• Benghazi guards turned on US diplomats in 2012 attack, sources say

    From Supporters Of Hillary Clinton@21:1/5 to All on Fri Nov 11 23:57:03 2016
    XPost: talk.politics.mideast, alt.politics.obama, alt.journalism
    XPost: soc.retirement

    An obscure private firm hired by the State Department over
    internal objections to protect U.S. diplomats in Benghazi just
    months before the American ambassador and three others were
    killed was staffed with hastily recruited locals with terror
    ties who helped carry out the attack, multiple sources told Fox
    News.

    The explosive charge against Wales-based Blue Mountain Group
    comes from several sources, including an independent security
    specialist who has implemented training programs at U.S.
    Consulates around the world, including in Benghazi, where he
    trained a local militia that preceded Blue Mountain. The source,
    who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Blue Mountain used
    local newspaper ads to assemble a team of 20 guards, many of
    whom had terror ties, after securing a $9.2 million annual
    contract.

    “The guards who were hired were locals who were part of the
    Ansar al-Sharia and Al Qaeda groups operating in Benghazi,” said
    the source, whose assignment in Benghazi had ended in November
    2011. “Whoever approved contracts at the State Department hired
    Blue Mountain Group and then allowed Blue Mountain Group to hire
    local Libyans who were not vetted.”

    Many were members of the Libyan government-financed February
    17th Martyrs Brigade, an Islamist militia that had previously
    guarded Americans before being replaced by Blue Mountain.

    John “Tig” Tiegen, one of the CIA contractors that responded to
    the Sept. 11, 2012 attack and co-author of “13 Hours: The Inside
    Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi,” confirmed to Fox
    News that the local Libyans who attacked the consulate that
    night included guards working for Blue Mountain.

    "Many of the local Libyans who attacked the consulate on the
    night of Sept. 11, 2012, were the actual guards that the State
    Department under Hillary Clinton hired to protect the Consulate
    in Benghazi,” Tiegen told Fox News. “The guards were unvetted
    and were locals with basically no background at all in providing
    security. Most of them never had held a job in security in the
    past.

    “Blue Mountain Libya, at the time of being awarded the contract
    by our State Department, had no employees so they quickly had to
    find people to work, regardless of their backgrounds,” he said.

    One former guard who witnessed the attack, Weeam Mohamed,
    confirmed in an email sent to the Citizens Commission on
    Benghazi and obtained by Fox News, that at least four of the
    guards hired by Blue Mountain took part in the attack after
    opening doors to allow their confederates in.

    “In the U.S. Mission, there were four people [who] belonged to
    the battalion February 17,” Mohamed wrote to the Commission, an
    independent body formed with Accuracy in Media to investigate
    the attack and the administration's handling of it.

    “Always armed. And they are free to move anywhere inside a
    building mission.

    “And therefore, they had a chance to do an attack on the
    mission's headquarters. They have all the details about the
    place. At the same time they have given the United States a
    painful blow,” Mohamed wrote.

    Blue Mountain officials did not return multiple requests for
    comment. The State Department acknowledged in internal emails
    obtained by FoxNews.com the local recruits fell short of their
    duty, but discounted the claim any took an active role in the
    attack that resulted in the deaths of Ambassador Christopher
    Stevens, Foreign Service Information Officer Sean Smith and CIA
    contractors and former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.

    “While the Accountability Review Board report and other reports
    were critical of our local guards’ performance, we are not aware
    of any evidence that they participated in the attacks
    themselves,” said State Department spokesman John Kirby.

    Blue Mountain was hired in February 2012, following an uprising
    that ended Col. Muammar Gaddafi's 42-year rule and plunged Libya
    into violent chaos. Congressional testimony in the wake of the
    attack on a consular office in Benghazi revealed that Stevens
    and his staff had made hundreds of requests for security
    upgrades but had been ignored by officials in Washington.

    “We kept asking for additional support, including a 50-caliber
    mounted machine gun, but the State Department would not give it
    to us, because they said it would upset the locals,” the source
    told Fox News. “Instead, the State Department hired a company
    that doesn’t have employees, which then hired terrorists.”

