House and Senate Committees to Hold Hearing on Benghazi Attack, Next Week – Top Obama Intelligence Officials to Testify (Video)

The House Foreign Affairs Committee, and the House Intelligence Committee have scheduled an open hearings for next Thursday on Benghazi and the Senate Intelligence Committee will be holding a closed hearing on the same day.

Fox News reported:

The House Foreign Affairs Committee has scheduled an open hearing for next Thursday on the Libya terror attack and has invited Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to testify, Fox News has learned.

The committee joins two others planning to hold hearings, albeit closed ones, that day.

Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the consulate in Benghazi. A local Libyan extremist group is suspected of carrying out the attack, but the Obama administration has been criticized for its confusing explanation for the strike and for security warnings that apparently weren’t heeded.

The House Intelligence Committee will hold its closed hearing on the attack on Nov. 15, Fox News has learned. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA Director David Petraeus and Matt Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, are expected to testify.

The Senate Intelligence Committee plans to meet the same day to discuss the Libya attack — that hearing will also be closed to the public.

Olsen was the first member of the Obama administration to publicly describe the Libya assault explicitly as a “terrorist attack,” at a hearing more than a week after the attack, though Obama had spoken earlier more generally about the U.S. response to “acts of terror.”

Yes, yes…we knowwww. Candy Crowley was kind enough to inform the American people about that in the second debate, October 16.

In the Rose Garden, the day after the attack, Obama first  implied that the attack was a result of the reaction to a YouTube video. Then, later in the speech, after mentioning “the solemn memory” of the 9/11/01 attacks, he said, “no acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation”. Then a little while later, during an interview with Steve Kroft on CBS’s 60 Minutes,  he said it was “too early to tell” whether the attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya was an act of terrorism, lending credence to the notion that he mentioned “acts of terror” he was speaking in general terms. Of course, that particular clip wasn’t made public until the eve of the election,  so oh well. Most people just remember Candy Crowley’s interference – not the CBS clip that shows Obama contradicting his debate claim that he identified the Sept. 11 Benghazi attack  as a terror attack, right away.

Rep. Peter T. King, Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, went on Fox News’ America Live with Megyn Kelly to discusses the House Intelligence Committee hearing, next week.

UPDATE:

Via Foreign Policy:

Under pressure from senators, the State Department is allowing some lawmakers to look at cables and other documents related to the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, but only today and tomorrow, when most senators are not in Washington.

Congress is gearing up for a full week of Benghazi-related hearings next week, including a Nov. 13 hearing behind closed doors of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, led by Chairman John Kerry (D-MA). Kerry has written two letters to the State Department requesting congressional access to information and documents related to the circumstances leading up to and during the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens. Several sensitive documents have already been leaked to congressional offices and the media, so the State Department has decided to let some senators view Benghazi documents but not take them home.

Holder Thinking About Stepping Down

This isn’t especially earth shattering, given that Attorney Generals rarely stay beyond one term, and Obama is likely to have someone equally corrupt on tap to replace him.

Attorney General Eric Holder said on Thursday he has not decided whether to stay on as the chief U.S. law enforcement officer in President Barack Obama’s second term.

Holder, speaking to law students at the University of Baltimore, said he still must speak with Obama and with his own family and ask himself, “Do I have some gas left in the tank?”

“That’s something that I’m in the process now of trying to determine,” he said.

Reuters made sure to note that  “Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives said a congressional inquiry into Fast and Furious was political, and the Justice Department’s inspector general cleared Holder of any wrongdoing.”

See, the whole Fast and Furious thing was a racist Republican witch hunt, and Holder was totally cleared of any wrongdoing, there. And if you doubt me, google IG report clears Eric Holder of any wrongdoing and see how many hundreds of pages come up  attesting to that. Holder is as clean as the wind driven snow, just so you know. No doubt that’s what the history books will say, too.

You have to actually do a little digging to find; Atlantic columnist, ’60 minutes’ analyst: IG report proves Eric Holder must resign over Fast and Furious

The Justice Department’s Public Affairs director, Tracy Schmaler, has said the inspector general’s report “cleared,” “exonerated,” and “vindicated” Holder, claims that a variety of media outlets and pundits have repeated uncritically. But Cohen, a left-leaning journalist, plainly was not convinced.

“Even viewing the documents and investigation in a light most favorable to the current head of the Justice Department, even discounting the conspiracy theories offered by the Administration’s most ardent critics, the Inspector General’s report tells us that Holder ultimately failed to do what he absolutely had to do at Justice when he succeeded caretaker Attorney General Michael Mukasey in early 2009,” Cohen wrote.

As one of the administration’s most ardent critics, I don’t discount the “conspiracy theories,” myself. There are no other theories out there to explain why the administration thought it was a good idea to walk thousands of guns into the hands of Mexican bandits to kill people with.

Cohen added that, while the inspector general concluded that Holder was not personally aware of Fast and Furious until February 2011, “avoiding perjury or obstruction of justice, or being ignorant of your department’s biggest scandal, is no cause for relief. … There’s no dispute that he should have known.”

Cohen also criticized Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer and the consistent failure of administration of officials to communicate.

“The [inspector general’s] report confirms that Breuer knew about the program in 2010 and yet failed to tell his boss about it,” Cohen wrote. “Never mind what Breuer then said to Congress; this initial failure to report the critical information up the line is inexcusable and unacceptable. And so is Holder’s failure this week even to mention, in his remarks responding to the OIG report, what Breuer belatedly conceded was his ‘mistake.’ Breuer should have resigned long ago. And, since he didn’t, this week Holder should have fired him. Trust me, the Department can live without Lanny Breuer.”

Of course,  Breuer remains at his post, too, even after calls for his scalp from House Republicans following the IG report:

Republicans are calling for more heads to roll in the wake of a lengthy inspector general report on the botched “Fast and Furious” operation that culminated in the immediate resignations of two top officials.

Lanny Breuer, the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s (DOJ) criminal division, is at the top of the GOP’s list of officials they are pressing to step down or be fired.

“Lanny Breuer has failed to lead the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice in a manner worthy of that title,” said Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), a former federal prosecutor, in a statement to The Hill.

“He failed to connect ‘dots’ on gun walking that a summer law clerk intern could have seen. By either errors of omission or commission, two demonstrably false letters were sent from the DOJ to committees of congress. Out of respect for the department and what the concept of Justice means, he needs to resign.”

***

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has also called on Breuer to be removed. As the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Grassley initiated Congress’ inquiries into “Fast and Furious” early last year. After calling for Breuer’s resignation 10 months ago, Grassley is maintaining that he should step aside in the wake of the IG’s report, his office told The Hill.“I’m not somebody who flippantly calls for resignations,” said Grassley, on the Senate floor in December. “I’ve done oversight for many years, and in all that time I don’t ever remember coming across a government official who so blatantly placed sparing agencies embarrassment over protecting the lives of citizens.“He has failed to do his job of insuring that the government operate [properly], including holding people accountable. Because of that Mr. Breuer needs to go immediately.”

Not that any of this matters. Like I said, even if they stepped down, they’d be replaced with equally, corrupt left-wing ideologues, although it would be a tall order to find anyone even more corrupt than those two…

Thomas Perez, I suppose.

Think about it. As bad as the last four years have been, the next four years will be even worse because the criminals in this administration will no longer be restrained by politics.

What a nightmare.