Judicial Watch already exposed the Obama administration’s lie that no military help was within striking distance by releasing an unclassified Navy map showing that the military had a multitude of forces in the region surrounding Libya at the time of the attack.
And now we learn through a JW investigation that there were serious concerns about the security detail hired to protect the Benghazi diplomatic facility. Serious enough that the firm was flagged as a “do not hire” by a key State Department security official.
On February 28, 2014 we obtained documents from the U.S. Department of State revealing that Blue Mountain Group (BMG), the security firm hired to protect the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, had lost at least two previous private security contracts in Tripoli and was hired despite a warning from the Embassy Acting Regional Security Officer.
According to the documents, which we received in response to our February 25, 2013 FOIA lawsuit, on June 7, 2012, Tripoli Acting Security Regional Officer (ARSO) Jairo Saravia sent the following email to RSO David Oliveira (Temporary Duty Office to Benghazi at the time) and others:
“Just a quick note in regards to Blue Mountain. The company has lost several security contracts here in Tripoli, including the Corinthian Hotel and Palm City Complex. The latest information is Blue Mountain is not licensed by the GOL to provide security services in Libya. 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 ….”
The documents also reveal that in Benghazi in April 2012, there was almost a physical altercation between a BMG supervisor and a member of the Libyan 17th of February Martyrs Brigade, a Libyan militia that was supposed to provide security at the Benghazi compound the day of the September 11, 2012, attacks. According to an April 18, 2012, email from ARSO Teresa Crowningshield to DS Program Manager Norm Floyd:
“At 1130 hours, a verbal altercation occurred between the Libyan February 17th Martyrs Brigade team member and Mr.[REDACTED]. The team member then notified the brigade team leader of the incident, who then went to the gate to speak with [REDACTED]. At that time, a second verbal altercation occurred between the three and [REDACTED] left the compound. The team leader then came to the RSO office and reported the incident.
“The team leader stated that [REDACTED] made an inappropriate comment with reference to Gaddafi. Then when the team leader came to speak with [REDACTED] he made derogatory comments regarding the team leader’s mother. As the situation escalated to the point of a likely physical confrontation, [REDACTED] left the compound.”
The role BMG played in protecting the security of the Benghazi facility first came to light shortly after the September 2012 terrorist attack when State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland emphatically denied that State had hired any private firm to provide security at the American mission in Benghazi:
QUESTION: (Inaudible) the claim was made yesterday that a company that is a spinoff of Blackwater, in fact, proposed or contracted the United States Government for this particular kind of eventuality, and it was caught up in some sort of bureaucratic –
MS. NULAND: Completely untrue with regard to Libya. I checked that this morning. At no time did we plan to hire a private security company for Libya.
QUESTION: Toria, I just want to make sure I understood that, because I didn’t understand your first question. You said – your first answer. You said that at no time did you have contracts with private security companies in Libya?
MS. NULAND: Correct.

Sources on the ground in Benghazi during the 2012 terror attack are pushing back hard on former CIA acting director Mike Morell’s testimony on Capitol Hill, where he defended his role in shaping the administration’s narrative and claimed politics were not involved.
As part of Morell’s testimony on Wednesday, the former acting and deputy CIA director acknowledged that he overruled the guidance of the top CIA officer in Libya at the time. That official told Morell the attack was not an “escalation of protests,” but Morell said he had to weigh that against analysts who concluded the opposite. He ultimately went with the analysts — whose assessment later turned out to be flawed — saying the chief of station’s report was not “compelling” and was based on loose evidence.
Why on earth would Morell choose to trust the word of “analysts” over intelligence operatives in the field who had their finger on the pulse of what was happening moment by moment at the Benghazi mission?
And “loose evidence”? Was it any looser than the evidence tying the attacks to an obscure Internet video a ridiculous claim peddled by the country’s Secretary of State during a series of television interviews? That’s the narrative the Obama administration fed us. And based on what?
The fact is, any intelligence officer worth his salt wouldn’t have such a horrible error in judgment. So what conclusion are we supposed to draw about this testimony?
It certainly seems to me that Morell is covering for some political operative inside the Obama administration who made the decision to downplay the terrorist connection to these attacks because it might have disrupted the president’s re-election campaign. Or maybe he is the political operative? Morell did little this week to excuse his false information and obstruction on Benghazi. If it were any other administration, there’d be an independent criminal investigation already underway.
What a mess. A year-and-a half after the attacks and we are all still in the dark about what really happened at Benghazi. Administration officials lied about the terrorist connection to the attack. They lied about the availability of military support that could have potentially saved lives. They lied about the security firm hired to protect our personnel, which we now know had a track record of failure.
And then we have this bizarre testimony from the nation’s former top intelligence officer suggesting he simply didn’t know that it was better to trust intelligence on the ground than “analysts” sequestered in a cubicle.
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