Benghazi Committee Report Uncovers Mistakes, But No Wrongdoing
As with each previous committee that investigated the 2012 attack on the U.S outpost in Benghazi, the House Select Committee finds that mistakes were made but no evidence of wrongdoing or cover-ups.
The House Select Committee investigating the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya that resulted in the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others released its final report today after more than two years of investigation and witness interviews that came to a head last October with the day-long questioning of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. For the most part, the report found the same things that all of the previous investigation of this matter have found, namely that while there were several mistakes made in connection with the attack, including apparent and puzzling failures by the Defense Department to carry out orders given by the President and the Secretary of Defense, there was no evidence of intentional wrongdoing or a cover-up, and nothing that appears to implicate Clinton herself in any such wrong doing. Indeed, the summaries of the more than 800 page report seem to substantiate what Clinton and the State Department have been saying about the events of that night in 2012:
WASHINGTON — Ending one of the longest, costliest and most bitterly partisan congressional investigations in history, the House Select Committee on Benghazi issued its final report on Tuesday, finding no new evidence of culpability or wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton in the 2012 attacks in Libya that left four Americans dead.
The 800-page report, however, included some new details about the night of the attacks, and the context in which it occurred, and it delivered a broad rebuke of government agencies like the Defense Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department — and the officials who led them — for failing to grasp the acute security risks in Benghazi, and especially for maintaining outposts in there that they could not protect.
The committee, led by Representative Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina, also harshly criticized an internal State Department investigation that it said had allowed officials like Mrs. Clinton, then the secretary of state, to effectively choose who would investigate their actions. In addition, it reiterated Republicans’ complaints that the Obama administration had sought to thwart the investigation by withholding witnesses and evidence.
The report, which includes perhaps the most exhaustive chronology to date of the attacks and their aftermath, did not dispute that United States military forces stationed in Europe could not have reached Benghazi in time to rescue the personnel who died — a central finding of previous inquiries.
Still, it issued stinging criticism of the overall delay in response and the lack of preparedness on the part of the government.
“The assets ultimately deployed by the Defense Department in response to the Benghazi attacks were not positioned to arrive before the final lethal attack,” the committee wrote. “The fact that this is true does not mitigate the question of why the world’s most powerful military was not positioned to respond.”
But the lack of any clear-cut finding of professional misconduct or dereliction of duty was certain to fuel further criticism of the length the investigation — more than two years — and the expense, estimated at more than $7 million, in addition to Democrats’ allegations that the inquiry was specifically intended to damage Mrs. Clinton’s presidential prospects.
(…)
The previous investigations had concluded that State Department officials had erred in not better securing the diplomatic compound amid reports of a deteriorating security situation. But the inquiries also determined that the attacks had come with little warning and that it would have been difficult to intervene once they had begun.
The investigations generally concluded that after the attack, the Obama administration’s talking points — a matter of much dispute — were flawed but not deliberately misleading.
On Sept. 11, 2012, Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and Sean Smith, a State Department information officer, were killed in an attack on the main American diplomatic compound in Benghazi by a mob of militia fighters who had been incited by an American-made video deriding the Prophet Muhammad. The fighters were apparently further inflamed by news of an assault on the American Embassy in Cairo.
Two other Americans, Tyrone S. Woods and Glen A. Doherty, who were contractors for the C.I.A., died later when a separate annex run by the agency came under mortar attack.
Previous investigations, including the internal inquiry by the State Department, found serious security gaps but also concluded that American forces could not have reached Benghazi in time to save the Americans, despite claims by some Republicans that Mrs. Clinton had ordered troops to “stand down.”
At the time the select committee was created, in addition to the State Department’s review, there had been at least seven other congressional inquiries into the Benghazi attacks. A House Intelligence Committee investigation, perhaps the most comprehensive until now, found that Obama administration officials had not intentionally misled the public with their talking points in the days after the attacks.
The release of the final report that will likely be approved by the Republican majority within a week or two came a day after the Democratic minority on the committee released its own report, which emphasized the fact that the committee had not found anything of substance about the attacks that had not been found by any of the previous reports and investigations and that it had not found any evidence of wrongdoing by Secretary Clinton specifically. Most prominently, though, the Democratic report repeats the allegations that Chairman Trey Gowdy had long been cutting Democratic Committee members out of the investigation process and accusing Committee Republicans of being more concerned with finding evidence of wrongdoing that would harm Hillary Clinton and the Democrats in the fall than uncovering the factors that led to the tragic loss of life in Benghazi and how such an event might be prevented in the future.
