The testimony, the attackers were INSIDE the buildings, the team from Tripoli arrived:
As I remember Sept. 11th, 2012, it was a routine day at our embassy and — until we saw the news about Cairo. And I remember sending a text message to Ambassador Stevens saying, Chris, are you aware of what’s going on in Cairo? And he said, no. So I told him that the embassy in — in another text, that the embassy had been stormed and they were trying to tear down our flag. And he said, thanks very much. And, you know, then I went on with business.
Closed the day and I went back to my villa and was relaxing, watching a television show that I particularly like, and at 9:45 p.m. — and all times will be Libyan times, there’s a six-hour time difference — the RSO [Regional Security Officer], John Martinec, ran into my villa, yelling, Greg, Greg, the consulate’s under attack. And I stood up and reached for my phone because I had an inkling or a thought that perhaps the ambassador had tried to call me to relay the same message, and I found two missed calls on the phone, one from the ambassador’s phone, one from a phone number I didn’t recognize.
And I punched the phone number I didnÂ’t recognize, and I got the ambassador on the other end, and he said, Greg, weÂ’re under attack. And I was walking out of the villa on my way to the tactical operation center, because I knew we would all have to gather there to mobilize or try to mobilize a response. And it was also a bad cellphone night in Tripoli. Connections were weak. And I said OK, and the line cut. As I walked to the tactical operations center, I tried to reach back on both of the numbers, the unknown number and the ambassadorÂ’s personal number, and got no response.
David McFarland, our political section chief, had just returned from Benghazi, where he had been our principal officer for the previous 10 days. And so he jumped into this picture by reaching out to his contacts in Benghazi and trying to get them at the local level there to respond to the attack. And he also was in touch with our local employee there as well.
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The attack unfolded in four phases — or the night unfolded in four phases. The first phase was the attack on our consulate. The story is well known, I think. The Benghazi — the consulate was invaded. The Villa C where the ambassador and Sean Smith and Scott Wickland were hiding in the safe area was set on fire. The attackers also went into another — went into another building. They were unable to enter the tactical operations center in Benghazi because of improvements to that facility that had been made. They — Scott attempted to lead the ambassador and Sean Smith out of the burning building. He managed to make it out. He tried repeatedly to go back in to try to rescue Sean and the ambassador but had to stop due to exposure to smoke.
The response team from the annex in Benghazi, six individuals, drove the attackers out of our compound and secured it temporarily. There have been estimates as high as 60 attackers were in the compound at one particular time. There were repeated attempts by all of the RSOs and by the response team from the annex to go into the burning building and recover — or try to save Sean and the ambassador. They found Sean’s body and pulled it out, but he was no longer responsive. They did not find the ambassador.
I spoke with a medical officer, one of our medical officers, after the attack and the heroism of these individuals in repeatedly going into the petroleum-based fire cannot be understated. Petroleum — according to this — to our regional medical officer, petroleum- based fires emit enormous amounts of cyanide gas. And he told me that one full breath of that would incapacitate and kill a person if exposed to it.
The Tripoli response team departs at about midnight and arrives at about 1:15 in Benghazi. If I may step back again to Tripoli and what’s going on there at this point. At about 10:45 or 11:00, we confer and I asked the defense attache who’d been talking with AFRICOM and with the Joint Staff: Is anything coming? Will they be sending us any help? Is there something out there? And he answered that the nearest help was in Aviano, and the nearest — where there were fighter planes. And he said that it would take two to three hours for them to get on site, but that there also were no tankers available for them to refuel. And I said, thank you very much, and we went on with our work.
We’re getting this information as the Tripoli response team arrives in Benghazi at the airport. Both our annex chief and the annex chief in Benghazi, and our defense attache, are on the phone during this period, trying to get the Libyan government to send vehicles and military and/or security assets to the airport to assist our response team. At this point, this response team looks like it may be a hostage rescue team — that they are going to — we are going to need to send them to try to save the ambassador who is in a hospital that is, as far as we know, under enemy control.
Our contacts with the government in Tripoli are telling us that the ambassador is in a safe place, but they imply that he is with us in the annex in Benghazi. And we keep telling them, no, the — he is not with us. We do not have his — we do not have him. About 12:30, at the same time that we see the Twitter feeds that are asserting that Ansar Shariah is responsible for the attack, we also see a call for an attack on the embassy in Tripoli.
A few MINUTES after he spoke with sec. Clinton, a mortar round hit.
Thr Tripoli team had no transport from the airport.