The US House of Representatives’ Select Committee on Benghazi on Tuesday concluded their US$7 million, two-year investigation into the deadly attacks in Libya, with fresh accusations of lethal mistakes by US President Barack Obama’s administration, but no “smoking gun” pointing to wrongdoing by then-US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, now the Democrats’ presumptive presidential nominee.
After the long investigation, filled with partisan sniping by panel members, none of the new revelations highlighted by the committee in its 800-page report pointed specifically to Clinton’s actions before, during or after the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on the US diplomatic outpost and CIA annex in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi.
Four Americans, including then-US ambassador Ambassador Chris Stevens, died in the attacks. Allegations against Clinton were a main impetus behind the House Republicans’ creation of the politically charged, Watergate-style select committee. Clinton testified before the panel for nearly 11 hours last fall.
Photo: Reuters
While the panel’s Republican members took shots at Clinton on Tuesday, Republican Representative Trey Gowdy, the chairman, summed up the document by asking “the American people to read this report for themselves, look at the evidence we have collected and reach their own conclusions.”
In Denver, Colorado, Clinton dismissed the report as an echo of previous probes with no new discoveries.
“I think it’s pretty clear it’s time to move on,” she said during a campaign stop.
Hardly — especially in the heat of an election. Republican presumptive presidential candidate Donald Trump, although silent on the subject on Tuesday, has frequently lashed out at Clinton over Benghazi.
Nearly four years ago, the Libya attacks became immediate political fodder, given their timing in the weeks before Obama’s re-election, and that has not abated despite seven previous congressional investigations.
There has been finger-pointing on both sides over security at the US diplomatic outpost in Benghazi and whether Clinton and the White House initially tried to portray the assault as a protest over an offensive, anti-Muslim video, instead of a calculated terrorist attack.
Republican insistence that the investigation was not politically motivated was undermined last year when House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy suggested that the committee could take credit for Clinton’s then-slumping poll numbers.
His statements helped dash his chances of becoming House speaker.
The committee interviewed more than 100 witnesses and reviewed about 75,000 pages of documents, but an almost accidental discovery by the panel last year has shadowed Clinton’s candidacy. The committee disclosed that she had used a private e-mail server to conduct government business while serving as secretary of state, a practice that has drawn widespread scrutiny, including an FBI investigation.
Already bitterly partisan, Tuesday’s release of the report exposed divisions within Republican ranks.
Representatives Mike Pompeo and Jim Jordan issued a separate report slamming Clinton and the Obama administration, with Pompeo telling reporters that the former first lady and senator was “morally reprehensible.”
Clinton’s public comments casting the attack as a possible protest over the anti-Muslim video differed sharply from her private assessments to family members and diplomats, Jordan and Pompeo said.
However, Gowdy deflected questions about her, saying the report “is not about one person.”
The committee report severely criticizes the military, CIA and administration officials for their response as the attacks unfolded, and their subsequent explanations to the American people.
On the night of Sept. 11, a large group of men rushed into the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, firing guns and setting fires. Stevens and computer specialist Sean Smith were killed, despite taking cover in a safe room.
Hours later, before dawn, mortar fire hit the CIA roof nearby, killing security contractors Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.
The report found that Libyan military officers loyal to former leader Muammar Qaddafi, whom the US had helped depose, had taken part in rescuing the remaining Americans.
“Not a single wheel of a single US military asset had even turned toward Libya,” Gowdy said.
US military leaders told the committee they thought an evacuation was imminent, slowing any response.
The committee’s five Democrats denounced the Republicans’ report as “a conspiracy theory on steroids — bringing back long-debunked allegations with no credible evidence whatsoever.”
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