WASHINGTON — House Democrats on Monday moved to pre-empt the findings of a two-year Republican-led investigation into the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, in which four Americans were killed, by issuing their own 339-page report that cast the inquiry as a politically motivated crusade that wasted time and money.
The release of the Democrats’ report came amid signs that the House Select Committee on Benghazi, led by its chairman, Representative Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina, was nearing the release of its official findings.
In the face of intense criticism, Mr. Gowdy has repeatedly defended the committee’s work as the most comprehensive examination of the attacks in Benghazi, which occurred on Sept. 11, 2012, and resulted in the deaths of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens; a State Department official, Sean Smith; and two Central Intelligence Agency contractors, Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty.
In recent days, the committee has reiterated longstanding complaints about lack of cooperation with the investigation by the Obama administration, including a statement by Mr. Gowdy on Monday citing obstruction by the State Department. The committee has also cited the refusal by the White House to have President Obama respond to written questions.
“For nearly a year and a half, the State Department has withheld documents and information about Benghazi and Libya from the American people’s elected representatives in Congress,” Mr. Gowdy said in the statement. “Whatever the administration is hiding, its justifications for doing so are imaginary and appear to be invented for the sake of convenience. That’s not how complying with a congressional subpoena works, and it’s well past time the department stops stonewalling.”
In their counternarrative, the Democrats serving on the House Select Committee said they had been virtually shut out of the process of developing the report, and they accused their Republican counterparts of trying to besmirch Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, who was secretary of state during the Benghazi attack.
“Section II of our report documents the grave abuses that Select Committee Republicans engaged in during this investigation,” the Democrats wrote. “Republicans excluded Democrats from interviews, concealed exculpatory evidence, withheld interview transcripts, leaked inaccurate information, issued unilateral subpoenas, sent armed marshals to the home of a cooperative witness and even conducted political fund-raising by exploiting the deaths of four Americans.”
The Democrats also singled out Mr. Gowdy for criticism. “In our opinion, Chairman Gowdy has been conducting this investigation like an overzealous prosecutor desperately trying to land a front-page conviction rather than a neutral judge of facts seeking to improve the security of our diplomatic corps,” they wrote.
The Democrats’ report included praise for American personnel in Benghazi and Tripoli, the Libyan capital, saying they “conducted themselves with extraordinary courage and heroism,” and determined that the American personnel could not have saved the four who died.
The report includes some criticism: “The State Department’s security measures in Benghazi were woefully inadequate as a result of decisions made by officials in the Bureau of Diplomatic Security.” But it absolves Ms. Clinton of responsibility, adding, “Secretary Clinton never personally denied any requests for additional security in Benghazi.”
The Democrats accused the Republicans of spending more than $7 million on an investigation that they argued would not reveal any substantially new information that would alter the understanding of events as described in multiple previous inquiries.
The Republicans sharply dismissed the report, turning the main Democratic criticism around — saying that they were overly focused on Mrs. Clinton.
“Benghazi Committee Democrats’ obsession with the former secretary of state is on full display,” the committee’s press secretary, Matt Wolking, said in a statement, which also accused the Democrats of issuing “rehashed, partisan talking points defending their endorsed candidate for president.”
The majority report and its various addenda can be read online as can the Democrats’ report and while both reports are long, the summaries reviewed to date clearly indicate that we’ve learned nothing new from this investigation regarding the attack itself or Washington’s response to the attack notwithstanding another two years of investigation and tens of millions of dollars. In the nearly four years since the attacks, there have been numerous investigations about what happened that night in Benghazi, as well as the response before and after the attacks, as well as concerns involving the response of the Defense Department, the question of why there was no military response to the attack, and issues involving security at embassies and other diplomatic outposts. Prior to the time that the Select Committee was even formed, at least five separate Congressional committees have investigated the matter, including the House Intelligence Committee, and none of them have found any evidence of wrongdoing or impropriety. The questions regarding the Administration’s initial reliance on the claim that the attack was motivated by an obscure YouTube video now seems in retrospect to have been motivated largely by the CIA’s initial assessments in the days after the attacks, but the fact that the story was being spread in the midst of a highly partisan election led many to the conclusion that it was part of some kind of cover-up even though there is no evidence of the same. Despite all of that, though, Republicans on Capitol Hill were not satisfied with the investigations that had been conducted so far, and were certainly not satisfied with the answers Clinton had given in previous testimony. As a result, a Select Committee was formed in the House, and a new investigation was launched. Now, after two years we know that the Select Committee uncovered nothing new regarding any of the issues surrounding the attack, and the committee’s investigation is looking even more political than it seemed to be at the beginning.
