Remembering Chris
Stevens - American Hero of the Libyan Revolution
Murder of an Idealist
For six hours on September 11, the American compounds in Benghazi,
Libya, stood siege. When
the attack was over, J. Christopher Stevens's body was pulled from the wreckage
— the first U.S.
ambassador killed by militants in over thirty years. Since then, his death has
been politicized and the details of the attack distorted. Sean Flynn
straightens out the story of Stevens's last days in Libya—and
reveals the true believer we lost that day
By Sean Flynn
GQ December 2012
On the morning of September 11, when the American flag flew
at half-mast above the U.S.
mission in Benghazi, J. Christopher
Stevens, the U.S.
ambassador to Libya,
had breakfast with a man named Habib Bubaker.
Stevens was in Benghazi
for the first time since being sworn in last May, having spent all of the
previous four months working out of the embassy in Tripoli.
But when Bubaker had greeted him at the airport the previous morning, a Monday,
Stevens had told him, "I'm very excited to be back."
Bubaker had known the ambassador for more than a year. He'd
introduced himself in April 2011, two months into the Libyan revolution, when
Stevens had been dispatched to Benghazi
as the U.S.
envoy to the rebel coalition. The United States
had already chosen a side in the war, and Stevens was assigned to establish
ties with the people who, it was assumed, would eventually govern the country.
Bubaker ran an English school in the city, and he offered to be
Stevens's translator. Stevens spoke Arabic, but the language of diplomacy being
delicate and precise, he preferred English in his official meetings. And so
Bubaker made introductions and accompanied him on business and was basically
his local right-hand man during that spring and summer of war. They were also
friends; Bubaker, in fact, refers to himself as "Chris Stevens's best
friend." A lot of people do. Stevens was a man who made friends easily.
Stevens planned to stay in Benghazi
for five days. He'd had meetings in the city on Monday, and he would have more
outside the compound on Wednesday. On Thursday, perhaps the most important day
of his visit, he planned to turn over the Benghazi
mission to the Libyans. The compound would be rechristened "an American
Space," and it would offer English lessons and Internet access and
show films and stock a library. The United
States would provide some computers, books,
and the rest of the materials and support—but it would be owned and operated by
locals. "An American Space," Stevens planned to say, "is a
living example of the kind of partnership between our two countries which we
hope to inspire."
Stevens had an affection for Benghazi—where
the uprising against Muammar Qaddafi had begun—and the city for him, because
Stevens had stood with its people during that uprising. During the revolution,
he'd spent most of his time in the streets, talking, mingling, exploring.
Nathan Tek, a young foreign-service officer who'd been at his side in 2011,
remembers Stevens getting antsy if he was cooped up too long. "He wanted
to experience the city as normally as possible," Tek says. "And he
understood that security wasn't just big guys with guns and armored convoys. It
was having friends, lots of friends, and having people treat you as a
guest."
Which Benghazians generally did. Though considering the
date, September 11—the eleventh anniversary of the attacks—and considering the
Islamist militias loitering in Benghazi,
Stevens had adjusted his routine. He'd brought two bodyguards with him from Tripoli,
complementing the three security agents already in Benghazi.
He skipped his habitual morning run outside the walls, and he'd scheduled all
of his meetings on September 11 inside the compound. The Americans had created
the mission in August 2011, after a bombing at the hotel they'd been using.
They rented three villas, tore down garden walls dividing them, and encircled
them into a single property, four low buildings set amid grapevines and guava
trees. Stevens's colleagues teasingly called it "Château Christophe."
As a temporary mission—as opposed to a more formal
consulate or
embassy—the facility was less fortified than many
U.S.
outposts. Still, Château Christophe was not unprotected. The property was 300
yards deep and a hundred yards wide, which gave the buildings a significant
setback from outside attacks. The wall surrounding it was nine feet high and
topped with an additional three feet of concertina wire. There were steel drop
bars at the gates to control vehicles coming in and concrete
Jersey
barriers both inside and out to prevent a ramming attack. Screens in the
tactical-operations center monitored the security cameras mounted on the
perimeter. In the main residence, a steel grate could be dropped and locked,
turning half the building into a safe haven; within that, moreover, was a
smaller room, even more isolated, with food and water and medical supplies and
no exterior exposure.
Château Christophe was reasonably secure for the
ambassador's business trip. Benghazi,
on the other hand, was dodgier. The Libyan government had yet to stand up a
proper police force, and violence had been intermittent all summer—some random
and criminal, some targeted against Westerners. Indeed, Stevens sent a cable to
Washington on September 11
recounting the locals' concerns about the lawlessness. Still, the city was calm
when Stevens arrived, and he assumed it would remain so. "Believe me one
thing," Bubaker says. "If Chris was afraid, he would not have been in
Benghazi on September 11."
Bubaker stayed through Stevens's meetings that morning. At three o'clock, they reviewed his schedule for
Wednesday, which was stacked with appointments; Stevens told him they'd have to
grab sandwiches for a quick lunch. Stevens's last meeting of the day, coffee
with a Turkish diplomat, ended at eight thirty.
Stevens walked his guest to the main gate, where there was a small barracks for
four men from the 17th of February Martyrs Brigade, a friendly militia hired to
provide security.
Seven hundred miles to the east, a mob surrounded the U.S.
embassy in Cairo, ostensibly
enraged by a third-rate video that depicted the Prophet Mohammed as a womanizer
and a thug. But Benghazi was quiet,
and the streets outside Château Christophe were empty.
Stevens returned to his room in the main residence. At nine forty, he heard a burst of gunfire. Such a
racket is not unusual in the Arab night. "Most of the gunfire,"
Stevens used to tell his brother, "is celebratory." Stevens used to
joke with Bubaker whenever they heard it. "So," he would say,
"we have another wedding."
But in the tactical-operations center, the agent monitoring
the screens saw armed men swarming through the main gate.
···
Stevens landed in Benghazi
for the first time on April 5, 2011.
