In Debut, Benghazi Panel Leaves Sparring to Others

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Source: NYT

WASHINGTON — The special House committee on Benghazi seemed determined to prove on Wednesday that it would not be the bickering, partisan panel that many expected. But the outside political class did not get the memo.

Behind-the-scenes maneuvering from the left and the right surrounding the committee’s restrained debut hearing offered an early glimpse of how the 2012 attacks on the United States diplomatic compound in Libya — which left four Americans dead, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens — would play out as a divisive issue if Hillary Rodham Clinton runs for president in 2016.

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Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the committee’s top Democrat, was also conciliatory in his opening remarks. He said that while previous congressional investigations into the Benghazi attacks had “devolved into unseemly partisanship,” the committee faced a potentially transformational moment that could have “lasting effects even when we’re gone on to heaven.”

Two witnesses who were called before the committee — both members of the Independent Panel on Best Practices at the State Department, which was formed after the attacks — said that the department had put in place 30 of the panel’s 40 recommendations, and that it was working to carry out eight more. But they said that the department had ignored two of the recommendations, including one to establish an under secretary for diplomatic security.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/18/us/politics/in-debut-benghazi-panel-leaves-sparring-to-others.html

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Dana Milbank, Wash. Post: Trey Gowdy’s unexpected Benghazi twist:

There was no discussion of talking points or stand-down orders, and only one of the seven Republicans on the panel — Jim Jordan of Ohio — even mentioned Clinton. Instead, Gowdy adopted as the theme of his first hearing an idea suggested by one of the committee’s Democrats, Adam Schiff of California: How well the State Department has been implementing recommendations to prevent future attacks on U.S. diplomats like the one in Libya two years ago that killed four Americans.