Family of SEAL killed in Benghazi files suit

9/21/2014

The Bay State family of a former Navy SEAL killed in the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack is suing his life insurance company, saying the policy he was forced to take out is “essentially worthless” because none of his surviving relatives can collect the benefits.

“It’s with a real heavy heart that we file this,” Kate Quigley of Marblehead, the sister of Glen Doherty, told Boston Herald Radio yesterday. “The long and short is that for two years we’ve been working with the agency because Glen had a life insurance policy, which is required, as anyone in his position would have. And the agency and the insurance companies have denied any benefits to be paid to his estate, and it’s been really frustrating.”

Doherty’s family has also filed claims with the CIA and State Department seeking 
$2 million in damages and alleging there was inadequate security at the compound where Glen and another ex-Navy SEAL were killed by mortar fire while holding off dozens of insurgents. Two other Americans, including the U.S. ambassador, also lost their lives in the attack.

But it’s the insurance policy that Glen Doherty was forced to take out and pay for that is sticking in his family’s craw.

As part of his contract with the CIA, Doherty, a Winchester native, paid Rutherfoord Insurance, of Roanoke, Va., thousands in premiums in the years he worked as a CIA contractor in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, according to the family’s lawyer, Amy Carnevale. Because he would need the coverage for only weeks at a time, he was allowed essentially to turn it on and off, paying each time he signed on again.

Doherty’s fellow former SEAL Tyrone Wood — who died alongside him — had the same policy, which the company paid off because Wood had a wife and children. Doherty was divorced and childless, so the company refused to pay.

Doherty’s family says they discovered in April 2013 that the policy, as their lawsuit puts it, was “essentially worthless.”

“We really didn’t want it to come to this but we need to make sure that these men and women are protected,” Quigley said. “Glen bought and paid into a policy every single year, and they just flat out denied any kind of benefit for him and his family and it’s just wrong.”

A spokeswoman for Rutherfoord did not return calls to her cellphone and desk seeking comment.

In July, five members of Congress, including Massachusetts Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Edward J. Markey, wrote to CIA Director John Brennan urging him to “provide the appropriate assistance to the Doherty family.”

Barbara Doherty of Woburn, Glen’s mother, issued a statement, saying, “We know Glen would have done anything to support the United States and protect our freedom as Americans. Two years after the Benghazi attack, our family has not received the symbolic justice all families of such American heroes deserve.”

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