Background Briefing on Libya
Office of the Spokesperson
Background Conference Call With Senior State Department Officials
Washington, DC
October 9, 2012
OPERATOR: Ladies
and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the State
Department call on Libya. At this time, all participants are in a
listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session.
Instructions will be given at that time. Should you require any
assistance during the call, please press *, then 0.
I’d now like to turn the conference over to your host, [Moderator]. Please go ahead.
MODERATOR: Hey, everybody. Thanks for joining us on such
relatively short notice, late on a Tuesday evening. You know that since
the beginning, we’ve been working with Congress on trying to ascertain
the facts and convey the facts of what happened on 9/11 in Benghazi. In
the last 24 hours and in the next 24 hours, we’re going to be engaging
with Congress, and we wanted to give you a sense, in the press, of what
we’ve been telling them.
So joining us tonight are two Senior State Department Officials, and
this will be on background, and they will be Senior State Department
Official Number One, who is [Senior State Department Official Number
One]; and Senior State Department Official Number Two, [Senior State
Department Official Number Two].
So in any case, thank you for joining us, and I’m going to hand it
over to Senior State Department Official Number One. And just a reminder
before I do, again, this is on background. Thank you.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL NUMBER ONE: All right. Let me
proceed. I’m going to give you as much information as possible about
the events of that night, but I am going to start with a scene-setter.
So let me set the stage. On April 5th, 2011, a small
Department of State team headed by Chris Stevens arrives by chartered
boat in Benghazi. They set up shop in a hotel. This is at a time when
Benghazi was liberated, Qadhafi was still in power in Tripoli, the war
was going on, our Ambassador had been expelled from Tripoli by Qadhafi,
the Embassy staff had been evacuated because it was unsafe. So Chris
Stevens coming back into Benghazi – coming into Benghazi on April 5th, 2011, is the only U.S. Government people in Libya at this time.
They set up shop in a hotel, as I mentioned. A few weeks later in
June, a bomb explodes in the parking lot in front of the hotel. The
group in Benghazi makes a decision to move to a new location. They move
to a couple of places, and by August they settle on a large compound
which is where the actual activity on 9/11 took place. So they’re in a
large compound, where they remain.
The compound is roughly 300 yards long – that’s three football fields
long – and a hundred yards wide. We need that much room to provide the
best possible setback against car bombs. Over the next few months,
physical security at the compound is strengthened. The outer wall is
upgraded, its height is increased to nine feet.It is topped by three
feet of barbed wire and concertina wire all around the huge property.
External lighting is increased. Jersey barriers, which are big concrete
blocks, are installed outside and inside the gate. Steel drop bars are
added at the gates to control vehicle access and to provide some
anti-ram protection. The buildings on the compound itself were
strengthened.
The compound has four buildings on it, and you guys are going to have
to get used to this, because I refer them to – as Building C, Building
B, Tactical Operations Center, and a barracks. So Building C is a
building that is essentially a large residence. It has numerous bedrooms
and it is – it has a safe haven installed in it, and I’ll talk more
about that in a minute. Building C ultimately is the building that the
Ambassador was in, so keep that in your heads.
Building B is another residence on the compound. It has bedrooms and
it has a cantina. That’s where the folks dine. The Tactical Operations
Center, which is just across the way from Building B, has offices and a
bedroom. That’s where the security officers had their main setup, that’s
where the security cameras are, a lot of the phones – it’s basically
their operations center. So I’ll call it the TOC from now on.
And then there was a barracks. The barracks is a small house by the
front gate, the main gate of the compound. In that barracks is a Libyan
security force which I’ll describe in a minute. Security on the compound
consists of five Diplomatic Security special agents and four members of
the Libyan Government security force, which I will henceforth call the
17th February Brigade. It is a militia, a friendly militia,
which has basically been deputized by the Libyan Government to serve as
our security, our host government security. In addition to all those,
there is an additional security force at another U.S. compound two
kilometers away. It serves as a rapid reaction force, a quick reaction
security team – a quick reaction security team, okay?
