 “Wonga Coup” in Equatorial Guinea, confirmed that he knew several of the South African mercenaries protecting Gaddafi.

The story gets stranger still. A video showing Gaddafi’s body being dragged and sodomized with a bayonet has voices in the background, voices speaking Spanish with a Colombian accent. Could this misplaced Colombian have been working for the UAE’s Reflexive Responses? Set up by Erik Prince—of Blackwater fame—Reflexive Responses was established at the request of one of the UAE’s princes. With a core nucleus consisting of Kiwi SAS veterans and South Africans that functions as a counter-terrorist force, the main body of this Private Military Company is known to consist of Colombian military veterans.

With only the support of the one prince, Erik Prince was kicked out of the UAE after a falling-out over a New York Times story that laid out the terms and conditions of Reflexive Responses’s entire contract. The company still exists, but it seems that Prince has been persona non grata in the UAE ever since.

Who the mysterious Colombian heard in the videotape is will be difficult to discern. Too many people across Western Europe and the Middle East wanted Gaddafi dead. It would have been highly embarrassing if Gaddafi had stood trial in the International Criminal Court and started talking about what governments he had under-the-table agreements with. This is the same reason that SEAL Team Six had to liquidate Osama Bin Laden in Abbotabad, Pakistan. Had he been brought back for trial, he would have revealed the associations he’d had with the US government when the CIA supported the Mujahedin’s war against the Soviets, calling American foreign policy into question.

Libya seemed to be becoming something of a free-for-all, with Gaddafi loyalists, rebel fighters, mercenaries, jihadists, contractors, and SAS and Delta force soldiers running around the battle space. Navigating this mess on behalf of the United States was Christopher Stevens, who arrived in Libya as a Special Representative of the State Department during the civil war.

With NATO enforcing a no-fly area over the warzone, there were no commercial flights into Libya, so Stevens and his entourage had to come into the country on a Greek cargo ship docking in Benghazi. Fluent in Arabic and French, Stevens had held diplomatic posts in Israel, Syria, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, in addition to his previous position as the Deputy Chief of Mission between 2007 and 2009. Known for his ability to mix it up with the locals and stroll around the souks of the Middle East on his own, Stevens was by all accounts the right man for the challenging task that lay ahead of him in the midst of a full-blown civil war.

BY THEIR NATURE, very little is known about covert and clandestine operations—unless, of course, something goes drastically wrong.

At five in the morning on April 20th, 2012, a van hurtled over the guardrail on a bridge crossing the Niger River in the West African nation of Mali. In total, six people were killed when the van sank into the river below. Three were Moroccan prostitutes. One was a US Army Civil Affairs soldier. Another was listed as Civil Affairs as a cover for his real work. The remaining fatality was Master Sergeant Trevor Bast, assigned to Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) at Ft. Belvoir, also a cover. Bast and one of the Civil Affairs soldiers were almost certainly members of the elite, but relatively unknown, Intelligence Support Activity.

Intelligence Support Activity, or ISA, operates under various codenames, which rotate every few years. As a part of JSOC, ISA operators help prepare battlespace for other Special Operations units, usually Delta Force or SEAL Team Six. Previous ISA missions include hunting down war criminals in the Balkans and locating Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. Man hunting is one of this unit’s specialties—part of a robust list of SIGINT and HUMINT capabilities. Like the rest of JSOC, ISA has not been hurting for work during the War on Terror.

Special Operations forces had been focusing on Africa for a number of years. As Rangers, Delta, and SEALs churned through one High Value Target after another in Afghanistan and Iraq, strategic planners knew that Islamic radicals would be looking for new places to seek safe harbor and to stage future operations. Blue Squadron of SEAL Team Six culled more than a few Al-Shabbab terrorists in Somalia, while Red Squadron executed the USS Maersk hostage rescue mission in Somali pirate waters. Meanwhile, Special Forces and SEALs moved into Uganda, seeking to rid the country of the already-defunct Lord’s Resistance Army. The British SBS launched a failed hostage rescue mission in Nigeria, in broad daylight, in March of 2012.

West Africa took on a different flavor. Through the Joint Special Operations Task Force Trans-Sahara, Special Forces ODAs had been training soldiers in Mali to battle AQIM. Making life difficult for the operators working out of the US embassy in Mali was Ambassador Milovanovic, who did not care for or trust the military. Compounding the problem, the Defense Attaché came from the US Air Force and had a poor understanding of Special Operations missions and capabilities.

In the months immediately after 9/11, Delta Force operators had been able to hunt down terrorists in a number of different countries, sometimes unilaterally, usually through host nation counterparts. Eight years later, the bureaucracy had come back in full swing, and the days were long gone when missions could be blessed by a handshake between a JSOC operator and the ambassador.

The nearby 2011 Libyan civil war also affected Mali, as Gaddafi had been a heavy hitter in the country before he was abandoned by his South African bodyguards and executed in the street.

Many taureg fighters, who had been allied with Gaddafi going back to the 1987 Toyota War with Chad, fought for him during the Libyan civil war in 2011. After Gaddafi was defeated, these fighters returned home with weapons, combat experience, and the motivation to carve out a separate, independent state for themselves.

When the coup sparked in Mali, formal US military assistance to the government was withdrawn, however AQIM remained a regional threat, one that no one wanted to see rise to power in the wake of a coup. AQIM was known for kidnapping—mostly Europeans, from whom they made millions in ransom dollars each year. Jihadist fighters coming back from Afghanistan also joined their ranks and began making deals with Al-Shabbab in Somalia and the Nigerian Taliban. Reportedly, many of these Nigerians had attended AQIM training camps.

What was ISA doing in Mali when two of their members and a Civil Affairs soldier were killed? AQIM was the main focus, and the Mali coup intersected with the mission. More than likely these ISA operators were working the intelligence piece for Direct Action operations that would be carried out by Malian military units or for airstrikes that would take out AQIM HVTs.

Sadly, the driver, Master Sergeant Bast, lost control of the vehicle they were riding in. The three Moroccan women were prostitutes more than likely trafficked into Mali from their home country. At the time of the crash, Bast was driving the van south, toward a safe house used by one of the ISA operators.

Every Special Operations unit has some black marks on its record. Delta Force has Operation Eagle Claw, the failed effort to recover American hostages held in Iran in 1980. SEAL Team Six accidentally killed Linda Norgrove, a hostage they were supposed to rescue from the Taliban in Afghanistan. Pat Tillman died in a tragic friendly fire incident while serving in 2nd Ranger Battalion. ISA makes mistakes like the rest of the Special Operations community, but this single incident should not paint the unit in a negative light, especially when one considers the volume of their work during the War on Terror, the vast majority of which has gone completely unreported.

It should also not tarnish the image of the three soldiers directly involved. Each contributed years of service to his country.

Meanwhile, in East Africa, a U–28 airplane wired up to collect Signal Intelligence crashed in Djibouti. Wired magazine’s Danger Room reported that, “the crew of the single-engine U–28 had been on a mission that ‘had to do with ISR’—that is, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance for special operations forces on the ground. The U–28 is a small, retrofitted commercial plane that looks indistinguishable from a civilian plane to the naked eye, especially from high in the air.”

Operated by a crew of four airmen, the U–28 could record electronic intercepts and take reconnaissance photos that would later be used by Special Operations troops to conduct combat operations.

Throughout West Africa, various intelligence-gathering assets were moved into place. Behind closed doors, President Obama had given his counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, carte blanche to run operations in North Africa and the Middle East, provided he didn’t do anything that ended up becoming an exposé in The New York Times and embarrassing the administration. In 2012, a secret war across North Africa was well underway.

Sources indicate that ISR platforms like the U–28 that crashed in Djibouti have been a constant presence in the skies over West Africa as well. Operating under the codename “Creek Sand,” these surveillance flights were based out of Burkina Faso but flew over Mali.

With JSOC, Brennan waged his own unilateral operations in North Africa outside of the traditional command structure. These Direct Action (DA) operations, unlike the traditional ISR missions mentioned above, were “off the books” in the sense that they were not coordinated through the Pentagon or other governmental agencies, including the CIA. With Obama more than likely providing a rubber stamp, the chain of command went from Brennan to McRaven, who would then mobilize the men of ISA, SEAL Team Six, or Delta Force to conduct these missions.

This way, the operations remained tightly compartmentalized to prevent knowledge of them from leaking to the public, something that the Obama administration had become weary of after getting in hot water due to the leaks they themselves initiated after the Osama Bin Laden raid. Of course, the problem became that they had to find ways to “deconflict” JSOC operations with those conducted by the CIA and by other branches of the military so that they didn’t step on other ongoing missions.

While ISA and others developed intelligence on the ground, a small JSOC element was secretly ferried to the sprawling naval airbase in Southern Europe. A few dozen men strong, this element was in place to conduct operations in Algeria, Libya, Mali, and Nigeria, and perhaps other countries as well.

Sometime prior to September of 2012, this JSOC element was directed by John Brennan to conduct combat operations in Libya. These operations targeted a high-level Al Qaeda operative who will not be named here out of consideration for operational security.

WITH THE LIBYAN Fighting Group essentially defunct, a group called Ansar Al-Sharia, meaning supporters of Sharia Islamic law, is now the most prominent Islamic extremist group in Libya. The group gained some notoriety during the 2011 revolution, in which it played a small role in the battle for Sirte. The group may have embellished its actual participation after the fact in order to gain more exposure.

Ansar Al-Sharia gained traction during the Libyan civil war as people took up arms against the Gaddafi regime. On February 20th of 2012, the blast from a suicide bomber tore apart the headquarters of Gaddafi’s security forces in Benghazi. Suicide vests are considered by many to be an indicator of a jihadist action.

The group and its leader, Abu Sufian Bin Qumu, hail from the Libyan port city of Derna—a notorious hotbed of Islamic extremism, as mentioned above—but have also set up shop in another center for international jihadists: Benghazi. Abu Sufian Bin Qumu is actually a former Guantanamo prison inmate who was released from US custody in 2007. Previously, he had worked for one of Osama Bin Laden’s companies in Sudan before traveling to Pakistan to wage jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. In 2001, he is reported to have traveled into Afghanistan, where he worked for the Wafa Humanitarian Organization, a charity that was actually an Al Qaeda front, until he was arrested by authorities in Pakistan after being tipped off by Libyan security forces in 2002.

The Pakistanis then turned Qumu over to the US authorities, who transferred him to Gitmo in May of 2002.

Abu Sufian Bin Qumu.

