← The Watch Floor with Sarah Adams
Loading summary
Transcript3 lines
- [00:00]
A
Summer always makes me rethink what I reach for in my closet every day. I want lighter fabrics, better materials and pieces that make getting dressed feel easy. Things that feel good the moment I put them on, but still it put together without trying too hard. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. It's one of those brands that just makes sense for everyday essentials. They focus on high quality pieces like breathable European linen so soft organic cotton in washable silk but without the luxury markup. You'll find things like 100% European linen pants, dresses and tops with styles starting around $32. Their denim is soft right away and the organic cotton sweaters are perfect for cooler summer nights when you want something that's light. What I really like is that everything is priced about 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. So you're paying for quality, not brand markup. And one piece I didn't expect to wear as much as I do is their washable silk slip dress. It works great dressed up or dressed down and has that quiet luxury feel, but it's still really easy to wear. I've ended up reaching for it a lot more times than I thought I would. And it's not just clothing. Quince has become a go to for elevated everyday essentials across home, kitchen and bedding. Small things that make your space feel a bit more intentional without overthinking it. Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quince.com watch for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. It's now available in Canada too. That's Quince. Q-U-I-N C E.com watch for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.com watch
- [02:10]
B
this episode is brought to you by Fox One. Watch all 104 matches of the FIFA World cup live in 4K for just $19.99 a month with three days free. Build your own multiview. Choose up to three streams and follow players spotlights. Stay on top of every moment with live stats, highlights and instant replays. The FIFA World cup, streaming live on Fox One, offers a subject to change. See fox.com for complete terms and conditions.
- [02:38]
A
Welcome to the Watch Floor. I'm Sarah Adams. Thanks for returning for our third episode of the Back to Benghazi series. In this episode, we're actually going to focus solely on Ambassador Steven, you know, and what happened to him in the hours after the attack on the consulate, because it's never really clearly been explained to people. But I think it's important because, you know, there are Good Samaritans involved here. We left Benghazi, leaving no Americans behind. And while this was a tragic event, that piece of the story is good, and that is something we should honor. So today we're jumping in. Now, we've already covered, you know, the consulate, the attacks on the CIA. So that was six. Six different terrorist attacks. Now we're going back to just after midnight. So it was one in the morning when the ambassador was found. Now, a lot of people don't actually understand where this is in the timeline. So the terrorists have been off the compound for just over about two hours. And then the looters came in after the terrorists. They're now off of the compound. So around this time, there's more, like neighbors, some citizens who came to see what happened. So think of this as a phase of onlookers being there. So there is no bad guys on the compound. So two individuals who are looking around Villa C, you know, at the fire damage, find an American body on the ground at the side of a bed. So they rush out of the building to. To get help to carry him out, and they see a Libyan army officer. He's wearing, like, his uniform. He normally guards, like, a checkpoint area or an intersection is the best way to put it. And he has a weapon slung over him. So they say, officer, will you come in and help us carry this body out? And he offers to go in and retrieve the body. So that's where this begins. So this army officer was on duty that night. He was working in a northern part of the city, just working at an intersection. His shift ended. A friend called and said, hey, I heard there is a terrorist attack. I believe it was at the University of Benghazi. So his friend comes and gets them. They go to the university. It's not there. And that's when they find out from other locals, oh, it was over at the U.S. consulate. So he travels over there. So that's now why he's here. So this isn't like the area of the city he works over or anything like that. Like many people in the city at this point, he went to the location to see what happened. And I have met with this army officer. So there'll be some good insights in this episode from that firsthand account. Between China's military exercises, the Iran conflict, Cuba's economic demise, and the war in Ukraine that keeps shifting week by week, the. The last few months has been a whirlwind. The global Threat landscape is completely flooded with information. Knowing where to turn, let alone what to trust, is harder than ever. Luckily, there's