From the start, the Select Committee was subject to the charges that the Committee’s investigation was more a politically motivated witch hunt aimed at damaging Hillary Clinton in advance of the 2016 elections than an objective search for the truth about what happened in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 and how the State Department responded both to the attack and the reports about threats to Americans in the city and elsewhere in Libya. Those charges, of course, were seemingly confirmed by the way that the investigation unfolded. From the start, the Committee seemed uninterested in conducting its investigation in an expeditious manner. This was seemingly confirmed when the committee made clear early on that a final report should not be expected before 2016, conveniently in the middle of the Presidential campaign. Additionally, the seeming partisan motivation behind the committee was acknowledged in comments by Majority Leaders Kevin McCarthy and New York Congressman Richard Hanna, both of whom had said that the committee’s purpose was primarily political rather than investigatory, comments which earned a rebuke from Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy. Indeed, in a poll taken just before the committee sat to question Hillary Clinton herself, CNN and ORC found that nearly three-quarters of Americans believed that the committee was largely a partisan political exercise rather than an objective search for the truth. The fact that this report doesn’t seem to tell us anything we didn’t already know adds weight to the allegations of partisanship, and seems likely to minimize whatever impact it may have on the race for President itself.
None of this is to say that the report didn’t find things that went wrong leading up to the attack and while it was unfolding. The fact that there apparently were no deploy-able military assets available that could have gotten to Benghazi in time to have an impact on the attack, for example, raises the question of why this was the case, especially given the fact that it has generally been common practice to increase security at U.S. outposts in the Middle East generally during the period around the anniversary of the September 11th attacks. It’s also still not entirely clear why the Benghazi outpost was kept open even as American allies such as Great Britain were closing their facilities in Benghazi due to the deteriorating security conditions there. Finally, there are a whole host of questions that go to the entire logic behind American policy in Libya dating back to the beginning of the civil war that led to the downfall of the Gaddafi regime and, especially, the decision to join France and Great Britain in aiding rebels of questionable motivation. The Select Committee’s report doesn’t touch on those issues, though, and doesn’t really make any recommendations for changes in policy that either could have prevented the attack or made it more likely that Ambassador Stevens and the three bodyguards would have survived the attack that night.
The big question, of course, is the impact that this report may have on the race for President. Honestly, given the fact that the majority of Americans seem to have written the committee off as a partisan political exercise, though, it seems as though it is unlikely to have much of an impact at all. Republicans will continue to believe that there is some unspecified cover-up of what happened on that September night in Benghazi and Democrats will emphasize the fact that, once again, an investigation has failed to reveal any nefarious actions by Secretary Clinton or anyone close to her. For most Americans, though, this will likely be filed away as just another partisan dispute that has no real impact on their lives. What perhaps does matter the most, though, is that a committee that was established with the obvious although unstated mission of uncovering something that would harm Hillary Clinton has once again come up short. To that extent, then, you can score this as a loss for House Republicans and another good day for Secretary Clinton.
At this point, any voter who really believes there was wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton should be voting against their Republican Representative anyway, for the pure incompetence of being unable to discover anything after 8 investigations. And any voter who does not believe there was wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton should be voting against their Republican Representative for taking a big pile of money and lighting it on fire. Genuine oversight is a valuable function of the House. But these jokers need to face consequences for this mess.
Totally OT, but a total howl. Doug, can you do a separate snippet on this? It’s hilarious.
Poor, poor, Jenos….made to be a Benghazi fool, again.
Seriously…why aren’t these people being taken to task for wasting taxpayer money like this?
And this from one of Trumps attorneys:
https://twitter.com/MichaelCohen212/status/747747571045642240/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Stay classy Republicans….
@grumpy realist: I wish they would try to donate in the hopes that the donations are accepted. Isn’t it illegal to take foreign donations for a presidential campaign?
The committee obviously didn’t ask those Townhall commenters about the stand down order.