Unsubstantiated reports point to Abu Sufian Bin Qumu as being Bin Laden’s driver, which would indicate that they had a very close relationship. Given that Bin Qumu was released from Gitmo before taking control of Ansar Al-Sharia, one must ask whether or not American intelligence services had “flipped” him while he was held in duress at the Guantanamo Bay prison facility. Is the Libyan terrorist leader a double, or even a triple agent?

Whatever the case, he was released from Guantanamo in 2007 and handed over to Libyan security forces until Gaddafi ordered him released with dozens of other dissidents in 2010 to celebrate his 41st year in power and as part of a deal struck with former leaders of the Libyan Fighting Group. In a recent interview posted on Ansar Al-Sharia’s Facebook page, Qumu claims that he was tortured in Guantanamo and is deeply resentful of the United States.

The group is believed to be attempting to grow its numbers by recruiting from the disenfranchised in Derna and Benghazi, and also to be running information operations to mold public perceptions through a media outlet called Al-Raya Media Productions Foundation, based in Benghazi. The group’s I/O message is to depict itself as the “defender of Islam and sharia,” and to “highlight[e] its goodwill and civic activities in Benghazi, such as visits to hospitals and trash cleanup efforts” in hopes of establishing credibility and legitimacy with the local population. Such techniques for ingratiating themselves to the public are also seen in groups such as Hezbollah and, more recently, Syrian jihadist rebels. While the idea of a kinder, friendlier jihadist group may seem laughable, these are actually advanced propaganda efforts that attempt to mold popular perceptions and are especially dangerous where the state is weak and failing governmental institutions have left a power vacuum.

Pictured above is the Ansar Al-Sharia logo, with the now-ubiquitous black flag of Al Qaeda proudly displayed.

One US government report on Islamic extremism in Libya contains an interesting passage about groups such as Ansar Al-Sharia:

In the process [of creating an Islamic Caliphate], al-Qaeda will seek to undermine the current process of rebuilding Libyan state institutions as a way of preventing the establishment of strong state counterterrorism capabilities that could hinder its ability to grow in Libya. As an example of this strategy, in late May 2012, a video surfaced on YouTube from the previously unknown figure Abu Mus’ab Al-Huwari and narrated by the similarly unknown Abu Dujanah Al-Aquri, who identify themselves as “mujahidin.” The video threatens to attack the Libyan government if it refuses to withdraw from counterterrorism agreements with the West, or if it allows its territory to be used to attack jihadists in North Africa, which appears to be a reference to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The video appeared after several attacks on international targets in eastern Libya were committed by jihadist groups, including the Brigades of the Imprisoned Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman in Benghazi.

In other words, Al Qaeda and other jihadists have the goal not just of establishing a system of Sharia law but of hollowing out any existing state institutions that could threaten their own base of power. This is an important point that has played into counter-terrorist operations in Libya.

Additionally, Ansar Al-Sharia is known to conduct assassinations and bombings directed against former Gaddafi loyalists and current government officials, attacks that serve as a recruitment tool for disenfranchised youths rather than as a means to a political end. Around Derna, the group has set up various training camps, at least one known to be home to senior Al Qaeda operative Abd Al-Baset Azzouz. Azzouz was dispatched to run Libyan AQ operations from Pakistan by none other than Al-Zawahiri to establish a base of AQ operations in Libya.

Ansar Al-Sharia is known as a katiba, meaning “battalion,” one of many militias thought to be associated with Al Qaeda or generally sympathetic toward jihadist causes. Although it was Ansar Al-Sharia that attacked the US Consulate in Benghazi, it was not Qumu, but rather another Ansar Al-Sharia leader, named Ahmed Abu Khattala, who has been accused of directing the attack on the ground the night of 9/11/12. Abu Khattala made a halfhearted attempt to explain to the Associated Press that he was in the consulate to rescue people he heard were trapped inside, but few are buying his story.

Abu Khattala is also the leader of the Abu Obaida Bin Jarrah militia, which has joined forces with Ansar Al-Sharia. The Bin Jarrah militia is best known for the assassination of defecting Gaddafi army officer Abdel Fattah Younis, who was helping to lead the rebellion.

MEANWHILE, JSOC COUNTERTERRORISM operations began sometime in mid-summer of 2012, when the organization began placing “boots on the ground” inside Libya. With the first phase of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) all but over, JSOC was starting in on “GWOT Season 2,” as it were, where North Africa was seen as the most dangerous hub of terrorist activity.

The nature of these operations remains highly classified. They were never intended to be known to anyone outside a very small circle in the Special Operations community and within Obama’s National Security Council. Ambassador Stevens, the CIA Chief of Station in Tripoli, and then-Director of the CIA, General Petraeus, had little if any knowledge about these JSOC missions.

With a small element launching from an airfield in a European nation, JSOC operations targeted Al Qaeda personalities within Libyan militia organizations. In the weeks before the Benghazi tragedy, they most likely hit a known associate of Al-Suri in order to get him to “up periscope” and increase his visibility, which would then make it possible for JSOC to run a targeted operation to kill or capture him.

The aftermath of one of these secret raids into Libya would have grave consequences for all of them, including former Navy SEALs Ty Woods and Glen Doherty. SOFREP believes the Benghazi attack on 9/11/12 was blowback from the late-summer JSOC operations that were threatening the Al Qaeda-aligned militant groups (including Ansar Al-Sharia) in Libya and North Africa, now a leading base of operations for Islamic extremism.

3

Sitting Ducks

“Overall, the number of Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS) security staff in Benghazi on the day of the attack and in the months and weeks leading up to it was inadequate, despite repeated requests from Special Mission Benghazi and Embassy Tripoli for additional staffing. Board members found a pervasive realization among personnel who served in Benghazi that the Special Mission was not a high priority for Washington when it came to security-related requests, especially those relating to staffing.”

State Department’s After Action Report

ALTHOUGH THE MEDIA has repeatedly referred to the compound that Ambassador Stevens was staying in the night of the 9/11/12 attack as a “consulate,” the State Department actually designated it a Temporary Mission Facility. For the sake of clarity, we will continue to call the compound a consulate (or just compound) since it served a similar purpose and readers are already accustomed to the term. (The key difference between an actual consulate and a Temporary Mission Facility is that a consulate is well established and serves as a miniature embassy that can conduct diplomatic services in other parts of the country, whereas a Temporary Mission Facility is something set up on a much more ad hoc basis and not given the same level of support.)

In the run-up to the attack, there were multiple indicators that threats existed against the consulate in Benghazi. As noted previously, Ambassador Stevens was well aware of the jihadist threat in Libya. The Regional Security Office in Tripoli also “compiled a list of 234 security incidents in Libya between June 2011 and July 2012, 50 of which took place in Benghazi.”

A UK Armored Toyota that was hit by a Rocket Propelled Grenade in April 2012. US Diplomats would help the British with security in the aftermath. It was no secret that Benghazi was heating up and that western diplomacy was not welcome. Courtesy of SOFREP.

It was clear from both classified intelligence reports and open-source information that there was an escalating threat to Western targets as the jihadist presence became more pervasive in eastern Libya. The Senate’s “Flashing Red” report points to four particularly important incidents, which should have served as warning signs in the run-up to the attack:

On May 22nd, 2012, the International Committee for the Red Cross/Red Crescent (ICRC) building in Benghazi was hit by two Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG) rounds, causing damage to the building but no casualties. Several days later, the Brigades of the Imprisoned Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman claimed responsibility for this attack, accusing the ICRC of proselytizing in Libya.

On June 6th, 2012, the US Temporary Mission Facility [referred to as a consulate in most media reports] in Benghazi was targeted by an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) attack that blew a hole in the perimeter wall. Credit for this attack was also claimed by the Brigades of the Imprisoned Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, which said it carried out the attack in response to the reported drone strike on al Qaeda leader Abu Yahya Al-Libi in Northern Waziristan.

On June 11th, 2012, an attack was carried out in Benghazi on the convoy of the British Ambassador to Libya. Attackers fired an RPG on the convoy, followed by small arms fire. Two British bodyguards were injured in the attack. This attack was characterized afterwards in an incident report by the Department of State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security as a “complex, coordinated attack.”

On June 18th, 2012, the Tunisian consulate in Benghazi was stormed by individuals affiliated with Ansar Al-Sharia Libya (AAS), allegedly because of “attacks by Tunisian artists against Islam.”

The Flashing Red report also makes the point that, while there was sufficient evidence to warn of a threat against American personnel and facilities in Libya—enough that it should have elevated their security posture—there was no specific intelligence information that pointed toward a targeted attack on the consulate on 9/11/12.

Full Timeline of Security Incidents from the State Department’s Report Leading Up to September 11th, 2012.

• March 18, 2012—Armed robbery occurs at the British School in Benghazi.

• March 22, 2012—Members of a militia searching for a suspect fire their weapons near the compound and attempt to enter.

• April 2, 2012—A UK armored diplomatic vehicle is attacked after driving into a local protest. The vehicle is damaged, but occupants are uninjured.

• April 6, 2012—A gelatina bomb (traditional homemade explosive device used for fishing) is thrown over the SMC north wall.

• April 10, 2012—An IED (gelatina or dynamite stick) is thrown at the motorcade of the UN Special Envoy to Libya in Benghazi.

• April 26, 2012—A Special Mission Benghazi principal officer is evacuated from International Medical University (IMU) when a fistfight escalates to gunfire between Tripoli-based trade delegation security personnel and IMU security.

• April 27, 2012—Two South African nationals in Libya as part of the US-funded weapons abatement, unexploded ordnance removal, and de-mining project are detained at gunpoint by militia, questioned, and released.

• May 22, 2012—Benghazi International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) building is struck by RPGs.

• May 28, 2012—A previously unknown organization, Omar Abdurrahman group, claims responsibility for the ICRC attack and issues a threat against the United States on social media sites.

• June 6, 2012—IED attack on the SMC. The IED detonates with no injuries but blows a large hole in the compound’s exterior wall. Omar Abdurrahman group makes an unsubstantiated claim of responsibility.

• June 8, 2012—Two hand grenades target a parked UK diplomatic vehicle in Sabha (800 km south of Benghazi).

• June 11, 2012—While in Benghazi, the British ambassador’s convoy is attacked with an RPG and possibly AK–47s. Two UK security officers are injured; the UK closes its mission in Benghazi the following day.

• June 12, 2012—An RPG attack is made on the ICRC compound in Misrata (400 km west of Benghazi).

• June 18, 2012—Protestors storm the Tunisian consulate in Benghazi.

• July 29, 2012—An IED is found on the grounds of the Tibesti Hotel.

• July 30, 2012—The Sudanese Consul in Benghazi is carjacked and a driver is beaten.

• July 31, 2012—Seven Iranian-citizen ICRC workers are abducted in Benghazi.