He was smuggled in on a freighter that sailed from Malta,
empty except for him, Nathan Tek, a small security detail, a USAID team, and a
crew of mostly puzzled Greeks and Romanians. Later, Stevens would tell friends
that other ways into the city had been considered—driving overland from Egypt,
zipping ashore in a Zodiac with a Seal team launched from a submarine—but he
didn't mind the boat ride or bunking in a tiny cabin with Tek, who was not even
half his age. "He thought it was romantic," Tek says. "Like a
nineteenth-century adventure."
Stevens had been an obvious choice for the mission. He was a
veteran diplomat, twenty years in the foreign service, almost all of them in
the Middle East and North Africa.
A lanky Californian with gray hair and a smile made of teeth that seemed a half
size too big for his mouth, he had a reputation for patience and calm and, as
one colleague puts it, "incessant optimism." And he knew Libya:
He'd been the deputy chief of mission at the embassy in Tripoli
for two years, beginning in 2007, back when the United
States was tepidly establishing relations
with Qaddafi.
Tek is right, too: For Stevens, sailing on a ghost ship into
a revolution really was an adventure. True, there was a good measure of
altruism to what Stevens did for a living, which appears to be a family trait:
His father, Jan, was a lawyer in the California attorney general's office who
worked on water rights and public-land access and such; his brother, Tom, left
a career as a civil litigator to prosecute federal white-collar crimes; his
sisters, Anne and Hilary, are doctors. Like them, Stevens did want to make the
world a better place. But he also thought his job was a terrific amount of fun.
In fact, when he was posted to Libya
under the Qaddafi regime, he told a foreign-service officer named S. Sita Sonty
that she and her family should come, too. "This is gonna be awesome,"
he told her. "It'll be like the Wild, Wild West. We'll have a great adventure."
Stevens grew up in Northern California—Grass Valley, Marin
County, Davis, then Piedmont, across the bay from San Francisco—and by the time
he was a senior at UC Berkeley, he'd already lived overseas twice, spending a
high school summer in Spain and a college semester in Italy. He was a history
major, but he wandered the course catalog. "He took a class in logic,
because why not? He took a class in Italian, because why not?" says Austin
Tichenor, a high school friend and one of his college roommates. "He was
the walking embodiment of a liberal-arts education."
Stevens decided when he was still at Berkeley
that he wanted to join the foreign service. He took the test before he
graduated but apparently failed; he told his roommates he thought he'd done
pretty well on the written exam but flubbed the oral. "They asked me to
compare and contrast how American democracy is like jazz," he'd said.
Instead of the foreign service, then, he joined the Peace
Corps. (That time, he bluffed the oral: When a recruiter asked him almost
offhandedly if he spoke French, he immediately answered, "Moi? Oui, of
course." Then he hung up the phone and turned to his roommate: "Shit,
I haven't taken French since high school.") He was sent to teach English for
two years high in Morocco's
Atlas Mountains, which are rugged and isolated and
desolately beautiful. Stevens was captivated. More than twenty years later, in
a video he recorded before his final return to Libya,
he would remember that Peace Corps tour as the time when he "quickly grew
to love this part of the world." Yet when his two years were up, he
returned to California, got a law
degree, and by 1990 was practicing international-trade law in the Washington
office of a large and prestigious firm.
But his heart wasn't in it. He still wanted to be an
overseas diplomat. "I don't think he fled the law," says Terry
Calvani, who was a partner in the firm at the time. "I think it was, 'Gee,
I really want to do this.' And my goodness, you oughta chase those things that
are important to you."
So he did. He took the foreign-service exam again, passed,
and in 1991 began his training. The following year, he was posted to Riyadh,
Saudi Arabia, and every
overseas assignment after that was in the part of the world that diplomats
call, usually with affection, the Sandbox. He studied Arabic in Tunisia
and did tours at the embassies in Cairo
and Damascus, and at the U.S.
mission in Jerusalem during the
second intifada. Even when he rotated back to Washington,
his jobs—Iran
desk officer, staff assistant in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs—usually
related to the Sandbox.
It's curious that a kid from California who grew up knowing
nothing about the Arab world would come to devote his career to the Middle East
and North Africa—as opposed to, say, Asia or Scandinavia or even no particular
place. A European woman named Henriette, who met Stevens in Jerusalem
in 2003 and had a "fantastic, turbulent" on-and-off romance with him
for nine years, tried to explain it to me.
"After we had become a couple," she said, "I
asked Chris when was the first time he noticed me with interest. He told me
that it was at the dinner party where we first met. He said that he had liked
the way I smelled. Chris was a sensualist—he applied all his senses in experiencing
the world. For people like us, the Middle East is
tantalizing. The smell of coffee with cardamom, and of apple tobacco burning in
water pipes; the color and touch of carpets and fabrics; the sounds of the
muezzin call to prayers and the energy of crazy urban traffic and large desert
landscapes. The warmth of its people and the sound of their music and language.
If you combine that with analytical curiosity invested in understanding the
long history of the region and the complex dynamics of its current politics,
the Middle East is a place you can't resist. It is not
only an intellectual endeavor—it makes you feel fully alive."
When Stevens and Nathan Tek docked in Benghazi
in April 2011, they were greeted by the rebel deputy minister of foreign
affairs. Over the next days and weeks and months, the two met with everyone
they could: the leaders of the Transitional National Council (the rebel
government), shopkeepers, teachers, doctors, militiamen back from the front.
"It was like they all spoke from the same script," Tek says.
"They were all saying the same things to me: They all wanted a new Libya
that represented the aspirations of the people. In my mind, it truly was a
popular revolution."
That was a critical message for Stevens to convey to his
superiors. Stevens's job, which is every diplomat's job, was to provide
reliable information and thorough analysis upon which Washington
could formulate policy. Though the United States
had already chosen a side in the revolution, opposing a sitting head of state
is not undertaken lightly. (Qaddafi, despite being a vicious nut, had been
marginally helpful in the so-called war on terror, and Libya
has the largest proven oil and gas reserves in Africa.)