@grumpy realist: Those solicitations themselves are already unlawful according to the FEC website:
” It is also unlawful to help foreign nationals violate that ban or to solicit, receive or accept contributions or donations from them. ”
The Trumpster needs to be called out for his illegal behavior!
Something that many people still don’t understand, even at this late date: the attackers were motivated by the video. Link, link, link.
@grumpy realist: Wouldn’t it be great if a reporter actually had the courage to ask Trump if this was the result of incompetence or malfeasance by his campaign? There really is no third option.
RIP Sean Smith, aka Kurgen, aka Vile Rat.
I hate the fact shameless opportunists are using your violent death for mere worldly gain.
@grumpy realist: Setting aside the fact that it’s illegal, how does that even happen? There is some serious cross-contamination of your email files if your campaign is sending fundraising letters to UK MPs.
The incompetence of Trump’s campaign is astonishing.
And now this:
Two Republicans on the House Benghazi Committee have released a supplement to the panel’s final report because they felt that Chairman Trey Gowdy’s effort did not sufficiently criticize the Obama Administration’s handling of the attacks.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/blogs/benghazi-report-findings-2016/2016/06/benghazi-report-ciritical-addendum-224871#ixzz4Cunf5t5O
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In a sane world, these two jackoffs would be voted out based on this alone. But in a sane world, the modern day GOP would have no power.
How’s that working out?
So now we know what the next 4-8 years will be like…the Republicans acting like Wile E. Coyote and another President Clinton acting like the Road Runner…
@Gavrilo: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-captured-benghazi-suspect-in-secret-raid/2014/06/17/7ef8746e-f5cf-11e3-a3a5-42be35962a52_story.html
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-19617175
Quite well actually. 10 seconds with google and you would of answered your own question easily.
@Jen: I almost agree with the suggestion that the clowns mixed up the email list with that of one of U. of Kentucky alums….
@Matt:
Right! That dude must have been John Rambo to kill four guys and do all that damage.
@Gavrilo: Wow, dude! You want us to round us everyone who was within gunshot of the embassy that night? Did you ever just for once try to have a rational thought?
How were they unable to drag this out through the election?
The Republicans really are incompetent. Leak something in October about Clinton saying we need to “cut our losses” and “they aren’t worth it” and then refuse to answer questions about classified data.
How hard is that?
So completely incompetent.
@Gavrilo: Reading must be very difficult for you. They arrested the leader of the militia involved AND 50 other people involved…
Also the locals raided the militia shortly after the attack.
If anyone was offended by my earlier intemperate remarks regarding Benghazi, and Libya in general. As we have seen in the case of Hillary’s e-mail server and several other cases, she did not commit any crimes or any other malfeasances, despite the allegations made against her (and the rest of the Obama administration). The report makes clear that she was merely grossly incompetent, and worked tirelessly to stonewall and lie after the fact to cover up her incompetence. There was no malice aforethought, mere complete ineptitude.
Trump who? And where’s my checkbook? We MUST make this woman our next president, so she can find new and exciting ways to demonstrate how incompetent she is, and to what lengths she will go to in order to attempt to cover it up!
@Jenos Idanian: Shorter Jenos: Now that even congressional Republicans admit that everything I’ve said about Benghazi was a lie, I will spin my way to victory!
@wr: If you don’t like my summation, feel free to refute it. Please, your flailing attempts to spin the facts might have the slightest amusement value.
I’m still enjoying the Washington Post’s defense of Hillary on her e-mail server, and seeing how “willful misjudgment” also applies here. The oxymoronic nature of “deliberately chose to make an unintended mistake” is just delightful.
And this has been yet another textbook example of how to handle a scandal Clinton style: lie, stonewall, lie, stonewall, lie, stonewall, repeat for several years, then say “that’s old news, and it’s all been investigated and answered.” It does require the assistance of a lapdog media, but it always works for the lickspittles.
@Jenos Idanian:
You just completely lack the balls that it takes to admit that you were dead wrong, and that 9 investigations have proven you to be dead wrong.
Kind of interesting, really. I’ve never heard of anyone who was actually, you know, a eunuch.
@jukeboxgrad:
Correct. Why you Americans have to be so utterly stupid about this rather escapes me.
No mate, not obscure when this happened, there were protests – oft violent – all around the region at this very moment about the video. I personally witnessed some.
The down playing of the video is simply party-political nonsense.
