The Stink Eye Conservative Forum; Politics, News, Republican Election Headquarters

?This investigation is about getting answers for the families of the victims and for the American people. These members have each demonstrated a commitment to this goal, and I have confidence that they will lead a serious, fact-based inquiry. As I have expressed to each of them, I expect this committee to carry out an investigation worthy of the American lives lost in Benghazi. I also urge my Democratic colleagues to treat this tragedy with the proper respect and appoint members so that we can finally, on a bipartisan basis, get answers, provide accountability, and help deliver justice. It is critical that this committee do its work in a focused, timely manner, so that the House can continue to make the economy and job creation its priorities.?

The Republican members of the Select Committee will be:

    Rep. Susan Brooks (R-IN)
    Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), Chairman
    Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH)
    Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS)
    Rep. Martha Roby (R-AL)
    Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL)

Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA)

WASHINGTON ? The lawmaker chosen to lead the House panel investigating the 2012 Benghazi tragedy is an unabashed supporter of the Tea Party movement who still considers himself more of a prosecutor than a professional politician.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) was tabbed to fill the chairmanship of the newly formed select committee to investigate the State Department?s handling of the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that led to the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.

Several House and Senate committees have been delving into the events surrounding the attack and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) had exhibited reluctance about forming a special committee. He decided to proceed on May 2, asserting that the White House is so ?intent on obstructing the truth about Benghazi that it is even willing to defy subpoenas issued by the standing committees of the people?s House.?

?Four of our fellow citizens were murdered, and a facility emblematic and representative of our country was attacked and burned on the anniversary of 9-11,? Gowdy said. ?Our fellow citizens are full well capable of processing the truth about the attacks and aftermath, and most assuredly entitled to hear it.?

Twenty months after the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attacks, Gowdy said, unresolved questions remain about inadequate security, the U.S. response and the government?s interaction with the public after the attack.

?All of those lines of inquiry are legitimate and should be apolitical,? Gowdy said. ?Facts are neither red nor blue.?

The House on Thursday voted 232-186 along party lines, Republicans forming the majority, to investigate all policies, decisions and activities that contributed to the attacks on U.S. facilities in Libya and affected the ability of the U.S. to prepare for the onslaught. The committee also is empowered to look into the Obama administration?s efforts to identify and bring to justice the perpetrators and gather information related to lessons learned from the attacks.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has rejected the terms of a GOP-created select committee on Benghazi, but Republicans are moving ahead without them.

A top aide to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told the Washington Examiner that the Benghazi Select Committee met today for the first time and plans to move ahead with its investigation, despite the missing Democrats.

"We made a fair offer," Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said. "We hope they appoint Democrats. At this point, it's time to get to work."

Pelosi, D-Calif., rejected the panel's terms in letter to Boehner that was in response to GOP proposal about the select panel would operate.

If Darrell Issa expected John Kerry to abide by a subpoena in the issue of e-mails withheld by the White House on Benghazi, the State Department wants to temper those expectations. Earlier today, spokesperson Jen Psaki offered a suggestion to the House Oversight Committee ? find someone ?more appropriate? for such testimony:

    The State Department is doubling down on its opposition to Secretary of State John Kerry testifying on the deadly Benghazi attack, saying in a statement overnight that a congressional committee should find ?a more appropriate witness.?

    Kerry will be on a previously scheduled official trip to Mexico on May 21, the day the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee subpoenaed him to testify, State spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in the statement.

    Psaki said State Department officials had been in touch with the committee to ?determine how to resolve their subpoena,? but she stopped short of confirming that Kerry would ever appear at a hearing related to the Sept. 11, 2012, attack, which predated his time in office.

National Security Adviser Susan Rice, at a foreign policy lunch on Wednesday, seemed to scoff at a question on whether a select committee investigation on Benghazi would reveal new evidence.

"Danged if I know," Rice said, to audience laughter. "I mean honestly, the administration has produced, I think, 25,000 pages of documents. ... It's hard to imagine what further will come of yet another committee. What I think about and focus on as the national security adviser is what we must do with Congress to increase our security of our embassies and facilities around the world."

She was addressing the decision last week by the House to establish a select committee investigation. Rice on Wednesday steered away from the issue of her national TV appearances in 2012 in which she wrongly linked an anti-Islam video to the terrorist attack.

"What is lost in all of this discussion about Sunday shows and talking points is that we lost four brave Americans on that day, " Rice said.

questions on Benghazi account
Catherine Herridge

By Catherine Herridge
Published May 15, 2014
FoxNews.com
Facebook0 Twitter0 Gplus0

Leading Republican senators charged Thursday that National Security Adviser Susan Rice?s public account of the Benghazi terror attack has now ?absolutely collapsed,? citing inaccuracies in her statements not only on the origin of the attack but the level of security at the U.S. compound.

The lawmakers said she is clearly ?frustrated? that her story is falling apart, a day after Rice appeared to scoff at a question on whether a congressional select committee probe would reveal new evidence. ?Danged if I know,? Rice said in response to the question Wednesday.

"She's frustrated this won't go away,"Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told reporters at a Capitol Hill news conference along with Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H. "She's frustrated that she appeared on national television and told a story about Benghazi that has absolutely collapsed."

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) on Thursday named Phil Kiko, a lobbyist and former Republican aide, as the majority staff director for the House select committee on Benghazi, which he chairs.

Since April 2013 Kiko has been vice chairman of the Smith-Free Group, a lobbying outfit in Washington D.C. Before that he worked in various GOP roles on Capitol Hill including as a legal counsel for the National Republican Congressional Committee and as chief of staff to the Republican-led Judiciary Committee under Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI).

"Phil brings with him years of experience serving in various capacities in the House and the

Rep. Alan Grayson, a Democrat from Florida, has a plan to become Republicans' "worst nightmare" if he is indeed appointed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the select committee investigating the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya.

Pelosi has not yet decided whether Democrats will participate in the panel. However, in an interview with Business Insider, Grayson gave a preview of what he'd do if he gets the job.

Grayson said the creation of the select committee dedicated to investigating Benghazi proves House Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa's probe of the incident is a "failure." He compared Republicans still focusing on Benghazi to so-called birthers who questioned President Barack Obama's citizenship.

"It's ridiculous. They just dredge up one fake scandal after another fake scandal, going all the way back to the president's birth certificate," Grayson said.

Grayson said he would use the Benghazi hearings as an opportunity to draw attention to other issues important to "ordinary Americans" that have not received as much attention.

"That's where we are at this point," he added. "They're scandalmongers without a scandal. They're trying to offer the American people bread and circuses ? without the bread."

Grayson has repeatedly said he would love to be appointed to the committee if Democrats do participate. The committee was established earlier this month by House Speaker John Boehner to investigate Benghazi attack and subsequent government response.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi ? after a heated debate over the issue within her caucus ? officially tapped five Democrats to the special committee charged with investigating the Benghazi attacks.

Democratic Reps. Elijah Cummings (Md.), Adam Smith (Wash.), Adam Schiff (Calif.), Linda Sanchez (Calif.) and Tammy Duckworth (Ill.) will serve on the panel, which is headed by South Carolina Republican Trey Gowdy.

The U.S. House on Wednesday night quickly approved an amendment to a defense policy bill that would require President Barack Obama to report to Congress on what is known about those who attacked the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi in 2012 ? and also what actions have been taken to capture the attackers.

The language also requires Obama to determine whether he has the authority to use force against the attackers, and makes a finding that the attackers still pose a security threat to the United States.

While Ambassador Chris Stevens was missing on September 11, 2012, and while Tyrone Woods, Sean Smith and Glen Doherty were fighting for their lives, with military assets within a quick flight to provide aid, the Obama White House decided to call?YouTube.

    A still-classified State Department e-mail says that one of the first responses from the White House to the Benghazi attack was to contact YouTube to warn of the ?ramifications? of allowing the posting of an anti-Islamic video, according to Rep. Darrell Issa, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

    The memo suggests that even as the attack was still underway ? and before the CIA began the process of compiling talking points on its analysis of what happened ? the White House believed it was in retaliation for a controversial video.

    The subject line of the e-mail, which was sent at 9:11 p.m. Eastern Time on the night of the attack, is ?Update on Response to actions ? Libya.? The was written hours before the attack was over.

    Issa has asked the White House to declassify and release the document. In the meantime he has inserted a sentence from the e-mail in the Congressional Record.

    ?White House is reaching out to U-Tube [sic] to advice ramification of the posting of the Pastor Jon video,? the e-mail reads, according to Issa.

U-Tube?

What did the White House want YouTube, a privately-owned website, to do?

Wouldn?t a call to the military have been more appropriate?

The White House spin on this is that the memo shows that senior officials genuinely believed that the video had caused the attack. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, it was always obvious that the attack was pre-planned. It was also obvious that the movie was being used by terrorists who had major plans for the unrest they were causing.

None of that excuses anyone at the White House for continuing to blame the video for weeks after the attack. It doesn?t excuse Hillary Clinton for blaming the movie with the bodies of the dead resting behind her, on September 14, 2012, and vowing to jail the filmmaker. It doesn?t excuse Ambassador Susan Rice blaming the movie, and it doesn?t come within a country mile of excusing Barack Obama for saying this to the UN on September 26.

?The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.?

He has certainly made good on that.

Issa has a different take on the memo.

    He contends the document contradicts the White House assertion that it was the CIA who first pinned blame for the attack on protests in response to the anti-Islamic video.

    ?The e-mail shows the White House had hurried to settle on a false narrative ? one at odds with the conclusions reached by those on the ground ? before Americans were even out of harm?s way or the intelligence community had made an impartial examination of available evidence,? Issa said.

While the White House was ringing up YouTube, Americans on the ground in Benghazi were reporting that Ansar al-Sharia jihadists were running the attack. Personnel in Tripoli wanted to help. The White House settled on blaming a movie, rather than re-examining its own policies and decisions leading up to the attack, or sending in troops and air assets that could have saved lives, pretty darn early.

And the terrorists who mounted the attack remain at large.

American Ambassador Christopher Stevens, who was murdered with three other Americans in Benghazi in 2012, was involved in a secret U.S. arms deal with al-Qaida-backed Libyan rebels, retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely has claimed.

"We now have pretty good evidence to answer the question of why Ambassador Stevens was in Benghazi," Vallely exclusively told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.

"He was there because of an arms deal that was a covert plan within the State Department ? to arm the Libyan rebels whom the United States government was supporting, and who ultimately ousted former Libyan Prime Minister Moammar Gadhafi in October 2011,'' Vallely said.

There have been ongoing rumors about Stevens' true purpose in Benghazi since he was slain by terrorists on Sept. 11, 2012. Stevens, who was based in Tripoli, arrived in Benghazi on Sept. 10, the day before the attacks on the mission compound.

Members of the Republican-led Benghazi select committee are getting down to work, with the first order of business a detailed timeline of the attack.

But it already is apparent to some committee members that previous investigations, including the State Department review known as the Accountability Review Board, were not as exhaustive as the administration claimed.

"If you go look at the other reports that were done, whether it be the Accountability Review Board or the Senate case (last January?s intelligence committee report), there are places where they have enough details but many, many gaps in the fact pattern," Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., a West Point graduate who sits on the Benghazi select committee, told Fox News.

"We still don't have all of the facts that surrounded the events of that night. Did the Department of Defense speak to the State Department? Did the State Department have good contacts with our intelligence operations folks?Where was the White House and its National Security staff, that entire team that's responsible?"

Excerpts of Hillary Clinton's forthcoming memoir obtained by Politico conflict with the factual record about what happened during and after the 2012 Benghazi terror attack.

Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., who sits on the newly formed Benghazi select committee and the House Intelligence Committee, told Fox News before the excerpts were released that he is concerned the administration has not fully grasped the impact of the terrorist assault.

"We know that intelligence analysts on the ground knew instantaneously that this was Al Qaeda and its affiliates who had led this attack. And yet it took an awfully long time -- indeed today, it's still not clear this administration has acknowledged the depth and the risks associated with what it means to have an Al Qaeda affiliate actually take down an American [consulate]," he said.

Washington (CNN) ? The chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi waved off questions Friday about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's criticism of GOP congressional investigations of the 2012 attacks in her forthcoming book ?Hard Choices.?

"There is a time and a place for everything and her book tour is neither for me," Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina told CNN about the chapter of the book that covers the attack in Benghazi, which left the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans dead.

Politico, which obtained the chapter on Benghazi, reported on it Friday morning, ahead of next month's publication of the memoir.