a solution. Ground News is a website and an app that collects thousands of news stories around the world every single day. It organizes each news story by topic, but then it digs a little deeper. It shows you the political bias, the reliability, and then the ownership of each source so you can compare the coverage and see the story from every angle. Let's take this story where the Kremlin is declaring that the war in Ukraine has entered a new paradigm shift. So in this case, the Kremlin is accusing Kiev of acts of terrorism against civilians while continuing to strike civilian targets itself. So, an interesting case. You get both points of view from inside of a war. The great thing is, if you're in ground news and you pull this up, you see, okay, it's covered by 25 sources. The sources skew slightly, right? And then 75% of the sources are highly reliable. Now you can dig in and click into each source. So let's choose the Kiev Independence. I've long used this publication, so it leans left, and in it, it focuses on the fact that, look, the Kremlin's blaming Ukraine for terrorism while conversely ignoring the number of ISIS plots that are being directed inside of Russia. It's just showing the color contrast of the way the Kremlin is using the term terrorism. Then if we pull another source, we can go with the Irish Independent. So this leans right. So they focus in their article on Russia's massive retaliation strikes inside Ukraine. Right? So it doesn't really discuss terrorism in the way Russia's trying to use it, but it picks another angle. So, same story, but they both have very different framing of the issue. And then underneath both, if you're an analyst, you're looking at something completely different. So I'd be thinking, is Russia setting the groundwork to justify some sort of massive escalation in response to these recent successes Ukraine has had? We all have a different question when we're looking at the news, and lots of times we're looking at the news. To help us answer those questions. There's a feature in Ground news that I've really been enjoying. It's called Blindspot. So this shows you stories that are covered almost entirely by one side of the political spectrum. So no matter where you sit politically, you're getting a filtered version of reality, Right? Our algorithms are essentially an echo chamber. So with ground news, you can actually see what you're completely missing. Go to Ground News Watch or Scan the QR code for 40% off the unlimited access vantage plan. It brings the price of this tool down to a cup of coffee a month. That's ground news slash watch. To subscribe today and to transform how you read the news now, the army officer and the two locals, they bring him out of villa seat and then they set him basically on the patio. If you watched our consulate episode, it's where you see me and Boone standing in one of the still shots and they set him down. And this is where you actually start seeing pieces of a video film because an onlooker then films this and they're saying God is great, Allahu Akbar. Because they believe they saved this individual from this fire damaged building. Unfortunately, at the time the ambassador was already dead. They weren't aware of that, so they thought they saved him. And then they started having discussions. As you can imagine, we got to get him to the hospital as soon as possible. Luckily a nearby neighbor was there who knew the ambassador. And he was like, I will take him to the hospital. So it was really good news that actually someone who knew the ambassador ended up taking him. So he said, bring him to my car and then I'll transport him. And then that's when you see in the video that they're carrying the ambassador. The Libyan army officer has a phone in his mouth and they transport him to this small little spot sedan. And the neighbor alone drives him to the hospital, which was Benghazi Medical Center. So that sometimes gets very confused by people. They think that video is a person's dragging him or something. I don't know why you get that from the video. I think it's, they see the still shot and nobody takes time to watch the entire video. But you know, these were good people trying to save an American. The majority of them actually had no idea this was the ambassador. I don't even think the neighbor told, told anyone either at the time. Right. He was just like, I need to rush him and get him to the hospital. You know, let's see if we can save his life. So the Ambassador arrives at 1:10 in the morning. We'll show you the route. The car came down to drop him off because we went back and visited Benghazi Medical center when we were in Benghazi last month. And you know, we learned a lot from him while we were there. When he first arrived, it wasn't clear to anyone that this actually was the U.S. ambassador to Libya. It was at some point the doctor that was trying to resuscitate him found out and realized he recognized him because he knew, of course, everyone in Benghazi knew the ambassador. He was very famous. The thing with Ambassador Stevens is all