[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 8 (Wednesday, January 23, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H253-H256]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TERRORIST ATTACK IN BENGHAZI
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf) is recognized
for the remainder of the hour.
Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, more than 4 months have passed since the
terrorist attacks in Benghazi, which killed four Americans, including
our ambassador, injured many others, and destroyed two U.S. facilities.
Yet, despite the months that have passed, we're hardly closer to
bringing those responsible to justice than we were in the weeks
immediately following the attack. Put bluntly, the lack of progress in
identifying and hunting down the terrorists responsible is stunning.
Consider the current state of the Obama administration's
investigation and response to the attack:
Four months later, the administration still cannot or will not name
the terrorist groups responsible for the attacks or the names of these
group leaders;
Four months later, despite consulate video footage that many Members
of Congress have seen and many eyewitnesses, not a single Benghazi
terror suspect is in custody;
Four months later, the FBI has had access to only one suspect, Ali
Harzi, for just 3 hours, and the Tunisian Government kept the FBI team
waiting for more than 5 weeks before finally granting access;
Four months later, the administration still has not disclosed the
serious connections between the groups behind the Benghazi attack and
the leaders of the attack on the U.S. embassies in Cairo, Tunis, and
Sana'a that same week of September 11;
Four months later, following the release of the Pickering report on
State Department failures leading up to the attack, not a single State
Department employee has been fired and held responsible for their role
in denying adequate security for the consulate in Benghazi;
Four months later, despite Secretary Clinton's September 21
declaration when she said, ``What happened was a terrorist attack, and
we will not rest until we have tracked down and brought to justice the
terrorists who murdered four Americans,'' this administration seems to
have not only rested, but to have moved on and apparently hopes that
the Congress and the American people will too.
Just today, the New York Times is reporting:
Several Egyptian members of the squad of militants that lay
bloody siege to an Algerian gas complex last week also took
part in the deadly attack on the United States Mission in
Libya in September.
Mr. Speaker, 4 months later, this is an unacceptable state of
affairs. Quite frankly, the Obama administration has failed. They have
failed to prioritize this investigation. They have failed to bring the
necessary pressure to bear on the Libyan, Tunisian, and Egyptian
Governments. But more fundamentally, the administration has failed to
respond to a terrorist attack appropriately, treating it as a law
enforcement and diplomatic issue, rather than the security issue that
it is.
At its core, this is yet another reflection of President Obama's
schizophrenic counterterrorism policy, the same administration that
unapologetically rains down lethal drone attacks on some al Qaeda
affiliate terrorists in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia and will not use
other counterterrorism resources to identify, locate, and detain the
terrorists involved in the death of our ambassador and others in Libya.
This inconsistent policy may stem from the President's hasty campaign
promise to shut down Guantanamo Bay in Gitmo and prematurely transfer
detention facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan. In doing so, the
President effectively ended America's ability to detain and interrogate
terrorists, depriving the FBI, the CIA, and other agencies of critical
opportunities to obtain information on al Qaeda networks.
Today, as the case of Benghazi suspect Ali Harzi has demonstrated,
the United States is completely reliant on the cooperation of host
countries to detain on our behalf and selectively allow access to
suspects. As in the case of Harzi, as demonstrated, this approach is
fraught with diplomatic roadblocks, costing critical time in getting
information from suspects to track terrorist networks. Perhaps that is
why President Obama so often opts to use lethal drone strikes to kill
terrorists, knowing that the U.S. would be unable to get access to
interrogate these terror suspects by working through host governments
or because he no longer has a way to detain them in U.S. custody short
of providing them the full privileges of an article III court.
{time} 1350
In short, the President has tied his own hands, compromised U.S.
national security and put the FBI in an impossible position. The FBI
has been asked to treat the terrorist attack where four Americans died
as if it's a law enforcement activity and has been put in a compromised
and very difficult spot, and they have laid the groundwork for the
administration's inept response in the wake of the terrorist attack in
Benghazi.
