[10] Based on extensive interviews with Libyan witnesses and American officials, the article concluded that the attack began as neither a spontaneous protest nor an Al Qaeda plot.
It was a planned attack carried out by local Islamist militants, and it was inspired in part by an American-made online video ridiculing Islam.
Kirkpatrick was denied entry into Egypt on February 18, 2019, and sent back to London the following day after Egyptian authorities held him for hours at Cairo International Airport.
[11] He was part of a New York Times team that received the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.
[16] Kirkpatrick's book, Into the Hands of the Soldiers: Freedom and Chaos in Egypt and the Middle East, (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018,) narrates the author's notes on how and why the Arab Spring sparked, then failed, focusing on America's role in that failure and the subsequent military coup that put Sisi in power.