In the section of the book Clinton writes, "I will not be a part of a political slugfest on the backs of dead Americans. It?s just plain wrong, and it?s unworthy of our great country. Those who insist on politicizing the tragedy will have to do so without me.?

Hillary Clinton?s newly released memoir leaves little doubt she was the first member of the Obama administration to publicly link an anti-Islam video to the 2012 Benghazi terror attack ? though she does not explain what intelligence she relied on to make the faulty connection.

The former secretary of State and potential Democratic presidential candidate discussed the Benghazi attack in her memoir ?Hard Choices.? The 33-page Benghazi chapter sheds some light on events, but it leaves plenty of inconvenient details out.

According to the chronology she offers, Clinton issued the statement linking Benghazi to the video before she called President Obama on the night of the attack to provide an update, suggesting she was the originator of the flawed explanation.

The terrorists who attacked the U.S. consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 used cell phones, seized from State Department personnel during the attacks, and U.S. spy agencies overheard them contacting more senior terrorist leaders to report on the success of the operation, multiple sources confirmed to Fox News.

The disclosure is important because it adds to the body of evidence establishing that senior U.S. officials in the Obama administration knew early on that Benghazi was a terrorist attack, and not a spontaneous protest over an anti-Islam video that had gone awry, as the administration claimed for several weeks after the attacks.

Eric Stahl, who recently retired as a major in the U.S. Air Force, served as commander and pilot of the C-17 aircraft that was used to transport the corpses of the four casualties from the Benghazi attacks ? then-U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, information officer Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods ? as well as the assault?s survivors from Tripoli to the safety of an American military base in Ramstein, Germany.

(CNSNews.com) -- Elements of the February 17 Martyrs Brigade, the Libyan militia hired by the U.S. State Department to station members as residents inside the U.S. compound in Benghazi and to protect the U.S. diplomats there, were ?complicit? in the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack that killed Amb. Chris Stevens and three other Americans, according to the testimony of Greg Hicks, who was the department's second-ranking diplomat in Libya at the time of the attack.

?Certainly, elements of that militia were complicit in the attacks,? Greg Hicks, the State Department?s former deputy chief of mission in Libya told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday. ?The attackers had to make a long approach march through multiple checkpoints that were manned by February 17 militia."

Rep. Blake Farenthold (R.-Texas), who asked Hicks about the militia's complicity in the attacks, also asked Eric Nordstrom, who had been the State Department?s regional security officer (RSO) at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli until July 26 of last year, whether the department was aware that the militia had any ties to Islamic extremists.

?Absolutely,? said Nordstrom. ?Yeah, we had that discussion on a number of occasions, the last of which was when there was a Facebook posting of a threat that named Ambassador Stevens and Senator McCain, who was coming out for the elections that was in the July time frame. I had met with some of my agents and then also with some Annex personnel. We discussed that.?

Farenthold expressed his incredulity that the State Department would hire militia of this nature to provide security.

?I'm stunned that the State Department was relying on a militia with extremist ties to protect American diplomats,? said Farenthold. ?That doesn't make any sense. How does that happen??

?You mean like in Afghanistan where Afghanis that are working with our military that are embedded and turn on them and shoot them?? asked Nordstrom rhetorically. ?Or Yemen, where our embassy was attacked in 2008 by attackers wearing police uniforms? Or in Saudi Arabia, in Jedda, we had an attack in 2004? The Saudi National Guard that was protecting our facility reportedly ran from the scene, and then it took 90 minutes before we could get help.?

Nordstrom added that the February 17 Martyrs Brigade ?was the unit that the Libyan government had initially designated for VIP protection? for Americans and that it would be ?very difficult to extract ourselves from that.?

According to a report published by the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Dec. 30, 2012, a member of the February 17 Martyrs Brigade had warned the RSO at the State Department compound in Benghazi on Sept. 8, 2012, that the militia would no longer protect the movements of Americans diplomats in the city. That specifically included the then-imminent visit of Amb. Stevens.

?In early September, a member of the February 17 Brigade told another RSO [State Department regional security officer] in Benghazi that it could no longer support U.S. personnel movements,? said the Senate committee report. ?The RSO also asked specifically if the militia could provide additional support for the Ambassador?s pending visit and was told no.?

Well, this is a bombshell.

    The terrorists who attacked the U.S. consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 used cell phones, seized from State Department personnel during the attacks, and U.S. spy agencies overheard them contacting more senior terrorist leaders to report on the success of the operation, multiple sources confirmed to Fox News.

    The disclosure is important because it adds to the body of evidence establishing that senior U.S. officials in the Obama administration knew early on that Benghazi was a terrorist attack, and not a spontaneous protest over an anti-Islam video that had gone awry, as the administration claimed for several weeks after the attacks.

    Eric Stahl, who recently retired as a major in the U.S. Air Force, served as commander and pilot of the C-17 aircraft that was used to transport the corpses of the four casualties from the Benghazi attacks ? then-U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, information officer Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods ? as well as the assault?s survivors from Tripoli to the safety of an American military base in Ramstein, Germany.

    In an exclusive interview on Fox News? ?Special Report,? Stahl said members of a CIA-trained Global Response Staff who raced to the scene of the attacks were ?confused? by the administration?s repeated implication of the video as a trigger for the attacks, because ?they knew during the attack?who was doing the attacking.?

As you might have already guessed, Hillary Clinton?s Accountability Review Board never interviewed Stahl at all. Nor did it interview another official, quoted in the Fox story backing Stahl?s assertion up.

In addition to disclosing that the terrorists were heard using U.S. phone to ring up their superiors during the attack, Stahl says that his crew could have gotten to Benghazi in time to rescue the Americans under siege there.

I?ve been trying to get to this story for a couple of days now, but there are so many tentacles to it I?ve had trouble making the time to put it together.

In short, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the alleged ?Coptic Christian? who made the infamous Muhammad video that the Obama administration blamed the Benghazi attack on ? well it turns out Nakoula is really a Muslim, not a Coptic Christian. And that?s been confirmed.

It also turns out that the official terms of Nakoula?s parole in 2009 was bogus, and that the administration used his parole as leverage to help him with their agenda: To create a climate for non-Muslim governments to enact laws that make criticism of Islam a criminal offense.

Sound far fetched? Well then I guess you haven?t heard about the ?Istanbul Process? meetings Hillary went to in Turkey as Secretary of State that were designed to help facilitate the creation of a ?climate for non-Muslim governments to enact laws that make criticism of Islam a criminal offense.?

But before Nakoula could get the video finished, Benghazi happened and the administration quickly blamed it on that video.

One more compelling note: Nakoula called Walid on his private home number, a number he should have never been able to get through non-government channels, and asked Walid not to expose this. Seriously.

In a recent bombshell interview with a military insider, Fox News? James Rosen and Brett Baier uncovered some startling new information about the attack on Benghazi. Rosen did the investigative work, while Baier interviewed Reitred Major Eric Stahl, who was the commander of a C-7 Aircraft that was stationed at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany.

Stahl makes some shocking assertions about what happened that night, and about the lies that the Obama administration made in the aftermath of the attack. His testimony seems to be damning evidence that both the State Department and the Department of Defense had a hand in lying to the nation about what really happened at Benghazi on 9/11/2012.

Garcia?s phone call with Nakoula three weeks ago provides the key to what Benghazi was all about. It was agitprop (agitation / propaganda to push communism), a vehicle to be used by the Obama administration to launch an all out assault on the first amendment. To quote Hillary Clinton at the 2011 ?Istanbul Process? meeting, it would be an example of?:

    ??some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming, so that people don?t feel that they have the support to do what we abhor.?

When riots across the Middle East broke out in response to the video, Hillary and the bunch were able to use those ?old-fashioned techniques? in an attempt to shame people into not using their freedom of expression to be critical of Islam.

The problem they did not foresee ? aside from the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi

And while the South Carolina Republican isn?t committing to specifics, such as whether there will be public hearings with high-profile witnesses like former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, his methodical approach could help the GOP savor a scandal that has at times looked more like a political sideshow.

(Also on POLITICO: No bail for Benghazi suspect)

?No one [has] defended the five-minute questioning [process] as the most calculated way of eliciting the most amount of information,? Gowdy said in an interview. ?There is most assuredly a place for hearings but not if your primary focus is to gather facts.?

While there isn?t much happening publicly, the House select committee investigating the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on the U.S. facility in Benghazi, Libya, is busy behind the scenes.

The panel is examining subpoenas from committees that previously investigated the Benghazi attacks to develop a list of unanswered questions from the Obama administration. There is also outreach to agencies that received requests for information.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Well-trained attackers executed the deadly dawn assault on a CIA complex in Benghazi, Libya, suggesting different perpetrators from those who penetrated the U.S. diplomatic mission the previous night, according to newly revealed testimony from top military commanders.

The initial attack, on Sept. 11, 2012, killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and communications specialist Sean Smith and set the mission ablaze. Nearly eight hours later at the CIA complex nearby, two more Americans, contract security officers Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, died in a mortar attack that showed clear military training, retired Gen. Carter Ham told Congress in closed-door testimony earlier this year.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Military officers testified that there was no "stand-down order" that held back military assets that could have saved the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans killed at a diplomatic outpost and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya. Their testimony undercut the contention of Republican lawmakers.

The "stand-down" theory centers on a Special Operations team - a detachment leader, a medic, a communications expert and a weapons operator with his foot in a cast - that was stopped from flying from Tripoli to Benghazi after the attacks of Sept. 11-12, 2012, had ended. Instead, it was instructed to help protect and care for those being evacuated from Benghazi and from the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli.

The Republican head of the Benghazi Select Committee warned Tuesday that no witnesses would be off limits in its upcoming probe and that he would consider going to court, if necessary, to compel testimony.

"I can't skip over a witness that I think we ought to talk to simply because there is an assertion of either privilege or immunity," Chairman Trey Gowdy of South Carolina told Fox News in an exclusive interview.

He said that while he has received good cooperation to date, and the issue had not yet arisen, "if you mean to say that 'not only can they not talk, they don't have to come,' you have to litigate that."

Gowdy said the investigation will be driven by facts, characterizing as strongly bipartisan his work with the committee's ranking Democrat, Elijah Cummings of Maryland, to review documents and identify witnesses.

Head of Benghazi probe says no witnesses off limits, including Clinton

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/07/30/head-benghazi-probe-says-no-witnesses-off-limits-including-clinton/?intcmp=trending

It?s been almost two years since the terror attacks on a U.S. diplomatic mission and nearby CIA complex in Benghazi, Libya that took the lives of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens on September 11, 2012. Since the events of that fateful evening, the left has done all they could to keep the American public from knowing what really happened at Benghazi.

Reports indicate that the Obama administration began working that very evening to hide the truth that terrorists were behind the attack?a truth that would have contradicted Obama?s 2012 campaign narrative that he had al-Qaeda ?on the run.? Other reports claim that the administration was hiding an illegal State Department gunrunning operation.

When blaming the attacks on an anti-Islam video didn?t work, senior Democrats including Nancy Pelosi, Senator Harry Reid, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and even President Barack Obama himself went on record, claiming that rumors of scandal and cover-up were nothing more than a Republican creation to undermine the president and the likely 2016 Democratic Party presidential nominee.

Republican South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the Benghazi Select Committee, said this week that no witnesses are off limits in his committee?s investigation into the Benghazi cover-up. So who will he subpoena? Here?s a suggestion: How about Ben Rhodes.

Ben Rhodes, the 37-year old little brother of CBS News president David Rhodes, is a national security adviser to President Obama. He also happens to be an Upper East Side literary type who took a Master?s in Fiction from NYU. Real serious artist. Rhodes was the one who edited the White House?s Benghazi talking points to focus the blame on spontaneous reaction to a YouTube video, rather than an al-Qaeda attack.

Ben even published a short story in the spring 2002 edition of Beloit Fiction Journal called ?The Goldfish Smiles, You Smile Back,? about an extremely good note-taker who edits talking points. ?Goldfish? appears to be Rhodes? only credit.

So what went wrong, Ben? No takers on that screenplay you had rattling around in the glove compartment? Seed money running out and still couldn?t pop a weekend piece in Reader?s Digest? Find yourself on Gower Avenue staring in your empty coffee cup, listening to the air conditioner hum? Had to take a little day job in politics to tide you over? No shame in that.

One minute you?re sipping kambucha with your peer-workshop buddies, the next you?re in a suit working on ?The YouTube Video Project.? Happens to the best of us. So tell us the story, Ben. Tell us of the YouTube video talking points. Spin us this tale of power, romance, and intrigue. This is your Washington thriller. Finally. Make it count.