To make matters worse, the administration has not even seen any
significant success from its diplomatic-focused response. When Tunisia
refused to allow the FBI access to Harzi for more than 5 weeks, the
administration took no public steps to use diplomatic tools, like U.S.
foreign assistance, to pressure the Tunisians to make Harzi available.
In fact, the FBI only gained access after Members of Congress
threatened amendments to cut off or restrict Tunisia's foreign aid if
they continued to obstruct the FBI investigation.
I was among those Members of Congress along with Lindsey Graham and
Senator McCain and others. In the interim, I urged the administration
to act immediately to suspend foreign assistance if the Tunisian
Government persisted in obstructing the investigation. On January 4, I
received a tepid--and it was tepid--response from the Acting Deputy
Assistant Administrator for Legislative and Public Affairs at USAID
with a bland assurance that the Tunisian Government was cooperating.
Was cooperating? Five weeks and the FBI had to wait? Then the FBI had 3
hours to talk to him, and we gave this Tunisian Government, Mr.
Speaker, $320 million last year? Days later, Ali Harzi was released.
Today, I again wrote USAID, expressing my disappointment that the
administrator himself could not respond directly to a Member of
Congress who serves on a committee of jurisdiction and, further,
pointed out what should be obvious--that the Tunisian Government did
not cooperate. The Tunisian Government never seriously thought the
aid--precious taxpayer money--was in jeopardy. The Tunisian Government
has not faced a single consequence for undermining U.S. national
security. I submit my letter for the Record.
Sadly, the failure to respond forcefully and appropriately to the
Benghazi attack will undoubtedly encourage our enemies and make the
world a more dangerous place for Americans working in hostile
environments around the world. This failure to respond has endangered
future Embassy staffs and Ambassadors--the Federal employees who serve
our country at great risk.
Rather than demonstrating that there will be no quarter, no respite,
no safe haven for terrorists who threaten American officials abroad,
the message the administration has sent is that there is no apparent
consequence for these actions. This will only embolden our enemy to
plan the next Benghazi, knowing that under this administration there is
less consequence even for their involvement in such an attack.
In this context, perhaps it is not surprising that the al Qaeda-
affiliated terrorist group Ansar al-Sharia brazenly took pictures of
the FBI agents interviewing Harzi and posted pictures on their Web
sites; and when the Tunisian Government released Harzi, Ansar al-
[[Page H254]]
Sharia was there to welcome him and post a video of the celebration of
his release. Again, these antagonistic actions have been met by silence
from this administration.
As Steve Hayes and Tom Joscelyn reported in The Weekly Standard this
week:
U.S. officials tell The Weekly Standard that the release of
the photos was a clear attempt to intimidate the Americans
and show that the FBI could not act with impunity.
In its posting, Ansar al-Sharia Tunisia warned the Tunisian people
that their government had allowed the FBI ``to begin investigating your
sons under post-revolutionary protection.''
Consider that, in the same week of the Benghazi attack, our Embassies
in Cairo, Tunis and Sana were also overrun in an increasingly apparent
coordinated plot. In each case, the American flag was ripped down and
burned, and a black al Qaeda flag was flown in its place. We are
fortunate and blessed that none of these incidents resulted in a loss
of life. They were, nonetheless, an attack on America by hostile
groups.
As the administration's own State Department Web site states: ``Any
attack on an Embassy is considered an attack on the country it
represents.'' Each Embassy and consulate that was overrun the week of
September 11 represents, in its own way, a public attack on America,
and in the months that have followed, this administration has
demonstrated that there are no consequences for breaching our Embassies
or for killing our personnel.
I fear that the latest hostage-taking and killing of Americans and
other Westerners in Algeria is a manifestation of a newfound confidence
by our enemy in knowing that they may face no serious consequences from
this administration for their murderous acts. It is telling that
neither President Obama nor any others in his administration have made
a public statement on the recent terrorist activities in Algeria,
whereas the head of France and the head of England have spoken out over
and over and over.
