Dems undecided on taking part in Benghazi panel
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WASHINGTON
(AP) -- The Obama administration and House Democrats said Monday they
were undecided about whether to take part in or boycott an election-year
investigation by Republicans into the Benghazi attack that killed four
Americans.
House Speaker John Boehner
announced last week he would create a select committee to examine the
response to the deadly Sept. 11, 2012, assault on the U.S. diplomatic
post in Libya that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other
Americans. Legislative aides said a vote to authorize the panel is
expected sometime this week. On Monday, Boehner said Rep. Trey Gowdy,
R-S.C., would head the investigation.
The
action puts President Barack Obama's team and House Democrats in a bind.
They are concerned about what they believe will be a partisan forum for
attacks on the president and his top aides ahead of crucial midterm
elections in November, which could swing the Senate to GOP control. But
avoiding the committee altogether means sacrificing the ability to
counter Republican claims.
White House press
secretary Jay Carney stressed Monday that the administration always
cooperates with "legitimate" congressional oversight - including sending
witnesses to hearings and providing bipartisan committees with
documents. He declined to characterize whether the Obama administration
would view a House select committee as legitimate or illegitimate. But
he said that what Republicans have said about the committee "certainly
casts doubt" about its legitimacy.
Carney also
suggested the select committee was unnecessary. "One thing this
Congress is not short on is investigations into what happened before,
during and after the attacks in Benghazi," he told reporters.
Boehner
and other Republicans accuse the administration of misleading the
American people after the attack to protect Obama in the final weeks of
his re-election campaign, and of stonewalling congressional
investigators ever since. They pointed to emails released only last week
as further evidence of White House wrongdoing.
Rep.
Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2-ranked Democrat, said he and his
colleagues would first have to see the specifics of Boehner's proposed
committee before making a decision on participating in or boycotting the
new probe. He said he and other party leaders would vote against
establishing the committee.
"This has been
seriously and thoroughly investigated," said Hoyer, citing 13 public
hearings on the Benghazi attack, 25,000 pages of documents handed over
and 50 separate briefings. "There was nothing the military could have
done in the time-frame available," he told reporters Monday. He said all
investigations thus far have produced "no smoking gun, no wrongdoing."
Republicans
have pointed a finger at one passage in particular among the 40 or so
emails obtained last week by the watchdog group Judicial Watch through a
Freedom of Information Act request. Three days after the attack, Ben
Rhodes, then the deputy national security adviser for strategic
communications at the White House, stressed the goal of underscoring
"that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader
policy failure."
The email was written the
Friday before then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice appeared on the Sunday
television news programs and explained the Benghazi attack as a protest
over a YouTube video that mocked the Islamic prophet Mohammed that was
hijacked by extremists. Administration officials later changed their
description of the attack and said references to a protest were
inaccurate.
Asked if Rhodes' email constituted
proof of administration wrongdoing, Hoyer said: "That's baloney." He
said the memo largely mirrored CIA language and joked that it must be
shocking that administration officials receive suggestions on what
they'll say before they appear on national news programs. "I was
astounded that any White House would do that," he said.
However,
Hoyer left open the small possibility of Democratic involvement in the
select panel. He said it "ought to be an equally balanced committee, so
that this is not an exercise in partisanship. We'll see whether that's
the case."
In 2005, most Democrats boycotted a
Republican-led select committee examining the Bush administration's
response to Hurricane Katrina. Democrats had sought an independent
investigation.
Establishment of the select
committee is almost a formality given the GOP's control of the House.
Democrats controlling the Senate have shown no interest in launching a
similar probe.
"With four of our countrymen
killed at the hands of terrorists, the American people want answers,
accountability and justice," Boehner said Monday in a statement.
He called Gowdy, a former prosecutor in his second term in Congress, "as dogged, focused and serious-minded as they come."
The committee will have "the strongest authority possible to root out all the facts," Boehner said.
Separately,
the State Department said Monday that Secretary of State John Kerry
would not appear before the House Oversight Committee on May 21 to talk
about Benghazi - as demanded in a subpoena from the panel's chairman,
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.
Department
spokeswoman Marie Harf said Kerry planned to travel to Mexico at that
time and officials would discuss alternative options with the committee.
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Associated Press writers Josh Lederman and Matthew Lee contributed to this report.
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Monday, May 5, 2014
Dems undecided on taking part in Benghazi panel
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