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Church Official Pushes Mormon Voter Registration in Key Swing State

Written By Sepatu on Kamis, 20 September 2012 | 08.33

In a provocative move within a religious organization that has sought to display strict political neutrality, an official of the Mormon church has disseminated a presentation across the key swing state of Nevada that urges members to vote and speak "with one voice" in the coming Presidential election that pits Mormon Mitt Romney against President Barack Obama.

"Any Mormon would understand exactly what's being said there," said Randall Balmer, a Dartmouth religion professor who has studied the church's handling of Romney's presidential bids. "This is very thinly coded language."

Mormon officials have permitted church leaders to encourage voting, but have stressed that it not be done in a partisan fashion. A senior church member emailed the presentation to Nevada "stake presidents" -- similar to Catholic bishops -- last month. The email was first reported last week by Jon Ralston, an independent Nevada journalist.

The roughly 30-minute PowerPoint presentation appears to have two goals -- to motivate Mormons in Nevada to register and vote in November, and to help them prepare for questions they may get as their church garners attention as a result of Romney's bid. Three of the 20 slides that were shared with ABC News pointedly urge members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to remember the "importance of speaking with one voice."

David Calvert/Getty Images

READ the POWERPOINT: Speaking With One Voice (PDF)

One slide includes voter registration data for Clark County, a jurisdiction that includes Las Vegas, where Democrats outnumber Republicans. Other slides appear to convey the stakes in the upcoming campaign, including one that espouses the need to restore a "spiritually dead society" and another that quotes a member of the church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles saying, "We are at war with the influences of Satan." ABC News has only seen a portion of the presentation.

Mormon officials told ABC News that the entreaty to "speak with one voice" conveys a desire to see church members provide consistent responses to questions from outsiders about church rituals and doctrine, and is not an entreaty to vote as a block.

"The Church has always encouraged people to be a part of the political process and to register to vote," said Dale Jones, a church spokesman. "However, we do not direct them on how to vote. We are politically neutral and do not support candidates or political platforms."

One slide in the presentation titled "Political Neutrality" explicitly notes this, stating that the Church's mission "is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, not to elect politicians." The slide says the church does not "attempt to direct its members as to which candidate or party they should give their votes to. This policy applies whether or not a candidate for office is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."

Church spokesman Scott Trotter, however, declined to respond to questions from ABC News about who prepared the presentation, how many church groups saw it, why details about it are being kept secret, and why a "war with Satan" was referenced in the middle of a presentation on the importance of voting.

Darren Littell, the spokesman for the Romney campaign in Nevada, said the Romney campaign has nothing to do with the "One Voice" PowerPoint presentation.

20 Sep, 2012


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Actress Says Maker of Anti-Muslim Film Lied to Cast

Written By Sepatu on Rabu, 19 September 2012 | 15.43

An actress who starred in an anti-Muslim film that stirred extremists to protest across the Middle East claims she was tricked by the filmmaker, who she says lied to the cast about his own name and the true intentions of the movie.

"They put words in my mouth that were not in the script and I never said," said Cindy Lee Garcia, who told ABC News that after she and the other actors had finished shooting their scenes their dialogue was crudely dubbed over with incendiary attacks on Islam and the prophet Mohammed that were not in the script.

"Now, I'm sick that people died over this. I'm exhausted and really hurt and angry," she said of the riots that have roiled the Middle East.

A clip of the film, "Innocence of Muslims," translated into Arabic and picked up by Mideast satellite television networks, helped stir crowds in Egypt, who on Tuesday stormed the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, replacing the American flag with an Islamic banner. Extremists who attacked an embassy in Yemen and a diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, where Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed, may also have been inflamed by the movie.

The low-budget film, shot on a California soundstage with limited sets and props, depicts Mohammed as a blood-thirsty fraud and pedophile.

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Garcia said she knew the filmmaker to be a man named Sam Bacile, whom she says identified himself as an Egyptian American. "Sam Bacile" has since been revealed to be a likely pseudonym.

No one with the name Sam Bacile appears in any public records.