Viral Crucifix By Ben Rhodes (Chapter 1: ?Download of Death?)

?Out of coffee and cigs,? Barack sighed, running a weary hand across his scalp. I could sense the momentum in the room shifting. We?d been up for hours, with still no workable premise and our deadline approaching. He stood and headed for the door, mumbling about picking up a bagel and a cup of black coffee. Youthful. Youthful. How do I do youthful? My specialty in grad school had been austerity. Density. I was out of my element. Then, suddenly, like the final orgasmic thrust of an unfaithful lover in a Paris motel, it came to me. ?Wait. I?VE GOT IT.? Barack turned. ?Mr. President, it was a YouTube video! It was a YouTube video!?

Rep. Trey Gowdy was bombarded with requests from fellow Republicans, eager to take part in the latest congressional investigation of the Benghazi attack. But when it became clear that he intended to lead the inquiry behind closed doors, far from the spotlight, the requests soon fell silent.

?If you want to get on the news, then go rob a bank,? Gowdy, R-S.C., said, recounting his message to several Republicans on both sides of Capitol Hill, dashing their hopes of being featured in what they assumed would be high-profile televised hearings.

Boehner Pledges Benghazi Select Committee ?Not Going to Be a Circus?

Boehner Taps Gowdy to Head Benghazi Probe as Dems Express Doubt

Boehner Backs Vote for Select Committee to Probe Benghazi Attack

?It?s going to be a professional investigation, despite folks who may want to see it be something else,? Gowdy told ABC News. ?They?re going to be disappointed.?

The blunt talk from Gowdy,  appointed by Speaker John Boehner to lead the House Select Committee on Benghazi, Libya, helps explain why the investigation hasn?t generated politically explosive headlines that were anticipated at the beginning of summer.

The committee has been quietly interviewing family members, witnesses and poring over documents from the 2012 deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission, but lawmakers have been doing nearly all of their work in private.

When Republicans voted in May to create a new committee to investigate the attack, Democrats bristled and several Republicans were hoping to play at least some role in any hearings during the summer and fall. But Gowdy said he had no interest in letting the process ?become a circus.?

Instead, he has approached the investigation like the work he did as a prosecutor before being elected to Congress in 2010 as one of the rising stars in the tea party wave. He said he has placed a vow of silence over the details of the investigation, with the hope of being fair and ?respectful of the four people who were killed.?

He and the top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, have sought to work together as partners ? albeit adversarial ones ? absent the public clashes and feuds that have become the soundtrack of this deeply divided Congress.

A new special committee created to investigate the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya, will hold its first public hearing next week, the panel announced Monday.

The hearing will focus on the implementation of security recommendations made by the State Department's Accountability Review Board that was set up to investigate the surroundings that led to the attacks.

The review board issued almost 30 recommendations in late 2012 after concluding that "systemic? State Department failures led to inadequate security at the diplomatic outpost in Benghazi.

Details of the hearing, including a witness list and on what day it will take place, haven't been announced.

The select Benghazi Committee holds its first open hearing Wednesday, employing broad congressional powers to try to answer lingering questions ranging from what led to the fatal 2012 terror strikes on a U.S. outpost in Libya to what is being done to better protect U.S. diplomats worldwide.

The hearing by the Republican-led House committee will focus on the extent to which the State Department has implemented post?attack recommendations made by the Accountability Review Board.

The department created the five-member, independent board just weeks after the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks in which four Americans -- Ambassador Chris Stevens, information specialist Sean Smith and Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty -- were killed.

While I agree it should not be a media circus, I oppose closed door investigations.  Too easy to cover up the findings.

A potentially damaging and explosive revelation in the investigation of the Benghazi affair by the Daily Signal's Sheryl Attkisson. You may recall that Attkisson was forced out of her job at CBS for aggressively reporting on various Obama administration scandals.

This has the potential to derail Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

Former Deputy Assistant Secretary Raymond Maxwell told Attkisson that there was an after hours operation set up in the basement of the State Department building that was supposed to go through all the documentation to be handed over to the Accountability Review Board and remove documents that may reflect badly on anyone in his department or on "the seventh floor" - a euphemism for the office of the Secretary of State.

    Maxwell says the weekend document session was held in the basement of the State Department?s Foggy Bottom headquarters in a room underneath the ?jogger?s entrance.? He describes it as a large space, outfitted with computers and big screen monitors, intended for emergency planning, and with small offices on the periphery.

    When he arrived, Maxwell says he observed boxes and stacks of documents. He says a State Department office director, whom Maxwell described as close to Clinton?s top advisers, was there. Though the office director technically worked for him, Maxwell says he wasn?t consulted about her weekend assignment.

    She told me, ?Ray, we are to go through these stacks and pull out anything that might put anybody in the [Near Eastern Affairs] front office or the seventh floor in a bad light,?? says Maxwell. He says ?seventh floor? was State Department shorthand for then-Secretary of State Clinton and her principal advisors.

    ?I asked her, ?But isn?t that unethical?? She responded, ?Ray, those are our orders.? ?

    A few minutes after he arrived, Maxwell says in walked two high-ranking State Department officials.

    Maxwell says the two officials, close confidants of Clinton, appeared to check in on the operation and soon left.

The ARB report was a transparent phony - a whitewash. But pehaps the co-chairs of the committee were sandbagged:

    When the ARB issued its call for documents in early October 2012, the executive directorate of the State Department?s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs was put in charge of collecting all emails and relevant material. It was gathered, boxed and?Maxwell says?ended up in the basement room prior to being turned over.

    In May 2013, when critics questioned the ARB?s investigation as not thorough enough, co-chairmen Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Adm. Mike Mullen stated, ?we had unfettered access to everyone and everything including all the documentation we

A former security official who served on a panel reviewing State Department policies raised concerns Wednesday that the department continues to rely on a "pre-Benghazi" approach to overhauling diplomatic security, at the first public hearing of the House committee probing the Benghazi attack and its aftermath.

"Now's the time. Clear the smoke, remove the mirrors," Todd Keil, member of The Independent Panel on Best Practices, testified, calling on the department to "finally institutionalize some real, meaningful and progressive change."

Later in the hearing, Keil specifically alleged the department "does not have that process" to evaluate whether they need to be in certain high-risk places. He said that when his panel interviewed ambassadors and other officers overseas and asked about the department's risk management process, "without exception, each one said 'there is none, and they make it up'."

Greg Starr, assistant secretary for diplomatic security, objected to Keil's characterization, claiming the department has concentrated on that very issue since the 2012 attack.

A spokesperson for the House Select Committee on Benghazi told Breitbart News that it ?expects to talk? with Leon Panetta, who served as President Obama?s CIA director and Pentagon chief.

Amanda Duvall, a spokesperson for the Benghazi Select Committee, made that revelation when asked to comment on a letter addressed to the House panel?s chairman from the Benghazi Accountability Coalition, which is made up of prominent conservative figures.

In the October 10 open letter addressed to Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), the House select committee chairman, the coalition requests that Panetta testify before the panel this month.

An indictment Tuesday of a Libyan militant already behind bars for the 2012 Benghazi attack that killed four Americans confirms that computers with sensitive and classified information were stolen from the consulate during the assault.

Fox News was first to report in July that at least two computers were stolen from the consulate.  While the State Department initially dismissed Fox's report, the new, 18-count indictment against Ahmed Abu Khattala confirms that sensitive and classified information was lost, including the location of the top secret CIA annex.

Abu Khattala, 43, the first militant to be prosecuted for the Benghazi violence, had initially been charged with conspiracy to provide support to terrorists, resulting in death. U.S. officials had described that initial, one-count indictment as a placeholder to allow for him to be brought into court and for a grand jury to hear more evidence.

The new indictment does not add to the public account of how the attack unfolded but it does include multiple counts that make Abu Khattala eligible for the death

by KRIS 'TANTO' PARONTO AND JOHN 'TIG' TIEGEN  2 Dec 2014, 11:16 AM PDT

Since the release of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee?s report on the Benghazi attacks this November, many uninformed people in the political and media world insisted the report ?debunks? claims that the government did not sufficiently defend its embassy on September 11, 2012.

The report, however, is full of inaccuracies?but the authors of the report printed them anyway, despite testimony and other information that proved those statements wrong.

Global Response Staff, security contractors on the ground working for the CIA in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 to September 12, 2012, provided testimony to the House Intelligence Committee. The team of CIA security contractors consisted of Kris ?Tanto? Paronto, John ?Tig? Tiegen, Mark ?Oz? Geist, Ty ?Rone? Woods (now deceased), Jack Silva, and DB Benton?all sources of the book 13 Hours, which is a first-hand account of what happened at both Benghazi locations during the attacks on September 11, 2012.

We provided the same unchanging and accurate information of what took place in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 through September 12, 2012 to our immediate chain of command in the CIA?s office of security, during several FBI interviews, and to Congressman Mike Rogers and his committee. The purpose of this article that we are writing as former CIA Global Response Staff security contractors, who fought and bled together that night in Benghazi, Libya, is to point out the major inaccuracies in the Committee's faux ?investigative? report.

The Republican chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi said Wednesday he wants to hear from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) told reporters after the panel's second hearing that he wants to talk to Clinton about the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya, which left four Americans dead.
ADVERTISEMENT
Separately, Gowdy indicated he wants his panel to have several more hearings at the beginning of next year, but left it unclear when Clinton might make a public appearance.

Clinton is ?a witness that we would like to talk to. I cannot tell you when,? he said.

Clinton, who is widely expected to run for president in 2016, was the nation?s top diplomat at the time of the attack and has been repeatedly chastised by the GOP over her handling of the episode that left four Americans dead.

A second appearance on Capitol Hill about Benghazi would be catnip for political operatives, Republican politicians and cable television producers.

In a memorable appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January 2013, Clinton had a testy exchange with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) that has since been repeatedly telecast, and is likely to make its way into many 2016 ads.

The State Department is blocking Congressional access to key first-hand witnesses of the 9/11 Benghazi attacks, citing a need to protect their personal safety.

?We understand the committee?s interest in interviewing these agents and I?m sure the committee does not want to take any action that would create risks to their personal safety or their ability to do their jobs,? Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Joel Rubin said during his opening statement at a hearing today of the Benghazi Select Committee.

Rubin explained that the State Department was trying to find a way for them to participate with the select committee, chaired by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), ?without endangering these men and their families.?

The State Department revealed that is is also concerned about jeopardizing the Justice Department investigation being carried out by Attorney General Eric Holder.

Benghazi Select Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy told FOX News today that White House witnesses including National Security Advisor Susan Rice and Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor, will come testify before the committee whether they want to or not.

    ?I would suspect that some, and I won?t say who, it would not be fair to Mr. Cummings, I would suspect some will come voluntarily but they?re coming whether it?s voluntarily or not. So, in urge to their benefit I would urge them to come voluntarily.?

Via America?s Newsroom:

Former Secretary of State and likely 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has agreed to testify before the House Select Committee on the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi.

Reportedly, she was first contacted in that regard by the committee?s ranking Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings.

According to reports, neither Clinton nor a spokesperson on her behalf has commented on her pending appearance.

    The U.S. consulate in Libya was attacked on Sept. 11, 2012. Four Americans, including the U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, were killed. Initially, the attack was thought to be perpetrated by an angry mob responding to a video made in the U.S. which mocked Islam and the P

The chairman of a special House committee created to investigate the 2012 Benghazi tragedy on Monday instructed his staff to review secretly recorded tapes and intelligence reports that detail Hillary Rodham Clinton?s role in advocating and executing the war in Libya, opening the door for a possible expansion of his probe.

Rep. Trey Gowdy?s decision to seek a review of the materials, first highlighted in a series of Washington Times stories last week, carries consequences for the 2016 election in which Mrs. Clinton is expected to seek the presidency. It could also move the committee to examine the strained relationship between the State Department and Pentagon, which sharply disagreed over the 2011 war in Libya and the response to the terrorist attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi a year later.

The Times reported last week that U.S. intelligence did not support Mrs. Clinton?s story of an impending genocide in Libya that she used to sell the war against Moammar Gadhafi?s regime. The newspaper also unveiled secretly recorded tapes from Libya that showed that the Pentagon and Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich so distrusted her stewardship of the war that they opened their own diplomatic channels with the Gadhafi regime.

The committee investigating Benghazi formally requested Friday that Hillary Rodham Clinton turn her email server over to an independent third party so it can be scrutinized to determine whether she and the Obama administration complied with open-records laws.

Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy sent a letter to the former secretary of state?s personal lawyer making the request, which he said only comes after ?exhaustive efforts? to get a look at her communications during the time of the 2012 terrorist attack on the diplomatic post in Libya?s second-largest city.

?Though Secretary Clinton alone is responsible for causing this issue, she alone does not get to determine its outcome,? the South Carolina Republican said.

Hundreds of the emails from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that were turned over to Congress regarding the Benghazi terrorist attack indicate that she and her advisers were closely monitoring the political fallout for the administration.

According to The New York Times, sources say that Clinton's top aides at times wrote to her about official business from their personal email accounts. Many of the messages were short or mundane, such as instructions to print an article or scheduling and logistics, but it's unclear whether they represent all of the emails on the subject of Benghazi given that Clinton pre-selected which emails she turned over to the State Department.

The emails did, however, show that Clinton and her inner circle reacted as the administration changed its position on what happened in the Benghazi attack after then-ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice appeared on several Sunday news programs instead of Clinton.

Jake Sullivan, a foreign policy adviser, communicated with Clinton following Rice's appearances, suggesting he was pleased with the way they went.

"She did make clear our view that this started spontaneously then evolved," Sullivan wrote to Clinton.

Now that the public knows Hillary Clinton destroyed all the emails on her secret server ? her lawyer told the House Benghazi Select Committee that there's nothing left to search ? a question remains: Did Clinton destroy documents that were under subpoena from Congress?

The answer is more complex than it might seem. There's no doubt Clinton withheld information that Congress demanded she turn over, and some Republicans believe the documents she destroyed were covered under a subpoena as well. But a look at the story behind the subpoena and other document requests from congressional Benghazi investigators is a tale of obstruction, delay and frustration that underscores the limits of Congress' power to investigate Benghazi. Clinton and her aides had the means to make life very difficult for Republicans trying to learn the full story of the attacks in Libya, and they did just that.

The subpoena story began on Sept. 20, 2012, nine days after the attacks. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, who was chairman of the House Oversight Committee's Subcommittee on National Security, Homeland Defense and Foreign Operations, sent a letter to then-Secretary of State Clinton asking for "all information ? related to the attack on the consulate." Chaffetz specifically asked for all analyses, whether classified or unclassified, on the security situation leading up to the Benghazi attack, plus, among other things, all analyses that either supported or contradicted UN Ambassador Susan Rice's assertion that the attack was the spontaneous result of outrage over an anti-Muslim video. The short version of the letter was that Chaffetz demanded "all information" on Benghazi.

Just to be clear, the Chaffetz letter included standard language telling Clinton, "In complying with this request, you are required to produce all responsive documents that are in your possession, custody, or control, whether held by you or your past or present agents, employees, and representatives acting on your behalf." The letter went on to include this standard definition:

The term "document" refers to any written, recorded, or graphic matter of any nature whatsoever, regardless of how recorded, and whether original or copy, including, but not limited to, the following: memoranda, reports, expense reports, books, manuals, instructions, financial reports, working papers, records, notes, letters, notices, confirmations, telegrams, receipts, appraisals, pamphlets, magazines, newspapers, prospectuses, inter-office and intra-office communications, electronic mail (e-mail), contracts, cables, notations of any type of conversation, telephone call, meeting or other communication, bulletins, printed matter, computer printouts, teletypes, invoices, transcripts, diaries, analyses, returns, summaries, minutes, bills, accounts, estimates, projections, comparisons, messages, correspondence, press releases, circulars, financial statements, reviews, opinions, offers, studies and investigations, questionnaires and surveys, and work sheets (and all drafts, preliminary versions, alterations, modifications, revisions, changes, and amendments of any of the foregoing, as well as any attachments or appendices thereto), and graphic or oral records or representations of any kind (including, without limitation, photographs, charts, graphs, microfiche, microfilm, videotape, recordings and motion pictures), and electronic, mechanical and electric records or representations of any kind (including, without limitation, tapes, cassettes, disks, and recordings) and other written, printed, typed or other graphic or recorded matter of any kind or nature, however produced or reproduced, and whether preserved in writing, film, tape, disk, videotape or otherwise. A document bearing any notation not a part of the original text is to be considered a separate document. A draft or non-identical copy is a separate document within the meaning of this term.

In other words, the committee wanted everything.

The State Department, as is now well known, was slow to respond. But after months of delay, State officials told the committee they would hand over material ? but only for what is called "in camera" review, meaning State retained possession of the papers at all time and no documents could leave the room in which committee investigators were allowed to view them. State agreed to bring documents to a reading room selected by the committee, where committee investigators could look them over and make handwritten notes. Over the course of months, the number of pages grew to 25,000, which State Department officials told the committee was everything related to Benghazi.

"The State Department actively told us that they were cooperating with us," says one Hill Republican with knowledge of the investigation. "They made representations that the documents in the reading room were complete and responsive."

But the committee was not given possession of the material. Each day, State officials brought the documents to the reading room, and at the end of each day they took them away and stored them in an office maintained by the military in the Rayburn House Office Building.

"So we entered into an arrangement in which they're supposed to give us all the documents related to Benghazi," recalls the House Republican. "So they start carting these documents into a reading room. They carted in boxes and boxes and by the time [the House Select Committee on Benghazi] was created, they are carting in 25,000 pages of documents every day. The minority had their own copy. And they were stored in one of the military offices in Rayburn. The State Department guy would keep them locked up overnight."

The routine got old fast. Republicans (and Democrats, for that matter) couldn't copy the documents and couldn't use them at hearings. Chaffetz and Rep. Darrell Issa, then the chairman of the full Oversight and Government Reform Committee, became frustrated. In response to their protests, the State Department stressed that it had made all the relevant documents available, even if under restrictive conditions. State has "provided Congress with access to documents, comprising over 25,000 pages to date, including communications of senior Department officials regarding the security situation in Benghazi," State official Thomas Gibbons wrote to Issa on March 29, 2013.

That did nothing to quiet Republican unhappiness. The problem came to a head on Aug. 1, 2013, when the committee issued a subpoena to the State Department. (It was officially directed to new Secretary of State John Kerry.) The subpoena ordered Kerry to produce:

All documents that have been made available to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform for in camera review, including, but not limited to, the approximately 25,000 pages of documents referenced in the March 29, 2013, letter from Acting Assistant

prev next
Home | Blogs | Ballot Box
Blog Briefing Roomicon
Blog Briefing Room feed
March 31, 2015, 11:03 am
Benghazi panel summons Clinton over emails

By Martin Matishak
 
Greg Nash

The House Select Committee on Benghazi has formally asked Hillary Clinton to answer questions about her use of private email and a personal server while serving as secretary of State.

In a letter to Clinton?s attorney, panel Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said his committee is ?committed to reviewing and considering every document related to the work the House of Representatives charged us with doing.?

ADVERTISEMENT
?Toward that end and because of the Secretary's unique arrangement with herself as it relates to public records during and after her tenure as Secretary of State, this Committee is left with no alternative but to request Secretary Clinton appear before this Committee for a transcribed interview to better understand decisions the Secretary made relevant to the creation, maintenance, retention, and ultimately deletion of public records,? he said.

The panel is ?willing to schedule the interview at a time convenient for Secretary Clinton, but no later than May 1, 2015,? according to Gowdy.

He added that the committee ?believes a transcribed interview would best protect Secretary Clinton's privacy, the security of the information queried, and the public's interest in ensuring this Committee has all information needed to accomplish the task set before it.

Former secretary of State Hillary Clinton permanently deleted all her emails from her private server between October and December 2014, Rep. Trey Gowdy told Fox News.

Gowdy, who chairs the House Select Committee on Benghazi, said Monday on Fox News Channel's "On the Record with Greta Van Susteren" that Clinton wiped her server sometime between October 28 and mid-December.

That would fall not long after the latest effort by Congress to get Clinton's email records began.

"We know the letter from the State Department went to the prior secretaries of state on October the 28th, 2014," Gowdy said. "And her lawyer says some time in the fall of 2014 she decided not to keep those emails, and the fall would extend, I guess, into the winter solstice in mid-December."

Gowdy said that the emails have been sought as part of the Benghazi investigation as far back as the weeks after the attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans on September 11, 2012.

Clinton says she turned over all work-related emails to the State

The chairman of the House select committee probing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's response to the Benghazi terror attacks signaled Wednesday that the release of a final report could slip to just months before the 2016 presidential election if the Obama administration delays producing documents and witnesses.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., chairman of the Benghazi panel, denied Wednesday that the potential delay of the report was politically motivated.

?That assumes the report would be critical of [Clinton] and I don?t make that assumption because we?re still in the process of gathering facts,? he told Fox News' ?On The Record.? "If the report is not critical of her, then she would probably want it to come out closer to the election but it?s not going to come out in the middle of 2016."

?I hope it doesn?t come out in 2016, period," Gowdy continued. "I hope we are done before the end of the year and I say hope because there are certain variables that I cannot control.?

The House Select Committee on Benghazi is asking former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham to testify in two upcoming public hearings, one to be held during the week of May 18 on her use of a private email system while serving as the nation?s top diplomat, and another to be held by June 18 specifically on the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack on the U.S. compound in Libya.

?With her cooperation and that of the State Department and administration, Secretary Clinton could be done with the Benghazi Committee before the Fourth of July,? Rep. Trey Gowdy, South Carolina Republican and the committee?s chairman, said in a statement. ?It is necessary to call Secretary Clinton twice because the committee needs to ensure we have a complete and responsive record and all the facts before we then substantively question her on the Benghazi terrorist attacks.?

Benghazi committee calls on Hillary Clinton to testify in May

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/apr/23/hillary-clinton-called-benghazi-committee-testify/

Could Congress be any more inept than they are?

The chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi on Thursday announced that the State Department has handed over 4,000 pages of new documents to the panel.
ADVERTISEMENT
"The Benghazi Committee continues to build the most comprehensive and complete record on what happened before, during and after the Benghazi terrorist attacks," Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C) said in a statement.

"Contrary to those who said all had been asked and answered, the Benghazi Committee has shown there is more still for Congress to consider. The committee will provide the final, definitive accounting of what happened with regards to Benghazi, reaching conclusions based solely on facts," he added.

The documents come from the State Department?s Accountability Review Board (ARB) investigation into the deadly assault on the diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya.

They include, among other things, emails and interview summaries, according to a congressional source.

This is the first time the State Department has turned over ARB documents to Congress, the agency told the select committee.

"Getting this production from State's Benghazi ARB is an important part of ensuring th

The Republican chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi on Friday defended the pace of his panel?s year-old investigation into the 2012 terror attack and announced plans to interview three top aides to former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., in a 15-page ?Interim Progress Update? released on the one-year-anniversary of the committee?s creation, blamed the Obama administration for delays in the panel?s probe.

?It is difficult to conduct a fact-centric congressional investigation when the Administration impedes the Committee?s progress by repeatedly failing to answer the Committee?s requests or to provide information in a timely manner,? wrote the South Carolina Republican.

?The largest impediment to being able to write the final, definitive accounting of what happened before, during and after the terrorist attacks in Benghazi is the Executive Branch itself.?

But Gowdy, who also has asked Clinton to appear before his panel, credits his committee with uncovering thousands of new emails and documents related to the administration?s handling of the attack that left four Americans dead.

Gowdy also said the panel wants to interview at least 60 more current and former officials, including Clinton, Susan Rice, Patrick Kennedy and three of Clinton?s top aides during her tenure as secretary of State: Cheryl Mills, Jake Sullivan and Huma Abedin.

The select House committee investigating the Benghazi attacks has made strides in learning the details of the assaults that killed four Americans 2012, Republican Chairman Trey Gowdy said Friday while slamming the Obama administration as "the greatest impediment to completing this investigation in a timely matter."

"We look forward to completing our work in a manner that is worthy of the sacrifice made by the four men who died and trust of our fellow Americans," Gowdy, who represents South Carolina, said in a report marking the panel's first anniversary.

But the committee's ranking Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, blasted the investigation as a "political charade" that has so far cost American taxpayers $3 million and is being "dragged out in order to attack" former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is seeking her party's 2016 presidential nomination.

"At every turn, the select committee comes up with a new excuse to further delay its work," Cummings said. "Republicans are desperately trying to validate the $3 million in taxpayer funds they have spent over the past year, but they have nothing to show for it other than a partisan attack against

The Hillary Clinton email mystery took yet another confusing turn Tuesday with accusations from Republicans that the former secretary of state "misled" the public about her email practices, by using multiple "secret" addresses despite claims to the contrary.

