The Benghazi committee’s dead end
After running a congressional oversight committee like a Republican opposition research shop for more than two years, Representative Trey Gowdy appears to be gearing up for the finale. Democrats on the Select Committee on Benghazi expect that a final report will drop soon, just as Hillary Clinton appears poised to clinch the Democratic nomination.
If things had gone his way, Mr. Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor, would have found a way to torpedo Mrs. Clinton’s presidential ambitions. After all, Republican lawmakers have admitted that this is precisely what they set out to do.
But things have not gone well for Mr. Gowdy, who has run the investigation with the dexterity and grace of a blindfolded toddler swinging at a piñata. Having pored over reams of documents, grilled Mrs. Clinton in an 11-hour session in October and hauled in more than 100 people for interviews, the Republicans seem to have come up with nothing.
In recent months, Republicans on the committee have pestered the Pentagon to track down potential witnesses who might have damning things to say about Washington’s response to the attack on American government facilities in Benghazi, in eastern Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012, when Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state. They include a man who identified himself as a military mechanic in an intriguing Facebook post, and “John from Iowa,” a person who claimed to
be a drone operator who had called into a right-wing radio talk show.
Stephen Hedger, the assistant secretary of defense for legislative affairs, complained to Mr. Gowdy in a letter in April about the “recent crescendo of requests.” The Pentagon, Mr. Hedger wrote, couldn’t find John from Iowa after expending “significant resources to locate anyone who might match the description of this person.”
The Benghazi committee, which was set up in May 2014, has been operational for longer than the 9/11 Commission was. It has dragged on longer than congressional investigations into the attack on Pearl Harbor, the assassination of President Kennedy, Watergate, the Iran-contra scandal, the 1983 bombing that killed 241 American service members in Beirut and the response to Hurricane Katrina.
The committee has spent nearly $7 million looking into an incident that had already been the subject of an independent investigation commissioned by the State Department and nine reports issued by seven other congressional committees. Those reviews faulted the federal government for failing to provide proper security for the American ambassador in Libya and three of his colleagues who were killed, but found no evidence of a cover-up or gross negligence by Mrs. Clinton.
Representative Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said the exercise showed Congress at its worst. “If you want a case study of why people are frustrated with government, this investigation is it,” said Mr. Cummings, who, along with a handful of Democrats, has remained on the committee to monitor what they regard as a partisan crusade. “They see all this effort, all this money, a budget that is endless, addressing issues that have already been addressed.”