A man named Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, however, told the Associated Press Wednesday that he was involved in the film's logistics. Nakoula said he was not Bacile, but a phone record search by the AP found that Nakoula owned the mobile phone associated with "Sam Bacile"

The man calling himself "Sam Bacile" initially told reporters Tuesday that he was an Israeli Jew. Nakoula, however, told the AP that he is an Egyptian Christian, or Copt.

Calls made by ABC News to several phone numbers believed to be associated with Nakoula were not immediately returned.

Police were called to his home this morning because he feared for his safety, according to law enforcement sources.

One prominent Christian extremist has told the media that he served as a consultant on the film. Another says he agreed to help distribute the film. Both men have ties to organizations that have been listed as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The leader of a third group made up of Copts has also said publicly that he was involved in the film's planned distribution.

Garcia said she spoke to "Sam" on Wednesday and that he revealed to her that "Sam" was not his real name. She did not ask what his real name was, however. She said Sam told her to clear her name in public and blame him for the backlash the film has caused.

Garcia and another actor contacted by ABC News describe production on a low-budget film shot in Duarte, Calif. Most scenes were filmed in front of a green screen.

"The movie was a complete mess. Totally amateurish," said another actor on the film who requested anonymity.

Garcia said she was contacted about the role by her talent agency, and was told the film titled "Desert Warriors" was "based on life from 2,000 years ago."

14 Sep, 2012


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Italy Upholds Americans' Conviction in CIA Rendition Case

Italy's highest criminal court on Wednesday upheld the convictions of 23 Americans in the kidnapping of an Egyptian terror suspect as part of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program.

The ruling marks the final appeal in the first trial anywhere in the world involving the CIA's practice of abducting terror suspects and transferring them to third countries where torture is permitted.

The 23 Americans all were convicted in absentia following a three-and-a-half-year trial, and have never been in Italian custody. They risk arrest if they travel to Europe and one of their court-appointed lawyers suggested that the final verdict would open the way for the Italian government to seek their extradition.

"It went badly. It went very badly," lawyer Alessia Sorgato said. "Now they will ask for extradition."

The Americans and two Italians were convicted last year of involvement in the kidnapping of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, from a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003 — the first convictions anywhere in the world against people involved in the CIA's practice of abducting terror suspects and transferring them to third countries where torture was permitted. The cleric was transferred to U.S. military bases in Italy and Germany before being moved to Egypt, where he says he was tortured. He has since been released.

Those convicted include the former Milan CIA station chief, Robert Seldon Lady, whose original seven-year sentence was raised to nine years on appeal. The other 22 Americans, all but one identified by prosecutors as CIA agents, face seven-year terms.

Previous Italian governments had declined to act on prosecutors' request to extradite the American suspects, most of whom had court-appointed lawyers the defendants never met. While some of the defendants in the case were known figures attached to the U.S. Embassy or Consulate in Milan, many of those named in the trial are believed to have been aliases, impeding any formal extradition.

Among those whose sentence was upheld was Air Force Col. Joseph Romano, who was head of security at the Aviano Air Force base where the Egyptian cleric was driven from Milan before being taken by plane to Germany and eventually Egypt.

Romano's lawyer, Cesare Bulgheroni, said he would appeal the verdict to the EU human rights court in Strasbourg on the basis that Romano was never formally notified of the charges against him, and that lower courts had rejected some witnesses. Romano was one of only two Americans who received permission to hire his own lawyer during the original trial.

The court also ordered new appeals trials for five Italian intelligence agents, including the former head of military intelligence, Nicolo Pollari. They had been acquitted by lower courts because of state secrets.

During the original trial, three other Americans were acquitted: the then-Rome CIA station chief Jeffrey Castelli and two other diplomats formerly assigned to the Rome Embassy. Prosecutors appealed the acquittal, as they can in Italy. The appeal is still pending in Milan.

20 Sep, 2012


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Panetta Blasts Ex-SEAL Over Book

Written By Sepatu on Selasa, 18 September 2012 | 21.23

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta became the highest-ranking U.S. official to speak out against the former Navy SEAL who wrote a firsthand account of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, saying the commando broke his promise to America and could have given away secrets that "tipped off" the enemy.