Now we’re on the day of, and before I go into this discussion of the
day of the events of 9/11, I’m going to be – I want to be clear to you
all. I am giving you this – you my best shot on this one. I am giving
you what I know. I am giving it to you in as much granularity as I
possibly can. This is still, however, under investigation. There are
other facts to be known, but I think I’m going to be able to give you
quite a lot, as far as I know it. I have talked to the – to almost all
the agents that were involved, as well as other people.
Okay. The Ambassador has arrived in Benghazi on the 10th
of September. He does meetings both on the compound and off the compound
on that day, spends the night. The next day is 9/11. He has all his –
because it is 9/11, out of prudence, he has all his meetings on the
compound. He receives a succession of visitors during the day.
About 7:30 in the evening, he has his last meeting. It is with a
Turkish diplomat. And at – when the meeting is over, at 8:30 – he has
all these meetings, by the way, in what I call Building C – when the
meeting is over, he escorts the Turkish diplomat to the main gate. There
is an agent there with them. They say goodbye. They’re out in a street
in front of the compound. Everything is calm at 8:30 p.m. There’s
nothing unusual. There has been nothing unusual during the day at all
outside.
After he sees the Turkish diplomat off, the Ambassador returns to
Building C, where the information management officer – his name is Sean
Smith, and who is one of the victims – the information management
officer – I’ll just call him Sean from now on, on this call – and four
other – four Diplomatic Security agents are all at Building C. One
Diplomatic Security agent is in the TOC, the Tactical Operations Center.
All of these agents have their side arms.
A few minutes later – we’re talking about 9 o’clock at night – the
Ambassador retires to his room, the others are still at Building C, and
the one agent in the TOC. At 9:40 p.m., the agent in the TOC and the
agents in Building C hear loud noises coming from the front gate. They
also hear gunfire and an explosion. The agent in the TOC looks at his
cameras – these are cameras that have pictures of the perimeter – and
the camera on the main gate reveals a large number of people – a large
number of men, armed men, flowing into the compound. One special agent
immediately goes to get the Ambassador in his bedroom and gets Sean, and
the three of them enter the safe haven inside the building.
And I should break for a second and describe what a safe haven is. A
safe haven is a fortified area within a building. This particular safe
haven has a very heavy metal grill on it with several locks on it. It
essentially divides the one – the single floor of that building in half,
and half the floor is the safe haven, the bedroom half. Also in the
safe haven is a central sort of closet area where people can take refuge
where there are no windows around. In that safe haven are medical
supplies, water, and such things. All the windows to that area of the
building have all been grilled. A couple of them have grills that can be
open from the inside so people inside can get out, but they can’t be –
obviously can’t be opened from the outside.
The agent with the Ambassador in the safe haven has – in addition to
his side arm, has his long gun, or I should say – it’s an M4 submachine
gun, standard issue. The other agents who have heard the noise in the –
at the front gate run to Building B or the TOC – they run to both, two
of them to Building B, one to the TOC – to get their long guns and other
kit. By kit, I mean body armor, a helmet, additional munitions, that
sort of thing.
They turn around immediately and head back – or the two of them, from
Building B, turn around immediately with their kit and head back to
Villa C, where the Ambassador and his colleagues are. They encounter a
large group of armed men between them and Building C. I should say that
the agent in Building C with the Ambassador has radioed that they are
all in the safe haven and are fine. The agents that encounter the armed
group make a tactical decision to turn around and go back to their
Building B and barricade themselves in there. So we have people in three
locations right now.
And I neglected to mention – I should have mentioned from the top
that the attackers, when they came through the gate, immediately torched
the barracks. It is aflame, the barracks that was occupied by the 17th
February Brigade armed host country security team. I should also have
mentioned that at the very first moment when the agent in the TOC seized
the people flowing through the gate, he immediately hits an alarm, and
so there is a loud alarm. He gets on the public address system as well,
yelling, “Attack, attack.” Having said that, the agents – the other
agents had heard the noise and were already reacting.
