Speaker 1: Pushkin previously on Fiasco.
Speaker 2: There were some mysteries embedded in Benghazi that needed to
Speaker 2: be answered, so that gave it legs.
Speaker 1: A number of conservative media outlets were particularly gender.
Speaker 3: Because you never knew what would get traction.
Speaker 4: Who told the military to stand down?
Speaker 5: Where in the world is Hillary Clinton?
Speaker 2: What's her legacy going to be? Benghazi?
Speaker 1: This is the final episode of our season on Benghazi.
Speaker 1: But before we get into how the story ended, I
Speaker 1: want to stop for a second and dwell on a
Speaker 1: question that so far we've only come at sideways.
Speaker 6: Actually a two part question.
Speaker 1: First, what did the people who were outraged about Benghazi
Speaker 1: actually think Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama did wrong? And second,
Speaker 1: what did they think their motivations were.
Speaker 7: There's no question Hillary lied and people died.
Speaker 1: I don't mean to sound defensive on behalf of Clinton
Speaker 1: or Obama. I just think it's surprisingly hard to pin
Speaker 1: this down given how many specific accusations were leveled against
Speaker 1: the administration.
Speaker 8: So the administration knew in real time there wasn't a mob.
Speaker 9: They knew in real time that this was a well
Speaker 9: coordinated attack.
Speaker 10: They absolutely lied to the American people from day one.
Speaker 5: The White House can sign those people to death.
Speaker 1: What I've been trying to figure out is how did
Speaker 1: all these accusations fit together, what did they add up to?
Speaker 1: And the closest I've come to an answer to a
Speaker 1: unified theory of the Benghazi scandal is that, at a
Speaker 1: basic level, many Republicans saw the attack as a repudiation
Speaker 1: of a worldview they had long despised.
Speaker 5: Son's problems with Benghazi make a bigger point about his
Speaker 5: approach to governor.
Speaker 7: Benghazi is the result of the failures of the Obama
Speaker 7: Clinton foreign policy.
Speaker 1: The argument was that Obama and Clinton were idealistic liberals
Speaker 1: who didn't understand the threat of Islamic extremism. They thought
Speaker 1: America could solve its problems in the Arab world with
Speaker 1: diplomacy and deference and leading from behind.
Speaker 5: Maybe they wanted to believe the lie governed by the
Speaker 5: ideology of hurt feelings. It's hipster diplomacy at its worst.
Speaker 11: If you're reluctant to call terrorism by its name, can
Speaker 11: you ever defeat the terrorists?
Speaker 1: Benghazi was proof that Obama, Clinton and their fellow liberals
Speaker 1: were fundamentally wrong about America's place in the world.
Speaker 5: The reason we have Libya is the obama mesress of
Speaker 5: terrorism has expanded all across the region.
Speaker 12: Now, mister President, it's your effeckless weak foreign policy that
Speaker 12: is creating a danger zone for all Americans.
Speaker 1: At best, the Democrats had gotten people killed with their
Speaker 1: naivete and at worst, they had deliberately prioritized their liberal
Speaker 1: values over protecting American lives.
Speaker 5: Bad things happen when you avoid reality, and unfortunately we've.
Speaker 6: Just seen that.
Speaker 1: It was a powerful story. But what strikes me is
Speaker 1: just how far the debate around Benghazi ended up drifting,
Speaker 1: how baroque and esoteric it got, Because it seems clear
Speaker 1: the scandal wasn't really about a foreign policy disagreement between
Speaker 1: left and right. It was about something deeper and also
Speaker 1: more shallow, which is why in this season finale, I
Speaker 1: want to tell you about two very different investigations into
Speaker 1: Benghazi that were carried out in parallel. One resulted in
Speaker 1: a trial in which a Libyan militia leader was accused
Speaker 1: of orchestrating the murder of Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty,
Speaker 1: and Tyrone Woods. The other ended with emails I'm Leon
Speaker 1: Nafok from Prologue Projects and Pushkin Industries this is fiasco,
Speaker 1: ben Gazi.
Speaker 13: The word Benghazi the ultimate roar shock test.
Speaker 14: Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, but we put together
Speaker 14: a Benghazi Special Committee.
Speaker 3: Congressional investigations are partisan in nature. Their sole purpose is
Speaker 3: to damage your opponent.
Speaker 8: They actually printed out tickets. It was like tickets to
Speaker 8: the circus.
Speaker 15: What is the psychic told that takes Hillary crooked?
Speaker 16: Hillary crooked?
Speaker 6: So crooked?
Speaker 1: Episode six, our season finale, Radicals, in which everyone has
Speaker 1: their own reasons for wanting the truth about Benghazi. We'll
Speaker 1: be right back.
Speaker 4: It's funny when you see it for the first time
Speaker 4: and then you see it for the thousandth time, you
Speaker 4: cannot believe how much you missed.
Speaker 1: The first Julianne Himmelstein watched the surveillance footage from the
Speaker 1: Benghazi compound over and over and over.
Speaker 4: It was grainy, it was black and white. But that
Speaker 4: was the nugget that we started from.
Speaker 1: At the time of the attack, Himmelstein was an assistant
Speaker 1: US attorney, and she was assigned by the Department of
Speaker 1: Justice to serve as one of the lead federal prosecutors
Speaker 1: in charge of the criminal inquiry into BEng Ghazi.
Speaker 4: We really were investigating it as a pure and simple
Speaker 4: murder case and terrorist attack.
Speaker 1: Himmelstein's partner and the investigation was an FBI counter terrorism
Speaker 1: specialist named Mike Clark.
Speaker 6: You know, we got the.
Speaker 17: Call on September eleventh to the normal channels, and immediately
Speaker 17: I was notified that I was going to be the
Speaker 17: lead case agent. We got our team together, and we deployed.
Speaker 1: On the night of September twelfth. The diplomatic security agents
Speaker 1: and CIA contractors who had been in Benghazi during the
Speaker 1: attack were in Germany, having just evacuated from Libya. Clark
Speaker 1: and his team needed to debrief them about what they'd seen.
Speaker 17: My first responsibility was to take my team to our
Speaker 17: forward operating base in Germany and interview the Americans that
Speaker 17: had survived the attack, mostly the DSS agents that were
Speaker 17: there on scene.
Speaker 1: Afterwards, Clark flew to Libya to personally pick up the
Speaker 1: surveillance footage that had been pulled off a dozen or
Speaker 1: so cameras set up around the Benghazi compound. Back in
Speaker 1: the United States, Clark and Himmelstein watched the videos together,
Speaker 1: sitting in a small room at an FBI office crowded
Speaker 1: with boxes and furniture. They would stop every few seconds,
Speaker 1: then rewind, then stop again, then rewind again. They would
Speaker 1: do this for hours and eventually years.
Speaker 17: When you first look at those videos and you don't
Speaker 17: know who the people are, it does look like a
Speaker 17: chaotic mess. But once you start being able to identify
Speaker 17: who the people are, what groups they belonged to, then
Speaker 17: it becomes clearer and clear.
Speaker 1: For Clark and Himmelstein, identifying the people in the video
Speaker 1: was the top priority. They received some promising leads from
Speaker 1: intelligence reports, but in order to build a case, they
Speaker 1: needed to connect that intelligence to the nameless individuals in
Speaker 1: the footage, and to do that, Himmelstein and Clark needed witnesses.
Speaker 4: The only way that we were able to identify anyone
Speaker 4: is to talk to people in Benghazi who knew them.
Speaker 4: It was hard to convince people who were there to
Speaker 4: talk to the FBI. There was an incredible witness who
Speaker 4: was in Benghazi and present on the night of the attack,
Speaker 4: very very young man. He was the first one to
Speaker 4: identify Abu Katala.
Speaker 1: Ahmed Abu Katala was a construction worker by trade. During
Speaker 1: the Libyan Revolution, he had taken up arms against muamargadaf
Speaker 1: and raised a small battalion in Benghazi called Obeda Benjarra.
Speaker 1: They were adherents to the ultra conservative solaphist interpretation of Islam,
Speaker 1: and their vision for Libya involved ridding the country of
Speaker 1: every imperialist foreign power, particularly the Americans.
Speaker 17: When you talk about Ubeeda Benjarrah and Abu Katala, you're
Speaker 17: talking about an extremist militia that doesn't believe that any
Speaker 17: government entity should be involved in anything involving Libya. He
Speaker 17: wanted Libya to be governed under strict Sharia law.
Speaker 1: Investigators learned that Abu Katala had met many of his
Speaker 1: compatriots in Obeeda Benjarra during the Gaddafi regime when they
Speaker 1: were imprisoned together at Abu Salim, the prison where more
Speaker 1: than a thousand inmates were killed in a massacre in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 4: Not swear many of them formed their friendships and relationships
Speaker 4: and it was just, you know, just a horrible environment,
Speaker 4: just the worst that you could ever think of. And
Speaker 4: there was torture, and actually Abu Katala was tortured.
Speaker 1: At some point. Abu Katala affiliated himself with a hard
Speaker 1: line Islamist militia called Ansar al Sharia. A few months
Speaker 1: before the attack on the US compound, he and about
Speaker 1: two hundred other members of Asar Al Sharia took part
Speaker 1: in a rally through Benghazi intended to show their force.