Had the rebels been less credible—had they, for instance, been unstable
butchers likely to plunge the country into bloody chaos for years on end—the
calculus would have changed considerably.
"Chris was the single most important voice," says
Jeffrey D. Feltman, who at the time was the assistant secretary of state for
Near Eastern affairs. "That didn't mean he was the only voice, and it
didn't mean everything he said was acted on. But his was the single most
important voice."
What made Stevens good at his job was his ability to get
people to trust him. That is not something that can be faked: It is possible to
manipulate people into confiding in you, of course, but it is not sustainable,
especially for an outsider in a foreign land. "He understood," says
Tek, "that you have to express empathy in a genuine way. And he defied the
stereotype of an American diplomat who was equal parts arrogant and ignorant.
He was honest and human.
"To me," Tek says, "he was the kind of
diplomat I want to be. He wielded American influence through respect rather
than intimidation and swagger."
In late August of 2011, Feltman, who was both Stevens's boss
and friend, traveled to Benghazi
for an update. One of their last meetings, on August 20, was with a
high-ranking rebel minister Stevens had gotten to know well. The Americans
wanted to know when the rebels would try to take Tripoli.
As they entered the El Fadeel Hotel, where the minister was
waiting for them in a conference room, Stevens gave Feltman a sideways glance.
"We've got time," he said quietly. "Let's just hang out for a
while." Stevens liked to hang out. He liked to hang out in cafés and
markets, in offices and living rooms. He wanted information—sometimes general,
sometimes specific—but he rarely gathered it by asking pointed questions. He
listened more than he spoke, and he paused often, leaving spaces for the other
person to fill.
The minister, a former exile whom Qaddafi had sentenced to
death in absentia, greeted them warmly. Tea was served. After some small talk,
Stevens and Feltman listened as the minister gradually explained that the
battle for Tripoli would begin in
the neighborhood of Souq al-Jumaa. Other areas would rise up with weapons that
had been smuggled into the city, and only then, after the people of Tripoli
had claimed the revolution as their own, would rebel forces advance from the
east.
The minister was very specific. Feltman wondered how much of
what he'd said could be trusted.
"When is this going to happen?" Stevens asked.
"It's imminent," the Libyan said.
Stevens sipped his tea. "Well," he said after a
moment, "what do you mean by imminent?"
"Soon."
"We hear that a lot," Stevens said softly. He
sipped more tea and sat quietly. It was not an uncomfortable pause but more of
a gentle, overlong rest. He had a gift for making silence seem inviting.
The minister spoke next. "This will all begin
tonight."
This was astonishing information, assuming it was true: the
timing, even the choreography, of an armed revolt in the capital city of a
country ruled for more than forty years by a despot. Stevens and Feltman quickly
sent an encrypted report of their meeting to Washington.
But it was cautious; who knew what to trust in a war zone?
The sun set behind the walls of Château Christophe. Night
fell over the grapevines and the guava trees and the guesthouses. Then, in the
darkness, Feltman heard rapid blasts of rifle fire. The noise was incessant,
celebratory.
The battle of Tripoli
had begun with the muezzins' call, and the first neighborhood to rise up was
Souq al-Jumaa.
···
As dusk fell over the American mission in Benghazi
on September 11, an information-management specialist named Sean Smith was
logged into an elaborate role-playing game called Eve Online. He was 34 years
old, a veteran of the air force and ten years in the foreign service, with a
wife and two kids in the Netherlands.
Smith was also one of the more prominent players in Eve. He went by the name
vile_rat. "Assuming we don't die tonight," he typed to his co-players
six minutes before eight. Dark humor—Smith had done tours in far more dangerous
places than Benghazi. "We saw
one of the 'police' that guard the compound taking pictures."
He probably meant one of the Libyans patrolling the
perimeter. But there were nine other guards in the compound—five armed
Americans and four Libyans from the 17th of February Martyrs Brigade, the same
militia that had helped protect Stevens when he was stationed in Benghazi
the first time.
Almost two hours later, at nine
forty, vile_rat typed: "FUCK. gunfire." He logged off.
According to senior State Department officials, the agent in
the tactical-operations center saw, on the screen monitoring the main gate,
armed men swarming in. There were too many to count. He punched the alarm,
grabbed the microphone for the loudspeakers. "Attack! Attack!" he
yelled.
The other four security agents were in the main residence
with Stevens and Smith. One of them hustled the ambassador and Smith into the
back half of the building, dropped the metal grille, sealed them inside the
safe haven. The other three sprinted for their own automatic weapons and body
armor. The agent with Stevens and Smith radioed that they were secure in the
safe haven.
The barracks at the front gate of the compound was in
flames, and attackers were spreading through the property. They broke into the
main residence, which was very dark. They tried the locks on the grille to the
safe haven but couldn't break them. The security agent, quiet in the shadows,
trained his M4 submachine gun on their silhouettes, ready to fire if they made
it into the safe haven. They didn't. But they had jerricans of diesel fuel from
the barracks. They doused the floor, the furniture, the puffy couches and
overstuffed chairs, and set the place alight.
Oily smoke and the fumes of melting synthetics billowed
through the residence, choking, poisoning the men trapped inside. Stevens,
Smith, and the bodyguard moved into a bathroom, got to a window covered with a
grate. The smoke was a black fog. The men were down on the floor, gasping for
whatever air was left in the building. They decided to get outside, so they
crawled to a bedroom where the window grille could be opened from the inside.
The agent, wheezing and half blind from the smoke, flopped
out onto a patio bunkered with sandbags. He immediately came under fire: There
were dozens of attackers flooding Château Christophe, firing wildly.
Neither Stevens nor Smith followed the agent out the window,
so the agent climbed back in after them. He couldn't find either man. He went
back out for a gulp of fresher air, then came back in again, out, in, out. He
still couldn't find Stevens or Smith. His lungs and throat seared, the agent
managed to pull himself up a ladder to the roof. He collapsed as he radioed the
other guards.