Okay. So we have agents in Building C – or an agent in Building C
with the Ambassador and Sean, we have two agents in Building B, and we
have two agents in the TOC. All – Building C is – attackers penetrate in
Building C. They walk around inside the building into a living area,
not the safe haven area. The building is dark. They look through the
grill, they see nothing. They try the grill, the locks on the grill;
they can’t get through. The agent is, in fact, watching them from the
darkness. He has his long gun trained on them and he is ready to shoot
if they come any further. They do not go any further.
They have jerry cans. They have jerry cans full of diesel fuel that
they’ve picked up at the entrance when they torched the barracks. They
have sprinkled the diesel fuel around. They light the furniture in the
living room – this big, puffy, Middle Eastern furniture. They light it
all on fire, and they have also lit part of the exterior of the building
on fire. At the same time, there are other attackers that have
penetrated Building B. The two agents in Building B are barricaded in an
inner room there. The attackers circulate in Building B but do not get
to the agents and eventually leave.
A third group of attackers tried to break into the TOC. They pound
away at the door, they throw themselves at the door, they kick the door,
they really treat it pretty rough; they are unable to get in, and they
withdraw. Back in Building C, where the Ambassador is, the building is
rapidly filling with smoke. The attackers have exited. The smoke is
extremely thick. It’s diesel smoke, and also, obviously, smoke from –
fumes from the furniture that’s burning. And the building inside is
getting more and more black. The Ambassador and the two others make a
decision that it’s getting – it’s starting to get tough to breathe in
there, and so they move to another part of the safe haven, a bathroom
that has a window. They open the window. The window is, of course,
grilled. They open the window trying to get some air in. That doesn’t
help. The building is still very thick in smoke.
And I am sitting about three feet away from Senior Official Number
Two, and the agent I talked to said he could not see that far away in
the smoke and the darkness. So they’re in the bathroom and they’re now
on the floor of the bathroom because they’re starting to hurt for air.
They are breathing in the bottom two feet or so of the room, and even
that is becoming difficult.
So they make a decision that they’re going to have to leave the safe
haven. They decide that they’re going to go out through an adjacent
bedroom which has one of the window grills that will open. The agent
leads the two others into a hallway in that bedroom. He opens the grill.
He’s going first because that is standard procedure. There is firing
going on outside. I should have mentioned that during all of this, all
of these events that I’ve been describing, there is considerable firing
going on outside. There are tracer bullets. There is smoke. There is –
there are explosions. I can’t tell you that they were RPGs, but I think
they were RPGs. So there’s a lot of action going on, and there’s dozens
of armed men on the – there are dozens of armed men on the compound.
Okay. We’ve got the agent. He’s opening the – he is suffering
severely from smoke inhalation at this point. He can barely breathe. He
can barely see. He’s got the grill open and he flops out of the window
onto a little patio that’s been enclosed by sandbags. He determines that
he’s under fire, but he also looks back and sees he doesn’t have his
two companions. He goes back in to get them. He can’t find them. He goes
in and out several times before smoke overcomes him completely, and he
has to stagger up a small ladder to the roof of the building and
collapse. He collapses.
At that point, he radios the other agents. Again, the other agents
are barricaded in Building C and – Building B, and the TOC. He radios
the other agents that he’s got a problem. He is very difficult to
understand. He can barely speak.
The other agents, at this time, can see that there is some smoke, or
at least the agents in the TOC – this is the first they become aware
that Building C is on fire. They don’t have direct line of sight.
They’re seeing smoke and now they’ve heard from the agent. So they make a
determination to go to Building C to try to find their colleagues.
The agent in the TOC, who is in full gear, opens the door, throws a
smoke grenade, which lands between the two buildings, to obscure what he
is doing, and he moves to Building B, enters Building B. He
un-barricades the two agents that are in there, and the three of them
emerge and head for Building C. There are, however, plenty of bad guys
and plenty of firing still on the compound, and they decide that the
safest way for them to move is to go into an armored vehicle, which is
parked right there. They get into the armored vehicle and they drive to
Building C.