Speaker 17: The rebel fighters from Libya's revolution had brought their weapons
Speaker 17: along while demanding that their country imposed Sharia Islamic law.
Speaker 1: They drove trucks brandishing artillery and loudly condemned the coming elections,
Speaker 1: Libya's first since the fall of Gaddafi.
Speaker 4: We need.
Speaker 18: To kill them, ko Kofan, Yeah, to kill the infidels.
Speaker 19: Yes.
Speaker 20: Yes.
Speaker 1: It didn't take long for investigators to start circling Abu Katala.
Speaker 1: Libyan witnesses told the FBI that they had seen him
Speaker 1: directing fighters during the attack, and sources from various local
Speaker 1: militias said Abu Katala had approached them several weeks earlier
Speaker 1: trying to acquire weapons and vehicles.
Speaker 17: He was also discreetly and diplomatically in some cases, going
Speaker 17: to other more mainstream militia leaders and basically telling them,
Speaker 17: you know, it would be a bad idea to interfere
Speaker 17: with our plans should something happen.
Speaker 1: The witness interviews that generated these details were hard won.
Speaker 1: People in Libya were scared of Abu Katala.
Speaker 17: Those are the people that made the case. Some of
Speaker 17: them paid the ultimate sacrifice. We had witnesses that were killed.
Speaker 17: We had witnesses that their houses were burned to the
Speaker 17: ground by the extremists. Once they found out that they
Speaker 17: were speaking out against Abu Katala and other militia groups,
Speaker 17: extremist groups, they risked everything to cooperate with the FBI
Speaker 17: because they realized how dangerous the extremists were.
Speaker 13: A Libyan militia leader who has the suspected ringleader behind
Speaker 13: the deadly attack on the US consul in Benghazi is
Speaker 13: basically thumbing his nose at American and Libyan investigators.
Speaker 1: Abu Katala was not exactly keeping a low profile. In October,
Speaker 1: just a few weeks after the attack, he even made
Speaker 1: himself available to the American media.
Speaker 13: His name is Ahmed Abu Katawa. He socialized with journalists
Speaker 13: last night at a hotel in Benghazi.
Speaker 1: In meetings with reporters from The New York Times, CNN,
Speaker 1: and Fox News, Abu Katala spoke in a tone that
Speaker 1: was described as taunting. During his time's interview, he sipped
Speaker 1: on a strawberry frape could have been a ringleader.
Speaker 21: Maybe a suspect may be just bragging about his contentions,
Speaker 21: but his walking around free as a bird in Benghazi
Speaker 21: a couple of days ago and talking.
Speaker 1: To the New York Times, Abu Katala denied playing a
Speaker 1: role in the attack, but he made no secret of
Speaker 1: his contempt for the American government and made clear that
Speaker 1: he wanted the US out of Libya. According to Mike Clark,
Speaker 1: the FBI agent leading the instigation, Abu Katala was also
Speaker 1: convinced that the US mission compound in Benghazi was not
Speaker 1: what the United States had claimed.
Speaker 17: Abu Katala never believed that the Special Mission was an embassy,
Speaker 17: was a diplomatic facility. He always believed, even to the
Speaker 17: time when I interviewed him, that it was a spy
Speaker 17: base and it was a front for illegal American activities.
Speaker 1: In this respect, Abu Katala had something in common with
Speaker 1: a certain subset of Americans, whether he knew it or not.
Speaker 1: There was a theory popular in conservative media that Chris
Speaker 1: Stevens's real reason for being in Benghazi was to broker
Speaker 1: a secret weapons deal with Turkey. The theory didn't exactly
Speaker 1: say the Benghazi mission was a CIA front, but it
Speaker 1: suggested Stevens was not acting as an average ambassador. In
Speaker 1: any event, Abu Katala thought every American in Benghazi was suspect.
Speaker 1: While the FBA eyes slowly developed their case, Republicans in
Speaker 1: Congress were focused on a different investigation, a bunch of
Speaker 1: them actually, all taking place on Capitol Hill, where multiple
Speaker 1: House committees were looking into various aspects of the attack.
Speaker 5: I mean five separate House committees are looking into this thing.
Speaker 5: Four or five different committees that are looking into ben Ghazi.
Speaker 1: Each committee had its own jurisdiction, So, for example, the
Speaker 1: House Armed Services Committee was focused on the Pentagon's response
Speaker 1: to the attack, and the Foreign Affairs Committee was focused
Speaker 1: on the State Department. The broadest scope belonged to the
Speaker 1: House Oversight Committee. You heard about their work in our
Speaker 1: previous episode. They were the ones who interviewed the whistleblowers
Speaker 1: and asked repeatedly about a stand down order.
Speaker 22: How did the personnel react at being told to stand down?
Speaker 6: They were furious, he said, this is the first time.
Speaker 1: Suzanne Saxmon Grooms was the Chief council for the Oversight
Speaker 1: Committee's Democratic staff. In that capacity, she worked under Congressman
Speaker 1: Elijah Cummings, so.
Speaker 8: The Oversight Committee was called back in immediately after the
Speaker 8: attacks and had its first hearing in October of twenty twelve,
Speaker 8: and then continued to heavily and actively aggressively investigate the
Speaker 8: Bengazi attacks for that full year and a half.
Speaker 1: Between the Oversight Committee investigation and all the others, the
Speaker 1: Bengazi attack was being scrutinized from every angle.
Speaker 8: The Committee's interviewed dozens of witnesses, They reviewed tens of
Speaker 8: thousands of pages of documents, There was a lot of
Speaker 8: classified interviews and briefings, and there were a number of
Speaker 8: public hearings.
Speaker 1: By mid twenty thirteen, polls were showing that Benghazi was
Speaker 1: being processed completely differently by Democrats and Republicans.
Speaker 13: The ultimate roar shock test in American politics today maybe
Speaker 13: the word Benghazi.
Speaker 1: For one thing, Republicans were just much more interested in
Speaker 1: the story. According to a Pew survey, they were twice
Speaker 1: as likely as Democrats to be followed Benghazi in the news.
Speaker 1: The same survey showed that among Democrats, sixty percent thought
Speaker 1: Republicans had gone too far with the investigations. Among Republicans,
Speaker 1: sixty five percent said the investigations had been handled properly.
Speaker 1: You could see a corresponding schism on Capitol Hill, where
Speaker 1: Democratic lawmakers were arguing that Benghazi was a manufactured scandal
Speaker 1: that Republicans were dragging out for political gain.
Speaker 3: There's an obsession with Benghazi Hillary Clinton that some of
Speaker 3: my Republican colleagues have in the House.
Speaker 1: While Republicans insisted that the real truth had still not
Speaker 1: come out.
Speaker 4: You know, I think the Benghazi issue is quite significant
Speaker 4: because we still don't have truth in regards to what
Speaker 4: happened there.
Speaker 23: And that was part of the message of the Tea Party.
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody leading the charge on the Republican side was
Speaker 1: a cohort of arch conservatives who felt the existing committees
Speaker 1: weren't being aggressive enough about Benghazi. That included members of
Speaker 1: the Tea Party, a flamboyant, anger fueled wing of the
Speaker 1: GOP that rose to power during Obama's first term. What
Speaker 1: they wanted was a new investigation into Benghazi, a special
Speaker 1: select committee that would find the smoking gun that had
Speaker 1: so far eluded Congress. More than anything, the desire for
Speaker 1: a select committee was about the promise of a less
Speaker 1: restrained approach than Republicans had been taking thus far. Part
Speaker 1: of the appeal was symbolic. Select committees have been created
Speaker 1: to investigate name brand scandals like Watergate and Iran Contra,
Speaker 1: so it was only right that Benghazi should get one too.
Speaker 1: But there was a practical appeal as well. The select
Speaker 1: committee wouldn't be limited by jurisdiction and could therefore investigate
Speaker 1: any aspect of the scandal they wanted.
Speaker 24: There were Republicans who believed that the people leading these
Speaker 24: other investigations were not sufficiently bloodthirsty.
Speaker 1: This is Tim alberta author of a book called American
Speaker 1: Carnage about the recent history of the GOP.
Speaker 24: They believed desperate times call for desperate measures. And we've
Speaker 24: got this incident that left four Americans dead, and we
Speaker 24: have the likely nominee of the Democratic Party right at
Speaker 24: the center of it, and nobody has even laid a
Speaker 24: glove on her yet. And so all of these fact
Speaker 24: finding missions that are playing by the rules of Congress
Speaker 24: are all fine and well, but isn't it about time
Speaker 24: that we tested some of those boundaries and that maybe
Speaker 24: we broke a couple of those rules.
Speaker 1: Calls for the formation of a select committee began just
Speaker 1: a few months after the attack, but the drumbeat got louder.
Speaker 1: Over the course of twenty thirteen. That summer, a freshman
Speaker 1: congressman from Texas announced that he had collected one thousand
Speaker 1: signatures from Special Ops veterans in support of a select committee.
Speaker 1: The congressman planned to unveil the signatures in the form
Speaker 1: of a sixty foot long scroll that he wanted to
Speaker 1: spread over the Capitol steps.