The other four American security operatives could barely
understand him. The attackers had broken inside Building B, the smaller
residence at the compound, but they couldn't get to the agents barricaded in an
interior room, and they hadn't been able to penetrate the operations center at
all.
There wasn't a direct line of sight from either Building B
or the operations center, but the agents could see a black cloud rising. They
had to get to the safe room in the main residence. An agent in the operations
center opened the door, lobbed a smoke grenade to cover him, then sprinted into
Building B, joining the other two agents. The three of them got into an armored
SUV parked outside and floored it to the main residence. Two of the agents held
off the attackers while the third slipped inside. He searched for Stevens and
Smith on his hands and knees until the smoke got too bad and he had to get
outside for some air. He went back in, and when he was too incapacitated,
another agent took his place. Then the third.
One of them found Smith and pulled him out. He was already
dead from the smoke. But they still couldn't find Stevens.
Reinforcements arrived, six Americans from a quick-reaction
force stationed in an annex about a mile away, accompanied by sixteen more men
from the 17th of February Martyrs Brigade. They retrieved the lone agent from
the operations center, who'd been on the phone calling for backup from the
quick-reaction team and Tripoli.
Then all the men regrouped at the main residence. The agent from the operations
center clambered inside; a couple of the reinforcements did, too. None of them
could find Stevens. Finally, the agent who'd made all the calls stripped off
his T-shirt, soaked it in a swimming pool, wrapped it around his face, made one
more sweep. Nothing.
The Americans and their Libyan allies tried to hold a
perimeter around the residence, but, overwhelmed, they were forced to evacuate
to the annex. The ambassador's security agents piled into an SUV with Smith's
body.
The fleeing Americans took fire, close-range, coming out of
the compound. Farther down the road, more armed men strafed the vehicle with
automatic rifles. A hand grenade bounced off it; another rolled underneath. Two
tires were blown out. The SUV was still rolling but slowed by traffic, so they
jumped a median and drove down the wrong side of the road.
They reached the annex. The men got into firing positions
inside the walls and on the roof. For hours they took bursts of rifle fire and
RPGs. In the early morning, more reinforcements arrived, Americans flown in
from Tripoli. Still the attack
continued. At about four o'clock,
mortars fell from the dark sky. One landed on the roof. Two former Navy Seals,
Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, were killed, and a third man—one of Stevens's
original bodyguards—was badly wounded.
The survivors decided to abandon the city. They organized a
convoy of SUVs, secured a route to the airport from friendly militiamen, and
finally escaped on two airplanes just after dawn.
The fire in the residence eventually died down. The
attackers faded away. Libyans, maybe looters or maybe just curious men, managed
to break into the safe haven, where they found Stevens. They pulled him out,
carried him from the compound, loaded him into a car, raced to the hospital.
Doctors in the emergency room tried to revive him for
forty-five minutes. Unable to identify the dead man on the gurney, they fished
a cell
phone from his pocket
and began dialing numbers in the call history.
···
The attackers who overran the American mission in Benghazi
were suspected to be, not surprisingly, Islamic militants. It is unlikely,
though, that they had any idea who, exactly, they were poisoning with diesel
smoke. If Chris Stevens had been the target, it would have been simpler to hit
his convoy or grab him on his morning run or snatch him from a meeting. Also, a
live American ambassador would have been a more valuable asset than a dead one.
But because Chris Stevens was killed fifty-six days before
the presidential election, he became a political prop within hours of his
death. Before dawn on September 12, Mitt Romney claimed him as a martyr to
American weakness. Paul Ryan said the killing was emblematic of the Obama
foreign policy, which "is unraveling literally before our eyes on our TV
screens." Republican congressmen who'd happily cut the State Department's
security budget ginned up hearings to figure out why there wasn't more security
in
Benghazi (and managed to out a
CIA
safe house in the process). Sean Hannity announced to his many millions of
listeners that Stevens had been raped and his body dragged through the streets,
a slur that was not only horribly cruel to Stevens's friends and family but
plainly false. Six weeks after the fact, during the second presidential debate,
Romney was frantically parsing whether Obama had declared Stevens's murder an
"act of terror" and if he'd done so promptly enough. The Obama
administration was criticized for initially suggesting that the attack began
with a protest over that idiotic
Internet video. But by
mid-October, that still seemed a fair conclusion: The New York
Times reported that locals said the invaders had indeed been Islamists
enraged by the
video.
Even the apparently important operational question—namely,
was there enough security—seems irrelevant, because there can never be enough
to prepare for every scenario. "The lethality and the number of armed
people is unprecedented—there had been no attacks like that anywhere in Libya,"
a senior State Department official said. "In fact, it would be very, very
hard to find an attack like that in recent diplomatic history."
And all of it missed, almost entirely, the point of Chris
Stevens's career. Diplomats do not work effectively from behind fortress walls.
The foreign service sends people all over the planet to gather information and
represent American interests, yes, but also to make friends.
Ten days after the attack on Château Christophe, on what was
to have been an American Space, 30,000 Benghazi
civilians marched in the streets and drove the Islamist militias from their
city. Thousands sent condolences to his family. And on a memorial website,
scattered among the stories from old friends and colleagues, there are notes
from ordinary Libyans who never even met the man. They say things like:
I feel ashamed that a man like this was killed by a bunch of
low life, religious zealot cowards. This is a man that has done so much for Libya.
And: Amb Chris Stevens, all the Libyan people love you
and will never forget your views toward us here in Libya.
And: We feel very sorry, please forgive us, we love you
chris and your family also all american.
That was the point of Chris Stevens's work.
Sean Flynn is a GQ correspondent.
Comment:
This is an apologist article on behalf of the State
Department. The greatest irony about this article is that nearly two months
since the terrorist attack, this article provides much more information about
the attack than the State Department has provided the American people. Sugar
coating this with pro-Obama bias as much as he can, Mr Flynn's article only
highlights the inexcusable cover-up being perpetrated on the American people.
With the election tomorrow, the American people should ajready know much, much,
more.