With such a weak opposition, one would think that Republicans would have no problem destroying the Clintons…that they haven’t really even been able to lay a glove on them speaks volumes about your fellow travelers’ bungling pathetic incompetence…
@Matt:
From your link:
Of course, even that turned out to be bullshit. The Libyan government did not cooperate at all. Abu Khattala lived free and clear for years, even though he was under U.S. indictment. He probably still would be, but he kept sitting down for interviews with CNN and The New York Times.
@Jenos Idanian:
Yet, what this story underscores (as does your response) is that attempts at refutation are pointless, as your response is always to move the goalposts.
@wr:
What else can he do? He’s a Republican.
@Jenos Idanian: Click.
@Jenos Idanian:
I guess you don’t realize that your constant references to “amusement value” make you sound like an unloved 15 year old. Perhaps you are an unloved 15 year old. It would explain a lot about you.
@Jenos Idanian:
And ….
Translation: “apparently Hillary Clinton outsmarted the mental midgets that are the Republican leadership and committee members who conducted 8 investigations into her role in the tragic events at Benghazi.”
@Steven L. Taylor: When the fixation turns from the actual topic at hand to “let’s gang up on Jenos and see if we can make him shut up,” I get seriously bored. And that’s what’s happening here — the report in question points out all the incredibly effed-up things Hillary et al did about Benghazi (including arguing whether or not a Marine rescue team should be in or out of uniform, making them change four times before they could depart), but instead I become the focus of attention.
Another point in Hillary’s “favor:” the first locals to offer help weren’t her beloved rebels who she supported so strongly, but the first (and only) forces to show up to help the Americans were Kaddafy loyalists.
That’s Hillary for you, folks. That’s YOUR candidate. I realize you desperately need something to talk about to avoid admitting what an incredibly incompetent, corrupt, petty, vindictive, and short-tempered person you want to put in the White House, but if ganging up on me is the best you can do, that’s really, really, really pathetic.
I see that the Conservative Victimhood Tour has returned…
@Jenos Idanian:
Funny, the article you linked to does not even mention Hllary – at all. If you have to make shit up to support your argument, you don’t have much of an argument.
@Jenos Idanian:
You become the focus of attention because you link to a piece you say says Clinton made these guys change four times…when it doesn’t say that at all. In addition you cherry pick a quote from a partisan report that is obviously political in nature…and we’ve known it was going to be political in nature since October of 2015 when House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy admitted it was.
When you have to make shit up…then you should get called on your BS.
Stop playing the whiny victim, and try telling the truth for once.
At the bare minimum you need to admit you were dead wrong.
@C. Clavin: I just want him to say whether he thinks Hillary did nothing during the attacks (the right wing’s outrage about Hillary before now) or if she instead spent hours micromanaging military dress codes (the current outrage). I guess we don’t really have to bother with such details, since whatever Hillary was doing, it surely was an outrage.
That kook in the photo – was he ever identified? What was he doing there ?
How about the trial ? It is high time they got that train rollin’ !
They owe it to the victims’ families.
ITs is amazing that you can write such crap as “no wrongdoing”.
the committee flushed out the fact that the zero and the crook lied to the people of the USA about a protest and video. Flushed out her illegal sever and you lap dogs just pant away like nothing happened, you just keep barking away they did nothing wrong. And we see this same thing play out after Orlando. With this disgraceful administration trotting out lies about why Muslims kill infidels right down to sending out the AG on Sunday talk shows to explaining why they redacted the 911 tapes.
ITS amazing that you don’t see the similarity of the two events.
Junkie glad to see you crawled out from under your rock to link yourself.
they attacked because….
….
Khattala was raised in Benghazi. You must think we arrested the wrong guy.
I have corrected you on this nonsense multiple times, since a long time ago, including here. Multiple sources indicate that there wasn’t much planning.
I link to my own comments when those comments lead to serious sources. If you were an honest person you would not imply that I linked only to my own words. I didn’t do that.
First Junkie those are direct block quotes out of Matt’s helpfully linked article.
You have not corrected anything, you have lied and defended zero and the crook like you are paid to do so. YOU have claimed multiple times that there was a protest and blamed the video. YOU were proven wrong. Then YOU now claim to know the motivations of people you haven’t met? Muslims kill the infidel because their corrupt and blood soaked “holy” books indoctrinates them and directs them to kill the kafir where ever they may find them.
What was the killer’s MO for Orlando? YOU are the genius please enlighten the Lap Dogs they are patiently waiting to know…