Speaker 24: The sixty foot scroll at noon time.
Speaker 7: I do believe it's been signed by a thousand Special
Speaker 7: Offs veterans.
Speaker 24: Well, this happened today.
Speaker 12: You're getting resistance on that from Capitol police.
Speaker 25: Well, the police say that we're not allowed to do it,
Speaker 25: but we're working with him. Right now, we're going to
Speaker 25: unfurrel the scroll and just demanding that we have a
Speaker 25: special investigation. We owe it to the survivors. We also
Speaker 25: owe it to the victims that were killed there.
Speaker 1: That more, The power to appoint a select committee on
Speaker 1: Benghazi lay with one man, House Speaker John Bayner. The
Speaker 1: surly had strong congressman from Ohio.
Speaker 6: What you see is what you get. I know who
Speaker 6: I am.
Speaker 18: I'm comfortable in my own skin, and everybody who knows
Speaker 18: me knows that I get emotional about certain things. Trying
Speaker 18: to catch my breath, so I don't refer to this
Speaker 18: as a chicken crap, all right? What this is bensense?
Speaker 23: All right.
Speaker 1: Bayner had a history as something of a renegade in
Speaker 1: the GOP, but after twenty years in the House he
Speaker 1: had evolved into a quintessential establishment figure, someone who would
Speaker 1: go on to support Jeb Bush and John Kasick in
Speaker 1: the Republican primary over their more erratic challengers.
Speaker 24: The term institutionalist gets thrown around a lot in Congress,
Speaker 24: but there's really no one in Congress at this time
Speaker 24: who is more of an institutionalist than John Bayner. This
Speaker 24: is somebody who is really, really, sort of obsessed with
Speaker 24: the long term health and stability and credibility of the
Speaker 24: US Congress.
Speaker 7: Whatever anyone thinks about the Speaker of the House, John
Speaker 7: Bahner may have the toughest job in Washington.
Speaker 1: Though Baynor had initially celebrated the Tea Party wave, he
Speaker 1: quickly found himself at odds with the Republican Party's ascendant
Speaker 1: right flank, many of whom he regarded as politically immature
Speaker 1: and unserious about governing.
Speaker 7: His problem has been the rise of the Tea Party faction,
Speaker 7: the newly arrived and highly motivated members who do not
Speaker 7: go along or get along with the wishes of the leadership.
Speaker 24: And so John Baynor tied after time after time. Since
Speaker 24: he becomes speaker in January of twenty eleven, he's butting
Speaker 24: heads with the far right of his conference.
Speaker 1: While Bayner owes his speakership to the Tea Party, victories
Speaker 1: that put Republicans in charge, the Tea Parties headstrong confrontations
Speaker 1: put his leadership on the rocks repeatedly.
Speaker 24: They are just ready to light fires and lob bombs
Speaker 24: and sort of engage in these guerrilla tactics against not
Speaker 24: only the Obama administration, but more and more against members
Speaker 24: of their own party.
Speaker 1: The Tea Parties guerrilla tactics included pushing conspiracy based legislation
Speaker 1: that Bayner opposed, like a bill requiring presidential candidates to
Speaker 1: show their long form birth certificates. What do Obama and
Speaker 1: God have in common?
Speaker 6: Neither has a birth certificate.
Speaker 12: But this strikes of racism in the very least, he's foreign,
Speaker 12: he's alien, he's the other.
Speaker 1: Tea Party members also forced government shut down and tanked
Speaker 1: several of Bayer's carefully crafted compromises with the Obama way
Speaker 1: Ight House. On one occasion, Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann demanded a
Speaker 1: spot on a powerful House committee and threatened to go
Speaker 1: on Sean Hannity's show to disparage Bayner if he didn't
Speaker 1: see her. This was par for the course for Tea
Speaker 1: Party members, who regularly used Fox News as a way
Speaker 1: to bypass Bayner's agenda and gain influence by talking directly
Speaker 1: to their base in private meetings. Bayner attempted to strong
Speaker 1: arm the renegades with little effect. He had a stern
Speaker 1: message for Tea Party or Bayner told them, get your
Speaker 1: ass in line.
Speaker 6: Don Bayner's a pissed off Speaker of the House.
Speaker 1: Bayner declined to be interviewed for this podcast, but Tim
Speaker 1: Alberta says the Speaker was uncomfortable with how the Republican
Speaker 1: Party was changing. At the same time, Alberta emphasizes that
Speaker 1: Bayner's discomfort wasn't about policy or ideology so much as
Speaker 1: tactics and temperament. Bayner saw himself as the adult in
Speaker 1: the room, and when he started getting pressure to form
Speaker 1: a special select committee to reinvestigate Benghazi, he bristled.
Speaker 24: What's really giving Bayner a great degree of heartburn is
Speaker 24: he's beginning at this point to appreciate what it is
Speaker 24: that these folks are really after. They're looking for the
Speaker 24: House of Representatives to do what traditionally a partisan opposition
Speaker 24: research firm would do, which is spend a whole lot
Speaker 24: of money and a whole lot of time and a
Speaker 24: whole lot of energy trying to dig up dirt on
Speaker 24: a particular subject. And for Bayner, that makes him extremely
Speaker 24: uncomfortable because he knows in his bones that that is inappropriate.
Speaker 1: On some level. Bayner's heartburn was about appearances. He had
Speaker 1: no problem with cutthroat political maneuvering. He just didn't want
Speaker 1: the Republican Party to look shameless.
Speaker 24: There are new developments on Benghazi.
Speaker 5: Some of the families of the four Americans killed, pressing
Speaker 5: House Speaker John Bayner to create what's called a select
Speaker 5: committee and investigate.
Speaker 1: By the spring of twenty fourteen, the pressure on Bayner
Speaker 1: to appoint a select committee was building. It was no
Speaker 1: longer just the zany, angry New Right calling out for it.
Speaker 1: It was all kinds of Republicans who were hearing from
Speaker 1: voters back home that not enough was being done about Benghazi.
Speaker 1: Author Tim Elberta again.
Speaker 24: Lots of the constituents. Even in these sort of moderate
Speaker 24: suburban Republican districts. The folks that we thought at the
Speaker 24: time were just your sort of traditional Republicans, you know,
Speaker 24: Chamber of Commerce, country Club, give me some tax cuts
Speaker 24: and Supreme Court justices. Republicans, they're you know, tuning into
Speaker 24: Fox News every night, and they're bringing these concerns now
Speaker 24: to their members of Congress, saying, hey, why aren't you
Speaker 24: looking at the ben Ghazi Why are you letting Hillary
Speaker 24: Clinton off the hooks.
Speaker 2: About one hundred and sixty seven members of the Republican
Speaker 2: Commerce have written to Bayner asking to create this committee.
Speaker 26: One month of billboards advocating Watergates style committee going up
Speaker 26: in Bayner's district.
Speaker 24: And it wasn't just the Tea partiers who were sort
Speaker 24: of battering at the gates of the House leadership asking
Speaker 24: for this investigation. More and more the drum beat was
Speaker 24: coming from across the conference.
Speaker 1: In April, John Bahner sat for an interview on Fox
Speaker 1: News with Megan Kelly, in which she pressed him on
Speaker 1: why he was resisting calls for a new investigation.
Speaker 11: You've got one hundred and ninety members in the House
Speaker 11: who are in favor of a select committee, and yet
Speaker 11: you are overruling or ignoring the will of your own majority.
Speaker 18: There are four committees that are investigating in BEng Ghazi.
Speaker 18: These committees all have subpoena power. At this point in time,
Speaker 18: I see no reason to break up all the work
Speaker 18: that's been done and to take months and months and
Speaker 18: months to create some select committee.
Speaker 6: But want it.
Speaker 11: You've got one hundred and ninety House Republicans who say
Speaker 11: they need it.
Speaker 6: I understand it.
Speaker 1: It's Later that month, the conservative legal group Didditional Watch
Speaker 1: published an email they had obtained through a four yer request.
Speaker 1: In it, a White House communications advisor laid out a
Speaker 1: series of talking points for Susan Rice's appearance on the
Speaker 1: Sunday News shows. The memo directed Rice to underscore that
Speaker 1: the recent unrest in the Arab world, including the Benghazi incident,
Speaker 1: was quote rooted in an Internet video and not a
Speaker 1: broader failure of policy.
Speaker 15: The president of Judicial Watch said the documents read like
Speaker 15: a pr strategy, not an effort to provide the best
Speaker 15: available intelligence to the American people.
Speaker 1: The State Department had not previously disclosed the email when
Speaker 1: responding to document requests from Congress. In a statement, John
Speaker 1: Bahner said he was appalled.
Speaker 27: Speaker Bayner said, quote, the administration's withholding of documents is
Speaker 27: a flagrant violation of trust, and it forces us to
Speaker 27: ask the question, what else about Benghazi is the Obama
Speaker 27: administration still hiding?
Speaker 1: Appointing the Select Committee would earn Bayner credit with the
Speaker 1: Republican Party's loudest, most ideological voices. In his book, Tim
Speaker 1: Alberta tells a story about Bayner going up to New
Speaker 1: York and meeting with Fox News chairman Roger Ales.
