Home Uncategorised “Benghazi Definitely Crossed Everyone’s Mind”: The Inside Story of the U.S. Embassy...

“Benghazi Definitely Crossed Everyone’s Mind”: The Inside Story of the U.S. Embassy Attack in Baghdad

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It was a balmy, extravagant New Year’s Eve in Baghdad in 2019, and also six Diplomatic Security agents were fending off enraged Iraqi protestors attempting to spike into their compound. The Iraqis had begun by hurling Molotov cocktails across the ceiling, in a clear attempt to set fire to the embassy’s gas depot. Now they were trying to force open two doorways on both sides of the compound’s northeastern gate.

Particular agent Michael Yohey, a 43-year-old Army veteran from Fredericksburg, Va., might hear a lot of chaotic chatter over his radio about protestors attempting to become in. He hurried toward the northernmost embassy gate to combine a handful of security contractors who were there, attempting to conquer dozens of Iraqi protestors who’d forced open doorways on both sides of the gate. However, the worst had happened: the embassy compound had been breached.

The Diplomatic Security agents entrusted with protecting the sprawling 104-acre embassy elaborate over the western banks of the Tigris River knew Iraq’s Iranian-backed militias were spoiling for a fight. There had been demonstrations because U.S. airstrikes killed a number of their associates. However, the Americans hadn’t even heard any word about a scheme against their embassy. Plus they had no way to understand that Iraqi security forces, their host country counterparts entrusted with keeping the outside the embassy safe, would yield and allow tens of thousands of angry protestors pour into the international zone which placed the primary U.S. military and diplomatic compounds.

It was a carefully orchestrated attack which escalated into the tit-for-tat shadow warfare involving the U.S. and also Iran, with Iraq serving as a battleground and punching bag, sufferer and instigator. For years, Iran has been smuggling weapons across the nation to arm its proxy forces in both Syria and Lebanonas well as also the Trump Administration has looked the other way as Israeli aerial bombardments ruined many of the shipments within Iraq, according to senior U.S. and Iraqi officials, speaking anonymously to describe the contentious operations which Israeli officials have repeatedly declined to confirm. In the past months of 2019, Iranian-backed militia groups countered by speeding up mortar and rocket attacks on U.S. military and diplomatic websites, and around Dec. 27, a barrage of those rockets killed an American contractor and injured four U.S troops. Two days after , the Trump Administration answered with U.S. strikes in Syria and within Iraq, murdering at least 25 members of an Iran-backed Iraqi militia group which has been a part of Iraq’s security forces and under the nominal control of the Iraqi prime minister.

Protesters take part in a demonstration against deadly U.S. airstrikes, in Baghdad on Dec. 31, 2019.
Ameer Al Mohmmedaw–picture-alliance/dpa/APProtesters participate in a demonstration against fatal U.S. airstrikes, in Baghdad on Dec. 31, 2019.

The reply to that was a funeral march on New Year’s Eve for Shia militiamen killed in those U.S. airstrikes. It quickly threatened to conquer the U.S. embassy’s defenses, which were never designed for an attack by tens of tens of thousands of protestors with no assistance from the host nation. At the frantic opening hours of what became a two-day standoff, the handful of Diplomatic Security brokers who directed the defense of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad would consider Benghazi — the Sept. 11, 2012 militant attack disguised as a demonstration which overran the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, also cost the lives of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and other Americans.

The six agents, who headed the embassy’s crisis response group of roughly two dozen safety contractors who day, have been nominated for federal law enforcement awards because of their bravery. For roughly ten hours, then they staved off tens of thousands of protestors which arrived at them waves, lobbing flaming gas bombs and chunks of broken concrete. No one died. None of the dozen or so Marines stationed on rooftop articles overlooking the protests started fire. The Diplomatic Security special agents, their groups, and also the U.S. military commanders in their chemical just a couple of hundred yards away knew one wrong move could have turned the mad protest into a bloodbath, and kicked off a wider conflagration and direct battle involving the U.S. and also Iran.

“They had been trying for us to kill them” says among two senior security officials who took a part that day, who spoke anonymously to characterize the riots that threatened in the very first hour to overpower the compound’s defenses. This accounts of the fraught hours in the U.S. embassy is based interviews with both agents who were in the very front lines of the protests, their award citation, and interviews along with other senior U.S. officials who were part of the response.