the good things you hear about him is true. All the bad things you hear about him is completely fake. He was a wonderful human. Human. Americans loved him. Libyans loved him. He had a career in the Foreign Service that was honorable. So this was kind of like the cream of the top. This is the best. When you talk about foreign service. So this is who is now in the hospital. This is one of our best Foreign Service officers in. In the entire world. And people need to be honest and truthful about that because they don't make a lot of people like Ambassador Stevens. So they bring him into the hospital, they bring him off to the left and we'll show you where they brought him to attempt to resuscitate him. Unfortunately, as I said, he did arrive at the hospital deceased. They spent 90 minutes trying to resuscitate him unsuccessfully. But obviously the effort was put in to. To do so. I read the hospital report at the time. He did die of smoke inhalation. He had no other bruising, scars or injuries anywhere to his body. So anyone who tells you any of that is lying to you. None of that's true. Hospital record is available and we all know he unfortunately died in the room because of the fumes from the smoke. And that's just a fact. No terrorists got anywhere near the Ambassador that night. None touched him. None were in the hospital with him. None were involved in any of the transport of him. And all that is factual. I know there's a lot of conspiracy theories that like to play games with this story, but we're not doing that here. Now, I wanna talk about the hospital for a minute. So we went back to the hospital. Unfortunately, the doctor who helped Ambassador Stevens, you know, is long gone at this point. But we met three of the main administrators of this hospital. The interesting thing is all three of them started in 2015. If you read our book and know anything about the history of Benghazi that was the height of the second Libyan civil war. I want you to think for a minute about the men we met. They decided to go in and keep a hospital running during a war. So I think there's so many times in life where we meet great people, in this case, great men, and you don't take a minute to reflect or even think about who is in front of you. I mean, these are heroes. I mean, they were heroes in their city, but they kept this hospital running through Everything. War, power outages, threats to the hospital. I mean, they had repeated attacks on the hospital. There was shortages of every piece of medical equipment you can imagine. There was massive casualty loads. And we're talking about war casualties, right? We're talking about shrapnel injuries, gunshot wounds, burns. So I want people for a minute to actually think about. We focus on one side of things, but we forget the other, right? So if terrorists take over a city and there's a war against them, there are good guys fighting them, but then there are also good guys keeping people alive. The other interesting thing about this hospital is they, during the war, took care of civilians, military and security personnel. They would not treat the terrorists. So that's also a very interesting thing because in a lot of places you get medical personnel saying, well, nope, I'm here to treat anyone. We'll take care of the terrorists. And they're like, no, no, no, we don't play. Right? We're not bowing in knee to the people who are causing this harm to our city. So I really think that's an important thing just to highlight. Now, this is a very large hospital. It's about 1400 beds. It's also now a teaching university. And we're going to give you kind of some shots on screen about our time visiting this hospital. Today we're here at the Benghazi Medical Center. This is where Ambassador Stevens was brought. If you don't know the story, well, it was a couple locals who found him in a bedroom in the consulate. They went out of the building. They asked for people's help to carry him out. They carried him out of the building, and then a neighbor put him in his car and he drove him here to the center. Unfortunately, he had already died of smoke inhalation, but the Doctors here spent 90 minutes trying to resuscitate him. So today we went and visited the hospital. We saw the area where they tried to resuscitate him, you know, to be very thankful for all these people who really tried to help save his life, you know, after the terrorists attacked him. There's a lot of misconceptions out there. You know, no terrorists got near our ambassador that day. The only people who interacted with him in the aftermath of the attack were good Samaritans, a neighbor, and then the medical staff here. And so everyone took the best care they could of him in such a horrible situation. So it's just really great to be here. Another thing that's wonderful to see is the hospital has received reconstruction dollars, so they've luckily been able to upgrade the er, the areas where the ambassador was taken. And so it's good to see this kind of rebirth of the city after the terrorists have left as. Hi everyone. Like to introduce you