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Welcome back to the watch floor. I'm Sarah Adams. Today we're discussing Benghazi, but not in the way you've heard it before. So for those who are aware, starting in about 2015, myself and Dave Boone Benton from 13 Hours fame, you know, started an investigation. It went and, like, identified, tracked down and located the terrorists that attacked us in Benghazi. Because the US Government wasn't doing a good job. They maybe found like 20 to 25 of them. It was crazy. It was just a real failed investigation. So we did it ourselves. But over the course of that investigation, as you can imagine, even us being former CIA, there were things we found that were pretty surprising. So today I want to walk through the 10 most surprising things. But these things have to do with the terrorists that attacked us, right? So we're not talking Hillary Clinton today or any of the other fools, you know, who messed up on the outside today. We're talking about the bad guys on the ground who did this to us, you know, in some of the things we learned. So let's just get rolling. First, number 10. We found out that us, the CIA, primarily our chief of base, was literally meeting with the head of Al Qaeda in Benghazi and did not know he'd been assigned the head of Al Qaeda and Benghazi and worse, we weren't even aware that Al Qaeda had created an actual base in Benghazi. Right? So for everybody who's watched the movies and thinks CIA knows everything, case in point, we definitely don't know everything. A huge problem at the time was, as you can imagine, our government wasn't focused on counterterrorism in Libya. They were focused on how is the government going to form, how is the oil industry going to take off, what's the representation going to look like in the government, are tribes going to be involved, are women going to be involved, et cetera. It was a lot of political reporting. And there's really only a couple of us in the country that were counterterrorism at all, right? It really was a collection failure. Now, this terrorist, his name is Mohammed Al Gharrabi, at the time, he was known as the head of. It was like a unit under the 17th of February Martyrs Brigade, which was one of the militias that worked for the government. But he ran the Rafala Al Sahati Brigades. They were a lot more extreme, comprised primarily of terrorists. So we knew he ran that group, but we did not know he'd been running Al Qaeda, which is actually crazy if you know his background and where he got his roots, like many other terrorists, right. His terrorist training and foundation was from the Mujahideen era in Afghanistan. Right. He knew Osama bin Laden and Dr. Ayman Al Zarahiri and all those players. Right? So we sometimes forget people's past and then they're getting this kind of like benefit of doubt in the future. It's like, hey, once a terrorist, always a terrorist. Unfortunately, Mohammed is still at large. He lives between Libya and Turkey. We'd love to get him on target deck someday. If anyone's got any insights into that, let's get him on a watch list. Now another thing that was extremely surprising and a little bit of the public saw this in real time. One of our terrorists alone basically got on a flight and he flew to Turkey and he got captured in Turkey because he had kind of what they were saying were fraudulent identity documents. Right. They had him watch listed in their country and clearly must have had biometrics. And he was on another government's passport that was kind of a one off. Unfortunately, the US government didn't ask to get him extradited or get access to him. He was released. There was kind of a hearing on the Hill where Hillary Clinton was asked about him and she said, oh, don't worry, we're monitoring him. I mean, that ended up not being true. He went back to Tunisia and he actually killed two senior political figures in the opposition there. Then he went on with his brother and they joined isis. So they were Al Qaeda. And previously in the years back, Al Qaeda in Iraq, so they're Al Qaeda. When they attacked us, they went and joined isis and him and his brother were very senior figures in isis. And then years later, we kill both him and his brother in strikes in Syria and Iraq. Right? Because remember, when you don't go after these terrorists, it's not like they stop being terrorists. They go on, you know, and kill others, unfortunately. So anyway, besides him though, so he was the one, at least people kind of heard about this fraudulent passport issue. But the majority of the terrorists at our attacks in advance of the attacks, and it didn't matter if they're Libyan, German, Tunisian, in his case, Algerian, it didn't matter. They were given legitimate Libyan passports and fake names. So the terrorists had an in with the Tripoli government like they still do today. A terrorist can still get one of these passports out of Tripoli and they could leave the country as Libyans on real passports and fake name. If you don't understand how complicated it is when you have a legitimate document in front of you with this person's name. It's very hard to link him to his real and true identity. So it's a very, very