    Clare Lopez, a member of Citizens' Commission on Benghazi, said
    the Clinton State Department bears blame for the security
    situation.

    “Think about it: Hillary Clinton's State Department actually
    hired the very people who, along with their jihadist allies in
    Benghazi, attacked us and killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens
    and Sean Smith as well as CIA contractors Glen Doherty and Ty
    Woods,” Lopez said.

    According to government records obtained by the Washington-based
    Judicial Watch, the State Department was in a “rush” to hire
    Blue Mountain UK, and its affiliate, Blue Mountain Libya, which
    together formed The Blue Mountain Group to secure the Benghazi
    contract.

    “I understand there was a tremendous rush to get the original
    contract awarded, and the Service level agreement was most
    likely overlooked in the rush,” wrote State Department
    contracting officer Jan Visintainer, in a June 6, 2012, email.
    Emails obtained from [missing word] after the attack showed
    Visintainer urged Blue Mountain officials not to talk to the
    media.

    Blue Mountain UK was formed in 2008 by David Nigel Thomas, a
    former Special Air Service official. Charles Tiefer, a
    commissioner at the Commission on Wartime Contracting, told
    Reuters the company was not well known.

    "Blue Mountain was virtually unknown to the circles that studied
    private security contractors working for the United States,
    before the events in Benghazi," Tiefer said.

    Despite the size of the operation, and having no staff or track
    record with the State Department, Blue Mountain Group landed the $767,767-per-month contract to protect the Benghazi consular
    office, beginning on Feb. 17, 2012.

    The company solicited applications in local newspapers and on
    websites, and very little, if any, screening of guards was done,
    the security specialist told Fox News. The lack of vetting led
    to several potentially dangerous hires beginning in March of
    2012, he said.

    “One of those guards hired by Blue Mountain was the younger
    brother of the leader of Al Qaeda of Benghazi,” he said.

    In an email obtained by Judicial Watch, Jairo Saravia of the
    Regional Security office for the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, told
    his superiors in Washington that Blue Mountain had held and lost
    security contracts in Tripoli, with the Corinthian Hotel and
    Palm City complex.

    “The latest information is Blue Mountain is not licensed by the
    GOL (Government of Libya) to provide security services in
    Libya,” Saravia wrote. “I would advise not to use their services
    to provide security for any of our annexes and/or offices due to
    the sensitivity this issue has with the current GOL.”

    Prior to Blue Mountain, security for Americans in Benghazi had
    been provided by the February 17th Martyrs Brigade under a
    direct agreement with the State Department. Despite its Islamist
    orientation, the militia included dozens of locals who had been
    carefully cultivated and trained by the U.S., according to the
    source. The majority of the February 17 Militia guards were
    fired without warning when Blue Mountain was hired, leading some
    members to turn against the Americans, he said. The State
    Department kept on at least three February 17 employees for
    patrol.

    Eric Nordstrom, the regional security officer in Libya who has
    vast, first-hand knowledge of some 600 security requests denied
    to the U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya, testified on May 8,
    2013, before the Congressional Committee On Oversight &
    Government Reform that he was aware that employees with both
    February 17 Martyrs Brigade and Blue Mountain had ties to
    Islamist terrorists.

    “I had met with some of my agents and then also with some annex
    personnel. We discussed that,” Nordstrom told lawmakers.

    Nordstrom testified that the “ferocity and intensity” of the 13-
    hour, four-phase attack, on the 11th anniversary of 9/11, was
    nothing that they had seen in Libya, or that he had seen in his
    time in the Diplomatic Security Service, with as many as 60
    attackers in the consulate.

    “I am stunned that the State Department was relying on [locals]
    with extremist ties to protect American diplomats,” U.S. Rep.
    Blake Farenthold, R-Texas, told Fox News. “That doesn’t make any
    sense. How does that happen?”

    Fox News was able to verify through a former Libyan guard the
    identities of several February 17 employees hired despite
    terrorist ties, who he said participated in the attack. While
    their identities have been provided to federal authorizes, none
    have been prosecuted.

    http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/11/07/benghazi-guards-turned- on-us-diplomats-in-2012-attack-sources-say.html
     

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