to Sara, Dr. Ashraf. They're all from the management team. And Dr. Abdulaziz. Dr. Ahmed. Nice to meet you Dr. Ahmed. So now. Sure. Go to the yard. Perfect. I want people to know that Ambassador Stevens went to the best hospital in the city. He had the best doctor he was taking the best care of. Unfortunately he was deceased at the time. But, but everything was done with the utmost care. He was handled with respect. And I really think that is something we should remember as we honor his service and think about all the loss that came from Benghazi and the aftermath of the attacks on us. When I started building the watch floor, people see the finished product now, but not actually what it took to get there. Like any new endeavor, you're trying to figure out the analytics, the branding, the scheduling, the platform, the outreach, the production, all while trying to of course, create something that's worth people's time. That's why having the right tools matter for millions of businesses. That tool is Shopify. Shopify gives you one place to run everything from selling products to managing payments to analytics and customer research. They have built in AI tools that help you with product descriptions, marketing and even content creation, which saves a huge amount of time when you already have a full workload. If you're trying to build something from the ground up, visibility matters. Shopify helps businesses reach people through email and social media campaigns without needing that massive marketing team behind you. Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify, and start hearing. Sign up for your $1 a month trial today at shopify.com watch. That's shopify.com watch again. Shopify.com watch. So this is the story of Benghazi. So of course something's going to go completely sideways and that happens at 1:15 in the morning. So there's a terrorist, everybody knows him now named Ahmed Abu Khatala. So Ahmad Al Mukhtala was a little kind of goofy in the head. Al Qaeda never shared this plot with him. He was home when the attack kicked off, having with a friend. He got a couple phone calls saying come down to the consulate, it's being attacked. He showed up at the consulate, he hung out outside. He went in after all the terrorists left, did some looting and then at 1:15 in the morning, he literally kidnaps this Libyan army officer. Cuz remember Katalla has no idea what's going on, cuz he wasn't invited to be involved in the attacks, even though some of the terrorists who fought in his battalion during the Libyan revolution were invited to take part. So he's actually pretty pissed off. So he kidnaps this Libyan army officer. So he holds this kid until 1:50 in the morning and spends the entire time asking him questions about the attack, who planned it, how many terrorists were involved, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Again, I told you this kid showed up. Well after all the terrorists were gone, all the looters were gone. He had no details of the attack, but he was harassed by this crazy terrorist. And it is Katala who the government framed as the mastermind of the Benghazi attack. So he's here in the United States in prison. I would just send him back and put him in prison in east Libya and be done with him. But that's the game they want to play when they fake they've done justice for us. Now finally at 150, this Libyan army officer gets released. Now this is where a lot of stuff goes on that you hear pieces of, but nobody understands what exactly is happening. So when he was in the room helping get Ambassador Stevens, they found a phone and it actually ended up being the phone for diplomatic security agencies, Scott Strickland. So he grabs the phone and when the neighbor takes the ambassador's body, he's then leaving the consulate and he's like, I'm gonna call people in the phone and alert them that this American was brought to the hospital. Well, outside of the consulate, he gets snatched by Katala. Katala doesn't take this phone, surprisingly. So now at 1:50 he goes back to his original plan and he's like, I gotta start going through this phone and alerting Americans that there's an American at the hospital, because they probably have no idea. So he starts going through the phone lists and calling people he was going through like the recently called numbers. And he starts telling people, hey, we brought an American to the hospital. And of course a lot of people originally think this is some ploy or some ruse. Terrorists are setting up some sort of ambush. And that goes, as you can imagine, a little sideways. Now, while the Libyan army officer was kidnapped by Katalla, Team Tripoli arrived. So I'm just letting you know where we are in the timeline. So Team Tripoli arrives at the airport in Benghazi. As we told you, they don't really have any team to move them through the city. So they're now stuck there. But they had A plan when they arrived that they were gonna go to wherever the ambassador's location was. Of course, initially it was maybe the consulate, maybe he was kidn. Now, at least with some