“They’re over the bridge”

It was a Tuesday afternoon, and the Diplomatic Security agents knew that Iraqi militiamen had begun their funeral march near the center of the funding, on a street on the opposite side of the wide, muddy Tigris River, across in the international zone which placed the embassy and key Iraqi government offices and residences. They had been on alert, however they weren’t especially stressed; they thought Iraqi security forces would continue to keep the mad marchers from coming across the heavily protected bridge which marks the entry from the town center to the government area. The international zone, after referred to as the “Green Zone,” no longer looks like the series of canyon-like high blast walls if U.S. forces occupied the nation. Most of the international zone’s walls were contested by 2019, however there were still some key safety chokepoints where Iraqi security forces can command the public’s entry.

A bit before 10:30 that afternoon, Special Agent John Huey, 41, got a call from an Iraqi security official that he ’d befriended. They’re coming over the bridge, the Iraqi said, and now there ’s nothing else we can do. Somewhere in the senior ranks of Iraqi government, officials had decided to permit the marchers through.

The agents, most of whom were in their control center in the chemical, watched incredulously throughout the security cameras which studded the outside of the embassy compound. Hundreds, then thousands, of Iraqi protestors filled Al Kindi Street, a wide and normally vacant avenue away from the embassy. “It happened very quickly from the group marching in their funeral procession parallel to the embassy. The second thing I heard is, ‘Ohthey’re on the bridge…They’re over the bridge,” remembers Huey, an Atlanta native and also the incident commander for what was to unfold daily. “They were simply simply allowed to drive . ”

At first, the protestors appeared like they had been planning a peaceful demonstration, putting up tents and political banner. They hung a massive militia flag on a apartment building across Al Kindi Street, among many tower blocks from the government area that placed Iraqis significant enough to merit a house within the semi-protected international zone.

Agent Thomas Kurtzweil, 42, had headed to the “Blue” gate as a portion of the agents’ choreographed safety plan. The former U.S. Army infantry officer from North Carolina had seen battle in Iraq in the year following the 2003 invasion. Now he noticed the protestors setup throughout the bulletproof windows of the gate’s little fortified reception construction that embassy visitors would pass through. “I watched them bring up trucks tents which they had been offloading, and I was like, ‘Well, they’re gont be here for a little while,’& & rdquo; he says.

The apartment building complex, which confronted the embassy, immediately became a de facto foundation of operations for the combination of Shia militia groups that had accumulated in front of the embassy to vent their anger. It was the initial of 3 days of mourning declared by Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, who was furious that the Americans had killed members of the Popular Mobilization Forces which were technically under his control. That force, comprising over a dozen largely Shia militia groups, were key to turning the tide against the Islamic State, which follows some violent, apocalyptic version of Sunni Islam. Roughly a third of the Shia groups were advised and provided by Iran, which likewise cultivated a close relationship with the storied ISIS-fighting Iraqi militia commander Gen. Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. Following their victory against ISIS, the prime minister was loath to throw this type of popular force in a nation that’s two-thirds Shia, therefore that he brought the bands beneath the Iraqi security agencies umbrella, despite protests by Sunni as well as other Iraqi minority classes. Now some of those militiamen were performing Tehran’s bidding, vying to get more financial aid from Iran by attacking U.S. targets, based on senior U.S. administration and military officials, speaking anonymously to talk about intelligence intercepts of both militia communications with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

It appeared clear to the Diplomatic Security brokers that the militia members had carefully plotted from the attack. Not long after setting up their tents, they began systematically carrying the embassy’s outside security cameras, says special agent Ian Mackenzie, 35, a former Missouri police officer. “They had been going around with big poles and knocking the cameras down to restrict our views on the outside of what was happening. ”

The Americans within the embassy were currently on high alert, and following a set of crisis protocols that they ’d rehearsed multiple occasions. Diplomats were “ducking and masking ” in safe areas away from the road.

Diplomatic Security special agent Evan Tsurumi, 41, who headed the embassy’s quick reaction force that day, joined an embassy marksman on a rooftop to find an aerial view of the crowd. At that stage, the crowd hadn’t yet turned violent. Tsurumi, a former New York city paramedic and Navy corpsman, saw tens of thousands gathered out, some carrying flags and some carrying firearms. They’re mostly young guys in their early 20s, a number of them wearing their forces’ uniforms. “They were very disciplined and they had a schedule,” he also says, on a current video call using TIME, together with other agents.

Protesters run from tear gas at the U.S. embassy compound in Baghdad, Dec. 31, 2019.
Khalid Mohammed–APProtesters operate out of tear gas in the U.S. embassy compound in Baghdad, Dec. 31, 2019.