• August 5, 2012—ICRC Misrata office is attacked with RPGs. ICRC withdraws its representatives from Misrata and Benghazi.

• August 9, 2012—A Spanish-American dual national NGO worker is abducted from the Islamic Cultural Center in Benghazi and released the same day.

• August 20, 2012—A small bomb is thrown at an Egyptian diplomat’s vehicle parked outside of the Egyptian consulate in Benghazi.

In a Senate hearing after the attack, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Matthew Olsen, stated that there was no evidence of “significant advanced planning or coordination for this attack.” This is a viewpoint shared by Matthew VanDyke, who told Business Insider, “This was not a commando style raid, that’s ridiculous, this type of thing can be put together in a matter of minutes with a few cell-phone calls.” VanDyke has stated that some Libyans would have seen concurrent protests at the US embassy in Egypt and elsewhere on satellite television in response to an inflammatory YouTube video that depicted the Prophet Muhammad.

VanDyke laid out his take on the attack for Business Insider, telling them about the extremist training camps in the nearby Green Mountains. “Those camps have been there. There’s no excuse for that. They’re about 2 hours from the consulate, so these guys probably saw it [the protests in Egypt] on TV, made a few cell-phone calls, grabbed some gear, and got on the road.” He went on to state that there was probably no intention for the protest outside the consulate to get violent, at least originally, but then the extremists showed up and used the protestors as a shield.

The problem with this thesis is that further investigation has clearly shown that there was no protest outside the consulate prior to or during the attack. There was an assault by armed gunmen on the consulate that night of 9/11/12, but there was no protest, peaceful or otherwise.

Certain evidence suggests that there was at least some operational planning on the part of the Ansar Al-Sharia militia affiliate that attacked the compound. On the morning of 9/11/12, two Blue Mountain security guards spotted a man in a Libyan police uniform taking pictures of the consulate from a nearby building that was under construction. The security guards briefly detained the man, who was taking the pictures with his cell phone, before telling him to get lost. He drove away in his police car and a complaint was made to the Libyan police station.

Sean Smith also noted this surveillance, posting a comment about it on the internet before he was killed on the night of the attack. As the IT guy for the consulate, Sean spent a lot of time on the internet, sometimes talking to friends and playing video games. On the day of the attack, he posted the following:

(12:54:09 PM) assuming we don’t die tonight. We saw one of our ‘police’ that guard the compound taking pictures

The local Blue Mountain security guards had to have known the deal. They fled the moment the attack began. There is some speculation that they even opened the gate to allow the terrorists ingress into the consulate.

When it comes to Third Country Nationals (TCNs), you get what you pay for. On Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) that house soldiers in Afghanistan, our troops have gone to check on the tower guards at the perimeter to find that they are too busy engaged in homosexual sex to pull guard duty. In Iraq, imported Ugandan gate guards were known to have a “big man” pimping them out for drugs on one US-run FOB. This isn’t to say that all TCNs are bad—many have served honorably alongside American servicemen and women—but no one can feign surprise that the Blue Mountain security men cut and run at the first sign of trouble.

With the Libyan government weak and unable to provide any kind of security, the State Department felt forced to rely on TCNs. The Blue Mountain security firm had hired the February 17 militia for security. The contract with February 17 was allowed to lapse prior to the 9/11/12 attack because the militia no longer wished to be seen protecting Americans in Benghazi.

Without casting blame on local nationals, one of the key institutional failures to protect the consulate happened because the Diplomatic Security personnel were rotated to the consulate on only a temporary basis. This made it very difficult to maintain a consistent security posture and ensure that security upgrades were made to the facility.

Imagine dropping a couple of security guards into buildings built for civilian purposes and asking them to protect these buildings. Just as they are beginning to hire contractors and get a security plan put together, they are yanked out of the consulate and reassigned elsewhere. The newly assigned Diplomatic Security personnel now have to play catch-up once they arrive at the consulate, and by the time they get things up and running, they too are reassigned somewhere else.

As the consulate was really a Temporary Mission Facility that would only be occupied for an unspecified period of time, it was never given the attention or funding that it should have been. Instead, it was an ad hoc facility created to help build diplomatic inroads in Benghazi during a transitional period in Libya, until something more permanent could be established.

That said, some security features were upgraded at the consulate. Jersey barriers were put into place, a safe room was established in one of the buildings, barb wire was strung along the tops of the compound walls, windows were barred, floodlights were installed, and other upgrades were made to the gates. But it was too little, too late.

Previous attacks on US embassies, consulates, and other facilities had resulted in a series of protocols and standard operating procedures when it came to security, but because the Benghazi consulate was designated as temporary in nature, many of these protocols were never carried out or enforced. Meanwhile, Diplomatic Security was pushing to have more agents assigned to Benghazi, and Ambassador Stevens was advocating a more permanent presence there.

One option mentioned prior to the attack was to co-locate the CIA annex and the consulate to help ensure mutual security, but because of the paramilitary nature of the GRS mission, it would not have been a good idea for diplomatic, if not legal, reasons to house the US Ambassador to Libya alongside these CIA-sponsored activities.

Clearly, the Temporary Mission Facility that served as the consulate in Benghazi was underprotected. Ambassador Stevens knew that the rise of Islamic extremism in Benghazi posed a threat and allegedly wrote words to this effect in his personal diary, which was recovered four days after the attack.

Unfortunately, it took the 9/11/12 attack itself and the deaths of four brave Americans to motivate the State Department to improve security in Libya.

4

9/11/2012

IT BEGINS . . .

What you are about to read is a true and accurate account of what happened in Benghazi from the initial attack to the final evacuation. Minor liberties are taken with regard to how the story is told in this chapter, but the truth is at its core. While no one person’s account can represent the entirety of a story, our hope is that by piecing together this complex puzzle, coupling facts with first-person accounts, we can best represent what happened that tragic day. After all, the American people deserve to hear the unvarnished truth.

In his first visit to Benghazi in almost a year, Ambassador Stevens arrived on September 10th, with Sean Smith and two Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) agents. The only other Americans in the compound were three additional DSS personnel assigned there temporarily. In total, seven Americans with four local militia guards were left to promote diplomacy in one of the most hostile and unstable places on earth.

Stevens’s main mission was to promote diplomatic relations with local government officials and pass assessments of Libya’s fragile state of affairs back to Washington. He took one meeting in town on the 10th, but on the 11th, all his appointments were conducted inside the compound as a security measure. The following events are true to the best of our knowledge, and many of the details have never been disclosed before.

Around 7:40pm, the ambassador escorted a Turkish diplomat to the compound’s main gate. Shortly after, around 8pm, a team of UK diplomatic security professionals dropped off borrowed vehicles and equipment, as had been the arrangement since the UK had suspended diplomatic operations in June 2012 due to the increased threat level.

At 9pm, the ambassador and Sean Smith retired to their rooms for the night.

Suddenly: BOOM! A Rocket Propelled Grenade hit the front gate of the compound with thunderous force. The guard stationed at the main gate had long since fled the scene. He was attached to the Supreme Security Council (SSC). The SSC is a loose coalition of militia elements that are providing interim security in Libya. The guard would later tell local press that he drove away under instructions to avoid further civilian casualties.

At the time of the attack, the following personnel were in the compound:

• Ambassador Stevens (Ambassador’s Villa)

• Sean Smith (Ambassador’s Villa)

• 5 DSS Agents (4 in DSS Villa, 1 in Tactical Operations Center)

• 4 Local Security Hired from February 17 Marty’s Brigade (Inside the Front Gate)

The main gate was practically left open. All four of the local security hightailed it out of there, along with the SSC guard, as soon as the assault began. Though the attack was coordinated, the attackers lacked training, a fact that would later play a role in the CIA team rescue. Many of the shots fired inside the compound were fired in the air and aimed at nothing in particular, mostly due to the fact that there weren’t any targets.

The American security officer on duty in the Tactical Operations Center (TOC) could see dozens of armed men entering the compound through the main gate, out of which the ambassador had escorted the Turkish diplomat only an hour earlier. He sounded the central alarm over the radios as soon as he noticed the local February 17 guards fleeing the area. It’s worth noting that the local guards hired by the State Department were armed only with bats, not with firearms of any sort; it’s no surprise they fled.

One of the other DSS agents was radioed by the officer in the TOC and asked to secure the ambassador. He grabbed his rifle and headed to the villa. Once there, he instructed Stevens and Smith to put on body armor, and then led them to a secured area in the back of the building. He locked the door and radioed back their position and that they were secure for the moment. The DSS agent was armed with an M4 assault rifle, handgun, and shotgun. Surprisingly, no shots were fired by the DSS security; this may have been due to their lack of experience and training, and, most importantly, to bad odds. The DSS agent gave his cell phone to the ambassador, who began making calls to the US embassy in Tripoli. They could hear the attackers destroying everything in their path in the adjacent rooms.

One of the remaining DSS agents ran up to the TOC while the other two, upon encountering the attacking force, barricaded themselves in a separate villa with one of the February 17 guards, whom they had run into. Still no shots had been fired in any effort to repel the attackers, most of whom were unarmed.

The attack continued, and the militia members found a stockpile of fuel containers and began to light several vehicles in the compound on fire. They entered the Ambassador’s Villa and started destroying and looting the contents. They then found the locked door behind which the Americans were hidden, and, after unsuccessful attempts to gain entry, they retreated and began pouring diesel fuel into the room. Soon a raging toxic fire was underway as the fuel was lit and burning tires were added to the blaze. None of the fires would be visible to the TOC’s security cameras until 10pm.

The Ambassador’s Villa became immersed in a thick cloud of rubber smoke. It was too much for the Americans inside, and they were forced to crawl on their hands and knees into one of the bathrooms in the rear of the building. The DSS agent attempted to ventilate the room with fresh air by opening a window, but it had the opposite effect, and essentially sucked smoke onto their position at an alarming rate. Visibility in the room was at zero, and the security agent yelled for the ambassador and Smith to follow him out of the room to another exit point. They all must have known that staying inside would mean certain death. They had no choice but to take their chances in the open, at the mercy of the attackers.

The security officer made it out of the building only to find himself alone in a hail of gun fire. He yelled for Stevens and Smith, but there was no answer. He reentered the building several times to try to locate them both, but found neither. In a last, desperate attempt to ventilate the smoke, he broke several windows before calling for help. The ambassador and Sean Smith could not be found. They wound up getting separated from each other amid the chaos, and within minutes each would suffocate from smoke inhalation.

The frenzied looting then overtook the other villas in the compound. The attackers tried but were unsuccessful at gaining entry to both the main space of the TOC and the villa safe room, where the other two DSS agents and a local guard were secure.