of this information they know he is at a hospital. The problem is while the living army officer told people the correct hospital, which was Benghazi Medical center, somehow some misinformation got interjected into it and it became the Al Jalal hospital, which at the time the terrorists mostly ran. And it had like an ansa Al Sharia Benghazi contingent outside that even guarded it. And again, that's why people thought, are they gonna set we show up at this hospital and get ambushed. So the strange part is the information came incorrect but then through the telephone game it ended up wrong. And unfortunately that is something that happens during a crisis. Now, at the same time the Libyan army officer got released from Katala, that is when Reuters puts out the first news piece that a staff officer at the consulate died. And that of course was a reference to Sean Smith. So this is the first time Americans are aware now that, hey, not only is something happening in Benghazi, we now have a dead American. It was then just after two in the morning when FBI alerts the Diplomatic Security Command, hey, we're opening investigation into this attack, into this attack. They were saying the right words at 2 in the morning. Of course, things changed over time. Of course, the FBI was on it, put out their press as always and since then they've done hardly anything against our attackers. That's that we are not going to be doing an episode on FBI's investigation. So then at 2:05 in the morning, State Department who luckily has the correct information that a body which they of course believe is Ambassador Stevens was brought to the Benghazi Medical center, they call an individual in Benghazi who was kind of like a de facto cultural affairs officer for the consulate. His name is Boubakar Habib. Now, Boubacar Habib is very, very famous and pretty much the whole diplomatic community loved him. We all did. Good man. Because during the Libyan revolution, if you remember, an American pilot went down, he was protected by Libyan civilians and then of course brought out safely. Well, it was Boubacar Habib who was involved in that, right? So he helped keep an American pilot safe. So very, very trusted individual. So State Department calls him and says, hey, we got this piece of information. The ambassadors at Benghazi Medical center, can you check? Well, Boubacar had heard a lot of information when the terrorists were on the compound that some were asking for him by name. So he believed he might be under some sort of threat. And again, there were people concerned this was a ruse. So he was like, yep, I'll get someone to go check. So he very smartly got an individual who could go there safely and have zero issues and even on the terrorist side of things. So he called Mustafa Siglisi. If you don't know this individual at the time, he worked under the Ministry of Interior. But during the revolution, he was one of the leaders of the 17th of February's Martyrs Brigade, as we told you, which provide a large number of attackers to this event and had insider threats who supported this event. His brother Khalid was also one of the terrorists who attacked us at the consulate. So he was of course safe to go to the hospital and check on the ambassador. Now he's in this gray area. We do not have him listed as a terrorist. Again, he worked for the government of Libya at the time and his role was this position where they were trying to bring the militias into the government, like disarm and become a part of official institutions. Now, I do believe he was leaning a little more on the side of the Muslim Brotherhood and not caring if they bring some of the bad actors in. But again, in this situation, he is kind of in the middle, right? He's not a terrorist. And he is someone who knows Ambassador Stevens and has a relationship with the U.S. consulate. So he is the one then that goes to Benghazi Medical center to answer is this actually Ambassador Stevens? Now at 2:10 in the morning, then Team Tripley is given all the information. I told you that Ambassador's at the hospital. They start making plans, but again they have no transport. So they spend about two more hours at the hospital. So it's 2:10 in the morning where Team Tripley actually gets that real piece of information. We believe the Ambassador is in a hospital. Of course, they had the wrong one. They start making plans to go to the hospital, but it never happens because again, they have no transport. And so they spend two more hours at the airport. Then at 2:17 in the morning, Katala returns home and he stays there the whole rest of the night through the morning. So anyone who says Katala had any role in the mortar strike and the CIA annex is full of it because he did not. Again, he was just a scapegoat. At 3:22 in the morning is when there's the first internal email that goes out within the State Department. It clearly goes out among only like senior leadership. So it's not like an announcement to the entire workforce. And it announces the death of the ambassador. It says, embassy Tripoli confirms the