Terrorism

The House Oversight Committee chairman is pushing ahead with his investigation of the fatal 2012 attack in Libya.

The father of a CIA contractor killed in Benghazi joined forces with the growing chorus of Republican lawmakers on Wednesday demanding that Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) create a select committee to probe the administration's response to the attack.

“Seven months later, we still don't know what happened,” Charles Woods, the father of former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods, said during a press conference with House Republicans. The mother of slain State Department employee Sean Smith endorsed the proposal last week.

Woods said Congress should subpoena the witnesses and endorsed the House resolution from Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) creating the special panel. The resolution had 106 co-sponsors as of Wednesday, almost half the Republican conference.

Secretary of State John Kerry vowed Wednesday to appoint a liaison to Congress to address Republican lawmakers' continued questions about last year's attack against the U.S. mission in Benghazi.

Some Republicans have demanded to be able to interview the Americans wounded in the attack. And a growing number of House Republicans — 107 to date — have signed on to a resolution calling for the creation of a select committee to probe the events leading up to the attack and the Obama administration's response.

“I can promise you that if you're not getting something that you have evidence of or think you ought to be getting, we'll work with you,” Kerry told Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) during a hearing on President Obama's 2014 budget. “And I will appoint somebody to work directly with you, starting tomorrow.”

Speaker John Boehner is trying to head off a GOP rebellion over his handling of the investigation.

Americans should “pray” for the Saudi man wounded in Boston now that he's been ruled out as a suspect, conservative firebrand Steve Stockman (R-Texas) said Tuesday. 

“The 20-year old hospitalized Saudi has been 'ruled out' as a suspect,” Stockman tweeted. “He is a victim like the others. Pray for him.”

“Injured Saudi is a witness, not a suspect, in Boston bombing,” he tweeted earlier.

The statements aim to tamp down vitriolic anti-Muslim comments that have proliferated since reports first emerged that Abdulrahman Ali Alharbi was being questioned as a “person of interest” after being wounded in the attack. Alharbi is believed to be a 22-year-old student studying English. He has been ruled out as a suspect and is said to be cooperating with law enforcement.

Stockman also accused CNN of politicizing the attack after anchor Wolf Blitzer said "who knows" if the attack was linked to Patriots' Day in Boston.

"Wolf Blitzer should immediately apologize. The mainstream media once again exploit killings to attack political opponents."

Other conservatives were quicker to draw conclusions.

The Pakistani Taliban denied involvement in Monday's bombing in Boston even as it endorsed attacks against the United States.

"We believe in attacking U.S. and its allies but we are not involved in this attack," Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told Agence France-Presse. "We have no connection to this bombing but we will continue to target them wherever possible."

While no one has claimed responsibility, the Taliban are natural suspects based on past actions. The group harbored Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan until the U.S. invasion of 2001 and claimed credit for a botched car bombing in New York's Times Square in 2010; a Pakistani-American man, Faisal Shahzad, is serving a life sentence in the attack and appeared in a video made before the attempt alongside Taliban leader Faqir Mohammed.

The State Department abruptly closed Secretary of State John Kerry's meeting with Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal on Tuesday amid reports that police questioned a Saudi national in connection with Monday's bombing in Boston.

The 10 a.m. bilateral meeting was scheduled to be preceded by a camera spray for news photographers. Shortly before the meeting the media were told it would be closed, without explanation. Speaking to reporters later, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said the cancellation was a scheduling decision to allow Kerry to recover from a 10-day trip abroad and prepare to testify about the president's budget Wednesday on Capitol Hill.

Faisal's visit comes as President Obama prepares to meet with four Middle Eastern leaders over the next few weeks to talk about the situation in Syria. His meeting with Kerry was instead expected to touch on Saudi-U.S. cooperation on antiterrorism amid reports that a 20-year-old Saudi  man who was wounded in the attack was questioned by law enforcement.

The New York Times quoted an unnamed law enforcement official on Tuesday that the man "was not involved in the attack."

Secretary of State John Kerry will stop in Chicago as he returns from a trip to Asia to meet with parents of a U.S. diplomat who was killed in Afghanistan earlier this month.

Anne Smedinghoff, aged 25, was killed on April 6 as she carried out a goodwill mission in Zaul province in Afghanistan, delivering books to a school. Her convoy was struck by a suicide bomber, killing her and wounding four others. 

Pentagon-run aerial drones were conducting surveillance in the skies above Libya prior to the deadly assault on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi last September, top intelligence officials revealed on Thursday.

The unmanned aircraft in Libya last year were operated under the Defense Department drone program and only for surveillance purposes, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told members of the House Intelligence Committee.

The administration touts Fatima, a Pakistani firm, after Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) blocked the company's proposed fertilizer plant.