"There's no question that the American people have a right to know about this operation. That's why the President spoke to the American people when that operation happened," Panetta said today on CBS "This Morning". "But people who are part of that operation, who commit themselves to the promise that they will not reveal sensitive operations and not publish anything without bringing it through the Pentagon so we can ensure that it doesn't reveal sensitive information -- when they fail to do that, we have got to make sure that they stand by the promise they made to this country."

"I cannot, as Secretary, send a signal to SEALs who conduct these operations [that] you can conduct those operations and then go out and write a book about it or sell your story to The New York Times. How the hell can we run sensitive operations here that go after enemies if people are allowed to do that?" he said.

The book "No Easy Day" is a first-person memoir written by a former SEAL Team Six member under the pseudonym Mark Owen that includes a detailed account of the May 2011 operation in Abbottabad, Pakistan to get bin Laden. According to the book, Owen was the second man in the room after bin Laden was shot and put a few bullets in the terror leader himself before taking the unreleased pictures of the dead al Qaeda leader.

The book follows Owen's rise through the Navy's ranks to elite SEAL Team Six and describes the various levels of training, walks through some on-the-ground operational tactics employed by the SEAL commandos and gives a minute-by-minute account of the bin Laden raid. Owen left the service in April, less than a year after the mission, according to military records provided to ABC News.

READ: Ex-SEAL: Why We Shot Bin Laden on Sight

Beyond writing under a pseudonym, Owen said he changed the names of other people involved in the operation, including a CIA analyst, to protect their identities and took pains not to reveal sensitive information. The book's publisher, Dutton, also said the memoir was vetted by a former special operations attorney to make sure Owen wasn't betraying any classified information.

But officials from the Pentagon to the CIA to the White House said they were not provided a copy of the book to review before publication. In late August the Pentagon wrote a letter to Owen in which it said it was considering legal action against him for breaking non-disclosure agreements, sparking a brief back-and-forth between the Pentagon and lawyers for Owen, who said he had not violated the agreements.

While Panetta declined to say whether or not he thought Owen should be prosecuted, he said the government has to "take steps to make clear that we're not going to accept this kind of behavior." Panetta said that leaking such information could "jeopardize other operations and the lives of others that are involved in those operations."

"I think when somebody talks about the particulars of how those operations are conducted, what that does is tell our enemies essentially how we operate and what we do to go after them. And when you do that, you tip them off," he said.

"No Easy Day" was originally intended to be released today, on the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, but the sale date was moved up after the book's existence leaked, causing a tidal wave of controversy and demand for the first-ever inside look at the historic raid.

Owen said he plans to give a majority of the proceeds from the book to charities that support the families of fallen SEALs, but at least one major SEAL charity, The Navy SEAL Foundation, already announced it would not be accepting donations from the book sales, citing Owen's possible legal troubles.

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11 Sep, 2012


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11 Sep, 2012


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Who Recorded Mitt Romney?

Before a May 17 fundraising dinner at a Florida mansion, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney told the reporters who'd been tailing him on the campaign trail that he was sorry they couldn't follow him inside.

"Too bad you can't come to the fundraisers," Romney told reporters.

While the journalists were left outside, however, someone inside the lavishly catered dinner decided to do a little freelance reporting, creating the latest viral recording to jar a national political campaign.

A camera secretly recorded Romney from a serving table at the edge of the room as he addressed an audience of 40 or 50 at the $50,000-a-plate event, delivering remarks that would make headlines four months later. Romney dismissed Obama supporters as entitled "victims."

"There are 47 percent who are with him," said Romney, "who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what."

Romney also joked that he'd have an easier path to victory if his father, who was born in Mexico, was actually Latino. "Had he been born of Mexican parents, I would have a better shot of winning this thing."

Charles Dharapak/AP Photo

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The camera rolled for 49 and a half minutes. Whoever recorded Romney's remarks then provided the tape to Mother Jones magazine, which published the full video on its website today.

Monika Bauerlein, co-editor of Mother Jones, told ABC News she would not disclose the identity of the magazine's source.

"This is somebody that, as people would be, was excited about being in the room with a Presidential candidate," said Bauerlein. She said the tape "did not come from opposition researchers or a political campaign."

James Carter IV, grandson of the former president and a political researcher, found the first posted snippet of the video on the internet and put Mother Jones in touch with the video's source. Carter told MSNBC today that "it would be fair to assume" that the videographer was not one of the wealthy donors who'd paid $50,000 to eat dinner with Mitt Romney.

