Newly-released documents show the U.S. military knew the 2012 Benghazi attack was terror-related hours just after it happened, according to Tom Fitton, president of the government watchdog Judicial Watch.
Fitton told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
Newsmax TV that the documents obtained by his group reveal the deadly assault military tied to a group supporting "an Islamic state" and retaliating for a drone strike on an al-Qaeda leader.
"We got hundreds of documents that were blacked out or redacted … The material that has been released demonstrates that the military immediately knew it was a terrorist attack," Fitton said.
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"A group associated with al-Qaida had been pressing the U.S. and pressing for the removal of the U.S. in Benghazi and was responsible for the bombing of the consulate previously and an attack on the Red Cross there … So the military knew it was a terrorist attack.
"We now know that not much was done and the assets that we had available weren't used in a way that would have impacted the situation either then or after the fact because Libya just has slipped further and further down into a black hole."
Four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, died in the bloodbath, which was first attributed to anger over an anti-Islamic video.
Fitton said the documents also point to then-secretary of State Hillary Clinton not taking "any steps to protect these people or to try to rescue them or to coordinate with the military."
"We've gotten the documents … that presumably would show whether the State Department was begging the military to rush to their rescue. That's not [in] any communications that we see."
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