THE REGIONAL SECURITY Officer (RSO) sounded the alarm and placed calls to the Benghazi CIA annex (a fortified base) and the embassy in Tripoli. In a panicked voice, he said, “We’re under attack, we need help, please send help now . . .” The call cut off. The CIA’s Global Response Staff (GRS) Team Leader (TL) and Ty Woods conferred. The TL respected Ty’s experience and listened intently as he made his case for the rescue mission. Ty was the senior security operative among them, with over twenty years of Special Operations experience as a Navy SEAL. He was a seasoned GRS agent, respected and loved by all who knew him. To Ty it was a matter of principle: Americans were at risk, and it was their job to help out. He would go alone if need be, and the TL knew it.

The GRS is one among many CIA paramilitary groups. In pop culture terms, GRS agents are similar to Jason Bourne without the complex spy work. GRS agents work closely with CIA case officers and analysts to ensure that missions and security are tactically sound. Typical agents have a minimum of ten years of Special Operations experience. They come from all over: Army Green Berets, USMC Recon, Air Force Para-Rescue/Combat Controllers, and, like Ty Woods, the Navy SEALs. Agents undergo a rigorous security clearance process with a series of tests that involve shooting, small unit tactics, and driving. They are held to the highest of standards, and more than one seasoned operator has failed the CIA’s operational readiness test standards. There is also another group that is recruited to conduct what we call “static” security. These men are mostly regular military and law enforcement professionals who are highly trained in base security.

Contrary to the many media myths about Benghazi, requests for help were not denied by the Obama administration. It appears as if every informed agency and organization tried its best to give whatever help it could during the attack. As you will soon see, this would also be true at the smallest unit level, where several American patriots in Tripoli would do anything to rally to the aid of their fellow countrymen.

Ty and the TL made their case to the CIA Chief of Base (COB), but it fell on deaf ears. It is rumored that the COB initially said absolutely not—he refused to authorize the GRS agents to conduct the rescue. Ty was relentless and assertive in his pursuit, refusing to take no for an answer; he explained that unless they did something, all of the people in that compound would be dead. A few minutes later, it became clear to the Chief of Base that Ty and the rest of the GRS team were going to go with or without his permission. It is unknown whether he relented and authorized the rescue attempt or simply turned a blind eye. Only the CIA After Action report holds that information, and it is unlikely to surface for years to come. Regardless, it was Ty Woods’s persistence and patriotic sense of moral duty that ultimately resulted in his getting the go-ahead for the rescue.

The GRS agents, all former Special Ops, would listen to Ty as he briefed them on the plan. It’s worth noting that, while there would have been no time to come up with a perfect plan, a good plan executed immediately will save lives. If you wait too long to come up with a brilliant idea, people die. Ty would have known this, and his plan must have been 90% instinct, honed over three decades of service to his country. (He had served twenty years as a SEAL and the rest of the time as a GRS operative.)

Six of the seven of them loaded up in two Toyota Land Cruisers. The Land Cruisers had a much larger capacity than the armored sedans. They did not drive through the consulate’s main gate, as that would have been too obvious. Instead, using the element of surprise, they planned to conduct an L-shaped ambush on the main body of attackers, and then shoot and maneuver to the TOC to link up with the other DSS agents. The Cruisers would stop short on the side of the walled State Department compound. They would lock the vehicles and use them to climb the main compound wall and take up positions. Nobody would fire a shot until the small team was in position, and then they would unleash Hell. Ty had radioed to the DSS agents in the TOC and told them not to fire on their position as they were coming over the wall. To a man, everyone in that room knew what needed to be done, and all of them were more than willing to follow Ty into the fight. They would do whatever they had to in order to save their fellow Americans. Most of the men in that room had spent half their lives serving their country in some capacity.

One advantage that the CIA team had over their inexperienced State Department security counterparts was that they knew the area like the backs of their hands, especially their immediate surroundings. There were hundreds of planned routes to and from their base into the dusty and dangerous streets of Benghazi. They had picked up dozens of CIA sources in an effort to hunt down stray chemical and nuclear Weapons of Mass Destruction. Like Syria, Libya had its own dirty past, and the CIA had been conducting a very important mission to ensure that yellow cake uranium didn’t make it onto the black market and into extremist hands.

Five minutes later, at 10:05pm, the men were fully briefed and loaded up in two of their up-armored indigenous vehicles, all most likely fitted with stolen local plates—a common practice. To the casual observer, they looked like regular Toyota Land Cruisers, but the initiated knew they were outfitted with mods and armor that could survive a direct IED blast and small arms fire. Each vehicle was equipped with a special encrypted communications suite, a heavy weapons platform, grenade launchers, and more. The TL, Ty, and four others went; they left one agent to man the radios—not much action but a very important job nonetheless.

Less than 30 minutes after the initial attack, two vehicles and six GRS agents sped off for the State Department compound. The drive lasted only a few minutes, but with smoke billowing from the compound visible in the distance, it must have seemed an eternity.

They kept a tight defensive driving formation while en route to the compound. Each GRS agent goes through extensive offensive and defensive driving schools, and they would give most professional race drivers a run for their money. “In at six out at nine,” the front car called out on the inter-team radios as they entered the last roundabout. Less than two blocks away, and they could practically taste the smell of burning tires and the unmistakable odor of spent gunpowder in the air.

“It’s pure survival when dealing with large crowds and you have to set harsh consequences for any threatening behavior. Kill everyone who isn’t a friendly. Lighten up and you put yourself and your teammates at risk and the mob mentality takes over,” said a former GRS agent.

They arrived outside the compound without much of a fight, then set up their vehicles along the perimeter wall, locked the doors, and phoned the agents in the TOC as planned, letting them know they were coming over the wall and to hold their fire. Why leave the vehicles? Because they had no choice; it was a hasty plan, and in reality the armored cars were virtually impenetrable left alone. Worst case scenario, they would have to hump it through the streets back to their base. No time to waste: up and over the wall.

MEANWHILE, BACK AT the CIA base, the communicators were busy passing email and cable traffic notifying their chain of command about current developments. Everyone at the CIA base worked relentlessly to support one another that day, including a small CIA and JSOC element in Tripoli who were itching to get in the fight to support their fellow Americans. This included Glen Doherty, who had volunteered to go back to Libya for a second time. We know that his decision was based on his friendship with Ty Woods, and the knowledge that his experience would be appreciated and meaningful in the Agency’s mission to round up the remaining WMD wandering the black markets of Libya.

The element in Tripoli consisted of two active-duty JSOC operators and five CIA personnel. Unknown to the public until now, the CIA and JSOC element led by Glen practically commandeered a small jet in Tripoli and forced the pilots to fly them to Benghazi so that they could get in the fight. They used cash they had on hand and paid the crew $30,000 US for the flight. Money talks in Libya, and soon they were on their way.

Here it’s important for the reader to understand the complexity of the situation. Events were developing extremely rapidly—by the minute—and Libya is not an established theatre. Having the Department of State, the CIA, and the US Military (Africa Command among others) in the mix, with no clear command structure, added new snags to an already-complicated and volatile situation. It’s widely known by insiders that intense rivalries among these agencies exist. CIA, JSOC, and State do not talk to one another on a regular basis, nor do they share information well.

AT THE STATE Department compound, Ty’s team set up and started to unleash everything they had on the attacking force. His guys had one MK46 machine gun between them, and individual H&K 416s complimented with GLMs (H&K 40mm grenade launchers). One of Ty’s team members was a USMC veteran of Iraq and the bloodbath in Fallujah. Ty’s agents unloaded on the enemy and soon had them on the run. The former Marine, armed with a bandolier of “golden eggs” (40mm grenades), would lob them as Ty directed; they worked with such efficiency that their teammates would later compare the sight to witnessing a conductor working with a master musician. Within minutes, the small, six-man team had turned the tide: dead enemy littered the compound, and the rest were confused and running for cover. At this point, Ty signaled for the team to head for the main TOC building.

The GRS agents fired and maneuvered their way to the DSS agents. It was the efforts of Ty’s team that enabled a lull in fire long enough for the remaining DSS in the outlying villa to join up with the main element. It was here that Ty and the TL made the decision to send the DSS team back to the CIA compound. The DSS guys were too inexperienced to be of much help, but Ty and the GRS team were another breed and would stay a bit longer to search for the ambassador and Sean Smith.

The GRS agents called back to the CIA base and let them know to expect one inbound vehicle containing State Department personnel. Ty gave the DSS agents a quick lay of the land outside the gate and was explicit in his instructions for them to make a hard right turn out of the gate. “Do not go left into bad guy land,” he said. The instructions were ignored, unfortunately, and the State vehicle made a left, immediately encountering a hail of gunfire. Lucky for them, the armored windows held up, and they eventually made it back to the CIA base unharmed.

Wasting no time, the elite GRS team worked their way to the ambassador’s burning Villa. Small arms fire was starting to pick up again, and they had to shoot their way to the burning building as several RPGs exploded nearby. Woomp BOOM! Woomp BOOM! Passing through a hail of bullets, they entered into the blazing building and began searching for the ambassador. Ty’s instructions in the burning building saved at least one man who almost took a wrong turn into the flaming maze. They located Sean Smith, who was unconscious and would later be declared dead. They spent a few more precious minutes searching for the ambassador before deciding that the compound was at risk of being overrun by enemy forces. They no longer had the element of surprise working for them. With their finite supply of ammunitions running low, they radioed that there was no sign of the ambassador and they were on their way back. It was the best they could do in an almost impossible situation.

They then shot their way back to the cars, again coming under heavy enemy rocket and AK–47 fire. They returned fire with well-aimed shots—only in Hollywood do you see guys spraying on full auto. In Special Ops, it’s all about well-aimed, effective fire and conserving ammunition. They arrived back at the vehicles, after sending a few more attackers to Allah while remaining virtually unscathed under the leadership of Ty Woods.

Once inside the vehicle, the team called back to base “Five minutes out.”

Ty’s team sped through the Libyan neighborhood. Their cars were rattled by small arms fire, their tires flattened and windows filled with the spider cracks that come with embedded lead. But the Agency’s armored vehicles held up. Driving armored cars is tricky; it requires skill to deal with the added gross weight. Take a turn too sharply and you dig a rim-and-roll because of the weight of the vehicle. These agents were professionals with decades of experience driving under hostile conditions. “One minute out,” they called back to base. The gate closed at approximately 11:50pm, and a small wave of relief must have overcome the team, but they were too seasoned not to know the fight was far from over. Things were relatively calm, at least for the next hour.

Meanwhile, local militia leaders were busy coordinating their next move. They repositioned for an attack on the CIA base just after midnight. The Americans would soon come under a barrage of machine gun, rocket, and mortar fire.

