Dark money group attacks Obama on Benghazi
By Bill Allison Oct 26 2012 10:41 a.m.Special Operations Opsec Education Fund, a dark money group that shares an office with top aides to the 2008 campaign of Republican presidential nominee John McCain, is launching an $397,000 ad buy attacking the President Barack Obama and his administration over last September's Benghazi embassy attack, according to disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission.
The group, which says its members are forrmer members of the Navy SEALs and intelligence officers, already attacked Obama's administration in August for, the group claimed, leaking sensitive intelligence information.
The new ad focuses on the administration's handling of the embassy attack in Benghazi, Libya, that resulted in the death of four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens--the first U.S. ambassador to die in duty since 1979, when Adolph Dubs was killed in a shootout between the Afghan militants who'd kidnapped him and Soviet advised Afghani security forces. According to U.S. News and World Report, some ads will run during a documentary about the killing of Osama bin Laden called Seal Team Six, set to air two days before Election Day.
Special Operations Opsec Education Fund is a social welfare organization, organized under section 501(c)4 of the Internal Revenue Code, and is not required to disclose its donors. On FEC filings, it lists as its address the Alexandria, Va., office of the Trailblaser Group, a firm run by Christian Ferry, who served as deputy campaign manager of McCain-Palin in 2008 and previously worked as a lobbyist for Davis Manafort, and Ryan Price, McCain's national deputy political director in the 2008 election.
Calls to the Trailblazer Group were not immediately returned.
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