13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi Read online

  Immediately after Alec Henderson’s initial call for help, the two-way radios scattered throughout the Annex snapped to life: “All GRS, meet in the CP.”

  The radio call came from the GRS Team Leader, calmly but firmly ordering the operators to muster in the Command Post, another name for the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility in Building C. All of the operators were on the Annex property except for Oz, who was still at dinner with the case officer.

  Tanto and D.B., unwinding with Wrath of the Titans, switched off the movie, rose from the couch, and began to gather themselves. Tanto, relaxing in cargo shorts, didn’t think the radio call sounded especially urgent. He figured they were being hauled in for a routine dressing down, having somehow pissed off their bosses. It had happened before, such as the time Tanto hung a photo in the Command Post of actor Robert Downey Jr. from the movie Tropic Thunder, captioned with a line from the movie, “Never go full retard.”

  “Hey Tanto,” D.B. asked, “what’d you do now?”

  Tanto wondered the same thing, but he wasn’t worried. He figured he’d take his licks and return to the movie.

  Less than twenty seconds after the first call, the radio sounded again: “We need GRS in the room. NOW!” The tone was altogether different.

  Tanto and D.B. caught each other’s eyes. “Shit, something’s really happening,” Tanto said as he moved toward the door. Unaware that American lives were in danger, Tanto grew excited by the prospect of a sudden night move: “We’re gonna get to do something fun tonight.”

  Tanto glanced at his wrist. No matter what anyone else would say later about the attack beginning at 9:42 p.m., Tanto was certain his watch read 9:32 p.m. He and D.B. grabbed their kits, including lightweight machine guns in addition to their pistols and assault rifles. They jocked up and moved toward Building C.

  The operators hustled, swiftly but not frantically, to avoid panicking Annex workers who hadn’t trained to be calm and collected in battle. The GRS Team Leader met them outside on the driveway, about halfway to Building C.

  “The consulate is being overrun,” he told Tanto and D.B.

  In the distance, they heard explosions and gunfire from the direction of the Compound. Tanto heard someone shouting in Arabic on a megaphone. He couldn’t make out much, but he could hear the distant amplified chant: “Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!”

  Still naked in his room, Jack set aside his laptop when he heard the first muster call. He hadn’t begun typing his nightly e-mail to his wife, but he figured he’d do so after a short interruption. At the first call, Jack began to dress, pulling on his jeans without underwear.

  His roommate, Tig, in nightclothes, slid on flip-flops.

  “Hang out here,” Tig said from the other side of the hanging blanket that divided their room. “I’ll see what’s going on.” Tig stepped outside. As he did, he heard the second muster call and ran across the driveway to Building C.

  “Hey, State is under attack!” the Team Leader told Tig, who immediately turned and ran back to Building D. He found Jack shirtless outside.

  “The consulate’s getting attacked,” Tig said. Both doubled their pace, pulling on civilian clothes then jocking up with a full array of weapons, armor, chest rigs containing ammunition, helmets, night-vision goggles, and other equipment. They also carried personal medical kits, with clotting agents, sterile Kerlix gauze dressings, and tourniquets already unwrapped so they could be applied with one hand if the other was injured, blown off, or holding a gun. That was among the tips that Rone had reinforced during his medical training exercise.

  As the operators prepared to move out, each grabbed his individual go-bag, stuffed with items including a compass, a GPS unit, extra ammunition, a flashlight, batteries, and in some cases their diplomatic passports.

  Jack popped in his contact lenses, but he did so too quickly and they weren’t oriented correctly. He left Building D with blurry vision.

  From the TOC at the US Embassy in Tripoli, Deputy Chief of Mission Gregory Hicks called the Operations Center at the State Department in Washington to report the attack and let officials there know what response was planned. Then he made a flurry of calls to Libyan officials. Hicks called the chief of staff to Libyan President Mohamed Magariaf to inform him of the attack and ask for immediate help. He made a similar request to the chief of staff of the Libyan prime minister. Then Hicks called the director of the Americas Desk at the Libyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Abdurrahman al-Gannas. Less than three weeks earlier, al-Gannas had held Chris Stevens’s hand in Tripoli as they shared the honors at the Consular Section ribbon-cutting ceremony. Now Hicks wanted al-Gannas to repay Stevens’s friendship by helping to save his life.

