As noted several days ago, Representatives Issa (R-CA) and Chaffetz (R-UT) of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform sent a letter [.pdf] to Secretary of State Clinton on 2 October announcing their intent to hold hearings on 10 October regarding the Administration's management of the security situation in Benghazi, Libya over the months, days and hours leading up to the assault on the consulate and annex during which four Americans perished.
Secretary Clinton responded on 2 October [.pdf]:
I appreciate that you and your committee are deeply interested in finding out what happened leading up to and during the attacks in Benghazi, and are looking for ways to prevent it from happening again. I share that commitment. Nobody will hold thid Department more accountable than we hold ourselves – we served with Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty, and Tyrone Woods. As a former member of Congress, I know as well as anyone the vital role the Congress plays in this effort, and in asking the questions we all want answered.
As you know, I have established an Accountability Review Board (ARB) which will be led by Ambassador Thomas Pickering, and will include Admiral Michael Mullen, Catherine Bertini, Hugh Turner, and Richard Shinnick. The ARB begins its work this week. It is charged with determining whether our security systems and procedures in Benghazi were adequate, whether those systems and procedures were properly implemented, and any lessons that may be relevant to our work around the world. I intend to share the ARB's findings and our response with the Congress, and would encourage you to withhold any final conclusions about the Benghazi attack until you can review the ARB's findings.
The announced witnesses for these 10 October House hearings are Eric Nordstrom (Regional Security Officer, stationed in Libya from September 2011 to June 2012) and Charlene Lamb (Deputy Assistant Secretary of International Programs.) Two additional as-yet-unnamed witnesses are also expected to be called.
In the other camera, Senators Corker (R-TN) and Isakson (R-GA) of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee also wrote a letter to Secretary of State Clinton on 25 September requesting additional information regarding "the apparent lack of security preparations made despite a demonstrable increase in risks to U.S. officials and facilities in Benghazi in the period leading up to the attacks." Clinton responded in a letter dated 3 October [.pdf]:
As you know, I have estabilshed an Accountability Review Board (ARB), which will be led by Ambassador Thomas Pickering. The ARB begins its work this week. It is charged with determining whether our security systems and procedures in Benghazi were adequate, whether those systems and procedures were properly implemented, and any lessons that may be relevant to our work around the world. I intend to share the ARB's findings and our response with the Congress, and would encourage you to withhold any final conclusions about the Benghazi attack until you can review the ARB's findings.
Corker and Isakson replied to Clinton on 3 October [
.pdf]:
We appreciate your efforts to quickly establish the Accountability Review Board, but hope you will work with Congress on our investigations of the situation and attempts to collect information.
To that end, we hope that in the next few days you follow through with transmitting information requested by members of Congress. In particular, we renew our request for all communications between the diplomatic mission in Libya and the State Department related to the security situation to be transmitted to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee without delay.
I am only surprised that Corker and Isakson managed to restrain themselves from bolding "without delay."
Some thoughts, after the whazzit à l'orange...
I'll focus my commentary on two aspects of these upcoming hearings: the timing and the narration.
With respect to timing and partisan expediency, I personally do not doubt at all that Issa and Chaffetz are pressing the issue in the month leading up to the presidential election to manufacture a partisan spectacle through which they will attempt to frame the events in Benghazi as a "failure" of the Administration generally and the President specifically. I also believe that this spectacle is intended to influence the foreign-policy portions of the upcoming debates, both presidential and vice-presidential. In spite of both Issa's and Chaffetz' protestations to the contrary and their claims to be "just doing their jobs" (see, for instance, Issa on Out Front [2 October] and Chaffetz on Fox and Friends [3 October]) holding these hearings while Congress is in recess is unusual; and in spite of Issa's and Chaffetz' denials that these hearings are motivated by partisan interests, the manner in which Issa and Chaffetz seem to have maneuvered around Ranking Member Elijah Cummings (D-MD) indicates otherwise to me.
Indeed, my expectation is that these hearings will function as little more than a companion-piece to Romney's foreign-policy address on Monday 8 October. Armed with only a few factoids pending the results of the Accountability Review Board's inquiry, their purpose is solely to advance the Romney/Ryan narrative, a narrative shaped by the likes of Dan Senor (pulled from his tutelage of Paul Ryan on 12 September to assist Romney with "foreign policy developments"), John Bolton, Cofer Black, Richard Williamson et alii, a veritable Who's Who of lying, war-mongering, criminal shits.
Romney will, to the extent he is able, articulate his campaign's narrative that Benghazi represents a failure of both the Administration generally and the President personally in his address at VMI on Monday. The contours of that narrative have however already been drawn in a letter [.pdf] dated 25 September from eight House Republican Chairs (McKeon [R-CA], Ros-Lehtinen [R-FL], Rogers [R-MI], Smith [R-TX], Rogers [R-KY], Young [R-FL], Wolf [R-VA] and Granger [R-TX]) to President Obama:
[W]e are seeking additional information regarding the intelligence leading up to the attack, the security posture of our embassy, the role former Guantanamo Bay detainees may have played, as well as the way forward in Libya and, indeed, the region.
We are also disturbed by the public statements made by members of the Administration that would lead the American public to believe this attack was a protest gone wrong, rather than what it truly was – a terrorist attack on the United States on the anniversary of 9/11. Decades after al Qaeda attacked our embassies in East Africa, which catalyzed a series of events that led to the attacks on 9/11, it appears they executed a highly coordinated and well-planned attacked [sic] against us again. Clearly, the threat from al Qaeda and affiliated groups has metastasized; yet we do not appear to be learning from the past.
These, then, are the partisan talking points: the Administration ignored intelligence warnings; the Administration was indifferent to security concerns at the consulate; the Administration misled the public; the Administration's policies in Libya specifically and in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) generally are suspect; and the Administration is losing the War on Terror by returning to what is called elsewhere in the letter "a pre-9/11 mindset." It is a narrative in which the Administration's handling of Benghazi is but a lens onto more fundamental supposed "failures" of MENA and counter-terrorism policy, policy framed as not only naïve but also negligent, contributing directly to the deaths in Benghazi.
The Romney/Ryan campaign knows that they need a game-changer. Economic issues on which they might have been able to capitalize have eluded them, and there seems a dearth of angry old white guys, so their Hail Mary pass is a desperate attack on the Obama Administration's foreign policies. While I personally find that the Administration invoked "the film" in discussions of Benghazi for a few days longer than necessary, the Romney/Ryan/GOP narrative is complete horseshit. The cynical partisan exploitation of the deaths of four Americans, though unsurprising, nevertheless disgusts me.