Members of the House Select Committee on Benghazi will interview former CIA Director David Petraeus on Wednesday, and Rep. Mike Pompeo said that the group just wants to hear from him the truth about the actions he took surrounding the 2012 embassy attacks.
"I hope Gen. Petraeus can share what he was doing that day, the intelligence that was provided to both U.S. government at large and the State Department, in particular, about what was potentially a threat there in Benghazi in the run-up to the events," the Kansas Republican told
MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell on her noon cable news show.
Further, he said that the committee wants to learn how briefings were conducted in the aftermath of the attacks, and "how Congress was briefed on the attacks after the events as well."
Mitchell pointed out that it's been suggested that the CIA, while working on talking points after the attacks, had been trying not to disclose its "very large intelligence operation there," as "they were trying to collect weapons that had been released to various militias" in Libya. Pompeo agreed that the questioning, which will happen behind closed doors, will include that information.
"We're going to ask [about] before the events, the events of that afternoon and evening here in Washington and the aftermath, the talking points and all the things that the intelligence community had provided to the secretary of state," he said.
"She [Hillary Clinton] testified about what she knew and didn't know," Pompeo continued. "She talked about this video. She told her family one thing and told governments around the world another and apparently families something else as well. We're looking for the truth. We want to make sure that the things that all the witnesses including Secretary Clinton told this committee were truthful."
Pompeo admitted that there is always a risk of confusion, but it was "by everything I have seen, pretty clear within hours, that this was a terrorist attack."
However, he said, "we had U.S. government officials go out after that and tell stories that were a great variant to the truth. We want to understand that because it's important not only for the events of that night, but we still have folks out in harm's way and dangerous places around the world."
And while critics have complained that the investigation went on to try to undermine Clinton's candidacy for the White House, Pompeo said that wasn't true.
"In fact, just recently on New Year's Eve we received an additional 2,500 documents," said Pompeo. "Remember, Gen. Petraeus has been interviewed by the House Intelligence committee, but when that interview took place the committee had no access to any of Secretary Clinton's emails. They didn't have access for a reason. She had them on a private server to which no one had knowledge."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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