WASHINGTON
— Ending one of the longest, costliest and most bitterly partisan
congressional investigations in history, the House Select Committee on
Benghazi issued its final report on Tuesday, finding no new evidence of culpability or wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton in the 2012 attacks in Libya that left four Americans dead.
The
800-page report, however, included some new details about the night of
the attacks, and the context in which they occurred. And it delivered a
broad rebuke of government agencies like the Defense Department, the
Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department — and the officials
who led them — for failing to grasp the acute security risks in
Benghazi, and especially for maintaining outposts there that they could
not protect.
The
committee, led by Representative Trey Gowdy, Republican of South
Carolina, also harshly criticized an internal State Department
investigation that it said had allowed officials like Mrs. Clinton, then
the secretary of state, to effectively choose who would investigate
their actions. In addition, it reiterated Republicans’ complaints that
the Obama administration had sought to thwart the investigation by
withholding witnesses and evidence.
The
report, which includes perhaps the most exhaustive chronology to date
of the attacks and their aftermath, did not dispute that United States
military forces stationed in Europe could not have reached Benghazi in
time to rescue the personnel who died — a central finding of previous
inquiries.
Still, it issued stinging criticism of the overall delay in response and the lack of preparedness on the part of the government.
No comments:
Post a Comment