The audience ’s mood changed fast. A bit more than a hour after they arrived, the protestors, shouting “Death to America,” accumulated in the end of the U.S. Embassy chemical, and started lobbing Molotov cocktails — flaming bottles filled with fuel — in the embassy’s gas depot just in the walls. It turned out to be a strategic target which U.S. special brokers say the protestors should have selected well in advance, hoping to start a fire which would lead to a massive explosion.

Huey and unique broker Mike Ross, a 37-year-old Marine reservist, conducted in the direction of the gas farm, in which the embassy’s firemen — a mixture of American and international contractors — were trying to put the blaze across the tanks before it ignited the fuel within.

“We had been dodging stone,” Huey says, “a surprisingly massive volume of rocks and Molotov cocktails. ” At least they were attempting to dodge them. Every broker and safety force member defending the primary gates which day got hit by some type of flying projectile–balls of brick or sidewalk the protestors dug out of the street outside the embassy, or baseball-sized rocks the rioters apparently brought together from beyond the international zone. The rocks mostly bounced off the American group ’s military-style helmets and bulletproof vests, but were large enough to wrap the brain, and cut bruise arms and legs in what was to be an hours-long battle.

It wasn’t immediately clear how many attackers they were confronting, or what they were trying to do. “It was rather tricky to read the scenario because all people on the floor had a whole lot of work to do, but we still couldn’t actually see what was happening, on the outside,” says Ross. The agents functioned on the premise that the protestors planned to storm the compound. “We had been concerned that…it may be like Iran in ‘79, essentially just being massively overwhelmed by the resistance that has been out of the embassy,” says Tsurumi, referring to this 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran when Iranian students took 98 Americans hostage. &ldquoWe had several hundreds of souls that we had been responsible for, and that we probably would not have the ability to evacuate in time when we couldn’t maintain off these guys. ”

After attacking the fuel farm, the protestors moved the embassy perimeter for their next target: the northeastern entry, known officially as the Red club, among three entrances they’d attack that day. The staff in the gate’s pillbox-like security entry had barricaded themselves as their crisis protocol ordered, but the protestors could induce open two doorways on both sides of the steel gate.

That’s Yohey and his Iraqi translator hurried to the entry in a loud-speaker-enabled vehicle that they’d use to warn protestors the remaining portion of the day to stay away from your embassy, and radioed to all that it had been breached. Huey and Ross rushed out of the gas farm blaze to combine them, as did Tsurumi. “They’d even set fire to several generators, and they were rolling the gasoline bombs across the walls,” Tsurumi says. “And they were flooding through the gate. ”

“Everyone calm the f-ck down! ”

The number of agents and their embassy security force — roughly a dozen in all — formed a half-moon around the protestors that ’d forced it and attempted to push them out. They opened fire with a range of “non-lethal” weapons: rip gas; “flash-bang” percussive grenades; & &; ldquo;stinger chunks,” thick rubber balls fired from grenade launchers, generally aimed toward the floor to bounce up and slap the protestors from the gut or knees.

Protestors burned an access control area at the U.S. embassy on Dec. 31, 2019.
Thomas Kurtzweil–Courtesy U.S. State DepartmentProtestors ruined the safety area in the U.S. embassy’s Red gate on Dec. 31, 2019.

They were able to induce the very first wave back out into the road, however a second spike of about 50 protestors soon forced their way in. Huey was concerned his group was going to be overrun — and when that happened, he worried that the safety group on the embassy buildings above would produce the call to use lethal force, which he feared would draw fire against armed militia guys he’d spotted in the road, who’d been careful to not approach the embassy compound. “We unleashed a very robust volley of all less-than-lethal munitions on the crowd,” Huey says, but the rioters simply kept coming.

That’s also when Huey spotted Iraqi counterterrorism troops making their way out of the road through the slumping protestors. They had been trying to acquire the militia members out of the chemical. “And in that stage, it became very apparent to me that we needed to regain control” while also committing the Iraqi counterterrorism compels some space to operate their way through the crowd and persuade them to depart the chemical.

Huey jumped between his line of agents and guards, and also the Iraqi protestors, and in a hoarse voice, shouted to each one of them, “Everyone calm the f-ck down! ” And everyone, including the Iraqis, took down a step. It worked “surprisingly well,” he remembers with a smile. “And we were able to sort of stop the competitive onslaught that we had unleashed on these sorts of folks,” and also the Iraqi counterterrorism troops could shepherd the militiamen out.