frustrating thing. Also for all the people who act like Benghazi is spontaneous in some matter, they made passports in advance, right? There's a lot of planning involved in this. They thought through every piece. And again, these passports and this exodus from Libya was because they thought our military was going to come and like rain hell on Benghazi after this. They're like, we got to get out of here. A lot of them went to Turkey and then to Syria, but, you know, we didn't do anything. So they all kind of came back within the next year or two and then fought in the second Libyan Civil War. Now, another thing that was really, really surprising because first, I'll tell you, kind of the US Government narrative, right, The US Government narrative went out, besides the whole protester thing, I don't waste my time on saying there are 20 terrorists involved in this incident. I mean, that's not even close to true. Right. Over more than 20 attacked the CIA annex. And of course, when I was in the CIA, I saw the CCTV video and there's at least 80 different terrorists on the video just at the consulate. So we knew the number was wrong, but we never really knew the exact number until we started identifying the different terrorists there and listing them. As of Today, we have 163 terrorists that were at the U.S. consulate. Some went on and assaulted the actual consulate location, or now they call it the US Mission. And then others coordinated off like the four streets around it. Okay. So, you know, some are interior, some are exterior, just so you understand where they're based. And then we found the entire 10 man mortar team, you know, that struck the CIA annex. And that was kind of the next day. So the early morning hours of September 12, 2012. And that unfortunately killed our brothers, you know, Tyrone woods and Glen dougherty. Right. So that's 160, 73 terrorists. And our government was throwing around numbers, oh, like 20 or like two dozen. Right. They were downplaying it. Besides covering up the fact that it was Al Qaeda led, they weren't giving you the real numbers, which is crazy because they had cctv, as I said, but they also put a drone over top and could collect phones and count that way. Right. So they had the capability to know the number. They just didn't put the work in and didn't care enough to put together a factual number, which is very, very frustrating. Now when we talk about the attack, people are still confused about what the attack was because there's so many conspiracy theories out there. Essentially, the attack on the consulate was planned as a kidnapping of Ambassador Stevens. And this wasn't a super long plot. So the plot kicked off in June of 2012 after the CIA kind of hit like the second most senior Libyan leader in Al Qaeda. So at the time, he was the deputy to Dr. Ayman Al Zawahiri. Okay, so Albi Yaqyal Libby, and now this was the second deputy in a row killed of Zawahiris, and it was the second Libyan. So Zawahiri was like, enough is enough, right? We're going to do an event in honor of my two Libyan deputies. So we're going to do something in Libya, right, against the Americans. So what he decided was we're going to make it a kidnapping operation of the U.S. ambassador. And then in honor of our fallen Libyans, we are going to request certain individuals be freed from prison. Right. At the time, the US was involved in a lot of negotiations with terrorists and they were freeing terrorists, like in Guantanamo Bay, for example, you know, for kidnapped Americans. They're paying, you know, millions and millions of dollars for some of these individuals. So unfortunately, you know, the we don't negotiate with terrorists just wasn't on the plate then. So it did incentivize terrorists, as you can imagine, to do these type of events against us. Now we never really got the full list of everyone we know they wanted to ask for the blind sheikh, but they always do and they never get him. We know they wanted to ask for Fia Siddiqui. Right, lady Al Qaeda. But a terrorists actually ended up being very, very interesting. So there is a terrorist, he was from Al Qaeda in Iraq and he was on death row. He was Libyan. His name was Adel Al Shilali. What ended up being his brother was the commander leading the entire attack on the ground that night. Right. He was Al Qaeda's head of their, like Maghreb branch, so the aqim. So he was a leader of AQA for the country of Libya. Okay. And then so he was like the operational commander leading the entire attack on the ground. And as you can imagine, it was very important for him to do this, right, because he wanted to free his brother. So he was like enraged in real time, as you can imagine, when they did not kidnap the ambassador, right. He called the entire operation a failure because he knew I don't have anything now, you know, to negotiate for the release of my brother two years later. They did kidnap a lot of the same guys involved in our attack, the Jordanian ambassador. And they were able to get a very senior Libyan out of, I believe it was Jordanian custody, but they still didn't get Adele. And then Adele ended up being, you know, got his death sentence from the Iraq government and