3 Navy SEAL Families Sue Government Over Sons' Deaths

An activist who has been filing anti-government suits since the Clinton administration is representing the parents of three Navy SEALs killed two years ago, alleging that slips by high-level Obama officials contributed to their deaths.

In the suit, filed Wednesday in federal court in Washington D.C., the plaintiffs are seeking $200 million in damages.

The men were among 30 service members killed when insurgents in Afghanistan shot down their helicopter west of Kabul in August 2011, three months after Osama bin Laden's death in a SEAL raid in Pakistan. 

Many of those aboard were from SEAL Team 6, which at the time had been publicly credited with bin Laden's death, though individual commandos were not identified.

The families named in the suit are Sidh Douangdara, Doug and Shaune Hamburger, Charles Strange and Billy and Karen Vaughn. They are the parents of Navy SEALs Michael Strange, John Douangdara, Aaron Vaughn and Army Staff Sgt. Patrick Hamburger, who also died in the crash.

In a news release, Larry Klayman, founder of Freedom Watch, a right-leaning advocacy group, accuses Vice President Joe Biden and former CIA director and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta of releasing classified information that he claims contributed to alleged tips provided to the insurgents who blew up the helicopter.

The suit even claims an Islamic cleric covertly slandered the American dead in a prayer for them at a memorial service. 

Also named as defendants are Afghanistan's leader Hamid Karzai and the nations of Afghanistan and Iran. 

Klayman has built a reputation as a right-wing commentator on World Net Daily and other sites. Talking Points Memo, a left-leaning political news site, calls Klayman a “conservative, birther and serial lawsuit filer.” 

The article quoted a Miami New Times piece in noting that Klayman filed 18 suits against the government during President Bill Clinton's two terms in office and at one time sued Facebook for $1 billion because he was offended by an anti-Israel page.

There have been months of build-up to the suit, including a May forum at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. where some of the relatives taking part in the suit appeared.

One said the government “put a target” on the backs of members of special forces units once officials named SEAL Team 6 in connection with bin Laden's death. 

The Pentagon issued a report this month investigating allegations that government officials had not taken enough care in protecting the identities of  – or tactics employed by – those who are part of such highly trained units. 

In a draft of the report, Panetta was alleged to have identified a leader of the bin Laden raid at a CIA ceremony attended by officials with high security clearances. The Hollywood screenwriter behind the film Zero Dark Thirty, an account of the search for bin Laden, was present.