That was in the very first hour of what was to become a day-long melee, with all the protestors besieging the embassy gates into coordinated waves. Fifty or so protesters would spike in the gate and fall back, replaced by 50 more, according to a senior security official who was monitoring the protest against the bottom across the road, talking on condition of anonymity. The Diplomatic Security agents were finally able to induce the gates closed.

“Benghazi certainly spanned everyone’s mind”

Pushed back away from the compound walls of the Red club, the protestors moved down to road to two other gates, the Blue and Consular entrances, even ruining their reception buildings, then using a metal roof by a sun shelter out as a ramp to climb over the wall. The embassy staff within those little, fortified reception buildings had cleared out sensitive documents and evacuated. At the other two gates, the protestors didn’t make it in the embassy compound in the exact numbers as in the Red gate, however they kept looking for hours.

Special Agent Evan Tsurumi, front-center, helps to remove a burning obstacle during an attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. In the background, DSS Special Agent Mike Yohey and others examine ways to barricade an entrance at the embassy.
Mike Ross–Courtesy U.S. State Department DSS Special Agent Evan Tsurumi, front-center, helps remove a burning obstacle during an attack over the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. In the background, DSS Special Agent Mike Yohey and others examine strategies to barricade an entry at the embassy.

“The remaining part of the day was sort of a standoff with many fractures where they’d probe different defenses, throw gas bombs” and tens of thousands of baseball-sized rocks, Tsurumi says, describing the defensive assignment as a marathon. “We had been alone without any help for approximately 10 hours, you understand, just working creatively. ”

The agents were also working as firefighters, as their contractors weren’t even compensated to resist fire while under attack. The rioters kept throwing Molotov cocktails across the wall in which numerous embassy automobiles were parked, so Mackenzie, who’d joined the fight in the Red gate, scrambled to discover secrets to the flaming vehicles, jump into them, and push them away in the walls to be able to set the flames out.

That violent first hour shaken them all. “Benghazi, certainly …crossed everyone’s thoughts,” Mackenzie says.

What the brokers couldn’t even understand from their vantage point in the middle of the fight on earth is that the U.S. army had teams on standby in Iraq, the Gulf, Europe and even back from the U.S. to flood the embassy, shield the interior and exude the diplomats if need be, state both senior security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe the answer.

In Washington, Senior State Department officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Iran envoy Brian Hook, were watching the siege from multiple cameras which stayed in the embassy, as well as the army ’s cameras trained on the road by the joint U.S.-Iraqi army foundation, Union III, catty corner in the diplomatic compound across the opposite side of Al Kindi Street.

In Virginia, Michael Evanoff, the then-head of Diplomatic Security, finally got the call in his home a bit past three in the afternoon — approximately 10 a.m. Iraq time — just as the marchers were allowed to cross the bridge and approach the embassy. He drove directly to the Diplomatic Security command center in Rosslyn, Va., where he could track what his agents were performing on the floor. A former Diplomatic Security agent with decades of experience in conflict zones, Evanoff had been hired in 2017 with a single overriding order from the White House: No longer “Benghazis. ” The Trump Administration desired no more U.S. diplomats dropped because of indefensible diplomatic centers.

Debris and burned items in the aftermath of an attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad on Dec. 31, 2019.
Ian MacKenzie–Courtesy U.S. State DepartmentDebris and burnt items in the Wake of an attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad on Dec. 31, 2019.

Evanoff and his team had planned for many years on how to avoid repeating a Benghazi-style tragedy, and this would be their test. They had beefed up multiple layers of safety within the Baghdad embassy, since they had in other high-threat articles, adding a U.S. Marine Air Ground Task Force team along with the Marines who regularly shield embassies and the classified material indoors. They drilled continuously on what to do when a embassy has been shrouded. “We are armed to the teeth and we could shred them,” he says. “But people had been fortunate enough to find that their intent was to harass. ”

Holding tens of thousands of miles away, Evanoff in Virginia, also Pompeo and the others seeing from a different observation center in the State Department, followed the lead of the very senior officer on the floor: Bryan Bachmann, the Diplomatic Security agent conducting the Baghdad embassy control center daily. It was Bachmann who chose his agents and the Americans’ crisis contractor safety force was handling the onslaught in the gates just nice, and he made the vital call to avoid bringing uniformed troops into the fight, judging that doing this might further inflame the crowd and turn it mortal, Evanoff says.

