for a film about the mistreatment of Christians in contemporary Egypt.
But it included bawdy historical flashbacks that derided the Prophet
Muhammad. Someone dubbed it into Arabic around the beginning of
September 2012, and a Cairo newspaper embellished the news by reporting
that a Florida pastor infamous for burning the Quran was planning to
debut the film on the 11th anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks.
Then, on Sept. 8, a popular Islamist preacher lit the fuse by
screening a clip of the video on the ultraconservative Egyptian
satellite channel El Nas. American diplomats in Cairo raised the alarm
in Washington about a growing backlash, including calls for a protest
outside their embassy.
No one mentioned it to the American diplomats in Libya. But Islamists
in Benghazi were watching. Egyptian satellite networks like El Nas and
El Rahma were widely available in Benghazi. “It is Friday morning
viewing,” popular on the day of prayer, said one young Benghazi Islamist
who turned up at the compound during the attack, speaking on the
condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
By Sept. 9, a popular eastern Libyan Facebook page had denounced the
film. On the morning of Sept. 11, even some secular political activists
were posting calls online for a protest that Friday, three days away.
Hussein Abu Hamida, the acting chief of Benghazi’s informal police
force, saw the growing furor and feared new violence against Western
interests. He conferred with Abdul Salam Bargathi of the Preventive
Security Brigade, an Islamist militia with a grandiose name, each
recalled separately, and they increased security outside a United
Nations office. But they said nothing to the Americans.
Reports of the video were just beginning to spread on Sept. 9 when
Mr. McFarland, then the officer normally in charge of politics and
economics at the United States Embassy in Tripoli, had his meeting with
the Benghazi militia leaders. Among them were some of the same men who
had greeted Mr. Stevens when he arrived in Benghazi at the start of the
revolt, including
,
39, a heavyset former Abu Salim inmate who ran a local sandwich truck
before becoming the leader of the Rafallah al-Sehati. Another was
,
also 39, a slim and slightly hunched mechanic known for his skill with
American cars who by then had become the leader of Libya Shield,
considered one of the strongest militias in Libya.
said that he had known about the building rage in Egypt over the video,
but that, “We did not know if it was going to reach us here.”
Mr. McFarland seemed most concerned about the big militia leaders.
“'How do the revolutionaries feel about having relationships with
Western countries? What is your opinion about the United States?'” the
Americans asked, according to Mr. Gharabi. It was “an interrogation,” he
said.
“We told them that we hoped that the countries which helped us during
the war would now help us in development,” he said. “And America was at
the top of the pyramid.”
and two other Libyan militia leaders present said separately that they
tried to warn Mr. McFarland. “We told them, ‘Weapons are everywhere, in
every home, and there is no real control,' ”
of Libya Shield said.
Mr. McFarland struggled to make sense of their contradictory signals.
“The message was, ‘Don’t come here because there is no security, but
come right away because we need you,' ” Mr. McFarland later told
colleagues.
The militia leaders seemed unable to get their stories straight, his
colleagues said, and the vague warnings amounted to a reminder of what
the diplomats already knew: Post-revolutionary Benghazi was a dangerous
place.
“Security vacuum,” Ambassador Stevens wrote in his personal diary on Sept. 6 in Tripoli, in one of the few pages recovered from the Benghazi compound.
“Militias are power on the ground,” he wrote. “Dicey conditions,
including car bombs, attacks on consulate,” he continued. “Islamist ‘hit
list’ in Benghazi. Me targeted on a prominent website (no more off
compound jogging).” A map of his Tripoli jogging route had appeared on
the Internet, seemingly inviting attacks, diplomats said.
But when he arrived from Tripoli for a visit, he was glad to be back
in Benghazi. “Much stronger emotional connection to this place,” he
wrote in his diary on Sept. 10, “the people but also the smaller town
feel and the moist air and green and spacious compound.”
