Testimony:
- Thompson testified that he had urged the deployment of an elite response team—known as the Foreign Emergency Support Team, or FEST—but was rebuffed by the White House. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, called the motivation for that decision one of the “mysteries” that need to be solved. Hicks said he pleaded for fighter planes to buzz the compound but was told none were close enough (and that military officials have cast doubt on the effectiveness of such a tactic). Hicks also said higher-ups nixed his request to send four special forces to the burning compound.
- Hicks said he spoke by telephone with Stevens shortly after armed men stormed the compound. “Greg, we’re under attack,” Stevens said, according to Hicks. Hicks said American officials in Libya concluded from unspecified Twitter feeds that al Qaida-affiliated Islamist extremists were carrying out the attack. He confirmed that officials on the ground never believed that the attack grew out of a demonstration.
- Hicks slammed U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice’s appearance on Sunday news shows days after the attack, when she linked it to angry demonstrations in the Muslim world against the video denigrating Islam. “I was stunned. My jaw dropped,” Hicks said in response to a question from Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C. “I was embarrassed.”
- Rice's comments flatly contradicted Libyan President Mohammed Magariaf's public statement that the attack was the work of terrorists, effectively humiliating him, with the result of delaying the FBI's access to the compound, Hicks said.
- After Hicks received the phone call about Stevens' death, unidentified Libyans called to say Stevens was with them and that American staff should come get him. “We suspected that we were being baited into a trap,” Hicks said. “We did not want to send our people into an ambush.” The Americans stayed put.
- Hicks said that, after years of glowing performance evaluations, higher-ups at the State Department turned on him when he questioned Rice's account of the events. He described his current position as a demotion.
- Hicks said that the State Department directed him not to speak to Chaffetz when he came to Libya as part of a congressional investigation into the attack. "We were not to be personally interviewed by Congressman Chaffetz," Hicks said. (A top aide to Clinton emailed NBC News to dispute the notion of a cover-up.)
- Hicks also suggested that a State Department-commissioned independent investigation into the tragedy, by retired diplomat Tom Pickering and retired Adm. Mike Mullen, had failed to hold senior figures responsible, pointedly naming Patrick Kennedy, undersecretary for management, as someone who bore some responsibility for poor security at the site. (Issa said he had invited Pickering and Mullen to testify, but that they refused.)
- Gowdy provided one of the few surprises in the hearing, reading what he described as an email from the day after the attacks in which Acting Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs Beth Jones said she had told the Libyan governor that "the group that conducted the attacks, Ansar al-Sharia, is affiliated with Islamic terrorists." That raised fresh questions about why top Obama aides emphasized the role of spontaneous demonstrations against the video in public remarks for days afterwards.
Lawmakers mostly listened respectfully. But they missed no opportunities to score partisan points.
Issa started the session by describing the administration’s version of the events as “their facts.” Issa accused the State Department and the White House of refusing to provide witnesses and documents to his committee.
Issa vowed to “make certain that our government learns the proper lessons” from the deaths of Stevens and three other Americans, and ensure that “the right people are held accountable.”
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/benghazi-hearing-promises-partisan-fireworks-144356871.html
