Heads Up: 3 Benghazi Hearings on the Hill, Today – Petraeus to Testify in Closed Session, Tomorrow

Scheduled on the Hill, today are three separate hearings focusing on the Benghazi terror attack that left four Americans dead.

Via Fox News:

The House Foreign Affairs Committee holding a hearing LIVE at 10am. The House Select Intelligence Committee and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hold private hearings today as well though they are closed to the press. Hopefully we’ll get some news out of those hearings.

1000EST — House Foreign Affairs Cmte holds hearing titled “Benghazi and Beyond: What Went Wrong on Sept 11, 2012 and How to Prevent it from Happening at other Frontline Posts, Part I.” LIVE

1100EST — Center for Strategic & Intl Studies Simon Chair in Political Economy hosts a Statesmen’s Forum on Pres Obama’s Asia policy in light of the president’s upcoming trip to the region with Natl Security Advisor Thomas Donilon. LIVE

1430EST — Senate Select Cmte on Intelligence holds closed oversight hearing into “the circumstances surrounding the deadly attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and the intel and security situation in other Arab Spring countries.” DNI Clapper, CIA Deputy Dir Michael Morell, FBI Deputy Dir Sean Joyce, Undersecy of State for Management Pat Kennedy, and NCTC Dir Matthew Olsen to testify. CLOSED / LIVE STAKEOUT via LiveU

The House Committee on Foreign Affairs’  hearing can be watched live, here.

Full Committee
Chaired by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL)

Witnesses

• Mr. Michael Courts
  Acting Director
  International Affairs and Trade
  Government Accountability Office
• Mr. William Young
  Senior Policy Analyst
  RAND Corporation
• James Jay Carafano, Ph.D.
  Director
  Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies
  The Heritage Foundation
• The Honorable Ronald E. Neumann
  President
  American Academy of Diplomacy

I was under the impression that members of the Obama administration would be testifying at this hearing, but apparently not. Hopefully, we’ll hear some news later on from the  House Select Intelligence Committee and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence which are holding private hearings today that are closed to the press.

Rep Smith (R-NJ) decried the White House’s unwillingness to make available to open testimony members of the administration who are involved in this scandal – which is why there’s no one but foreign policy experts testifying at this hearing.

Honestly, I’m not sure what the purpose of holding a hearing on Benghazi to find out “what went wrong” is, if they’re not hearing from any of  the leading players who contributed to “what went wrong.” Republicans are grousing about everything we conservative pundits have been saying for the past two months. Democrats are saying, “bla bla bla. Bla bla bla.” (A whole lot of nothing.)

Tomorrow, General Petraeus will testify on Capitol Hill at a closed session before the House Intel Committee.

WASHINGTON—Former Central Intelligence Agency director David Petraeus is set on Friday to make his first appearance on Capitol Hill since his resignation last week, but he won’t be talking about the extramarital affair that led to his downfall.

A congressional aide said Mr. Petraeus would testify in a classified session before the House intelligence committee about the September attack against Americans in Benghazi, Libya. The aide said Mr. Petraeus’s personal matters wouldn’t be on the agenda.

The Friday testimony will follow hearings on Benghazi Thursday at the House and Senate intelligence committees. The acting CIA director, Michael Morell, is set to speak before closed sessions of the committees, first at the House in the morning and then in the afternoon at the Senate.

Republicans are continuing to press questions about the Sept. 11 attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) said Wednesday he wanted to know more about why U.S. forces couldn’t respond more quickly when the U.S. consulate in Benghazi came under attack and why Obama administration officials initially said the violence sprang from a spontaneous protest over an anti-Islam video.

“There is no credibility amongst most of us concerning the administration and the numerous controversies and contradictions that have been involved in their handling of this issue,” Mr. McCain said.

SEE ALSO:

Hot Air: WSJ: Petraeus pushed out after defending CIA over Benghazi?

All of this is an interesting context for Petraeus’ sudden offer to talk to both intel committees, starting tomorrow, behind closed doors.  Petraeus may have nothing more to offer than just a personal recapitulation of what we know already, delivered to give Congress closure and end the distraction of his absence.  It could also be that Petraeus has decided to up the ante and add a few more pertinent points to the CIA timeline, perhaps even including how he ended up backing the false spontaneous-demonstration story when briefing Congress.  Lyndon Johnson once said he’d rather have a particularly annoying critic on the inside of the tent looking out (I’m paraphrasing) than on the outside of the tent looking in, and the Obama administration may end up realizing the wisdom of LBJ in this instance.

Eh. We’ll see. I’m dubious.

UPDATE:

Weasel Zippers: Sparks Fly During House Benghazi Hearing: Dems Accuse GOP Of “McCarthyism,” Say Attack On Consulate Their Fault…

Via NBC News:

A House Foreign Affairs hearing on “Benghazi and Beyond” quickly turned into a shouting and accusations forum.

It began when Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) said this: “What is clear is that this administration, including the president himself, has intentionally misinformed, read that LIED, to the American people in the aftermath of this tragedy. Now President Obama has the gall to float the name as possibly secretary of State, the name of the person who is the actual vehicle used to misinform the American people during this crisis.”

Rep. Brad Sherman, a Democrat also from California, called the attacks on Rice “unfair” and leveled that Colin Powell testified that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, because that’s the information that was given to him.

Rohrbacker shot back, going further, intimating that what the White House has done is worse than Watergate.

“This is not simply a cover up of a third-rate burglary,” he alleged. “We have four of our personnel dead, and it is not a McCarthy-era tactic to demand accountability and to demand that American people are not misinformed about it to the point that they don’t know what the threat is.”

Naturally Democrats responded. It began rather timidly and escalated.

Bah-humbug. Who didn’t see it coming?

 

Linked by Michelle Malkin, thanks!