Speaker 24: John Bahner and Roger Ayles have been friends for a
Speaker 24: very long time. They talked frequently. When Ales took over
Speaker 24: Fox News, he and Bayner had long dinner conversations about
Speaker 24: Ales's vision for the network. These two were really, in
Speaker 24: some ways peas in a pod. These guys were buddies.
Speaker 1: Bayner planned to tell Ales that he had decided to
Speaker 1: go ahead and form the Select Committee. So many on
Speaker 1: Fox News had been demanding. What Bayner wanted in exchange
Speaker 1: was for Ales to get Fox News off his back,
Speaker 1: not just about Bengazi, but about everything. Bayner wanted the
Speaker 1: crazies his word, to tone down their criticism of the
Speaker 1: Republican Party, and he wanted Fox News to stop giving
Speaker 1: them a platform.
Speaker 24: Bayner says to Ales, he says, listen, Roger, I want
Speaker 24: you to know that I'm the one given this thing
Speaker 24: the green light, and i want you to know that
Speaker 24: we'll be communicating with you and with your anchors and
Speaker 24: with your hosts about this, and we're going to make
Speaker 24: sure that Fox News has a front row seat for
Speaker 24: everything that's happening with this committee. But Roger, I'm telling
Speaker 24: you this because I need you to call off the hounds.
Speaker 24: I need you to give me a break here. I
Speaker 24: need you to treat this as something of a peace offering.
Speaker 1: Essentially, Bayner was offering to trade Ales more Benghazi content
Speaker 1: for a friendlier Fox News. Bayner had long understood Ales
Speaker 1: to be obsessed with ratings, but he viewed him ultimately
Speaker 1: as a reasonable man. Ales gave Bayner no indication that
Speaker 1: he was willing to tone anything down.
Speaker 24: Ales here's the word ben Ghazi and basically spirals out
Speaker 24: into a little dark world of his own, in which
Speaker 24: he begins to talk about, as Bayner said, black helicopters
Speaker 24: flying all around his head. He talks about how the
Speaker 24: Obama administration is spying on him and how he has
Speaker 24: to create a safe room in his house to make
Speaker 24: sure he's not being monitored, and how his property has
Speaker 24: armed guards to protect against potential assassins coming to take
Speaker 24: him out. Bayner walks out of that meeting thinking, if
Speaker 24: the head of Fox News is this conspiratorial, and this lost,
Speaker 24: and this deep down some of these crazy wormholes believing
Speaker 24: this stuff, then how does that bode for this country
Speaker 24: and for the conservative movement and for the Republican viewers,
Speaker 24: millions of them around the country who are essentially addicted
Speaker 24: to watching his network every single night.
Speaker 15: At this time, I would yield to the jail woman,
Speaker 15: the Speaker of the House, the gentleman, mister Bayner from Ohio.
Speaker 18: I believe the whole House and the American people deserve
Speaker 18: to know how I came to the decision that brings
Speaker 18: us here today.
Speaker 1: Baynor announced the formation of the Select Committee on May two,
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, not long after his meeting with Ales. He
Speaker 1: billed it as the definitive Bengazi investigation, the one that
Speaker 1: would settle the case once and for all.
Speaker 23: This doesn't need to be, shouldn't be, and will not
Speaker 23: be a partisan process, and we will not allow any
Speaker 23: side shows that distract us from those goals.
Speaker 1: Bayner's pick to chair the new committee was Trey Goudy,
Speaker 1: a Tea Party favorite from South Carolina.
Speaker 10: Congressman Trey Goudi now leading the charge with it.
Speaker 1: It was as clear a sign as any that Bayner
Speaker 1: was thinking of the Select Committee as a way to
Speaker 1: appease the Republican Party's most extreme members.
Speaker 28: Goudy, with that wonderful Southern accent, leading that committee hearing.
Speaker 2: So, I think I am not surprised at the President
Speaker 2: of the United States call this a phony scan. I'm
Speaker 2: not surprised, as Secretary Clinton ask, what difference does it make?
Speaker 1: I'm Goudy had the track record of a hardline conservative.
Speaker 1: During Obama's first term, the congressman had advocated for getting
Speaker 1: rid of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. He had also
Speaker 1: been a particularly vocal critic of the administration's handling of
Speaker 1: the Bengazi attack.
Speaker 2: No one has been arrested, no one has been prosecuted,
Speaker 2: no one has been brought to justice. We don't even
Speaker 2: have access to the witnesses.
Speaker 1: At the same time, Goudy was seen as a sort
Speaker 1: of thinking man's Tea partier, someone who could throw punches,
Speaker 1: but wasn't reckless about it. True to that image, Goudy
Speaker 1: vowed to the Select Committee and Benghazi would be fair
Speaker 1: and apolitical, a fact finding mission that had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with attacking Hillary Clinton and everything to do with
Speaker 1: answering the unanswered questions.
Speaker 2: Can you tell me why Chris Stevens was in the Gazi?
Speaker 2: Do you know why we were the last flag flying
Speaker 2: in Benghazi after the British had left and the Red
Speaker 2: Cross had been blonged? Do you know why requests for
Speaker 2: additional security were denied?
Speaker 1: Do you know why this messaging was consistent with Speaker
Speaker 1: Bayner's desire to keep up appearances.
Speaker 2: I have no friends to reward and no foes to punish.
Speaker 2: We're going to go wherever the facts take us. Facts
Speaker 2: are neither.
Speaker 24: Rule, and so Trey Goudi was sort of that rare
Speaker 24: specimen in the eyes of Bayner, who was going to
Speaker 24: make the Tea Party guys happy, but who also could
Speaker 24: be expected to run a professional investigation that was not
Speaker 24: going to bring any sort of embarrassment to the institution.
Speaker 1: Democrats were unconvinced by Goudy and Bayner's promises. Remember this
Speaker 1: was the spring of twenty fourteen, and Hillary Clinton was
Speaker 1: widely expected to run for president in twenty sixteen. No
Speaker 1: matter how a political Goudy and Bayner wanted it to look,
Speaker 1: the Select Committee would inevitably be an early battleground in
Speaker 1: the upcoming election, and initially the Democrats considered boycotting it
Speaker 1: so as to avoid giving it the appearance of legitimacy
Speaker 1: at House.
Speaker 5: Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi calls it a political stunt and
Speaker 5: are still considering whether her party will participate.
Speaker 1: Ultimately, the Democrats decided they couldn't trust Goudy and Bayner
Speaker 1: to run a fair hearing on their own, and so
Speaker 1: they sat five members of their party, including Elijah Cummings,
Speaker 1: alongside the seven Republicans. Bayner had selected.
Speaker 29: Elijah Cummings a seasoned vet when it comes to all
Speaker 29: things Benghazi, having suffered through Daryl IS's House Oversight Committee
Speaker 29: on the very same subject he will be.
Speaker 1: Doing at that point. Suzanne Grooms, the Democratic staffer you
Speaker 1: heard from earlier, transitioned along with her team from the
Speaker 1: Oversight Committee to the new Select Committee. Here's Grooms again.
Speaker 17: We saw our.
Speaker 8: Role as to fact check and ensure that the most
Speaker 8: accurate information about what happened in the Benghazi attacks was
Speaker 8: going to be made public, and that any conspiracy theories
Speaker 8: be done away with.
Speaker 1: To that end, the first thing Grooms and her team
Speaker 1: did was make a website, a.
Speaker 29: Website intended to preemptively push back on the expected avalanche
Speaker 29: of Republican rumors and conspiracy mongering joining me.
Speaker 1: He was titled Benghazi on the Record, Asked and Answered,
Speaker 1: and its purpose was to address more than a dozen
Speaker 1: frequently asked questions about Benghazi, including why was security in
Speaker 1: Benghazi inadequate despite repeated requests? And did Secretary of State
Speaker 1: Quinton order the military to stand down? The website was
Speaker 1: based on a very earnest premise that if the Democrats
Speaker 1: could just get all the relevant information in one place,
Speaker 1: anyone who was intrigued by the conspiracy theories they were
Speaker 1: hearing about on Fox News could just consult the record
Speaker 1: and set themselves straight. According to Suzanne Grooms, the Democrats
Speaker 1: even thought there was a chance that, upon seeing the website,
Speaker 1: Trey Goudi himself would be compelled to narrow the scope
Speaker 1: of the committee's investigation.
Speaker 8: Our hope was at the beginning that if there was
Speaker 8: some chance for bipartisanship, Trey Goudi would sort of look
Speaker 8: at some of these conspiracy theories that had been debunked
Speaker 8: already and make a powerful statement pointing to these factual
Speaker 8: pieces of evidence that were already in existence, and we
Speaker 8: could take those off the table, and maybe we could
Speaker 8: stop the right wing media from kind of constantly repeating
Speaker 8: them by having an authoritative source say that they were
Speaker 8: not true. Maybe that was overly hopeful.
Speaker 1: Now, normally, this is where I'd tell you that the
Speaker 1: Republicans were taking a much more relentless tack than the Democrats,
Speaker 1: that they were focusing less on humbly educating the public
Speaker 1: and more unscoring direct hits against their opponents. But that's
Speaker 1: not really what happened after the Select Committee was formed. Instead,
Speaker 1: Trey Goudi's investigation got off to a conspicuously slow start.
