Terrorism

The top Democrat on the House Oversight panel on Thursday joined the authors of the State Department's Benghazi review in demanding they be allowed to testify publicly.

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) called on Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) to let the leaders of the Accountability Review Board (ARB) testify before the committee after Republicans questioned their report on State's handling of the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya.

Retired Ambassador Thomas Pickering and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen wrote to Issa on Thursday refusing his request that they sit down for a transcribed interview with his staff before they can testify at a public hearing.

“House Republicans have politicized this investigation from the beginning, and they have recklessly accused Ambassador Pickering and Admiral Mullen of being complicit in a cover-up,” Cummings said in a statement. 

“It is time for the Chairman to honor his commitment to hold a hearing to allow these officials to respond to these reckless accusations, instead of imposing new conditions to keep them from testifying. Members of Congress and the American people should hear directly from these officials — in public — and the Chairman’s efforts to keep them behind closed doors undermines the Committee’s credibility and does a disservice to the truth.”

Pickering and Mullen say the closed-door meeting is an "inappropriate precondition" to their testimony.

The emails suggest the CIA initially thought the attack spun from a protest.

The Oversight Committee chairman wants the authors of the report to commit to a transcribed interview before testifying in the House.

“He didn’t say why. He just turned it down,” a Defense official told McClatchy.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said House Republicans needed to “look in the mirror” on who is to blame for the “Benghazi scandal.”

“Start by looking in the mirror,” Boxer said on the Senate floor Tuesday. “Admit that you cut too much from embassy security.”

Forty-nine percent of respondents to a poll from Democratic firm PPP trust Clinton on the controversy to 39 percent for Republicans.

Rep. Cummings wrote to Issa on Monday asking that the authors be allowed to defend themselves in public from criticism.

“I don’t believe at this stage anything has changed by the testimony last week," Pickering said.

Retired U.S. Ambassador Thomas Pickering, who led the State Department’s internal audit of the Benghazi attack, defended their efforts on Sunday, saying they had completed a thorough review and saw no reason to reopen the investigation.

“I don’t see yet any reason why what we did at the Accountability Review Board should be reopened,” said Pickering on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”