Three Republican Senators on Wednesday asked that a Watergate-style special committee of inquiry be established to streamline the investigation into the details of what happened in the Sept. 11 attack of a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., said such a committee could best wade between the plethora of agencies with information on the attack to find out whether security warnings were ignored or the response was proper, reported the
New York Times.
“We believe that the complexity and gravity of this matter warrant the establishment of a temporary select committee that can conduct an integrated review of the many national security issues involved, which cut across multiple executive agencies and legislative committees,” McCain said.
Right now, several Senate committees, including intelligence, foreign relations, and armed services, plan to hold hearings to learn what happened in the attack. Graham said at the news conference that combining them into one special hearing would save time and allow all of the pertinent information to be gathered at once.
“The three committees will not be able to hear what the other groups are saying,” Graham said, according to
The Washington Post. “I’d like to ask Gen. Petraeus some questions, and I’m sure there are some people on the [Intelligence Committee] that would like to hear what the Department of Defense has to say about their handling of the Benghazi attack. And when it comes to the State Department, all of us would like to know, why were there so many requests for additional security denied... If you have these people in separate rooms, telling separate stories, trying to blame each other, it’s going to fall through the cracks.”
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