All the while, the Arab Spring, which was fanned by this
administration to much fanfare, has become an Arab Winter, and for many
of the people in the Middle East and North Africa, this Arab Winter--a
new safe haven for al Qaeda-affiliated groups--is forming,
ideologically fueled by the release of terrorists and extremists from
prisons and flush with weapons provided to anti-Qadhafi rebels last
year.
We are witnessing the potential formation of the next front in the
war on terror, but we increasingly have an administration that no
longer considers it a war worth fighting no matter the cost to American
power or to the safety of our people abroad. While some have described
the Obama doctrine as leading from behind, it is increasingly clear
that the Obama doctrine means not leading at all. While most of the
responsibility falls on the President and his administration, the
Congress--the House and the Senate--and the media share some blame for
failing to adequately investigate and bring attention to the many
questions surrounding the administration's response to Benghazi.
Aside from a handful of reporters who have stayed with this story and
have continued to raise questions about the administration's words and
deeds, I can't help but wonder: Where are the New York Times, the
Washington Post, or the network news programs? Why in the wake of last
week's deadly terrorist attack in Algeria are no reporters
investigating the serious links between al Qaeda's affiliates in North
Africa and the connection between the groups?
Equally important, where has the Congress been in investigating both
the circumstances of the attack and the administration's response over
the last 4 months? Despite a handful of hearings, many in classified
settings and done by very capable and good people, the American people
have not been provided with anything close to an adequate answer to the
following questions. It is not only important for the Congress to find
out; it is important for the American people to find out. Have they
been given answers to these questions?
Secretary Panetta, Attorney General Holder and DNI Clapper still have
not testified publicly before Congress as to what steps they took
during the attack and in the days that followed.
What were the President's activities during the 7-hour period of
attack?
Why wasn't the U.S. military deployed to assist?
On the anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in American history
and after multiple attacks this year on U.S. and Western interests, why
were U.S. military units and assets in the region not ready, alert, and
in a position to respond? After all, two of the four people killed were
murdered 7 hours after the fighting began.
Why do we still not have the clear answers on the internal process
that produced the inaccurate and, frankly, misleading talking points on
which Ambassador Rice relied several days after the attack?
Why were the testimonies of the U.S. personnel who were evacuated
from Benghazi on September 12--eyewitnesses who knew there was never a
demonstration outside the consulate--not immediately factored into the
judgments of our intelligence community?
Have the witnesses who were there on the scene, government employees,
good people--all risking their lives--been called to come up and been
given the opportunity to talk to Members on both sides of the aisle?
The answer to date is ``no.''
Why hasn't Secretary Clinton been interviewed by the Pickering
Commission?
Was the White House aware of the FBI investigation of General
Petraeus? If not, why not?
To date, Congress has failed to get these answers, and it has not
developed a coordinated or substantial investigative plan to fully
explore this critical matter, which has a direct bearing on U.S.
national security. In the absence of serious oversight, the media has
moved on. In the absence of this, the administration, which has so much
to account for to the American people, receives a carte blanche from
the legislative branch to continue its questionable policies.
These matters are too serious to be brushed aside. There are critical
legislative decisions the next Congress will have to make based on
answers to these questions; but, more importantly, the American people
deserve the answers to these questions, including open hearings and an
unclassified report.
{time} 1400
Mr. Speaker, for these reasons I remain convinced that a House select
committee on the terrorist attack in Benghazi is needed more than ever.
That is why last week I introduced my resolution, H. Res. 36, with 20
of our colleagues joining as cosponsors.
A select committee is essential to combine the myriad existing
investigations into a single, comprehensive, and exhaustive review. I
believe such a combined effort will yield even more information
regarding the true nature of these terrorist attacks and the
administration's response will not allow administration officials to
offer up siloed accounts to various committees.