The attackers quickly found out that the CIA base was heavily fortified and prepared for an attack, with fighting positions, heavy weapons, skilled paramilitary professionals, high-intensity floodlights (blinding to any would-be attacker), and highly paid indigenous security personnel. Unlike State’s foreign security, the Agency’s were well armed. This would end up giving the Americans a tremendous advantage and ultimately ensure their safe evacuation.

The fight started just after midnight. It would be a sleepless night as the GRS and DSS agents, along with their local security, fended off attacks throughout the early morning hours. They would rack up dozens of enemy KIA. The intensity would never get to the point where the CIA thought they were at risk of being overrun; however, that would change as the sun came up on the 12th.

EARLY IN THE morning, the jet carrying Glen Doherty and his team from Tripoli landed in Benghazi. The US team was initially held up at the airport for a few hours. It’s unclear whether this was intentional or not, but the Americans eventually forced their way through. Just after 5:00am, the seven-man support team arrived to aid their countrymen at the CIA annex. Minutes after their vehicle drove through the gate, the base came under heavy fire. Glen and his fellow Americans were quick to take up defensive positions and join in the fight. At this point, several of the enemy tried coming over the wall but were dispatched with lethal accuracy. All told, the handful of Americans would kill just under a hundred enemy attackers.

When the fighting lulled, Glen began searching for his good friend Ty. He was told that Ty was on the rooftop, manning the MK46 machine gun with two others, directing the main defending element. Glen climbed onto the rooftop to join his friend without knowing the gravity of that decision.

On the roof of the CIA base, the two long-time SEAL friends briefly embraced like brothers, and both quickly filled each other in. Soon they retook defensive firing positions to engage the enemy along the outer perimeter. Ty yelled out a quick endorsing introduction of Glen—whom he referred to by his call sign, “BUB”—to the other two guys on the roof. During a lull in fire, the three men—Ty, another GRS operative, and a DSS agent—told Glen how glad they were to have more capable bodies in the fight, and how much they appreciated his efforts to get to Benghazi.

They fought together on that rooftop half a world away from their homes for only a few more minutes. Meanwhile, the attackers’ skilled mortar team was using a common tactic of “bracketing” to find their mark. They would fire a couple rounds, adjust based on where they landed, and then send two more mortars. The rounds were getting closer with each shot.

WREESHHH . . . BOOM! Ty’s position was hit with a French 81mm mortar round, fatally wounding the veteran warrior. Ty’s body shielded the other GRS agent—saving the man’s life, though still leaving him critically wounded. As Glen attempted to reposition and take cover, a second round dropped onto his position, killing him instantly. A third round hit the DSS agent’s position, wounding him and shredding his leg with fragments.

Glen’s and Ty’s deaths severely impacted their fellow teammates and influenced two GRS agents, long after the fight, to quit as a result of their deaths. They were the type of men people looked up to and loved. They were exemplary in all aspects of their personal and professional lives. With no time for personal reflection, they died with a gun in their hands, defending their fellow Americans.

Without hesitation, and clearly putting themselves at risk, several more agents, including one JSOC guy, ran up to the roof to assess the damage and give aid to the wounded. This quick action unquestionably saved two men’s lives. They lowered the bodies down with rope they had cut from gym equipment. The GRS agent was able to make it down the ladder on his own, and the JSOC guy literally strapped the wounded DSS agent to his back before climbing down the ladder under a hail of incoming fire.

At this time, another JSOC operator was monitoring the situation from his handheld ROVER, a device used to display sensor data from a General Atomics MQ–1 Predator overhead.

A ROVER Handheld Device. Courtesy of L3 Communications.

It was an unarmed drone equipped with multiple sensors to detect infrared (IR) and thermal signatures. The drone had been redirected to the scene by the DOD’s AFRICOM (Africa Command) at the request of the JSOC operator. It contributed to the overall situational awareness of the ground-based team, and the information was a huge factor in the next decision—which would save all of their lives.

Armed Version of the Predator. Courtesy of General Atomics.

“There’s a large element assembling, and we need to get everyone out of here now!” the JSOC man relayed to the Chief of Base and GRS TL. The footage on the ROVER’s screen was enough to convince the CIA Chief. They immediately notified everyone to gather up all their personal security items and evacuate.

To the CIA’s credit, all told, they successfully rescued six State Department personnel, recovered Smith’s body, and got approximately thirty Americans out of Benghazi alive. And they also didn’t compromise any classified material in the process. The CIA team left the compound locked, and in the hands of a trusted local.

Within minutes of the decision, the vehicles were loaded and the Americans were on their way to the airport. They encountered small arms fire on the way but arrived unscathed in time to meet the first of two aircraft that would fly them back to Tripoli.

EARLIER, WHILE THE CIA compound was under attack, the embassy in Tripoli had been trying to coordinate with an unknown caller concerning the whereabouts of Ambassador Stevens’s body. A call had come in at 2:00am from the borrowed cell phone that was loaned to Stevens by the DSS agent. They were suspicious that it was a guise to lure the Americans into incurring further casualties. The decision was made to send a trusted local, familiar with the ambassador, to the Benghazi Medical Center, where he positively identified Stevens’s body. We’re unsure about the details, but arrangements were made to transport the ambassador’s remains to the airport. We’ve heard that there was an exchange of fire in the handoff process, but it’s unconfirmed. There was likely a money exchange involved, regardless of what happened.

At 7:30am, a chartered jet took the wounded and a small number of American evacuees back to Tripoli in the first wave. A second Libyan aircraft (a C–130) would take the remaining Americans, including Ambassador Stevens’s body, which had arrived by ambulance at the airport around 8:30 in the morning. They would all land in Tripoli at 11:30am. The bodies and wounded were sent to Germany on two US Air Force aircraft (a C–130 and a C–17). The planes arrived in Ramstein Air Force Base around 10:30 at night, nearly 24 hours after the initial attack commenced.

The CIA did an exemplary job with virtually no outside support. They left Benghazi with all Americans accounted for. Ty’s leadership that day, and his refusal to sit by and allow his fellow Americans to be overrun, is a testament to his character. His willingness to stand up to his CIA boss and do what was right is an example of true American heroism. Glen Doherty ran toward the sound of gunfire, and his CIA and JSOC comrades could have waited it out in Tripoli. Instead, they practically commandeered a local plane and forced their way into the fight. Their presence and the JSOC element’s access to the Predator drone ultimately drove the decision to evacuate the Americans.

All gave some, and some gave all, during those two days in Benghazi.

5

Myth Busting

GENERAL PETRAEUS

When CIA Director David Petraeus resigned just a few weeks after the reelection of President Obama, the country was still in the throes of confusion and anger over what had happened in Benghazi. Certain media outlets had led people to believe that Obama had abandoned two former Navy SEALs in a combat zone, callously handing them a death sentence. However, even those who were skeptical of these media reports had to admit that the timing of David Petraeus’s resignation was absolutely devastating. For all intents and purposes, it appeared that he had resigned over something to do with Benghazi.

SOFREP received word that Petraeus was going to resign a full three weeks ahead of the public announcement. What we were not expecting was the reason cited for his stepping down. Not long after the Benghazi tragedy happened, Petraeus began interviewing for a job at Princeton University and was planning to quit as Director of the CIA.

The overrunning of the consulate, and the killing of two GRS employees, must have come as a shock to him. John Brennan was running his own operations and probably briefing the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, on the bare minimum of information needed to keep these secret missions legal. Likewise, a Congress member with budget oversight responsibilities was probably being read on, with the briefings kept vague to the point of uselessness. Brennan just needed a rubber stamp.

Kept in the dark about these compartmentalized JSOC operations, the CIA was caught off guard by the Ansar Al-Sharia retaliation. They had no idea that Special Operations missions would be kicking the hornets’ nest in Libya and therefore could not prepare for the fallout that would result. Realizing this after the consulate attack, Petraeus knew for certain that he was a perpetual outsider in the administration. More specifically, he was furious about being left in the lurch by the Obama administration.

Like a good soldier, Petraeus was waiting until after the election season to resign, but CIA officials behind the scenes apparently had other ideas. The director had made plenty of enemies on the 7th floor of CIA headquarters in Langley by pursuing paramilitary operations and moving the Agency even further from its roots in intelligence collection.

The reason for this is partially that there were budget incentives to pursue paramilitary operations as the funding was there for them, but many longtime CIA officers did not appreciate the direction that Petraeus was taking their agency in. They also did not like the fact that the director was still acting like a four-star general and throwing his weight around at Langley.

One of the authors was near General Petraeus and his wife, Holly, at the Veteran’s Day parade in New York City in 2011. By this time, Petraeus had been sworn in as Director of the CIA. While Petraeus was surrounded by friends who respected him and was never in any danger, it was disconcerting how easily his own Personal Security Detachment (PSD) lost track of him. For at least an hour, the general was out there flapping in the breeze without any security around him because the SUV filled with his bodyguards was stuck in traffic at the end of the parade.

What the PSD personnel may have lacked as bodyguards, they made up for by knowing the intimate details of his personal life. One of those details was Paula Broadwell.

It was well known to Petraeus’s Personal Security Detachment that he and Broadwell were having an affair. He wasn’t the only high-ranking Agency head or general engaged in extramarital relations, but when the 7th floor wanted Petraeus out, they cashed in their chips.

The FBI had been alerted to Paula Broadwell’s shenanigans months prior and had investigated her and her relationship with the general. In fact, the FBI had been trying to shut the investigation down for months prior to Petraeus’s resignation for the simple reason that they could find no criminal wrongdoing. The reality of the situation is that high-ranking CIA officers had already discovered the affair by consulting with Petraeus’s PSD and then found a way to initiate an FBI investigation in order to create a string of evidence and an investigative trail that led to the information they already had—in other words, an official investigation that could be used to force Petraeus to resign.

The FBI was never allowed to shut down their investigation. What benefit FBI director Robert Mueller and Attorney General Eric Holder got by playing along with the CIA’s palace coup is unknown at this time. It is interesting that Petraeus was already on his way out the door over Benghazi and the CIA nonetheless forced him out on their terms rather than on his own. It seems purely vindictive, and perhaps was meant to sabotage any future possibility of a presidential campaign.

For her part, Paula Broadwell has hired a high-power public relations firm to rehabilitate her image, and none of us are looking forward to the daytime talk show or reality TV program that we all fear is coming.