death of Ambassador John C. Stevens in Benghazi. At the time, he was the eighth US Ambassador killed in the line of duty and he was the first since that. I don't know if you remember in 1998, the mysterious plane crash where we lost Arnie Raphael and the president of Pakistan at the time, Zia Ul Haq. I mean, there's still so many questions about that. But this was now kind of the next ambassador's death since then. So we went from 1988 all the way to 2012. So this was pretty shocking to the community, as you can imagine, and later became, of course, shocking to the entire American public. So then at 3:25, the chief of station for the CIA, who actually sits in Tripoli, he calls his team Tripoli and he says, hey, I talked to the embassy. The ambassador is definitely deceased. Your goal now is to get to the CIA annex and then evacuate the personnel. So that's when their mission changed from let's get to where the ambassador is to let's get now to the rest of our associates in the CIA. In the next episode, we're going to actually kind of walk through that exfiltration of when everybody leaves the CIA annex and they go to the Benghazi airport. So we're not going to get into that today. But again, a lot of people don't even know the organization that showed up and helped in that effort. And so I do wanna spend some time and walk through to make it clear. But let's get back really quick. So now it's 4:25 in the morning and this is besides Reuters, which was for Sean Smith. We finally now have the first public reflection that shows something happened to Ambassador Stevens. So it actually happens on Twitter. And there's a screenshot of the video that I told you about when they're carrying the ambassador out and that goes viral on X. And that's where, of course, a lot of rumors go around that terrorists are dragging him out and they have never gone away for some reason. But that's now when the public realizes something happened to the ambassador. But the government has not made any sort of official statement yet. So it's just, as you can imagine, a massive rumor mill to start. It's 4:34 now over at Benghazi Medical center and you know, Mustafa Gleese is there. He has identified Ambassador Stevens and then they confirm his death officially. Now he's been dead for five, six hours at this point. But this is, you know, the date stamp on the paperwork, just to be aware. And this is now when Mustafa, talking with the Ministry of Interior, starts putting a plan in place to, to bring the Ambassador to the rest of the Americans. It ends up being that he transports him to the airport. So Mustafa brings the Ambassador's body to Benghazi airport. After all of our team gets there again, we're going to walk through the team arriving there in the next episode. So how it worked is there was the private plane that we talked about previously that came from Tripoli to Benghazi. So that one loaded up with like the CIA officers, the chief of base, the diplomatic Security agents, and then it departed Benghazi because it could only hold, as you can imagine, so much capacity. So now at the airport, we really just have like CIA's GRS, right, being their Benghazi guys, their Tripoli guys, and then, of course, the couple DS agents and then couple other people on the plane. Now, the body of the Ambassador Stevens arrives at 8:25 in the morning, you know, with Mustafa. And then he hands it over to the Americans. And then it's at 9:54 in the morning when everybody, finally, the rest of the crew leaves on a C130 provided by the Libyan Air Force. It ended up being a little later in the morning because the plane couldn't fly in at night because the Runway didn't have any sort of light. So, I mean, that's what you're working with there. So, you know, we're very thankful they brought this in and finished the evacuation. Again, though, there was no US Bird that landed in Benghazi at all. And a lot of people don't actually talk about this and they're not honest about it. Eventually they landed a bird in Tripoli that brought, you know, those who got out up to Ramstein in Germany. But, you know, they never did anything in the city of Benghazi. And it was Libyans who stepped up to help in this case. So that's the story of how, you know, Ambassador Stevens body ended up being taken out of the consulate in an effort to save his life, you know, brought to the hospital, then transferred back to American custody by the Ministry of Interior. At the time, it was the Ministry of Interior in Benghazi who was charged under the Geneva convention to protect U.S. diplomatic security and their personnel. So it makes perfect sense that they were the entity called and the one that transported the Ambassador's body. So we hope that helps answer a lot of questions people had about what happened to the Ambassador. This was a horrific event. The terrorists had wanted to kidnap him. They were unable to. He enforced, unfortunately died in this fire. But at the end of the day, we brought him home with us. And that's what matters the most. Thanks for being here today on the watch floor.