Benghazi panel, acting with deliberation, might end near conventions or election
WASHINGTON — Gen. Carter F. Ham, who led the U.S. Africa Command on the night of the attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, has been interviewed at least nine times by investigators scrutinizing the events in 2012 that led to the deaths of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.
But more than two years after House Republicans created the Select Committee on Benghazi, Ham has yet to appear before that panel. He was finally supposed to do so Thursday, but Republicans suddenly postponed his session until June 8, citing scheduling conflicts.
Whether by diligence or design, the committee’s grindingly slow pace has put it on track to deliver a final report shortly before the presidential nominating conventions in July, or even as late as the weeks before the November election — both points at which it could inflict maximum political damage on Hillary Clinton, who has been a central focus of the investigation since its inception.
Even some Republicans say the sluggishness of the committee risks feeding its reputation as an exercise meant to harm Clinton’s campaign. It also illustrates how a committee created to get at the truth of a terrorist attack that killed four Americans has expanded in multiple directions but could fail to come up with significant new information.
“The sooner you got through the investigation, the better it would be to do the report,” said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., who is not on the committee. “I think the later it goes, the more politicized it seems.”
Political impact
Although Cole said he trusted Rep. Trey Gowdy, the South Carolina Republican who is chairman of the Select Committee, he offered some advice: “If you can’t get it done relatively soon, certainly don’t put it out the month before the election. That, to me, would discredit the hard work I know that committee has done.”
Gowdy blamed what he called repeated obstruction by the Obama administration for the slow pace, and said that he was trying to get the report out “before summer.”
On Thursday, Gowdy complained the Pentagon has failed to provide the names of all the pilots who sent drones over Libya the night of the deadly 2012 attacks.
Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook dismissed Gowdy’s criticism, saying the department provided the names of four drone pilots and four sensor operators working the day of the attacks.
Cook said the Pentagon has offered to make four pilots available for interviews as early as next week.
“My understanding is some of these people are not still in the service at this point, and one may even be deceased,” Cook said.
Gowdy and Republican staff members say the report will contain important revelations, a prediction Democrats dismiss as laughable. They point to the Select Committee’s eight-hour questioning of Clinton at a hearing in October, which even some conservative commentators derided as a waste of time.
In a statement, the senior Democrat on the panel, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, said he had no doubt about the Republicans’ true purpose.
“The Select Committee has been a taxpayerfunded attack against a presidential candidate by an opposing political party rather than an objective effort to seek the truth,” Cummings said.
Democrats have accused Republicans of wasting millions of dollars on the investigation, although independent assessments have found some of that criticism to be exaggerated.
Heart of the matter
The war of words escalated this week after Gowdy appeared on Fox and seemed to undercut a central allegation that Republicans have made about Benghazi: that the military could have done more that night to help the Americans who were under attack.
Aides to Gowdy insist his remark was not a departure from previous queries.
“Whether or not they could have gotten there in time, I don’t think there is any issue with respect to that,” Gowdy said in the Fox interview. “They couldn’t. The next question is, ‘Why could you not? Why were you not positioned to do it?’ ”
Republicans say those are among the questions they want to ask Ham, as well as the other Defense Department employees they have asked to testify.