House Oversight Committee Opens Hearing On Benghazi-Gate Tomorrow

The House Committee On Oversight and Government Reform will have a hearing on the Benghazi attack and possible cover-up tomorrow. 

The hearing will focus on “The Security Failures of Benghazi.” It will  include a review of attacks that took place before September 11, 2012 — attacks which should have provided the Obama administration with credible reasons for increasing security in Benghazi rather than cutting it.

Lt. Col. Andy Wood, whose 16-man security detail was pulled from Benghazi in August, will be a witness at the hearing. Wood arrived in Libya in February 2012, and he will tell the Oversight Committee there were 13 “attacks or threats” against U.S. officials between that time and his departure in August.

Woods says he worried about the safety of consulate personnel, but that the State Dept. brushed aside his concerns every time he made them known. 

Various State Dept. officials have denied this, but an email which  circulated inside the State Dept. on May 3, 2012, shows that the State Dept. denied a request for a DC-3 airplane to be left in Libya. That airplane would have allowed security personnel or consulate personnel to move more easily in the event of an emergency.

Oversight Committee member Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) said the hearing is being held to “consider the security situation in Benghazi leading up to the September 11 attack.” He said, “The attack that claimed the Ambassador’s life was the latest in a long line of attacks on Western diplomats and officials in Libya in the months leading up to September 11, 2012.”

Chaffetz added that the attack “was clearly never, as administration officials once insisted, the result of a popular protest.”

The hearing begins at 12 p.m. EST Wednesday, October 10.