At Benghazi Trial, Attack Survivors Recount a Night of Horror

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/03/us/politics/benghazi-trial-day-two.html

Version 0 of 1.

WASHINGTON — David Ubben, disoriented and bleeding, was crawling through a burning building at the American Mission in Benghazi, Libya, when he stumbled across the lifeless body of Sean Smith.

Mr. Ubben, a State Department security agent who testified Tuesday at the United States District Court in Washington, dragged Mr. Smith, a computer technician, out of the building, then returned to look for Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. But when a frantic Libyan guard implored him and other Americans to leave before the attackers returned, Mr. Ubben reluctantly agreed to call off the search.

“I didn’t like the idea of not recovering at least his body,” he told the court. “I realized that the chances of finding him alive were very slim at this point, especially after we had recovered Sean Smith. Nevertheless, I wanted to at least recover his body.”

Mr. Ubben’s testimony capped the second day of the trial of Ahmed Abu Khattala, a Libyan man whom prosecutors have accused of helping orchestrate the September 2012 attacks on the American Mission and a nearby Central Intelligence Agency annex. Mr. Khattala’s defense lawyers have argued that he is being scapegoated for the actions of other people.

Neither Mr. Ubben nor two other witnesses who took the stand on Tuesday — including Scott Wickland, another diplomatic security agent who survived the attack, who had started testifying on Monday — mentioned Mr. Khattala. Prosecutors have said that they intend to establish the events of the night of the attack first, then turn to Mr. Khattala’s alleged role.

The government supplemented the second day of testimony with clips of surveillance videos from the attacks, including footage of Mr. Ubben and two other agents as they emerged from a villa, each wearing body armor and brandishing rifles, and prepared to drive an armored vehicle to the burning building.

Mr. Wickland had left off on Monday afternoon after testifying about losing contact with Mr. Stevens and Mr. Smith inside the smoke-filled building, returning several times to search for them and eventually taking refuge on the roof.

On Tuesday morning, Mr. Wickland picked up from that point, describing how colleagues — including Mr. Ubben — had arrived at the building to rescue him, found Mr. Smith’s body and decided it was not safe to stay any longer, so they left for the C.I.A. annex.

Despite his exhaustion and the difficulty he was having breathing because of smoke inhalation, Mr. Wickland said, he took the wheel of an armored vehicle and tried to dodge attackers who threw a bomb at it and sprayed it with bullets.

Mr. Ubben, who was sitting in the front passenger seat, later recounted a “surreal” moment during that attack in which he locked eyes with one of the attackers.

“I remember him very clearly,” Mr. Ubben said. “He had a red soccer jersey on and he had an AK-47 in his hands. We had this kind of odd moment and stared at each other — it must have been just a second — and then he lifted his weapon and started firing on the vehicles.”

The rounds, Mr. Ubben said, struck the bulletproof glass next to his face.

Mr. Wickland said he plowed through a roadblock set up by militants, then careened down another street, straddling a median to avoid traffic.

After they reached the C.I.A. annex, Mr. Ubben climbed to a roof, where he had several calls, he said, including calling his wife to let her know that there had been an attack but that he had survived. He also received a call from a Libyan government official, whom he refused to tell where they had gone.

Mr. Ubben also received a call, he said, from a contact at a Libyan militia that had been hired to provide security for the mission but had seemingly done nothing during the attack. The man had not responded to calls when the attack started, but said his group had killed numerous attackers, Mr. Ubben said. Mr. Ubben did not believe him.

Mr. Ubben’s testimony ended there on Tuesday; he is expected to pick up on Wednesday.

Earlier Tuesday, Mr. Wickland had recounted what happened next: Mortars began to fall on the roof, killing two C.I.A. operatives, Tyrone S. Woods and Glen A. Doherty, and gravely wounding two other men — including Mr. Ubben.

“Dave, the mortar had basically ripped off his leg. He had shrapnel in his face. It had ripped off part of his arm,” Mr. Wickland testified, describing putting tourniquets on his friend and trying to encourage him. “I didn’t think Dave was going to live.”

But on Tuesday, Mr. Ubben was able to walk to the witness stand.