Posted 11/5/2012
3:25:17pm by boxingfan1
Ambassador Chris
Stevens’ Sister Helping Carry On His Work
Friday, 15 Feb 2013
By Bill Hoffmann
The physician sister of slain U.S. Ambassador
Christopher Stevens is helping carry out the work he started in Benghazi,
the Seattle Times reports.
Anne Stevens, a specialist in autoimmune conditions in Seattle,
at Seattle Children’s Hospital, is working to help Libya
improve emergency care.
This week, three Libyan doctors visited Seattle
and Boston spearheading a
collaboration between Seattle Children’s Hospital, Massachusetts
General Hospital,
and the Benghazi Medical
Center, according to the Times.
And six Libyans will soon train as paramedics in Boston.
“They could use our help to gain peace, stability, and security,” Thomas Burke,
an emergency physician who was in Benghazi
the night Stevens was killed Sept. 11, told the newspaper.
Benghazi doctors, with the guidance
of Stevens, Burke, and others, will be able to develop healthcare management skills.
February 15, 2013
By Tom Paulson
Seattle sister of murdered US Ambassador assists on Libyan health
initiative |
Event: Three Libyan doctors visited Seattle
to promote a new health initiative in Benghazi
honoring the legacy of murdered US
Ambassador Chris Stevens. Listen to KPLU’s interview with his sister,
Seattle doctor Anne Stevens.
A group of Libyan physicians were in Seattle this week —
despite the best efforts of the FBI to discourage them — to meet with Anne
Stevens, a physician researcher at Seattle Children’s Research
Institute, and others to foster an initiative aimed at building a new health
care system in that ravaged country.
Stevens, a pediatric researcher, is sister of the late Chris
Stevens, the US
Ambassador to Libya
who was killed last September in the attack on the embassy quarters in Benghazi.
“After he was killed, we wondered why he’d been in Benghazi,”
she said. “It was safe in Tripoli
so why did he go there? We didn’t know.”
It turns out, Ambassador Stevens had been working with a
physician from Boston’s Massachusetts
General Hospital,
Thomas Burke, to launch a project at the Benghazi
Medical Center
aimed at improving the poorly functioning health care system.
“This was one of the most neglected part of the country
under Gaddafi,” Stevens said.
While there are many physicians, she said, there is not much
of a health care system.
“They don’t have enough ambulances, anything like the 911
(emergency call) system or many of the most basic features of health care we
take for granted here.”
Seattle, on the
other hand, is relatively famous for its systems approach to health care having
been a pioneer in promoting now routine life-savers such as Medic One and poison
control.
“One of our ideas is to establish a basic poison control
system which could evolve into a 911 system for Libya,”
Stevens said. “The idea is to train physicians here and send them back to Benghazi
to make these basic changes, with the eventual goal that these systems will
spread throughout the country.”
This is a first for Stevens, who’s never before done work
overseas and has largely focused on her laboratory speciality of auto-immune
diseases. But when her brother was murdered in the attack on the U.S. embassy,
the Stevens family began looking more closely into what he had been up to — and
into what they could do to continue his legacy.
“After he was killed, Secretary Clintoncalled me up, at
five in the morning, and the first thing she said was ‘Don’t worry, we are
going to find out who did this and bring them to justice,’ ” Stevens said.
“That’s not what Chris was about. That’s not what he would have wanted.”
What her brother would have wanted, she said, was to
continue to work with Burke on the medical initiative in Benghazi.
Once the Stevens family learned of it, they contacted Burke to find out how
they could help it go forward. The gatherings in Seattle
for this health initiative are about honoring Chris Stevens’ kind of diplomacy.
“It really is a new country, at a tipping point,” said
Burke, who is chief of global health and human rights at Mass General
and happened to be in Benghazi waiting
to meet with Stevens when the attack took place. Most Americans probably have
little knowledge of Libya,
he said, and are unaware of just how traumatized the people are having lived
under the terror regime of Gaddafi.
“These are remarkable people who have endured a lot, some of
it because of our own government’s (on and off) support of Gaddafi,” Burke
said. “With programs like this we have an opportunity to help them build a new,
stable society.”
That’s what makes what happened earlier to the Libyan
doctors when they arrived at Boston’s
Logan Airport
so mindless and infuriating, Burke said.
“The FBI was there waiting for them,” Burke said.
The federal agents wouldn’t allow Burke and his colleagues
to talk with their guests. After they retrieved their bags, the three Libyan
physicians say they were individually isolated and interrogated for hours. “At
one point, we were told, one of the agents said ‘You killed our ambassador!‘”
Burke said he didn’t want to go into too many details about
the incident because “there are some serious discussions going on now between
the two countries as a result of this.”
Fortunately, he said, they were able to persuade the Libyan
physicians not to return home (which is what, after the interrogations by the
FBI, they wanted to do) and to push forward with this effort aimed at improving
the health and welfare of the new Libya.
Today, Seattle
residents have an opportunity to learn more about this initiative, the needs in
Libya and the
efforts to rebuild a nation. One of the Libyan physicians, who will be speaking
at the UW event, will be Dr. Laila Bugaighis, assistant director general of Benghazi
Medical Center. She
intends to focus especially on the needs of women. Here are a few stories, from
the Seattle Times and Boston Globe, on the project. Here’s
a Globe and Mail story noting, disturbingly, that the Islamist militia
that killed Stevens is back in Benghazi.
“My brother really believed in Libya’s
future,” Stevens said. “I don’t think we knew how bold he was being, or how
dangerous it was. But he was passionate about the country’s possibilities after
the revolution. He was excited to be a part of history in the making…. We want
to keep that going.”
Honoring my brother
and former U.S. Ambassador, Chris Stevens
by Anne M. Stevens, MD, PhD
It was 5:30 in
the morning on Sept. 12, 2012.
I had just fallen asleep, having been up all night talking with foreign service
officers in the State Department, first with news that the Benghazi Mission had
been attacked and that my brother was missing, then hours later that he had not
survived the night. I called my brother and sister, our parents, and my
brother’s girlfriend.
