POLITICS
Updated May 8, 2013, 1:15 p.m. ET
By SIOBHAN HUGHES
WASHINGTON—House Republicans and Democrats clashed Wednesday at a congressional hearing featuring three State Department officials, who are testifying about what happened before, during and after the fatal attacks last year on a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya.
Associated Press
Eric Nordstrom, the former chief security officer for the American diplomatic outpost in Libya, answera questions in October 2012.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) opened the hearing by complaining that the Obama administration had ignored congressional inquiries—a claim top State Department officials have flatly said is wrong. He also said that the two men who headed an independent board that reviewed what went wrong in Benghazi had declined to testify.
Rep. Elijah Cummings (D., Md.), the committee's top Democrat, challenged an impression left by Republicans that a military team could have gotten to Benghazi before the second attack on the consulate compound, and that the second attack might have been stopped if a fighter jet had been sent.
"Our committee has a fundamental obligation to conduct responsible oversight," Mr. Cummings said. "What we have seen over the past two weeks is a full-scale media campaign that is not designed to investigate what happened in a responsible and bipartisan way, but rather a launch of unfounded accusations to smear public officials."
More Covearge
WATCH: Live stream of the hearing
Gregory Hicks' Testimony: How the Benghazi Attack Unfolded
Testimony: Thompson | Hicks | Nordstrom
State Department report
Senate report from US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
Text of the House GOP report
Earlier
GOP Report Slams Obama Administration on Benghazi (4/23/2013)
Senate Report Widens Fault for Benghazi Failures (12/30/2012)
Four at State Department Removed After Libya Report (12/19/12)
State Department Faulted in Libya Attack(12/19/12)
Mark Thompson, the deputy coordinator for operations at the State Department, said he was at his desk when the first reports arrived indicating an attack in Benghazi. He said he decided that the U.S. needed to activate a group called the Foreign Emergency Support Team, and notified the White House, but was told that meetings had already taken place that determined the team wasn't "in the menu of options."
Mr. Thompson said he thought that it was important to "act now" because "you don't know what's going to happen in two hours."
The State Department has said that the team, based in the U.S., wouldn't have arrived in Libya in time to make any difference. Daniel Benjamin, the head of counterterrorism at the time of the September attacks, has said that the question of whether to deploy the team was posed early, and the State Department made the correct decision against sending it.
Gregory Hicks, the former deputy chief of mission in Libya, began his testimony with a chronology of the attacks from his viewpoint. Last month, he told congressional investigators that the U.S. might have prevented a second attack that killed two Central Intelligence Agency contractors if the military had been able to get a fighter jet to Benghazi as soon as possible, according to a partial transcript of an April interview released by House Republicans.
The Pentagon has repeatedly said that planes couldn't have arrived in time. A State Department Accountability Review Board report released in December found that "there simply was not enough time for armed U.S. military assets to have made a difference."
A third witness, Eric Nordstrom, the former chief security officer for the American diplomatic outpost in Libya, said in prepared testimony that the Benghazi compound failed to meet security standards, even though it faced some of the gravest security threats. In his prepared testimony, he also asked why a review board investigating the attacks didn't expand its probe to cover decisions made higher up the chain of command.
Democrats see the hearing as a politically motivated effort to keep alive an eight-month-old story and drag in former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a possible 2016 Democratic presidential contender.
A State Department official said Tuesday that the department already has a "tough assessment" from an Accountability Review Board convened by Mrs. Clinton. The board faulted a "lack of proactive senior leadership" for security arrangements in Benghazi and said physical security was "profoundly weak."
Republicans are convinced that more digging will show that the Obama administration put politics before security in Benghazi. Republicans say that they themselves aren't motivated by politics but by a desire to seek justice for U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the three other Americans killed in the attacks. They included an information officer and the two CIA contractors.
The hearing is a prelude to at least two more that Republicans hope to use to keep a spotlight on the attacks.
Mr. Nordstrom, who was in charge of security in Libya until shortly before the attacks, said in prepared testimony that the review board's process seemed professional but left some things unexamined.
Mr. Nordstrom, according to this prepared remarks, also said that he told officials in February 2012 that he wouldn't support occupancy of the diplomatic compound in Benghazi until security upgrades had been completed. He will say that senior State Department decision makers "determined that funding would not be provided," and will ask who waived requirements that embassy facilities meet security standards.
Real-time Washington News and Insight
Witness Hicks: How the Benghazi Attack Unfolded
Gregory Hicks, the former deputy chief of mission in Libya, on Wednesday testified to a House committee about the night of the attacks at the Benghazi facility and how the U.S. reacted. Here is a partial transcript.
Who's Who: The Benghazi Hearing Witnesses
Seib & Wessel: What We're Reading Wednesday
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