I saw the very first story of him being “raped and tortured” when it appeared on a Lebanese site WHILE they were still looking for his body, as I recall. There were no photos, just a claim, and they made no mention of a cattle prod. I figured it was an effort by Hezbollah to humiliate and demoralize the US and play on the gay theme.
Lebenese media passing it around laid the blame for Benghazi on a video just as did the administration.
It wasn’t until well after Benghazi that some propagandist on one side or the other took a liking to this pic and tried to push it but most people noticed right away the uniforms are not right for the region.
The story in the Lebanese paper was retracted but it never had a photo.
Stevens’ girl friend wrote an article after she had time to grieve.
At some point propagandists decided the raped story wasn’t enough and produced a picture of someone else. Some even tried to pass off Qadaffi as Stevens.
When that wasn’t enough they found this old one with a cattle prod from the Argentine version of SERE school.
STEVENS was gay I believe.
Doesn’t mean he wasn’t brutalized, it’s just there has been no conclusive proof he was or that he died from anything other than smoke inhalation so the jury’s still out so long as the FOIA doesn’t produce any more details.