11:00 a.m. EST
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will hear testimony from three witness Wednesday morning. The hearing, led by Republican Chairman Darrell Issa, is titled “Benghazi: Exposing Failure and Recognizing Courage.” It begins at 11:30 a.m. EST. The three witnesses who will appear are:- Mark Thompson, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism, U.S. Department of State
- Gregory Hicks, Foreign Service Officer and former Deputy Chief of Mission/Chargé d’Affairs in Libya, U.S. Department of State
- Eric Nordstrom, Diplomatic Security Officer and former Regional Security Officer in Libya, U.S. Department of State
11:35 a.m. EST
Rep. Darrell Issa begins the hearing, citing the oversight committee’s role in holding “government accountable to taxpayers.”“The witnesses before us are actual experts on what really happened before during and after the Benghazi attacks,” Issa said. “These witnesses deserve to be heard,” he insisted.
Issa also read aloud the names of the four Americans killed in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.
11:41 a.m. EST
Issa introduces the three witnesses. “These brave whistle blowers are in fact what makes this committee’s work work … the public has a right to hear their accounts.”11:43 a.m. EST
Oversight committee Democratic ranking member Elijah Cummings speaks. “I am glad the whistle blowers are here and I will do every single thing in my power to protect the whistle blowers.” Cummings says he sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry reminding him of the importance not to retaliate against whistle blowers. “Whistle blowers are important. They are very important.”11:49 a.m. EST
Cummings slams a “full scale media campaign … too launch unfounded accusations to smear public officials,” although he’s careful not to blame the present witnesses for the uptick in media attention.11:52 a.m. EST
“I respect the witnesses who are hear today to offer their testimony … I have a tremendous respect for evidence. But today’s hearing is not the full story,” Cumming says. Cummings wants to hear from a wider range of government officials first, he says.11:54 a.m. EST
Issa begins expanded introductions of the witnesses.11:58 a.m. EST
“Do you solemnly swear the testimony you’re about to give will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth?” Issa asks. All answer in the affirmative.11:59 a.m. EST
Mark Thompson begins his testimony. He says he was at his desk at night when the first reports of the Benghazi attack came in and he followed along as the situation evolved. He then notified his “leadership,” he explained. Thompson said he told his leadership that “with the tyranny of distance, we needed to act now.”Thompson says he sought a quick response team from the White House to get into the area. The White House responded that the option “had been taken off the table,” he said.
12:05 p.m. EST
Gregory Hicks begins his testimony.12:06 p.m. EST
“I fast became known as the ambassador’s bulldog,” because of my management style, Hicks says. Hicks says that a range of leadership in the Obama administration praised his “performance” which was “near heroic” during the attack in Benghazi.12:08 p.m. EST
Eric Nordstrom begins his testimony. “I served as the principal security adviser to” Amb. Chris Stevens, Nordstrom says. He thanks the committee for “investigating all of the details” about what happened “prior, during and after the attack.”“It matters to me personally and it matters to my colleagues at the Department of State,” he says. Nordstrom begins to choke up as he cites that it also matters to Americans and for the memories of the four Americans lost in Benghazi.
12:11 p.m. EST
Issa asks Hicks to “take us through the day of September 11th … from somebody who was there.”12:12 p.m. EST
“It was a routine day … until we saw the news about Cairo,” Hicks said. He says he sent a text message to Chris Stevens asking him if he knew about Cairo. “No,” Stevens responded. Hicks explained via text what was happening and Stevens thanked him for the information. Hicks said he was watching TV when the RSO “ran into my villa yelling ‘Greg, Greg the consulate’s under attack.’”I reached for my phone, and found two missed calls, one from the ambassador and one that I didn’t recognize I called the one I didn’t recognize and the ambassador answered ”Greg, we’re under attack!” Stevens said.
“I said ‘OK’ and the line cut,” Hicks recalled.
As I walked to the tactical operations center, Hicks said, I tried to call both numbers and got no response.
When I got to the operations center, Hicks said, I told them what the ambassador said. I asked one of our agents what number the unknown number was, he explained. It belonged to Stevens’ personal escort who was in the villa with Stevens during the attack.
Hicks learned that the consulate had been breached and that there were at least 20 armed hostiles in the compound.
12:18 p.m. EST
Hicks explains that he was in touch with the government of Libya, the State Department and the annex chief.“We agreed that we would move forward with chartering a plane form Tripoli to fly” in a response team, Hicks says, referring to his discussion with the annex.
12:21 p.m. EST
“The response team from the annex in Benghazi, 6 individuals, drove the attackers out,” of the consulate, with as many as 60 attackers inside the consulate at one point, Hicks says.12:22 p.m. EST
“It was noticed that [the] second wave of attackers” were coming to attack the facility, Hicks says. Those Americans still alive were able to get away from the facility.Later, the second phase of the attacks hits the annex. They suffered ”probing attacks” from the terrorists. They were all able to “disperse them.”
