I actually liked this movie as it gave a somewhat accurate display of the clusterfuck with intelligence linked operations, the complexity of morals with such affairs, and a very accurate paranoia of the people on the ground, rather than blindly glamorizing warfare for it's own sake.

Important background

Some real life events that the movie didn't get to cover, but will make the movies depiction much more accurate: We didn't have an embassy in Benghazi, we have an Embassy in Tripoli.

Benghazi was the site of arms trafficking groups linked with the CIA, who were funneling guns to a Turkish group, who would then funnel them to proto-ISIS in Syria.

Think a modern version of Iran-Contra, except more extreme as weapon supplies were micromanaged by the handlers.

The Libyans (including some Jihadists) were pissed that the CIA and MSM had an extremely aggressive gun buyback program, trying to disarm the people they had just armed now that the "job was done" (Gadaffi was dead).

Ethics aside, I think it's extremely understandable how Libyans in general got suspicious, and this gun buyback program was censored by the MSM who promoted this hoax video of Mohammed or something as the motive.

A contemporary media piece:

https://world.time.com/2012/09/30/libyas-flawed-attempt-to-soak-up-a-flood-of-weaponry/

Libya’s Flawed Attempt to Soak Up a Flood of Weaponry

...In Libya’s largest cities of Tripoli and Benghazi, more than a thousand people responded to a televised appeal to turn in their weapons. The Libya al-Hurra television station promised participants the chance to win iPads and flat screen televisions. But the Libyans who showed up said that they were moved by a patriotic duty rather than material compensation. However, though the drive netted a number of heavy weapons, the militias that control most of the country’s arms stayed away from the festivities.

Lifeprotip for arms traffickers: if you don't trust a group of people to be responsible with weapons, then DON'T FUCKING ARM THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE. That's it. Handling weapons takes responsibility, and recipients need to be vetted. It doesn't matter how evil Qaddafi may seem, that doesn't justify arming terrorists.

Anyways some sources on the weapons smuggling part, as weapons moved to Turkey (en route to fuel Syrian terrorists):

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2015/05/18/confirmed-weapons-were-moving-through-benghazi-to-syria-n2000471

https://www.politico.com/blogs/benghazi-report-findings-2016/2016/06/benghazi-report-weapons-trafficking-224869

https://www.businessinsider.com/us-syria-heavy-weapons-jihadists-2012-10

The movie itself

The movie had it's own limitations to deal with, being a movie and all, and couldn't cover the entire narrative regarding Libya, but despite all of this I found the portrayal of the characters involved completely congruent with the real life operations.

What I liked about the movie's very realistic portrayals:

The real life Chris Stevens was perhaps a bit of a "muh neoliberal democracy" ideologue who fell sway to his own ideological goals. A mistake was that he networked with some of the same Arab Spring "Revolutionary" Jihadists that later came back for the attack.

The information-compartmentalized roles. The higher ups clearly aren't telling the hired guns/security the purpose of the compound they are staying in, and threaten the guards for asking questions.

The clusterfuck of groups involved, with hints that some of our "allies" are Jihadists who do an about-face, where the lower ranked agents have to make guesses and take risks on who to trust to escort them safely, while feeling betrayed by the higher-ups.

It was also a preventable attack, ie if our compartmentalized intelligence services actually wanted to protect employees they had the capability of doing so.

Vox had a hit-piece against this movie a few years ago, largely based on nitpicking details of the film for it's "toxic masculinity" and "hate speech against CIA leadership" trying to act as if it wasn't their fault the attack killed people:

http://archive.vn/SE3YA

The movie is based on a book of the same name, by Boston University journalism professor Mitchell Zuckoff. The book's narrative is based on interviews with five military contractors tasked with defending a CIA annex in Benghazi; Bay's movie follows the same script, telling the attack from the point of view of the contractors.

What Ansar al-Sharia is, or what the group's goals are, isn't really explained. Rather, they are presented as part of a larger threat of armed, shady-looking men, any of whom could pose a threat.

The film's desire to keep this dynamic simple is understandable — action movie audiences aren't looking for a tutorial on North African jihadism. But it's the other major dynamic of the film where it gets into trouble: the conflict between the contractor heroes and the sniveling CIA bureaucrats.

...Tl;dr: Strong men with guns are good, and weak men with Harvard degrees are bad. That is Michael Bay's story of Benghazi and why four Americans died.

...But 13 Hours isn't another one of Bay's Transformers: He's working with real life here. And the true story of Benghazi is not a story of heroic men stymied by incompetent bureaucrats and abandoned by their government.

Vox is, of course, a piece of trash neoliberal publication so them being upset at the "conspiracy" nature of the movie just speaks in its favor.

Yes, the workers who were "kept out of the know" were completely fucked over by their government for antisocial reasons, just like countless others were historically, just like Frank Olsen was, just like troops in Vietnam were.

While the movie casts blame to perhaps the wrong person, the attack was definitely preventable, and it wasn't prevented because the intel leadership had their focus on preventing leaks of the operation, while being apathetic to the harm to underlings:

https://heavy.com/news/2013/08/cia-was-smuggling-weapons-to-syrian-rebels-during-benghazi-embassy-attack/

Typically, the agency will only conduct one test over three or four years. Right now they’re subjecting these people to the tests one or twice a month. This rate of polygraph testing is rare, to say the least.

CNN’s source claims that this is a trend of intimidation that the agency is carrying out. In an exclusive communications in the CNN report, one insider writes, “You don’t jeopardize yourself, you jeopardize your family as well.” Another says, “You have no idea the amount of pressure being brought to bear on anyone with knowledge of this operation.”

A new source told CNN that there were “dozens of people working for the CIA […] on the ground that night, and that the agency is going to great lengths to make sure whatever it was doing, remains a secret.”

The source said that the number of assets was 35, and as many as seven were wounded. Some of those were injured seriously. Although the source did not specify how many of them were CIA, he or she did say that 21 American were working in a building called the “annex,” which is believed to be run by the CIA.

What's also important is that Nakoula Basseley Nakoula's anti-Islam film “The Innocence of Muslims” had nothing to do with the attacks motivations, he was a target selected as a distraction for the mob.

Conclusion

From the perspective of a hired contractor just trying to do their job, the movie did excellent work with the portrayal of what such people would experience, as well as a justified cynicism towards establishment bureaucrats. Establishment bureaucrats within our own leadership ARE the primary villains, not the footsoldiers.