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Benghazi: Episode 6 - Radicals

October 6, 2025·1 hr 9 min·4 clips

A Benghazi witness describes Abu Qatala’s militia pushing Sharia and condemning elections.

1. Fiasco’s Benghazi finale, titled “Radicals,” contrasts the criminal case against Ahmed Abu Qatala with the House Republican fight over a Benghazi select committee. 2. Host Leon Nafak frames the episode around two investigations that produced very different outcomes, one ending in a trial and the other in “emails.” 3. The episode asks what outraged Republicans thought Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama did wrong, and what motivations they believed were behind Benghazi. 4. Republicans quoted in the episode describe Benghazi as proof that Obama and Clinton were idealistic liberals who misunderstood Islamic extremism. 5. The narration connects those arguments to phrases like “leading from behind,” “hipster diplomacy,” and complaints that the administration avoided calling terrorism by its name. 6. Julianne Himmelstein, an assistant U.S. attorney, and FBI counterterrorism specialist Mike Clark led the criminal inquiry for the Department of Justice and the FBI. 7. Their first task was to review grainy surveillance video from the Benghazi compound and debrief surviving DSS agents and CIA contractors in Germany. 8. Clark then flew to Libya to collect footage from roughly a dozen cameras around the compound, and the team spent hours rewinding and identifying people in the video. 9. Witnesses in Benghazi helped investigators identify Ahmed Abu Qatala, who had led the Obeida Ben-Jurah battalion and later aligned with Ansar al-Sharia. 10. The episode says Abu Qatala’s militia supported strict Sharia law and opposed Libya’s first elections after Gaddafi’s fall. 11. Libyan witnesses told the FBI they saw Abu Qatala directing fighters during the attack, and local militia sources said he had sought weapons and vehicles weeks earlier. 12. The episode says witnesses risked burned houses and death threats, and that some witnesses were killed after cooperating with investigators. 13. Abu Qatala also spoke publicly to The New York Times, CNN, and Fox News in October, sipping a strawberry frappe while denying the accusations. 14. Clark says Abu Qatala believed the Benghazi mission was not an embassy but a spy base for illegal American activity. 15. Conservative media had circulated a different theory that Chris Stevens was in Benghazi to broker a secret weapons deal with Turkey. 16. On Capitol Hill, multiple House committees reviewed the attack, interviewed dozens of witnesses, and held public hearings, but Republicans kept pushing for a select committee. 17. Tim Alberta describes Tea Party members and other Republicans as wanting a less restrained, opposition-research-style investigation that would go beyond normal committee limits. 18. Boehner resisted at first, then formed the select committee after pressure from 190 House Republicans, Fox News, and a Judith Watch FOIA email about Susan Rice’s talking points. 19. Viewers who track Benghazi politics, congressional investigations, and Fox News influence will find this episode useful. 20. Listeners wanting a quick, non-political recap of Libya’s civil war should probably skip it.

As heard by us

A taut finale on how Benghazi outgrew investigation and hardened into a political story.

Fiasco closes its Benghazi season by turning from the facts of the attack to the story Americans built around it: what Clinton and Obama were accused of, what motives their critics imagined, and why the controversy kept gathering force.

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Why you'd press play

Boehner tries to trade more Benghazi coverage for a friendlier Fox News. Ailes answers with black helicopters, spying, safe rooms, and talk of assassins.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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