“When that occurred,” says Lt. Col. Andrew Wood, who headed the military security team in Tripoli, “we were the last flag flying in Benghazi; we were the last thing on their target list to remove.”

On Aug. 15, at the U.S. compound in Benghazi, an emergency meeting was convened to discuss the 10 Islamist militias and their training camps in the area, among them al-Qaida and Ansar al-Sharia.