gave a riveting minute-by-minute
account on Wednesday of the lethal
terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, last
Sept. 11 and described its contentious
aftermath at a charged Congressional
hearing that reflected the weighty
political stakes perceived by both
parties.
During a chaotic night at the American
Embassy in Tripoli, hundreds of miles
away, the diplomat, Gregory Hicks,
got what he called “the saddest phone
call I’ve ever had in my life” informing
him that Ambassador J. Christopher
Stevens was dead and that he was
now the highest-ranking American in
Libya. For his leadership that night
when four Americans were killed, Mr.
Hicks said in nearly six hours of
testimony, he subsequently received
calls from both Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton and President
Obama.
But within days, Mr. Hicks said, after
raising questions about the account of
what had happened in Benghazi
offered in television interviews by
Susan E. Rice, the United Nations
ambassador, he felt a distinct chill
from State Department superiors.
“The sense I got was that I needed to
stop the line of questioning,” said Mr.
Hicks, who has been a Foreign Service
officer for 22 years.
He was soon given a scathing review
of his management style, he said, and
was later “effectively demoted” to
desk officer at headquarters, in what
he believes was retaliation for
speaking up.
House Republican leaders made the
hearing the day’s top priority,
postponing floor votes so that the
Committee on Oversight and
Government Reform could continue
without interruption. The Obama
administration appeared focused on
the testimony, with senior officials at
the White House, the State
Department and the Pentagon
responding through the day to
Republican accusations of
incompetence and cover-up in
campaign war room style.
In the balance, in the view of both
Democrats and Republicans, is not just
the reputation of Mr. Obama but also
potentially the prospects for the 2016
presidential election as well, since Mrs.
Clinton, who stepped down in
February, is the Democratic Party’s
leading prospect. If the testimony did
not fundamentally challenge the facts
and timeline of the Benghazi attack
and the administration’s response to
it, it vividly illustrated the anxiety of
top State Department officials about
how the events would be publicly
portrayed.
Mr. Hicks offered an unbecoming view
of political supervision and intimidation
inside the Obama administration.
When Representative Jason Chaffetz,
Republican of Utah, visited Libya after
the attack, Mr. Hicks said his bosses
told him not to talk to the
congressman. When he did anyway,
and a State Department lawyer was
excluded from one meeting because
he lacked the necessary security
clearance, Mr. Hicks said he received
an angry phone call from Mrs.
Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills.
“So this goes right to the person next
to Secretary of State Clinton. Is that
accurate?” asked Representative Jim
Jordan, Republican of Ohio. Mr. Hicks
responded, “Yes, sir.”
A State Department official said Mr.
Hicks had been free to talk to Mr.
Chaffetz, but that department policy
required a department lawyer to be
present during interviews for any
Congressional investigation.
In a statement late Wednesday, a
State Department spokesman, Patrick
H. Ventrell, said the department had
not and would not retaliate against Mr.
Hicks. Mr. Ventrell noted that Mr.
Hicks “testified that he decided to
shorten his assignment in Libya
following the attacks, due to
understandable family reasons.” He
said that Mr. Hicks’s current job was
“a suitable temporary assignment” at
the same salary, and that he had
submitted his preferences for his next
job.
The accounts from Mr. Hicks and two
other officials, Mark I. Thompson, the
former deputy coordinator for
operations in the State Department’s
Counterterrorism Bureau, and Eric
Nordstrom, an official in the State
Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic
Security who had testified previously,
added some detail to accounts of the
night of Sept. 11 in Benghazi. Armed
Islamic militants penetrated the
diplomatic compound, starting the fire
that killed Mr. Stevens and an aide,
and later killed two security officers in
a mortar attack; in Tripoli, where
frantic diplomats fearing a similar
invasion used an ax to destroy
classified hard drives; and in
Washington, where officials struggled
to keep up with events.
The hearing offered a compelling,
often emotional view from the ground,
where officials were desperate for a
rescue mission. Mr. Hicks described his
exchange with the furious leader of a
four-member Special Operations team
that wanted to fly from Tripoli to
Benghazi to help but was told not to.
Mr. Thompson wanted to see his
Foreign Emergency Support Team sent
to the scene and could not understand
why his superiors did not agree.
But from the more detached
standpoint of senior officials in
Washington — offered in statements
from the Defense Department and the
State Department — neither unit could
have reached Benghazi in time. The
team in Tripoli worked much of the
night on moving American Embassy
personnel to a secure annex and was
not ready to leave for Benghazi until
the early morning. The emergency
support team would have deployed
from the United States and would
have arrived many hours after the last
Americans were evacuated from
Benghazi.
“None of us should ever experience
what we went through in Tripoli and
Benghazi,” Mr. Hicks said.
The hearing became a political
spectacle well before the committee’s
chairman, Representative Darrell Issa,
Republican of California, gaveled it to
order. Republicans had promised
damning revelations that could
ultimately undo the Obama
presidency. “Every bit as damaging as
Watergate,” Senator Lindsey Graham
of South Carolina said this week.
Congressional Republicans have
threatened to hold additional hearings
and subpoena witnesses, including
Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Rice, and
Democrats see a partisan fishing
expedition.
“This is a subject that has, from its
beginning, been subject to attempts to
politicize it by Republicans,” the White
House spokesman, Jay Carney, said
Wednesday.
The three witnesses challenged both
the Obama administration’s initial
version of events — long ago
withdrawn — and its claim to have
exhaustively investigated the attacks.
When Ms. Rice suggested on Sunday
talk shows days after the attack that
it had begun with protests against a
crude anti-Muslim video that had been
posted on YouTube, Mr. Hicks said: “I
was stunned. My jaw dropped and I
was embarrassed.”
Her remarks angered the president of
Libya’s National Assembly, Mohamed
Magariaf, who had said on one of the
Sunday shows that the attack was the
“preplanned” act of militants, including
some from Al Qaeda, Mr. Hicks said.
He asserted that Mr. Magariaf’s fury
at being undercut caused Libyan
officials to drag their feet on
cooperating with F.B.I. investigators.
A State Department official said the
delays were caused by security
concerns in Benghazi.
The witnesses also said they felt that
the administration’s official
investigation, led by a retired
diplomat, Thomas R. Pickering, and a
former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, Adm.Mike Mullen, was
inadequate.
“They stopped short of interviewing
people who I personally know were
involved in key decisions,” Mr.
Nordstrom said.
Mr. Hicks also said the State
Department’s Accountability Review
Board, as the inquiry was called, failed
to hold high-level political appointees
at the department responsible for
inadequate security in Benghazi.
Mr. Nordstrom said that when he
pressed for additional security
personnel, he was told, “Basically, stop
complaining.”
Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the
committee’s senior Democrat,
accused the Republicans and Mr. Issa
in particular of distorting the facts of
the inquiry for partisan purposes.
But Mr. Cummings joined Republicans
in promising that they would make
sure the three witnesses did not suffer
for their candid testimony. “I try to do
everything in my power to protect
witnesses,” he said. “I don’t care if
they are brought by Republicans or
Democrats.”
Post a Comment