By 7 a.m. on Sept. 11, guards at the American Mission had spotted a
man taking photographs with a cellphone on the second floor of an
unfinished building next to the Venezia Restaurant across the street,
according to interviews with the compound’s Libyan guards as well as the
State Department report.
When the guards approached, the photographer fled in a police car
with two others, all in the uniforms of a quasi-official militia known
as the Supreme Security Committee. Fawzi Wanis, a former commander of
the group, said he suspected that the men were doing reconnaissance for
someone else.
“We had all kinds in the Supreme Security Committee, from Islamist extremists to drunks,” Mr. Wanis said.
In his diary, Mr. Stevens wrote, “Never ending security threats…”
Around dusk, the Pan-Arab satellite networks began broadcasting
footage of protesters breaching the walls of the American Embassy in
Cairo, pulling down the American flag and running up the black banner of
militant Islam. Young men around Benghazi began calling one another
with the news, several said, and many learned of the video for the first
time.
Mr. Stevens, who spent the day in the compound for security reasons
because of the Sept. 11 anniversary, learned about the breach in a phone
call from the American Embassy in Tripoli. Then a diplomatic security
officer at the Benghazi mission called to tell the C.I.A. team. But as
late as 6:40 p.m., Mr. Stevens appeared cheerful when he welcomed the
Turkish consul, Ali Akin, for a visit.
There was even less security at the compound than usual, Mr. Akin
said. No armed American guards met him at the gate, only a few unarmed
Libyans. “No security men, no diplomats, nobody,” he said. “There was no
deterrence.”
Sept. 11, 2012
9:02P.M.
A police car stationed in front of the compound belatedly arrives. It
stays parked outside for 40 minutes and abruptly leaves. The attack
begins moments later.
9:42P.M.
Attackers storm through the main gate and set barracks and cars on fire. Mr. Stevens, Mr.
Smith and a security officer in the main villa lock themselves in a safe
room. Attackers set the main villa’s living room on fire. They bang at the safe room’s door,
but do not enter.
Three American armed officers outside the main villa rush to retrieve rifles, radios and
bulletproof vests in the security quarters. Two of them try to return to the villa, but find
the alley between the two buildings overtaken by attackers. Outnumbered and outgunned, they
barricade themselves in the security quarters.
As the main villa is engulfed in smoke, the security officer tries to guide Mr. Stevens and
Mr. Smith outside through a window. The officer leaves, but the two men do not follow. The
officer re-enters the building multiple times, but is unable to find the two men.
At 8:30 p.m., British diplomats dropped off their vehicles and
weapons before flying back to Tripoli. At 9:42 p.m., according to
American officials who have viewed the security camera footage, a police
vehicle stationed outside turned on its ignition and drove slowly away.
A moment later a solitary figure strolled by the main gate, kicking
pebbles and looking around — a final once-over, according to the
officials.
The attack began with just a few dozen fighters, according to those
officials. The invaders fired their Kalashnikovs at the lights around
the gate and broke through with ease.
The compound had a total of eight armed guards that night: five
Americans and three Libyans affiliated with the February 17 militia. All
of them fell back. The Americans raced to grab their weapons in the
compound’s other buildings but then found a swarm of attackers blocking
their way to the main villa.
Mr. Stevens and an information officer took refuge in the villa’s
safe room while an armed security officer positioned himself to defend
it.
Reports from the scene ricocheted around the city in frantic phone
calls telling competing stories. Abu Baker Habib, a Libyan-American
friend of Mr. Stevens, began calling for help from a handful of the most
important militia leaders, like
Mr. Bin Hamid and
Mr. Gharabi.
But a false report spread much wider and faster: that guards in the
compound had shot and wounded Libyans who had come only to protest.
“They told each other that the Americans had killed a Libyan,” Mr. Gharabi said. “For that reason, everybody would go.”
Mr. Gharabi, who was at a friend’s wedding a hundred miles away, knew
that some of his fighters would join the attack, so he sent a
delegation of “wise men” to deter them, he said.