GENERAL HAM

In the wake of the Benghazi attack, the political media machine went into overdrive, each end of the spectrum trying to paint their opposition in the worst light possible. One rumor that began circulating on the internet was that General Ham, the AFRICOM commander at the time of the 9/11/12 attack, had “gone rogue.” The story went that the Obama administration did not want to send reinforcements or support the GRS element in Benghazi and had ordered General Ham to stand down air support and other assets that could have been moved into the theatre. It was said that General Ham had blown off these orders and was preparing to support the GRS team when he was “apprehended” and later forced into retirement.

Great story, but completely false. Sources indicate that the DOD rebuttal is actually much closer to the truth in this case. The original rumor was spread by someone making an anonymous post on an internet message board. From there, rather dubious media outlets picked up the story and ran with it, fooling many people in the process.

“The speculation that General Carter Ham is departing Africa Command due to events in Benghazi, Libya, on [Sept. 11,] 2012 is absolutely false,” Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in his statement. “General Ham’s departure is part of routine succession planning that has been ongoing since July. He continues to serve in Africom with my complete confidence,” the release reads (www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=118400).

Check your sources. Don’t be a cyber-chump.

AC–130

Another cute story was that there was an AC–130 gunship circling over Benghazi the night of the attack but that the crew was denied permission to initiate airstrikes in support of the GRS element on the ground. This story is also false. There were two unarmed drones over Benghazi the night of the attack. A JSOC operator with the GRS element was able to monitor the video feed from the drones for situational awareness purposes, but there was no gunship support.

ARMED DRONES

AFRICOM allocated two drones and positioned them overhead, but these drones were not armed with Hellfire missiles. Even if there had been armed drones overhead, launching a missile strike within yards of the annex would have been very risky.

6

Conclusion

WHAT STANDS OUT the most from the Benghazi attack is that America lost four great men. Chris Stevens was a very sharp ambassador who understood Libya like few other Americans. Sean Smith was a dedicated communications specialist for the State Department and an Air Force veteran who got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Glen Doherty and Ty Woods were two of America’s best, showing intense moral and physical courage during the night of the attack and the morning after.

Beyond an epitaph for the fallen, Benghazi must be viewed as a commentary on American foreign policy and counterterrorism strategy. What lessons can be learned from the failures of Benghazi? It is beyond concerning how the media lied and distorted the truth about the attack; caught up in the fervor of the 2012 presidential election, much of both the mainstream and alternative media got it wrong. The lesson to Americans is clear in this case: take what you hear with a grain of salt and always question the narratives, and the backgrounds of the authors whose stories are being sold to you. Even if it is coming from your favorite source of trusted news. None of these outlets constitutes a paragon of truthfulness.

The security failures at the consulate are appalling; however, in the aftermath of any attack, it is natural to focus on a lack of security. After any devastating terrorist assault, be it 9/11/01 or 9/11/12, security will always be seen as inadequate in hindsight. Still, a more permanent solution should have been implemented in Benghazi much sooner. Ambassador Stevens pushed for this, knowing how important Benghazi would be for US interests.

Instead, it was labeled as a Temporary Mission Facility and never given the defenses that this mission required. This was the key institutional failure from a security standpoint—that there was not enough support for the mission and little continuity between the personnel stationed there on temporary duty, since they rotated in and out of Benghazi so fast. Currently, Congress is looking over how budgets will be allocated and how security can be upgraded, but these measures have already taken place after previous embassy attacks such as the ones in Kenya and Tanzania, and the tangible end result seems ambiguous at best. This is especially true now, given the amount of political posturing being done by those in Congress.

Immediately after the attack in Libya, the State Department and the Obama White House indicated that the attack occurred because of an inflammatory internet video filmed in America that insulted Islam. The US government later had to retract these statements and reverse course as the controversy around the attacks grew and it became increasingly apparent that there was no protest outside the consulate in Benghazi and that the violence had little to do with some offensive video.

However, the media frenzy around whether or not there was a protest, whether or not the attack was motivated by a YouTube video, and why security at the consulate was weak—as well as the innuendo about Obama refusing to support the GRS team while they were under attack—played right into the administration’s hands because the truth paints a far grimmer picture.

The last thing the White House wanted was journalists digging into what was really going on in Libya, namely, secret weapons transfers from Libya to Syria, a program that remains a peripheral issue in the story of the Benghazi attack. More importantly, they did not want the press investigating the true motivations behind the assault.

Did Ansar Al-Sharia get inspired after seeing the Egyptians storming the US embassy in Cairo the day before? Did they get offended by an internet video? Did they choose 9/11 as the date for the attack because of the obvious symbolism? Maybe. But another contributing factor was JSOC operations in Libya, which kicked the hornets’ nest and pissed off the militia.

The other media circus of the last year was about high-level leaks coming from the White House after the Bin Laden raid in Pakistan. One of these leaks came from a senior official who fed information to The New Yorker. Nicholas Schmidle was spoon-fed the story because his father is a general. The New Yorker had to sit on the story for months in order to make it appear as if Schmidle were consulting with sources, to create the illusion of actual investigative journalism as opposed to government propaganda, which is what the resulting article, “Getting Bin Laden,” is. Schmidle’s work on the Bin Laden raid was wildly inaccurate because he was being fed garbage designed to make the Obama administration look good.

It is an open secret in Washington, DC, that John Brennan is a world-class windbag. Previous investigations by SOFREP, published in our e-book No Easy Op, exposed some of Brennan’s antics. His activities have continued unabated since then as he runs highly compartmentalized secret operations from his seat as Obama’s counterterrorism adviser. He has long had his eye on becoming the Director of Central Intelligence or Director of National Intelligence but will find it challenging going through the confirmation process because of the political baggage he carries due to past support for so-called “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques.”

With tacit support from Michael Vickers and James Clapper, Brennan works to exploit a number of loopholes and utilize the Obama administration’s creative interpretations of Title 10 and Title 50 powers to launch operations across North Africa and the Middle East, with Admiral McRaven no doubt happy to be along for the ride.

These operations may very well be warranted. One of the main targets is known to be Yasin Al-Suri, one of the last major league Al Qaeda leaders. The world will certainly be a better place after JSOC puts a bullet in his head. Ezedin Abdel Aziz Khalil, also known as “Yasin Al-Suri,” is one of the last high-level AQ operatives on the US government’s kill list. With a ten million–dollar bounty on his head from the State Department, Al-Suri is known to be a terrorist facilitator, moving men and money between Iran and Pakistan. Darwinism has taken effect after over a decade of the War on Terror. The dumb terrorist leaders are all dead, and now it is the masterminds who are left.

The end game for terrorists like Al-Suri is an Islamic caliphate, something which would probably never happen even without US opposition due to larger geopolitical issues, but the idea of a united Sunni insurgency spreading across the Middle East is enough to have Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states nervously wringing their hands in a cold sweat.

The problem occurs when a bunch of 18th-century tribesmen in sandals with rusty AK–47’s are permitted to wag the dog—that is, when their actions move a multibillion-dollar counter-terrorist apparatus across the world, and its operations begin to get out of control . . . all with a non-elected political appointee running the show.

Because John Brennan is running his own private war, he is not going through the normal chain of command, and operations are not deconflicted. Ambassador Stevens, for instance, was not read on to the JSOC operations in Libya. He was kept in the dark and ultimately killed in a retaliation that he never could have seen coming. Likewise, the CIA never knew what hit them. They were trying to track down fissile material in Libya and had no way of knowing what was coming. In the days after the attack, even GRS employees thought that the consulate was hit because Ansar Al-Sharia was upset over some YouTube video.

The problem is exacerbated by the poor communication between different agencies. There has always been some bad blood between the CIA, the State Department, and the Department of Defense, but this has only gotten worse because of the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden in Abbotabad, Pakistan.

SEAL Team Six executed the raid and conducted the SSE on the objective; however, they were technically operating under the auspices of the CIA at the time, to skirt around the Title 10/Title 50 distinctions. Because of this, the CIA got the SSE materials off the objective and has been analyzing them. Even though it was SEALs who recovered the information, the CIA has only shared a very small percentage of the intelligence windfall that resulted from the raid with DOD. DOD in turn has decided to stop sharing information with the CIA, creating a frustrating situation for those trying to carry out sophisticated counter-terrorist operations around the globe.

The issue of operations not being properly deconflicted is likely to escalate as we move into the next phase of the War on Terror. Season 1 of the GWOT is just about over as America begins to withdraw from Afghanistan. Season 2 of the GWOT will be premiering soon, and it will be even more global in nature, with an optempo previously unseen.

Ambitious bureaucrats like John Brennan need to be reined in or fired if these operations are to be successful, or we will see plenty more Benghazis happen. This occurs on a fairly regular basis in Afghanistan, where JSOC will raid a terrorist compound and kill the enemy, and the conventional units who patrol the area end up paying the price. Long after JSOC takes off in their black helicopters, the conventional forces are getting IED-ed along the roads by angry jihadists who are retaliating against any Americans they can find.

This is what really happened in Benghazi, and this is why the Obama administration is more than happy to have the media fixated on red herrings like poor security at the consulate or wound up in an intellectual Gordian knot about some YouTube video.

In 1987, Seymour Hersh wrote an article titled “Targeting Gaddafi,” which detailed how the White House’s National Security Council was exploiting a legal loophole in order to kill the dictator. He wrote in the aftermath of the Iran-Contra scandal that, “Oliver North would emerge in the public’s perception as a unique and extraordinary player inside the National Security Council, a hard-charging risk-taker who was different from his colleagues. It is now apparent that North was but one of many at work in the White House who believed in force, stealth and operations behind the back of the citizenry and the Congress. He was not an aberration, but part of a White House team whose full scope of operations has yet to be unraveled.”

From Oliver North to John Brennan, this is just the way that the system works regardless of the administration. The dead bodies they leave in their wake—men like Glen, Ty, Sean, and Chris—are, at the end of the day, just collateral damage in a war waged by those with political ambitions.

Nothing changes after Benghazi. The State Department claims to have disciplined several employees, but in truth they just shuffled personnel around a little. The politically powerful remain in power, and the fun and games continue. As the Global War on Terror enters the next phase in North Africa and elsewhere, we can only hold our breath and wonder which of our friends will be killed in the next debacle.

Appendix I: Bios of the Four American Heroes

CHRIS STEVENS was born and raised in Northern California. He earned his undergraduate degree at the University of California at Berkeley in 1982, a J.D. from the University of California’s Hastings College of Law in 1989, and an M.S. from the National War College in 2010. He spoke Arabic and French. Prior to joining the Foreign Service in 1991, Ambassador Stevens was an international trade lawyer in Washington, DC. From 1983 to 1985, he taught English as a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco. Stevens was a career member of the Senior Foreign Service. He arrived in Tripoli in May 2012 as the US Ambassador to Libya. Ambassador Stevens had served twice previously in the country—as Special Representative to the Libyan Transitional National Council from March 2011 to November 2011 during the Libyan revolution and as the Deputy Chief of Mission from 2007 to 2009.

