Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the GOP's select committee on Benghazi
With the House GOP Benghazi committee holding its first public hearing on Wednesday, it's only natural to assume that the event will devolve into a tinfoil spectacle aimed at pleasing the right's most wild-eyed conspiracy theorists. Writing for
Mother Jones, however, David Corn
reports that at least on paper that isn't supposed to happen:
Instead, the committee will examine the State Department's implementation of the recommendations made by the Accountability Review Board, an independent outfit that investigated the attack and in late 2012 issued proposals for improving security for American diplomats and US diplomatic facilities overseas. And the idea for this first hearing came from…a Democrat.
As Corn says, this actually could be a worthwhile hearing topic—but it's certainly not the kind of hearing you need a special select committee to hold. Without the conspiracy theories that keep the Benghazi story alive, the House never would have voted to create the committee in the first place. And if the only thing they do is examine relatively mundane questions about how the administration handled the aftermath of the ARB report, they will have effectively conceded that there was never a good reason to create the committee.
So what's going on, then? Well, as Corn also notes, it turns out the committee chairman Trey Gowdy of South Carolina has been pretty clear about his strategy:
I know I'm biased, but one of the good parts about running an investigation in a way that appears to be serious-minded is that witnesses who were previously unavailable or not interested in cooperating are now interested in cooperating. The universe of witnesses is expanding.
Note that Gowdy didn't say he was interested in running a fair or serious hearing. It's that he said he wants to run the committee in a way that
appears to be serious-minded. Why? Because he thinks that's the best way to get witnesses to divulge the secrets behind the conspiracy that Republicans all know took place. The only thing their theories lack is evidence, and Gowdy's pitch to conservatives (and perhaps himself), is that pretending to be serious is the best way to get somebody to spill the beans. So while it may be the case that this latest hearing is a relatively boring affair, don't make the mistake of assuming that the GOP has given up on Benghazi. In fact, the more "serious-minded" that they "appear" to be, the bigger the circus will be when they finally pitch their tent.