Burton / M. Katz Under Fire

1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-1-84831-729-1
Verlag: Icon Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 320 Seiten

Benghazi, Libya. 9/11/2012. Just over a year after the fall of Gaddafi, and on the eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, a group of heavily armed Islamic terrorists had their sights set on the U.S. diplomatic and intelligence presence in the city. In the prolonged attack, four Americans died, including the American ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, the Information Officer Sean Smith, and two former Navy SEALs, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, working for the Central Intelligence Agency. Based on confidential eyewitness sources within the intelligence, diplomatic, and military communities, Under Fire is the terrifying account of that night, and of a desperate last stand amid the chaos of rebellion.

Fred Burton is a former State Department counter terrorism deputy chief and one of the world's foremost experts on security, terrorists and terrorist organizations. He is the author of a bestselling memoir, Ghost: Confessions of a Counterterrorism Agent, and Chasing Shadows: A Special Agent's Hunt to Bring a Cold War Assassin to Justice (Palgrave, 2011). Samuel Katz is an internationally recognized expert on Middle East security issues, international terrorism, and military special operations and counter-terrorism.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Burton, Fred

M. Katz, Samuel

Leseproben

PROLOGUE

The Oncoming Storm

Libya was the place where you needed to worry about the young men who ogled a woman in the street, and you had to worry about those who didn’t!

—Dan Meehan, U.S. Diplomatic Security Service special agent stationed to Libya1

The wine should have flowed freely at lunch, but this was Benghazi after all. A bottle of red or white was supposed to have been one of the trappings of civility handed to a city that had been colonized by Mussolini, but post-Qaddafi Libya would have none of the alcoholic pleasures of the West. There was very little law and order in the new Libya, bullets were still flying all over the country, and indeed much of the Arab world, but a glass of wine was forbidden by the clerics—pure and unadulterated haram—even though it would have been splendid with the meal.

The Venezia Café was one of the ritziest eateries in the western suburbs of Benghazi—a relic of those bygone days when a Qaddafi-crony elite class had disposable cash and an insatiable appetite. Establishments like the Venezia never disappeared in the smoldering debris of a revolution; they thrived. Once the smoke cleared, Venezia’s tables, where despots—or their cousins—once sat and intimidated the Egyptian and Sudanese waitstaff, were cleared and set up with china and polished silverware for Benghazi’s new movers and shakers. Diplomats, spies, businessmen, gunrunners, and oil industry magnates all competed for the best table. The Venezia was also a favorite of militia commanders, especially business-minded lieutenants who could combine the zealous passion of faith with the hard green cash of selling weapons, drugs, or women.

Located behind the sprawling estate of the unofficial U.S. diplomatic compound, the Venezia was blessed with a most convenient location. Most of the restaurant was nestled inside a plush green garden, with an impressive display of local cacti and flora. The Venezia provided pure serenity, and as a result it served as a safe haven—a no-man’s-land—for all sides who had a stake or hand in determining Libya’s future. Many considered it a Switzerland of sorts—completely neutral. Politics were left at the door, though the bodyguards never relinquished their sidearms. This was Libya after all.

The Venezia was, for Sir Dominic Asquith anyway, one of those cherished human reminders of what a world without the need for bodyguards was like, even though he was required to travel in a fully armored and fully armed cocoon of security. Her Majesty’s special representative to the newly transitional democratic Libya, Asquith was a veteran Arab hand at the Foreign Office who, despite service in such pressure-cooker posts as Syria, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq, and now Libya, sported a youthful appearance that never betrayed his fifty-five years. As the great-grandson of a British prime minister, the ambassador was of noble stock and was considered a most capable diplomat who understood the complexities and realities of the Arab world and still reveled in its charm and wonder despite its bullet-strewn landscape. And Benghazi was indeed bullet strewn. The bodies were still being counted and scores still being settled as the port city recovered from the revolution that ended the forty-two-year reign of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, but on this June noon, with an ever-so-wonderful ocean breeze bouncing off the palm trees nearby, the madness of the city and the sometimes drowning paperwork of top secret cables and e-mails made way for a meal outside the bunker of the British consulate. There were always eateries, even in war zones, that were known as safe havens. These restaurants were immaculately maintained bastions of fine food, generous bars, and discreet waitstaffs; they were neutral hangouts in locations where spies, soldiers, and those ever-present men in dark suits who played for both sides of any conflict felt at home. These establishments made sure that a favorite meal was always purely heartwarming and that there were always enough Cuban cigars at the ready.

