US News

Slain Ambassador Christopher Stevens remembered for bravery, friendship

He was America’s version of James Bond — a bold, fearless figure known in Libya as a “legend.”

A lifelong diplomat, Christopher Stevens was the natural choice to act as US liaison when rebels rose up against Moammar Khadafy in 2011.

He couldn’t just fly into the country — so he hitched a ride on a Greek cargo ship and sailed into Benghazi just as the fighting erupted.

“He arrived . . . in the port of Benghazi and began building our relationships with Libya’s revolutionaries,” Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton said yesterday.

His team initially set up in a hotel — until a car bomb blew up in the parking lot and drove them out. So Stevens and his team scrambled to set up a makeshift office — and got to work.

“He risked his life to stop a tyrant, then gave his life trying to help build a better Libya,” Clinton said.

The outgoing Stevens, able to relate to both high-ranking officials and the ragtag rebels, sent cables back to the US detailing Khadafy’s monstrous actions.

“It’s especially tragic because Chris Stevens died in Benghazi . . . a city he fought to save,” President Obama said.

Stevens, who was single, is the first US ambassador to die in the line of duty since Adolph Dubs died in Afghanistan in 1979.

President Obama swore him in as ambassador to Libya in May — capping a distinguished, two-decade career in the Foreign Service.

An avid athlete, Stevens took time to play tennis and went running in the rural neighborhoods of vineyards and goat farms.

On July 4, he hosted an embassy party featuring a “Libyan band that specializes in 1980s soft rock.”

And on a recent trip to Libya, Sen. John McCain teased Stevens about his prowess with a coffee machine, tweeting a picture of the ambassador making a cup of joe and noting: “One of America’s favorite diplomats also makes the best cappuccinos in Tripoli.”

A few months ago, Stevens sent an e-mail to pals, talking about how Tripoli had changed since the Khadafy years.

“The whole atmosphere has changed for the better,” he wrote. “People smile more and are much more open with foreigners. Americans, French and British are enjoying unusual popularity. Let’s hope it lasts!”

It was that winning personality that earned him the trust of revolutionaries.

But friends said he was deadly serious about his mission — even though he carried it out with his trademark easygoing nature.

He was born in California, the son of retired lawyer dad Jan Stevens and symphony orchestra cellist Mary Commanday.

He graduated from Berkeley and got a law degree from Hastings College in San Francisco. He quickly abandoned a job as a lawyer, joined the Peace Corps and went off to Morocco to teach English.

He then joined the State Department, landing posts in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria and Israel.

A member of Stevens’ Foreign Service training class said he was the “quintessential diplomat,’’ who was “unflappable, but not nerdy.”

“I heard about his death when I was on the road, and I just pulled over and cried,” another friend, Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli lawyer, told The Guardian of London.

“We called him ‘the senator.’ He was capable of expressing empathy with Israelis and Palestinians simultaneously in the same room without being one bit maudlin or romantic about it. This was real nobility.”

Despite his exciting, high-powered career, Stevens remained close with his boyhood friends.

Paul Feist, who met Stevens in the 1970s as a California high school freshman, recalled his slain friend in a Facebook post: “25 years ago next week, John Christopher Stevens was the best man at my wedding. Today I awoke to the horrible news that Ambassador Stevens had been killed at the U.S. consulate in eastern Libya.”

“We are grief struck,” wrote Feist. “Thank you, Chris, for being a friend and for serving your country and the international community so well and so selflessly.”

Stevens would take ski trips with friends or show up at their homes for a home-cooked meal.

“He was such an unpretentious guy,” Feist told the Sacramento Bee.

“He’d want to know about your son and how he was doing in school. He was a remarkable man.”

In Libya, friends echoed the sentiment.

“Everybody in Benghazi and Tripoli are appalled,” tweeted Omar Amer Al Barghathi, founder of the Libyan Youth Movement.

Several Libyans last night rallied to protest Stevens death.

They held up signs that read, “Chris Stevens was a friend to all Libyans,” and, “Sorry, People of America.”