they returned his body to Libya. So they never were able to free kind of the Al Qaeda terrorists. That was what of the ones they thought, hey, we do have an opportunity to free him, unlike the blind sheikh, which they knew was just, you know, an attempt, but they never get him. So another thing that's very interesting. So as you can imagine, if you're planning kidnapping of an American, even though they didn't really think this through because he actually spoke Arabic and everything, it was decided by AQIM because they were given this plot by Zawahiri that, hey, we need to choose different individuals who speak fluent English because they're going to need to rotate off with the ambassador while we're holding him and while we're doing negotiations. Right. So actually, like, two of the terrorists chosen for our attack were Canadians solely for the purpose of their language abilities, which is really interesting because our government really didn't immediately go after the terrorists that attacked us. Those two went on. It was just under six months later in January of the next year, and they were involved in the really big oil facility attack. Inaminas, I don't know if you remember that even Americans were taken hostage there. Unfortunately, a lot of people died, over 30 people. But those two Canadians did die during that attack. So luckily we're at least not tracking them down. But there's this kind of belief that, oh, there's like, these street gangs in Benghazi that rose up and did this for some reason. And, hey, we got two, you know, Canadian members of AQIM at the attack, right? So there were plenty of foreign fighters also, you know, involved in this event. And nobody's been that honest about it. So number six is interesting. We're just going to talk about one terrorist. His name is Mahmoud Al Barrasi. Now, the night of our attacks, I wouldn't call him the most famous terrorists at the event. He was like a commander for Ansar Ashuria. He ran one of the neighborhoods in Benghazi. And then how the attack worked is these local commanders during the attack event were in charge of the terrorists that came from their neighborhood is the best way to put it. But Barrassi ended up becoming famous for two reasons. One, he always hid his face and no one knew what he looked like. And two, he ended up being the Founding leader of ISIS and Benghazi. And if anyone knows, ISIS and Benghazi went on to do very horrible things with Al Qaeda. They ended up taking the city for a short time before kind of the second Libyan civil war pushed them out. So as you can imagine when you're running an investigation, we need Barassi's photo, right? So we spent years looking for it. You know, we finally got it. I'd say maybe around the 10 year mark since the attack. The funny part is when we got his photo, we realized his photo had been in the public the entire time and no one had any clue. Just over a little week after the attack occurred on us in Benghazi, BBC, of course, BBC, they came out and they interviewed one of the terrorists that kind of sent a huge contingent of the fighters to the attack, right? So this was the head of Ansel Asharya, Benghazi, and his name is Muhammad Al Zahawi. Okay? So he sits down for this interview with the BBC and it's filmed and he brings two security guards and they're standing in the doorway. So they end up at least in a couple of kind of like the B roll shots. And one of them is Barassi. So Barassi's photo was available from like immediately after the attack, right? All the way through the next couple years. He then starts leading isis. He's in all these ISIS videos and the photo is sitting there the whole time. You know, so that's just like a funny thing, right? Sometimes what you want is like, been in front of you the entire time. Okay, to number five. So we explained the kidnapping piece, but what I want to explain, because if you thought through it, you'd be like, hey, she only talked about it being planned as a kidnapping of the ambassador. And that's correct. So Al Qaeda only planned the attack on the consulate to get the ambassador. Now when we talk about the mortar strike and the CIA annex, that's a completely separate individual. Okay, so the mastermind for the attack on the consulate, his name was Muktar Bilmukhtar. And he led kind of one of the biggest wings of aqim, but he was also their best commander to do, like, kidnapping for ransom operations. So he was chosen partially because of that and partially because he was one of the most senior leaders in North Africa who had the best relationship with Libyan terrorists. Okay, so Belmukhtar is the consulate mastermind. The crazy thing, the mortar strike was planned in real time during the events. So what occurred, you know, if you know, the storyline, you know, A piece of this. So the CIA had a branch in Benghazi and they had a branch in Tripoli. So the branch in Tripoli, of course, course, when they hear there's attack, they're like, we need to send a rescue team. So they put together a team and then there were two JSOC officers who sat basically in CIA spaces and they joined the team. At the time JSOC was training this unit, it was called the 1208 force. They called