GLEN DOHERTY AND
TYRONE WOODS: U-T’S 2012 PERSONS OF THE YEAR
“It
is difficult to adequately convey how much we owe these men and others in the
SEAL community who have died in service to country.”
By Chris Reed
12:01 a.m., Jan.
1, 2013
Navy SEALs – resourceful, courageous, devoted and
disciplined — represent the best qualities of our community and our nation. Whether
in high-profile operations like tracking down and killing Osama bin Laden or
strategic efforts like seizing and preserving power plants in the opening days
of the Iraq War in 2003, Navy SEALs are the silent professionals whose
sacrifices protect our values and our nation. It is our privilege that so many
of these special forces are trained at the Naval Amphibious Base Coronado.
When something goes horribly wrong — as it
did in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11-12 — and SEALs die as a result, it leaves
us with a deep sense of remorse and an obligation to honor their sacrifices.
That was our reaction to the deaths of Glen
Doherty, 42, of Encinitas, and Tyrone Woods, 41, of Imperial Beach, former
SEALs turned CIA contractors who were killed after hours fighting heavily armed
terrorists who had already succeeded in killing U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris
Stevens and information officer Sean Smith, who also had roots in San Diego.
It is why U-T San Diego has chosen to honor
Doherty and Woods as our Persons of the Year for 2012.
Their deaths came as they defended their fellow
Americans at a U.S. building after the main U.S. diplomatic compound in
Benghazi had been attacked and set afire. An official account released by the
State Department says they died shortly after 6 a.m. Sept. 12 when three mortar
rounds struck the roof of the building, where the men were in defensive
positions.
But the story that has been told to the men’s
families since soon after that terrible event — coming from both government and
unofficial sources — is far more dramatic and wrenching.
On Sept. 11, aware that it was the 11th
anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Ambassador Stevens held all his scheduled
meetings at the fortified compound that housed the U.S. consulate. An
uneventful evening came to an abrupt end when dozens of heavily armed men broke
through the front gate and began lighting buildings in the compound on fire.
Officials notified Washington and called Doherty, Woods and other members of a
quick-response team at a U.S. facility a little more than a mile away.
Security agents already at the compound took
Stevens and Smith to a safe room inside a residence building in the compound.
Attackers managed to get into the building but couldn’t breach the safe room,
so they lit the building on fire.
While the quick-response team was still making
its way to the consulate, agents pulled Smith — dead from smoke inhalation —
out of the residence. Stevens could not be found. His body was later identified
at a hospital where he had been taken by good Samaritans.
When Doherty and Young reached the smoky
compound, they worked to quickly evacuate the surviving Americans to the second
U.S. facility. It was there, early the following morning, that the terrorists
launched their second coordinated attack – the one that killed the ex-SEALs.
Glen Doherty’s
brother, Greg, a Marin County teacher, told us, “His actions were heroic from
the start. We knew very early on he had rushed in to help that night, that he
got 20 to 30 people out of the consulate.”
Tyrone Woods was
found “slumped over his machine gun, which was caked with blood. He had
continued to fire until he had no blood left and was unable to fire anymore,”
Charles Woods, the former SEAL’s father, told The Washington Times.
Doherty’s family
has no time for those who see the attack in a political context and who demand
that heads roll in the Obama administration. His sister, Kate Quigley, of
Marblehead, Mass., urges those who care about her brother to visit a website
created in his honor, www.glendohertyfoundation.org.
This reflects the family’s wish that the focus be on the victims.
“It’s clear that
we could have been more prepared, but hindsight is 20/20. The primary
responsibility is on the terrorists, not the American defense,” said Greg
Doherty.
Tyrone Woods’ father
is far more critical of the U.S. government. His son, stuck in Benghazi, died
many hours after the initial attack. Charles Woods
told a U-T reporter that there had been an official cover-up. “When a mission
is compromised, within minutes — not hours — they extract them. Seven and a
half hours, and they still have not extracted him. ... I have correspondence
from people who are in the military, and they tell me extraordinary measures
are always taken to rescue. And they didn’t do that with Ty, and there’s a
reason why. We’re not getting the truth from anyone.”
It is U-T San
Diego’s view that the truth needs to come out about what happened at Benghazi.
Today, our focus
is on the victims, their good works, their lives of public service, their love
for their families and devotion to their friends. These were individuals who
inspired those around them.