Speaker 30: Democrats explicitly said that they didn't know where this committee
Speaker 30: was going.
Speaker 6: They said that it was rudderless. Essentially, they had.
Speaker 31: No organizational meetings, that they had no long term timeline.
Speaker 6: They did not know.
Speaker 1: During the first year of the committee's existence, Goudy presided
Speaker 1: over just three days of public hearings, and none of
Speaker 1: them offered much in the way of fireworks.
Speaker 5: Where is the outrage from Republicans.
Speaker 11: I heard Brettber's reporting today earlier.
Speaker 22: And he was laying it out, It's going to be
Speaker 22: kind of like a slow role.
Speaker 5: When is the role part of the slow coming.
Speaker 1: To Brad Pudliska, who joined the Republican staff of the
Speaker 1: SECT Committee as an investigator in September of twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: it looked like his new colleagues weren't doing much of
Speaker 1: anything at all.
Speaker 3: It was well known that staffers were surfing the web,
Speaker 3: staffers were drinking in the office. It was just very,
Speaker 3: very slow.
Speaker 1: Pudliska says he was disappointed. He was a military intelligence analyst,
Speaker 1: and he says he really wanted to conduct a meaningful investigation,
Speaker 1: and so he buried his nose and State depart documents,
Speaker 1: including a bunch of Hillary Quinton's emails that had previously
Speaker 1: been obtained by the oversight committee.
Speaker 3: Basically, there was like no day to day oversight. He
Speaker 3: would show up at nine o'clock in the morning, go
Speaker 3: down to the document room and look through documents, although
Speaker 3: he long with no director from above, nothing to look
Speaker 3: for in particular. It was just start to look through
Speaker 3: the documents to see if you find anything interesting, and
Speaker 3: then at the end of the day you would simply
Speaker 3: clock out and go home.
Speaker 6: You just pull out a random one from a boxer.
Speaker 3: Like basically, and it was just start shuffling through documents.
Speaker 3: If you found anything good, you would simply highlight it,
Speaker 3: set it aside with marking, and then move on to
Speaker 3: the next one.
Speaker 1: I should mention here that Brad Pugliska went on to
Speaker 1: sue Trey Goudi and the Select Committee for wrongful termination,
Speaker 1: so he's not exactly an unbiased source, but he says
Speaker 1: the lack of urgency around the investigation was an open
Speaker 1: joke at the office, especially after Elijah Cummings, the lead
Speaker 1: Democrat on the committee, criticized Goudy for the glacial pace
Speaker 1: of the committe.
Speaker 30: He says quoted every turn, the Select Committee comes up
Speaker 30: with new excuses to further delay its work and then
Speaker 30: blames the glacial pace on someone else.
Speaker 1: Cummings was suggesting that the Republicans were slow walking the
Speaker 1: investigation on purpose so that they could extend it further
Speaker 1: into the twenty sixteen race, when each little morsel of
Speaker 1: information could do more damage to Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 3: He suspected that we were trying to draw this investigation
Speaker 3: into the election year, and you know, we took that
Speaker 3: in jest. Soon a staff member had designed and produced
Speaker 3: a lapel pen that said glacial pace on it. Another
Speaker 3: staff member designed and produced wineglasses that said glacial pace
Speaker 3: on it, and this became a running joke within the office.
Speaker 1: Trey Goudi said, the problem was that the Obama administration
Speaker 1: wasn't responding quickly enough to document requests and subpoenas.
Speaker 2: It would be shame on us if we intentionally drag
Speaker 2: this out for political expediency. On the other hand, if
Speaker 2: an administration is slow walking document production, I can't end
Speaker 2: a trial because the defense won't cooperate.
Speaker 1: Regardless, not much was happening, and that was the state
Speaker 1: of play on the committee until early twenty fifteen. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: over at the Department of Justice, Prosecutor Juliannehimmelstein and FBI
Speaker 1: agent Mike Clark were making progress.
Speaker 19: Sunday night, on.
Speaker 32: Orders from the Commander in Chief, the United States Military
Speaker 32: conducted in Operation to Capture Ahmed Abu.
Speaker 1: Kaitala on June fifteenth, twenty fourteen, almost two years after
Speaker 1: the attack, the FBI in a team of special forces
Speaker 1: arrested Ahmed Abu Katala in Benghazi. They then transported him
Speaker 1: by ship to the US to stand trial.
Speaker 32: Katala has been charged for his role in the attacks
Speaker 32: on US facilities in Benghazi, Libya, on September eleventh, twenty twelve.
Speaker 1: It was the climax of a process that, unlike the
Speaker 1: political drama on Capitol Hill, had unfolded almost entirely out
Speaker 1: of sight, with FBI eight working with confidential informants in
Speaker 1: Libya to build the case against Abu Katala before taking
Speaker 1: him into custody.
Speaker 25: Katala was lured to a location south of Benghazi.
Speaker 21: Intelligence gleaned from local Libyans helped draw Katala to the location.
Speaker 1: Among the informants was a man whom the FBI paid
Speaker 1: seven million dollars as a reward for infiltrating Abu Katawa's
Speaker 1: inner circle, once again, Mike Clark.
Speaker 17: He basically went in and befriended Abu Katala and developed
Speaker 17: enough information to allow us to develop a pattern of
Speaker 17: life and then get him legally captured and then transported
Speaker 17: back to the United States, fore he faced justice in Washington,
Speaker 17: d C.
Speaker 11: There's also the question of how they plan to prosecute him.
Speaker 5: The Obama administration says Abu Katala will be tried in
Speaker 5: civilian court.
Speaker 1: The fact that the Obama administration wanted Abu Katala to
Speaker 1: stand trial as a civilian rather than sending him to
Speaker 1: Guantanamo Bay and prosecuting him as an enemy combatant was
Speaker 1: instantly controversial among conservatives.
Speaker 29: Send him to GITMA. That is the course of action
Speaker 29: recommended by one Republican senator after another, Rubio Cruz.
Speaker 1: Even John McCain on Fox News. The administration also took
Speaker 1: criticism for not capturing Abu Katala sooner.
Speaker 12: It certainly doesn't look like it was a top priority.
Speaker 12: Let's face it, six hundred and forty two days. It
Speaker 12: took us that long. But again, I don't know the details.
Speaker 12: I can't make that accusation. What I can tell you
Speaker 12: what is not a priority. This administration is holding members
Speaker 12: of his administration accountable for.
Speaker 1: Their day election to do both. Himmelstein and Clark told
Speaker 1: me they were able to mostly tune this stuff out
Speaker 1: along with the rest of the public dialogue around Benghazi.
Speaker 4: We were protected, the investigation team was protected from so
Speaker 4: much of the noise that was happening all around us,
Speaker 4: and we never thought about any of the silliness. I
Speaker 4: don't know if I should use that word, but it's
Speaker 4: the only word that came to mind.
Speaker 6: People have used ruder words NaNs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll be right back. Despite the capture of Abu Katala,
Speaker 1: it's fair to say that the Benghazi story was stuck
Speaker 1: in neutral. Then, on March second, twenty fifteen, The New
Speaker 1: York Times published an article about Hillary Clinton's personal email account.
Speaker 1: According to the article, the account had come to light
Speaker 1: after the Select Committee on Benghazi sought correspondence between Missus
Speaker 1: Clinton and her aides about the attack.
Speaker 6: Hillary Clinton has some explaining to do.
Speaker 5: A New York Times story this morning about when she
Speaker 5: was Secretary of State, she never had a government account,
Speaker 5: she exclusively communicated using a personal email account.
Speaker 1: And the story, written by reporter Michael Schmidt, said that
Speaker 1: while serving as Secretary of State, Clinton had declined to
Speaker 1: use a government email address and instead had relied exclusively
Speaker 1: on a personal one HDR twenty two at clinton email
Speaker 1: dot com. Schmidt noted that federal law required government officials
Speaker 1: to preserve all their correspondents on government servers, and that
Speaker 1: Clinton's staff had handpicked which emails to hand over to
Speaker 1: the State Department. Schmid's reporting was immediately picked up by
Speaker 1: the news networks and amplified far and wide.
Speaker 23: Our lead story, email.
Speaker 17: Gate, Hillary Clinton email mess This story is something for everyone.
Speaker 7: How Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email address while
Speaker 7: Secretary of State shielded her and the department from a
Speaker 7: probe of her public records.
Speaker 1: Brad Pudliska told me he was caught off guard when
Speaker 1: the Time story broke. As an investigator on the Republican
Speaker 1: staff of the SEUECT Committee, he had seen some of
Speaker 1: Clinton's emails, and it hadn't even occurred to him that
Speaker 1: her use of a personal account might be seen as problematic.
Speaker 3: We always knew that Secretary Clinton used private emails in
Speaker 3: her capacity a Secretary of State, and it was just like, okay, well,
Speaker 3: everybody to use this private email if necessary, not a
Speaker 3: big deal. We simply want access to those to those emails.
Speaker 1: You had come across emails from her that had the
Speaker 1: email address.
