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.