Hadn’t heard of the doctor’s call. The facts of one of the most fouled up State Department details are coming together.
Thanks.
http://articles.boston.com/2012-09-14/metro/33818187_1_thomas-burke-libya-emergency-department
Libya is a country of nearly 6.5 million people, and the availability of emergency medical care can be summed up this way: It is almost nonexistent.
It is for that reason that a leading emergency physician from Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Thomas Burke, chief of the Boston hospital’s Division of Global Health and Human Rights, found himself in Benghazi, Libya, on Tuesday. Burke was preparing to begin a 10-year cooperative effort between Mass. General and Benghazi Medical Center to develop an emergency care infrastructure, when tragedy struck.
Just hours before Burke was scheduled to meet with John Christopher Stevens, the US ambassador to Libya, the US consulate was attacked. Stevens and three other Americans were killed, including Glen Doherty, a Winchester native and former Navy SEAL working for a private security company.
Burke’s colleagues had spoken with Stevens just 45 minutes before the attack, and Burke was on the phone with an embassy attaché when the shelling began.
“He yelled, ‘Oh my God, Oh [expletive],’ and then he hung up,” said Burke, who was in a hotel about a mile from the consulate when the attack began. “Then we heard these deep blasts. We didn’t know what was going on. Nobody knew if the whole city was being attacked.”