Speaker 3: Yeah, certainly we knew her private email address, and like
Speaker 3: I said, we didn't think anything of it.
Speaker 1: Pudliska was perplexed. Not only was everyone suddenly talking about
Speaker 1: Clinton's private email server as if it were a huge deal,
Speaker 1: but the original Time story by Michael Schmidt credited the
Speaker 1: Select Committee with discovering it. It was hard to tell
Speaker 1: from the story how Schmidt was defining discovered, because it's
Speaker 1: not like the committee had officially made an issue out
Speaker 1: of Clinton's email use. The Times did that after an
Speaker 1: anonymous source told Michael Schmidt about it. Much like Podliska,
Speaker 1: Schmidt didn't think much of it at first, figuring Clinton
Speaker 1: probably used her official address for some things but not others.
Speaker 1: It was only months later, when he asked some other
Speaker 1: sources about it, that Schmidt realized he had stumbled onto
Speaker 1: a major story. Here, Schmidt an interview on Fresh Air.
Speaker 30: I knew that the committee had these personal email messages,
Speaker 30: but it wasn't until the end of the reporting, right
Speaker 30: before I was about to publish that I learned that
Speaker 30: she did not have a State Department email account, and
Speaker 30: she was using this personal account to do government work.
Speaker 30: So that was a pretty significant fact because it showed
Speaker 30: that her email system had operated very differently than any
Speaker 30: other government official.
Speaker 1: Practically, overnight, the Clinton email story injected new vigor into
Speaker 1: John Bayner and Trey Goudi's Select Committee on Benghazi.
Speaker 30: I thought that maybe the story had a month long
Speaker 30: shelf life at the time, meaning that it would have
Speaker 30: been over by April of twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: From that point forward, Clinton's use of the private email
Speaker 1: server became the focus of the investigation, while the events
Speaker 1: surrounding the Benghazi attack took an unmistakable backseat. Spugliska put
Speaker 1: it to me, the Republicans on the committee could smell
Speaker 1: blood in the water.
Speaker 3: It was no longer a sleepy investigation. This was now
Speaker 3: front and center in terms of the political world. And
Speaker 3: this became, you know, very much hyper focused on Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 6: Why why do you think the email story took off?
Speaker 3: Oh, it feeds into that Clinton narrative of their their
Speaker 3: hiding things. So you know, going back to Bill Clinton
Speaker 3: with the Lewinsky scandal and Whitewater and all that, it's
Speaker 3: the Clintons are hiding things. And so this becomes a
Speaker 3: self looking ice cream cone. If you're the Clintons and
Speaker 3: you you know, no matter what you say or do you,
Speaker 3: someone you know sees that the wrong way. And you're
Speaker 3: an investigation, So what do you do? Okay, you isolate
Speaker 3: yourself more and you make really really dumb decisions that
Speaker 3: as setting up a email server in your basement of
Speaker 3: your house, and then this is discovered. Okay, now this
Speaker 3: is you know, leading to more investigations, and so you know,
Speaker 3: it became a self looking ice cream cone. In terms
Speaker 3: of political scandals.
Speaker 1: The self liaking ice cream cone is a great image,
Speaker 1: but as a metaphor, it kind of falls apart when
Speaker 1: you imagine the ice cream gradually melting away or being eaten.
Speaker 1: Because the Clinton email scandal, like Benghazi before, it never
Speaker 1: did melt away. It just got bigger, especially after Hillary
Speaker 1: Clinton formally declared that she was going to be running
Speaker 1: for president.
Speaker 11: Hillary Clinton making it official with a two minute, nineteen
Speaker 11: second video launching her second White House campaign.
Speaker 21: Everyday Americans need a champion, and I want to be
Speaker 21: that champion.
Speaker 1: So you can do more than just get by.
Speaker 21: You can get ahead and stay ahead.
Speaker 1: For the next six months, John Bayner and Trey Goudi
Speaker 1: made the most of the new Clinton scandal that had
Speaker 1: fallen into their laps. The subpoenas and the press releases flew.
Speaker 5: Hillary Clinton using not only private email, but her own
Speaker 5: private server, and that's causing all kinds of questions and
Speaker 5: new actions.
Speaker 28: Today, a House committee investigating the Bengazi terror attack subpoenaed
Speaker 28: private emails from Clinton's time as Secretary of State.
Speaker 1: The committee sat down with witnesses, including Clinton's longtime confidant
Speaker 1: and email correspondent, Sydney Blumenthal.
Speaker 10: He is a close friend to Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 10: Apparently mister Bloomenthal had private business interests in Libya at
Speaker 10: the same time he was emailing missus Clinton about policy there.
Speaker 33: We want to talk to all the folks who were
Speaker 33: providing information to decision makers, and mister Bloomenthal's part of that.
Speaker 1: Every little push and pull between the Select Committee and
Speaker 1: its target became news, and the decisions Hillary Clinton and
Speaker 1: her staff had made about her emails started to look
Speaker 1: more and more suspicious.
Speaker 15: Will this not be a psychic overhang for her? That
Speaker 15: people were reminded of? Man, all of that stuff from
Speaker 15: the nineteen nineties, all the Clinton wars, right that was
Speaker 15: just that was a There was impeachment and all of that.
Speaker 15: If this stretches out in Republicans with Benghazi and there's
Speaker 15: more subpoenas and there's more of this, and there's more
Speaker 15: of that, what is the psychic toll? That that takes
Speaker 15: on the electorate in terms of her prospects. I can't
Speaker 15: tell you, but it's not good if.
Speaker 1: The Select Committee was on some level a pr battle
Speaker 1: the Republicans were now winning. In September of twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: a Gallup poll found that Clinton's favorability ratings were just
Speaker 1: forty one percent, the lowest they'd been in more than
Speaker 1: twenty years. Later that month, one elected official went on
Speaker 1: television and couldn't stop himself from gloating about it.
Speaker 14: Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right, but we put
Speaker 14: together a Benghazi Special Committee. What are her numbers today?
Speaker 14: Her numbers are dropping?
Speaker 23: Why?
Speaker 14: Because she's untrustable.
Speaker 1: Congressman Kevin McCarthy's comments were a perfect example of what
Speaker 1: people in Washington like to call a Kinsley gaff, when
Speaker 1: a politician tells the truth by accident. McCarthy had essentially
Speaker 1: admitted that the point of the Select Committee had been
Speaker 1: to hurt Hillary Clinton in the polls. Many of McCarthy's
Speaker 1: fellow Republicans were enraged.
Speaker 12: As you see all the hammering he's getting today for
Speaker 12: that statement he made on Fox last night.
Speaker 22: Well, I think rightfully, so that's an absolutely inappropriate statement,
Speaker 22: it is not how this started. We wanted to get
Speaker 22: to the truth of it.
Speaker 1: For months, Kevin McCarthy had been considered a likely replacement
Speaker 1: for John Bayner as House Speaker. After his comment, his
Speaker 1: chances were completely shot. It appeared that at least some
Speaker 1: Republicans still shared Bayner's allergy to appearing shameless.
Speaker 6: I think I shocked some you.
Speaker 23: Huff Sligiam mccartman.
Speaker 12: How much did your comments about Bank Dazzi last week's
Speaker 12: we playing into decision.
Speaker 14: A step aside to day, Well, that wasn't helpful.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1: Brad Pudliska by this point was no longer on the
Speaker 1: Select Committee staff. He had been fired back in June
Speaker 1: for reasons he thought were related to his lack of
Speaker 1: enthusiasm for going after Clinton over her emails. Now Pudliska
Speaker 1: was going public with his long simmering discontent about how
Speaker 1: the Select Committee was being run.
Speaker 31: But Liska says in March the investigation took a turn
Speaker 31: after The New York Times broke the story of Hillary
Speaker 31: Clinton using a personal email server for State Department business.
Speaker 31: After that happened, the investigation's broader focus narrow, he says.
Speaker 3: And I was told that things were now changed. There
Speaker 3: was this great hubris with the committee after that March
Speaker 3: second New York Times article of we're kind of on
Speaker 3: the side of good to go after Clinton because of
Speaker 3: this email server. And honestly, like to me, you know,
Speaker 3: congressional investigations are partisan in nature. Their sole purpose, arguably
Speaker 3: is to damage your opponent, and so I didn't see
Speaker 3: McCarthy's comment as controversial as it turned out to be,
Speaker 3: but it certainly was damaging to the committee.
Speaker 1: The timing for the Republicans couldn't have been worse. On
Speaker 1: the heels of the Kevin McCarthy incident and Pudliska's emergence
Speaker 1: as a quasi whistleblower, the country's attention was about to
Speaker 1: turn to Hillary Clinton, who, finally, after more than a year,
Speaker 1: would be sitting down before the Select Committee for questioning.
Speaker 1: It would be her second time appearing before Congress and
Speaker 1: addressing Benghazi, but it would be her first as a
Speaker 1: presidential candidate.
Speaker 6: Well.
Speaker 28: This morning, Hillary Clinton testifies before the House Committee investigating
Speaker 28: the attacks on the US diplomatic mission in Bengazi, Libya.
