{"id":26444,"date":"2014-09-19T21:19:56","date_gmt":"2014-09-19T13:19:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=26444"},"modified":"2014-09-19T16:44:19","modified_gmt":"2014-09-19T08:44:19","slug":"1st-open-hearing-of-benghazi-select-committee-to-focus-on-steps-to-improve-us-embassy-security","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/09\/19\/1st-open-hearing-of-benghazi-select-committee-to-focus-on-steps-to-improve-us-embassy-security\/","title":{"rendered":"1st open hearing of Benghazi select committee to focus on steps to improve US embassy security"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"President<\/a>
President Barack Obama, with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, delivering a statement at the White House on September 12, 2012 in which he condemned the attack on the U.S. Consulate. Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

WASHINGTON\u2014A congressional committee on Benghazi gets its public debut Wednesday, two years after militants in the eastern Libyan city killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans, and four months after Republicans launched their special investigation.<\/p>\n

The House Select Committee is using its first open hearing to focus on what the Obama administration has done since the Sept. 11, 2012, attack to improve security at U.S. embassies and other diplomatic missions around the\u00a0world.\u00a0The State Department\u2019s chief of diplomatic security was to be the committee\u2019s first witness.<\/p>\n

It was unclear whether the big allegations that prompted the probe will be examined\u2014that U.S. forces were directed not to respond and that administration officials lied about the nature of the attack.<\/p>\n

Republicans have issued a range of accusations, from the military holding back assets that could have saved American lives to President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and others misleading the public about the attack as Americans prepared for a presidential election.<\/p>\n

Democrats deride the continued interest in Benghazi as a right-wing obsession designed to maintain talk of scandal and harm a potential Clinton bid for the presidency in 2016. It also comes less than two months before November midterm elections, when the two parties will battle for control of the Senate.<\/p>\n

On the surface, the hearing should be noncontroversial. It will centre on the State Department\u2019s implementation of an independent review board\u2019s recommendations to correct \u201csystemic failures\u201d that led to grossly inadequate security in Benghazi. The department endorsed the recommendations and there is little disagreement between congressional Democrats and Republicans about them.<\/p>\n

But on almost everything else related to Benghazi\u2014interpretations of what happened before, during and after the attack\u2014far greater partisan divide prevails.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is truly an effort to do fact-finding,\u201d Rep. Mike Pompeo, one of seven Republicans on the 12-member committee, said in a telephone interview, stressing the thoroughness of the investigation, not its urgency. \u201cMuch of the work we\u2019re going to do won\u2019t be in hearings like we\u2019re having this week.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Republican House Speaker John Boehner called for the select committee\u2019s establishment in May, he accused the Obama administration of \u201cobstructing the truth about Benghazi.\u201d The new body, Boehner vowed, will work \u201cquickly\u201d to get answers.<\/p>\n

Democrats on the panel are trying to pressure majority Republicans into providing a time frame and scope for the investigation. The initial budget is $3.3 million but no limits have been placed on what the select committee can look at or when the probe must finish.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t keep re-litigating the same issues over and over,\u201d Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff said at a\u00a0news\u00a0conference Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Democrats have created a website pulling together various Benghazi claims of Republican House and Senate members alongside the conclusions of past congressional investigations. Democratic Rep. Adam Smith said the goal was to prevent the select body from becoming \u201canother partisan witch hunt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the attention devoted to the Benghazi attack, the panel clearly was being overshadowed this week.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers, eager to return this week to campaigning for the Nov. 4 election in which control of Congress will be at stake, were racing to seal a spending bill that would avert a government shutdown and authorize Obama to train and arm moderate Syrian rebels to fight Islamic State militants in the Middle East.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON\u2014A congressional committee on Benghazi gets its public debut Wednesday, two years after militants in the eastern Libyan city killed …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":26461,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1482,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking","category-news-w","mauthors-bradley-klapper","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}