Sen. Lindsey Graham has thrown down the gauntlet to President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: No administration nominees move in the Senate until the administration ends the cover-up of what happened at Benghazi and Congress is allowed to interview the five State Department employees who survived the attack. Their enforced silence since September 11, 2012, has been the biggest obstacle to learning the truth about why four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were murdered in an attack that Stevens warned the State Department appeared imminent. It is all but impossible to believe the administration’s claim that the five must be kept out of public forums because of an ongoing criminal investigation. That dodge is itself an abuse of the legal process.

As Graham explained Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” program, “oversight is important. I want to perform oversight, I’m not trying to prosecute a crime … I want to hear from the people who work for us, the American citizens in harm’s way. What did you feel like when you were told nobody was coming to help you, did you see a protest, did you report a protest, did you tell the FBI about a protest. And if they didn’t, did you see security concerns before the attack and if you did who did you report them to. Fourteen months after the attack, we haven’t heard from those who survived the attack. Congress has an independent duty to find out what happened.”