Speaker 1: The plan was for each member of the committee to
Speaker 1: ask questions for ten minutes before handing it off to
Speaker 1: the next person in line. After all twelve members got
Speaker 1: a chance to ask their questions, they would then go
Speaker 1: around again for a second time, and then again for
Speaker 1: a third Democratic staffer Suzanne Grooms again.
Speaker 8: Chairman Goudi had told us that he was going to
Speaker 8: have three rounds, and three rounds in a Congressional hearing
Speaker 8: is not ever done because it takes forever.
Speaker 1: The Democrats suspected that taking forever was exactly the.
Speaker 8: Point, because we knew that it was going to be
Speaker 8: such an incredibly long day. One of the larger sort
Speaker 8: of thought processes around the hearing was whether Clinton would
Speaker 8: just have the stamina to get through it.
Speaker 1: Everyone remembered that last time Clinton appeared before Congress as
Speaker 1: part of a Bengazi investigation, she had lost her cool
Speaker 1: and uttered a SoundBite that had been used against her
Speaker 1: ever since.
Speaker 7: The former Secretary of State will try to avoid an
Speaker 7: outverst like this one before a Senate panel in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 21: What difference at this point does it make?
Speaker 8: Certainly, the concern was that if the goal was just
Speaker 8: make it last all day long and see if she
Speaker 8: has a bad moment in that time period, there wasn't
Speaker 8: really anything in that space that the Democrats could do
Speaker 8: about that other than spend some of our time kind
Speaker 8: of calling out Republicans on their abuses, and so we
Speaker 8: obviously did that.
Speaker 1: It felt like the whole Benghazi scandal had been leading
Speaker 1: up to this final high stakes confrontation between the former
Speaker 1: Secretary of State and the Republicans who had been pressing
Speaker 1: the case against her for more than two years.
Speaker 2: Morning, Committee will come to order the share notes the
Speaker 2: presidence of a quorum. Good morning, Welcome, Madam Secretary. Welcome
Speaker 2: to each of you. This is a public hearing of
Speaker 2: the Bengazi Select Committee.
Speaker 8: It was crowded. There were a lot of members who
Speaker 8: came to sit behind Clinton. They actually printed out tickets
Speaker 8: to the hearing, little paper tickets, which I thought looked
Speaker 8: just like a terrible thing. It was like tickets to
Speaker 8: the circus. Everybody was there who could get a ticket
Speaker 8: to get in.
Speaker 1: Clinton answered questions for a total of eleven hours, with
Speaker 1: both Democratic and Republican members trying to create big, memorable
Speaker 1: moments for the next day's news cycle. For Democrats, the
Speaker 1: goal was to show just how thoroughly the Bengazi attack
Speaker 1: had already been litigated, and how little evidence there was
Speaker 1: that Clinton had done anything wrong, either in the run
Speaker 1: up or the aftermath.
Speaker 34: I know the ambassador was a friend of yours, and
Speaker 34: I wonder if you would like to comment on what
Speaker 34: it's like to be the subject of conallegation that you deliver
Speaker 34: interfered with security that cost.
Speaker 17: The life of a friend.
Speaker 21: Well, Congressman, it's a very personally painful accusation.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 21: I've would imagine I've thought more about what happened than
Speaker 21: all of you put together. I've lost more sleep than
Speaker 21: all of you put together. I have been racking my
Speaker 21: brain about what more could have been done or should
Speaker 21: have been done, And.
Speaker 1: So Republicans used their time to cast Clinton as an
Speaker 1: absentee leader at best and a liar at worst. At
Speaker 1: one point, she was asked to recount in detail what
Speaker 1: she was doing on the night of the attack.
Speaker 8: Okay, and who else was at your home?
Speaker 24: Were you alone?
Speaker 21: I was alone?
Speaker 4: Yes, the whole night.
Speaker 21: Well, yes, the whole night.
Speaker 23: Well. I don't know why that's funny.
Speaker 6: I mean, did you have any in person briefing? Since
Speaker 6: I don't find it funny at all.
Speaker 24: I'm sorry.
Speaker 21: A little note of levity at seven fifteen.
Speaker 9: Well, I mean the reason I say it's not funny
Speaker 9: is because through.
Speaker 1: It all, Clinton kept her cool, answering every question patiently,
Speaker 1: while also making it clear that she viewed at least
Speaker 1: some of the people attacking her as political opportunists. Why
Speaker 1: didn't you just speak plain to the American people?
Speaker 21: I did, and I said it again in more detail
Speaker 21: the next morning, as did the President. I'm sorry that
Speaker 21: it doesn't fit your narrative, Congressman, I can only tell
Speaker 21: you what the facts were, and the facts as the
Speaker 21: dem juz am grooms again, our goal was.
Speaker 8: To have the top takeaways be that there was essentially
Speaker 8: nothing new found out about Clinton's role in the Bengazi attacks,
Speaker 8: and that there were Republican abuses in the Select Committee,
Speaker 8: and that the committee was not legitimate. And I think
Speaker 8: if you look back at the press from that day,
Speaker 8: I think those were the takeaways.
Speaker 3: There was nothing big, There was no major bombshell, and
Speaker 3: for Hillary Clinton, that's a great thing.
Speaker 1: Clinton did receive very positive reviews for her performance from
Speaker 1: some conservatives, who felt the Republicans had blown an opportunity
Speaker 1: to take Clinton down.
Speaker 33: I just got up the phone a few moments ago
Speaker 33: with the Republican operative, and this person said there was
Speaker 33: a total wipeout for the Republicans on the committee. Now,
Speaker 33: maybe he's exaggerating, but she did look presidential. She did
Speaker 33: look in command today.
Speaker 1: Just like she did it in the weeks that followed.
Speaker 1: Clinton's poll numbers in the Democratic primary started going up,
Speaker 1: and even as Republicans continued beating the Benghazi drum as
Speaker 1: much as they could, the narrative around her testimony was
Speaker 1: that she had defeated the final boss. Eight months later,
Speaker 1: when the Republicans on the Select Committee published their majority report,
Speaker 1: what stood out was how stale most of it felt,
Speaker 1: and how little there was to personally tie Clinton to
Speaker 1: any of the decisions that made the Bengazi attack so deadly.
Speaker 26: Along with waited House Republican report on ben Ghazi found
Speaker 26: no new evidence of wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton or anyone else,
Speaker 26: but the report blasted the Obama administration for failures and
Speaker 26: intelligence coordination and security.
Speaker 9: And with the report paints is a narrative of the
Speaker 9: Bengazi outpost as a bureaucratic and diplomatic no man's land,
Speaker 9: which made it unnecessarily hard to get funding and security.
Speaker 4: I don't see evidence of anything further than what we
Speaker 4: already knew, and so there's no smoking gun at all
Speaker 4: about Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 6: And in fact, what we knew.
Speaker 8: It was clear that the report just did not have
Speaker 8: the kind of smoking gun evidence that Hillary Clinton had
Speaker 8: blood on her hands that a number of Republican folks
Speaker 8: had wanted. That's just simply because those facts didn't exist,
Speaker 8: and Trey Goudy couldn't come up with them because they
Speaker 8: weren't there.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, Trey Goudy was coming in for
Speaker 1: criticism from his party's most conservative members, the same ones
Speaker 1: who had push John Bayner to launch the new investigation
Speaker 1: back in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 16: Trey Goudi should be impeached for wasting my time.
Speaker 23: He promised us a lot.
Speaker 30: Remember Trey Goudi, Trey Goudi, the Great Tea Party, Trey Goudy,
Speaker 30: Everyone loved him.
Speaker 1: At an event at the National Press Club, a member
Speaker 1: of the far right Citizens Commission on Benghazi asked if
Speaker 1: maybe the GOP leadership had tampered with the evidence in
Speaker 1: order to benefit Clinton.
Speaker 4: Has someone in the GOP leadership gotten their fingers involved
Speaker 4: in watering down some of this against Secretary.
Speaker 1: Clinton and Republican voters around the country had wanted Goudy
Speaker 1: to produce new evidence of Clinton's wrongdoing, something anything about
Speaker 1: her giving a stand down order or leaving Chris Stevens
Speaker 1: for dead out of political expediency. Among the disappointed was
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, who by this point was well on his
Speaker 1: way to securing the Republican nomination, and who had referred
Speaker 1: to Trey Goudy on Twitter as a Bengazi loser.
Speaker 33: So Trump now says Goudy is a loser for failing
Speaker 33: to nail Hillary Clinton on Ben Gazzi.
Speaker 1: The following month, at the Republican National Convention, the Trump
Speaker 1: campaign invited the mother of Sean Smith to deliver a
Speaker 1: primetime speech for.
Speaker 19: All of this loss, for all of this grief the
Speaker 19: tragedy in vain Ghazi has brought upon America. I blame
Speaker 19: Hillary Clinton personally for the death of my son personally.
Speaker 1: By then, the issue of Clinton's email server had become
Speaker 1: a reliable set piece at Trump's campaign rallies. Exhibit a
Speaker 1: of Quinton's corrupt and untrustworthy nature.