it a counterterrorism force. It was really like a ragtag militia. They were doing a lot of support to terrorism. And the program ended up being wrapped up because of the fraud and corruption involved with this 1208 unit. They were basically just like a band of criminals. So anyway, the night of the attacks, jsac, of course, calls this General Hasani. He's running this unit. I do General, because he was never designated a general. He just called himself that. He was kind of like an information peddler. So they called the general running 1208 and saying, hey, we're flying to Benghazi. Can you line up some sort of support on the ground for us? So they were calling these 1208 special forces. They weren't. And that's a huge confusion around Benghazi. So 1208 wasn't a special force. There were special forces in Benghazi. They were called Saika, but they were never called that night, unfortunately, to help as backup. So anyway, so General Hasani calls a contact in Benghazi to get support, you know, to move the Americans from Tripoli once they arrive into the airport to the CIA annex. Well, he ends up calling this individual named Wassam bin Hamad. So when Wassam bin Hamad was in charge of one of the branches of Libya's shield, and I'm not going to get too detailed, but just so you know, the government wasn't able to pull the militias into a real military. So they set up like these 12 branches of Libya Shield. They operated all over the country. I think in Benghazi we had number one, two and seven at the time. So number one, he ran, and then number two ends up being involved as well in Benghazi. So in the attack events. So he calls Wissam and he says, hey, I need you and your guys on Libya Shields, you know, to pick up these Americans, you know, and move them to whatever objective they want to do. But of course, they're coming to rescue the ambassador. So with some freaks out, and he gets really upset. He's like, I don't want any More Americans in my city. He's the one. Two days prior, and this was kind of all over the news, had sat down with State Department and said, we will no longer secure your safety in the city of Benghazi. And that was because the US Was backing Dribril, who is a candidate that was going to disband all these militias, which would include this Libya Shield. So they really thought the US Presence and the US Influence in Benghazi was working against them on a political side of things. The day after our attacks in Benghazi on the 12th, there were Libyan elections. That has an effect on things. But anyway, he gets mad and he's like, nope, we are just going to get rid of the Americans altogether. And then he goes and he plans the mortar strike on us. Okay, so Mukhtar bin Mukhtar, mastermind number one, Wisam bin Hamad, mastermind number two. Okay, down to number four. I just gave you the names of the two masterminds. If you know anything about Benghazi, you're like, well, who's Ahmed Abu Khattala? Exactly. Our government framed a fake mastermind for Benghazi. Right. Which is super frustrating to any of us who serve there to watch kind of this crap sham trial take place. Now, Katala is a real terrorist, and he actually carried out, like, a massive assassination in Libya. It was against Abdelfattah Yunus, who was basically kind of like the same as General Haftar. He was one of the key leaders of the Libyan revolution, so he's not a terrorist. And he spent years in Abu Saleem prison under Gaddafi's time for his terrorism. He served in prison with a lot of our terrorists. He was roommates with some of them, et cetera. What happened is, the night of the attacks, he was home and he was having tea. He had a guest over, and he gets a couple different phone calls from individuals who actually are at the consulate committing the attack. And they said, you know, Katala, we're down here. We're attacking the Americans. Come on down. So he leaves his home and he comes down to the consulate, and then he hangs out outside until Al Qaeda leaves. Right. So Al Qaeda never shared this attack with him. They didn't include him in any of the planning. He then goes into the consulate after Al Qaeda leaves, does some looting, you know, makes some statement, talks to some people. He even talks to Wisam bin Hamed, of all people, because he's hanging out outside. Right. It was like the biggest event in Benghazi that night. And then he ends up going home that night because his phone was there and everybody saw him. He was a well known player. He ended up kind of being the scapegoat for the attack. He was also very easy to capture. You know, he went back to his day job, he was working on construction sites every day. He also had mental health problems. A lot of people say it was from his time in Gaddafi custody. So again, easy, low hanging fruit, but very, very frustrating because they went after the wrong mastermind and he's in prison, United states for like 20 years. So next one. So when we talk about the actual masterminds, we have, like I said, Wisam Ben Hamed. Well, luckily both masterminds are now deceased. Well, most likely Bill Mukhtar seems to always survive, but we do believe he's dead this time. So Wissam Bin Hamad ended up dying and it was