Mr. Bukatef
of the February 17 Brigade was in Tripoli that night but said in an
interview that he also believed some of his men had participated.
Soon scores, if not hundreds, of others were racing to the scene.
Some arrived with guns, some with cameras. The attackers had posted
sentries at Venezia Road, adjacent to the compound, to guard their rear
flank, but they let pass anyone trying to join the mayhem. Witnesses
said young men rushing inside had left empty pickup trucks from Ansar
al-Shariah, but also all the other big militias ostensibly allied with
the government.
Sept. 11, 2012
10:05P.M.
A C.I.A. team leaves the Annex in two vehicles, trying and failing to get help from militia members it finds along the way.
It takes enemy fire as it approaches the mission.
The Annex team rescues the officer in the monitoring office and joins the search for the two
missing Americans. They find Mr. Smith in the main villa, dead from smoke
inhalation, but not the ambassador.
Cellphone video posted online shows Mr. Stevens's body being recovered later by a crowd from
a window near the villa's entrance.
There is no doubt that anger over the video motivated many attackers.
A Libyan journalist working for The New York Times was blocked from
entering by the sentries outside, and he learned of the film from the
fighters who stopped him. Other Libyan witnesses, too, said they
received lectures from the attackers about the evil of the film and the
virtue of defending the prophet.
Mr. Abu Khattala’s
whereabouts on the day before the attack could not be determined, nor
could his precise role in its planning. People who know him say he was
at work as usual in the days leading up to it.
“His neighborhood is full of people like him,” said the leader of a
major Islamist militia, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear
of reprisals. “So it is easy for him to pick up a phone and rally people
around him.”
Witnesses at the scene of the attack identified many participants
associated with Ansar al-Shariah. Mr. Abu Khattala’s presence and
leadership were evident. He initially hung back, standing near the crowd
at Venezia Road, several witnesses said. But a procession of fighters
hurried to him out of the smoke and gunfire, addressed him as “sheikh”
and then gave him reports or took his orders before plunging back into
the compound.
A local Benghazi official named Anwar el-Dos arrived on the scene and
identified Mr. Abu Khattala as directing the fighters, people present
said. Then Mr. Dos approached Mr. Abu Khattala for help entering the
compound.
The two drove into the mission in Mr. Abu Khattala’s pickup truck,
the witnesses said. As he moved forward, the fighters parted to let them
pass.
Mr. Abu Khattala,
in an interview, recounted meeting Mr. Dos that night. Mr. Dos declined
to comment. When the truck doors opened inside the compound, witnesses
said, Mr. Dos dived to the ground to avoid gunfire that was ringing all
around. But Mr. Abu Khattala strolled coolly through the chaos.
“He was just calm as could be,” a young Islamist who had joined the
pillaging said, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of
retribution. Around 11:30 p.m., Mr. Abu Khattala showed up on internal
security cameras, according to officials who have viewed the footage.
Sept. 11, 2012
11:30P.M.
The five security agents originally in the mission leave the compound in an armored vehicle
and come under attack. They manage to escape, but are followed to the Annex.
Back at the main villa, Americans are attacked again. The team is unable to find the
ambassador and retreats to the Annex carrying Mr. Smith’s body.
Shortly after they reach the Annex, the compound is attacked with gunfire and
rocket-propelled grenades, intermittently, for an hour.
Witnesses described utter bedlam inside. Men looted suits of clothes
and carried them out on their hangers. They lugged out televisions. Some
emerged from buildings clutching food they had found, and one poured
what appeared to be Hershey’s chocolate syrup into his mouth. Others
squabbled over trophies as small as a coil of rope left on the ground.
A newly acquired and uninstalled generator sat near the main gate,
with large cans of fuel beside it. Attackers stumbled upon it within 15
minutes of entering the compound, according to officials who have seen
the video footage, and soon begun using the fuel to set fire to vehicles
and buildings.
