Karl Rove: House Panel Must Press for Benghazi Answers

There's plenty of evidence showing that the deadly Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on U.S. outposts in Benghazi were terrorist strikes, but the House Intelligence Committee should press for answers on lingering questions, Karl Rove urges.

In an op-ed piece in the online Wall Street Journal on Wednesday night, Rove, once President George W. Bush's deputy chief of staff, said it would be too difficult for Congress to get National Security Adviser Susan Rice to testify under oath — and he blasted her expressed lack of regret Sunday for having said at the time that the siege was a result of protests against an offensive video denigrating Islam.

The Obama administration later acknowledged the attack was likely pre-planned, and a separate Senate investigation found the attacks in Benghazi were likely preventable.

"The Obama administration and [former Secretary of State Hillary] Clinton desperately want Benghazi to go away, and the mainstream media continues ignoring it," Rove wrote.

"But four Americans are dead. While Ms. Rice claims she has no regrets about misleading the country, she should. Americans are owed the truth, most of all the families of those who died in Benghazi in the service of their country."

Rove said Rice's additional assertion that she was "merely sharing 'the best information that we had at the time' . . . is a contemptible falsehood."

"The government knew long before Ms. Rice went on five Sunday television shows that the assaults were carefully planned terrorist attacks unconnected to a video," he wrote.

Rove wrote that the role of then-Deputy CIA Director Mike Morell in shaping the administration's response "raises important questions that need answers," including what contact he had with the CIA station chief and if he was told it was a terrorist attack.

Rove said there reportedly was a video conference within 72 hours of the attack among CIA officials in Washington, in Libya, and among survivors.

"During that call . . . Mr. Morell suggested that the attacks resulted from a demonstration," Rove wrote. "True? And if so, how did Mr. Morell come up with that concoction?"

"The way to start getting these questions answered is for the House Intelligence Committee to interview the CIA station chief and then put Mr. Morell under oath," Rove wrote.

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