[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 13561-13568]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1145
                         INVESTIGATING BENGHAZI

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, it is my privilege to be recognized 
to address you here on the floor of the United States House of 
Representatives, and to do so the day after the anniversary of the 
tragic attack on America that took place September 11, 2001, and the 
tragic attack that took place against Americans in Benghazi September 
11, 2012.
  Who would have believed, Madam Speaker, that a full year would go by 
and we would still not have the truth, we would still not be to the 
bottom of the Benghazi events. We still wouldn't have a timeline, we 
wouldn't have a chronology, we wouldn't have an autopsy report from 
Ambassador Stevens and others, we wouldn't have the testimony of those 
who were wounded and those who survived, and we wouldn't have the full 
story from the administration. And we wouldn't have yet the confession 
from the administration that they willfully, I believe, misinformed the 
American people and the United States Congress.
  And so the individual who has taken the lead on this Benghazi series 
of events and called for a special select committee to investigate is 
the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf), and I am very pleased to yield 
to the leader on the Benghazi incident here in the United States 
Congress, Mr. Wolf of Virginia.
  Mr. WOLF. Madam Speaker, I thank Mr. King for the time. I am very 
grateful.
  Madam Speaker, yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of the 
deadly attacks on the U.S. consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya, 
which took the lives of four Americans, and seriously wounded several 
others. One is still out at Walter Reed Hospital after one year.
  Despite a year of investigations in five different House committees, 
most of the key questions about what happened in Benghazi and why no 
response was authorized by Washington remain unanswered. So far the 
Congress has failed.
  That is why since last November I have been pushing for a House 
select committee to focus on this investigation, hold public hearings, 
issue subpoenas to key witnesses and survivors, and produce a final 
report that answers these important questions. One hundred seventy-four 
Republicans in the House have now cosponsored H. Res. 36 to establish a 
select committee--three-quarters of the majority--and six new 
cosponsors joined this week alone.
  The select committee approach has been endorsed by family members of 
the Benghazi victims, the special operations community, the Federal Law 
Enforcement Officers Association, and the editorial page of The Wall 
Street Journal, among many other prominent individuals and 
organizations.
  I was pleased to receive a copy of a letter sent to the Speaker 
earlier this week calling for the creation of a select committee and 
signed by some of the most respected and distinguished national 
security and military leaders that have served our country.
  These leaders include:
  Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who also served as judge in 
the trial of the Blind Sheikh, the first trial dealing with an attack 
against the World Trade Center;
  Admiral James ``Ace'' Lyons, U.S. Navy, Retired, former commander in 
chief of the U.S. Pacific fleet;
  General Frederick J. Kroesen, U.S. Army, Retired, former Vice Chief 
of Staff of the Army;
  Lieutenant General William ``Jerry'' Boykin, U.S. Army, Retired, 
former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and commander 
in Mogadishu during the ``Black Hawk down'' incident;
  Lieutenant General Harry Edward Soyster, U.S. Army, Retired, former 
Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency;
  Ambassador Henry Cooper, former chief negotiator of the defense and 
space talks and the former Director, Strategic Defense Initiative;
  Major General Paul E. Vallely, U.S. Army, Retired, former deputy 
commander of the U.S. Army Forces, Pacific;
  Honorable Tidal McCoy, former Secretary of the Air Force;
  Lieutenant Colonel Allen West, U.S. Army, Retired, and former Member 
of Congress;
  Honorable Joseph E. Schmitz, former inspector general of the 
Department of Defense;
  Honorable Michelle Van Cleave, former National Counterintelligence 
Executive;
  Vice Admiral Robert Monroe, U.S. Navy, Retired, former Director of 
the Defense Nuclear Agency; and
  Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., former Assistant Secretary of Defense for 
International Security Policy.
  It is good to have their support for this important effort, and I 
would like now to read the text of their letter.
  They said:

       Dear Mr. Speaker:
       As former military, intelligence and national security 
     officials with extensive experience in security policy and 
     practice, we are concerned about the American people's 
     apparently serious loss of confidence in the institutions of 
     their government. One factor contributing to this alienation 
     has been the failure of those institutions to respond 
     appropriately to the murderous jihadist attacks in Benghazi 
     on September 11, 2012. They rightly expect, at an absolute 
     minimum, that Congress will ensure accountability of those 
     responsible.
       As you are well aware, our country is nearing the first 
     anniversary of the assaults on the Special Mission Compound 
     and CIA Annex in Benghazi. To date, however, the five House 
     committees that share jurisdiction have held only a small 
     number of mostly less-than-illuminating hearings into the 
     policies that led to, and the events that occurred during and 
     after, the murder of four of our countrymen and the wounding 
     of many more.
       We appreciate that the chairmen of these committees 
     produced four months ago a joint ``interim report.'' Yet, its 
     authors acknowledged that they did not have answers to many 
     crucial national security questions. In addition, no 
     timeframe has been publicly announced for going beyond the 
     interim report or holding additional hearings toward that 
     end. This is particularly troubling in light of press 
     accounts that the survivors of the Benghazi attack are being 
     intimidated and risk job action should they come forward with 
     their eyewitness account.
       If Congress does not afford them an opportunity to do so 
     without fear of retaliation by issuing subpoenas for their 
     testimony, it will be complicit in precluding their help in 
     seeing justice served--and in denying the American people the 
     full accounting to which they are entitled.

  They go on to say:

       We believe an ample chance has been afforded for the 
     regular order to operate in investigating Benghazi-gate. It 
     has failed to do so. Now is the time for a select committee 
     to be established with a mandate to draw upon the five 
     committees' existing investigative resources and results to 
     date and to complete--if possible by year's end--the 
     necessary, thorough and comprehensive inquiry. This approach 
     can alleviate concern about undue costs and further delay in 
     convening a select committee.


