House Speaker John Boehner wants a special Republican-led House committee tasked with investigating the Benghazi attacks to keep digging, despite another House panel debunking many conspiracies surrounding the 2012 incident.
The Ohioan, as expected, reappointed fellow Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina on Monday to lead the select committee to probe the Obama administration’s actions surrounding the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks in Benghazi, Libya, which claimed the lives of four American diplomats, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.
Boehner, who initially tabbed Gowdy to lead the panel shortly after it was created in May, said Gowdy should stay in the role when the new Congress begins in January because “the American people still have far too many questions about what happened that night — and why.”
“I look forward to the definitive report Chairman Gowdy and the select committee will present to the American people,” said Boehner in a brief prepared statement.
The Obama administration originally said the assault was spontaneous and linked to protests earlier that day in Cairo against an American-made video denigrating the prophet Muhammad. That explanation, repeated several times in the days after the attacks by Susan Rice, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was later disproved.
Many Republicans suggested the administration knew all along that the Benghazi attack was planned by an organized anti-American terrorist group but was reluctant to admit it for fear the truth would tarnish its anti-terrorism efforts in the region.
But a report by the GOP-lead House Intelligence Committee that was declassed Friday concluded that, while the U.S. officials ignored warnings of terrorist threats, administration appointees weren’t directly to blame.
The report said intelligence analysts, not political appointees, made wrong calls. And it didn’t conclude that Rice or any other government official acted in bad faith or intentionally misled Americans.
The investigators insist their probe into Defense Department, State Department and White House activities before, during and after the attacks was exhaustive and thorough — though they said their report doesn’t make final conclusions on the role of other agencies regarding the incident.
“We spent thousands of hours asking questions, poring over documents, reviewing intelligence assessments, reading cables and emails, and held a total of 20 committee events and hearings,” said Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., the committee’s chairman, and Rep. C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger of Maryland, the ranking Democrat, in a joint statement.
Democrats says the report shows that Gowdy’s committee, which has held only one hearing, is now largely redundant and unnecessary.
But a spokesman for Gowdy’s panel said it received the Rogers report months ago and suggested that, while helpful, it isn’t a definitive explanation of the events surrounding the attacks.
The special committee “has reviewed it along with other committee reports and materials as the investigation proceeds,” said spokesman Jamal Ware. “It will aid the select committee’s comprehensive investigation to determine the full facts of what happened in Benghazi, Libya, before, during and after the attack and contribute toward our final, definitive accounting of the attack on behalf of Congress.”
