Ex-Clinton aide grilled for 9 hours in Benghazi panel

[Valin]

The Hill :

Julian Hattem

09/03/15

 

Former State Department official Cheryl Mills sat through nine hours of extended questions from the House committee investigating the 2012 terror attack in Benghazi, Libya, on Thursday. The closed-door, daylong deposition of the longtime Hillary Clinton aide was marked by “professionalism and respect,” Mills told reporters in brief remarks after the discussion had concluded. “Ms. Mills answered all of the committee’s questions,” Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said. “The dialogue was professional and fact-centric.”

 

Yet despite requests from both Mills and top committee Democrat Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.) to release a transcript of the deposition, the contents of the briefing won’t be made available for the public — at least for now. “The members of the Benghazi committee on our side are going to treat the conservation as if it were classified,” Gowdy said. Like transcripts of other interviews conducted by the panel, he added, intelligence and national security officials need to review the record of what was said, to make sure that nothing secret gets out.

 

“I’m not going to release something that in hindsight I say ‘Oops, I shouldn’t have released that,’ ” he told reporters. “I’d rather err on the side of y’all being upset with me that I’m not releasing it than err on the side of releasing it and then having to explain afterwards why I did it.” Cummings, meanwhile, repeated his request for Gowdy to release the text of the deposition as soon as possible. He has worried that continued secrecy allows for Republicans to selectively leak portions to the press out of context, in order to paint people in a negative light. “Hopefully soon the transcript will be given out to the public,” Cummings said. “I think that’s very important.”

 

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Related

 

Stephen Hayes retweeted

Benghazi Committee ‏

This Democrat has attended only one hour of one #Benghazi interview. The Committee has held more than 45.



9:23 AM - 4 Sep 2015

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Democrat Who Wants To Disband Benghazi Committee Has Attended Just One Of 45 Interviews
Chuck Ross

9/4/2015

 

A Democratic member of the House Select Committee on Benghazi is calling for an end to the investigative body, but Republicans are hitting back hard, pointing out that the lawmaker, Adam Schiff, has largely served “in absentia,” attending only one of 45 interviews the committee has conducted.

 

Schiff, from California, issued the call to disband the committee in a New York Times op-ed published on Friday. He claimed that the panel has lost sight of it purpose of investigating the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and is now focused only on taking down former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

 

“The committee is solely concerned with damaging her candidacy, searching for something, anything, that can be insinuated against her,” Schiff wrote in the op-ed.

 

But Republicans questioned how Schiff could make such a plea given that he’s rarely around to observe the committee’s work.

 

“It is interesting he made this call considering Mr. Schiff himself has only attended one of the more-than-45 interviews conducted to date by the Select Committee on Benghazi,” Jamal Ware, a spokesman for committee Republicans said in a statement on Friday.

 

“In fact, save for voting no to create the committee and then attending a press event on the now well-disproven Democrat talking point that all has been ‘asked and answered,’ Mr. Schiff has largely been a Member of the committee in absentia.”

 

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