[[Page 13562]]


  Mr. Speaker, they go on to say:

       The survivors want to tell their stories and correct the 
     record. Two different books based on their stories are 
     reportedly in the works. If the American people learn what 
     happened from a published account rather than from those 
     charged with congressional oversight, the perception of a 
     coverup--or at least a serious dereliction of duty--is 
     inevitable.
       Our Republic is predicated on the trust of the governed in 
     those they choose to represent them. We must not allow the 
     jihadists who have thus far paid no price for murdering 
     Ambassador Stevens, murdering three of his comrades and 
     afflicting the lives of so many others, to do violence as 
     well to our people's confidence in their constitutional form 
     of government.
       For all these reasons, we call upon you to establish 
     without further delay a select committee to investigate the 
     Benghazi attacks.

  I think they make a very, very powerful case. For the Congress to 
fail to do this, as they said, the Congress will be complicit in this. 
So I call on the Speaker of the House to do what these gentlemen, who 
have as much experience as any Member who serves in this Congress on 
either side, have asked us to do, and establish a select committee.
  With that, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman from 
Virginia and ask if the gentleman could stick around for a moment. I 
have a couple of questions that occurred to me as I was listening to 
his presentation. I would like to ask for the record, and your 
knowledge of the Benghazi incident goes more deep than mine does, and I 
think probably as deep as anyone in the Congress does, Mr. Wolf, and so 
I wanted to ask: Do we know how many survivors there were from the 
Benghazi incident?
  Mr. WOLF. There were roughly 30 or 31 or so that waited on the tarmac 
after the fighting had ended to be picked up, and they were not picked 
up in an American plane; they were picked up in a Libyan plane. There 
were a number of wounded. One, Mr. David Ubben, who is currently out at 
Walter Reed, and another gentleman who was severely wounded, they were 
flown out separate from that other group, and they were flown out not 
in an American plane but in a Libyan plane, maybe even commandeered by 
those that rescued.
  We also know that we lost four. Several were Navy SEALs. And we were 
also told by those who have been in touch with those on the ground that 
there was a call from the consulate to the annex saying, help us. They 
were told to stand down by the CIA station chief, not knowing if that 
came out of Washington or not. They did stand down. They got another 
call, and they were told to stand again, and they did stand down. They 
had another call and they finally said we're not standing down, and 
they went. Some believe that had they gone at the initial time, they 
could have saved the life of Ambassador Stevens and Sean Smith.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. The information you provided here, especially 
information as to the numbers of survivors and the numbers of wounded, 
where they were picked up, and by a Libyan plane, not a U.S. plane, was 
that information that was forthcomingly delivered to you or the 
American people by our administration, or how did you learn those 
facts?
  Mr. WOLF. No, it was not delivered by the administration, nor was it 
delivered by any committee up here. It was delivered by people who are 
connected to, related to people who were on the ground.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Do we know, has any of that information been 
entered into the record under oath, so far as witnesses are concerned, 
before the five committees that have jurisdiction?
  Mr. WOLF. I think not, but I have not been in some of the closed 
doors. As you know, that is one of the problems. The Intelligence 
Committee has everything in closed doors. Quite frankly, if you're a 
Member of the House, you have very little opportunity to find out 
sometimes what even goes on in the Intelligence Committee. So they 
could have been sworn in. The people I have spoken to have not even 
been called. And I spoke last week, last Tuesday to a person who was on 
the scene at the time of the attack, and he has not been called.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. And so, Mr. Wolf, is it possible that the Select 
Committee on Intelligence could have had testimony before the 
committee, and because they are bound by the confidentiality of 
classified information, that even if they learned something from an 
open source that also confirms something that they learned in a 
classified setting, they now are prohibited from speaking about that 
outside of that room?
  Mr. WOLF. I do not know. I do not serve on the Intelligence 
Committee. There are all good people on it, and Mr. Rogers does a good 
job. I can't answer. They can better answer that. I don't know what the 
rules are with regard to that.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Let me pick up on that. I have a measure of 
classified rating as a member of the Judiciary Committee. Those are the 
rules that we are bound by when we go into a classified setting. What 
we speak about there, what we learn there, even if we know it from an 
open source before we go in, or even if we learn about it from an open 
source after we go out, we cannot speak to that topic outside of the 
room.
  That's one of the reasons why we need the select committee. Even if 
all of the information we need to know happens to be gathered by the 
special Select Committee on Intelligence, that doesn't get that 
information that can be declassified declassified, that doesn't get it 
correlated with the balance of the information that is public 
knowledge, or the information that has come before the other 
committees.
  Another question: Do we have any autopsy reports from Ambassador 
Stevens or any of the other three fatalities that were killed in that 
action a year and a day ago?
  Mr. WOLF. My committee that I chair, the House Appropriations 
subcommittee that funds the Justice Department and the FBI, we have 
never received an autopsy report. We have been told how the death of 
the Ambassador took place verbally, but we have never seen the autopsy 
report.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Do we have a timeline that sets down events that 
took place from its inception to its relative conclusion in the 
operations and the cleanup that also correlates with a timeline of the 
situation room in the White House, and who was in the White House and 
what they knew and when they knew it? Are you aware of any timeline 
that correlates that?

                              {time}  1200

  Mr. WOLF. There may be. Perhaps the Intel Committee has it. I 
understand there are some timelines out there that do not quite, quite 
match; but I do not know the answer to that. That's why we need public 
hearings.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Virginia. That's my 
understanding as well. And this colloquy that we've had here, I think, 
illuminates the questions, some of the questions that can be answered 
with a special select committee that would be addressing the Benghazi 
incident.
  And a full year and a day has gone by. The trail gets more cold every 
day. And just yesterday, I saw the announcement that the administration 
is going to make some of the survivors available to Congress, finally, 
after a full year, so that we can have some dialogue with them.
  I just envision the 9/11 Commission that sat around the table. They 
swore in witnesses. They built a public record. The American people 
watched in on all of those deliberations so they could draw their 
judgment on whose version was the most accurate and the closest to the 
truth.
  When the 9/11 Commission report came out, it was a bound book about 
that thick. I read it. A lot of us read it. But that was the definitive 
response to the United States Congress that said these are the facts as 
we can determine them, the reasoned judgment of the United States 
Congress.
  That also happened on the Warren Commission report on the 
assassination of President Kennedy. I think that the Benghazi incident 
deserves a full investigation in that fashion.
  I applaud the gentleman from Virginia for taking the lead on this, 
and