However, a spokesman with the House committee probing the 2012 Benghazi attack, and Clinton's handling of it, would not go so far. Rather, he told FoxNews.com the confusion only further underscores the need to subject Clinton's private server to a third-party analysis, saying that's the only way to resolve this.

The questions over multiple Clinton addresses were raised after emails were published as part of a lengthy New York Times report on Clinton confidante Sidney Blumenthal's memos on Libya before and after the fall of Muammar Qaddafi. The emails show Clinton writing from the address, hrod17@clintonemail.com. This is distinct from the other address she has acknowledged using as secretary of state, hdr22@clintonemail.com.

There is no mystery here.  Clinton committed treason for the sole purpose of financial gain.  She is 100 times worse than Anderson, the spy that was sent to prison for life.  Clinton has been blatant in her actions to trade favors for money, large sums of money adding up to hundreds of millions of dollar, under the guise of a foundation charity.

This is extreme treason!

I just don't think they can take her with a bag over her head to the Democommie nomination, let alone the general election.  Eventually, she will be asked 500 times about the transgressions, repeated abuses of policy, the death of our men in Benghazi until she blows a gasket. And suffice to say enough entities successfully attacked her server, and they know everything.  That info will leak like a dripping faucet.

She just does not make the finish line for the Democommies.  In 2008, she was a US Senator and former First Lady.  Now she is a politician aligned with Obama with many unethical actions that she thinks she does not need to answer for, and her husband, is a man that flew off with his billionaire buddy to sexually assault minor girls.  Does anyone really think that horror show has been put to bed?

The House select committee investigating the deadly 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya has said that the State Department pledged to turn over 5,000 documents related to the attack on Tuesday.

In a statement late Monday, committee chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., described the document production as "second largest production the Committee has received and the largest since last summer." In return for the documents, Gowdy said he had accepted a request from Secretary of State John Kerry's chief of staff, Jon Finer, to postpone a scheduled Wednesday hearing at which Finer was due to testify.

However, Gowdy warned that a hearing on State Department compliance with the committee's requests would be scheduled if, "the State Department does not fulfill this production, or if production continues to be anemic and underwhelming."

  Makes you wonder what is really going on in our government, who really holds the strings.

Former State Department official Cheryl Mills sat through nine hours of extended questions from the House committee investigating the September 2012 terror attack in Benghazi, Libya, on Thursday.

The closed-door, daylong deposition of the longtime Hillary Clinton aide was marked by ?professionalism and respect,? Mills told reporters in brief remarks after the discussion had concluded.

?Ms. Mills answered all of the committee?s questions,? Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said. ?The dialogue was professional and fact-centric.?

ADVERTISEMENT
Yet despite requests from both Mills and top committee Democrat Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.) to release a transcript of the deposition, the contents of the briefing won?t be made available for the public ? at least for now.

?The members of the Benghazi committee on our side are going to treat the conservation as if it were classified,? Gowdy said.

Like transcripts of other interviews conducted by the panel, he added, intelligence and national security officials need to review the record of what was said, to make sure that nothing secret gets out.

The former ambassador who spearheaded a review of the 2012 attack on at U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, reaffirmed Friday that one of Hillary Clinton?s top aides had seen the report before it was issued to the public.

Some of the comments from Cheryl Mills, who served as Clinton?s chief of staff during her tenure as secretary of State, were later included in the report, Thomas Pickering told The New York Times.

ADVERTISEMENT
?Some of the comments we accepted, and some we did not because they were not consistent with our findings and the way we chose to convey those,? he said.

?My judgment was that this did not constitute an inappropriate intervention or an attempt to change the basic report which we were not going to accept.?

Republicans have lambasted the Accountability Review Board?s report, which they say lacked independence and was set up to protect Clinton ahead of her run for the White House.

On Thursday, Mills was grilled for nine hours in the House?s Select Committee on Benghazi, during which time she reportedly confirmed that she offered some input about an initial draft of the report.

A Democratic member of the House Select Committee on Benghazi is calling for an end to the investigative body, but Republicans are hitting back hard, pointing out that the lawmaker, Adam Schiff, has largely served ?in absentia,? attending only one of 45 interviews the committee has conducted.

Schiff, from California, issued the call to disband the committee in a New York Times op-ed published on Friday. He claimed that the panel has lost sight of it purpose of investigating the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and is now focused only on taking down former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

?The committee is solely concerned with damaging her candidacy, searching for something, anything, that can be insinuated against her,? Schiff wrote in the op-ed.

But Republicans questioned how Schiff could make such a plea given that he?s rarely around to observe the committee?s work.

?It is interesting he made this call considering Mr. Schiff himself has only attended one of the more-than-45 interviews conducted to date by the Select Committee on Benghazi,? Jamal Ware, a spokesman for committee Republicans said in a statement on Friday.

?In fact, save for voting no to create the committee and then attending a press event on the now well-disproven Democrat talking point that all has been ?asked and answered,? Mr. Schiff has largely been a Member of the committee in absentia.?

Democrats and Republicans have battled over the direction of the committee since it was formed last year. Schiff, like nearly all House Democrats, voted against setting it up in the first place.

?Whatever their original purpose, the Select Committee?s leaders appear no longer to have any interest in Benghazi, except as the tragic events of that day may be used as a cudgel against the likely Democratic nominee for president,? Schiff wrote in his op-ed.

While Republicans have long questioned decisions made by Clinton and her State Department aides before and after the Benghazi attack, which left four Americans dead, the Benghazi Committee took a new direction when it discovered that Clinton used an off-the-books email account during her time in office.

That discovery, which Ware notes would not have come about without the committee, has ballooned into a scandal in which the FBI is involved.

Meanwhile, the committee has interviewed several of Clinton?s aides and associates. Clinton herself is scheduled to testify publicly next month.

It?s not just about the e-mails ? Benghazi remains a key point of concern.

With the news media focused on the question of Clinton?s private server, it?s easy to forget why the Select Committee on Benghazi was first assembled. But on Friday, the majority of Sullivan?s questioning seemed to revolve around the State Department?s policies in Libya, with Chairman Trey Gowdy arguing that Sullivan was in a ?unique position? to talk about the Department?s physical presence in the country. And on Thursday, Mills admitted that she reviewed and suggested changes to the government?s official report on the Benghazi terrorist attack that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans there on September 11, 2012, an admission that alarmed GOP lawmakers already concerned that the report was altered to protect Clinton.

The high-profile testimonies rekindled partisan rancor over the congressional Benghazi investigation.

There?s no love lost between Democrats and Republicans on the Benghazi Committee. But Mills?s Thursday testimony seemed to be the breaking point for California Democratic lawmaker Adam Schiff, who in an op-ed in Friday?s New York Times issued a call to ?disband the Benghazi Committee.? The congressman argued that the ?Select Committee [is] little more than a partisan tool to influence the presidential race.? Republican committee spokesman Jamal Ware pulled no punches in his response, noting in an e-mail to reporters that Schiff ?has only attended one of the more-than-45 interviews conducted to date by the Select Committee on Benghazi.? He added that if Schiff ?truly cared about Benghazi and getting to the truth . . . he would actually show up and help guide the direction of the investigation.?

A House Benghazi committee interview with former State Department aide Bryan Pagliano, who managed Hillary Clinton's private email network, lasted only 15 minutes Thursday after he refused to answer questions.

Transcribed interviews of Cheryl Mills, Clinton's former chief of staff, and Sidney Blumenthal, an informal adviser to Clinton from her time at State, both took roughly nine hours.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, the committee's ranking Democrat, first announced that Pagliano had refused to talk with the panel.

"We knew he was going to do that last week," the Maryland Democrat said, before blaming Pagliano's appearance on politics.

Longtime Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin is scheduled to testify before the House committee investigating the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya, in the coming weeks.

Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) told reporters on Thursday that Abedin would appear before a closed-door meeting of the committee at some point before Clinton?s public testimony on Oct. 22.

ADVERTISEMENT
Abedin serves a top role in Clinton?s front-running 2016 presidential campaign and was her deputy chief of staff during Clinton?s time as secretary of State. Abedin is also the wife of former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.).

The news about her appearance came after another former State Department official, Bryan Pagliano, briefly appeared before the committee, where he invoked his constitutional right against self-incrimination.

Pagliano ? a former IT official who assisted in setting up Clinton?s personal email server ? was brought in to plead the Fifth in person despite the protests of Democrats on the panel. He had previously turned down an offer to give a ?preview? interview to Senate lawmakers before striking a deal granting him immunity.

?If Chairman Gowdy actually wanted to find out what Mr. Pagliano knows, he would follow the lead of Senate Republicans and consider immunity ? something Democrats would support,?

In a sworn declaration to the District Court of Arizona May 5th 2015, Manners said, "It was then, and remains now, my opinion that the United States did participate, directly or indirectly, in the supply of weapons to the Libyan Transitional National Council (TNC)." The timing matters because in the Spring of 2011 the Libyan opposition was not formally recognized, and the direct supply of arms was not authorized. At that time, the CIA director was David Petraeus.

As part of Fox's ongoing reporting of the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack, Fox News senior executive producer Pamela Browne interviewed Turi, who recalled this email exchange--- adding it came after he applied for a license through the State Department to sell weapons.

"At that point in time, this would've been the first application where the thought process was: the US government was going (to) directly support the Libyan TNC-not use any ally, use their own resources and support," Turi explained. "I actually-we met: Kostiw, and Manners, and myself. and I said, 'Listen, we're going to need overflight permission."

Turi said support for arming the Libyan rebels came from the most senior levels of the US government. Turi's claim is consistent with a Reuters news service exclusive report from March 31, 2011 that stated "President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing covert U.S. government support for rebel forces seeking to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi...Obama signed the order, known as a presidential "finding", within the last two or three weeks, according to government sources familiar with the matter."

"I'm being extremely transparent and you gotta understand from a, a person in my position, you're not going to go to a country that's under war and hold yourself out there like you're a black market arms dealer. You are committing suicide," Turi said.

"'Hey, I'm here. I'm an option for you if you wanna use that option.' Otherwise, they're gonna do it themselves and that's exactly what they wanted to do because what happens is, if you don't want a US footprint-any type of US entities that's subject to subpoena powers - what do you do? You outsource it and that's what they did."

Turi and his company, Turi Defense Group deny they shipped any weapons, arguing their concept to use an Arab ally instead, so there would be a "zero foot print" for the US government, was used but without strong security and vetting procedures in place.

It probably wasn?t the best idea for Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), the presumptive successor to outgoing Speaker of the House John Boehner, to suggest that Hillary Clinton?s poll numbers were sinking due to the existence of the House Select Committee on Benghazi. The Clinton Team already has a campaign ad about it, and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), who is challenging McCarthy for the speakership, called the remarks ?absolutely terrible.?

In a second salvo, House Democrats are aiming to dissolve the Select Committee on Benghazi tonight, with Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) proposing the Rules Committee eliminate it tonight, though it?s bound to be blocked given the Republican majority. The Washington Post  reports that while this move is unlikely to succeed, it shows that Democrats intend to soften up the panel ahead of Hillary?s Oct. 22 testimony before the committee:

    Democrats will double down Tuesday night on their push to end the House Select Committee on Benghazi when Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) offers an amendment to kill the panel during a meeting of the Rules Committee.

    Slaughter?s move will be blocked by Republicans, who are a majority on the panel. But the amendment offers a hint at Democrats? strategy to weaken the panel before it hears testimony from Hillary Clinton on Oct. 22.

    Slaughter, the top Democrat on Rules, will offer her amendment to a Republican bill creating a new Select Committee on Planned Parenthood in response to a series of controversial, undercover videos about the group. The amendment will strike the Planned Parenthood language and order the dissolution of the Benghazi committee.

    This just in: House Rules Cmte top Dem Rep. Louise Slaughter will put fwd amdt tonight to abolish select committee on Benghazi
    ? Tim Mak (@timkmak) October 6, 2015

    Sensing political opportunity, Dems line up to try to shut down Benghazi investigation. Excited for all the "Democrati

The American people will judge the Select Committee on Benghazi on our actions, not the words of others unfamiliar with our work.

Similarly, those calling for an end to the committee are either satisfied with an incomplete inquiry into the deaths of four Americans in Libya or unconcerned with accountability as it relates to the public record.

USA TODAY

Wrap up Benghazi inquest: Our view

This committee has interviewed 41 witnesses no other committee interviewed. Seven were eyewitnesses to the attacks. We have reviewed 50,000 pages of documents never before given to Congress ? including the emails of top State Department personnel. And, for the first time, State is committed to finally providing all Ambassador Stevens? emails by week?s end.