  During a phone call between Hicks and Bob the Annex chief, they agreed to mobilize a response team consisting of American operators based at the embassy in Tripoli. One team member would be former Navy SEAL Glen “Bub” Doherty, who’d be joining his friends Rone, Jack, and Tanto. Hicks and other Tripoli embassy staffers went to work chartering a small Libyan commercial jet to fly the reinforcements to Benghazi.

  Meanwhile, the embassy’s defense attaché called leaders of Libya’s Air Force and other Libyan armed forces, seeking help. The defense attaché also regularly updated officials in Washington and the US military’s Africa Command, known as AFRICOM. Embassy staffers called officials at Benina International Airport to ask for logistical support and cooperation, in anticipation of the arrival of the operators from Tripoli and an eventual evacuation of all the Americans from Benghazi.

  David McFarland, the embassy’s political section chief, had just returned to Tripoli after ten days in Benghazi as the Special Mission’s acting Principal Officer. McFarland called his militia contacts and trusted Libyans who worked various jobs at the Compound, to urge them to repulse the attack with overwhelming force.

  Calls also went out from the American diplomats to leaders of the 17 February Martyrs Brigade militia, officials at the United Nations, and diplomats in friendly nations’ embassies in Libya. Hicks then called Washington with another update.

  At 10:05 p.m. Benghazi time, or 4:05 p.m. in Washington, the State Department Operations Center issued an alert to the White House Situation Room, the FBI, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, among other key government and intelligence agencies. “US Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack,” it said. “[A]pproximately twenty armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well. Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi… [is] in the Compound safe haven.”

  Within five minutes of Alec Henderson’s first mayday call from the Compound, Tanto, D.B., Rone, Tig, and Jack were jocked up and assembled outside Building C. They talked among themselves, asking each other if anyone knew how many Americans were on the Compound and what kind of weapons were there. The answer: seven Americans with light weapons. From the gunfire and explosions they continued to hear, and from the reports of perhaps several dozen attackers, the operators knew that they’d be dealing with what Tanto called “a substantial force.”

  Tig told the GRS Team Leader they might want to drive up a narrow, rutted dirt pathway immediately west of the Annex, which the operators called “Smuggler’s Alley,” because it would lead them directly to the Fourth Ring Road and the Compound’s back gate. But the Team Leader said he’d heard from the DS agents that they thought the Compound’s back gate had been breached, so the operators should pick another route.

  The GRS Team Leader told the operators they wouldn’t be going in alone. He said they’d be linking up with a large group of 17 February fighters, who’d be fulfilling their militia’s promise to serve as a Quick Reaction Force. The T.L. told them that the attackers seemed to be armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades, and that the Americans at the Compound were separated into several groups. The T.L. instructed the five operators to stay ready and wait for his signal to leave.

  They tossed their gear into a dark-blue BMW sedan and a boxy, black Mercedes SUV. B
oth were armored, with bullet-resistant windows and tires called “run-flats,” designed to live up to the name if hit by bullets, spikes, or shrapnel. Both vehicles were tuned like racecars but dusty and worn outside, so they wouldn’t attract additional notice as they moved toward the Compound. The operators staged the vehicles outside Building C, pointing toward the gate, with the BMW in front.

  Rone got behind the wheel of the BMW, Jack rode shotgun, and Tig slid into the backseat, armed with a grenade launcher in addition to a lightweight machine gun with two bandoliers of ammunition. Tanto and D.B. jumped into the front seat of the Mercedes, with Tanto behind the wheel. Along with his usual weapons Tanto brought a light machine gun with a bandolier of ammunition. He knew that there were other, similar bandoliers already in the car, in case he needed more ammo. The GRS Team Leader remained outside near Building C, talking on a cell phone.

