The House Ways and Means Committee grilled Miller, who resigned on Wednesday, and Treasury Inspector General Russell George over revelations that the IRS singled out groups with conservative names and missions for additional scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status. The IRS maintains that lower-level employees at a Cincinnati, Ohio office were responsible.

“Do you believe it is illegal for employees of the IRS to create lists to target individual groups and citizens in this country?” asked Rep. Tom Price (R., Ga.).

“I don’t believe it is [illegal],” Miller said. “I don’t believe it should happen. Please don’t get me wrong, it should not happen.”

Miller said the IRS actions were an example of “horrible customer service” and called a list of criteria that employees used to identify conservative groups “obnoxious.”

While he acknowledged that the IRS actions were inappropriate, he objected to the characterization that conservative groups were “targeted.”

“When you talk about targeting, it’s a pejorative term,” Miller said. “What happened here was … that [an IRS employee] saw some Tea Party cases coming through, they were acknowledging that they were going to be engaged in politics … [and so IRS officials] in Cincinnati decided ‘let’s start grouping these cases.’”

“The way they centralized them [was] troubling. The concept of centralizing [was] not. We’re not targeting these people,” Miller added.

Lois Lerner, the director of the IRS Exempt Organization Division, first admitted the agency singled out conservative organizations during an American Bar Association meeting last Friday, after being asked a question by an audience member.

Miller said he and Lerner had planned the disclosure, planting an associate in the audience to ask the question.

“I did speak to Lois about the possibility that now that the [inspector general] report was finalized, now that we knew all the facts, now that we had responded in writing and everything was done, did it make sense for us to now start talking about this in public?” Miller said.

Rep. Peter Roskam (R., Ill.) called the pre-planned question a “scheme” and “a manipulation,” and asked why Miller did not disclose the news to the committee first.

Miller said the agency had called to try to get on the committee’s calendar.

“You called to try to get on the calendar? Is that all you got?” Roskam shot back.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) asked Miller why he had not informed the committee about this when he testified on the subject in April last year, since the acting commissioner said he had known about the targeting since March of 2012.

“You knew that the targeting was taking place. You knew the terms ‘Tea Party,’ ‘Patriots’ were being used,” Ryan said. “You acknowledge a minute ago that they were outrageous and then when you’re asked about this, that was the answer you gave us? How can we not conclude that you misled this committee?”

“I did not mislead the committee,” Miller said. “I stand by my answer then and I stand by them my answer now. Harassment applies to political motivation. There is a discussion going on and there is no political motivation.”

George, the inspector general, spoke to the committee about the findings of his report, which concluded the IRS used “inappropriate criteria to target … Tea Party and other organizations based on the name and policy positions.”

George told congress that groups were singled out if their names included words such as “Tea Party,” “patriot,” and if their issues included “government spending,” “government debt,” or “taxes.” Another listed criterion was “education of the public by advocacy or lobbing to ‘Make America a better place to live.’” Groups were also flagged if they had “any statements in the case of criticizing how the country is being run.”

George said additional investigations were currently underway by the inspector general office.

Sebelius personally called health industry executives asking them to contribute to nonprofits that are working to enroll uninsured Americans under President Barack Obama’s health care reform law, the Washington Post first reported last week.

HHS confirmed that administration officials had been involved in fundraising in a capacity despite initially denying the reports, according to the New York Times. The administration says it was done in a personal, not official, capacity.

Richard Painter, who served as Bush’s ethics counsel from 2005 to 2007, said this type of fundraising still appears to violate Office of Government Ethics rules, which prohibit federal officials from soliciting money from sources over which they have regulatory authority.

“To me it’s a clear violation of the rules if you’re asking insurance companies to put money in,” Painter said.

According to ethics rules, federal employees cannot solicit money from a source that “does business or seeks to do business with the employee’s agency,” “conducts activities regulated by the employee’s agency,” or “has interests that may be substantially affected by performance or nonperformance of the employee’s official duties.”

Painter called Sebelius’ health care fundraising “an end run around the Hatch Act,” the law prohibiting federal employees from engaging in political activity under their official capacity.

With violations of the Hatch Act, “the presumptive penalty is firing,” Painter said. “There could even be criminal charges. But with this, it’s really just you violated the ethics rule, and then the president gets to decide what to do.”

Because the Office of Government Ethics does not conduct investigations, any inquiries into Sebelius’ actions would likely be handled by the HHS inspector general’s office or a congressional oversight committee.

Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee, the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and the House Ways and Means Committee have written letters to Sebelius requesting more information and called on the Government Accountability Office to investigate.

It is not clear whether the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hold hearings into the matter. Chairman Darrell Issa’s  (R., Calif.) office did not respond to a request for comment. The committee is juggling several high-profile investigations at the moment, including inquiries into the IRS targeting conservative organizations and the events surrounding the Benghazi terrorist attack.

“It’s all a question about whether Congressman Issa’s team, whether they want to move [the Sebelius issue] to the front burner,” Painter said.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) defended Sebelius Thursday, saying “I don’t have any problem with her doing that.”

