GOP Benghazi report blasts Obama administration

WASHINGTON—Critical details surrounding the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya, will remain a mystery even after today’s final report, according to two Republican members of the select committee.

A day after panel Democrats released their version of events, Republicans on the House Select Committee on Benghazi will release their final report on what happened before, during, and after the attacks that killed four Americans. Committee Chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., will hold a press conference to discuss the GOP findings at 10 a.m. today on Capitol Hill.

According to advance excerpts reviewed by WORLD, the committee learned significant new facts about events surrounding the attacks, but details about the White House response remain unclear. Republicans say the Obama administration did not cooperate with the investigation, leaving them without an account of what the president did that night.

“While the investigation uncovered new information, we nonetheless end the committee’s investigation without many of the facts, especially those involving the president and the White House,” Reps. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., wrote in “additional views” attached to the full report. “The committee ended its work without having spoken to anyone in the White House Situation Room that night.”

In the weeks leading up to the attacks, the security situation had deteriorated so much, according to the testimony of one State Department agent, it was essentially a “suicide mission” where “there was a very good chance that everyone was going to die.” The agent referred to a response from Washington that said: “Everybody back here in D.C. knows that people are going to die in Benghazi, and nobody cares and nobody is going to care until somebody does die.”

When the initial attack began at the State Department compound, Jordan and Pompeo say officials in Washington knew in “almost real time” that it was a terrorist event, but the administration worried about putting at risk an election that was then only 56 days away.

Documents obtained by the committee show administration officials fretting about possible political implications on the evening of Sept. 11, 2012—even before a mortar attack killed Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty at the CIA annex.

In the intervening seven hours, the Obama administration “never set in motion a plan to go to Benghazi,” Jordan and Pompeo wrote. “It is one thing to try and fail; it is yet another not to try at all.”

In the aftermath of the attack, the administration pinned blame on an obscure YouTube video that insulted Islam—in conversations with victims’ families and in five infamous Sunday talk show appearances by then-Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice. In their analysis, committee Democrats maintained that was a logical conclusion, citing initial evidence of confusion, possible protestors, and bad intelligence reports.

But Republicans point to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s internal emails and, among other things, a State Department press officer at the embassy in Tripoli, Libya, who on Sept. 14 wrote: “It is becoming increasingly clear that the series of events in Benghazi was much more terrorist attack than a protest which escalated into violence. It is our opinion that in our messaging, we want to distinguish, not conflate, the events in other countries with this well-planned attack by militant extremists.”

Now almost four years later, the U.S. has captured only one attacker, Jordan and Pompeo noted. According to Department of Justice charges brought against the suspect, the attack was “willful, deliberate, malicious, and premeditated—a coordinated assault aimed at killing or kidnapping America’s ambassador.” The criminal indictment against Ahmed Salim Faraj Abu Khatallah makes no mention of the much-maligned YouTube video.

Today’s full report will conclude more than two years of work for the controversial committee, which Congress (including seven Democrats) voted to create in May 2014.

On Monday, the panel’s five Democrats accused Republicans of wasting time and money on the lengthy investigation. They cited private March testimony from David Petraeus, director of the CIA at the time of the attacks, who indicated a definitive version of events may not even be possible: “I am not sure that the amount of scrutiny spent on this has been in the least bit worth it.”

Frequent spats over getting documents from the State Department and other agencies marred the committee’s work over the last two years. On Sunday, Politico reported that Neil Eggleston, counsel to the president, chastised the committee for sending the White House a list of written questions about the Benghazi attacks.

“If the president were to answer your questions, his response would suggest that Congress has the unilateral power to demand answers from the president about his official acts,” Eggleston wrote to Gowdy.

Among other things, Gowdy asked if President Barack Obama ever authorized undercover operations to provide weapons to Libyan rebels; if he ever personally viewed the video footage of the attack on the special mission compound; and when he learned the identities of terrorists who carried out the attacks.

Gowdy, a former prosecutor, blasted the Obama administration on Monday for its lack of cooperation: “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.”