Benghazi: Episode 1 - The Dictator

SPEAKER_2 (0:19)

Pushkin.

Leon Neyfakh (0:19)

Pushkin Plus subscriber. Sign up for Pushkin Plus on the Fiasco Apple Podcast Show page, or visit pushkin.fm slash plus. Now on to the show. On the night of September 11th, 2012, four Americans were killed in Benghazi, a city in Libya on the Mediterranean Sea.

SPEAKER_4 (0:46)

What potentially happened in Libya, in the city of Benghazi, not only did the attackers storm the building in Benghazi.

Leon Neyfakh (0:54)

The attack began when a group of armed assailants broke into a diplomatic compound operated by the State Department. It ended nearly eight hours later with the bombing of a secret CIA base nearby.

SPEAKER_4 (1:05)

First, they attacked it with RPG rifles, then they opened fire on it with machine guns.

Leon Neyfakh (1:10)

Among the victims was the American ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens.

SPEAKER_5 (1:14)

And again, his name is John Christopher Stevens, and he was born in Northern California in 1960

Leon Neyfakh (1:19)

Stevens had been posted in Libya on and off for the better part of five years. On the night of the attack, he died of smoke inhalation after the assailants set fire to the villa where he was hiding from them. Afterwards, it seemed like all anyone in the United States wanted to talk about was whose fault it was.

SPEAKER_6 (1:38)

The Obama administration resisting responsibility.

SPEAKER_4 (1:41)

There's a lot of dispute when the administration knew how dangerous the situation was in Benghazi.

Leon Neyfakh (1:46)

Who had let it happen? Who had failed to stop it once it started? Whose lack of vigilance had allowed the attackers to do as much damage as they did?

SPEAKER_7 (1:55)

Should they have had more advanced warning?

SPEAKER_6 (1:57)

Should they have set more security?

Leon Neyfakh (1:58)

A question that usually got skipped over, as if the answer were self-evident, was what Ambassador Stevens was doing in Benghazi to begin with. All anyone seemed interested in was that the American mission in Libya had failed, not what the mission had actually been.

Chris Stevens (2:17)

My name is Chris Stevens, and I'm excited to continue the great work we've started, building a solid partnership between the United States and Libya to help you, the Libyan people, achieve your goals.

Leon Neyfakh (2:35)

For more than 40 years, Libya had been ruled by a violent and eccentric dictator, Muammar Gaddafi.

SPEAKER_9 (2:41)

We read that you are mad.

SPEAKER_2 (2:44)

You know that those things have been printed.

Leon Neyfakh (2:47)

Gaddafi had long been regarded in the West as an unparalleled menace. Before Bin Laden, Gaddafi was the face of international terrorism.

SPEAKER_10 (2:55)

He's been called the world's number one terrorist, a madman who exports terrorism around the world.

Leon Neyfakh (3:01)

Ronald Reagan once memorably called Gaddafi the mad dog of the Middle East. What I had forgotten or never really absorbed in the first place was that during the early 2000s under the Bush administration, the United States had reconciled with Gaddafi. We lifted sanctions. We established diplomatic relations. We even accepted his help in pursuing suspected terrorists.

SPEAKER_6 (3:25)

The United States may have a new ally in the war on terror. Libya's Muammar Gaddafi says...

Leon Neyfakh (3:30)

American oil companies were doing business with Libya for the first time in decades. In Tripoli, Libya's capital city, the State Department opened a new American embassy. As you'll hear, that was why Chris Stevens first came to Libya back in 2007

SPEAKER_6 (3:46)

Muammar Gaddafi's regime has shown excellent cooperation against terrorism and dismantled its nuclear weapons...

Leon Neyfakh (3:54)

Back then, I wasn't paying much attention to international news. And I certainly wasn't paying attention to Libya. I was just graduating from college in 2007 I had heard of Gaddafi, but that was about it. I was only slightly more tuned in in 2011, when the Arab Spring swept into Libya and forced Gaddafi out of power as part of a US-backed revolution.

SPEAKER_11 (4:16)

The uprising against Gaddafi broke out in mid-February, and anti-regime protests quickly spread across the vast desert country of 6 million people.

Leon Neyfakh (4:24)

But even then, I just wasn't that invested or informed. So when I saw reports in September of 2012 about an attack on a diplomatic compound in Benghazi, I had no context for it. To be honest, I didn't even really think of Benghazi as a place. Instead, I experienced it as an American political scandal. I associated the word Benghazi with a drawn-out controversy that had spawned endless conspiracy theories and captivated the Republican Party.

SPEAKER_12 (4:52)

Benghazi gate.

SPEAKER_6 (4:53)

The political cover-up of some kind.

SPEAKER_13 (4:54)

The regime keeps lying about it.

Chris Stevens (4:56)