This is not the first time Sebelius has come under scrutiny for alleged ethics violations.

The Office of Special Counsel concluded in 2012 that Sebelius violated the Hatch Act, after she gave a speech supporting Obama’s reelection at an official event. Obama declined to take disciplinary action against her.

Painter said he does not recall any Bush administration officials engaging in similar fundraising during his time in the White House.

“[I told them] ‘Don’t even think of asking anybody for money until you’ve left the White House,’” Painter said. “I don’t remember anybody violating that. …The question was asked, yeah, but I don’t remember anybody doing it.”

“Team Cornyn softball team was scheduled to play the IRS team on Friday, ‘the Cheetahs,’” Cornyn wrote on his Facebook page. “Game has been cancelled by IRS, without rescheduling.”

A spokesperson for Cornyn confirmed the last-minute cancellation but was unsure of the reason.

“We contacted them to confirm our game which was scheduled for tomorrow night, and they said they needed to reschedule,” Drew Brandewie said. “Guess they needed an extension.”

Cornyn gave a fiery floor speech on Tuesday, blasting the IRS for targeting conservative nonprofits for heightened scrutiny and comparing its actions to those of “corrupt tin pot dictators.”

“When the IRS starts behaving like a rogue agent that considers itself above the law, we’ve entered truly dangerous territory,” said Cornyn.

He called for the acting IRS commissioner, Steve Miller, to step down. Miller resigned on Wednesday.

There was speculation on Twitter that the sudden IRS cancellation was related to the controversy.

The IRS did not respond to requests for comment.

Holder, who says he has recused himself from an intelligence leak probe in which the Department of Justice subpoenaed phone records from Associated Press reporters, repeatedly dodged questions about the growing scandal.

When asked whether the DOJ attempted to work with the AP before seizing the phone records, Holder said, “I don’t know what happened. I was recused from the case.”

He added that he was not sure when he recused himself from the leak investigation and did not know when the subpoena had been issued.

“I think [the recusal] was towards the beginning of the matter,” he said. “I don’t know when.”

The attorney general was also unaware whether his deputy was interviewed as part of the investigation.

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I assume he was but I don’t know,” he told the committee.

Holder announced a criminal investigation into the IRS targeting of conservative organizations this week but was unable to answer numerous inquiries from lawmakers.

When asked whether the IRS had targeted any liberal groups, Holder said, “We’re at the beginning of the investigation so I don’t know who—what groups—were targeted. All I know is what I’ve read about in the case.”

He said he was not sure whether rogue, low-level IRS employees were responsible for the targeting effort, as top agency officials have claimed or whether the orders came from a higher level.

“I simply don’t know at this stage,” he said.

Holder also did not know about the transfer of any detainees from Bagram Air Base for trial, whether the Justice Department has ever enforced the Born Alive Infant Protection Act under his tenure, or what questions the Boston bombing suspect was asked by federal law enforcement.

He said he did not know whether his interpretation of the anti-lobbying act applied to Health and Human Services grantees, who may have spent the money lobbying government officials.

“I think you might be referring to what I only read about in the newspapers involving what HHS is doing with implementation of the act. I don’t know whether or not—what funds are being used or whether that letter would apply to that effort,” said Holder. “I just don’t know.”

Holder told the committee that he was not sure at what point former CIA Director General David Petraeus or Director of National Intelligence James Clapper were informed about an FBI investigation into Petraeus’ extramarital affair that ultimately led to the CIA chief’s resignation.

“I don’t remember when that happened. I knew about it for a while before [Clapper] was notified, I don’t know exactly what the time frame was,” said Holder.

He added that he was “not sure” and did not remember whether there was any attempt by the DOJ to find out whether the IRS had leaked tax information about Mitt Romney during the 2012 election.

Holder had a tense exchange toward the end of the hearing with Rep. Louie Gohmert (R., Texas) over the FBI’s handling of the Boston bombing investigation after Gohmert suggested the FBI had not been thorough in its interrogation of one of the terror suspects.

“You have characterized the FBI as being not thorough or taken exception to my characterization of them as being thorough,” said Holder. “I know what the FBI did. You cannot know what I know. That’s all.”

Levin said he was concerned nonprofit organizations were abusing their tax-exempt status and engaging in partisan politics and requested information from the IRS on 12 organizations.

“Organizations are using Internal Revenue Code section 501(c)(4) to gain tax exempt status while engaging in partisan political campaigns,” wrote Levin in one letter on July 27, 2012. “Making the problem worse is that the IRS knows there is a problem because of the public nature of the activity but has failed to address it.”

He asked whether the 12 organizations “applied for [tax-exempt status]; and if so … received the described exemption for political activity from the IRS.”

Levin’s list contained nine conservative groups, including Club for Growth, Americans for Tax Reform, and Americans for Prosperity. It also included two liberal groups and one centrist group.

The IRS officials were reportedly already aware that the agency had been targeting conservative groups for special scrutiny during the time Levin was corresponding with Shulman and Lerner.

The IRS acknowledged on Friday that agency officials singled out conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.