SEAN SMITH grew up in San Diego, California. He graduated from Mission Bay High School in 1995, enlisted in the Air Force in July 1995, and served for six years, becoming a ground radio maintenance (2E) specialist. He was promoted to staff sergeant in August 2000. He completed his military service in 2002. As a Foreign Service employee, he lived in The Hague, Netherlands, with his wife, Heather, and children, Samantha and Nathan.

TYRONE (TY) WOODS led a distinguished Navy SEAL career for over 20 years. After retiring from the military, Ty continued to serve his country as an independent security contractor for the CIA. His work included multiple deployments to some of the most hostile parts of the world to protect US national interests.

GLEN DOHERTY served as a US Navy SEAL for nine years. He worked extensively as an independent security specialist throughout some of the most dangerous places on the planet, all in support of the freedoms we enjoy as Americans. Glen believed in working hard and playing harder; before giving up his life, he was frequently found skiing in Utah or surfing with friends at his home break in Encinitas, California.

Appendix II: A Brief History of Libya

THE HISTORY OF Libya is a history of conflict with foreign invaders, from the ancient Greeks and conquering Islamic Ottomans to the first generation of American sailors and naval warfighters who battled the Barbary pirates. Libya also rests on a geographical plane where both trans-Saharan trade routes and various maritime endeavors intersect with each other, making the country a center of commerce and cross-cultural exchange throughout the centuries.

There was a time in Libya, perhaps witnessed by the Greeks upon their arrival, before desertification, when the country was largely green and flush with a complex system of irrigation canals. Giraffes and other exotic animals thrived in a Libya very different from the one we know today. As the Sahara desert began to dry out and expand, it acted as something of a filter for trade between North and Sub-Saharan Africa. In these early years of trans-Saharan commerce, caravans of camels traveling across the desert were known to number in the tens of thousands.

The Garamantes were the indigenous peoples who occupied present-day Libya as far back as 1,000BCE. An agrarian society, the Garamantes also worked as merchants and engaged in the salt trade with the ancient West African empires. Later, the Phoenicians extended their commercial trade network across North Africa, absorbing the three-city region called Tripolis on the Libyan coast from which the modern capital, Tripoli, draws its name. The ancient Greeks then created a colony in Libya, welcoming Alexander the Great in 331BCE.

As the Roman Empire was coming into the picture, multiple trade routes were emerging that crisscrossed the desert. Libya was thus linked to Sudan, and Algeria linked to the Niger River bend, via a Mauritanian corridor suitable for grazing in the months of October through May. A third major route came into existence, connecting Sudan with Egypt. A complex series of oases acted as waypoints through the desert as the caravans could go as long as eight to ten days without water. By 74BCE, Libya had voluntarily become a Roman province.

Tripoli continued to grow into a commercial hub under Roman protection until the empire declined and the Vandal barbarian hordes swept through North Africa in the 5th century BCE. The Romans attempted to reassert themselves in the region, but their empire was overextended, causing Roman infrastructure and culture to wither away until the spread of Islam came to fill the power vacuum.

For centuries, control of Libya was up for grabs among the Berber tribes, the Byzantines, and various Arab invaders, including the Caliphate of Ummayad of Syria. The burgeoning trade in gold brought the precious metal to the Mediterranean coast from the Wangara clan of modern-day Mali and Ghana. Heavy caravans of several thousand camels flowed across the desert once a year, while light caravans consisting of a hundred camels were more frequent.

By the 16th century, Libya had fallen under Ottoman control, while favorable political conditions in Mali had allowed for extensive trade networks to develop (mostly) unhindered by bandits and thieves. The spread of Islam had a profound effect on North Africa, developing a civil society connected by religious ties that stretched across nations and empires. Literacy, promoted by the Muslim faith to allow followers to read the Koran, led Muslim caravanners to create a system of credit and other legal documents, such as contracts.

While the trans-Atlantic slave trade picked up pace, Arab slavers also began engaging in the practice of raiding European coastal cities to procure Christian slaves. Arabs also captured black African slaves from sub-Saharan Africa, but even combining these two slave networks, the number of people sold into slavery by Arabs was perhaps 1.5 million on the outside, a mere drop in the bucket compared to the European trade in black slaves. However, the Barbary slavers were prolific enough to cause entire stretches of Mediterranean coastline to be abandoned in Spain, France, Italy, and elsewhere, while the pirates raided as far as Iceland and Ireland.

Previously, historians believed that, with the increase in maritime trade, the trans-Saharan routes fell into disuse, however, recent analysis shows that quite the opposite happened. The Ottoman Empire’s presence in Libya opened up new markets for goods flowing across the north-south trade routes from places like Bornu and Timbuktu, according to a French doctor held in Libya during the 1680s.

The 1700s found Libya sliding into a chaotic time of coups and counter-coups. European nations paid tributes to the Barbary pirates to prevent them from seizing their merchant ships and enslaving their sailors. Ships originating in colonial America were protected as British-flagged ships, but, after the Revolutionary War, Thomas Jefferson stayed true to his principled ideals and refused to engage in paying tributes and becoming entangled in complicated foreign affairs. With American ships now under siege by North African pirates, the first of the Barbary wars kicked off.

In 1784, the first American merchant ship was seized by pirates from the Barbary Coast, which included the shores of Morocco, Algeria, and Libya. Acting as the American Ambassador to France at the time, Jefferson negotiated a treaty with the Moroccans but was much less successful in dealing with the two other Barbary states. Pirates from Algeria and Libya continued to capture American ships, motivating the US government to establish a Navy in the year of 1798 as a response to the Barbary threat. All the while, American sailors were sold into slavery and a life of hard labor while the pirate states attempted to ransom them back to the US government along with their impounded vessels.

Throughout this ordeal, Jefferson stuck to his guns in regard to not paying ransoms and tributes, using the rationale that paying off the pirates would only incentivize them to capture more ships and ransom off more American sailors. This, unfortunately, was a lesson that had to be relearned in the 1980s by Oliver North and his crew as they traded missiles to Iran in exchange for the release of American hostages in Lebanon.

The US government did compromise by paying some ransoms in order to stall for time until an adequate naval force could be stood up, but Jefferson remained adamant about ceasing the payments altogether, believing that America’s future lay in westward expansion rather than in cramping future Americans in cities like Boston and New York, which could very well come to be filled with the urban poor and resemble the destitute slums of London and Paris. Old Word entanglements did not sit well with him.

Sworn in as President in 1801, Jefferson ceased paying any form of ransom, leading the Barbary pirates to declare war on the United States. In an episode frighteningly similar to current events, the Turkish Ottoman pirates cut down the flag pole in front of the US consulate in Tripoli. At the same time, administrators in Algiers were upset that the previous Adams presidency had been paying Tripoli more in tribute than they received, while the governors in Tunis grew angry at not having received a payoff in several years.

By now, the President had a naval force at his disposal to protect American merchant ships and enforce US foreign policy. He soon dispatched a small naval force under orders to “protect our commerce and chastise their insolence-by sinking, burning or destroying their ships & Vessels wherever you shall find them.” The USS Enterprise chalked up its first defeat of a Barbary ship in August of 1801. More US naval ships arrived on the Barbary coast and established a blockade around Barbary port cities in 1803.

The First Barbary War continued until 1805, when the US Marines led a daring raid along with Greek and indigenous mercenaries in the Battle of Derna. The action resulted in a decisive American victory, immortalized in the Marine hymn with the words, “From the Halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli; we fight our country’s battles in the air, on land, and sea.” It was America’s first war and the country’s first successful overseas military campaign.

Though America was distracted by the War of 1812 and Europe similarly preoccupied by the Napoleonic Wars, governments on both sides of the Atlantic resolved to destroy the Barbary pirates once and for all. The Berlin Conference of 1884 formalized European imperialism on the African continent. While France secured Algeria using the pretext of preventing further Barbary piracy, Italy staked its claim to Libya in 1912, calling it Italian North Africa. After fighting a bitter war against Libyan Bedouin resistance, Italy eventually had to abandon the country as North Africa was plunged into World War Two.

It was during the North African Campaign against the Nazi forces of Erwin Rommel, perhaps Germany’s most capable general, that the British Special Air Service was first used for commando actions behind enemy lines. Conducting parachute drops and working alongside the Long Range Desert Group, the SAS strode into history, becoming the preeminent Special Operations force, which the rest of the Western world sought to emulate decades later.

As a result of the Allied victory in the Second World War, Libya was allowed to become an independent state. In 1951, it was declared an independent monarchy ruled by King Idris. With the discovery of Libya’s massive oil reserves, the country became rich seemingly overnight. With wealth concentrated around King Idris, resistance to the monarchy and foreign interference continued to build during the post-colonial Arab and African nationalist movements of the 1960s.

Under the aegis of Marxist revolutionary rhetoric, Omar Gaddafi staged a coup against the king in 1969. The Libyan revolution had brought into power a dictator who would antagonize America, and Africa, for decades to come.

Born to a Bedouin family of little consequence, Gaddafi rose through the ranks as a young Libyan military officer, receiving specialized radio training in England along the way. When he launched his coup, he used his charisma to build popular support and align himself against the Italian colonizers and Western powers. Although he came out of a post-colonial background, Gaddafi can in some ways be seen as a precursor to over-the-top populist figures such as Hugo Chavez of Venezuela in terms of his strong anti-Western stances and attempts to nationalize industry in an effort to free his citizens from the “scourge of the private sector.”

Gaddafi proposed his own unique political doctrine, one that embraced socialism but rejected the atheism of the Soviet Union, instead implementing Sharia Law in Libya. This course of action was well advised as communism had been quickly rejected in Iraq during its first go-around in the Muslim world during the 1950s, when Soviet envoys insisted that the Arabs abandon their Muslim faith.

Promoting himself to colonel, and later general, Gaddafi installed himself as the figurehead of his revolutionary movement while giving the illusion that the reins of power had been handed over to a series of councils and committees. Seeking to become a pan-Arab leader at the center of a single Muslim state that encompassed North Africa and the Middle East, Gaddafi cultivated relationships with Arab leaders such as Anwar Al-Sadat of Egypt and Hefiz Al-Assad of Syria. However, these leaders never fully trusted Gaddafi or his ambitions. Even though he was strongly anti-Israeli and promoted the Palestinian cause, Egypt and Syria left him out of the planning process as they prepared for war against Israel.

