Democrats say a new House committee created to investigate the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya — set to hold its first public hearing Wednesday — is already falling short of expectations.
“More than four months after the House established the select committee, we still do not have a time-line for our work, we have not adopted committee rules and we have no investigative plan,” Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the panel’s senior Democrat, complained Tuesday.
“We’re not sure exactly where we’re going” with the committee.
The Republican-run House voted in May to create a special committee to investigate the Obama administration’s handling of the attacks that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. Senate Democrats blocked a similar effort in the upper chamber.
Most Democrats view the committee as nothing more than Republican grandstanding since five other House committees — most notably the Oversight and Government Reform Committee led by Rep. Darrell Issa of California — have already investigated the attacks.
“It looks at this point like just a fishing expedition,” said Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, one of five Democrats on the 12-member panel. “As Democrats, we always believed that there was no point in putting together this committee because the questions had been asked, the questions had been answered, people had been held to account and there had been a thorough analysis of what was undeniably … a tragedy for America.”
“We have looked at it and we don’t know where this committee is going.”
But Republicans say the committee, chaired by Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., is essential because Obama administration officials haven’t been forthcoming when previously called before Congress to explain what led to the 2012 attack.
“As Chairman Gowdy has said, he is willing to risk answering the same question twice rather than risk it not be answered at all,” said committee spokesman Jamal Ware. “Since all documents responsive to congressional inquiries into the Benghazi terrorist attack have not been produced, it is fair to say that not all questions have been asked and answered.”
One potential witness Republicans likely will be eager to re-question is former State Department official Raymond Maxwell, who recently told the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal that he saw an aide for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton destroying documents related to the attack.
The oversight committee had previously interviewed Maxwell, but he never mentioned anything about the incident, said Cummings.
“He was called by Chairman [Darrell] Issa as a witness and he never talked about this,” Cummings said. “He had plenty of opportunities to do it — he didn’t.”
“But keep in mind we have allegations seeming to come out every week.”
The administration originally said the assault on the diplomatic outpost in Benghazi was spontaneous and linked to protests earlier that day in Cairo against an American-made video denigrating Islam’s prophet Muhammad. But Republicans have said evidence suggests the administration knew it was a planned attack by an organized anti-American terrorist group.
Wednesday’s hearing will focus on the implementation of security recommendations made by the State Department’s Accountability Review Board that was set up to investigate the surroundings that led to the attacks.
The review board issued almost 30 recommendations in late 2012 after concluding that “systemic” State Department failures led to inadequate security at the diplomatic outpost in Benghazi.
The last special joint committee convened on Capitol Hill was 2011’s so-called supercommittee, which was set up to find ways to reduce the federal government’s ballooning deficit. Its failure trigged the automatic “sequester” spending cuts that began in early 2013.