They drive to the part of the building where the agent had emerged.
He’s on the roof. They make contact with the agent. Two of them set up
as best a perimeter as they can, and the third one, third agent, goes
into the building. This goes on for many minutes. Goes into the
building, into the choking smoke. When that agent can’t proceed, another
agent goes in, and so on. And they take turns going into the building
on their hands and knees, feeling their way through the building to try
to find their two colleagues. They find Sean. They pull him out of the
building. He is deceased. They are unable to find the Ambassador.
At this point, the special security team, the quick reaction security
team from the other compound, arrive on this compound. They came from
what we call the annex. With them – there are six of them – with them
are about 16 members of the Libyan February 17th Brigade, the same militia that was – whose – some members of which were on our compound to begin with in the barracks.
As those guys attempt to secure a perimeter around Building C, they
also move to the TOC, where one agent has been manning the phone. I
neglected to mention from the top that that agent from the top of this
incident, or the very beginning of this incident, has been on the phone.
He had called the quick reaction security team, he had called the
Libyan authorities, he had called the Embassy in Tripoli, and he had
called Washington. He had them all going to ask for help. And he
remained in the TOC.
So at this point in the evening, the members of the quick reaction team, some parts of it, go to the TOC with the Libyan 17th Brigade – 17th
February Brigade. They get him out of the TOC. He moves with them to
join their colleagues outside of Building C. All the agents at this
point are suffering from smoke inhalation. The agent that had been in
the building originally with the Ambassador is very, very severely
impacted, the others somewhat less so, but they can’t go back in. The
remaining agent, the one that had come from the TOC, freshest set of
lungs, goes into the building himself, though he is advised not to. He
goes into the building himself, as do some members of the quick reaction
security team.
The agent makes a couple of attempts, cannot proceed. He’s back
outside of the building. He takes his shirt off. There’s a swimming pool
nearby. He dips his shirt in the swimming pool and wraps it around his
head, goes in one last time. Still can’t find the Ambassador. Nobody is
able to find the Ambassador.
At this point, the quick reaction security team and the Libyans,
especially the Libyan forces, are saying, “We cannot stay here. It’s
time to leave. We’ve got to leave. We can’t hold the perimeter.” So at
that point, they make the decision to evacuate the compound and to head
for the annex. The annex is about two kilometers away. My agents pile
into an armored vehicle with the body of Sean, and they exit the main
gate.
Here it’s a little harder to understand because I don’t have a
diagram that you can show – that I can show you. But in a nutshell, they
take fire almost as soon as they emerge from the compound. They go a
couple of – they go in one direction toward the annex. They don’t like
what they’re seeing ahead of them. There are crowds. There are groups of
men. They turn around and go the other direction. They don’t like what
they’re seeing in that direction either. They make another u-turn.
They’re going at a steady pace. There is traffic in the roads around
there. This is in Benghazi, after all. Now, they’re going at a steady
pace and they’re trying not to attract too much attention, so they’re
going maybe 15 miles an hour down the street.
They come up to a knot of men in an adjacent compound, and one of the
men signals them to turn into that compound. They agents at that point
smell a rat, and they step on it. They have taken some fire already. At
this point, they take very heavy fire as they go by this group of men.
They take direct fire from AK-47s from about two feet away. The men also
throw hand grenades or gelignite bombs under – at the vehicle and under
it. At this point, the armored vehicle is extremely heavily impacted,
but it’s still holding. There are two flat tires, but they’re still
rolling. And they continue far down the block toward the crowds and far
down several blocks to the crowd – to another crowd where this road
t-bones into a main road. There is a crowd there. They pass through the
crowd and on – turn right onto this main road. This main road is
completely choked with traffic, enormous traffic jam typical for, I
think, that time of night in that part of town. There are shops along
the road there and so on.
Rather than get stuck in the traffic, the agents careen their car
over the median – there is a median, a grassy median – and into the
opposing traffic, and they go counter-flow until they emerge into a more
lightly trafficked area and ultimately make their way to the annex.