“Glen believed
in what he was doing. He really wanted to make a difference in the world. He
liked the people he was with and believed in the mission he was on,” Greg
Doherty told us. “But he was more than his job.”
In his 42 years,
Doherty found time to become an accomplished pilot, skier, cook, white-water rafting
guide and triathlete. After serving as a SEAL for 10 years, he co-authored
“21st-Century Sniper: A Complete Practical Guide.”
“Glen was a
super fun and caring person,” his brother said. “He spent a lot of time
cultivating friends [and had] an ever-widening circle of interesting, talented,
good people around him.”
Tyrone Woods was
more low-key, and nearly all his family has kept a low profile in the aftermath
of the tragedy. He was a SEAL for two decades before going to work as a CIA
contractor in 2010. Woods was beloved by those who knew him as a devoted family
man, a friendly and reassuring presence in his Imperial Beach neighborhood —
and as a great patriot.
“He had the
hands of a healer as well as the arms of a warrior, earning distinction as a
registered nurse and certified paramedic,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton said in an official tribute to Woods on Sept. 14.
It
is difficult to adequately convey how much we owe these men and others in the
SEAL community who have died in service to country. As Abraham
Lincoln said at Gettysburg, in dedicating the site of a Civil War battle, “The
brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above
our poor power to add or detract.”
So we will
simply state that Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods are heroes who died in defense
of America’s ideals after saving the lives of many of their countrymen.
Whatever one’s
politics or larger views about the Benghazi scandal, no one should forget this
central fact. Doherty and Woods are U-T San Diego’s Persons of the Year
for 2012.
____________________________________________________________________
San Diego
Union-Tribune Refuses to Let the Benghazi Victims be Forgotten
BENGHAZI’S
STILL-UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
Our front-page editorial today naming Glen Doherty of
Encinitas and Tyrone Woods of Imperial Beach as U-T San Diego’s Persons of the
Year notes that the truth needs to come out about the events in Benghazi,
Libya, on Sept. 11-12 that led to the deaths of the former Navy SEALs
turned CIA contractors. Unfortunately, at first President Barack Obama’s
re-election campaign seemed to get in the way. Now media-enabled obstinance
seems to be keeping the lid on.
For more than two weeks after the attack,
the Obama administration deceived the public about the nature of the assaults
on a U.S. diplomatic compound and another U.S. building in Benghazi. The
CIA had quickly confirmed the attacks were coordinated efforts carried out by
heavily armed terrorists. Yet in a Sept. 25 speech to the United Nations, the
president strongly implied they were the result of a spontaneous protest over
an anti-Islam YouTube video – not once but six times. His U.N. ambassador,
Susan Rice, made the claim in five interviews on Sept. 16 alone, relying on
what we’re told were “edited” versions of talking points from U.S. intelligence
agencies.
On Monday, a bipartisan Senate committee
report confirmed anew the spuriousness of the White House narrative. Yet
the administration, many Democratic lawmakers and much of the media continue to
not only deny that the public was deceived, but to treat talk of a Benghazi
cover-up as a fabricated controversy, a partisan hullabaloo about nothing.
But just imagine what these people would be
saying if the following had happened on a Republican president’s watch: A U.S.
ambassador and three other Americans are killed in a terrorist attack that is
knowingly mischaracterized as a spontaneous protest that got out of hand, with
the president even telling the U.N. that “there is no video that justifies an
attack on an embassy” long after he knew the video wasn’t to blame. There is
vast evidence that U.S. security was lax, inviting the tragedy. There is also a
White House in re-election mode trying to promote the narrative that the
terrorist threat had receded on the incumbent’s watch – a White House that
refuses to release key information until after the election.
Anyone who believes that Democrats and their
media allies wouldn’t have concluded this had the makings of a cover-up is
kidding himself.
After all this time, we still don’t have an
answer to this question:
What did the president
know and when did he know it?
Or this one: Where
is the paper trail showing who edited the truth out of Susan Rice’s talking
points?
Or this one: Where
is the paper trail showing what options national security officials thought
they had in the many hours between when the terrorist attacks began on the
night of Sept. 11 and when the surviving Americans in Benghazi were evacuated
the morning of Sept. 12?
We need these
three questions answered – at the very least.
For there is a much fuller story behind the deaths of
Glen Doherty, Tyrone Woods, Chris Stevens and Sean Smith than has been
revealed.