The video is shot across the top of a marble-topped table that is apparently being used to serve wine and ice, with a clear view in-between various pitchers and decanters. A short stack of bar napkins is visible to the left. About four minutes into the tape, the camera angle is adjusted, and a pitcher on the right is moved out of the way. Later, a wine decanter on the right is maneuvered out of the shot.

At one point, a waitress can be heard placing an order with the bartender, saying, "Four martini glasses, please." The back story of how and why the tapes were made and worked their way to the mainstream media provides a rare look at an increasingly common political tactic, according to Democratic strategist Doug Thornell.

"I think one of the most influential, important developments in campaigns over the last ten years is the viral video that catches a candidate," said Democratic consultant Doug Thornell.

The Romney tapes were first posted on line on You Tube on May 31, two weeks after the speech, by a new user with and account called "Romney Exposed."

19 Sep, 2012


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Gitmo Inmate Who Died Was Denied Release

The Guantanamo detainee who died this weekend was a 32-year-old Yemeni who had been held at the U.S. detention camp in Cuba ever since it was established a decade ago in January 2002, and whom human rights activists called "the face of indefinite detention at Guantanamo."

Joint Task Force Guantanamo identified the detainee as Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif from Yemen. His name had been withheld pending family notification of his passing.

Latif had been found unconscious and unresponsive in his cell on Saturday and was declared dead after what were characterized as "extensive lifesaving measures" were performed to revive him.

Investigators from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service are looking at the circumstances surrounding his death. A release by JTF-Guantanamo said an autopsy had been conducted, but said the results and determining a cause of death "take time".

Captured by Pakistan along the border with Afghanistan Latif arrived at the newly established camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in January, 2002 shortly after it had been established as Camp X-Ray. The facility was initially designed for the temporary detention of enemy combatants captured on the battlefields of the War on Terror, but eventually became the permanent detention facility for terrorism suspects.

Courtesy of Marc Falkoff/AP Photo

Latif had pressed his legal status in U.S. civilian courts and reached the Supreme Court where his case was rejected this past June. While he was alleged to have been an al Qaeda-trained fighter, the Department of Defense issued an opinion in 2004 that he was "not known to have participated in combatant/terrorist training." Latif was recommended for transfer to his home country twice by the military panels set up to review the cases of detainees. However, those recommendations were never acted upon.

His civilian attorneys told the Associated Press that Latif had a history of mental illness and had received treatment at Guantanamo. David Remes said, "This is a man who would not accept his situation ... He would not accept his mistreatment. He would not go gently into that good night."

The Center for Constitutional Rights, a legal advocacy group that represents many of the detainees at Guantanamo, issued a statement Tuesday that said Latif was "innocent of any wrongdoing that would have justified his detention."

"Adnan Latif is the human face of indefinite detention at Guantanamo," said the statement, "a policy President Obama now owns."

"President Obama's Justice Department knew he was innocent but appealed a district court order directing his release rather than send him home to Yemen," said the CCR. "The president has imposed a moratorium on all transfers to Yemen, which is why more than half of the remaining detainees are Yemenis. … Adnan Latif was held indefinitely and ultimately for life because of his Yemeni citizenship, not his conduct."

Since the camp was opened in 2002 eight other detainees have died while in custody -- six from suicides and the other two from natural causes. The most recent death was in 2011. Latif's death means there are now 167 detainees at the camp, which at its height held 779 detainees. A third of the detainees still at Guantanamo – 55 men -- are Yemeni.

Latif, who contributed to a 2007 book of poetry by detainees, was one of several "Gitmo" detainees who have been participating in hunger strikes, which have been going on at the camp for years.

He had ended his hunger strike on June 1 and had recouped 95 percent of his body weight. Hunger strikers at the camp are routinely force-fed by medical personnel. A Defense Department official says that the hunger strikes are more of a political act than a physical act as many take their liquid nutrient feeds willingly and assist medical personnel with the insertion of the food tubes that force-feed them.