Secretary Clinton was in charge at all times relevant to our inquiry, so of course we need her public record and testimony. But she is one witness. Her emails make up 5% of what the committee has.

It is true other panels conducted Benghazi inquiries. It is equally true they failed to interview dozens of key witnesses, failed to access all information and inexcusably missed Clinton?s exclusive use of private email on her personal server for official business.

The House Intelligence Committee report has been wrongly used to clear the administration. As the author, former Rep. Mike Rogers, said, ?Some have said the report exonerates the State Department and White House. It does not.?

Our committee has also accessed new documents from the White House, CIA, Defense Department and Justice Department. Our committee does not trot out or trumpet every piece of new information uncovered or release selective portions of witness interviews, because credible investigations pursue facts, not headline

he House Select Committee on Benghazi will be making public next week new documents that demonstrate Sidney Blumenthal was seeking business in Libya as he was advising then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on U.S. policy in the country. According to a letter from Chairman Trey Gowdy to Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the committee, at least once Clinton sought to aid Blumenthal's business interests in Libya.
Sidney blumenthal

Sidney Blumenthal

Larry D. Moore CC BY-SA 3.0

The 13-page letter also details new concerns about compromised security on Clinton's email, noting that in one unsecured email Blumenthal appears to name a top CIA source in Libya --a revelation that could compromise the safety of that source if it became known publicly.

In a statement accompanying the letter, Gowdy makes some of his strongest accusations to date about the Obama administration's obstruction of the committee's work.

?These messages should have been made public when the State Department released Secretary Clinton?s other self-selected records on Libya and Benghazi, but there was a clear decision at the time to withhold this information from the American people and the Committee," reads the letter. "The State Department has now made these messages available, and the Committee intends to question Secretary Clinton about them during her appearance.?

Gowdy did not identify the individuals responsible for the "clear decision" to withhold information. The new documents add to a long list of materials withheld by the Obama administration and Clinton and her lawyers, and raise further questions about what other documents have not yet been turned over to the committee.

Rather than cooperate, Democrats have tried to thwart the Benghazi probe from within since the beginning, the special panel?s chairman said in a letter released Thursday that accused Democrats of bad faith and also announced the release of emails that call into question the relationship between former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and her associate Sidney Blumenthal.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, South Carolina Republican, said it was Democrats, not members of his party, who ?selectively leaked information? to try to set the political narrative about the probe.

Mr. Gowdy said Democrats have been more interested in that than in participating in the investigation, and accused the top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, of acting as defender of Mrs. Clinton rather than as an honest auditor.

?Your duty as ranking member of this committee has not been to the American public, but to your Democrat

This story was more or less lost in the noise of yesterday's palace intrigue, but it's too important to simply let lie.  Do yourself a favor and click through to Gowdy's letter before proceeding any further. Read the entire thing. It's extraordinary, on several levels: First, Gowdy summons his prosecutorial vigor to absolutely demolish the ranking Democrat on the House Select Committee on Benghazi.  Democrats have seized upon erstwhile Speaker-in-waiting Kevin McCarthy's ill-advised comments to try to shut down the panel's probe -- a continuation of their ongoing, partisan efforts to dismiss its focus as a "phony scandal" and to portray the investigation as a political witch hunt.  Gowdy has been unsparing in his rejection of McCarthy's since-abandoned characterization and unflagging in his defense of the committee's work.  In response to Democrat Elijah Cummings' endless attacks and accusations, the South Carolina Republican drops the hammer:


Cummings, Gowdy continues, has been acting on duties "not to the American public, but to your Democrat colleagues and to the administration, including former Secretary Clinton," adding that he's disappointed in the Democrat's "complete lack of interest in gathering any facts."  Again, read the whole thing. The letter goes on to ridicule Cummings for objecting to the release of some Clinton emails, noting that both Mrs. Clinton and Cummings himself have stated that all of the messages should be made public: "Only in Washington, DC can both the author of the emails and the ranking member of a committee call for the disclosure of all relevant emails and then complain that all relevant emails were

Hillary Clinton's confidant Sidney Blumenthal names a CIA source and pushes action in Libya, partly to promote business interests, Trey Gowdy says in a letter about new emails his committee plans to release.

The House Benghazi Select Committee plans to release the emails from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton prior to her testimony later this month.

Gowdy, the Republican chairman of the committee, sent a scathing 13-page letter to ranking member Elijah Cummings, a Democrat, on Wednesday, accusing Cummings of abandonong the normal "cordial relationship" between the members of the committee and instead writing letters "dripping with vitriol and baseless allegations."

The committee's work is not partisan, as Democrats claim, Gowdy says, and show serious breaches of Clinton's use of a private, unsecured email server while she was with the State Department.

Gowdy quotes extensively from the emails, saying that Blumenthal names a CIA source in one and that Clinton forwarded the email. That contradicts Clinton's claims that no classified information was contained in them, Gowdy said.

A committee source told CNN that Abedin will not undergo a full deposition and would be interviewed behind closed doors by committee staffers.

Huma Abedin, a longtime aide to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, testified Friday before the House committee investigating the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, as the panel faced fresh criticism from Republicans and Democrats about the purpose of its inquiry.

Abedin met behind closed doors for what was expected to be several hours focused on the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on the U.S. facilities that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. Clinton herself is scheduled to appear before the panel on Thursday in a widely anticipated public hearing.

The decision by the GOP-led panel to question Abedin angered the panel's top Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, who argued that her knowledge of details at the time of the attacks were minimum.

"She had no policy responsibilities, no operational responsibilities and was not with Secretary Clinton on the night of this phenomenal tragedy," Cummings told reporters after breaking away momentarily from the day's proceedings.

Abedin is vice chairwoman of Clinton's campaign and was a top State Department aide when Clinton served as secretary of state. She also worked in Clinton's Senate office.

The committee chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., did not attend the session in which committee staff and attorneys questioned Abedin. Republican Reps. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., and Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., did attend the meeting as did Cummings.

Hillary Clinton?s presidential campaign is warning Republicans on the House Select Committee on Benghazi not to leak details of a top aide?s closed-door appearance on Friday, as they allege lawmakers have done with other private briefings.

As campaign vice chairwoman and longtime Clinton confidante Huma Abedin entered the committee?s meeting room on Friday morning, campaign spokesman Nick Merrill renewed his allegations that the committee is merely interested in politics.

ADVERTISEMENT
?The Republicans' focus on her of all people, and their decision to leak details about her appearance, is just another tactic in their partisan plan to go after Hillary Clinton,? Merrill said in a statement.

?And in that vein, we hope that the leaks that have become routine do not happen after she completes her interview."

Democrats have repeatedly accused GOP lawmakers of using the committee as a taxpayer-funded political hit job, and Merrill?s comments on Friday emphasize the degree to which Clinton?s campaign is ready to attack.

?The committee?s focus on Huma (as opposed to numerous intelligence and defense community officials still outstanding) is additional evidence that the actual attack in Benghazi, and its lessons about how we might better protect diplomats serving in dangerous places, are the last things on the committee's mind,? he said.

rom TheBlaze:

    WASHINGTON (AP) ? Huma Abedin, a longtime aide to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, testified Friday before the House committee investigating the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, as the panel faced fresh criticism from Republicans and Democrats about the purpose of its inquiry.

    Abedin met behind closed doors for what was expected to be several hours focused on the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on the U.S. facilities that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. Clinton herself is scheduled to appear before the panel on Thursday in a widely anticipated public hearing.

    The committee chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., did not attend the session in which committee staff and attorneys questioned Abedin. Republican Reps. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., and Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., did attend the meeting as did Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the panel?s top Democrat.

    Asked about Gowdy?s absence, spokesman Jamal Ware said, ?no particular reason.?

    The Benghazi panel is under intense scrutiny after two House Republicans described the GOP-led committee as partisan and aimed at hurting Clinton?s presidential bid, a characterization the panel?s chairman rejects.

House Benghazi Chairman Trey Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor, used to get death threats in his previous line of work. But watching his Benghazi investigation get slammed by accusations that it?s a partisan assault on Hillary Clinton is actually much worse, he says.

?I would say in some ways these have been among the worst weeks of my life,? Gowdy said this weekend during a lengthy interview with POLITICO. ?Attacks on your character, attacks on your motives, are 1,000-times worse than anything you can do to anybody physically ? at least it is for me.?

Gowdy faces the biggest moment of his political career when he squares off with Clinton this Thursday. But as the chairman prepares for the showdown, he?s facing increasing pressure to salvage his panel?s reputation ? and perhaps his own.

Gowdy worked behind closed doors for 18 months in an effort to keep the committee?s work out of the political fray. But his strategy started unraveling after three Republicans suggested the committee was aimed at hurting Clinton in the polls. Democrats pounced, newspaper editorials called for the panel to be disbanded, and now there are calls from commentators of all stripes for Gowdy to reveal what he?s uncovered.

Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign and its allies have kept up the pressure with an almost daily barrage of news releases and statements slamming the panel?s work.

Republicans have ?no evidence? to support claims that Hillary Clinton was in any way responsible for the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, three years ago, according to Democrats who are going on the offense ahead of her testimony this week.

Democrats on the House Select Committee on Benghazi on Monday released a new 124-page report summarizing more than four-dozen interviews that the panel has conducted so far and taking aim at GOP criticism of Clinton?s role during the 2012 violence.

Nothing in those interviews substantiates GOP criticism of Clinton, the Democrats claimed.

ADVERTISEMENT
Republican attacks ?are based on no evidence or evidence that is unsubstantiated or distorted,? panel Democrats said in their report.

?[T]hey use extreme rhetoric that has no basis in fact, and they often make a direct link to Secretary Clinton?s bid for president.?

The Democrats targeted a slew of Republicans who have gone on the attack against Clinton, not just their GOP counterparts on the Benghazi panel.

For instance, the report calls out former Hewlett-Packard executive Carly Fiorina, a 2016 presidential contender, who claimed in July that Clinton has ?blood on her hands.?

?I now think we now have enough information to understand that Hillary Clinton as secretary of State has engaged in gross dereliction of duty,? Fiorina said on Fox News at the time. ?She has engaged in a cover-up, and she has blood on her hands.?

The report also aims to refute former House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and other prominent Republicans.

Monday?s counter-attack from Democrats comes as part of a vigorous push from Clinton?s defenders ahead of her Thursday morning appearance before the Benghazi panel. Democrats appear to believe they have the momentum heading into the closely watched hearing, following remarks from top Republicans claiming that the panel is in part motivated by politics.

So far, the Benghazi panel has conducted 54 transcribed interviews and depositions. Thirty-one of those have been with people who did not speak with previous congressional probes into the 2012 attack or with an accountability review board set up to investigate the incident, Democrats said.

According to committee Democrats, those interviews describe Clinton as being ?deeply engaged during and after the attacks? and claim that she ?took action to ensure the safety and security of U.S. personnel, even as intelligence assessments of the attacks changed more than once during this period.?

Republicans, meanwhile, have insisted that the interviews raised new questions

Two months before the fatal 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, then-Ambassador Chris Stevens requested 13 security personnel to help him safely travel around Libya, according to a cable reviewed by Fox News -- but he was turned down.

In the July 9, 2012 cable, Stevens reported that, "Overall security conditions continue to be unpredictable, with large numbers of armed groups and individuals not under control of the central government, and frequent clashes in Tripoli and other major population centers." The cable said 13 security personnel would be the "minimum" needed for "transportation security and incident response capability."

But a congressional source said Patrick Kennedy, a deputy to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, turned down the request.

The cable sent under Stevens' electronic signature shows that he was advocating for additional security and warning that the set-up did not meet State Department standards, as conditions deteriorated in the run-up to the attack that killed Stevens and three other Americans.

A ?human error? at the State Department caused the House Select Committee on Benghazi to release the name of an apparent CIA source that the government had hoped to keep secret.

The name of the source ? which was the subject of a partisan battle over the weekend ? was not classified to protect national security, the Obama administration said on Monday. Instead, the State Department had hoped to keep it private to protect the man?s privacy.   

ADVERTISEMENT
"I think it was just human error in our desire to get these documents to the Benghazi committee as quickly as possible," State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters.

?We have asked the Benghazi committee not to use the individual's name publicly to protect that individual's privacy.?

The name of the apparent CIA source ? former Libyan intelligence head and Foreign Minister Mousa Kousa ? was initially revealed in the subject line of an email released by Republican leaders of the Benghazi panel over the weekend. The email was sent to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by longtime associate Sidney Blumenthal.