  Several of the operators demanded to know what they were waiting for. The Team Leader pulled away from his phone: “We need to come up with a plan,” he said, referring to how they’d coordinate with the 17 February militia. Also standing outside the vehicles talking on phones were Bob the Annex chief and his second-in-command, a CIA officer who’d earned the operators’ esteem by treating them with respect.

  Inside the vehicles, the five GRS operators triple-checked their gunsights, tightened their armor, and tried to figure out why they hadn’t already left. They likely could have reached the Compound on foot in the time they’d been waiting. Most sat quietly, but Tanto tried to keep the atmosphere light by complaining that he had nowhere to put the coffee cup he’d brought with him. “Spend $250,000 on a damn Mercedes and there’s no cup holder? What kind of bullshit is that?”

  As minutes passed and they grew tense listening to the conversations outside the cars, the operators got the distinct impression that the rescue plan being discussed somehow didn’t include them.

  Standing outside the Mercedes, Tig called out, “Hey, we gotta go now! We’re losing the initiative!”

  “No, stand down, you need to wait,” Bob the base chief yelled back.

  “We need to come up with a plan,” the Team Leader repeated.

  “It’s too fucking late to come up with a plan,” Tig yelled. “We need to get in the fucking area and then come up with a plan.”

  Tanto got out of the Mercedes and approached the Team Leader and Bob. He asked them to request US military air support, specifically an unmanned ISR drone, named for its ability to provide intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. Tanto also asked them to call in a heavily armed AC-130 Spectre gunship, a four-engine, fixed-wing plane designed for lethal ground assaults. In the meantime, Tanto told the bosses, he and the other operators were overdue to move out.

  The CIA chief looked at Tanto, then at the Team Leader, then back to Tanto. Tanto felt as though the chief was looking right through him. “No,” Bob said, “hold up. We’re going to have the local militia handle it.”

  Tanto couldn’t believe his ears. He turned to the Team Leader: “Hey, we need to go.”

  “No,” the T.L. said, “we need to wait. The chief is trying to coordinate with 17 Feb and let them handle it.”

  “What do you mean, ‘Let them handle it?’ ” Tanto demanded. He had little confidence in the 17 February militia, whose members he and several other operators considered as liable to turn on them as to serve alongside them. Tanto especially wouldn’t trust the militia on its word when the objective was to save American lives. “We need to go. We’re not letting 17 Feb handle it.”

  Tanto’s memory flashed back to the airport standoff earlier in the summer. He believed that Bob was repeating the go-slow, stand-down, let-the-friendly-militia-handle-it approach he’d taken when hostile militiamen held up Rone and another GRS operator. That incident was resolved peacefully, without injuries and without exposing the CIA presence in Benghazi, when Rone and his companion demonstrated that they wouldn’t be robbed without a fight. This time, Tanto thought, Bob was taking the same passive tactic even though the fight had already begun and the Americans were losing, possibly dying.

  “I’ve been through this before,” Tanto told the T.L., “when the chief didn’t let us go when our own guys were in trouble. Go ask Tyrone. He’s right over there. He was one of the guys out there when the chief said to have 17 Feb handle it and held us back.”

  “Tanto, I know,” the T.L. said. “I’m working on it.”

  Tanto returned to the Mercedes SUV and told D.B.: “This is a bunch of fucking bullshit.” D.B. was incredulous. His head slumped forward in frustration. Yet both knew that it wasn’t over. Plans were still forming and changing, with input and decisions flying between Benghazi, Tripoli, and Washington. They didn’t know whom Bob was speaking with, but they hoped that the “wait” order would be reversed quickly and they’d be given a green light.

  Tanto got on the radio and relayed his conversation to Rone, Jack, and Tig in the BMW. Rone looked over through the car window, his expression trapped between anger and disgust. Tanto held his palms up and shrugged.

  Rone got on the radio and called out: “We gotta go, gotta go, gotta go!”

  His vision still blurred from his misaligned contact lenses, Jack stared out the window of the BMW, wondering whether whoever was attacking the Compound might try a simultaneous assault on the Annex. He experienced the familiar yin and yang of the moment: disbelief that this was happening, contrasted by a sense that he had expected it all along. As he considered the situation, Jack remembered that he’d left his laptop on. The e-mail that he’d intended to send his wife remained unwritten.