Dozing off in a daze, my phone rang. “The
Secretary would like to speak with you,” said an unidentified voice. Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton came on the line. She explained what happened, and I
remember she said that justice would be done. This upset me. Chris was not
focused on revenge. He wanted the Libyan people to have a free and democratic
society. “I hope this will not prevent us from continuing to support the Libyan
people, from moving ahead,” I said to her.
I had no idea at the time that I would help oversee one of
those projects. But soon after that call, I learned that Chris had been working
with Dr. Thomas Burke, an emergency physician at Massachusetts
General Hospital.
Thomas was in Benghazi the day that
Chris and three other Americans were killed. His account of what happened was
moving and informative, and I learned that Chris was working with him and
leaders at Benghazi Medical
Center to establish the country’s
first modern emergency department and emergency care programs.
My brother hadn’t told me about this project, but the more I
learned about it, the more sense it made. I knew that Chris saw what a fabulous
country Libya
could be, and he was trying to help make that happen by fostering and
encouraging public-private collaborations. He could see history in the making
from all sides of his work. And that’s why he was in Benghazi
on that fateful day, instead of at his home base in much safer Tripoli.
My colleagues at Seattle Children’s said that they wanted to
do something to honor Chris, and I brought them into the loop with my new
friends at Mass General.
Helping Libya’s
healthcare system
Benghazi has a
modern medical center and plenty of doctors. But there are no ambulances,
emergency medical technicians and no 911 system. There are no pediatric
psychiatrists and no emergency medicine pediatricians. Benghazi
has 25 fatal car crashes every day. Many of those accidents include children.
Where do we start?
Thomas and his crew, including doctors from Libya,
decided that for starters, we could bring doctors to the U.S.
to provide training in poison control, and to train toxicologists. We could
help establish a poison control call center, which could eventually
provide a structure for a 911 system. There is currently no poison control
center in all of the Middle East.
I return to Seattle today, having spent several days in Boston
with Thomas, his colleague Dr. Stephen Bohan, and new friends from Libya,
including Dr. Laila Bugaighis, assistant director general of Benghazi
Medical Center.
We have begun to discuss the ideas sketched out above, and we will now spend
the next few days meeting with physicians and leaders at Seattle
Children’s, Harborview and PATH.
It’s currently not safe for me to travel to Benghazi.
But in the meantime, I look forward to establishing this partnership and
project to honor Chris and to help advance some of the work he started.
I think about what happened to him a lot. I didn’t know how
bold he was being at the time, with his travels to Benghazi,
and I had no idea how dangerous it was for him. But I’m learning a lot. I’ve
become, to my surprise, an unexpected diplomat. I think that he would like
that.
Dr. Stevens studies auto-immune conditions including
lupus, a condition in which the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy cells
and tissues, damaging joints, skin, blood vessels and organs.
Remembering Chris Stevens
The Stevens family has established the J. Christopher
Stevens Fund, with an aim to promote intercultural understanding between
Americans and the people of the Middle East. The fund
will support educational programs, including student exchanges, libraries and
the Peace Corps.
They have also established a site to remember and honor
Chris. Donations to the fund are accepted on this site.
“Libyan Women: War and Beyond” lecture
Dr. Bugaighis will speak at Health Frontlines: Insights
from Benghazi on Friday, February
15, from 3:30 to 5 p.m. at the University
of Washington, Health
Sciences Building,
Room T-625. She and leaders from Benghazi
Medical Center
will report from the field on their experiences during the Libyan Revolution.
This talk is open to the public.
The lecture is sponsored by Seattle Children’s, Global WACh,
Global Injury and Violence Prevention Initiative, Washington Global Health
Alliance, UW Department of Global Health, The Henry M. Jackson School of
International Studies at the UW and the UW Center for Global Studies.
For media:
Drs. Stevens, Bugaighis and Burke will be available for
media interviews on Friday, Feb. 15, from 1
to 2 p.m. at Seattle Children’s
Research Institute. If you’d like to attend, please contact us at (206)
987-4500 or at press@seattlechildrens.org.
Mass. General doctor
spoke with Ambassador Stevens just before his death, pledges commitment to
peace
By Chelsea Conaboy, Globe Staff
Dr. Thomas Burke, an emergency physician at Massachusetts
General Hospital who
oversees some of the hospital’s global health programs, was scheduled to meet
with Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Libya
the morning after he was killed in an attack.
Burke spoke with Globe reporter Bryan Bender and
sent this account:
September 12, 2012
Perspective from Benghazi
Today is a tragic day for Americans and Libyans alike. All
over the world our hearts ache for the loss of our US
Ambassador, Christopher Stevens, and those that died at his side last evening.
Our courageous Ambassador held a unique passion and hope for all of Libya
but especially Benghazi. Our
Ambassador was beloved by the people of Benghazi.
This is my second trip to Benghazi;
the first one was in late May. My close colleague and friend, Dr. Stephen Bohan
and I have been working with the leaders of the Benghazi Medical Center (BMC).
BMC director general and hematologist, Dr.
Fathi al Jehani, and chief medical officer and obstetrician /gynecologist (and
human rights leader), Dr. Laila Bugaighis, are hoping that the Massachusetts
General Hospital (MGH) can assist them with two critical areas of need;
training in leadership and management skills, and establishment of the
country’s first modern emergency department and pre-hospital care system. I can
tell you first hand, the people of Benghazi
are absolutely lovely -- kind, generous and curious. However, they are just
barely emerging from 42 years of brutal rule.
BMC is an extraordinarily
impressive structure, built some 30 years ago with the intention of becoming a
world class 1,000-bed medical center. In keeping with Gadhafi’s policy of
controlling Eastern Libya by severely restricting
resources, BMC was only able to first open
in 2009. BMC was never to have an ER but
instead was to focus its expertise and efforts on becoming the referral center
for the eastern half of the country.