The Italian restaurant was only a short ride from the ad hoc British consulate, located in the affluent Western Fwayhat neighborhood. The section of the city was a vast expanse of villas and estates, warehouses and buildings abandoned by war. Towering palm trees, as well as some slightly smaller, spread generous shade to the wide avenues and the gravel-strewn side streets. The neighborhood served as Benghazi’s diplomatic enclave, home to missions and consulates, ambassadorial residences, and the city’s much-envied International School. The food, the sun, and the sea breeze made it possible, even if for a brief moment, to forget that this luxurious oasis was inside the semi-lawless grasp of the Benghazi landscape, inside the epicenter of the Arab Spring and a just-relocated battlefield in the Global War on Terror. Ambassadors could dream, of course; close protection agents were paid to worry. Ambassador Asquith was always shadowed by a team of heavily armed security agents working for Her Majesty’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office; the United Kingdom did not field a specialized security arm within its law enforcement and intelligence services and, as a result, relied on special operations units, or companies fielding retired special operations unit personnel. The contracting firm responsible for protecting British interests in Libya was GardaWorld.2 GardaWorld, a global risk management and security services company, is the international division of Garda World Security Corporation, the largest privately owned security company in the world. Much of its corporate leadership was former British Special Forces; a member of its international advisory board was the retired U.S. Navy admiral Eric T. Olson, former head of U.S. Special Operations Command, who had been awarded a Silver Star for valor in the Battle of Mogadishu, Somalia, and who had played a critical role in planning the 2011 DevGru raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, targeting Osama bin Laden.

Some members of Sir Dominic Asquith’s security detail were undoubtedly veterans of 22 Special Air Service, or SAS, Great Britain’s legendary commandos, whose motto is “Who Dares Wins.” Others were members of the Royal Marines Special Boat Service, or SBS; a few were even experienced bobbies with a history of firearms use in units such as SO1, the London Metropolitan Police’s Dignitary Protection Squad; SO6, the Diplomatic Protection Group; SO14, the Royal Family Protective Unit; and SCO19, the Specialist Firearms Command. Anyone accepted for such hazardous duty was considered top tier. All were veterans of Britain’s terrorist wars—either overseas or at home, in London and beyond. The old-timers who had served in Northern Ireland, as well as those who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially those from the SAS, never left home without their Browning Hi Power 9 mm automatic—the regiment’s favorite and most reliable sidearm.

Ambassador Asquith’s security detail moved out of the restaurant, some walking in front of and others walking behind the diplomat, toward the awaiting vehicles; the driver from each vehicle in the ambassador’s package remained behind at the wheel in order to prevent any malicious elements from sabotaging the armored SUVs or in case the detail had to escape with no time to spare. When the ambassador finished his meal, the vehicles were summoned and pulled up in front of the main entrance.

The warm and soothing June sun had already baked everyone’s face a shiny glow of reddish brown. With the sun and coastal breeze and the palms swaying ever so gently as they spread shade along the boulevard, Benghazi could have been a Club Med. It was even plausible, if just for a second, to forget that only five days earlier Abu Yahya al-Libi, the Libyan-born deputy commander of al-Qaeda, had been blown to bits by a CIA drone strike in Mir Ali, a rugged patch of hell in the northern part of Waziristan, Pakistan.

Ambassador Asquith could never enjoy the breeze of driving in a Benghazi June, because he rode in an armored SUV whose bullet-resistant windows were closed at all times. There were several cars to his motorcade—a lead, a follow, the principal’s vehicle, and that of the armed specialists who escorted the ambassador everywhere. Traffic was frenetic that beautiful afternoon, Sunday, June 10, but maneuvering through any Arab city was always an exercise of honk, brake, curse, brake, honk. Protection specialists were always taught to never become a statistic in traffic, and Ambassador Asquith’s motorcade swerved in and out of lanes as it moved along its short path toward the consulate. Two months earlier, on April 2, a U.K. consulate car found itself in between three warring militias—one of which was the local traffic police—and barely managed to escape from the melee. The warring militias weren’t thugs or gangster groups, however; well, not officially at least. They were actually uniformed members of the local law enforcement community—the men sworn to protect and serve rather than rape and pillage—who were flexing their muscles and settling some scores.

The two assailants, masked persons unknown behind their camouflage fatigues and dishdashas, were waiting behind the neatly manicured trees and brush. The attack site was chosen very carefully. The terrorists had conducted advance surveillance of the area in order to pinpoint a specific choke point, known as the “X”, where the motorcade would be at its most vulnerable and where the escape avenues...