The presence of the name was previously reported by Yahoo News. The Benghazi panel subsequently redacted the name from the email's subject line.

?State Department failed to redact a name in a subject line, so the committee took steps to

Chelsea Clinton is predicting her mother's upcoming testimony before the House Select Committee on Benghazi "will be remarkable," and brushing off partisan attacks that haven't gotten under her "thick skin."

"I think every opportunity my mom has, she proves again and again why she should be our next president," the former first daughter says of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in an interview with "CBS This Morning."

Her remarks start at about the 5-minute point in the interview.

"I know I'm very biased, and I actually think I'm even more biased now as a mom than as a daughter because I feel like I have a different stake in the future because of my daughter, Charlotte."

"And so, I have no doubt on Thursday she will ... be remarkable and that Americans will really see why I so strongly believe that she should be our next president."

Chelsea Clinton also said she doesn't let the criticism of her father, President Bill Clinton, or her mother, and their political careers get to her.

"I mean, I don't remember a time when people weren't attacking my parents," she says. "So in some ways, I think as I grew up I developed a thick skin. And I also know my mom, and I think it's so much more important to look at what people do and how they lead their lives than what's happening in the echo chamber."

Just two days before Hillary Clinton?s testimony to the House Benghazi Committee, the State Department presented lawmakers with a huge trove of Ambassador Chris Stevens? emails:

    #BREAKING: The State Dept *just* delivered nearly 1,300 printed pages of new emails from Ambassador Chris Stevens. #Benghazi

    ? Benghazi Committee (@HouseBenghazi) October 20, 2015

Yesterday, Fox News obtained one of Stevens? cables from July 2012, and found him pleading for decent security protection? a plea that fell on deaf ears in Hillary Clinton?s department.

    In the July 9, 2012 cable, Stevens reported that, ?Overall security conditions continue to be unpredictable, with large numbers of armed groups and individuals not under control of the central government, and frequent clashes in Tripoli and other major population centers.? The cable said 13 security personnel would be the ?minimum? needed for ?transportation security and incident response capability.?

    But a congressional source said Patrick Kennedy, a deputy to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, turned down the request.

    The cable sent under Stevens? electronic signature shows that he was advocating for additional security and warning that the set-up did not meet State Department standards, as conditions deteriorated in the run-up to the attack that killed Stevens and three other Americans.

As Fox News goes on to note, the terrorist-infested wasteland Clinton and Obama transformed Libya into was the scene of 243 security incidents in the year before Stevens? murder on 9/11/12, fifty of them occurring in Libya? including a failed attempt to assassinate the British ambassador with a rocket-propelled grenade, a month before Stevens requested more protection. Instead, Hillary?s minions decided to reinforce the Tripoli airport, and left Stevens stuck with a security contractor that didn?t even have a valid license to operate in Benghazi, because the British corporate HQ had a nasty spat with its Libyan agency.

For all the Democrat complaints about a ?politicized? Republican committee, the simple, irrefutable fact is that we wouldn?t need such a committee if Obama, Clinton, and the rest of this Administration had been remotely honest about what happened in Benghazi.

Three years after the event and they are finding artifacts.  But hey, everyone has been so forthcoming!

Over 600 pleas for increases in security, yet Clinton claims she never saw a one.  There is virtually no emails available by her during the Benghazi attack period, and it all adds up to the fact this woman could not tell the truth to save her grandchild.

The cover-up here is criminal.  Her failure to present her documents is criminal.  Why is this bimbo left to walk the streets let alone run for the highest office of the land?

So far, Mr Pompeo is the only one asking questions that sting.  Her answers were weak to say the least.

I will say, the members of this panel going forth in the media and saying what they have, do none of these people have a brain?  Gowdy is supposed to be this brilliant former prosecutor, yet his committee is running around shooting their mouth off and undermining their efforts.

This should be a criminal investigation, not these political clowns running around town and making appearances on the networks.  Stupid j*ck*ss*es!!!!!!!!!

It's not bad enough that McCarthy said what he said, but the members of the committee shooting their mouth off is pure idiocy.  

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speculated Wednesday that former Ambassador Chris Stevens must have been joking when he sent a question about security at the Benghazi consulate where he and three others later died.

During afternoon testimony,
Rep. Susan Brooks (R-IN)
33%
asked Clinton about an email dated Dec. 15, 2011 in which Stevens asked an official about security at the Benghazi compound, and whether the State Department had decided to close it.

Clinton responded: ?Well, Congresswoman, one of the great attributes that Chris Stevens had was a really good sense of humor and I just see him smiling as he?s typing this because it?s clearly in response to the e-mail down below talking about picking up a few ?fire sale items from the Brits.'?

Chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi Trey Gowdy wasted no words while explaining clearly and convincingly the purpose of the committee?s investigation and the reason former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was called to testify on Thursday.

?Madame Secretary, I understand some people ? frankly in both parties ? have suggested this investigation is about you,? Gowdy said in his opening statement. ?Let me assure you it is not. And let me assure you why it is not. This work is about something much more important than any single person. It is about four U.S. government workers, including our Ambassador, murdered by terrorists on foreign soil. It is about what happened before, during, and after the attacks that killed these four men.?

This is a one day event that should go a week or so to be comprehensive.  

What is disgusting is the defensive position the Democrats are taking when they know that the State Dept, Hillary Clinton, and the Executive branch of government has done everything they can to undermine the investigation into Benghazi.

The UGLY TRUTH is that we were running guns out of Libya to Syria, and that was Stevens mission there.  He had inadequate security, and the fact that over 600 requests for additional security in Libya were made, and went unanswered is criminal in and of itself.  Someone is responsible, and we know who.

Clinton's contempt of the American people knows no bounds.  She sits there lying, and I suppose she thinks everyone is as dumb as the average Democrat.  Just incredulous to me!


Also she joked that Stevens had a great sense of humor, laughing at a fire sale email he wrote to her. I guess he was
And I am not an expert on body language, but when she lies, she gives little to no eye contact.  For someone so smart, she just can't make her body deny the lies.  

Hillary Clinton testified before the US House Select Committee on the Events Surrounding the 2012 Terrorist Attack in Benghazi, Libya today on Capitol Hill.

Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS) questioned Hillary Clinton today on why over 600 requests for more security from Libya leading up to the attack.

Hillary Clinton did not have an answer.

Over 600 requests for more security were ignored by the Clinton State Department.

    Sec. Clinton has no idea who US State Dept officials were meeting with, which included radical islamists days before the attack. #Benghazi

    ? Mike Pompeo (@RepMikePompeo) October 22, 2015

If our government is worth a BM, they better indict this lying POS.  She has committed more criminal acts than any modern day criminal, from treason, fraud, obstruction of justice, perjury, and probably a dozen other crimes, with each act a felony.


HILLARY FOR PRISON 2016

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton brushed aside emails Thursday that showed she privately told family and world leaders that the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi was a terrorist assault, and said Ambassador Christopher Stevens was responsible for his own decisions regarding skimpy security ahead of his death.

Testifying to the House Select Committee on Benghazi, a composed and controlled Mrs. Clinton said she was involved in the big decisions of deploying Stevens to Libya and pressing President Obama to lead the war effort that ousted Moammar Gadhafi. But she deflected responsibility for much of what went wrong, saying the ambassador's requests for more protection, which were denied, were handled at levels beneath her.

Mrs. Clinton also revealed that she gave orders for her lawyer and aides to go through her emails, but she did not "look over their shoulder" and didn't know exactly how they decided which emails were work-related business. And she declined to agree to release any emails recovered from her server.

In a hearing that lasted more than eight hours, Mrs. Clinton escaped without the kind of major gaffe that plagued her 2013 appearance before the Senate.

But she seemed unsure of whether she spoke with Stevens in the months between swearing him in as ambassador and the attack, in which he died of smoke inhalation.

POMPEO: "Do you know how many security requests there were in the 1st quarter of 2012?"

CLINTON: "For everyone or for Benghazi?"

POMPEO: "I?m sorry, yes ma?am. Related to Benghazi and Libya. Do you know how many there were?"

CLINTON: "No."

POMPEO: "Ma?am, there were just over 100 plus. In the 2nd quarter, do you know how many there were?"

CLINTON: "No, I do not."

POMPEO: "Ma?am there were 172ish ? might have been 171 or 173. ? How many were there in July and August and then in that week and few days before the attacks? Do you know?"

CLINTON: "There were a number of them. I know that."

POMPEO: "Yes, ma?am ? 83 by our count. That?s over 600 requests. You?ve testified this morning that you?ve had none of those reach your desk. Is that correct also?"

CLINTON: "That?s correct."



 

POMPEO: "Madam Secretary, Mr. Blumenthal wrote you 150 emails. It appears from the materials that we?ve read that all of those reached your desk.

"Can you tell us why security requests from your professionals, the men that you just testified ? are incredibly professional, incredibly capable people, trained in the art of keeping us all safe, none of those made it to you, but a man who was a friend of yours, who?d never been to Libya, didn?t know much about it ? at least that?s his testimony ? didn?t know much about it, every one of those reports that he sent on to you that had to do with situations on the ground in Libya, those made it to your desk?

"You asked for more of them. You read them. You corresponded with him, and yet the folks that worked for you didn?t have the same courtesy."

CLINTON:  "Congressman, as you?re aware, he?s a friend of mine. He sent me information he thought might be of interest. Some of it was. Some of it wasn?t. Some of it I forwarded to be followed up on. The professionals and experts who reviewed it found some of it useful, some of it not.

"He had no official position in the government, and he was not at all my adviser on Libya. He was a friend who sent me information that he thought might be helpful."

POMPEO: "Madame Secretary, I have lots of friends. They send me things. I have never had somebody send me a couple of pieces of intelligence with the level of detail that Mr. Blumenthal sent me every week. That?s a special friend."

CLINTON:  "It was information that had been shared with him that he forwarded on, and as someone who got the vast majority of information that I acted on from official channels, I read a lot of articles that brought new ideas to my attention, and occasionally, people including him and others would give me ideas. They all went into the same process to be evaluated."

POMPEO: "Yes, ma?am. I will tell you that the record that we?ve received today does not reflect that. It simply doesn?t. We?ve read everything that we could get our hands on. It?s taken us a long time to get it, but I will tell you, you just described all of this other information that you relied upon, and it doesn?t comport with the record that this committee has been able to establish today."

She told Jordan she was only saying that others were claiming it as a motivation for their participation and  she was not herself assigning blame. Yet this became the Obama administration mantra, being repeated five times on the Sunday talk show circuit and six times in a single speech to the United Nations by President Obama. Worse yet, she told both Charles Woods and Patricia Smith as they stood in front of their son?s caskets that she would see to it that she would get the person who made that inflammatory video. Investor?s Business Daily noted how much Hillary?s expression of regrets over Benghazi meant to these mourning parents:

    Not much, particularly to Charles Woods and Patricia Smith, parents of Ty Woods and Sean Smith, respectively, two of the four Americans murdered by al-Qaida-affiliated terrorists in an attack Clinton blamed on a video.

    Clinton expressed no regrets for repeating the video lie to Woods in front of his son's casket as it arrived at Dover Air Force Base:

    "Her countenance was not good, and she made this statement to me . .. she said we will make sure that the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted," he told radio host Glenn Beck, adding that he "could tell that she was not telling me the truth."

    As we have pointed out, phony scandals don't produce body bags. Smith testified before the House Oversight Committee about how President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Clinton, among other top administration officials, approached her at the casket ceremony when her son's body was returned.

    "Every one of them came up to me, gave me a big hug, and I asked them, 'What happened, please tell me?' And every one of them said it was the video. And we all know that it wasn't the video. Even at that time they knew it wasn't the video. So they all lied to me."

Hillary Clinton that night knew that the video in question had nothing to do with Benghazi. Gregory Hicks, deputy chief of station in Libya at the time of the attack and a career foreign officer for over two decades, told the truth before Congress and was rewarded with a demotion:

    We have the testimony of Gregory Hicks, deputy chief of mission in Libya and a foreign service officer for 22 years. He was demoted to desk officer for telling the truth that those in Libya knew it was a terrorist attack from the "get-go," that there was no "protest" or mention of one from anyone on the ground, and that the infamous YouTube video was "a non-event" in Libya.

We also have the public testimony of Mike Morrell, then acting CIA director, who has also said that the video and the Benghazi attack had nothing to do with each other:

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at Thursday?s Benghazi hearing that she?s proud of her work spreading the U.S. message against an anti-Muhammad YouTube video in 2012.