Israel’s defensive preemptive action, now known as the Six-Day War, struck a humiliating defeat to the Arab nations that resonates to this day. When Israeli fighter jets screamed over Egyptian airfields and destroyed their aircraft before they could even get off the ground, it left a feeling of impotence among the Arabs. Finger-pointing and shifting of blame happened between Assad, Sadat, and Gaddafi, resulting in the Arab leaders’ completely rejecting Gaddafi as a political player.

Since the Arabs wanted nothing to do with the Libyan leader, Gaddafi instead turned his attentions to Africa, now hoping for a pan-African movement that would unite the continent under his leadership. Delusions of grandeur appeared to be a habitual character flaw of his. In addition to assassinating overseas dissidents, Gaddafi financially supported anti-Western terrorist groups as wide-ranging as the IRA, the Red Army Faction, Filipino Muslim militants, the Black Panthers, the ANC in South Africa, and many others.

Meanwhile, covert operations were in the works against the Libyan colonel, operations hatched by former CIA operative Ed Wilson. Ted Shackley was the original CIA officer who set the conditions for covert operations that utilized non-official cover, that is to say, front companies. Wilson also came to specialize in the establishment of front companies that housed various CIA projects and programs. One of his more successful endeavors was setting up Consultants International, which was used as a front to provide logistical support for CIA operations. However, it all came to an end when Wilson and approximately 800 other CIA operatives were fired in 1977. This had the unforeseen outcome of making many of these operatives turn to freelance work.

Ed Wilson began cutting deals with the Libyan government, including sending training teams into the country to instruct Libyan soldiers in infantry and commando tactics. One of those teams was led by legendary Special Forces Sergeant Major Billy Waugh. Waugh, a Vietnam veteran who conducted cross-border operations with MACV-SOG, led a team consisting of three other Special Forces veterans to Benghazi in 1977.

The four men were called in for a briefing by someone acting as a lawyer and representing Ed Wilson in the Washington, DC area. It was at this briefing that they learned that the mission they had been recruited for was not actually a CIA-sponsored operation but rather a commercial endeavor undertaken on Wilson’s own initiative.

“My bullshit antennae went on high alert upon hearing this news,” Waugh recalls about the meeting in his memoirs. He was never completely convinced that the mission was not being conducted under the auspices of the CIA.

While the team waited for their visas to be approved through the Libyan embassy, Waugh received a call to his hotel room. The man on the other end of the line dropped some names, the names of Special Forces men Waugh had served with in Vietnam, in order to establish his bona fides. Waugh agreed to meet the man, named Pat, in a restaurant in Arlington. Pat produced a CIA identification card and informed Waugh that Ed Wilson’s training mission in Libya had not been authorized by the Agency. However, he was still encouraged to go to Libya with the training team and take a 35mm camera with him and snap any pictures of Libyan military installations or equipment that could prove useful to the CIA down the line.

With the de facto blessing of the CIA, Waugh and his team landed in Tripoli in August of 1977. After their first meeting with Libyan military officers, the Americans were housed at the Omar Khayamm Hotel in Benghazi. Assigned to train Libyan commandos, Waugh relied on his Special Forces background to gain the trust of the trainees and began casually taking photographs with his CIA-supplied camera, snapping pictures of everything from surface and air missile sites to MIG fighter jets.

Waugh worked with the Libyan commandos for almost a full year but never had a high opinion of their capabilities. In 1978, he returned home and got married before going back to Libya as a singleton operator. This time, the Libyans asked him to conduct a cross-border operation into Egypt to photograph potential military targets, a request that Waugh refused as it would mean his taking part in military operations for the Libyan government, a government not exactly on good terms with America to begin with.

Having refused the recon mission, Waugh was moved to a secret compound in the Green Mountains, east of Benghazi, to train another commando unit. It was on November 4th, 1978, that Waugh learned the US embassy in Tehran had been taken over by Iranian terrorists and Americans had been held hostage in retaliation for the United States’s providing asylum for the late shah of Iran. The Arab world perceived this act as a sell-out by America. A Libyan officer who had befriended Waugh warned him at the eleventh hour that the Libyan government would be coming after him and he needed to escape the country immediately.

The officer helped him escape to Benina Airport in Benghazi and handed him a ticket to Frankfurt, Germany, where Waugh’s wife was living with family at the time. Though Billy got out of the country in the nick of time, he later learned that his Libyan officer friend had been executed for taking part in an attempted coup against Colonel Gaddafi.

A few years later, in 1982, Ed Wilson was arrested for selling 20 tons of C4 plastic explosives to the Gaddafi regime. It was also alleged that the Libyan commandos trained by the Special Forces veterans he had hired for Gaddafi later went around the world assassinating Libyan political dissidents in places as far flung as Germany and the United States. Wilson maintained his innocence and spent decades in prison trying to clear his name.

Through Freedom of Information Act requests, he managed to show at least eighty occasions on which the CIA had been in contact with him after he was no longer their employee, establishing that there was a continuing relationship between him and the CIA. Although he was never able to demonstrate that the US government had allowed him to sell the C4 to Libya, he did show that he had been in close contact with CIA representatives during the time of major arms deals he had made with Gaddafi. Ultimately, this was enough for his release from prison in 2004.

Was Ed Wilson working for the CIA the entire time, or did the CIA simply allow him to run his own entrepreneurial activities and piggyback their own operations onto the tail end of them by recruiting people like Billy Waugh to feed them information? We probably won’t know for sure until more documents are declassified.

Gaddafi’s reign of terror came to a head with the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, which brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland and killed 270 people. Secret NSA intercepts pointed toward Gaddafi as the culprit, the bombing of the aircraft done as part of a series of skirmishes between America and Libya that included the US military shooting down two Libyan fighter jets and sinking a number of military boats off the country’s coast. In response, Gaddafi had a discotheque in Germany bombed, killing three people. The United States later retaliated by deploying fighter jets to drop bombs on Tripoli and Benghazi in 1986. The airstrike failed to kill the Libyan dictator but allegedly killed his adopted daughter. This small-scale conflict ultimately resulted in the dictator’s ordering the Lockerbie bombing.

These airstrikes were almost certainly planned with the aid of the reconnaissance photos taken by Billy Waugh during his many adventures in Libya.

Another motivation for the Lockerbie bombing was America’s and France’s assistance to Chad as Gaddafi’s pivot from the Arab world to Africa saw him launching a highly unpopular war in the desert nation on his southern border. The so-called Toyota War between Chad and Libya resulted in yet another defeat for Gaddafi in 1987, with heavy losses of both soldiers and war material.

Not content to run an extraction-based economy centered on oil exportation and oppress the people in his own nation, Gaddafi furthered his African ambitions by financing and providing weapons to butchers in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, and elsewhere. He also provided aid and comfort to other autocrats such as Idi Amin of Uganda and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.

For all his sins, the Western world seemed to enter into some kind of detente with Gaddafi starting in the 1980s. Despite the African leader’s forays into terrorism and assassination, it seems that the West could not ignore a nation so rich in oil, and with an apparently unhinged leader who had a growing interest in Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Margret Thatcher wrote at the time that the former President of Sudan had once called Gaddafi “a man with a split personality—both of them evil.”

After the attacks and counter-attacks between Gaddafi and the West during the 1980s, the Libyan leader sought to rehabilitate his image as the “mad dog of the Middle East,” as Ronald Reagan had once called him. He admitted to responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing and turned over two suspects, his own intelligence operatives, for trial in Europe. His concession, and willingness to pay over two billion dollars in damages to the families of the victims, is seen as purely Machiavellian. Ever the shrewd manipulator, by admitting some responsibility for the bombing, Gaddafi succeeded in having UN sanctions against his country lifted.

The fun and games continued through the 1990s as well. David Rothkopf, who discusses conspiracy theories about the power elite in his book Superclass, relates a personal story in which the CEO of a major aircraft manufacturer pitches an assassination plot to Representative Pat Schroeder.

Here is the deal. I want to sell a plane to Muammar Qaddafi and he wants to buy one. But we have sanctions in place that won’t let me sell to him. The US wants this guy dead. So, what I’m thinking is, if you help me get the okay to sell him the plane, I’ll build it with explosive bolts connecting the wings to the fuselage. Then, one day he’s up flying over the Med and we push a button. He’s gone. I make my sale. Everyone’s happy.

It is unknown what ultimately became of this plan.

Ironically, Gaddafi himself faced an internal threat from Islamic extremists in the 1990s that influenced him to cooperate with American and British counterterrorism initiatives. Libya was even used as a center in the rendition flight network for detained suspected terrorists held by American operatives after the 9/11 attacks. One of these rendition prisoners appears to have been an internal political opponent of Gaddafi’s named Abdelhakim Belhadj, an Islamic extremist who fought with the Mujahdeen in Afghanistan against the soviets before becoming an emir in the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. The CIA then arranged for him to be arrested in Malaysia and returned to Libya, where Gaddafi later released him as part of a de-radicalization program. Belhadj became a leader in the Libyan civil war against Gaddafi’s forces just a few years later.

With the British, French, and Americans convincing Gaddafi to abandon his Weapons of Mass Destruction program, the Bush administration removed Libya from the list of nations that support terrorism, and both MI–6 and the CIA increased intelligence-sharing and cooperation with the Libyan regime. Only after the civil war was it evident that the CIA had even written speeches for Gaddafi and helped him set up an extensive surveillance system.

At this point, there was a warming of relations between Gaddafi and the West as he signed agreements with French Prime Minister Sarkozy and Italian Prime Minister Burlesconi. He also opened the door to Russia, meeting with Medvedev and Putin. The once-ostracized dictator even rated a handshake from President Obama at a G8 summit in 2009.

All of which makes Gaddafi’s liquidation, with direct Western assistance, in 2011 all the more interesting.

About the Authors

JACK MURPHY is the managing editor of SOFREP.com and a former US Army Ranger with multiple combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is an eight-year Army Special Operations veteran who served as a Sniper and Team Leader in 3rd Ranger Battalion and as a Senior Weapons Sergeant on a Military Free Fall team in 5th Special Forces Group. Acting as senior trainers and advisers to an Iraqi SWAT team, his Special Forces soldiers conducted Direct Action and other missions across Northern Iraq. Having left the military in 2010, he now studies political science at Columbia University.

BRANDON WEBB is the editor-in-chief of SOFREP.com and a former US Navy SEAL who served combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. President George W. Bush awarded the Presidential Unit Citation to Webb and his SEAL platoon following their deployment to Afghanistan after September 11, 2001. After his final combat deployment, he was Course Manager for the US Navy SEAL Sniper program, arguably the most difficult sniper courses in the world. The author of the bestselling memoir The Red Circle, Webb has appeared in the New York Times and on ABC News, CNN, MSNBC, FOX, the BBC, and other outlets.

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