The new Benghazi book by Brandon Webb and Jack Murphy, SOFREP.com, a site by special ops folk. Their information was sourced according to their contacts in the intelligence and special ops world.
The book lays the blame on John Brennan for conducting a “secret war” with hit squads, for which he was given a blank check by President Obama, unbeknownst to Ambassador Stevens or CIA director General Petraeus.
Here is some of their blow-by-blow account of what actually happened in Benghazi that evening:
Around 9 p.m. came an attack that would carry on through the night. The consulate’s first line of defense was four locally hired security guards and another man on the front gate. All five of these rent-a-cops, who were armed only with baseball bats and no firearms, immediately fled when the attack began. One of them, Murphy and Webb say, may even have opened the gates for the dozens of armed al Qaeda fighters who came swarming into the compound.
That left Ambassador Stevens and IT worker Sean Smith defended only by five inexperienced Diplomatic Security Service agents. When Stevens and Smith fled to a safe room, the attackers smoked them out by lighting up diesel fuel. Smith and Stevens eventually choked to death on the smoke.
Meanwhile, DSS agents called for help from the nearest Americans, at a CIA compound defended by much more experienced security men. Team leader Ty Woods, who had spent 20 years in the Navy SEALs, in minutes put together a plan in which he and five others would load up their weapons in a pair of armored Toyota Land Cruisers. Woods had a heated discussion about his rescue mission with his CIA boss, who opposed the idea, though the authors say it’s unclear whether Woods simply ignored orders or persuaded his superior to change his mind.
The plan was to park outside the consulate, climb over the walls and ambush the attackers with a machine gun, rifles and grenades called “golden eggs.” At first, it worked beautifully. Many of the jihadists were killed and others were confused and scrambling for cover. The authors estimate more than 100 attackers were killed in total.
Woods took the opportunity to evacuate the DSS agents at the compound, putting them in a Land Cruiser and directing them back to the local CIA building.
Woods told them to turn right outside the consulate: “Do not go left into bad guy land,” he said. Confused, they turned left anyway and took on heavy gunfire, though the vehicle’s armor held up and they eventually made it to the CIA hideout.
At the consulate, Woods entered the blazing building in which Smith and Stevens had hidden when the terrorists’ assault began. Woods found Smith, who was unconscious and would shortly die.
Al Qaeda forces were regrouping. Rifle shots and rocket-propelled grenades tore into the walls around Woods, so he led his team out without ever finding Stevens. They shot their way back to their other Land Cruiser, then raced out of the compound under fire. “Their tires flattened and windows filled with the spider cracks that come with embedded lead,” the authors write. Woods and company made it back to the CIA building at 11:50 p.m.
The CIA location, unlike the consulate, was well-defended, with fighting positions, heavy weapons, skilled paramilitary personnel, floodlights designed to blind any attackers and high-paid local security. But the al Qaeda militias pressed the battle through the next day. The CIA “would rack up dozens of enemy KIA,” or killed in action, write Webb and Murphy.
“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.”
Meanwhile, 400 miles away, in Tripoli, Woods’ old Navy SEAL buddy Glen Doherty was rounding up the cavalry. The authors say that it’s a “media myth” that the diplomats’ cries for help were denied; in fact, at every stage of the game, aid was vigorous.
Doherty gathered up six other hard-charging warriors, found a plane and gave a pilot $30,000 cash to fly them east to Benghazi. When they arrived at the CIA compound, the gates opened for them and Doherty quickly joined Woods on the roof, where the latter was manning the MK46 machine gun with two others. Woods and Doherty “embraced like brothers,” and Woods began referring to Doherty by his call sign, “Bub.”
As Woods was thanking Doherty, though, the attackers were adjusting their mortar fire, and getting closer with each volley. A French 81 mm round ended Woods’ life, though as he fell, his body shielded another security agent, saving his life.
Doherty was killed instantly by a direct hit on his position from another mortar round.
From below, several other agents rushed up to the roof and put themselves in the line of fire while they saved the other two men’s lives. They lowered the bodies down with rope they had cut down from their gym. One JSOC agent strapped a wounded DSS man to his back, then climbed down a ladder under fire.
Everyone at the CIA compound might well have been killed if they had remained, but an unmanned intelligence drone overhead signalled, by tracing heat signatures, that a much larger hostile force was gathering.
Some 30 Americans loaded into vehicles and evacuated the area. They were fired on again during the drive to the airport, but made it and escaped to Tripoli on two flights, at 7:30 and 8:30 a.m. Sept. 12. Stevens’ body was finally recovered when a local was sent to the Benghazi morgue and “there was likely a money exchange,” the authors say, to release the remains, which were on the 8:30 plane.
So, who is to blame for Benghazi? The authors are withering on the subject of John Brennan, our likely next CIA director.