12 Sep, 2012


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Air Force Admits Wrong in Nixing F-22 Fighter Safety System

A top Air Force official admitted to Congress that it was "not an appropriate decision" to cut a back-up oxygen system from the original F-22 Raptor fighter design -- a safety system the Air Force is now paying millions to install and one that a dead pilot's family says would've saved his life.

Gregory Martin, a retired Air Force general who headed an official task force to investigate mysterious oxygen problems in the F-22, told the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee last week that a back-up oxygen system was in the original design of the F-22 but had been cut in order to drop weight on the high-performance fighter jets.

"It was not a cost issue," Martin said. "It was true that it was taken out. It did have an initial design of a back-up oxygen [system], in addition to the emergency oxygen system. A series of events occurred, but the catalyst for this particular decision was... the 'war on weight.'"

"In retrospect, that was not an appropriate decision. But at the time, that's what the decision was," he said.

Martin's comments seem to contradict those made by Gen. Charles Lyon in August when he told reporters that the back-up system had been nixed to cut costs in the $420 million-a-piece planes.

Either way, the sister of F-22 pilot Capt. Jeff Haney said her brother would still be flying today had such a system been present in November 2010 when Haney's primary oxygen system failed just before his plane crashed.

U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Kenneth W. Norman / Released / 97th Air

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"It would've saved Jeff's life," said Jennifer Haney, who acts as family spokesperson. "My brother would be alive if this would've been something that was in the F-22 from the get-go."

READ Exclusive: Family Demands Truth in Air Force F-22 Pilot's Death

Capt. Haney had just completed a routine training mission in Alaska in mid-November when a still-unexplained malfunction in the plane caused his oxygen system to shut down. Haney never made any distress calls, but a few seconds later he took his jet into almost a direct dive from 51,000 feet. Haney also didn't eject and it appeared he tried to pull out of the dive at the last second, but it was too late, according to an Air Force investigation report. He struck the ground going faster than the speed of sound and died on impact.

Despite the malfunction, the Air Force blamed the crash on Haney, saying he did not properly fly the plane and failed to activate an emergency back-up oxygen system as he fell to the earth. That emergency system, currently an F-22's pilot's only recourse in the event of oxygen system failure at high altitudes, is activated by pulling on a ring tucked into the corner of the cockpit -- a procedure the Air Force admits is difficult even under controlled circumstances, much less while the pilot is tearing through the sky and unable to breathe.

Last month, ABC News reported that an internal document revealed that an Air Force and civilian contractor test group had brought concerns over such a system to the Air Force's attention more than a decade before the crash, citing an "operational deficiency" in the oxygen system design that would go on to play a direct role in Haney's death. The document had suggested the Air Force find another "reliable" source of oxygen for the pilot in case the primary one went down. Beyond the manual emergency system that was already in the planes at the time, the Air Force never did.

READ Exclusive: Air Force Warned of Fatal F-22 Flaw Decade Before Crash

"It's really nice of the Air Force to have known about this 12 years ago and then let my brother die," Jennifer Haney told ABC News last month. "That's 10 years before Jeff died that they could've done something and they did nothing. They knew there was a problem with the jet."

18 Sep, 2012


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Family of Anti-Islam Filmmaker Flees California Home

Written By Sepatu on Senin, 17 September 2012 | 13.23

Family members of the California man who wrote and produced the controversial anti-Islam film "Innocence of Muslims" fled their home early Monday morning to join the filmmaker in hiding.

Nakoula Basseley Nakoula has not returned to his Cerritos, California home since being interviewed late Friday night by federal probation officers about his role in the creation of the film, excerpts of which have ignited violent anti-American protests across the Muslim world.

Shortly before 4 a.m. Monday, officers from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department escorted members of Nakoula's family, who had their faces covered, out of the house and into police vehicles so they could rejoin Nakoula at an undisclosed location.

"They decided they would be safer where they could move about and live a normal life," said Steve Whitmore, a spokesman for the Sheriff's Department. "All we did was pick them up and reunite them with Mr. Nakoula."

Whitmore said the family's current whereabouts are unknown to him, and it was his understanding that they won't ever return to their Cerritos house, though that decision was "entirely up to the family."

"What we do know and what they told me is that for the time now and for the immediate future, for the weeks and months to come, they will not be returning to this address," Whitmore said.

