https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3479528/posts
Arms dealer says administration made him scapegoat on Libya operation to ‘protect’ Clinton
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/10/11/arms-dealer-says-administration-made-him-scapegoat-on-libya-operation-to-protect-clinton.html ^
10/11/2016
Arms dealer says Obama admin used him as a scapegoat
EXCLUSIVE: American arms dealer Marc Turi, in his first television interview since criminal charges against him were dropped, told Fox News that the Obama administration — with the cooperation of Hillary Clinton’s State Department — tried and failed to make him the scapegoat for a 2011 covert weapons program to arm Libyan rebels that spun out of control.
“I would say, 100 percent, I was victimized…to somehow discredit me, to throw me under the bus, to do whatever it took to protect their next presidential candidate,” he told Fox News chief intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge.
The 48-year-old Arizona resident has been at the epicenter of a failed federal investigation led by the Justice Department spanning five years and costing the government an estimated $10 million or more, Turi says.
Turi says the Justice Department abruptly dropped the case to avoid public disclosure of the weapons program, that was designed to force the ouster of Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi during the 2011 Arab Spring.
“Those transcripts from current as well as former CIA officers were classified,” Turi said of the evidence. “If any of these relationships [had] been revealed it would have opened up a can of worms. There wouldn’t have been any good answer for the U.S. government especially in this election year.” The Justice Department faced a deadline last week to produce records to the defense.
Turi says he was specifically “targeted by the Obama administration “and “lost everything—my family, my friends, my business, my reputation.”
As Fox News has reported extensively, in 2011, the Obama administration with support from some Republican and Democratic lawmakers explored options to arm the so-called “Libyan rebels” during the chaotic Arab Spring but United Nations sanctions prohibited direct sales.
Turi’s plan was to have the U.S. government supply conventional weapons to the Gulf nations Qatar and UAE, which would then in turn supply them to Libya. But Turi says he never sold any weapons, and he was cut out of the plan. Working with CIA, Turi said Clinton’s State Department had the lead and used its own people, with weapons flowing to Libya and Syria.
“Some (weapons) may have went out under control that we had with our personnel over there and the others went to these militia. That’s how they lost control over it,” Turi said. “I can assure you that these operations did take place and those weapons did go in different directions.”
Asked by Fox News who got the weapons — Al Qaeda, Ansar al-Sharia, or ISIS — Turi said: “All of them, all of them, all of them.”
Turi exchanged emails in 2011 with then U.S. envoy to the Libyan opposition Chris Stevens. A day after the exchange about Turi’s State Department application to sell weapons, Clinton wrote on April 8, 2011 to aide Jake Sullivan, “fyi. the idea of using private security experts to arm the opposition should be considered.”
Asked if the email exchanges are connected or a coincidence, Turi said, “When you look at this timeline, none of it was a coincidence. It was all strategically managed and it had to come from her own internal circle.”
Turi also told Fox News that he believes emails sent about the weapons programs were deleted by Hillary Clinton and her team because that “it would have gone to an organization within the Bureau of Political Military affairs within the State Department known as PM/RSAT (Office of Regional Security and Arms Transfers.) That’s where you would find Jake Sullivan, Andrew Shapiro and a number of political operatives that would have been intimately involved with this foreign policy.”
The four felony counts — which included two of arms dealing in violation of the Arms Export Control Act and two of lying on his State Department weapons application — were dismissed last week against Turi “with prejudice,” meaning the government cannot come after him again on this matter.
The Justice Department decision, weeks before the election, coupled with the now public emails, cast a new light on Clinton’s 2013 Benghazi testimony where she was asked about the movement of weapons by Sen. Rand Paul.
Paul: Were any of these weapons transferred to other countries. Any countries. Turkey included?
Clinton: Well, senator you’ll have to direct that question to the agency that ran the annex and I will see what information is available.
Paul: You’re saying you don’t know?
Clinton: I don’t know.
Turi first told his story to Fox News senior executive producer Pamela Browne in 2014, and since, Turi says he’s lost everything to fight the Justice Department, which had no further comment beyond the publicly available court records.
Bttt
Ping
A lot of people have been deeply hurt, or lost their lives because of this pathologically ambitious narcissistic and incompetent woman with daddy issues.
thanx for dusting off some more of the details.
this is another example of our own gummit funding our enemies.
the mention of herridge makes me question her move from faux to cbs??
was the cbs hiring their attempt to get one of the last real investigative reporters in order to get out in front of the coming storm?
or... did the clowns get cbs to hire herridge to put the clamp on her investigative reporting?
btw, all the arms talk aside, where did all gadaffi’s gold end up?
PS: is there any statute of limitations on treason?