The Pentagon responded Thursday to charges from House Benghazi Committee Chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., insisting it is fully cooperating with the committee’s requests, and is ready to make drone pilots available for interviews as soon as next week.
Gowdy complained earlier Thursday that the Defense Department has failed to provide Congress with a list of drone pilots who were active at the time of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.
Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said some names had been provided, and others would be soon.
But Gowdy says the Pentagon has been taking far too long to respond, essentially ignoring the committee’s requests for five weeks.
“Surely DOD can complete the simple task of finding the people within the chain of command in less than three months,” he said.
The Pentagon says it provided names of four drone pilots and four sensor operators last month, and that it is working to provide additional names.
Cook insisted there was no attempt to stall the committee’s work. “My understanding is some of these people are not still in the service at this point, and one may even be deceased,” he said. “We continue to work closely in trying to provide the information to the committee that they’ve requested. And we’ll continue to do so.”
Gowdy also protested that some of the information the committee has received from the Defense Department so far has been “flat out wrong.”
A May 6 letter he wrote to Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the department has changed its own timeline of how it responded to the attacks, and said a map showing how forces were arranged in the region had to be redone.
Gowdy has spent months accusing the State Department and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s camp of being slow to provide information about emails she sent at the time of the attack.
