Senator renews threat on nominees
Sen. Lindsey Graham on Sunday stood by his threat to block all nominations by the Obama administration until Congress is granted access to all of the survivors of the attack on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, Libya, even as the news report on which Republicans based their latest demands was retracted.
Graham, R-S.C., said on the CNN program State of the Union that he would not back away from his threat because he had been asking to talk to the witnesses of the attack on Sept. 11, 2012, for a long time without success.
“I’ve been trying for a year to get the interviews without holds, and you just can’t allow something this bad and this big of a national security failure for the administration to investigate itself,” he said.
On Sunday, Lara Logan appeared in front of the trademark black backdrop for
CBS’ 60 Minutes and issued an apology.
Logan said that Dylan Davies, one of the main sources for a 2-week-old story about the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, had misled the program’s staff when he gave an account of rushing to the compound the night the attack took place. “It was a mistake to include him in our report. For that, we are very sorry,” Logan said.
The apology lasted only 90 seconds and revealed nothing new about why CBS had trusted Davies, who appeared on the program under the pseudonym Morgan Jones.
After the earlier 60 Minutes report was broadcast, seeming to support claims that the mission was not adequately secured and that the attack was the result of a terrorist plot, some Republican senators renewed calls for the Obama administration to make survivors of the attack available to congressional investigators.
Graham vowed to hold up President Barack Obama’s nominations until the administration complied, citing the CBS News report to substantiate his demands.
Graham said he had not known of Davies until the 60 Minutes report came out.
When asked how many witnesses would satisfy his request — with one having already testified in a closed hearing with members of the House and another three former security officers set to testify next week, according to CNN — Graham said he wanted to question all five survivors, plus the CIA officials with knowledge of what happened in Benghazi. He estimated that the total would be no more than 30 people.
“The State Department has thus far refused to allow anybody in Congress to talk to these five,” he said. “And we’re going to talk to them because they possess the best information about what happened at Benghazi, more than you and I know, and I want to find out what they know.”
Graham said he didn’t want to delay nominees such as Janv et Yellen at the Fed and Jeh Johnson at the Department of Homeland Security.
“All I want to do is talk to the survivors, protecting their security, protecting their identity, to find out exactly what did happen. Was it a protest? Was it an al-Qaida-inspired attack?”
The attack has been the subject of anger among congressional Republicans, many of whom have accused the administration of failing to secure the diplomatic compound and of misleading the public about whether the attack arose spontaneously from a protest or from a terrorist effort planned in advance. State Department officials, including then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have testified before Congress, and an independent inquiry determined there were serious security failures.
Davies told CBS News that on the night of the attack he visited the hospital where he saw the body of J. Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador who was killed, as well as the compound, where he fought off an attacker.
But that version of events contradicted his account to the FBI, in which he said he did not arrive on the scene until the next morning, which matched the incident report completed by his security firm.
Conservatives contend that the Obama administration tried to mislead the American people in the heat of a presidential campaign by playing down a terrorist attack on Obama’s watch. Republicans have accused the administration of stonewalling their investigations.
The State Department has told Graham that it was concerned about congressional interviews with the survivors of the attack because of Justice Department advice that the survivors could be witnesses in a criminal trial and any interviews outside the criminal justice process could jeopardize a case.