National Security House Republicans issue report on Benghazi attacks but find no new evidence of wrongdoing by Clinton

Benghazi report finds no new evidence of wrongdoing by Clinton

The final House report’s overall narrative did not substantively differ from previous investigations and numerous news accounts over the years.

The Republican majority that investigated the 2012 attacks in Libya found fault with virtually every element of the executive branch response. www.washingtonpost.com

• By Karen DeYoung
  National Security

  House Republicans issue report on Benghazi attacks but find no new evidence of wrongdoing by Clinton
  
  House Benghazi Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) participates in a Capitol Hill news conference with fellow committee Republicans after the release of their report on Tuesday. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

  By Karen DeYoung June 28 at 1:50 PM

  A final report issued by the Republican majority that investigated the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, found fault with virtually every element of the executive branch response to the attacks but provided no new evidence of specific wrongdoing by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
  A committee news release said the report “fundamentally changes the public’s understanding of the 2012 terrorist attacks that killed four Americans,” including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens.
  But while it contains voluminous additional details of what happened before, during and after the attacks on State Department and CIA compounds in Benghazi, the report’s overall narrative does not substantively differ from previous investigations and numerous news accounts over the years.
  Release of the report Tuesday, the day after minority Democrats on the House Select Committee on Benghazi separately published their own conclusions, is likely to draw additional criticism over the $7 million price tag for the two-year investigation.
  Democrats called the inquiry a witch hunt, designed and dragged out by the GOP to coincide with and undermine Clinton’s presidential campaign.
  House Republicans released their report on the attack on the 2012 U.S. consulate in Benghazi on June 28. Here are the 5 most serious accusations in the report. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)
  

  But Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), who charged the Obama administration with delaying the committee’s work by the slow release of documents and other information, said he had “promised to conduct this investigation in a manner worthy of the American people’s respect, and worthy of the memory of those who died. That is exactly what my colleagues and I have done,” he said in a statement accompanying the report.
  “I simply ask the American people to read this report for themselves, look at the evidence we have collected, and reach their own conclusions,” Gowdy said.
  Clinton, at a campaign event in Denver, said the committee had “found nothing, nothing, to contradict” the findings of an independent accountability board or previous inquiries.
  “So while this unfortunately took on a partisan tinge, I want us to stay focused on what I’ve always wanted us to stay focused on, which is the work of diplomacy and development,” she said.
  “I’ll leave it to others to characterize this report but I think it’s pretty clear it’s time to move on,” she added.
  Unlike other congressional investigations, the majority report does not list specific conclusions. Instead, as Gowdy said, its more than 800 pages tell a story, via documents and witness testimony, divided into several discrete parts — a timeline of the attacks, internal and public government communications about the attacks, and the events that led up to them. Separate sections criticize administration compliance with the investigation and offer recommendations for the future.
  Twelve annexes include summaries of historical information surrounding the Benghazi diplomatic facility and witness statements. It also includes a June 7 letter from Gowdy to White House Counsel W. Neil Eggleston posing 15 questions to President Obama.
  
  What the aftermath of the Benghazi attacks looked like

  

  View Photos

  In September 2012, a U.S. diplomatic compound and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya, were attacked, killing four Americans
  The questions largely ask what Obama knew and when he knew it regarding the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letter.
  Two of the majority members who were most critical of the administration during committee hearings, Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.), appended their own commentary to the report, with more sharply written charges that the administration — and Clinton in particular — failed to protect the diplomatic facility, failed to adequately respond to the attacks, misled the public about Benghazi and did not cooperate with the investigation.
  The report repeats, with additional detail, accounts of Clinton’s strong advocacy for the 2011 U.S. attacks on Libya that led to the overthrow and death of ruler Moammar Gaddafi, which led to instability there. As the administration spent the subsequent year trying to support a makeshift Libyan government, it notes that numerous internal State Department reports described the temporary Benghazi facility as insecure. Stevens and others had recommended it be established as a permanent consulate, in advance of what it says was a planned Clinton trip to Libya in October 2012.
  It recounts, in more detail than previous reports, the fluctuating internal and official versions of the motivation of the attackers — which both the CIA and Clinton variously attributed to a protest against an anti-Muslim video posted on YouTube, to the planned terrorist attack that ultimately proved to be true.
  But for the most part, it describes what it says Clinton should have known and should have done, without pinpointing specific culpability for widespread systemic failures across the government.
  The report reserves most of its sharpest criticism for the Defense Department — which failed to launch a rescue attempt for the diplomats and CIA employees — while not disputing Pentagon statements that such aid would not have arrived in time to save the lives of Stevens and State Department communications specialist Sean Smith at the diplomatic compound, or CIA security contractors Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods at the CIA compound.
  
  Checkpoint newsletter

  Military, defense and security at home and abroad.
  “Nothing could have reached Benghazi because nothing was ever headed to Benghazi,” Gowdy said Tuesday. “Not a single wheel of a single U.S. military asset had even turned toward Libya.”
  He rebuked the military and leaders in Washington for failing to make convincing moves to rush assistance to Benghazi once they knew it was under attack – even if it would have been difficult for that help to arrive in time.
  “Washington had access to real-time information,” Gowdy continued, “but that real-time information did not inform and instruct the actions” that were being taken.
  
  Anne Gearan and Karoun Demirjian contributed to this report.
  
  copy  https://www.washingtonpost.com/