WASHINGTON (TheBlaze/AP) -- House Republicans investigating last year's deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya, badgered a former U.N. ambassador and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Thursday over their review of the Obama administration's handling of the scandal.
Family members of the Benghazi heroes who died also testified Thursday. Patricia Smith, the mother of Sean Smith, said President Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Susan Rice all "lied" to her about the attack.
WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 19: (L-R) Thomas Pickering, retired U.S. ambassador and Chairman of the Benghazi Accountability Review Board, Admiral Mike Mullen, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and current Vice-Chairman of the Benghazi Accountability Review Board, Mark Sullivan, former director of the U.S. Secret Service, and Todd Keil, Former Asst. Secretary for Infrastructure Protection with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, testify during a House Oversight Committee hearing entitled 'Reviews of the Benghazi Attack and Unanswered Questions,' in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill, September 19, 2013 in Washington, DC. Credit: Getty Images
GOP members of the House oversight committee asked why former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other top administration officials weren't questioned during the inquiry overseen by Thomas Pickering and Adm. Mike Mullen. They chaired an independent panel that reviewed the Sept. 11, 2012, attack, which killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.
Their report last year harshly criticized the State Department for its security posture in the months before militants stormed the Benghazi facility. But House GOP members said it was incomplete and lacked independence.
Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., called the report by Pickering and Mullen a "whitewash" and asked why Clinton and Tom Donilon, then Obama's national security adviser, weren't interviewed. Pickering said they weren't involved in Benghazi security decisions.
"If the secretary wasn't involved, I must be on another planet," Mica answered.
Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina later asked Mullen if he interviewed President Barack Obama.
Fellow Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio accused Mullen of tipping off Clinton's former chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, about the investigation. Rep. Jason Chaffetz argued with Mullen about U.S. or allied military assets that the Utah congressman insisted could have been mobilized during the attack.
"When we bombed Libya for months, we did so in connection with our NATO partners, and you never asked that NATO partners to help and engage," Chaffetz said.
Mullen responded sharply. "I actually commanded NATO forces, and the likelihood that NATO could respond in a situation like that was absolutely zero," he said.
Pickering, who was President George H.W. Bush's U.N. envoy, and Mullen, the top U.S. general under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, defended their efforts.
"We had unfettered access to State Department personnel and documents. There were no limitations," Mullen said. "We received the full cooperation of all witnesses and every State Department office. We interviewed everyone we thought it was necessary to interview. We operated independently and were given freedom to pursue the investigation as we deemed necessary."
The hearing with Pickering and Mullen carried on for nearly five hours. After breaking, the panel heard from the father of slain Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods and the mother of Sean Smith, who worked as an information technology specialist when he was killed in Benghazi.
“I was told a few things and they were all lies,” Smith said. "Obama, and Hillary, and Panetta, and Susan [Rice] all came up to me at the casket ceremony – every one of them came up to me, gave me a big hug – and I asked them what happened."
“And every one of them says, ‘it was the video,’ and we all know that it wasn’t the video. Even at that time, they knew it wasn’t the video," she added.
"So, they all lied to me," she said.
In advance of the hearing, House Democrats released an 80-page report that concluded the U.S. military wasn't ordered to "stand down" during the Benghazi attack - rejecting a claim repeated as recently as Wednesday by several Republican members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, Mullen's successor as top U.S. general, rejected the stand-down claim at a Senate hearing in June. The Republican-led House Armed Services Committee endorsed that position after a classified hearing with other senior officials in July. Mullen rejected the charge as well multiple times Thursday, saying it would have been impossible for any military assets to make it to Benghazi in time to make a difference.
Credit: AFP/Getty Images
The Democratic report also defended the conduct of Pickering and Mullen.
However, Democrats found significant fault with the State Department for establishing Benghazi as a "temporary post" without the full security of an embassy or consulate. That could provide at least some ammunition for criticism of Clinton as she gears up for a potential presidential run in 2016, given that she would have been involved in approving a U.S. mission in the largely lawless city after Libya's 2011 civil war.
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