All this changed in February of 2011. On Feb. 15, peaceful
demonstrations on the steps of the Benghazi
courthouse marked the beginning of the revolution. Violence erupted on the 16th
and Dr. Jehani immediately ordered his staff to open an ER. Within 20
minutes an ER was born. In the days that followed the BMC
staff worked tirelessly, responding to a mounting human slaughter. On the 20th,
Mehdi Ziu, a Libyan petroleum engineer, drove his car filled with explosives
into the fortress walls of Gadhafi’s forces, giving his own life to tip the
struggle in favor of the people; and thus end Gadhafi’s brutal rule over Benghazi.
Just a few minutes ago I sat with Dr. Naseralla Elsaadi, a
gentle and endlessly patient 42-year old surgeon. Tears quietly ran down his
cheeks. Ambassador Chris Stevens was supposed to have been sitting with us.
Naseralla is chief of the patchwork ER and has been up all night caring for the
sick and injured and has 25 patients to still round on. He said, “It is fine to
write about me and use my name because I am from the most powerful tribe in Eastern
Libya. They will protect me.” He handed me 4 pages stapled
together, the first being the medical note on the attempt to save the
Ambassador’s life, and the latter three sheets, copies of the ambassador’s flat
line heart rhythm. I put my hand on Naseralla’s shoulder and he reached up,
taking my hand in his. “This is terrible not just for the Americans and Libyans
but for all humanity. My wife and children just called me crying. Everyone in
the hospital and everyone in Benghazi
are angry with those people (the radical extremists) and we weep. Islam is
peaceful. It is our duty to care for our guests.” He looked down and his
shoulders dropped with obvious despair. “We work so hard for peace.” I asked
him to not give up. I told him that most Americans don’t know the true story of
the Libyan people, but that he can count on Americans not giving up. While
still holding my hand I locked onto his eyes, “if we work together on a unified
commitment to peace, and together build bridges, a brighter future will
emerge.”
Eight weeks ago the world bore witness to the first
democratic elections in Libya’s
history. Although Libya’s
new Prime Minister will be named today, the moment in history is overshadowed
by the loss of Ambassador Stevens and those that died at his side. There
remains much to be done in this remarkably complex region of the world;
however, the Libyan people are free for the first time in many decades. The
nation, although fragile, does have great potential. We must not give up our
collective commitment to securing a safe, free, and peaceful Libya.
The world will be a better place for us all.
Dr. Thomas Burke
Chelsea Conaboy can be reached at cconaboy@boston.com.
Remembering Chris
Stevens
THIS SITE HAS
BEEN SET UP BY THE FAMILY OF CHRIS STEVENS TO CAPTURE THE MEMORIES OF PEOPLE
TOUCHED BY CHRIS, FAR AND NEAR.
TO SHARE A PRIVATE MESSAGE WITH CHRIS'S FAMILY, PLEASE SEND AN EMAIL TO
REMEMBERINGCHRISSTEVENS@GMAIL.COM.
TO SHARE A STORY OR MEMORY WITH THE WORLD, PLEASE CLICK HERE
.
http://www.rememberingchrisstevens.com/submit
CHRIS HAD A PASSION FOR BUILDING BRIDGES BETWEEN THE PEOPLES OF THE MIDDLE
EAST,
NORTH AFRICA,
AND
THE UNITED STATES. IN THIS SPIRIT, A FUND
HAS
BEEN ESTABLISHED IN HIS NAME TO SUPPORT THIS IMPORTANT, YET UNFINISHED,
ENDEAVOR.
Remembering Ambassador Christopher Stevens
Posted: 10/29/2012
Justice, Minnesota
Supreme Court
Ambassador Christopher Stevens was a conscientious,
well-informed and engaging diplomat who served our country exceptionally well.
He earned the right to be called a hero. His status as a hero involves much
more than the circumstances of his tragic death last month in Benghazi.
Significantly, Stevens' heroic status stems from his exceptional good works on
behalf of our country and the personal risks that he knowingly took when
performing his duties. Fluent in both Arabic and French, the Ambassador had an
uncanny ability to translate for other cultures the ideals, principles and
beliefs that underlie our form of constitutional democracy.
The exceptional characteristics and works rendered by
Ambassador Stevens, and the risks he took in service to our country, stand in
stark contrast to the recent attempts to exploit the Ambassador's death for
political purposes. For those who knew and admired Ambassador Stevens, these
efforts are inappropriate and disheartening, even borderline offensive. The
time has come for those who knew the Ambassador and understand his legacy to speak
out and plea that these efforts stop.
I was initially reluctant to speak out publicly because my feelings on this
tragedy are personal, and I believed that silence was the
best course out of
deference to and respect for the late Ambassador's family. Having lost a
daughter several years ago, I am all too familiar with the pain and sorrow that
comes with the loss of a child. But the recent willingness of the Ambassador's
parents to speak up has prompted me to write my own concurrence to their plea
that the political exploitation of their son's death end.
I met Ambassador Stevens last June when I was in
Libya
and
Tunisia to
promote the concept of the rule of law and fair elections in
Libya,
and to participate in a Tunisian symposium on the drafting of constitutions.
The program was sponsored by the Rule of Law Initiative of the
American BarAssociation. My
efforts in
Libya
focused on assisting lawyers and civil society advocates who were working to
ensure that that country's July elections would be as open and fair as
possible. The visit was my latest in a series of trips abroad focusing on the
rule of law and
America's
special form of constitutional democracy.
My foreign visits almost always include a meeting at the U.S Embassy. The
general purpose of these meetings is to inform the State Department why a
Minnesota Supreme Court Justice is in the country and to assure the embassy
that I was in the country to promote, not disrupt, the goals of
U.S.
foreign policy. Most often these meetings started out stiff and formal; but my
meeting at the embassy in
Tripoli
was different for one reason -- Ambassador Stevens.
I sensed this difference when the Ambassador first entered the room and greeted
each of us with a broad smile. Not only did he warmly greet our delegation, he
almost immediately launched into a substantive discussion about our efforts in
Libya.
