Members of the House Select Committee on Benghazi interviewed an unnamed State Department witness Wednesday in a closed-door, transcribed session.
The witness, who worked on Libya policy at the agency, was the third interviewed by the committee since its highly-publicized hearing with Hillary Clinton on Oct. 22.
Lawmakers spoke with two other witnesses last week as the committee quietly continued its investigation into the events surrounding the 2012 terror attack in Benghazi.
One witness was from the Department of Defense, and the other was a member of the “national security community” within the federal government, the committee said. None were identified.
The interviews followed weeks of criticism from Democrats who accused Republicans on the panel of using their platform to damage Clinton’s presidential campaign.
But many viewed Clinton’s performance at the 11-hour hearing last month as a political victory after the former secretary of state glossed over questions about her private email use and detachment from the security situation in Libya.
That hearing raised a number of new issues, including internal emails that indicated Clinton knew immediately that the attack was perpetrated by terrorists and was not, as she later stated, the result of a spontaneous protest.
Even so, most observers conceded the interview helped Clinton kill speculation that her private emails could end her campaign.
Clinton attempted to conflate the hearing with an FBI investigation into her private email use Saturday during the second Democratic debate, when she joked that 11 hours of testimony should answer a question about whether the FBI probe will turn up any additional scandals.
However, the two are completely unrelated, and that investigation is reportedly expanding.
The select committee is set to interview more witnesses in the coming weeks, although an aide declined to specify when.
Lawmakers on the panel continue to struggle with their efforts to extract Benghazi-related documents from the State Department.
For example, the agency is still withholding a “small number” by claiming the records “implicate important Executive Branch institutional and confidentiality interests.”
A State Department spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on the status of those documents, which the committee is still seeking.
