Members of the House Select Committee on Benghazi are preparing to interview Gen. David Petraeus, former head of the Central Intelligence Agency, in a closed-door session Wednesday afternoon.
The high-profile interview will mark the first the panel has conducted in the new year, although there are two additional interviews scheduled for later this week.
Committee Democrats sent out a fact sheet hours before the Petraeus interview noting the Benghazi investigation has officially outlasted the 9/11 Commission.
“The Select Committee’s investigation of the Benghazi attacks has been widely condemned as hyper-partisan and ineffective, and it stands in stark contrast to the bipartisan investigation and report issued by the 9/11 Commission,” Rep. Elijah Cummings, the panel’s top Democrat, said in a statement Wednesday morning highlighting the “major milestone” of surpassing the bipartisan 9/11 investigation in duration.
Matt Wolking, spokesman for committee Republicans, noted earlier this week that the panel has interviewed 64 witnesses so far, including 53 who had never spoken to other congressional committees that have investigated Benghazi.
“It also obtained and reviewed roughly 100,000 pages of documents from various departments and agencies, most of them never before seen by a congressional committee,” Wolking said Monday. “While we are still waiting to receive crucial documents from the State Department and the CIA, and still waiting for important witnesses to be made available, the committee is diligently working to complete its thorough, fact-centered investigation and release a report with recommendations within the next few months.”
The select committee is set to interview Charlene Lamb, former deputy assistant secretary of state for international programs for diplomatic security, on Thursday and former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Friday.
Lamb, who resigned in late 2012, was blasted by congressional Republicans for ignoring requests for more security from State Department personnel on the ground in Libya.
The Benghazi committee will also interview Jeremy Bash, former chief of staff at the U.S. Department of Defense, on Jan. 13.
Bash authored an email the night of the 2012 terror attack that has since sparked controversy, given that the message to State Department and Pentagon staff indicated the Defense Department had forces ready to intervene in the raid that ultimately claimed four American lives.