Once at the annex, the annex has its own security – a security force
there. There are people at the annex. The guys in the car join the
defense at the annex. They take up firing positions on the roof – some
of them do – and other firing positions around the annex. The annex is,
at this time, also taking fire and does take fire intermittently, on and
off, for the next several hours. The fire consists of AK-47s but also
RPGs, and it’s, at times, quite intense.
As the night goes on, a team of reinforcements from Embassy Tripoli
arrives by chartered aircraft at Benghazi airport and makes its way to
the compound – to the annex, I should say. And I should have mentioned
that the quick reaction – the quick reaction security team that was at
the compound has also, in addition to my five agents, has also returned
to the annex safely. The reinforcements from Tripoli are at the compound
– at the annex. They take up their positions. And somewhere around 5:45
in the morning – sorry, somewhere around 4 o'clock in the morning – I
have my timeline wrong – somewhere around 4 o'clock in the morning the
annex takes mortar fire. It is precise and some of the mortar fire lands
on the roof of the annex. It immediately killed two security personnel
that are there, severely wounds one of the agents that’s come from the
compound.
At that point, a decision is made at the annex that they are going to
have to evacuate the whole enterprise. And the next hours are spent,
one, securing the annex, and then two, moving in a significant and large
convoy of vehicles everybody to the airport, where they are evacuated
on two flights.
So that’s the end of my tick-tock.
MODERATOR: Great. Thank you so much. Given the length of that
tick-tock, I would just ask before we turn it over to questions that you
keep your questions very concise. And again, a reminder that this is an
on-background briefing.
So, Operator, go ahead and open it up for questions.
OPERATOR: Certainly. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like
to ask a question, please press * then 1. You’ll hear a tone indicating
you’ve been placed in queue, and you may remove yourself at any time by
pressing the # key. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up the
handset before pressing the numbers. Once again, if you have a question,
press * 1 at this time. And we will limit you to one question, and you
may re-queue after that. It’ll be just one moment.
First question is from the line of Anne Gearan with the Washington Post. Please go ahead.
QUESTION: Hi. You said a moment ago that there was nothing
unusual outside, on the street, or outside the gates of the main
compound. When did the agents inside – what – excuse me, what did the
agents inside think was happening when the first group of men gathered
there and they first heard those explosions? Did they think it was a
protest, or did they think it was something else?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: The agent in the TOC
heard the noise, heard the firing. Firing is not unusual in Benghazi at
9:40 at night, but he immediately reacted and looked at his cameras and
saw people coming in, hit the alarm. And the rest is as I described it.
Does that help?
MODERATOR: Great. Next question?
OPERATOR: The question is from Andrea Mitchell, NBC News. Please, go ahead.
QUESTION: Hi. When did you finally find Ambassador Stevens?
And do you know now how he got to the hospital? Was it definitely
Libyans? Were they the militia, the February 17th militia? What can you tell us about it?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: We do not know exactly
how the Ambassador got to the hospital. That is one of the issues that
we are – that we hope to resolve in the ongoing reviews and the
information we are still seeking. We know he got to the hospital at some
point. The hospital picked a cell phone out of his pocket, and we
believe just started calling numbers that were on the cell phone that
had received calls, and that is how we got the information that he was
there.
MODERATOR: Okay, next question.
OPERATOR: The next question is from the line of Michael Gordon with the New York Times. Please, go ahead.
QUESTION: Yes. Could you tell me, please – and I know you
mentioned this – when was the Tripoli reinforcements requested? How long
did it take them to get to Benghazi, how many of them were there, and
did it represent all of the available security personnel from Tripoli?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL NUMBER TWO: The calls were
made to Tripoli at the moment that the – at the same time the agent in
the TOC sounded the alarm and then proceeded to make calls. I’m not
going to go into any details about the number of security personnel who
moved.
MODERATOR: Okay. Next question, please.
OPERATOR: The question is from the line of Eli Lake, with Newsweek’s Daily Beast. Please, go ahead.