Libyan militia leaders who might have intervened to help the
Americans washed their hands of the attack. At the militias’ so-called
joint operations room inside the February 17 Brigade headquarters, the
commander in charge was Mr. Bargathi of the militia called the
Preventive Security Brigade. He had also been a friend and neighbor of
Mr. Abu Khattala since childhood.
He said he immediately radioed the Libyan guards in the compound and
told them not to resist the assault. “I told them: ‘Don’t shoot. Just
run away from the place,' ” he said. “Because I knew that it was not
wise to provoke. These are not like normal attackers, and it might
enrage them more. They might kill everyone inside.”
He volunteered that the leaders of Ansar al-Shariah had joined him in
the operations room shortly after the attack began — underscoring the
permeability of the line between threat and protector among Benghazi
militias.
Of all the major militias in the city, Libya Shield was the best
positioned to intervene. It was arguably the most formidable in the
country at the time, and its leader,
Mr. Bin Hamid
received an urgent call from the ambassador’s friend Mr. Habib asking
for help. Mr. Bin Hamid arrived at the scene within 30 minutes after the
attack began, he said in an interview.
“The situation wasn’t suitable for me to go inside the compound,” Mr.
Bin Hamid said. “And when the shooting stopped, we thought the
Americans had been evacuated.”
A group of about 20 young men who had been hanging around the
headquarters of the February 17 Brigade did try to help the Americans.
But they ran into the attackers’ sentries on Venezia Road.
“They pointed their guns at us and said, ‘This is none of your
business, go back,' ” said Sherif Emrajee el-Sherif, 18, a petroleum
engineering student who was among those who tried to help the Americans.
Sept. 12, 2012
1:00A.M.
A seven-person American team from Tripoli arrives in Benghazi on a
Libyan cargo jet, but struggles to negotiate an escort out of the
airport.
5:00A.M.
The response team arrives at the Annex, accompanied by a convoy of about a dozen Libyan militia trucks.
Minutes later, the Annex is attacked again. Three mortar rounds hit
one of the buildings, killing the security officers Tyrone Woods and
Glen Doherty. Two other officers are also wounded.
The militia fighters all followed an unstated code, the rescuers and
other militiamen said. Never enter a public gunfight with other Libyans,
for fear of setting off a cycle of retaliatory violence and demands for
blood money. “It is normal,” Mr. Sherif explained. “Whatever happened,
they were other Libyans.” (He and at least one other rescuer ultimately
entered the compound with Americans from the C.I.A. Annex, and Mr.
Sherif was shot in the leg in gunfire inside.)
As the melee continued,
Mr. Abu Khattala drove to the headquarters of Ansar al-Shariah and an affiliated militia, Othman Ibn Affan, witnesses said.
At one point, a fighter asked Mr. Abu Khattala what to do with the remains of the compound. “Flatten it,” he said.
Later, Mr. Abu Khattala appeared to prepare for another phase of the
attack. One young fighter with him told another to “cleanse ourselves
for another battle” — an apparent reference to a subsequent attack on
the C.I.A. Annex.
That phase appears to have been improvised that night. After the
Americans fled from the mission to the C.I.A. Annex, it, too, came under
a sporadic, low-grade attack for the first time, suggesting that the
assailants had just learned of it. Later, guards there observed people
lingering in a nearby pasture, stirring fears that they were plotting
coordinates for launching a mortar attack.
Back in Tripoli, American diplomats scrambled to make sense of the
news out of Benghazi. Many learned of Ansar al-Shariah’s existence from
social media during the attack. They sent seven security officers to
Benghazi in a borrowed Libyan cargo jet.
Sept. 12, 2012
6:30A.M.
Americans leave for the airport with support from a Libyan militia.
One hour later, part of the staff leaves Benghazi on a chartered jet.
8:25A.M.
Mr. Stevens’s body arrives at the Benghazi airport in an ambulance.
Hours earlier, about 1 a.m., some of the compound’s invaders found him
in the main villa and took him to a hospital, where he was pronounced
dead, apparently from smoke inhalation.
11:30A.M.