Speaker 16: In other words, Hillary's secret email server existed for the
Speaker 16: reason we all know, to keep her emails from ever
Speaker 16: being read by the public rigged system, folks, remember I
Speaker 16: used to saying I'm the one that brought.
Speaker 23: That word up.
Speaker 1: In November of twenty seventeen, five years after the attack
Speaker 1: in Benghazi, Ahmed Abu Katala was found guilty on terrorism charges.
Speaker 1: He was eventually sentenced twenty two years in prison by
Speaker 1: a US District Court judge.
Speaker 3: The jury convicted him of material support for terrorism, conspiracy,
Speaker 3: malicious destruction of property, and also got him on a
Speaker 3: weapons offense.
Speaker 1: According to prosecutor Julianne Himmelstein, only one of the Republican
Speaker 1: Congressmen from the Select Committee made a point of attending
Speaker 1: Abu Katala's trial.
Speaker 6: What did it tell you that everybody else didn't show up.
Speaker 4: I really can't say why they didn't. You know, we
Speaker 4: just cared so much about the case. You know, we've
Speaker 4: spent six years traveling all over the world trying to
Speaker 4: find out desperately who did this, Who attacked our facilities,
Speaker 4: who attacked our mission. That's all we thought about. Really,
Speaker 4: I'm not making a judgment. I'm just saying that they
Speaker 4: didn't show up.
Speaker 1: When I first started learning about Ambassador Chris Stevens and
Speaker 1: what he represented in the world of American foreign policy.
Speaker 1: What really stopped me cold was how unlikely a martyr
Speaker 1: he was for the conservative movement. Throughout his career, Stevens
Speaker 1: had revealed himself to be distinctly unconservative in terms of
Speaker 1: how he thought about the Arab world, how he conceived
Speaker 1: of his role as a diplomat, and what he believed
Speaker 1: America's posture should be towards political Islam. This was a
Speaker 1: guy who once expressed hope that the US government would
Speaker 1: give Hamas a chance. He also opposed the Iraq War
Speaker 1: so strenuously that he refused to be posted there afterwards
Speaker 1: out of principle, even though at the time it was
Speaker 1: widely seen as the best way to advance your career
Speaker 1: in the State department. Stephens was also a risk taker.
Speaker 1: Starting in the nineteen eighties, a string of deadly terrorist
Speaker 1: attacks in Lebanon had caused American embassies all over the
Speaker 1: world to become more like militarized fortresses, where diplomats were
Speaker 1: expected to hole up in safety instead of going out
Speaker 1: and really getting to know their host countries. Stevens didn't
Speaker 1: want to be that kind of diplomat, and when he
Speaker 1: was first posted in Benghazi during the Libyan revolution. He
Speaker 1: went out running every morning, stopped to talk to people
Speaker 1: in the street, and reveled in his freedom to meet
Speaker 1: with locals in their homes.
Speaker 20: What Chris felt about security was making friends increases security,
Speaker 20: and he wanted to be out there with the people
Speaker 20: and communicating and being on the ground.
Speaker 1: This is Ann Stevens, Chris's sister, speaking to a Washington
Speaker 1: Post reporter a few months after the attack.
Speaker 20: I think what really came out in his work is
Speaker 20: how inclusive he was. And you know, at a personal level,
Speaker 20: when we were deciding who to invite to your wedding,
Speaker 20: you invite everybody. When you go out into the world,
Speaker 20: who do you talk to? We talked to everybody. I
Speaker 20: think that's a wonderful.
Speaker 17: Way to live.
Speaker 1: After her brother's death, Ann Stevens emerged as a spokesperson
Speaker 1: for her family, and in a series of media appearances,
Speaker 1: she made it clear that they didn't blame the State
Speaker 1: Department or Hillary Clinton for what happened. He decided to
Speaker 1: take the risk to go there, Stevens told The New Yorker,
Speaker 1: it is not something they did to him. Pretty Much
Speaker 1: every State Department person I've talked to for this podcast
Speaker 1: told me Stevens knew that Benghazi was dangerous and decided
Speaker 1: to go anyway. In other words, he wasn't naive about
Speaker 1: the risks. From what I understand, he made the trip
Speaker 1: to Benghazi because he thought it was that important for
Speaker 1: the future of Libya that the United States have a
Speaker 1: strong diplomatic presence there. The Benghazi attack helped put an
Speaker 1: end to all of that. Afterwards, the internal divisions left
Speaker 1: over from Gaddafi's overthrow grew sharper and more violent. As
Speaker 1: one former diplomat told me in an email, despite all
Speaker 1: the US's imperfections, we can be a force for good
Speaker 1: and are often uniquely capable of preventing or ending conflict
Speaker 1: around the globe. When Chris Stevens died, this person said,
Speaker 1: we not only lost our ability to understand Benghazi and
Speaker 1: therefore Libya, but Libya lost its best advocate in the
Speaker 1: United States. The country became political kryptonite, so that no
Speaker 1: US politician could see the point in risking anything to
Speaker 1: help slow or stop its downward slide. In twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: the American mission, once led by Ambassador Stephens, was effectively
Speaker 1: suspended due to security concerns.
Speaker 28: The United States has closed and evacuated its embassy in
Speaker 28: Libya as the security situation deteriorates.
Speaker 1: In the capital of Tripoli, Benghazi became a war zone
Speaker 1: as local militias faced off against an army led by
Speaker 1: Khalifa Haftar, an ex member of the Gadathi regime who
Speaker 1: had defected to the US and returned to Libya after
Speaker 1: the revolution. Amid the fighting between Haftar and the militias,
Speaker 1: large parts of Benghazi were reduced to.
Speaker 21: R To this day, people are dying because they just
Speaker 21: want to.
Speaker 22: Return to their homes.
Speaker 1: For years now, the State Department has urged all Americans
Speaker 1: to stay out of Libya, while other foreign powers like Russia,
Speaker 1: the UAE, Turkey, and Egypt have flooded the country with
Speaker 1: mercenaries and weapons.
Speaker 28: Classes between rival militias are growing more fierce and violent.
Speaker 28: American travelers are also being advised to steer clear of Libya.
Speaker 1: It's always hard to definitively establish cause and effect, and
Speaker 1: it would be too simple to say that America's diplomatic
Speaker 1: withdrawal is the reason why Libya descended into a bloody
Speaker 1: civil war, but it is clear that the fallout from
Speaker 1: the Bengazi attack did not just transform American politics. It
Speaker 1: also transformed Libya.
Speaker 14: They call it the Second Libyan Civil War, as warlord
Speaker 14: Khalifa Haftar advances on the capital of Tripoli.
Speaker 1: Back in twenty twenty, when this season of Fiasco was
Speaker 1: first released, I said that the prospect of building a
Speaker 1: democracy in Libya was tenuous but real. At the time,
Speaker 1: the Biden administration was exploring the possibility of reopening the
Speaker 1: American embassy in Tripoli. A State Department spokesman was quoted
Speaker 1: as saying that the US's intent was to begin to
Speaker 1: resume operations in Libya as soon as the security situation permits.
Speaker 1: Five years later, the embassy in Tripoli remains closed, while
Speaker 1: in Washington, Benghazi remains a shorthand for scandal. The difference
Speaker 1: is that scandal no longer feels like a distraction from politics.
Speaker 1: It's now the raw material. That's it for this season
Speaker 1: of Fiasco. You can check out our other seasons on
Speaker 1: Bush v. Gore, the AIDS Epidemic, and Iran Contra. All
Speaker 1: in this feed for a list of books are articles
Speaker 1: and documentaries we used in our research. Follow the link
Speaker 1: in our show notes. Fiasco is a production of prolog
Speaker 1: projects and it's distributed by Pushkin Industries. The show is
Speaker 1: produced by Andrew Parsons, Ulla Kulpa, Sam Lee and me
Speaker 1: Leon Mayfock, with editorial support from Sam Graham Felsen and
Speaker 1: Madeline Kaplan. Our researcher was Frances Carr. Our score was
Speaker 1: composed by Dan English, Joe Valley and Noah Hecht. Additional
Speaker 1: music by Nick Sylvester, Joel Saint, Julian Billy Libby and
Speaker 1: Little Cheddar Studios. Our theme song is by Spatial Relations
Speaker 1: Audio mixed by Rob Buyers, Michael Raphael and Johnny Vince Evans.
Speaker 1: Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at Chips and Y
Speaker 1: Copyright Council. Provided by Peter Yassi at Yass Butler PLLC.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Archive dot Org, maraud Adrise, Nicole Hemmer, Ben Fishman,
Speaker 1: Ethan Chorn, Frederick Warehey, David Kirkpatrick, Hannah Groach, beegwi Aya Burwela,
Speaker 1: Stephen Fischer, Percia, Verlin, Ed Claris, Alexei Abadott, Matt Sachs,
Speaker 1: Jamie Lyons, Mark Silverstein, Kyle Ranson, Walsh Langston, Dillard, Evan Bell,
Speaker 1: Lisa de Leone and everyone at Luminary. I also want
Speaker 1: to thank Alexandra Garriton, Sarah Bruguer, and everyone at Pushkin
Speaker 1: who helped bring this season to life. Special Thanks to
Speaker 1: Carrie Baker and Alice Gregory, and thank you for listening.