[[Page 13563]]

I'll certainly support it all the way to its conclusion.
  Mr. WOLF. I thank the gentleman. Thank you for the time.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Virginia. And reclaiming 
my time, I appreciate having the dialog to this extent.
  And I know that the gentleman from Pennsylvania has a real focus on 
Benghazi. We've had some of this dialogue before, and so I would be 
very pleased to yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Perry).
  Mr. PERRY. Thank you for yielding, and I want to begin by thanking 
our colleague from Virginia (Mr. Wolf) for his leadership with House 
Resolution 36.
  It should not have to come to a select and special committee to 
investigate this, but it's very apparent that the administration 
operating on point on this is doing everything they can and expending 
all resources to obfuscate, stonewall, and keep the truth and the facts 
from the American people.
  And so, while we appreciate the fact that there are numerous 
committees in the House investigating this simultaneously, but 
individually, one concerted effort is probably what it's going to take, 
at the end of the day, to answer the call of this administration who 
would rather this information not be let out to the American people.
  I just want to start out by saying that, you know, a year ago, a year 
ago on this day, Americans were waking up to or hearing about on their 
lunch hour that the first Ambassador in over 30 years, a United States 
Ambassador, had been killed on foreign shores.
  And as a person who's operated in the military and as just a citizen 
who thinks that, look, some of this would make common sense, on the 
anniversary date of such a historic event and shameful event in 
America, that we would increase our security posture, especially 
overseas.
  And as a person who has served overseas during 9/11, the anniversary 
of 9/11, I know very well that we did increase our security posture. So 
the fact that this happened really leads to questions as to what the 
heck was going on at the State Department regarding the security in 
Benghazi and who was making decisions.
  It's disgraceful that an entire year later, despite the fact that a 
number of terrorists have been identified who have participated in this 
attack, not one of them has been brought to justice, not one.
  And it's also interesting that this administration has the 
information, the intelligence information that it has regarding Syria. 
Yet while we were in Benghazi, while we had boots on the ground in 
Libya, a year later we don't seem to have the facts about the 
intelligence that occurred there.
  Some questions that I have--it's my understanding that Under 
Secretary Kennedy will be testifying in front of the Foreign Affairs 
Committee on which I serve next week, and we have some questions for 
him.
  I think the American people want to know why this administration 
politicized national security during an election cycle regarding the 
talking points, and who made that order. Who decided that? Who was at 
the top of that?
  The reduction in security forces, again, on 9/11, it's my 
understanding, with an outpost like Benghazi, that it could only have 
come from one person. There's only one person in the State Department 
that is authorized to issue that reduction in security posture, and 
that is the Secretary.
  We want to know whose signature is on the authorization. We want to 
know who authorized not sending help.
  In the military, we don't have a stand down order. But somebody said, 
no, and somebody didn't contingency plan. Somebody wasn't prepared.
  Now, the boots on the ground, the fine soldiers, the airmen, the men 
and women who would have gone into help, they were ready to go. The 
United States military was ready to respond. It's the chain of command 
that wasn't, somewhere along the line. And we want to know who made 
that decision.
  We don't know yet what the Ambassador was doing there. Do we really 
know?
  We've asked the question, but we don't know what his purpose was. 
Sure, we hear that he was there to solidify that location as an 
operations point for diplomatic actions and show that everything was 
normal in Libya again. But on 9/11 you're really going to send him 
there with a reduced security posture?
  Folks, ladies and gentlemen, these Ambassadors don't roll in a car by 
themselves out to these outposts. They don't even go to their 
consulates by themselves. They have a security detachment of highly 
trained people. The vehicles they ride in are not something that you 
buy on the lot. These guys are loaded up, and they're ready to handle 
contingencies.
  This is abnormal. What was he doing there?
  Why does this administration continue to stonewall?
  You're hearing that they're giving us everything that we ask for, the 
emails and so on and so forth.
  Why is it that the emails come in a box, to a SCIF, a secure 
location, our people in the Congress, we're allowed to look at them, 
our investigators are allowed to look at them, transcribe information, 
and then the emails go back into the box under armed guard and they're 
taken away.
  We're not allowed to copy them. We're not allowed to get them all at 
one time. They're meted out to us. Why is that?
  If there's nothing to hide, why not have the information so we can 
all know what it is within the confines of security postures and 
operational security and security clearances?
  Finally, or maybe not finally, who's accountable?
  Has anybody been held accountable?
  Sure, there were some four employees at the State Department that 
were excused from their duty for a year, or nearly a year, with pay, 
and then brought back in. And this is not to disparage those employees.
  It's my understanding, since we haven't talked to any of them yet 
because we've been disallowed to talk to them, that they didn't even 
know they were held responsible until the day it happened, and they 
still haven't seen the report that says they were responsible for the 
reduced security posture. Nobody's been held accountable.
  Why wasn't the Secretary involved in the questioning of the ARB, the 
Accountability Review Board?
  The person at the top, not even questioned. That's like having a 
murder investigation in a family where the husband was having an affair 
and having strained relations with his wife, the wife was murdered, and 
he was the only one in town at the time, and not questioning that. 
That's what that's like.
  Nobody questioned the Secretary. Really?
  Was there real-time video information via drone, unarmed aerial 
vehicle?
  We heard originally--I was in the questioning, in the hearing with 
the Secretary, Secretary Clinton, when she originally came earlier this 
spring, and she said that there was no real-time information.
  Yet, on national radio, I heard a guy call into national radio who 
was the payload operator. And to be clear, the payload operator is not 
the individual flying the unarmed aerial vehicle. The payload operator 
is the individual that handles the camera or the weapons system.
  So the individual handling the camera called into a national talk 
show and described what he was seeing as it was occurring. So if we had 
the real-time information, why weren't we acting on it?
  Where is that real-time information?
  Why haven't we seen it?
  Finally, where was the President during this?
  I mean, this is a crisis of national proportion and national 
security. And I know the President hasn't come before Congress to ask a 
question, and every time we ask anybody else the question, the answer's 
going to be, well, I don't know. I don't keep the President's schedule.
  Why can't the American people know the facts?
  We just want the truth. We just want the facts. The facts will lead 
us to the truth. We're not on a witch hunt. The American people deserve 
to know. The families of the fallen, they deserve to know what happened 
here.

[[Page 13564]]

  And I know the administration is hoping that time will go by, debt 
ceiling, continuing resolution, ObamaCare, Syria, anything will get in 
the way of finding out what happened here. But we are duty-bound, 
ladies and gentlemen, Madam Speaker, we are duty-bound to find out this 
information on behalf of the American people.
  I applaud you, Mr. King. Thank you for yielding the time.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania and 
appreciate his presentation here on the floor. I'd ask if he could 
stick around for a moment because I'm trying to do a little research of 
my own here, and that is that there's a patchwork of information that's 
been gathered together.
  Among the American people, they'd have collectively, within their 
memory and their records, all that's publicly available. If we could go 
out and pull it together and consolidate it, then we could organize it.
  This Congress is similar to that. We're representatives of the 
American people. And from each of our districts, each of our sets of 
responsibilities and access to information, we can put together some of 
the puzzle here.
  But it's hard to put together a puzzle if you don't have the picture 
that's on the box. This administration has the box, with the pieces, 
and the picture on the box of the puzzle of what actually happened in 
Benghazi, and they knew it almost in real-time. And they have been 
meting out the information, accepting or admitting to information as it 
was forced upon them thanks to the media, thanks to people that have 
done real research.
  I recall a statement made to our gathering in our meeting that there 
weren't any wounded from the Benghazi incident out at Walter Reed Army 
Hospital. One of our Members went out there and hung around the 
cafeteria until he found out otherwise and made personal contact and 
had deep conversations with at least one individual that was a survivor 
of Benghazi that was in a long-term rehab, Walter Reed. And so that's 
the level that we have to go to to get an admission.
  I wanted to ask the gentleman from Pennsylvania just a series of 
questions that clutter my mind. Have you seen a list of the survivors 
of Benghazi, those survivors that Mr. Wolf talked about that were 
picked up on the Tarmac at the airport in Benghazi and flown out by a 
Libyan plane?
  Mr. PERRY. I have not seen the list.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Do you know the name of any of those 30-some 
survivors?
  Mr. PERRY. I do not.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. And have you seen a timeline that shows what 
happened in Benghazi from beginning to end, one that is credible, that 
you have confidence in?
  Mr. PERRY. Well, I certainly haven't seen anything that I have 
confidence in. There's been numerous ones put together, mostly by the 
side that wants to investigate, that's trying to piece it together 
based on open-source information.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Open-source timeline. Have you seen any timeline of 
the Situation Room in the White House?
  Mr. PERRY. We have no knowledge of anything in the Situation Room in 
the White House.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Just wondering. When the assault went on in the 
compound that took out Osama bin Laden, and I would ask the gentleman, 
did you see any pictures from inside the Situation Room, and did you 
see a timeline of the events that took place on that assault?
  Mr. PERRY. Sure. The whole world saw that, and rightly so.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Exactly. And as I draw a comparison to Benghazi and 
the takedown of Osama bin Laden, those circumstances would have been 
similar, except that we initiated the operation against Osama bin 
Laden, so I presume there were some people that got invitations to go 
into the Situation Room and be there. We saw the looks of worry and 
concern on their faces. I remember the President there in front of it, 
Secretary Clinton was there, and others in that setting.
  But we have no visuals of who was in the Situation Room during 
Benghazi. We have no timeline of who came into the room, who was in the 
room, who left the room or when. And in that list would be when the 
President came, how long he was there, and when he left.
  We don't know the answers to that, even though everybody that was in 
the Situation Room would have known when the President arrived. They 
would have known when he left. They would have remembered precisely all 
dialogue that came from the President and almost all that went to the 
President.
  That's how I envision it. Would you envision that the same way, Mr. 
Perry?
  Mr. PERRY. That's exactly right.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. And so the American people need to know this. Do 
you have any knowledge of who had custody of the body of Ambassador 
Stevens from the moment he was killed until such time as he turned up 
at the hospital in Benghazi?
  Mr. PERRY. Well, there's been some conflicting reports between, 
again, open source, between the rebels, and then he went to the 
hospital and was picked up by some of the folks from Tripoli; but then 
he wasn't there, and they--there's nothing congruent in that.
  I'm not sure the custody, the chain of custody regarding the 
Ambassador's body. We're pretty sure we know what happened to it, and 
it's very unpleasant. But again, without an autopsy we can't even be 
sure of that.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I would agree. And the individuals that delivered 
Ambassador Stevens' body to the hospital should be available to us. We 
should have been able to put them under oath and gather the record of 
what took place there. We don't know who had custody of Ambassador 
Stevens' body. We just know his body showed up at the hospital.
  And the balance of that is conjecture, although we've seen at least 
one picture of him being carried through the streets in a vertical way, 
with no knowledge of whether he was alive or dead at that time. Most 
believe that he was dead at that time, but we just simply don't know.
  And can you imagine if it's your family member who had gone through 
this, and to be locked out from the truth, if you'd lost one of the 
four lives that we lost in that, or if you're one of those that is 
wounded and has been muzzled.

                              {time}  1215

  The argument came out yesterday that the administration asserts that 
they have not commanded people to be muzzled or to be quiet about what 
happened in Benghazi, yet there's the intimidation factor. If your top 
officers lean on you and say, You've already taken a confidentiality 
oath, you better stick with that confidentiality oath.
  As a former member of the armed services, if you're bound by 
confidentiality and you've already taken the oath and then your 
commander, your superior comes to you and says, You've been involved in 
an incident, and you're bound to that confidentiality, would you honor 
that, Mr. Perry?
  Mr. PERRY. Well, in the interest of national security, you're in a 
dilemma. You've taken an oath and you do have a confidentiality 
requirement. However, I would also say there is a compelling reason for 
you to provide information to the American people and certainly to the 
Congress.
  I know that the Foreign Affairs Committee has set up hearings with 
some of these folks and they have said they were coming, and then, 
miraculously and mysteriously, they declined between the time they said 
they were coming and the time they were supposed to appear. And so 
we're not sure why they would agree to it at the onset and then decide 
to change their mind hence. I think it's a very compelling question. 
But I think in the interest of finding out the truth, they would be 
compelled to testify under oath.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Do you believe that the attack by our enemies on 
our Ambassador and the other victims was a planned attack or a 
spontaneous eruption?

[[Page 13565]]


  Mr. PERRY. There's no doubt in America's mind, the world's mind. 
Libyan intelligence knew it within 24 hours.
  And we have the fact that our Ambassador, which--by the way, I must 
say that it besmirches her credibility, the President's credibility, 
the administration's credibility, including the recent activities 
regarding Syrian foreign policy and decisionmaking, to go out for weeks 
on end, including the President, and issue talking points that they 
clearly knew were false. They knew they were false, and the world knows 
they're false now. Most of the world knew they were false then.
  This was not a spontaneous eruption of violence, including RPGs and a 
coordinated attack. Coordinating the attack requires planning. It 
requires resourcing. That didn't happen in a few moment's time over a 
video, which maybe that gentleman is still in prison to this day. The 
only person held accountable for this, I think, is arguably somebody 
who had absolutely nothing to do with this.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Do you believe that the administration knew in 
real-time that it was a planned attack on our Ambassador and an 
assassination attempt?
  Mr. PERRY. Since the Ambassador himself and his deputy both reported 
it was a real-time, coordinated attack, not a spontaneous 
demonstration, I'm very certain in my heart and my mind that the 
administration knew what was happening.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Do you think Susan Rice knew when she went before 
the five television networks the following Sunday?
  Mr. PERRY. Again, we want to know who changed the talking points. I 
don't want to indict her if she was given the talking points. But at 
the level she was operating, she either should have known or 
corroborated the talking points. And so, to a certain extent, I think 
she's culpable, and it's reasonable to expect that she did know the 
talking points were changed and she was misleading the public.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I would ask the gentleman from Pennsylvania if he 
attended the classified briefing Monday at 5 o'clock.
  Mr. PERRY. I did.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. What level of confidence did that give you when you 
see Ambassador Susan Rice there to lead the briefing?
  Mr. PERRY. Again, I suggest that the administration has a trust and 
confidence issue not only with this Congress but with the American 
people, and that is one of the reasons. You can't send somebody out at 
the top levels of government to provide information on such a sensitive 
issue as potentially going to war or an act of war whose credibility 
has been diminished by her own actions and the actions of this 
administration. So I think that that trust and confidence has been 
eroded because of prior actions, particularly with Benghazi and Libya.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. And I would agree wholeheartedly, Mr. Perry, and 
end this one remaining component of this topic that I think that you 
alluded to somewhat in your statement. The question is: What was 
Ambassador Stevens doing in Benghazi?
  We've seen the announcement that came out last night or today that 
our administration is funneling weapons now into some elements of the 
Free Syrian Army. I'm concerned that those elements are the Muslim 
Brotherhood elements of the Free Syrian Army. But they have now 
announced that they're finally getting some resources in there. If that 
was the plan and the strategy, to funnel weapons into the Free Syrian 
Army a year ago, that would have been a better strategy because the 
Muslim Brotherhood hadn't completely taken over that operation then.
  But some have speculated in the media--and we don't know because we 
haven't had a select committee that brought all this information out--
that that was part of the business that may have been taking place in 
Benghazi. I don't have confirmation that that is the case. And I would 
ask the gentleman from Pennsylvania if you have seen any evidence that 
that might be the operation that was taking place and the reason that 
Ambassador Stevens was in Benghazi that day.
  Mr. PERRY. We've seen no evidence. We've been given no evidence. We 
have asked the questions directly and been denied.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Denied a straight answer to that.
  Mr. PERRY. Denied any answers.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Denied any answers.
  So what we know is that the administration immediately announced that 
it was a spontaneous eruption of a protest over a video. How they ever 
found that information to even be able to tie it to it because it's 
completely disconnected and illogical, but they sent Susan Rice out 
before the American public and on five networks she gave the same 
story. And now she's been awarded with the confidence of the President 
to advance her even more within this administration and sent before the 
House of Representatives in a classified setting to lead us in the 
briefing on potential Syrian engagement.
  So we know it wasn't a video. Do we know if the individual who 
actually produced that video is yet out of jail? Do you have any 
information?
  Mr. PERRY. He may be. I'm not sure. He may be out of jail. But I know 
he was held accountable at some point, and he literally did go to jail. 
And I would say it's arguable that he had absolutely anything to do 
with this or anything else.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. And the last information I had was that he was 
still in jail. That's been some weeks ago. But I think he's a person 
you might be able to identify as a political prisoner at this point. 
It's unlikely that he would be in jail for his not meeting the parole 
requirements for this period of time except for the politics that he 
got wrapped up into, Madam Speaker.
  All of these things that are inaccuracies and some of them outright 
dishonesties. There's been no question that this administration went 
out and willfully misinformed the American people. They did so in open 
source setting, the President's dialogue directly to the United Nations 
and multiple oblique references to a video. They knew in real-time that 
it was a planned attack. There's a reason why we know that, and I know 
Mr. Perry knows that reason.
  I ask you if you can tell us here why we know that it was a planned 
attack against our U.S. Ambassador.
  Mr. PERRY. Like I said, you don't just bring heavy weapons like RPGs 
and things of this sort to a spontaneous eruption and demonstration. 
Like I said, it requires resourcing, ammunition.
  This thing went on for hours and hours with heavy weapons. You just 
don't show up with a belt-fed weapon and the ammunition to support it 
on a whim. This is something that's heavy to carry. The ammunition is 
heavy to carry. It requires vehicles and people and coordination and 
what we call fields of fire, so you don't shoot the friendly; you only 
shoot the enemy. This coordination takes effort and time. It doesn't 
happen in a minute or two.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I recall a message that came out from the 
administration that Libya is a highly armed country and people walk 
around with AK-47s or else they've got them very handy so, if there's a 
violent demonstration, that they can grab their AK-47 and run to the 
sound of not the guns but the demonstration.
  I don't disagree that that's a possibility in Libya. I know it was a 
possibility in Iraq with the armament that they have or the weapons 
they have in their homes. But we also know that there were RPGs there. 
We know that there were mortars there.
  We know that there were two locations. The first location was where 
the attack took place, and then there was a fallback location. One was 
the compound and one was the annex. We know that there were mortar 
rounds dropped in on the secondary location. It looked like, the 
sequence, that they had already dialed in that secondary location as a 
target. If that's the case, not only was it a planned attack, but it 
was a planned attack with intel that had the secondary location, the 
alternative location where they would retreat to

[[Page 13566]]

once attacked, and the primary location already set up, the mortars 
zeroed in on that.
  Does that fit with what you know from a military background, I would 
ask the gentleman from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. PERRY. Absolutely. A mortar is what we call an indirect fire 
method weapon. You don't necessarily have to see the target. You lob 
the round into the target. So it requires coordination and known points 
of where the mortar is located versus where the target is located. You 
have to shoot the right angle and the right azimuth.
  It's not just something that's done capriciously or quickly. There's 
a thing called a baseplate, which holds this mortar tube. It has to be 
carried. It usually takes several men or a vehicle, depending on the 
size of the mortar. And then there's the ammunition that comes in 
cases. It's not something that you just carry around in your pocket. 
It's heavy. And you're not just shooting one, so multiple cases.
  Again, logistics and support for this, planning for this. Of course, 
like you said, the planning on multiple locations of attack. They would 
have to know that. They would have to know the location of where it is, 
of course, and where their firing point was for the best field of fire 
and security from opposing fire.
  Of course, I think the Ambassador described all this in his phone 
calls. Our troops on the ground, some of them who perished, lasered the 
target, expecting support from the United States, from what they knew. 
You never go without knowing who your support is going to be, what your 
backup plan is. These folks fully expected some guided munitions to 
come take out the assault, but it never came.
  And so there's no doubt in my mind that this was a coordinated, well-
prepared attack, and there's also no doubt in my mind that the 
administration knew this very early on. Maybe if they didn't know it 
within 24 hours, they certainly knew it within the span of a week. But 
the misleading of the American public went on for weeks.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. If the gentleman were going to set up a mortar and 
zero in on a target, what would be the minimum number of rounds that it 
would take to have confidence that you can zero in on the top of a 
building?
  Mr. PERRY. Well, a mortar is what we call an area weapon, so you're 
not going to shoot a mortar into a window. But what they fire on, they 
sometimes shoot long, they shoot over, or they shoot short. So they 
bracket it. They adjust the tube back and forth until they get it to 
range. But if you have a known point that you're firing from and a 
known point that you you're firing to, you can do that with much 
greater accuracy in much less time.
  I would suggest that they had that all figured out when they showed 
up, which is how they were able to deliver rounds on the target 
immediately.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. I would ask the gentleman, if the third mortar 
round was the fatal round for two of our brave Americans, would that 
indicate that that mortar had been set up and planned in advance?
  Mr. PERRY. Absolutely. You must know that it takes multiple, what we 
call, registration rounds and so on and so forth to bracket a target, 
multiple iterations of firing the tube or the mortar to hit the target. 
I'm talking half a dozen, a dozen times, and it's very precise.
  So they knew exactly what they were doing. They had this planned well 
in advance, in my opinion.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. And we would have known that in almost real-time in 
the Situation Room in the White House, would be what I would say, and 
yet still people went out and made the story that it was a movie. And 
then after the story of the movie began to break down, it became, well, 
it was actually a spontaneous response and people came running with the 
weapons that they had.
  We've gotten more truth out in this dialogue that we've had here in 
this past 45 minutes on the floor of the House of Representatives than 
has willingly been brought forward by this administration.
  I have said that Benghazi is worse than Watergate. I think that's a 
very easy position to hold in that Watergate was a burglary that the 
President found out about afterwards. It was wrong for President Nixon 
to seek to cover that burglary up. It cost him the Presidency and it 
cost America dearly in the events of history that unfolded from that, 
but this is something that goes deeper and worse.
  I believe it was a planned assassination attack on our Ambassador, 
and I believe that we had a whole group of heroic Americans who 
conducted themselves very well and they deserve to be identified, if 
they want to be, and they deserve the respect and appreciation and the 
honor that the American people would like to give them.
  The best thing we can do for the memories of those that are lost is 
to provide the full truth that goes outside that that must be 
classified. As history moves on, classification changes because of 
relevance of need for it to remain secret also changes.
  So perhaps today we can pick up the momentum to get those final 
signatures on the Wolf resolution, get to the point where we can 
convince our Speaker that we need to have this special select committee 
to investigate Benghazi, that it incorporates the top people from the 
five committees that have jurisdiction to do those kind of hearings 
with a significant budget where we can make sure that it's well staffed 
and also subpoena the people that we need to put that record out into 
the public eye and the public ear, record that record and build that 
and put it into a bound copy, a version which says, This is the 
reasoned judgment of Congress. These are the facts as they can be 
gathered, and that has been scrutinized by the public in real-time.

                              {time}  1230

  If we do that--we can draw our conclusions; historians will be able 
to draw their conclusions--we can do honor to those who lost their 
lives, gave their lives for us. We can do honor to those who have 
suffered serious wounds, and we can do honor to those who were in that 
conflict. And we can clean this up to the point where all of those that 
serve us in the Foreign Service and put their lives on the line--and 
there have been, by my recollection, eight Ambassadors who have lost 
their lives in the line of duty or died while in service of our country 
over the course of the history of the United States--Ambassador Stevens 
the most recent, the most violent, but also the one that they have the 
most questions about.
  This was going to be an open administration, one of the most 
transparent in history. And now we have the Secretary of State who 
presided over this, who was the lead voice, the one who should have 
given us the most direct response, has not given us a full testimony. 
She did appear before a Senate committee and it was a limited amount of 
testimony, but she has not come clean with this.
  As we see this, the situation of the coverup of the facts of 
Benghazi, we are also seeing the people that are engaged in this that 
do know the facts asking for an even higher level of responsibility in 
leadership, in fact, all the way to the White House seems to be the 
direction that the former Secretary of State would like to take. I'm 
going to suggest, Madam Speaker, that this can't happen in America. You 
cannot have someone who covered up something worse than Watergate find 
a path to go back to the White House and then put this country back 
under another shield to hide information, a coverup. The American 
people deserve the truth.
  One of the strengths that we have as a Nation is because we have been 
willing to face the real truth, face the real realities, and brace up 
and take on the enemies within the world. The people that serve this 
country, and do so with dignity and honor and nobility, are those in 
uniform. But it isn't only those in uniform. It's those that are in the 
CIA. It's some of the civilian contractors that have served in our 
military that are also part now of civilian security detail. There are 
those in the State Department that know they're out there on the edge 
and on the end. We need to honor all of them by bringing the truth out.

[[Page 13567]]

  There are many people, especially within the State Department and the 
CIA, who are sick at heart because they know the real truth. We need to 
give them an opportunity to bring that real truth out.
  I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. PERRY. Well, you are absolutely right, Mr. King. As you already 
stated, the American people deserve to know.
  Scarcely 6 weeks ago, I talked to some of the families of the fallen 
who have not, since that fateful day nearly--well, it's a year ago now; 
then it was just nearly a year--have still not gotten any answers from 
the administration. As a matter of fact, the administration doesn't 
talk to them at all. They're coming into Congress asking us to find 
answers.
  I would ask the American people: Is that how you want the people that 
serve this country overseas in very dangerous situations to be treated? 
Some of these are former military members serving in this capacity as 
security detail for the Ambassador, or that just picked up and went to 
the fight, even though they were told not to, and gave their lives. 
Their lives were taken from them. And this is how their families are 
being treated. They're dead, and their families are getting no 
resolution. They're getting no closure on this thing. And it's at the 
hands of this Federal Government and this administration. It's 
reprehensible. And it can be stopped immediately if they would just 
answer the questions that we have, that all Americans have.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I will just say a few more 
words, Madam Speaker.
  I sat through a series of briefings over the last week or a little 
better in different places around the world. In one of those briefings, 
one of our Special Operations Forces personnel made a point that they 
were ready to go to Benghazi. Now, there's nobody there that trains 
that isn't ready. Nobody is reluctant to step in and serve. No matter 
how dangerous a mission, no matter what the prospects are of success, 
if there are Americans in trouble and they are given the green light--
and that's the order to go into battle--they don't hesitate. They don't 
shrink back. They don't think, ``I wish I wasn't here.'' They train for 
that. And as they train for that, there is no hesitation.
  So we should always know that our military men and women, our 
security personnel, there is no hesitation on their part. They wanted 
to be there. That's why, when they got the order to stand down at the 
third time, they went anyway because these were brethren that needed to 
be protected.
  I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. PERRY. I would ask, Mr. King, we were told that there wasn't 
adequate time, that reinforcements and help were too far away. How did 
the administration know how long this was going to take, how long this 
attack was going to go on for? Because when the calls came from the 
Ambassador, it was hours and hours later until he perished, until 
others perished. During that period of time, we could have sent people 
on the way. Maybe they would have never gotten there in time, and maybe 
that's still a failure in planning, but I think the American people 
could forgive the mistake with the effort. But the effort wasn't made 
at all.
  And I wonder who made the determination that this is going to end in 
2 hours or 3 hours or 10 hours or 10 minutes and said, No, we're not 
going to send anybody because it's going to be over. How did they know 
that? I would suggest they never knew that because they never had any 
intention of sending anybody because they never had any plan. They 
never expected this, they never wanted this, and they hoped it would go 
away quietly into the night. That's what I would suggest.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Well, reclaiming my time, it appears to me that 
there was a political decision that was made in the Situation Room in 
the White House, and that political decision was: We're in a tough, 
tight, reelection battle. This is September 11. We are less than 2 
months before the election date. This could become a whole pivotal 
issue that the election is decided upon. Let's see if we can slide this 
thing down and tamp it under the rug and maybe it will go away. Maybe 
it won't be as big or as bad as we fear that it is. That is the 
question that comes back.
  There is a time in this job to do your duty. There is a time in this 
political arena that we're in that you set aside politics. There is a 
time when you look at your reelection and you decide, My job here in 
this moment doing the right thing is more important than any prospects 
of how people will vote 2 months from now or a year or more from now. 
That's that sense of duty.
  That's why we take an oath to uphold this Constitution. We all stand 
here on the floor of this House and take this oath to preserve, 
protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. The 
President does so. The executive personnel do so.
  When I look back through history, I can think of no time that our 
leadership in the White House has decided that the political 
calculation was more important than the lives of an Ambassador that had 
an opportunity to be saved. And maybe we would not have been able to 
save the Ambassador. Maybe we could have saved two of the others that 
were killed later in that operation. But we could have at least been 
there to send that message and to intimidate. And we're now a year and 
a day later. The press has identified some of the perpetrators. They 
have gone to Benghazi and sat down and had lunch and interviewed them. 
There are at least three media networks that have interviewed one or 
more of these perpetrators. If we know who they are and justice was 
going to be brought to them, why hasn't that been the case? Why hasn't 
this administration acted?
  Meanwhile, they will tell us they know exactly how to put a precision 
strike in on Assad in Syria to send just the right message that won't 
tip the balance of power and change the result of the civil war in 
Syria, but it will give him the message that he won't use weapons of 
mass destruction again. They have enough intel to apparently do that, 
but not enough intel to just follow the reporters around in Benghazi 
and collar the people that they talk to. That would be just that 
simple.
  Furthermore, the intel that seems to have identified the elements of 
the Free Syrian Army, I'll just say a few words about that that I've 
gathered as I have circumnavigated this globe and sat down in a whole 
series of meetings that took place that put the pieces of the puzzle 
together on the intel with Syria and Egypt and others.
  Just on the Syria side, we had a Free Syrian Army that emerged. It 
emerged as a popular uprising against Assad for his cruel and evil 
dictatorship of his people and for killing some of his own people even 
then, his political enemies. And the Free Syrian Army emerged. So they 
should have easily been the people that we supported.
  Well, as that battle went on, they were taking over different areas 
within Syria, tactical objectives and communities and cities and large 
geographical areas of Syria. And at a certain point, the Muslim 
Brotherhood stepped in. They took over some parts of the Free Syrian 
Army. They set up an operation to essentially sacrifice the leader of 
the Free Syrian Army. He was captured in an operation where he was 
sacrificed. They took him out of command. His successor commander now 
has been marginalized and pushed off to the side.
  And the Free Syrian Army--the knowledge that I have--is now 
controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical Islamist 
entities, including al Qaeda. That is the entity that we now have good 
enough intel that we are starting to send supplies and military 
supplies into.
  Those two entities, Assad and radical Islamist components, which is a 
large component of the Free Syrian Army, they're the bad guys. They're 
both our enemies. Yet the administration is in the business now, a year 
after that should have been happening in an aggressive way, of arming 
some of the wrong people.
  It's not that we didn't have good choices. There still are good 
choices. There still are good people in Syria and outside Syria that 
will step forward that want to have a secular Syria, a

[[Page 13568]]

Syria that has freedom of religion, a Syria that is run by the people 
of Syria. Those elements are still there in Syria and around Syria--at 
least 2 million Syrian refugees. That force can be put together. It 
takes longer than firing a cruise missile into Damascus and picking a 
target to send a pinprick message. It can be done, but I'm not 
confident that this administration has identified our friends.
  What I have seen is that, when we've aligned with anybody in the 
Middle East, it's been the Muslim Brotherhood. We've had 2\1/2\ years 
of the Arab Spring; and in every break that has changed the power 
within the countries of North Africa and the Middle East, every break 
has gone in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood, except one. That is now, 
when the Muslim Brotherhood took over Egypt under Morsi. Thirty to 33 
million people came to the streets in a popular demonstration--the 
largest demonstration in the history of the world--to unseat Morsi 
because they don't have a constitutional way to impeach him. They 
didn't have a way to arrest him. The only thing they could do was go to 
the streets and demand that he be removed from power.
  Our administration sent a message before Morsi came to power that 
Mubarak had to be gone yesterday--remember that word? ``He needs to be 
gone yesterday.'' Well, that upset the balance of power in Egypt. That 
helped Morsi come to power. Morsi squeaked by by winning an election 
with 5.8 million people voting for him out of 83 million or so 
Egyptians altogether. Not exactly what you would call a majority of the 
people supporting Morsi--Morsi's complete incompetence, but also his 
very bold moves to consolidate power within Egypt to where it became 
clear that there was not going to be another election in Egypt and that 
the Muslim Brotherhood was going to impose shari'a law. And you start 
seeing that happen.
  Well, 30 to 33 million people in the streets of Egypt, and the 
Egyptian military stepped forward to support the popular uprising that 
took place. Now they have laid out a time line, a roadmap to write a 
constitution, put a constitution out on a public vote to ratify and 
then to elect a president and a civilian government. And General Assisi 
has pledged to turn over this military control of the Egyptian 
Government to a newly elected, legitimate civilian government. That 
time line is a good time line. It's a good commitment that has been set 
up and it's a good result.
  The problem we have is that our administration was against Mubarak 
and helped push him out of power. That helped open the door for Morsi, 
who came in--one of the Muslim Brotherhood. And it's clear, this new 
leadership, the interim President of Egypt, General Assisi, commanding 
the military--and also, by the way, they have the support of the Pope 
of the Coptic Christian Church in Egypt--all of that, the new forces 
are clear. They oppose the Muslim Brotherhood.
  The struggle within the Middle East, Muslim Brotherhood, radical 
Islam, radical and violent Islamist groups working against the free 
people in that part of the world, we need to be on the right side of 
everyone, not on the wrong side of everyone. And the administration is 
going to have to turn their course around in Egypt and get behind the 
new administration and support new elections and a new constitution.
  I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. PERRY. I would like to pose a question to you based on what 
you've seen regarding Syria and Benghazi and Libya, the classified 
briefings and your travels.
  This administration reported to us that Syria had used chemical 
weapons 11 times previously. On the 12th time, we want to send a 
message that that's not okay--and it's not okay, let's be clear about 
that. But why didn't we send a message and why haven't we sent a 
message that it's not okay to kill a United States Ambassador? When is 
that message going to be sent?
  I would just like to get your thoughts on that and the dichotomy and 
the lack of parallel in some kind of strategy and foreign policy that 
is congruent and makes sense to our allies and our adversaries.
  Mr. KING of Iowa. Well, I would just say to the gentleman that he has 
pointed out a stark contradiction in our policy. Eleven or 12 times of 
alleged, at least, weapons of mass destruction used against the Syrian 
people. I'm going to suggest that this push now is because some of the 
people that want those elements of the Free Syrian Army that I 
described to succeed are saying, Help us out by landing a strike or two 
in on Assad. That's my guess.
  But with regard to justice for the people that perpetrated the 
Benghazi incident against our Americans and our American Ambassador, 
that justice needs to be delivered. We know who some of those people 
are. And it's irresponsible of this administration to shut information 
down to the United States Congress, to the American people, and to fail 
to act when they have a clear act of war committed against the United 
States on U.S. territory.

                              {time}  1245

  I'm aware that the clock has ticked down here to the end.
  I want to thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania for coming to the 
floor. I'm sure that he wasn't aware that this wasn't choreographed. It 
was a spontaneous eruption of protest calling for the truth to come out 
and a light to shine on Benghazi.
  I thank the gentleman from Virginia for his leadership on this, Mr. 
Speaker, and I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Salmon). The Chair would remind Members 
to direct their remarks to the Chair.

                          ____________________