A second flight lands in Tripoli, with the remaining staff and the bodies of the four Americans.
Embassy officials had arranged for the team to be met by Fathi al-Obeidi, a trusted lieutenant of
Mr. Bin Hamid
of Libya Shield. But when the jet landed around 1 a.m., seemingly every
commander in Benghazi was competing for the honor of escorting the
Americans, even those who did nothing to stop the attack, including Mr.
Bin Hamid himself.
A group from the Preventive Security Brigade, led that night by
Mr. Abu Khattala’s
old friend Mr. Bargathi, insisted on coming, and held the team up for
hours on the tarmac, Mr. Obeidi said. And instead of the low-profile
escort the Americans had sought, a parade of nearly a dozen pickup
trucks ultimately joined them.
Shortly after the convoy arrived around 5 a.m., the C.I.A. Annex came
under a new attack: the mortar rounds the guards had feared. Within 90
seconds, five had landed, the last three hitting the roof of the main
building.
Almost all of the Libyan fighters who had insisted on accompanying the Americans from the airport fled immediately.
Two American security guards, Tyrone S. Woods and Glen A. Doherty,
were killed by the mortar shells. Mr. Stevens and Sean Smith, an
information officer, suffocated in the burning of the main villa in the
diplomatic compound.
Aftermath
After the attack,
Mr. Obama vowed retribution. “We will not waver in our commitment to
see that justice is done for this terrible act,” he said in a televised
address from Washington on the morning of Sept. 12. “And make no
mistake, justice will be done.”
But much of the debate about Benghazi in Washington has revolved
around statements made four days later in television interviews by Ms.
Rice, who was then ambassador to the United Nations.
“What happened in Benghazi was in fact initially a spontaneous
reaction to what had just transpired hours before in Cairo,” she said on
NBC’s “Meet the Press,” “almost a copycat of the demonstrations against
our facility in Cairo, prompted by the video.”
Republicans, pouncing on the misstatement, have argued that the Obama
administration was trying to cover up Al Qaeda’s role. “It was very
clear to the individuals on the ground that this was an Al Qaeda-led
event,” Representative Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican who is the
chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said last month on Fox
News.
“This was a preplanned, organized terrorist event,” he said, “not a video. That whole part was debunked time and time again.”
But the Republican arguments appear to conflate purely local
extremist organizations like Ansar al-Shariah with Al Qaeda’s
international terrorist network. The only intelligence connecting Al
Qaeda to the attack was an intercepted phone call that night from a
participant in the first wave of the attack to a friend in another
African country who had ties to members of Al Qaeda, according to
several officials briefed on the call. But when the friend heard the
attacker’s boasts, he sounded astonished, the officials said, suggesting
he had no prior knowledge of the assault.
Al Qaeda was having its own problems penetrating the Libyan chaos.
Three weeks after the attack, on Oct. 3, 2012, leaders of the group’s
regional affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, sent a letter to a
lieutenant about efforts to crack the new territory. The leaders said
they had sent four teams to try to establish footholds in Libya. But of
the four, only two in the southern Sahara “were able to enter Libyan
territory and lay the first practical bricks there,” the letter said.
The letter, left behind when the group’s leaders fled French troops
in Mali, was later obtained and released by The Associated Press. It
tallied up the “spectacular” acts of terrorism the group had
accomplished around the region, but it made no mention of Benghazi or
any other attacks in Libya.
More than a year later, the group appears more successful. People
briefed on American intelligence say the regional affiliate has
established a presence in Derna.
In the days after the Benghazi attack, meanwhile,
Mr. Abu Khattala
was still at work on construction sites and moving at ease around the
city, even mocking the American political debate about the ambassador’s
death. “It is always the same two teams, but all that changes is the
ball,” he said in an interview. “They are just laughing at their own
people.”
Sitting for an interview on a Benghazi hotel patio three weeks after
the attack, Mr. Abu Khattala acknowledged being at the scene. But he
said he had stopped near the mission that night only to break up a
traffic jam. He then left, he said, and returned later to help rescue a
Libyan guard he had heard was trapped inside.
