Aide to Clinton testifies in private on Benghazi

Former Hillary Clinton aide, during her tenure as Secretary of State, Jake Sullivan, center, arrives to be interviewed before a House panel on the Benghazi investigation on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Sept. 4, 2015.
Former Hillary Clinton aide, during her tenure as Secretary of State, Jake Sullivan, center, arrives to be interviewed before a House panel on the Benghazi investigation on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Sept. 4, 2015.

WASHINGTON -- A senior member of Hillary Rodham Clinton's inner circle testified Friday before a House panel investigating the deadly 2012 attacks in Libya as a spat broke out between a Republican staff member and a Democratic lawmaker who insists it's time for the committee to disband.

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Jake Sullivan, a former policy director and deputy chief of staff under Clinton at the State Department, was questioned by the panel in a day-long session of private testimony.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., the committee's chairman, said Sullivan was in a "unique position" to talk about how U.S. policy in Libya required the State Department to have a physical presence in the country. Sullivan is currently a top policy aide on Clinton's presidential campaign.

Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the senior Democrat on the committee, said at midday that Sullivan had answered every question.

The panel is investigating the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks at the U.S. facilities in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

Mike Morell, the CIA's former deputy director, likely will be the next witness to appear before the panel, Gowdy told reporters.

Separately, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a member of the panel, wrote in a New York Times op-ed that the committee had become "little more than a partisan tool to influence the presidential race, a dangerous precedent that will haunt Congress for decades."

Schiff called for the panel to be shut down.

"Whatever their original purpose, the Select Committee's leaders appear no longer to have any interest in Benghazi, except as the tragic events of that day may be used as a cudgel against the likely Democratic nominee for president," he wrote.

He said the panel had let down the families of those killed in the attacks.

That prompted a response from Jamal Ware, a spokesman for the GOP-led panel. In an email to reporters, Ware said Schiff had not attended enough of the panel's meetings, including Friday's session, to levy criticism. Schiff was traveling from California to Washington on Friday.

"You all need to ask Mr. Schiff how it is he has drawn these conclusions, since he has only seen fit to attend one hour of one witness interview since the committee was constituted," Ware said.

Cummings seized on the exchange, calling Ware's comments a "bizarre, highly defensive, and erratic statement overflowing with false claims." He also questioned whether Gowdy approved the comments, which he described as an attack on a member of Congress in a "direct and offensive manner that I have never seen before."

Gowdy said Friday that inquiries that focused on a private email server Clinton used while serving as secretary of state, including its setup, came only later in the session. "Our committee is the committee on Benghazi. It's not the committee on emails," Gowdy said.

A candidate for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, Clinton has been dogged by criticism about her use of a private email server for government business during her tenure as secretary of state.

Clinton is scheduled to testify before the committee next month.

Cheryl Mills, Clinton's former chief of staff, answered questions for the panel for 9½ hours Thursday. Few details were released, but knowledgeable officials said lawmakers asked Mills about her role in preparing "talking points" for administration officials after the Benghazi attacks. The officials were not authorized to speak publicly and requested anonymity to discuss Mills' appearance.

Meanwhile, the head of the review board that studied the Benghazi attacks said Friday that Mills had read a draft of his findings before they were made public and made suggestions that were ultimately accepted for the final version. The inquiry was led by Thomas Pickering, a former ambassador, who was tasked with investigating what occurred at the State Department before, during and after the attacks.

Mills had testified under oath Thursday that she had read an independent review board's report on the attacks and suggested changes, according to two congressional officials.

Pickering's report was critical of the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security and its Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs but did not criticize senior officials, including Clinton.

Pickering said Friday that Mills was among a group of people he had allowed to read the report before it was released. He said the report was independent because he and the other members of the team that conducted the inquiry -- known as the Accountability Review Board -- "made all of our decisions unanimously about the report and its direction regardless of where the comments came from."

"Some of the comments we accepted, and some we did not because they were not consistent with our findings and the way we chose to convey those," Pickering said.

He added, "My judgment was that this did not constitute an inappropriate intervention or an attempt to change the basic report which we were not going to accept."

A Clinton campaign aide who declined to be named said that "whatever observations were shared, the [Accountability Review Board] decided what to include."

"And any read of their report shows they didn't pull any punches," the aide said.

Information for this article was contributed by Jesse J. Holland, Kenneth Thomas and Matthew Daly of The Associated Press and by Michael S. Schmidt of The New York Times.

A Section on 09/05/2015

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