When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a brief self-congratulatory trip to Tripoli, Libya, in October 2011 — with U.S. military assets lurking offshore in case they needed to rescue her — she joked, in the presence of then-Ambassador Gene Cretz and Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman, that they had not-so-long-ago been worried that the ambassador might end up the target of a murderous Libyan assault.

“As Gene and Assistant Secretary Feltman and I were walking through here, they were talking about how the last time Jeff was here was when we were very worried that Gadhafi and [Libyan intelligence chief] Senussi were going to kill you,” Clinton said in a speech to the staff at the U.S. Embassy.