But he scarcely hid his sympathy for the attackers. While almost
everyone else in Benghazi mourned Mr. Stevens as a friend of the
revolution, Mr. Abu Khattala was unmoved by his death. “I did not know
him,” he said coolly.
And he suggested that the video insulting the Prophet Muhammad might
well have justified the killing of four Americans. “From a religious
point of view, it is hard to say whether it is good or bad,” he said.
But as American investigators focused on Mr. Abu Khattala in the following weeks, other militia leaders closed ranks with him.
Mr. Bargathi and
Mr. Bin Hamid
offered alibis for him, contradicting many witnesses. Mr. Bargathi said
that he had received a call from Mr. Abu Khattala after the attack had
begun and that Mr. Abu Khattala had seemed surprised by the news.
Told that
Mr. Abu Khattala
had given his name as a corroborating witness, Mr. Bin Hamid said they
had stood together outside the compound because it seemed too dangerous
to enter.
In an interview last spring, Mr. Bin Hamid said he had decided to
make Mr. Abu Khattala a kind of local real estate judge, putting him in
charge of settling disputes over property deeds.
“That made him happy,”
Mr. Bin Hamid said. “He is good at this. He is a sincere person. People respect him.”
Other Benghazi Islamists insist, bizarrely and without evidence, that they suspect the C.I.A. killed the ambassador.
The leaders of Ansar al-Shariah, the hard-line Islamist group allied
with Mr. Abu Khattala, declared in a statement read on television the
morning after the attack that they had not participated in it. But they
lauded the assault as a just response to the video. They, too, insisted
that a “peaceful protest” had “escalated as a result of shooting that
came from the consulate, which led to the ambassador’s death by
suffocation.”
As they did with Mr. Abu Khattala, other local militia leaders and
even elected officials embraced Ansar al-Shariah more tightly after the
attack. Yousef al-Mangoush, the chief of staff of the Libyan military,
met with its leaders to confirm their warm ties. “Mangoush has a very
good impression of them,” said
Ibrahim Bargathi, the chief of the Preventive Security Brigade, who arranged the meeting.
Ansar al-Shariah focused on charitable missionary work, including an
antidrug campaign with local corporate sponsors, picking up garbage
during sanitation strikes and offering exorcisms for those troubled by
evil spirits.
“They are like Boy Scouts,” Mr. Bargathi said. “Anything that promotes good, they support.”
By last summer, United States investigators had interviewed hundreds
of witnesses and formally asked the Libyan government to arrest
Mr. Abu Khattala,
along with about a dozen others wanted for questioning. The United
States military also prepared a plan to capture him on its own, pending
presidential approval, officials said. But the administration held back,
fearing that unilateral United States military action could set off a
backlash that would undermine the fragile Libyan government.
In the meantime, violence among local groups has scattered the
militia. This fall, Ansar al-Shariah fought a citywide gun battle with a
defected military unit that left at least nine dead. Opponents burned
down Ansar al-Shariah’s headquarters and bombed its clinic, and its
fighters were driven into hiding.
The fighters are widely blamed for explosions that have destroyed
seemingly every police station in the city, as well as car bombings and
drive-by shootings targeting the defected unit.
Hearing rumors that a revenge-seeking mob was threatening to come
after Mr. Abu Khattala this fall, dozens of his neighbors sprang to his
defense in scenes reminiscent of Venezia Road on the night of the
mission attack. Fighters raced to erect checkpoints on the roads around
his house, and they pulled out Kalashnikovs, grenade launchers,
truck-mounted artillery and even a tank. Some drove government-issued
pickups.
Mr. Gharabi
said that Libya’s prime minister, under pressure from the Americans,
had asked a Benghazi army commander for help apprehending Mr. Abu
Khattala.
Mr. Gharabi quoted the commander as replying, “You will be lucky if he does not apprehend you.”
