[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 107 (Wednesday, July 24, 2013)]
[House]
[Page H4981]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    THE SEVENTH UNANSWERED QUESTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Virginia (Mr. Wolf) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, today I've come to the floor to raise the 
seventh in a series of critical but unanswered questions about the 
terrorist attacks on the U.S. consulate and annex in Benghazi last 
September 11.
  Despite a year of investigation in a number of committees, the 
American people still do not know the answers to these questions, nor 
do they know if they have even been asked.
  With only 5 legislative days remaining before the Congress departs 
for August recess, I'm increasingly concerned that none of these 
questions will be answered by the one-year anniversary of the Benghazi 
attack.
  According to a recent excerpt in the forthcoming book, ``Under Fire: 
The Untold Story of the Attack in Benghazi,'' which was published in 
this month's Vanity Fair magazine, Ambassador Stevens made several 
calls for help after reaching what he believed was a safe room on the 
consulate compound.
  As we well know now, one call was placed to his Deputy Chief of 
Mission, Gregory Hicks, who was at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli. In May, 
Hicks provided powerful testimony about that final conversation with 
Stevens.
  He also called ``local militia and public-security commanders in 
Benghazi, pleading for help.''
  What I found interesting in the Vanity Fair excerpt is that Stevens 
also made calls to ``nearby consulates'' on the BlackBerry of someone 
on his security detail. Assuming the authors are correct, the 
government must have the phone records from Stevens' calls to the 
militia and foreign consulates that night.
  This raises the important question of what foreign consulates did he 
call, and how did these consulates respond?
  If Stevens was calling foreign consulates, it also begs the question, 
did U.S. officials in Tripoli or Washington call any allies with assets 
in Libya to help respond to the attack?
  Furthermore, did the Pentagon connect any NATO allies with military 
assets in the region that could have provided assistance that night?
  Given how close many of the European allies are to the Mediterranean, 
wouldn't they have planes or response teams stationed in locations in 
or nearby the region that could have mobilized upon a request from 
Washington?
  After speaking of force posture, what have we done to ensure that if 
another incident were to happen this September 11 that we're prepared 
to respond?
  We're less than 2 months away from the 9/11 anniversary, but the 
American people don't know whether we're any more capable of responding 
to an incident in North Africa or the Middle East.
  The American people have lost confidence in this investigation. We 
can help restore it with a bipartisan select committee.

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