The select committee I am proposing should draw from the existing
congressional investigations by including the chairman and ranking
member of each committee of jurisdiction--the Intelligence Committee,
Mr. Rogers and Mr. Ruppersberger have done a great job; the Foreign
Affairs Committee, Mr. Royce and Mr. Engel do a great job; the
Judiciary Committee, the same way; the Armed Services Committee; the
Homeland Security Committee; the Oversight and Government Reform
Committee; as well as five additional Republican Members appointed by
the Speaker and two additional Democrats appointed by the minority
leader so it is truly bipartisan.
I appreciate the support I've received for this resolution from the
original cosponsors, as well as the Heritage Foundation; former Senator
from Tennessee, Fred Thompson, who was counsel on the Watergate Select
Committee; former Ambassador John Bolton; and General Jerry Boykin, a
former special operations officer and CIA operative who is widely
respected in the intelligence community.
Mr. Speaker and Members of this body, we owe it to the families of
the victims and the American people to fully investigate this terrorist
attack. I urge my colleagues to support my resolution to create a House
select committee.
I yield back the balance of my time.
[[Page H255]]
Congress of the United States,
House of Representatives,
January 23, 2013.
Dr. Rajiv Shah,
Administrator, Agency For International Development,
Washington, DC.
Dear Dr. Shah: Ms. Barbara Bennett, acting deputy assistant
administrator for legislative and public affairs at USAID
recently sent a response to my December 11, 2012 letter to
you. I was disappointed you did not respond directly to a
Member of Congress who serves on a committee of jurisdiction,
especially given that my concern was budgetary in nature.
Just days after I received your response, Tunisian
authorities released Ali Harzi, a key suspect in the
September 11 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate and annex
in Benghazi, which took the lives of four Americans,
including the U.S. ambassador, and resulted in the
destruction of two U.S. facilities. This development is
completely at odds with USAID's assurances in the response
letter that ``. . . Tunisian authorities are cooperating with
the Department [State] through normal law enforcement
channels.'' Respectfully, I would also like to remind you
that I chair the Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations
subcommittee which has jurisdiction over the Federal Bureau
of Investigation (FBI). Consequently, while Ms. Bennett
indicated that USAID ``could not provide further detail,'' I
am well-versed on the investigation and can say with
confidence that releasing Ali Harzi is an affront to U.S.
national security and rule of law, given the evidence of his
alleged involvement.
Furthermore, your assertion that U.S. assistance is
critical to ``Tunisia's successful democratic transition'' is
misguided. Tunisia is not transitioning successfully. I have
enclosed for your review a recent piece which ran in
Bloomberg Businessweek, ``Revolution and Entropy,'' which
paints a bleak picture of progress in Tunisia. A January 14
Reuters piece described large street protests in the capital
city during which protestors chanted, ``Where is the
constitution? Where is democracy?'' Democratic transition
aside, the Tunisian government, as evidenced by this most
recent development with Ali Harzi, is working at cross-
purposes with U.S. national interests.
During these tight budgetary times, when worthy programs
face constraints and cuts, our national priorities should
undergird our foreign assistance. The administration
continues to claim that bringing the perpetrators to justice
for the deadly attack on the U.S. consulate is a priority.
And yet its actions are inconsistent with such sentiments,
particularly in the case of Tunisia.
We must send a clear and unequivocal message to the
Tunisian government. U.S. aid must not be taken for granted.
U.S. national security considerations are a cornerstone of
our foreign policy. When those interests are undermined,
there are consequences.
I look forward to a personal response to this letter and
any future correspondence. Best wishes.
Sincerely,
Frank R. Wolf,
Member of Congress.
____
[From Bloomberg Businessweek, Jan. 14-20, 2013]
Revolution and Entropy
(By Norman Pearlstine and Tarek el-Tablawy)
In Tunisia, where the Arab Spring began, the transition to
democracy is sputtering.
Two years after he set himself on fire, Mohamed Bouazizi
remains history's most famous fruit vendor. Like many
enterprising Tunisians, Bouazizi, 26, was subject to constant
fines of as much as 10 times his daily earnings as he tried
to make a living on the streets of Sidi Bouzid. After his
scale and cart were seized on Dec. 17, 2010, he doused
himself with a liter of paint solvent while standing in front
of the provincial governor's office. A flick of a lighter and
. . .
