Guest columnist: Benghazi answers long overdue

By REP. JIM GERLACH
Guest columnist

The recent release of 41 documents related to the White House’s handling of the terror attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya and murder of four brave public servants should open everyone’s eyes to the fact that the families of the victims and the public have waited too long for answers.

For most of the 603 days since the Sept. 11, 2012 attack, the White House has been trying to make questions about Benghazi and the U.S. response to the attack go away by spinning the media and stonewalling Congress.

Even though Congress has issued subpoena after subpoena for information about the White House’s response to the attack, it took a Freedom of Information Act request filed last summer by Judicial Watch to pry critical documents loose from this Administration.

Among the 41 documents released in late April was an email exchange between the President’s national security team, senior White House advisors and Obama campaign operatives that makes it clear the White House deliberately misled the public about the reason al-Qaida affiliates targeted our consulate.

Specifically, an email from Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes that was shared with White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer and Obama’s 2008 campaign manager David Plouffe showed the White House was most concerned about protecting the President’s re-election chances.

In the email, Rhodes advised U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice to make it clear that the attack resulted from protests “rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.”

That’s exactly what Ambassador Rice did some 36 hours later when she hit the Sunday talk show circuit, unleashing a vigorous defense of the Administration and tamping down any notion that the attack contradicted the President’s campaign boasts that al-Qaida was “on the run.”

As The Weekly Standard noted, the Administration was adamant that Ambassador Rice’s talking points and public response were based solely on information available at that time and assessments provided by the intelligence community. We know now that’s not true.

But here’s the bigger problem. We don’t know if there’s more information that was given to the American people that wasn’t true.

The fact that it took a Freedom of Information Act request from a private organization and a subsequent court order to unearth emails revealing the political motives behind the Administration’s misinformation campaign speaks volumes about the White House’s refusal to level with the public more than 600 days after four Americans were killed in an pre-meditated assault on the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.

The release of these 41 documents also demonstrates that the House needs to get serious about its responsibility to exercise thorough and effective oversight on matters as important as this.

If an American diplomat and the three Marines in his security detail had been murdered in Washington instead of Benghazi, you can bet there would have been a national blue ribbon panel commissioned the next day to get to the bottom of the attack.

For more than a year, I have been among a group of House members calling for a Select House Committee that can focus exclusively on getting answers the public deserves.

Now that we know the White House has sidestepped subpoenas from the House Government Oversight Committee, the need for a Select Committee is greater than ever.

So I applaud House Speaker John Boehner for announcing that he will form a Select Committee to try and get to the bottom of the Benghazi attack.

The time for political theater and schemes to divert public attention from this grave issue is over.

The families of the victims of the Benghazi attack, the public and Congress have put up with that for 603 days, and that’s downright shameful.

Congressman Jim Gerlach is a Republican who represents Pennsylvania’s 6th District, which includes parts of Berks, Chester, Lebanon and Montgomery counties, and is a member of the House Ways & Means Committee.