QUESTION: Hi, thanks so much for doing this. Do you have any
response from the charge from Erik Nordstrom, the Regional Security
Officer who left this summer, who is set to testify tomorrow to say that
it was a mistake to begin to normalize security operations and reduce
security resources in accordance with an artificial timetable? That’s
from a letter he sent earlier this month to the oversight committee.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: I don’t know what Erik
is going to fully testify on tomorrow. That’s something that will come
out in the hearing. We could have a different discussion about all the
security measures we had taken, but that’s a different question.
MODERATOR: Okay, next question, please.
OPERATOR: The next question is from the line of Margaret Brennan, CBS News. Please, go ahead.
QUESTION: Hi, thanks for doing this. The timeline here begins
around 8:30 p.m., but we had heard in response to some reports where
reporters had found paperwork documents on the grounds of the compound
that secure materials, that confidential paperwork had actually been
secured earlier in the day, therefore there wasn’t any compromised
material found at the compound. When did that occur? At 8:30 at night?
When were those documents secured or shredded or burned or whatever?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Because of the – this
was a post and not a – and we – this post held no classified documents.
They had computer communications with Washington, but the material would
arrive on the screen and you would read it on the screen, and then that
was it. There was no classified paper, so there was no paper to burn.
MODERATOR: All right, thank you. Next question, please.
OPERATOR: The next question is from the line of Brad Klapper with AP. Please, go ahead.
QUESTION: Hi, yes. You described several incidents you had
with groups of men, armed men. What in all of these events that you’ve
described led officials to believe for the first several days that this
was prompted by protests against the video?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: That is a question that
you would have to ask others. That was not our conclusion. I’m not
saying that we had a conclusion, but we outlined what happened. The
Ambassador walked guests out around 8:30 or so, there was no one on the
street at approximately 9:40, then there was the noise and then we saw
on the cameras the – a large number of armed men assaulting the
compound.
MODERATOR: Okay, thank you. We’re ready for the next question, please.
OPERATOR: The next question is from the line of Toby Zakaria with Reuters. Please, go ahead.
QUESTION: Hi. Do you know what the threat level for Benghazi
was the day before the attack? And also, did anyone suggest to the
Ambassador that it might not be prudent to go to Benghazi on 9/11?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: Taking your questions in
reverse order, ambassadors travel, ambassadors must travel, ambassadors
must get out and meet with a variety of individuals, especially in
countries that have multiple centers of energy or power. That’s just –
it just must happen.
But secondly, as Official Number One said earlier, the Ambassador did events in the city on the 10th. He had plans to do events in the city later in the week. But on the 11th, he remained in the compound.
As in terms of the – of any kind of security threat, the – both ODNI
spokesman and the DNI have been correctly quoted as saying that there
was no actionable intelligence of any planned or imminent attack.
MODERATOR: Okay. Thank you. Next question, please.
OPERATOR: The next question comes from the line of David Lerman with Bloomberg News. Please go ahead.
QUESTION: Hi. Did the Ambassador – before the attack, did the
Ambassador request that security be increased in Benghazi? And if so,
did anything ever come of it?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL NUMBER TWO: The – when the
Ambassador traveled to Benghazi, he traveled with two additional
security agents over and above the complement of three who were assigned
to post. So there were five agents with him there rather than the two
who are normally assigned there – the three who are normally assigned.
So they were up two.
MODERATOR: Okay. Thank you. Next question, please.
OPERATOR: The next question comes from the line of Jo Biddle with AFP. Please go ahead.
QUESTION: Thank you very much. The two people who died in the
compound – in the annex, excuse me – were they part of the five security
agents you’ve mentioned, or were they separate to that? And how many
people did you have to evacuate that night from the annex?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL NUMBER TWO: Because – since
unfortunately we couldn’t fit everything on one compound, we had two –
the principle compound and the annex. We had – therefore, had our
security professionals divided between the two compounds.
MODERATOR: Okay. Thank you. Time for just a few more questions.