Following Benghazi, embassies in conflict zones like Iraq and Afghanistan had been better fortified, however Evanoff’s group took that additional, installing a number of rings of mainly invisible security. In Baghdad, the group reception buildings which visitors would pass through, and also the protestors penetrated and torched, were developed to buy less than a hour for people inside to prepare the deadlier traces of protection, like the dozens of Marines armed with heavy automatic weapons set over the rooftops. The harm to the 3 gates was around $20 million, among the senior security officials says, but that has been deemed money . It gave the protestors a thing to vent their anger on, and bought time for all those indoors to prepare.

There were some sections of Evanoff’s plan that didn’t work nicely. Somehow, the mechanisms in at least one of the enormous, multimillion-dollar gates have stuck, and the agents had to determine how to dismantle the controls to close it. Agent Kurtzweil says a sharp knife proved the simplest option, then the agents and their groups of safety contractors scoured the chemical for vacant transport containers, and establish a new internal ring at each of these torched entrances. In response, similar gates in other U.S. substances across the globe have been repaired, among the security officials says, and now there ’s a new standard operating procedure for improvising new gates if a chemical gets overwhelmed. Fuel farms also have been fortified to withstand attack from the outside.

Waiting it out

By nightfall of the very first day, the agents had secured the gates, and multiple Iraqi officials including the Minister of Interior and Iraqi militia commander General al-Muhandis had seen the crowd to calm down them. Allied officials tell TIME they worked as fast as they were able to de-escalate the circumstance, which they insist was more emblematic than a real danger to people inside. An aide for then-Prime Minister Abdul Mahdi explained the U.S. airstrikes against militia members, completed with no denying the prime ministry, had created a level of anger within government ranks that had to be handled carefully.

Around midnight, the protestors awakened their harassment again, shouting “Happy New Year, Amriki! ” to the agents indoors, before shooting commercial-grade fireworks into the air, then right in the Americans. “But it wasn’t even a mortar or an RPG,” a rocket-propelled grenade, among the security officials says, and beginning fireworks to harass those within the U.S. embassy and military compounds was also a normal weekend event, the next safety official says. So, the representatives simply hunkered down, and even ready to put out any flames the incendiary volleys might begin.

Iraqi security forces stand guard in front of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, Jan. 1, 2020.
Qassim Abdul-Zahra–APIraqi security forces stand guard in the front of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, Jan. 1, 2020.

Day two of the protests felt like a PR exercise on the milita’s a part, Huey says. Protestors milled around, listening to loud sound systems blaring patriotic militia songs, while the Americans, adding over 100 additional Marines delivered by the Pentagon, largely waited it out. At one stage, the Americans fired tear gas for an energetic group of protesters which had climbed atop among the burnt reception buildings, except for the large part, the conflict was over. In the end of the day, the protestors, heeding needs in their very own militia leaders to discontinue, packed their tents up and departed.

That’s when the U.S. military flooded the embassy with more defenses, under cover of darkness, in expectation of the next form of revenge, among the senior security officials says. On Jan. 3, a U.S. drone strike killed Iran’s Gen. Qasem Soleimani and also the Iraqi militia General al-Muhandis, accusing them of planning the U.S. embassy attack.

However, this time, protestors weren’t allowed to reach the road away from the U.S. embassy. The Iraqi prime minister’s powers kept them out. Pompeo had warned him following the embassy breach on New Year’s Eve that the U.S. would “protect and defend its people” when the embassy was assaulted again.

During those two tense days, the agents were getting feverish messages from loved ones back home, watching the violence unfold as it was filmed by local and international press, and the protestors themselves, in what was about the ritual humiliation of the Americans inside. “My wife was simply beside herself. It was absolutely terrifying for her,” Mackenzie says. After he returned to the U.S. weeks afterwards, “he basically told methat you’re not going backagain. ” He hasn’t returned because, however Huey and a few of the other brokers have.

The six guys were simply named recipients of this season ’s Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association National Award for Uncommon Valor, and the total Baghdad safety team has been nominated to the State Department’s heroism award for keeping their cool in the face of a competitor who was trying to goad them into violence.

They knew when things went wrong , it could begin a war,” Huey says. &ldquoWe knew what was at stake . ” So, they kept their wits, and sense of comedy, adds Ross, with a remark that attracts grins from all the agents. “If it’s gonna move down, then I’m at least going down grinning. ”

Article Source and Credit time.com https://time.com/5885388/us-embassy-baghdad-attack/ Buy Tickets for every event – Sports, Concerts, Festivals and more buytickets.com

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