in a joint operation. So I said General Haftar's name. So he has this Libyan national army and they were working with the Emirati Air Force and they took like a strike on Wasam Bin Hamed and he was in an armored vehicle and he kind of survived for a bit, but I really think terrorists were just keeping him on like a life support because they knew if he died, kind of the whole Al Qaeda front was going to fall in Benghazi and General Haftar was going to kind of win the second Libyan civil war. So anyway, he though was in this armored vehicle. Well, isn't that interesting? Right? So at first we're like, well, was the armored vehicle maybe one of the ones we left behind when we abandoned Benghazi? But it's not. The armored vehicle he was in ended up belonging to the government of Sweden. Isn't that interesting? So the mastermind of the attack on the CIA was driving around Benghazi and being kept safe in a vehicle belonging to the government of Sweden. I mean, super, super frustrating if you're US Number two. We told you how there is this fake Benghazi mastermind framed. Well, to frame someone you need a witness, right? So the FBI moved a witness to the United States. He was a Libyan. He's a terrorist in his own right. They paid him somewhere between six and seven million dollars. He testified against Katala in trial. Okay, so we knew at least two of his family members were involved in the consulate attack. Now, it took us probably another year or so after we put out our initial findings on the investigation to actually identify the 10 man mortar team. The US government never found the mortar team that attacked us. As you can Imagine this was our top priority. We find the team, we identify each member, and when we do, we realize five of the 10, 50% of the mortar team were direct family members of FBI's witness. So not only did he help set up a fake mastermind, they were never going to find the mortar team because their own family member was involved in the investigation and shielding them. Right. Super, super frustrating. And as of today, not one member of the mortar team has been detained, has even been put on a watch list. Right. Super frustrating. Okay, last one, back to the mortar team. Now, we spent a ton of time on the mortar team and a lot of it was we were looking in the wrong place. So I told you Wisam bin Hamad directed the mortar attack and he ran Libya's shield. So the practical thing was the mortar team has to be within kind of at least one of the branches of Libya Shield because he would be the commander and able to direct them. Right. It made perfect sense. When we actually did find the mortar team, they weren't in Libya Shield at all. They were in Rafala Al Sahati, the brigade I told you, under Muhammad Al Gharabi. And it was basically a unit within the 17th of February Martyrs Brigade. You know, I know that name is very familiar for like 13 hours. Watchers, because that was the only armed security on the consulate compound who refused to send any help that night during the attacks. But they refused help because they had 20 to 25 of their own terrorists participate in the attack that no one's really honest about because they were chosen by the US government to protect them. So anyway, the team ended up being in this Rafal Al Sahati brigade. And what we found out is Wassan that night just called the best mortar team in town, which is actually so much more, I guess, logical than him calling a unit in his own right. If you want to hit the CIA, you call the best. So we were really curious now, how did they become the best mortar team? Obviously, there was a revolution in Libya, but it actually was very, very short. It only went February to October. That's not much time. So we end up putting a lot of work into this. And of course, the most important thing is who trained them, right? Who made them the best? And we actually ended up finding out in 2011, the entire mortar team was trained by the Qatari government. And another thing is we actually found out where they trained them. And it was even just as interesting. The Qatari government trained the mortar team in the headquarters of the 17th of February Martyrs Brigade in Benghazi. So it's just interesting how we just gave you kind of these 10 surprising things, but they all kind of become intertwined. And that's really the frustrating thing when it comes to terrorists and terrorism. It's not just a sole actor or a sole group. There was five, six, seven, eight different terrorist groups that attacked us that night in Benghazi. And then those terrorists went on and killed others, joined other groups, created much larger networks. Right. I mean, the ball kept rolling because nobody really went after our attackers. Right. They framed a fake mastermind so the public would be like, oh, good, they put some away for Benghazi. And then it just kind of like went away from that side of things and everyone focused on the political piece of it. But at the end of the day, you know, our terrorists are still out there and our terrorists are still harming people. And the worst thing is our terrorists are still planning more attacks against Americans. Thanks for being here today on the watch floor.