OPERATOR: The next question comes from the line of Jonathan Karl with ABC News. Please go ahead.
QUESTION: Yeah, hi. Just two quick follow-ups – I want to be
clear on one thing. You said as soon as they heard the noises outside,
they went to look and saw armed men assaulting the compound. That was
the very first thing that they saw after hearing the noise outside?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL NUMBER ONE: They heard
noises, firing, and an explosion. The agent in the TOC looked at his
camera and saw people coming through the front gate.
QUESTION: Okay. So there was --
MODERATOR: Okay. Thank you. Next question, please.
OPERATOR: The next question --
MODERATOR: Sorry, we’re trying to keep it moving along here.
OPERATOR: -- from the line of Kim Ghattas with BBC. Please go ahead.
QUESTION: Yes, thank you for taking the call. I just wanted to
clarify a little bit whether – with the rundown that you just gave us,
whether it is possible to now say clearly that this was very much a
preplanned attack, and if so, whether you can explain why there was no
actionable intelligence.
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL NUMBER TWO: This – that
subject is now under review by both the FBI and potentially the
Accountability Review Board based on whatever information the FBI or the
intelligence community collects.
MODERATOR: Right, okay. Thank you. Just a couple more questions.
OPERATOR: The next question is from the line of Shaun Waterman, Washington Times. Please go ahead.
MODERATOR: Shaun? Let’s go to the next question, and maybe Shaun can go next. Maybe he’s not off mute.
OPERATOR: The next question is from Dion Nissenbaum with Wall Street Journal. Please go ahead.
QUESTION: Thanks for taking the call. I was – just wanted to
get a little more clarity about the annex attack and when the attack
started on the annex. Was it before the convoy arrived or as they
arrived or --
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL NUMBER ONE: It started after they arrived and went on intermittently for several hours.
MODERATOR: Okay. Thanks. I think we have one more question, then. Time for one more question.
OPERATOR: Certainly. Our next question is from the line of Chuck Todd, NBC News. Please go ahead.
QUESTION: Can you at least explain the process by which if a
request for more security comes in, how that’s – how you go about
determining resources, so in the instance of the reports that more
security was requested by the folks in Libya, can you sort of walk
through how that process works?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL NUMBER TWO: Certainly. The –
this is sort of an iterative process, a discussion between the field and
Washington, back and forth; the field identifying what their needs are,
Washington working very, very closely with them. We always attempt to
mitigate our risk. We cannot eliminate them. Sometimes the post – any
post in the world might come in and say, “We need A, B, and C,” there
would be a dialogue, and instead of sending them A, B, and C, we would
send them B, C, and D because in this discussion process, we go to
functionality, and when we determine the functionality that gets us the
maximum – a maximum possible security, then we – that is what we deliver
to the post.
MODERATOR: Okay. Thank you. I feel like I just ignored Shaun. I know you dropped off. If you’re still on, you get last chance here, buddy.
OPERATOR: And our last question does come from Shaun Waterman, Washington Times.
QUESTION: Hello?
MODERATOR: Yes, Shaun. Go ahead, buddy.
QUESTION: Oh, hey. Okay. Thanks, man. So could – I mean, just
in view of what you are now saying about the attack and the intensity of
it and the numbers of people involved, what – can you say what kind of
security presence might have been needed to repel an attack like that? I
mean, what – I mean, if the criticism is there wasn’t enough security,
how much would you have needed to protect the compound from this attack?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL NUMBER TWO: It is difficult
to answer hypothetical questions, but let me just put it this way. The
lethality and the number of armed people is unprecedented. There had
been no attacks like that anywhere in Libya – Tripoli, Benghazi, or
elsewhere – in the time that we had been there. And so it is
unprecedented. In fact, it would be very, very hard to find a precedent
for an attack like that in recent diplomatic history.
MODERATOR: Okay. Thank you, and glad we got that question in.
Thanks to all of you for joining us so late this evening. We do
appreciate it, and we will keep in touch with all of you as we move
forward. Again, thank you.
PRN: 2012/1613
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