Now that the 2012 election is in the past, Republicans' focus will return in full force to the Benghazi terror attack that left four Americans dead. To this end, Republican-led House Foreign Affairs Committee asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to testify at an open hearing on November 15.
While the State Department responded that Clinton will be traveling abroad during the time of the hearing, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Matt Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, are slated to testify. Now former CIA Director David Petraeus was also supposed to testify, but he will not longer do so following his resignation.
Clinton is reportedly scheduled to travel to Singapore, Australia, Thailand, Burma and Cambodia while the hearing will take place.
The Senate Intelligence Committee also plans to hold a closed-door hearing the same day, according to spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.
At a House hearing before the Nov. 6 elections, Republicans said President Barack Obama’s administration failed to provide adequate diplomatic security before the Benghazi attack and sought to play down the role of terrorists afterward. Democrats defended the administration’s performance and said Republicans were seeking to exploit the attack for political gain.
Clinton, meanwhile, vowed to keep good on her promise to increase security at U.S. diplomatic outposts.
“We now have a formal Accountability Review Board investigating the terrorist attack that killed Chris, and we will certainly apply its recommendations and lessons learned to improving security everywhere,” Clinton said during a tribute to Stevens at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington.
The issue is that the chairman of the Accountability Review Board, U.S. diplomat Thomas Pickering, has come under suspicion for being sympathetic to Islamist causes.
Meanwhile, author Ed Klein believes the Clintons are rallying their lawyers in the event the Secretary of State is subpoenaed. Some believe Clinton when she claimed that she did order additional security for the Benghazi compound and that the request had "not been carried out."
With talk of Hillary Clinton stepping down from her post, it is possible that she may be more outspoken about the administration's handling of the deadly terror attack come 2013.
A Fox News report with Rep. Jason Chaffetz on this issue is featured below:
