[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 114 (Friday, August 2, 2013)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1218-E1219]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  A COMPILATION OF UNANSWERED QUESTIONS ABOUT THE BENGHAZI TERRORIST 
                                 ATTACK

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. FRANK R. WOLF

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, August 2, 2013

  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I submit a compilation of the questions I have 
asked about the Benghazi terrorist attack over the past three weeks. 
These questions remain unanswered despite nearly a year of 
investigations and that is why I continue to believe that a Select 
Committee is the only way to fully understand what happened in Benghazi 
that night and the response that followed. The Congress owes it to the 
families of the victims, the survivors of the attack and the American 
people to find these answers once and for all. It's time for a Select 
Committee.


          Question of the Day #1 (Delivered on July 16, 2013)

       1. Why has not one person who was in Benghazi the night of 
     the attack been subpoenaed to testify publicly before 
     Congress, and instead, some of the survivors will tell their 
     stories through multi-million dollar book deals?
       2. Will any of the $3 million they are earning from the 
     book deal be shared with Ty Woods widow and child or the 
     parents of Glen Doherty?
       3. Why has the Congress not asked, or subpoenaed, these 
     individuals to testify before House committees that have been 
     investigating over the past year?


   Question of the Day #2 (Submitted for the record on July 17, 2013)

       1. Was there an intelligence failure in vetting the true 
     loyalty of the Libyan security guards for the U.S. consulate? 
     Which agency was responsible for vetting the militias?
       2. Who provided the terrorists with details of the 
     consulate property? Was it the security guards or someone in 
     the Libyan government who was notified about the ambassador's 
     visit?
       3. Why did the guards in the car outside the consulate not 
     warn the U.S. staff of the gathering terrorists as they drove 
     away a minute before the assault began? Were they complicit 
     in the plot?


          Question of the Day #3 (Delivered on July 18, 2013)

       1. How many Benghazi survivors, including federal 
     employees, military personnel or contractors, have been asked 
     to sign additional Non-Disclosure Agreements by the different 
     agencies relating to what happened in Benghazi?
       2. Do these NDAs apply only to those under cover, or have 
     non-covert State Department and Defense Department employees 
     been directed to sign them too?


          Question of the Day #4 (Delivered on July 19, 2013)

       1. Reports indicate that upwards of 100 terrorists may have 
     attacked the consulate and annex. After nearly a year of FBI 
     investigations, why has the U.S. not located, apprehended and 
     brought to justice a single terrorist responsible for killing 
     four Americans, including a sitting U.S. ambassador?
       2. Why has the Obama Administration not taken any apparent 
     steps to apply pressure to countries that have refused to 
     allow the FBI access to terrorists responsible for the 
     Benghazi attacks? Has the FBI had access to any other 
     suspects, in any country, other than their brief interview 
     with Ali Harzi?


          Question of the Day #5 (Delivered on July 22, 2013)

       1. Why was the CIA's security team repeatedly ordered to 
     ``stand down'' for more than 30 minutes after the attack 
     began?
       2. Where did the order to stop the team from responding 
     originate? Was it directed by the CIA or someone else in 
     Washington?
       3. If the team had been allowed to respond immediately, 
     could the lives of Ambassador Stevens and Sean Smith been 
     saved?
       4. Has anyone been held accountable for obstructing the 
     security team for so long?


          Question of the Day #6 (Delivered on July 23, 2013)

       1. Doesn't it bother any of my colleagues that Gen. 
     [Carter] Ham can speak publicly about the military's response 
     at a forum in Aspen, Colorado--where tickets start at 
     $1,200--yet his testimony before Congress was behind closed 
     doors? (Gen. Ham, who was the head of U.S. forces in Africa 
     the night of attack, appeared at the Aspen Security Forum 
     last weekend and spoke openly about the U.S. response to the 
     Benghazi attack.)
       2. If Gen. Ham's command required no additional authority 
     to respond to what he then believed to be a hostage rescue 
     situation, why did it take another seven hours before AFRICOM 
     ordered a C-17 aircraft in Germany to prepare to deploy to 
     Libya to evacuate Americans? Why did that plane not leave 
     Germany for another eight hours after that?
       3. If the situation appeared to be deteriorating throughout 
     the night at the annex, why wasn't there any additional 
     effort to accelerate air support or even planes to evacuate 
     American personnel directly from Benghazi?
       4. Given the betrayal by our supposed allied Libyan militia 
     forces when calls to defend the consulate went unheeded, why 
     would the Pentagon not move even faster to ensure there was a 
     reliable evacuation and hostage response force to assist the 
     Americans in Benghazi?
       5. Given that no American plane arrived in Benghazi to 
     support the evacuation, just what planes were used to 
     evacuate the Americans the morning of Sept. 12?
       6. The State Department's Accountability Review Board said 
     two planes were used the transport Americans from Benghazi to 
     Tripoli. We know that one was a Libyan Air Force C-130 that 
     brought back the bodies of Ambassador Stevens, Sean Smith, Ty 
     Wood and Glen Doherty, but the first to depart was a private, 
     ``chartered'' jet. It took off at 7:40 a.m. with ``evacuees, 
     including all wounded personnel,'' according to the 
     unclassified version of the report.
       7. Just who owned that jet?
       8. Was it the same jet that brought in the seven-person 
     response team from Tripoli earlier that night?
       9. Was it really chartered or was it commandeered?
       10. How many wounded were evacuated on that jet?
       11. Of the wounded, how many were State Department 
     employees, CIA employees or security contractors?


          Question of the Day #7 (Delivered on July 24, 2013)

       1. According to an excerpt of the new book Under Fire: The 
     Untold Story of the Attack in Benghazi, which was published 
     in this month's Vanity Fair magazine, on the night of the 
     attack, Ambassador Stevens made several calls for help after 
     reaching what he believed was a safe room on the consulate 
     compound. Some of those calls were made to ``nearby 
     consulates.'' Assuming the authors are correct, the 
     government should have the phone records from that night. 
     Which foreign consulates did he call? How did those 
     consulates respond?
       2. If Stevens was calling foreign consulates, did U.S. 
     officials in Tripoli or Washington call any allies with 
     assets in Libya to help respond to the attack?
       3. Did the Pentagon contact any NATO allies with military 
     assets in the region that could have provided assistance that 
     night?
       4. Given how close many of our European allies are to the 
     Mediterranean, wouldn't they have planes or response teams 
     stationed in locations in or nearby the region that

[[Page E1219]]

     could have been mobilized upon request from Washington?
       5. And 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?


    Question of the Day #8 (Submitted for the record July 25, 2013)

       1. A U.S. consulate is under attack. A U.S. Ambassador is 
     missing. A State Department Diplomatic Security Agent is 
     dead. Are the American people to believe the president is 
     briefed only once that entire night, at 5 p.m. Eastern 
     Standard Time?
       2. Where was the president the rest of the night?
       3. Did his national security team, including John Brennan, 
     Sec. Panetta and Gen. Dempsey, ever go back and brief the 
     president when the annex came under attack? If so, what steps 
     did he direct at that time?
       4. Did the president ever step foot in the White House 
     Situation Room that night?
       5. Did he ever see the footage from the unarmed drone 
     stationed over Benghazi monitoring the attacks?
       6. Last evening, Fox News' Catherine Herridge reported how 
     Diplomatic Security Agent David Ubben is still recovering at 
     Walter Reed National Military Medical Center--more than 10 
     months after the attack--for injuries he sustained while 
     repeatedly risking his life to save others that night. Has 
     the president ever called or met with David Ubben to thank 
     him for his sacrifice? Has he ever called the others who were 
     seriously wounded that night, including the former Navy SEAL 
     on the security team who sustained significant injuries?
       7. To Secretary of State John Kerry's credit, I know that 
     he has visited with Ubben at Walter Reed. But did former 
     Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ever meet with him during 
     the six months she was still in office after the attack?
       8. Did the president and his team ever even consider 
     cancelling his political fundraiser in Las Vegas the day 
     after the attack to monitor the situation in Benghazi?
       9. That night, when the ambassador was considered a 
     potential hostage and nearly 30 Americans were under 
     sustained attacks at the CIA annex, did the president's staff 
     ever notify the campaign that he might not be leaving the 
     White House the next day?
       10. When he boarded Air Force One for Las Vegas, did the 
     president know about the serious injuries that some of the 
     survivors had sustained? Did he know what hospitals they were 
     being taken to?
       11. Is there a parallel in American history when the U.S. 
     was under attack, Americans were killed and a sitting U.S. 
     ambassador was considered a potential terrorist hostage, but 
     the president was not engaged with his national security 
     team?


          Question of the Day #9 (Delivered on July 30, 2013)

       1. Who are the anonymous senior administration officials 
     who admitted ``mistakes'' in their handling of the attack to 
     CBS?
       2. Why haven't they testified to Congress about these 
     mistakes?
       3. Why wasn't the Foreign Emergency Support Team (FEST) 
     deployed immediately?
       4. Last week, Gen. Ham admitted that he believed Ambassador 
     Stevens may have been taken hostage by terrorists. Given the 
     FEST team's terrorism and hostage negotiation expertise, who 
     made the decision not to deploy them?
       5. Why didn't the White House convene the Counterterrorism 
     Security Group (CSG) that night to coordinate the interagency 
     response to the attack? If that group wasn't responsible for 
     coordination, who was?
       6. Which agency was leading the response that night?
       7. Was the State Department directing the Pentagon not to 
     deploy its planes or response teams while also not sending 
     the FEST team?


          Question of the Day #10 (Delivered on July 31, 2013)

       1. When was the CIA annex in Benghazi established?
       2. How many people worked at the annex--of these, how many 
     were direct agency employees and how many were contractors?
       3. What was the ratio of CIA staff to security contractors?
       4. Above all, why was there a facility operated by the CIA 
     in Benghazi?
       5. If indeed the CIA facility in Benghazi involved in the 
     collection of $40 million in weapons from the U.S., as first 
     reported by National Journal in 2011, where are they?
       6. The $40 million promised by Secretary Clinton would buy 
     a very large quantity of weapons. Were they shipped out of 
     Benghazi? Are they in warehouses on U.S. soil? Are they in 
     other allied countries? Or did they end up elsewhere?
       7. Is it possible that the president's intelligence finding 
     included an authorization for the weapons collected in Libya 
     to be transferred to Syrian rebels? Was the CIA annex being 
     used to facilitate these transfers? If so, how did the 
     weapons physically move from Libya to Syria? By plane? By 
     ship?
       8. And, again, I ask, if these weapons were not being 
     transferred to other countries like Syria, where exactly did 
     they end up?
       9. Was the CIA annex being used as a logistics center to 
     track and transfer these weapons?
       10. Was Ambassador Stevens' visit to the CIA annex on 
     September 10 associated with these operations?
       11. And if these activities were taking place, was this 
     consistent with the president's intelligence finding? Was the 
     Congress notified?


         question of the day #11 (delivered on august 1, 2013)

       1. Who in the White House knew what was going on in the 
     [CIA] annex [in Benghazi]? The president? The chief of staff? 
     Then-deputy national security advisor and current CIA 
     director John Brennan?


         Question of the Day #12 (Delivered on August 2, 2013)

       1. Why are these heroes being told not talk? What is the 
     administration afraid of? What is it protecting?
       2. How can the Congress know the survivors don't want to 
     speak with Congress if they can't learn who they are and ask 
     them?
       3. Are we really to take the administration's word [that 
     they aren't being silenced]?
       4. With such a broad range of support [for a Benghazi 
     Select Committee], it begs the question: why not? What are we 
     afraid of from a full investigation and public hearings?
       5. The House ``interim progress report'' on Benghazi was 
     released on April 23. When will the final report be released?
       6. Can any member here confidently say that they know what 
     happened that night?
       7. Can any member honestly say--with reports like the one 
     CNN did yesterday--that this Congress has done everything it 
     can to allow the survivors to come forward and tell their 
     story?
       8. September 11 is fast approaching. Will we continue on 
     our current path and learn from forthcoming books written by 
     the survivors and sanitized by the CIA, or will we create a 
     Select Committee to subpoena witnesses to testify under oath 
     at public hearings?
       9. With news reports this morning that the U.S. will be 
     closing all embassies in the Middle East this weekend due to 
     a suspected terrorist threat, are we better prepared now to 
     respond to an attack? We still don't know.

                          ____________________