  From the driver’s seat in the Mercedes, Tanto noticed a civilian named Henry, an owlish, balding, olive-skinned man with glasses, walking across the Annex driveway. Tanto bounded out of the SUV. Henry was a US citizen in his sixties working as an interpreter at the Annex. Some translators in hostile areas are designated combat interpreters because they’ve had specialized weapons training. Henry wasn’t among them. He was an office worker who reviewed and translated documents from Arabic and occasionally went out on operations no more dangerous than dinner with locals. Tanto stopped Henry in his tracks.

  “I’ve been through this before, and we need you to come with us,” Tanto said. “If we’re linking up with 17 Feb, none of us speaks the language well enough to communicate. We need you in here.”

  “Tanto,” Henry replied, “I’m not weapons qualified.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Tanto said. He pulled out a pistol and handed it to Henry. “Here’s your weapon. Go get your helmet and your armor. We need you.”

  Without hesitating, Henry said: “Roger. I’ll be right back.”

  Barely two minutes later, Henry was seated in the back of the Mercedes, his armor and helmet secured, Tanto’s gun in his hand, and a look of pure fright on his weathered face. Tanto thought he resembled a Middle Eastern version of the comic Bob Newhart. He handed Henry an extra magazine of ammunition.

  When Jack saw Henry jocked up and ready, he felt a flush of admiration. Here’s a guy, Jack thought, who’s an administrative guy, and somebody gave him body armor and a helmet and a pistol. He volunteered to come basically on a suicide mission. For us, it’s our job to do stuff like that. His job is to sit behind a desk and interpret Arabic into English. But he’s doing what he thinks is right.

  From their idling vehicles, the operators could vaguely see the orange flames rising from the Compound. With their doors flung open, they could hear chanting in the distance. Tanto grabbed his radio, so everyone in the Annex would hear his message. He hoped it also would reach someone on the same frequency at the Compound. Tanto repeated his earlier request as a demand: “Get us an ISR [drone] and a Spectre gunship!”

  Tanto didn’t know it, but one part of his demand was already being fulfilled. Within the first half hour of the attack, at 9:59 p.m., the US military’s Africa Command ordered a drone surveillance aircraft to reposition itself over the Special Mission Compound. It would take
more than an hour to reach Benghazi, but once there the drone could monitor events and beam live images to Washington.

  But a request for close air support wouldn’t be so easy to fulfill. A Pentagon spokesman would say later that none of America’s punishing AC-130 gunships were anywhere within range of Benghazi on the night of September 11, 2012.

  As minutes ticked by and the operators waited for clearance to leave, the air in the vehicles grew thick with tension. The operators imagined bloody scenes of what was happening to their countrymen less than a mile away. And the longer they sat idle, the more likely the same fate awaited them.

  As the hour neared 10:00 p.m., with the operators’ radios tuned to the same frequency as those at the Compound, they heard the voice of one of the DS agents in the Compound TOC, Alec Henderson or David Ubben.

  “We’re being attacked!” one yelled, his voice tight with stress. “There’s approximately twenty to thirty armed men, with AKs firing. We’re being attacked! We need help! We need help now!”

  Adrenaline surged through the operators’ veins, but again they were told to wait. They were used to following orders, and they knew that insubordination could mean their jobs or worse. But a shared thought took hold in both vehicles: If they weren’t given permission to move out soon, they’d take matters into their own hands.

  FIVE

  Overrun

  BEHIND THE LOCKED STEEL GATE INSIDE THE VILLA’S safe haven, Ambassador Chris Stevens and communications expert Sean Smith cowered in the dark with DS agent Scott Wickland.

  Wickland heard the intruders breaking through the villa’s reinforced wooden front doors, apparently by blowing them open with a rocket-propelled grenade. Staying out of sight, the DS agent peered through the openings between the bars of the security gate. Wickland watched from his protected position as their enemies burst into the building carrying AK-47s.