The House Benghazi committee’s Republican chairman is ignoring statements by his own former lawyer indicating that the US military acted properly on the night of the deadly Sept. 11, 2012, attacks in Libya, the panel’s Democrats said.
Representatives Elijah Cummings and Adam Smith said Representative Trey Gowdy omitted the lawyer’s comments when he fired back at the US Department of Defense for criticizing the Republican-led investigation into the attacks that killed four Americans.
Gowdy’s actions, coupled with delays that have pushed the two-year inquiry into the heat of the 2016 presidential race, “have damaged the credibility of the select committee beyond repair,” Cummings and Smith wrote on Sunday in a letter to Gowdy.
The criticism by the two Democrats is the latest volley in an escalating, election-year fight over the Benghazi panel’s actions — or inaction. The panel, created in May 2014, has not conducted a public hearing since October last year when former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton testified.
Democrats call the panel a thinly veiled excuse for Republicans to criticize Clinton, the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination. Republicans say the administration of US President Barack Obama has dragged its feet, failing to produce needed documents or interview subjects, delaying a final report.
Then-US ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens was among those who died during the twin assaults nearly four years ago.
Cummings and Smith cite comments by retired army lieutentant general Dana Chipman, who served as chief counsel for Republicans on the Benghazi panel from August 2014 until January last year.
Chipman “repeatedly commended the military’s actions on the night of the attacks during closed interviews with Defense Department officials,” Cummings and Smith wrote.
Chipman, a former judge advocate general for the army, attended a closed-door interview with former US secretary of defense Leon Panetta on Jan. 8.
Cummings and Smith quote Chipman as telling Panetta: “I think you ordered exactly the right forces to move out and to head toward a position where they could reinforce what was occurring in Benghazi or Tripoli, or elsewhere in the region, and, sir, I don’t disagree with the actions you took, the recommendations you made and the decisions you directed.”
Chipman later told Panetta he was “worried” that US officials were caught by surprise during the raids.
Still, Chipman told Panetta: “Nothing could have affected what occurred in Benghazi,” Cummings and Smith wrote.
The letter from the Democrats comes after Gowdy sent a letter to US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter complaining that a top Pentagon official had intentionally mischaracterized the House inquiry.
Gowdy said comments by Stephen Hedger, assistant US secretary of defense for legislative affairs, were “riddled with factual inaccuracies” and did “a disservice to the public” and employees at the defense department.
Hedger, in an April 28 letter to Gowdy, expressed frustration with the Benghazi panel, citing a “crescendo” of costly, duplicative and unnecessary requests, including a few based on claims made on Facebook or talk radio.
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