Benghazi Committee still...

Pentagon rips Benghazi Committee over 'speculation'

A Defense Department official says the House panel's repeated demands for information is straining resources.

By RACHAEL BADE

The Pentagon is pushing back against the House Benghazi Committee, saying its repeated requests for documents and interviews are straining the department's resources — and, to make matters worse, many of the queries are speculative or hypothetical.

Assistant Secretary of Defense Stephen Hedger complained in a letter to the committee on Thursday about its continued demands for information, and implied that the panel is grasping to make assertions based on theory rather than facts.

“[W]hile I understand your stated intent is to conduct the most comprehensive review of the attack and response, Congress has as much of an obligation as the executive branch to use federal resources and taxpayer dollars effectively and efficiently,” the letter reads. “The Department has spent millions of dollars on Benghazi-specific Congressional compliance, including reviews by four other committees, which have diligently reviewed the military’s response in particular.”

Hedger also complained that Defense Department interviewees “have been asked repeatedly to speculate or engage in discussing on the record hypotheticals.”

“This type of questioning poses the risk that your final report may be based on speculation rather than a fact-based analysis of what a military officer did do or could have done given his or her knowledge at the time of the attacks,” he wrote.

Panel Republicans waived off the letter, saying it is “further proof the Benghazi Committee is conducting a thorough, fact-centered investigation.” Republicans have contended that the Pentagon has been stonewalling, causing the investigation to drag on. They threatened Defense Department with subpoenas in hopes of getting swifter answers.

“It’s unfortunate it took the threat of subpoenas for the Pentagon to make witnesses available earlier this year,” said a committee spokesperson. “This delayed the committee from learning a tremendous amount of new information from several witnesses, and when they refer the committee to others in the department, the responsible thing to do is to interview them. What is DOD so afraid of? Why are they supposedly unable to find their own employees?”

Hedger blasted the subpoena threats in his letter, saying the Pentagon is “concerned by the continuous threats from your staff to subpoena witnesses because we are not able to move quickly enough.”

The letter details the Pentagon's own reluctance to fulfill a series of new requests that officials believe are unnecessary. Officials are asking the panel for a meeting to discuss them.

In one example cited by the letter, the committee is seeking an audience with a man who posted on Facebook that he was a mechanic on an air base in Europe the night of the attack. He claimed that planes could have been deployed.

The panel wants to talk to him, but the Pentagon says “those claims are easily dismissed by any one of the multiple high-level military officials already interviewed.”

Panel Democrats, meanwhile, note that the man used the following hash-tag in his post, suggesting to them a political motivation: "#ifyouvoteforhillaryyouarebeyondstupid."

The panel also was seeking to talk to a man simply known as “John from Iowa,” who claimed on the radio that he was a remotely piloted aircraft camera operator and said he saw a feed of the attack. When the Department said they couldn’t find him, the committee asked to talk to all such operators on the ground in the area that night, the letter says.

The Department thinks it's unnecessary.

The letter also says the panel had sought to interview four pilots who would have been deployed the night of the attack but were not — only to drop that request.

Panel Democrats, meanwhile, pounced on the letter as further proof that the committee is wasting taxpayer dollars. They said a number of Defense Department officials that the committee has recently asked to interview have already been questioned by other congressional panels looking into the Benghazi attacks, including General Carter Ham, former second commander of U.S. Africa Command.

“The Department of Defense has a critical job to do, which is to keep our nation safe from those who would do us harm. But Republicans continue to squander millions of taxpayer dollars chasing right-wing conspiracy theories and forcing Pentagon officials to waste their time on this partisan fishing expedition,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the committee's ranking member.