House Select Committee on Benghazi Ranking Member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) showed a news clip containing footage of protests against the video including Kabul, Jakarta, Pakistan and Beirut.

Clinton said she was ?particularly concerned about what happened in Tunis, and it was the Friday after the attack in Benghazi.?

?We knew from monitoring the media, from reports coming in from our embassies throughout the region, that this was a very hot issue. It was not going away. It was being kept alive. We were particularly worried about what might happen on Friday, because Friday is the day of prayers for Muslims,? she said.

?So, we were on very high alert going into Friday. I got a call through our ? our Operations Department from our Ambassador in Tunis who was in the safe room in the embassy in Tunisia. There were thousands of demonstrators on the outside. They were battering down the barriers and the walls around our embassy. They had already set on fire the American school, which is very close to the Embassy. And the ambassador and his team were desperate for help. Their calls to the government of Tunisia, the host government, had gone unanswered.?

Clinton said she ?immediately got on the phone calling the foreign minister, calling the prime minister, who were the heads of government.?

?I could not find either one of them. I called the president, President Marzouki. I got him on the phone. I told him he had to rescue our people. He had to disperse the crowds that were there because of the video,? she continued. ?He said, I don?t control the army. I have nothing I can do. I said, Mr. President, you must be able to do something. I?ve got all of my people inside the Embassy ? they are being attacked. If the protesters get through into the Embassy, I don?t know what will happen.?

She said she persuaded him to send his presidential guard to ?at least show that Tunisia will stand with the United States against these protesters over this inflammatory video.?

?It was the kind of incredibly tense moment ? we had protesters going over the walls of our embassy in Khartoum. We had protests, as you rightly point out, all the way to Indonesia. Thankfully, no Americans were killed, partly because I had been consistent in speaking out about that video from the very first day when we knew it had sparked the attack on our embassy in Cairo,? Clinton said.

?I spoke about it because I wanted it to be clear to every government around the world that we were going to look to them to protect our facilities. And it was a very tense week, congressman. One that I think demonstrated how volatile the world is and how important it is for the United States to be on top of what people themselves are reacting to, and that?s what I tried to do during that time.?

Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.) commented that Clinton gave the committee ?that blow by blow of something that we?re not even investigating here.?

?Could you do the same thing with what happened in Benghazi?? Westmoreland asked. ?Could you tell us the same kind of play by play that ? who came to the rescue there? Because I don?t know of anybody that did.?

Clinton shot back that ?several of you have raised the video and have dismissed the importance of the video.?

?And I think that is unfortunate, because there?s no doubt, and as I said earlier, even the person we have now arrested as being one of the ringleaders of the attack on our compound in Benghazi, is reputed to have used the video as a way to gather up the attackers that attacked our compound. So, I think it?s important. These are complex issues, Mr. Congressman. And I think it?s important that we look at the totality of what was going on. It?s like that terrible incident that happened in Paris,? she said, referring to the Charlie Hebdo attack.

?Cartoons sparked two al-Qaeda-trained attackers who killed, you know, nearly a dozen people. I think it?s important as you are members of Congress looking into these issues, that you look at the totality so we can learn the best lessons.?

A day after new records were made public showing Hillary Clinton said from the start the 2012 Benghazi attack was not linked to an obscure anti-Islam film, the father of a former Navy SEAL killed that night told Fox News she blamed the filmmaker for his son's death in a conversation with him.

Charles Woods, father of Ty Woods, who died defending the CIA annex, shared with Fox News the diary notes he took after his encounter with Clinton during the ceremony on Sept. 14, 2012, when the bodies were flown back to the U.S.

"I gave Hillary a hug and shook her hand. And she said we are going to have the film maker arrested who was responsible for the death of my son," the entry says.

"She said -- the filmmaker who was responsible for the death of your son," Woods emphasized as he read his diary entry. Woods attended Thursday's hearing where the former secretary of state testified to the Benghazi congressional committee.

Family members of two of the four Americans murdered during the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks in Benghazi had harsh words for Hillary Clinton following her testimony in front of the House Select Committee on Benghazi on Thursday.

In an interview with CNN?s Anderson Cooper, Kate Quigley, the sister of CIA contractor Glen Doherty, recalled a meeting she and her family had with Clinton at Andrews Air Force Base three days after the terrorist attack in which the then-secretary of state said that the onslaught started as a spontaneous protest.

?She spoke to my family about how sad we should feel for the Libyan people because they?re uneducated, and that breeds fear which breeds violence and leads to a protest,? Quigley recalled.

But as was made clear in Thursday?s hearing, Clinton knew even before the attacks were finished that terrorists with links to al-Qaeda were involved. Clinton emailed her daughter Chelsea stating that terrorists were involved. She relayed the same information to the president of Libya and the prime minister of Egypt in conversations in the day or two after the attack. But despite privately stating that terrorists were involved in the attack, Clinton parsed her words in public. And many others in the Obama administration outright tied the motive for the attacks on a YouTube video.

?When I think back now to that day and what she knew, it shows me a lot about her character that she would choose in that moment to basically perpetuate what she knew was untrue,? Quigley told Cooper.

    Sister of #Benghazi victim Glen Doherty: @HillaryClinton "perpetuated what she knew wasn?t true? at their meeting https://t.co/c7T2Jc6Ll1

    ? Anderson Cooper 360? (@AC360) October 23, 2015

?It was very strange, and I thought about it and never spoke about for a long time,? Quigley said of her interaction with Clinton.

She did acknowledge that Clinton ?did a fairly good job answering some of the questions? she was asked Thursday. But ?as expected, ?a lot of the real answers that we?re looking for were kind of brushed off,? Quigley said.

The Obama administration officials ? with the awareness of the Secretary of State ? were involved in violating a ban on arming rebels in Syria in an operation that mirrors the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan Administration. But while the news media initiated a feeding-frenzy on Iran-Contra, they?re either yawning or helping the Obama administration in covering up the Benghazi-to-Syria arms transfers.

During Thursday?s House Select Committee on Benghazi hearing, the news media and the Democratic Party information machine appeared to be creating their desired narrative: the GOP is on a witch hunt to stop Hillary Clinton?s inauguration as President. But the hearings did manage to force the release of documents that were being hidden by the alleged conspirators.

Some of the many documents released by a watchdog group that investigates and exposes corruption and criminal activity by government officials and agencies provides evidence that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other senior officials, as well as President Barack Obama, deceived the American people regarding the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi U.S. consulate massacre. The pages released show that top administration officials were handed intelligence reports within hours of the attack that stated the Islamic terrorists? actions had been planned up to 10 days before the attack and the goal was simply to assassinate as many Americans as possible.

The documents also confirm the suspicions that U.S. government officials were well aware of weapons being shipped from Benghazi to Syria for use by rebel forces against the Al-Assad regime, according to Judicial Watch. In addition, the document-release contains an August 2012 analysis of intelligence that predicted the meteoric rise of al-Qaida in Iraq terrorists who morphed into the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. It also the predicted failure of Obama?s foreign policy aimed at regime change in Syria.

In an overly redacted copy of a memorandum dated Sept. 12, 2012 ? the day after the Bengahzi slaughter of four Americans including a U.S. ambassador ? the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) reported to Hillary Clinton, then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, the White House National Security Council and the U.S. military?s Joint Chiefs of Staff that the Islamic terrorists planned their attack about 10 or more days prior to the slaughter that occurred on the day the U.S. acknowledged the 11th Anniversary of the attacks in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania that killed about 3,000 people.

The terrorists intended to attack the sparsely protected U.S. diplomatic mission and to assassinate as many American officials as possible. The motive for the attack appeared to be revenge for the U.S. killing of Abu Yahya al-Libi, a high-level Al Qaida terrorist killed by U.S. drone strikes in North Waziristan.

According to Judicial Watch?s analysis of the documents, the Benghazi attack ?was planned and perpetrated by members of the Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman (BCOAR). BCOAR is also responsible for past attacks

The upcoming interviews by the Benghazi Select Committee will be held in private following the daylong televised testimony by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the committee's chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy, said Sunday.

"I can just tell you of the 50-some-odd interviews we have done thus far, the vast majority have been private and you don't see the bickering among the members of congress in private interviews," Gowdy told "Meet the Press"  host Chuck Todd. "The private ones produce better results."

Clinton herself requested the public interview, Gowdy said, which was her right.

"I can just tell you in the private interviews there is never any of what you saw Thursday," he said. "It is one hour on the Republican side, one hour on the Democrat side which is why you're going to see the next two dozen interviews done privately."

The Obama administration pursued a policy in Libya back in 2011 that ultimately allowed guns to walk into the hands of jihadists linked to the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) and al-Qaeda (AQ) in Syria, according to a former CIA officer who co-authored a report on behalf of the Citizen?s Commission on Benghazi (CCB), detailing the gun running scheme.

In Congress, the then-bipartisan group known as the ?Gang of Eight,? at a minimum, knew of the operation to aid and abet America?s jihadist enemies by providing them with material support. So says Clare Lopez, a former CIA officer and the primary author of CCB?s interim report, titled How America Switched Sides in the War on Terror, speaking with Breitbart News.

The ripple effects of the illegal policy to arm America?s enemies continue to be felt as the U.S. military is currently leading a war against ISIS and AQ terrorists in Iraq and Syria, according to Lopez.

In late October, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said that the U.S. would begin ?direct action on the ground? against ISIS terrorists in Iraq and Syria who may have reaped the benefits from the gun-running scheme that started in Libya.

?The Obama administration effectively switched sides in what used to be called the Global War on Terror [GWOT] when it decided to overthrow the sovereign government of our Libyan ally, Muammar Qaddafi, who?d been helping in the fight against al-Qaeda, by actually teaming up with and facilitating gun-running to Libyan al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood [MB] elements there in 2011,? explained Lopez. ?This U.S. gun-running policy in 2011 during the Libyan revolution was directed by [then] Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and [the late Libya Ambassador] Christopher Stevens, who was her official envoy to the Libyan AQ rebels.?

To avoid having the funds tracked back to the Obama administration, the arms flow to Libya was financed thru the United Arab Emirates, while Qatar served as the logistical and shipping hub, she noted.

?In 2012, the gun-running into Libya turned around and began to flow outward, from Benghazi to the AQ-and-MB-dominated rebels in Syria,? Lopez added. ?This time, it was the CIA Base of Operations that was in charge of collecting up and shipping out [surface-to-air missiles] SAMs from Libya on Libyan ships to Turkey for overland delivery to a variety of jihadist militias, some of whose members later coalesced into groups like Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS [also known as IS].?

Jabhat al-Nusra is al-Qaeda?s Syrian affiliate.

?The downstream consequences of Obama White House decisions in the Syrian conflict are still playing out, but certainly the U.S. ? and particularly CIA ? support of identifiable jihadist groups associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham, the Islamic State and other [jihadists] has only exacerbated what was already a devastating situation,? declared Lopez.

Some of the other weapons that eventually ended up in Syria included thousands of MAN-Portable-Air-Defense-System (MANPADS) missile units, such as shoulder-launched SAMs, from late dictator Muammar Qaddafi?s extensive arms stockpiles that pose a threat to low-flying aircraft, especially helicopters.

?It?s been reported that President Obama signed an Executive Order on Syria in early 2012 [just as he had done for Libya in early 2011], that legally covered the CIA and other U.S. agencies that otherwise would have been in violation of aiding and abetting the enemy in time of war and providing material support to terrorism,? notes Lopez. ?Still, such blatant disregard for U.S. national security can only be described as deeply corrosive of core American principles.?

Libya Amb. Stevens was killed by jihadists in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, along with three other Americans.

Echoing a Benghazi resident who provided a first-hand account of the incident, retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Dennis Haney, a CCB member, suggested to Breitbart News that Hillary Clinton?s State Department armed some of the al-Qaeda linked jihadists who may have killed the four Americans in Benghazi.

?The reason the U.S. government was operating in Libya is absolutely critical to this debacle because it reflects where America went off the tracks and literally switched sides in the GWOT,? points out Lopez. ?This is about who we are as a country, as a people ? where we are going with this Republic of ours.?

?There can be no greater treason than aiding and abetting the jihadist enemy in time of war ? or providing material ? weapons, funding, intel, NATO bombing ? support to terrorism,? she continued. ?The reason Benghazi is not the burning issue it ought to be is because so many at top levels of U.S. government were implicated in wrong-doing: White House, Pentagon, Intel Community-CIA, Gang of Eight, at a minimum, in Congress, the Department of State, etc.?

The State Department and the CIA did not respond to Breitbart News? requests for comment.