While Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, she supported a covert exchange of weapons to Libyan rebels, some of whom then conducted the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, according to federal court documents obtained by Fox News.
Career CIA officer David Manners offered sworn testimony to the District Court of Arizona on May 5, 2015, claiming, "It was then, and remains now, my opinion that the United States did participate, directly or indirectly, in the supply of weapons to the Libyan Transitional National Council (TNC)."
The Democratic presidential front-runner even suggested the idea in a recently disclosed secret email to long-time confidant Sidney Blumenthal. Dated April 8, 2011, Clinton wrote, "Fyi. The idea of using private security experts to arm the opposition should be considered," reported the New York Post.
Manners' testimony was part of a grand jury investigation into Marc Turi, an American defense contractor under federal investigation for allegedly violating the arms control export act by facilitating the covert flow of weapons into Libya to aid in the ousting of former Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi.
Turi told Fox News that the Obama administration and some members of Congress were well aware that weapons were flowing into the region during the Arab Spring protests in 2011 and, due to poor oversight, were being re-directed to individuals hostile to the U.S. in both Libya and Syria.
"When this equipment landed in Libya, half went one way, and the half went the other way," Turi told Fox News. "The half that went the other way is the half that ended up in Syria."
At the time, several thousand U.S. arms contractors were licensed by the State Department to sell and move weapons around the world, and Turi was one of those contractors.
"I got involved in this business in the 1990s," he said. "I've been involved in all types of operations, regarding transportation, logistics and liaising with those foreign governments."
While Clinton was secretary of state, her department awarded a record number of export licenses to arms dealers, allowing them to sell sophisticated weapons internationally. In all, more than 86,000 licenses valued at $44.3 billion were granted in 2011 alone - over $10 billion more than in 2010, according to Fox.
Turi told Fox that his high level contacts from inside and outside the U.S. government encouraged him to arm the Libyan rebels who were fighting to overthrow Qaddafi. Manners, who told the court he was an expert in "authorized covert arms transfers," was one of Turi's contacts.
In an attempt to eliminate a paper trail of covert weapons transfers implicating the U.S. government, Turi devised a plan to outsource the project to Qatar, who would in turn supply the Libyan TNC with the U.S. weapons.
Turi submitted a $267 million contract and Clinton seemingly went to work to arrange the deal, traveling to Paris just two days later to meet with Libya's Mustafa Jibril, a senior member of the TNC. The next day, Clinton met with Egypt's new foreign minister Nabil el Arabi in Cairo, where she walked through Tahrir Square with her senior adviser Human Abedin, according to Fox.
Turi said that after his application was submitted, his contacts submitted the application information to Clinton through the TNC council when she was in Cairo. Turi's application for the Qatari deal was approved in May 2011.
Now, Turi says he believes the government has made him the fall guy for a program that went far off the tracks and left four Americans dead.
