Free 13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi by Mitchell Zuckoff

grapes, and abundant flowers. Located in the Western Fwayhat neighborhood, the property opened onto a gravel street. Its rear wall bordered the Fourth Ring Road.
    Among its convenient charms, the property was across the street from an upscale restaurant called the Venezia, which was popular with well-heeled Libyans and the multinational diplomatic corps. Throughout the summer, the onetime private compound was renovated for increased security. By August 2011 it was dubbed the United States’ Special Mission Compound in Benghazi.
    The Compound covered nearly eight verdant acres. One appeal of the property to the Diplomatic Security staff was that the main buildings were set back far enough from the surrounding walls to protect inhabitants against car bombs. In addition, the DS team arranged for sections of the walls to be reinforced and raised to nine feet, though some areas remained eight feet high. A barbed-wire crown topped most of the wall’s length.
    Inside and outside the property’s three gates, rows of concrete Jersey barriers were arranged in serpentine patterns to prevent truck or car bombers from crashing through to the Compound. Steel traffic bars were installed to control vehicle entrance to the property, which occurred primarily through an imposing main gate in the north wall topped with spikes and known as Gate C1. To the side of the main vehicle gate entrance was a narrower pedestrian gate.A secondary gate, farther east along the same wall, was called B1, or Bravo gate. The third gate to the Compound, in the wall opposite the main gate, was called Gate C3 and opened out to the Fourth Ring Road. Other enhanced security measures on the property included sandbag fortifications, high-intensity lighting, explosive-detection devices, and an Internal Defense Notification System—known as a drop-and-cover alarm—in case the Compound came under attack.



All the buildings were reinforced with security measures, starting with the largest structure on the property, a split-level yellow concrete building known as Villa C. Stevens’s working and living quarters were there, and it eventually gained an affectionate nickname, “Château Christophe.” Part of Villa C, in the area where several bedrooms were located, was fortified as a safe haven, with locked metal grilles on the windows. At the interior entrance to the safe-haven area stood a heavy metal gate with double locks that looked like the door to a jail cell. Exterior wooden doors were hardened with steel. For added protection, the safe-haven area contained a last-refuge safe room, essentially a windowless closet that contained water, medical supplies, and other necessities.
    A second structure, on the east side of the Compound, was Building B, also known as the Cantina, which contained bedrooms and a dining area. Next door to the Cantina was a third building, the Tactical Operations Center, known as the TOC, which served as the security and communications headquarters for DS agents based at the Compound. The fourth and final building on the property was a guesthouse by the front gate that had been converted into a barracks. It typically housed four armed Libyan security guards, allmembers of the 17 February militia. Supplementing the militiamen were other locally hired guards, unarmed, who were provided under a contract with a British security company called Blue Mountain Libya.
    To the uninitiated, the precautions might have seemed impressive. But in the realm of modern diplomatic protection, the Special Mission Compound in Benghazi was only modestly secure. Some might even say insecure, in light of recent history and relative to other American diplomatic outposts in hostile places.
    After the 1983 bombings of the American Embassy and Marine Barracks in Beirut, and the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Congress established and strengthened security standards for embassies and consulates. Buildings needed to be engineered to