Republicans demand access to Americans wounded in Benghazi attack

By Julian Pecquet - 03/11/13 04:04 PM ET

Republicans are demanding that the Obama administration give them access to the “as many as 30” Americans they say were wounded in the attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi six months ago Monday.

Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) in a March 1 letter to Secretary of State John Kerry said he'd been told that some 30 Americans were injured in the attack that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. He said seven wounded Americans had been treated at Walter Reed, and Kerry himself confirmed last week that he's visited one of the survivors there.

“Six months later, none of the survivors have been identified or questioned by Congress about the attack or credited for their heroism. We don’t know their names, conditions or stories,” Wolf said Monday. He called the lack of congressional access to people with first-hand information about the attack “shameful” and renewed his call for a select committee to investigate the attack.

Pressure has been steadily building on the administration to provide more answers.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs panel on emerging threats, wrote a letter to Kerry on Monday to tell him his agency's “stonewalling” was “unacceptable.”

"As a senator, you would not have tolerated such behavior, and you should not perpetuate it now,” Rohrabacher wrote.

“The House Foreign Affairs Committee has a right to know what the survivors saw and experienced in the service of their country on that dreadful night,” he wrote. “I will be recommending to [House Foreign Affair] Chairman Royce and to Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), that if the situation does not immediately improve, legal charges be leveled against those responsible to insure details of this attack on American diplomatic personnel are not kept hidden from the American people.”

Three hawkish senators – Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) – will press Kerry to make the survivors available to Congress, Graham told Fox News over the weekend.

“We’re going to write a letter. Myself, Sens. Ayotte and McCain, to Secretary Kerry asking to make the survivors available to the Congress,” Graham said Saturday. “The appropriate committees can interview the survivors about what happened that night.”