12:25 p.m. EST
The nearest aircraft were in Aviano Air Base in Italy, about 3 hours in flight time, Hicks says, but he was told they lacked the refueling planes needed to keep them in the air.12:27 p.m. EST
“At about 12:30, at the same time we see the Twitter feeds asserting that Ansar al Sharia are responsible for the attack,” we also see that there are calls for an attack on the embassy in Tripoli, where Hicks was, he says.12:29 p.m. EST
“During the night, I’m in touch with Washington, keeping them posted,” Hicks says. “I think at about 2 a.m. [Sec. Clinton] called me and she asked me what was going on and I briefed her on the developments. Most of the conversation was on the search for Ambassador Stevens.” It was also on what they were going to do with the personnel in Benghazi. Evacuate, they both agreed.The Prime Minister of Libya called Hicks at around 3 a.m — “saddest phone call I have ever had in my life” — and told him Stevens had died in the hospital. Hicks says he immediately called Washington.
12:32 p.m. EST
Hicks describes his staff’s heroism that night, from loading weapons, to “smashing hard drives with an axe,” to loading vehicles, to communicating with contacts in Benghazi. “Mountains of strength,” Hicks says. “I’m still in awe of them,” he continues, choked up.12:37 p.m. EST
Shortly after the survivors of the consulate attack reached the annex, mortars started coming in, killing former SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, Hicks says.12:39 p.m. EST
Hicks somberly repeats the story he told congressional investigators last month about a special forces unit led by a Lt. Col. Gibson that was called off by higher authorities from leaving with a C-130 to travel from Tripoli to Benghazi.12:43 p.m. EST
Testimony is paused as the floor is yielded to Rep. Cummings. “It just reminded me of the high cost of so many in our diplomatic corps. It also reminded me of their bravery,” Cummings says.12:46 p.m. EST
Cummings asks Hicks to verify his prior claims that a fast-moving plane could have averted some of the attack by intimidating the attackers in Benghazi. Hicks acknowledges that he said that.Cummings then says Gen. Martin Dempsey has already testified before Congress that F-16′s from Aviano could not have been deployed.
“Do you have any reason to question Gen. Dempsey’s testimony?” Cummings asks.
Hicks says he was told by the defense attache that the planes would take “2 to 3 hours” to arrive, but without refueling capabilities. Hicks reiterated his claim that the “Libyans would not stand if they were aware that American aircraft were in the vicinity.”
12:51 p.m. EST
Issa jumps in to say that he will bring in witnesses “from both sides” to assess whether planes could have been deployed in time to intervene during the Benghazi attacks.12:54 p.m. EST
Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy begins asking Hicks about the involvement of a YouTube video as a theoretical precursor to the Libya attack. Hicks maintains that he was never under the impression that a YouTube video led to the attack and that he was “embarrassed” when U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice cited the video on Sunday shows after the Benghazi attack. “I was stunned. My jaw dropped. And I was embarrassed,” Hicks said.12:58 p.m. EST
Gowdy asks how Rice’s talk show statements impacted the people on the ground in Libya.We encountered bureaucratic resistance from the Libyan government, Hicks says. “It took us an additional 18 days to get the FBI team into Benghazi.
1:02 p.m EST
Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney uses her time to defend former Secretary of State Hillary from the fact that her signature appeared on a State Department cable refusing extra security at the Benghazi consulate ahead of the attacks. Maloney insists that Clinton had nothing to do with the cable because it’s customary for the secretary’s name to be printed on such cables without her direct involvement.1:08 p.m EST
Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz asks Hicks where the special forces stand down order came from. Hicks says he believes the order came from AFRICOM (United States Africa Command).Chaffetz asks Thompson why his request for a Foreign Emergency Support Team (FEST) was denied. “I do not know,” Thompson replies.
1:11 p.m. EST
A ceremonial member of the House
,
Washington, D.C.’s Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton begins her questioning.
She asks whether the counterterrorism bureau of the State Department was
pushed out of the conversation the night of September 11, 2012 for
political reasons.Mark Thompson says the counterterrorism bureau was pushed out of the conversation that night and only later welcomed in the administration’s conversations.
Thompson would not say whether he thought the move was political.
1:19 p.m. EST
Republican Rep. James Lankford asks the witnesses whether the security provided to the diplomatic facilities in Libya prior to the attack was adequate. They answer that it wasn’t.1:21 p.m. EST
Hicks says Amb. Stevens went to Benghazi to convert it into a permanent diplomatic post at the request of Sec. Clinton. Clinton wanted a report on the political and security environment there before September 30, Hicks says.1:27 p.m. EST
Democratic Rep. John Tierney plays a video of Gen. James Clapper — in prior congressional testimony — defending Amb. Susan Rice from criticism, saying that the Obama administration’s intelligence community was under the impression that a demonstration preceded the attack in Benghazi.He uses his time to insist that politics played no role in the botched reports.
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