The whole time he was charming, full of energy, engaged, curious, disarmingly
candid and most importantly he quickly demonstrated how well informed he was
about the current political situation in Libya.
Stevens was optimistic about
Libya's
future and passionate about the efforts being made to establish a
constitutional democracy. From the way he talked it was obvious that he had
genuine affection and respect for the Libyan people. He expressed his belief
that
Libya had
as good a chance to succeed as any of the "Arab Spring" countries. I
particularly remember his description of the courage and dedication he
witnessed first-hand as the Libyan people sought to rid themselves of the
tyrannical rule of Colonel Muammar Gadhafi. He knew he was doing the right
thing in
Libya
and believe that he could make a difference for the Libyan people in particular
and the citizens of the Arab world in general.
Stevens was especially known for his "pleasant silences," when he
would listen intently to what a compatriot had to say. I was the beneficiary of
several of Stevens' pleasant silences when I responded to his questions about
recent legal developments in
U.S.
law (Stevens was a lawyer), the impact of some recent U. S. Supreme Court
decisions, the direction in which the Supreme Court may be heading, and the
type of issues that come before the Minnesota Supreme Court.
We also talked about the need to better inform the American people about their
own government and
America's
role in the world. I recall with special delight Steven's reaction when I
spontaneously drew two of his embassy staff members into a physical,
basketball-oriented, demonstration on how our system of separation of powers
works. It is a demonstration that I frequently use with school students. The
Ambassador laughed out loud as the three of us, the two staff members and I
each representing one of the branches of government -- legislative, executive
and judicial -- jostled and elbowed each other as we sought to position
ourselves to best get an imaginary rebound of a basketball labeled
"power." But more importantly, he fully understood how this
basketball analogy demonstrated that even though our form of government can
appear to be inefficient, messy, and even a rough at times, our system of
separation of powers is designed to protect the individual liberties enshrined
in our constitution.
We also discussed in some detail the security risks for Americans in
Libya.
This topic was very much on my mind because my family and friends thought that
it was imprudent for me to go to
Libya
given the repeated warnings about heavily armed militias and individuals,
assassinations and kidnappings.
Tripoli
was generally considered to be safer than
Benghazi
and Derna. It was clear that
Libya
was a very dangerous place and that the local police could often only provide
nominal security.
The Ambassador was fully aware of these dangers and the risks assumed by any
American in
Libya.
Precautions could be taken to reduce the risks, but there was no way they could
be eliminated. One thing soon became evident to me: my profile in
Libya
was comparatively low and my exposure to the risk of danger was short term. On
the other hand, the Ambassador's profile was about as high as it could be for
any American in
Libya.
Moreover, his tenure in
Libya,
unlike mine, was for the long term. Despite the known risks, Ambassador Stevens
liked being out among the people. He believed that his constant contact with a
broad spectrum of people made him a more effective advocate for democratic
reforms. But Stevens' success in promoting democracy also made him an enemy of
some elements. Unquestionably, Ambassador Stevens was constantly exposed to
considerable danger, something that he both acknowledged and accepted.
As we parted, we agreed that would be beneficial if I returned to
Libya
after the elections, possibly as early as this fall. We both expressed how much
we looked forward to our next meeting. I remember how proud and pleased I was
that Christopher Stevens was our country's most prominent face in
Libya.
The foregoing experience, background, and knowledge provide the context for my
dismay and irritation with the attempts to exploit Stevens' death for perceived
political advantage. The pain and sorrow from my own experience of losing a
child make me certain that as Stevens' parents mourn the death of their son,
the current attempts to politically exploit his death must have elevated the
pain of their personal loss to a nearly intolerable level. It must make the
pain all the more unbearable for them to know that some of the loudest voices
crying out are the same voices that worked to limit the adequate funding of our
foreign service. Funding that might have been available for additional security
for their son when he was in
Libya.
The stark reality is that present-day
Libya
is a very dangerous place.
Benghazi
is particularly dangerous.
Benghazi
was the crucible for the revolt against Gadhafi. It is a city that Ambassador
Stevens helped to save from that tyrant's troops. it is a city that Stevens had
a special affinity for and it was a city that contained many of his friends --
friends who Stevens believed could protect him from danger.
As I end my comments I have some suggestions for those who
seek to exploit the Ambassador's death for political purposes. First of all
they should heed the admonitions of Stevens' parents: the attempts to
"place blame are unproductive" and the blatant attempts to exploit
the Ambassador's death are "abhorrent." We all would be better off if
we returned to the bygone ethic of past leaders who sought to unite our nation
on issues of foreign policy, not divide it. I hope, if nothing else, these
tragic events make those exploitative voices reconsider their efforts to
diminish the amount of resources our country commits to its foreign service.
Perhaps it is time to consider in earnest an idea discussed
by Tom Brokaw and General David Petraeus. They agreed that something more
subtle and nuanced than military boots on the ground may be required to win
over local communities. Brokaw suggested that we would be much better off in
the long run if we deployed a diplomatic special forces populated by Americans
who were well versed in the language, customs and culture of the local people.
Further, these American representatives would be trained to clearly understand
what is exceptional about America
-- our commitment to the rule of law, the equality and opportunities that this
commitment brings, and the form of constitutional democracy we cherish, a form
of governing that has allowed our country to "long endure."
Perhaps an appropriate name for such a corps of diplomats
who are specifically trained in the skills and dedicated to the qualities
exhibited by Ambassador Christopher would be the Stevens Diplomatic Corps, and
those who received this training could be called Stevens Diplomatic Scholars.
Ambassador Christopher Stevens is an American hero and we
must take special care not to tarnish his legacy. Further, Stevens is not only
a hero in the United States,
but in other countries as well. The Libyan ambassador to the U.
S. recently said that Stevens was both a
"friend and hero" to the Libyan people. Let Ambassador Stevens'
reputation for tireless, fearless public service to his country be the legacy
we speak of and honor. We should also honor the late Ambassador by rejecting
the voices of those who seek to turn his death into a vehicle to advance their
own parochial purposes.