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Nakoula, 55, admitted his role in the film last week and sought help from law enforcement in dealing with death threats he had received since the film's release, saying he was "scared to death" about the safety of himself and his family, authorities told ABC News.

Nakoula had originally used the pseudonym Sam Bacile, telling reporters he was an "Israeli Jew" and that the film had cost about $5,000,000, which came from wealthy Jewish friends.

But Nakoula, who is actually an Egyptian-American Coptic Christian, later told authorities that he and his son, Abanob Basseley, 21, were responsible for producing the movie. He reportedly said the film cost between $50,000 and $60,000 and was shot in a little over 12 days. Authorities say he claimed the money for the movie came from his wife's family in Egypt.

Records obtained by ABC News show Nakoula was convicted of intent to manufacture methamphetamine in the 1990s, and also served time in federal prison on bank fraud charges, where he told authorities he wrote the script.

Sentenced to 21 months in prison and five years on probation, Nakoula was moved from the federal correctional complex in Lompoc, California to a halfway house in 2010, according to the website The Smoking Gun. He was released from federal custody in June 2011 and production on the film began just two months later at a soundstage in Southern California.

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He met late Friday night with federal probation officers about whether his involvement in the film violated the terms of his probation, which barred him from accessing the Internet without prior approval.

The inflammatory film has been blamed for violent protests across the Middle East, including in Benghazi, Libya, where four Americans died, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, when militants attacked U.S. diplomatic facilities there on Sept. 11.

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18 Sep, 2012


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American Killed in Libya Was on Intel Mission to Track Weapons

One of the Americans killed alongside Ambassador Christopher Stevens in an attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya Tuesday told ABC News before his death that he was working with the State Department on an intelligence mission to round up dangerous weapons in the war-torn nation.

In an interview with ABC News last month, Glen Doherty, a 42-year-old former Navy SEAL who worked as a contractor with the State Department, said he personally went into the field to track down so-called MANPADS, shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, and destroy them. After the fall of dictator Moammar Gadhafi, the State Department launched a mission to round up thousands of MANPADS that may have been looted from military installations across the country. U.S. officials previously told ABC News they were concerned the MANPADS could fall into the hands of terrorists, creating a threat to commercial airliners.

READ: Nightmare in Libya: Thousands of Surface-to-Air Missiles Unaccounted For

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Doherty said that he traveled throughout Libya chasing reports of the weapons and once they were found, his team would destroy them on the spot by bashing them with hammers or repeatedly running them over with their vehicles. When ABC News spoke to Doherty in late August, he was enjoying a short time off in California before heading back to Libya just days ago.

The State Department declined to comment on Doherty's involvement in the MANPADS program, but pointed to a previous statement from State Assistant Secretary for Political-Military Affairs Andrew Shapiro in which he said the department was looking at "every possible tool to mitigate the threat."

According to military records provided to ABC News, Doherty joined the Navy in 1996 and was a combat medic and a decorated member of the elite SEAL teams by the time he left active duty in 2004. He's described in glowing terms as a top-tier SEAL and better friend in the book "The Red Circle," written by Doherty's longtime friend and SEAL sniper school partner, Brandon Webb.

"Glen was a superb and respected operator, a true quiet professional," Webb told ABC News today. "Don't feel sorry for him, he wouldn't have it. He died serving with men he respected, protecting the freedoms we enjoy as Americans and doing something he loved. He was my best friend and one of the finest human beings I've ever known."

Doherty's mother, Barbara, told ABC News' Boston affiliate WCVB she had been notified of her son's death late Wednesday.

"He was the most wonderful person," she said. "We are all in pain and suffering."

Ambassador Stevens and State Department information management officer Sean Smith were killed in the first wave of attacks in Benghazi when the building they were in was set on fire around 10 p.m. local time Tuesday, a senior administration official told reporters. Doherty was apparently one of two other Americans who were killed in a firefight nearly two hours later, while the facility was still under attack. The fourth victim was Tyrone S. Woods, also a former Navy SEAL, according to a State Department news release.

ABC News' Dana Hughes contributed to this report.

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14 Sep, 2012


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Source: http://feeds.abcnews.com/click.phdo?i=5be92d377fbac4531f2a9e2531ce2ef5
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