Former U.S. Ambassador John Bolton — stunned by the Washington Navy Yard massacre — says that security at federal facilities is too lax based on his own experience.
"I am familiar with it at the State Department and it's almost broken there," Bolton told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.
"I used to go into the department all of the time and, while people recognized me, they didn't check the trunk of my car, they didn't check the trunks of anybody's car, and we've had instances like this before."
Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said the shooting suspect Aaron Alexis' troubled past is proof that more needs to be done to keep tabs on the mentally ill.
"This particular shooter was mentally deranged and it focuses, again, the question on why we're so reluctant to commit people in mental institutions when they pose a danger to themselves and others," Bolton said.
"I understand why you don't want to overdo that but here's a tragedy with 12 innocent people killed that might have been averted if people had been willing to act on the evidence that was right in front of them about this fellow's difficulties."
Bolton also spoke about the ongoing efforts in Congress to get to the truth behind the bloodbath in Benghazi in which Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed a year ago.
"There’s still so much here that we don't know about and Congressional hearings unfortunately are not always the best way to try and get these facts out but Congress has got to stay at this," Bolton said.
"We have got to keep at this and not allow this truth to be suppressed because it's not just the outrage that one year after the killings of our ambassador and three others in Benghazi, nothing has happened. Nothing has happened ...
"Getting to the answers in Benghazi so we can correct the mistakes that were made are important not simply in the case of Libya but really for US security around the world."
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