What then? Tunisia's revolution and the Arab Spring that
followed created a list of dead, imprisoned, or exiled
autocrats--including Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, Libya's Muammar
Qaddafi, and Tunisia's own Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. (Syria's
Bashar Assad hangs on, brutally.) But hope and vengeance are
very different from progress, as Ben Ali's successor as
president, the physician and ex-opposition leader Moncef
Marzouki, has discovered.
On Dec. 17, 2012, Marzouki went to Sidi Bouzid to
commemorate the man and the moment that began all the changes
in the region, only to be greeted by angry chants of ``Leave!
Leave!'' When he told the crowd he lacked a ``magic wand'' to
cure Tunisia's ills, the response was a hailstorm of rocks
and tomatoes. Marzouki had to be hustled into a car and sped
away from the stage.
``Nothing has changed, and that's the sad reality,'' says
Mohamad Amri, a close friend of the Bouazizi family.
Unemployment is officially 18 percent, but a September study
published by the Middle East Economic Association says about
50 percent of young Tunisians with higher education are
without work. At 33, Amri is unemployed and relies on an
allowance from his father to cover soaring food and living
costs, ``I feel like I need to be optimistic, but in the end,
I'm pessimistic.''
On Dec. 12, Fitch Ratings downgraded Tunisia's sovereign
ratings, citing the slow transition to a free economy and
``large twin budget and current-account deficits.'' Standard
& Poor's has downgraded the country to junk status, too. Meji
Djelloul, a professor of Islamic history at Manouba
University in Tunis, the capital, says 80 percent of his
students are eager to leave after graduating. ``In 25 years
of teaching I have never encountered such a sense of
helplessness,'' he says.
It need not be this bleak. The revolution lifted restraints
on expression that had existed for decades, and Tunisians
seem to agree that even without a functioning constitution,
they feel more free--a significant accomplishment. The
country has close social and economic ties to Europe, a
highly educated populace, and infrastructure that's among the
best in the Arab world, with good roads and nine commercial
airports serving a country the size of Florida.
Tunisia has the further comfort of knowing it's not alone.
In its political and economic struggles, Egypt is Tunisia's
larger, perhaps more troubled mirror. Both saw Islamists take
top government positions while Salafis, who embrace the
strictest, most puritanical interpretation of Islam, have
pressed for an even greater role for religion in the reborn
nations. (Egyptian secularists are angered by a constitution
they say was forced upon them, while Tunisia's latest
constitutional draft was stripped of references to sharia, or
Islamic law.) Both countries also saw their economies
contract sharply in reaction to change. Egypt's net
international reserves tell almost 60 percent, to $15
billion, over the past two years. Tunisia's economy
contracted 1.8 percent in 2011. Last year growth was likely
2.7 percent and could rise to 3.3 percent this year, says the
International Monetary Fund. ``We are going through a
complicated transition, not unlike what Eastern Europe went
through,'' says Tunisian Foreign Minister Rafik Abdessalem, a
former professor of politics in Britain who returned to
Tunisia after the revolution. ``We need to prove that it is
possible to have democracy in the Arab world.''
Weaker, economies in Europe have hurt tourism and exports,
two of Tunisia's chief sources of revenue. That's left
officials appealing to the U.S., the United Arab Emirates,
and Qatar, for investment. So far Tunisia hasn't received the
support it sought, let alone the aid it was promised. At its
May 2011 summit in Deauville, France, the Group of Eight
pledged more than $30 billion to assist new Arab governments.
``When we spoke about intentions, it was $30 billion,'' jokes
Alaya Bettaieb, secretary of state to the minister of
investment and international cooperation. ``When we spoke
about action, it was $250 million'' that was delivered.
