HEARING 4 HEARING 4 BEFORE THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE EVENTS SURROUNDING THE 2012 TERRORIST ATTACK IN BENGHAZI HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, OCTOBER 22, 2015 Printed for the use of the Select Committee on the Events Surrounding the 2012 Terrorist Attack in Benghazi ( Available on the Internet: www.fdsys.gov U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 98–884 WASHINGTON : 2016 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Publishing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800 Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001 VerDate Sep 11 2014 22:25 Apr 05, 2016 Jkt 098884 PO 00000 Frm 00001 Fmt 5011 Sfmt 5011 E:\HR\OC\B884P2.XXX B884P2 srobinson on DSK5SPTVN1PROD with HEARING HOUSE SELECT COMMITTEE ON BENGHAZI TREY GOWDY, South Carolina, Chairman LYNN WESTMORELAND, Georgia ELIJAH CUMMINGS, Maryland JIM JORDAN, Ohio Ranking Minority Member PETER ROSKAM, Illinois ADAM SMITH, Washington MIKE POMPEO, Kansas ADAM SCHIFF, California MARTHA A. ROBY, Alabama LINDA SA´ NCHEZ, California SUSAN BROOKS, Indiana TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois PROFESSIONAL STAFF PHIL KIKO, Staff Director SUSANNE SACHSMAN GROOMS, Minority Staff Director (II) VerDate Sep 11 2014 22:25 Apr 05, 2016 Jkt 098884 PO 00000 Frm 00002 Fmt 5904 Sfmt 5904 E:\HR\OC\B884P2.XXX B884P2 srobinson on DSK5SPTVN1PROD with HEARING HEARING 4 THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2015 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SELECT COMMITTEE ON BENGHAZI, Washington, DC. The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:01 a.m., in Room 1100, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Trey Gowdy [chair- man of the committee] presiding. Present: Representatives Gowdy, Brooks, Jordan, Pompeo, Roby, Roskam, Westmoreland, Cummings, Smith, Schiff, Sanchez, and Duckworth. Staff Present: Philip G. Kiko, Staff Director and General Coun- sel; Chris Donesa, Deputy Staff Director; Dana Chipman, Chief In- vestigative Counsel; Sharon Jackson, Deputy Chief Counsel; Craig Missakian, Deputy Chief Counsel; Mark Grider, Deputy General Counsel; Mac Tolar, Senior Counsel; Carlton Davis, Investigator; Sara Barrineau, Investigator; Sheria Clarke, Counsel; Paige Oneto, Clerk; Kim Betz, Member Outreach Liaison; Paul Bell, Minority Press Secretary; Krista Boyd, Minority Senior Counsel; Linda Cohen, Minority Senior Professional Staff; Ronak Desai, Minority Counsel; Shannon Green, Minority Counsel; Susanne Sachsman Grooms, Minority Staff Director and General Counsel; Jennifer Werner, Minority Communications Director; Peter Kenny, Minority Senior Counsel; Erin O’Brien, Minority Detailee; Laura Rauch, Mi- nority Senior Professional Staff; Dave Rapallo, Minority Senior Ad- visor to the Ranking Member; Daniel Rebnord, Minority Profes- sional Staff; Mone Ross, Minority Staff Assistant; Heather Sawyer, Minority Chief Counsel; and Brent Woolfork, Minority Senior Pro- fessional Staff. Chairman GOWDY. Good morning. The committee will come to order, and the chair notes the presence of a quorum. Good morning. Welcome, Madam Secretary. Welcome to each of you. This is a public hearing of the Benghazi Select Committee. Just a couple of quick administrative matters before we start, Madam Secretary. There are predetermined breaks, but I want to make it abso- lutely clear, we can take a break for any reason or for no reason. If you or anyone would just simply alert me, then we will take a break, and it can be for any reason or for no reason. To our guests, we are happy to have you here. The witness de- serves to hear the questions, and the members deserve to hear the answers. So proper decorum must be observed at all times. No re- action to questions or answers, no disruptions. Some committees (1) VerDate Sep 11 2014 22:25 Apr 05, 2016 Jkt 098884 PO 00000 Frm 00003 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 E:\HR\OC\B884P2.XXX B884P2 srobinson on DSK5SPTVN1PROD with HEARING 2 take an incremental approach to decorum. I do not. This is your one and only notice. Madam Secretary, the ranking member and I will give opening statements, and then you will be recognized for your opening state- ment. And then, after that, the members will alternate from one side to the other. And because you have already been sworn, we will go straight to your opening. So I will now recognize myself and then recognize Mr. Cummings and then you, Madam Secretary. Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty, and Tyrone Woods served this country with courage and with honor, and they were killed under circumstances most of us could never imagine. Terror- ists pour through the front gate of an American facility, attacking people and property with machine guns, mortars, and fire. It is im- portant that we remember how these four men died. It is equally important that we remember how these four men lived and why. They were more than four images on a television screen. They were husbands and fathers and sons and brothers and family and friends. They were Americans who believed in service and sacrifice. Many people speak wistfully of a better world but do little about it. These four went out and actually tried to make it better. And it cost them their lives. So we know what they gave us. What do we owe them? Justice for those that killed them. We owe their families our everlasting gratitude, respect. We owe them and each other the truth—the truth about why we were in Libya; the truth about what we were doing in Libya; the truth about the escalating violence in Libya be- fore we were attacked and these four men were killed; the truth about requests for additional security; the truth about requests for additional personnel; the truth about requests for additional equip- ment; the truth about where and why our military was positioned as it was on the anniversary of 9/11; the truth about what was happening and being discussed in Washington while our people were under attack; the truth about what led to the attacks; and the truth about what our government told the American people after the attacks. Why were there so many requests for more security personnel and equipment, and why were those requests denied in Wash- ington? Why did the State Department compound and facility not even come close to meeting proper security specifications? What policies were we pursuing in Libya that required a physical pres- ence in spite of the escalating violence? Who in Washington was aware of the escalating violence? What precautions, if any, were taken on the anniversary of 9/11? What happened in Washington after the first attack, and what was our response to that attack? What did the military do or not do? What did our leaders in Washington do or not do, and when? Why was the American public given such divergent accounts of what caused these attacks? And why is it so hard to get informa- tion from the very government these four men represented, served, and sacrificed for? Even after an Accountability Review Board and a half-dozen con- gressional investigations, these and other questions still lingered. And these questions lingered because previous investigations were VerDate Sep 11 2014 22:25 Apr 05, 2016 Jkt 098884 PO 00000 Frm 00004 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 E:\HR\OC\B884P2.XXX B884P2 srobinson on DSK5SPTVN1PROD with HEARING 3 not thorough. These questions lingered because those previous in- vestigations were narrow in scope and either incapable or unwilling to access the facts and evidence necessary to answer all relevant questions. So the House of Representatives—including some Democrats, I hasten to add—asked this committee to write the final, definitive accounting of what happened in Benghazi. This committee is the first committee to review more than 50,000 pages of documents because we insisted that they be produced. This committee is the first committee to demand access to more eyewitnesses because serious investigations talk to as many eye- witnesses as possible. This committee is the first committee to thoroughly and individually interview scores of other witnesses, many of them for the first time. This committee is the first committee to review thousands of pages of documents from top State Department personnel. This committee is the first committee to demand access to relevant doc- uments from the CIA, the FBI, the Department of Defense, even the White House. This committee is the first committee to demand access to the emails to and from Ambassador Chris Stevens. How could an inves- tigation possibly be considered serious without reviewing the emails of the person most knowledgeable about Libya? This committee is the first committee, the only committee, to un- cover the fact that Secretary Clinton exclusively used personal email on her own personal server for official business and kept the public record, including emails about Benghazi and Libya, in her own custody and control for almost two years after she left office. You will hear a lot today about the Accountability Review Board. Secretary Clinton has mentioned it more than 70 times in her pre- vious testimony before Congress. But when you hear about the ARB, you should also know the State Department leadership hand- picked the members of the ARB. The ARB never interviewed Sec- retary Clinton. The ARB never reviewed her emails. And Secretary Clinton’s top advisor was allowed to review and suggest changes to the ARB before the public ever saw it. There is no transcript of ARB interviews, so it’s impossible to know whether all relevant questions were asked and answered. And because there’s no transcript, it is also impossible to cite the ARB interviews with any particularity at all. That is not inde- pendent. That is not accountability. That is not a serious investiga- tion. You will hear there were previous congressional investigations into Benghazi, and that is true.