Tunisia's transition from dictatorship to democracy would
have been easier had the collapse of the Ben Ali regime not
been so sudden. Amri, Bouazizi's friend, suggests the man who
started it all didn't even know how flammable the paint
thinner he poured on himself was, let-alone the impact of his
act of martyrdom. Other protesters, in Tunisia and across the
Arab world, decided to set themselves afire in the weeks and
months that followed. Hernando de Soto, the Peruvian
economist best known for his work seeking property rights for
peasants, has studied the underclass in Tunisia, Egypt, and
elsewhere. He documented 164 deaths by self-immolation in the
six months following Bouazizi's act. ``The ground was fertile
socially, economically, and politically for this kind of
statement,'' says Ali Bouazizi, a cousin who played a key
role in the revolution by filming and uploading to his
Facebook page a video of the protest after the fruit seller's
death.
The embers of unrest remain hot. Tunisia's first truly free
elections in 2011 yielded a Constituent Assembly charged with
drafting the country's new charter and also serving as its
parliament. Ennahda, the moderate Islamist party whose name
translates to Renaissance, won 41 percent of the seats and
together with two smaller secular parties formed a ruling
coalition.
The constitution is still a source of great uncertainty, as
are Ennahda's broader intentions. Critics on the right
maintain that the party has stressed its commitment to
Tunisia's secular tradition in public, while urging Salafis
to be patient for the realization of their goals behind
closed doors. Salafis, including Mouldi Mojahed, who heads
the Salafi-controlled al-Asala Party, says Ennahda ``has
backed away from its principles.''
Neither side has been pacified. Salafis have been blamed
for the serial arson of stores selling alcohol as well as the
September attack on the U.S. embassy amid outrage over a
YouTube clip denigrating Islam's prophet. Ahmed Nejib Chebbi,
an Official in the opposition Jumhuri, or Republican, Party
says, ``The Islamists don't know how to govern,'' and the win
by Ennahda in October 2011 was ``not very reassuring to the
economic stakeholders in the country.''
Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali has tried to walk the middle
ground. ``The Tunisian people have their own identity, and
they agreed on this identity,'' says Jebali in an interview,
affirming the country's commitment to secularism. Jebali, who
spent 10 years in solitary confinement while Ben Ali
controlled the country, says the new constitution won't
impose Islamic law and will respect women's rights. He and
Ennahda have also pledged to support a market economy, if not
a workers' paradise; he rages at those he suggests have riled
up. labor unions and ``who live with the idea of the
proletariat revolution, and who believe that the revolution
in Tunisia was led by the proletariat.''
Sorting out how to improve the lives of ordinary Tunisians,
regardless of their politics,
[[Page H256]]
is complicated by a lack of economic facts. At a conference
organized by Utica, a group representing Tunisia's largest
employers, De Soto, the economist, estimated that the black
market economy is more than 10 times the size of all
companies on the country's stock exchange. Others have
suggested off- the-books trade represents as much as 30
percent of Tunisia's GDP. The divisions between the corporate
and informal sectors run deeper than matters of accounting.
Wided Bouchmaorii, Utica's president and head of one of
Tunisia's largest business enterprises, says the informal
economy condones violence. ``It is disastrous for legitimate
businesses serving consumers,'' she says.
Prime Minister Jebali acknowledges the size of the informal
economy and continued problems with corruption. (The nation
saw its corruption ranking, issued by Transparency
International, slide from 59th in 2010 to 75th in 2012.) He
pledges that Tunisia will do more to address these problems
as democratic institutions take hold and the economy
strengthens. In the meantime, he says priorities include
addressing the ``heavy taxation of the formal economy'' and
the inability of a ``young economy to absorb unemployed
youth.''
For those who have been waiting, patience is running short.
Habib Kasdalli set himself afire shortly after Bouazizi when
a civil servant denied him government benefits for a mental
disability. Seated in a Tunis hotel, Kasdalli describes his
nervous condition as his burn-scarred hands twitch. When he
pulls off a blue knit cap, his scalp is grotesquely scarred.
``I felt oppressed, and I felt hopelessness,'' Kasdalli says.
The revolution offered a respite. Relief remains a long way
off.
____________________