Levin is a prominent supporter of the DISCLOSE Act, which would require the disclosure of corporate donors to tax-exempt organizations. He was an original cosponsor of the legislation.

He told New York Times columnist Joe Nocera he would take on groups he believed were abusing their tax-exempt status.

“Tax-exempt 501(c)(4)s are not supposed to be engaged in politics,” he said. “We’re going to go after them.”

Levin, who chairs the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said the subcommittee will be investigating the IRS targeting of conservative groups.

“After Friday’s announcement that the IRS, to the extent it has been enforcing the law, may have done so in ways that singled out some groups for special scrutiny, we have determined that the subcommittee should investigate that additional issue as well,” Levin and Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) said in a statement.

Levin’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Bradley Smith, chairman of the Center for Competitive Politics, said Levin should not be surprised that the IRS was caught targeting Tea Party groups when senators are sending these kinds of letters.

“And he wonders why the IRS gets caught using partisan criteria to investigate Americans,” said Smith.

Democratic Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), Tom Udall (N.M.), and Al Franken (Minn.) sent a similar letter to Shulman in February 2012, asking for the IRS to investigate tax-exempt groups they believed were engaged in political activities.

Similar letters were also sent to the IRS by Sen. Max Baucus (D., Mont.) in 2010 and House Democrats in 2012, the Atlantic reported on Monday.

David Keating, president of the Center for Competitive Politics, said requests from members of Congress for the IRS to single out specific groups for scrutiny were inappropriate.

“There seems to be a consensus that members of Congress should not pressure government officials to reward friends with contracts or special treatment,” said Keating. “Neither should they demand that government agencies punish political opponents.”

The director of the IRS Rulings and Agreements division, Holly Paz, said in June 2012 that the agency would make it a priority to investigate the tax-exempt status of political nonprofits, the Wall Street Journal reported at the time.

Paz said the IRS was developing a questionnaire to send to these organizations, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The rulings and agreements division was apparently aware that IRS officials were targeting groups with words like “tea party” in their names as early as June 2011, according to a timeline compiled by the IRS inspector general.

Paz, who is responsible for developing the IRS exempt organization division’s guidance and rulings, contributed $2,000 to President Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008.

“I think there’s a fundamental assumption this administration has made that the Middle East doesn’t matter,”said Vali Nasr during a panel discussion promoting his new book “The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat” at the Brookings Institution.

Nasr’s book draws on his experience working as a senior adviser for the late Richard Holbrooke.

The current dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Nasr said the administration has sought “to downgrade the Middle East as important to global politics and American foreign policy,” and has not used its full influence to support democracy movements during the Arab spring and to support the Syrian rebellion.

“This is couched in the pivot-to-Asia language, but it’s become the bedrock of our approach to the region,” he said.

While Nasr said he does not believe “that the Chinese are gunning to replace us” in the Middle East, he does see a “rising strategic concern [for China]” in the region.

“They need the energy,” he said. “The energy comes from central Asia, comes from the Persian Gulf.”

China has been making significant investments in building infrastructure, including pipelines and ports, aimed at bringing minerals and oil out of the Middle East, Nasr said.

Brookings senior fellow Robert Kagan, who has critiqued the idea of inevitable American decline, pushed back on parts of Nasr’s argument during the discussion.

“Far be it from me to defend the Obama administration,” said Kagan. “[But] the missing part of your story so far is, what is the situation that Obama inherited?”

Kagan said the economic crisis could have discouraged the Obama administration from making a larger investment in Arab spring democratization and added that there was “a real [domestic] unhappiness with the policies that had been conducted by the previous administration, rightly or wrongly, in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Nasr responded that the administration still has a responsibility to “push back against domestic sentiments.”

“You don’t have the luxury of saying you can hit a pause button on foreign policy because you have domestic issues or you have a fatigue,” he said.

Nasr also criticized the U.S. surge in Afghanistan, which he said was unsustainable and signaled to the Taliban that America did not have the stamina for a long-term fight.

“The way that we conducted this war essentially was that there is no victory and there is no political settlement,” he said.

While acknowledging the constraints the financial crisis placed on the administration, Nasr argued for a scaled-back approach to Afghanistan that he said would have been more sustainable.

“Three months, two months of the war in Afghanistan would have been transformative in Egypt,” he said.

Attorney Dan Backer, whose client TheTeaParty.net has been trying to obtain tax-exempt status since 2010, said an IRS analyst mentioned the alleged working group during a phone conversation about one of Backer’s other client organizations.

“More than a year ago, one of these guys, really a slip of the tongue, [said] ‘Yeah we have this new working group that’s really looking at all these conservative organizations,’” Backer said. “And that’s when we knew it was gonna be a problem.”

The IRS apologized for singling out organizations with conservative-sounding names and missions for scrutiny on Friday, days before the agency’s inspector general is expected to release the results of its investigation into the matter.

The IRS says low-level staffers in its Cincinnati, Ohio office, conducted the inappropriate targeting. However, Backer and other conservatives say they doubt this excuse and believe the targeting was approved higher up in the agency.

Backer said IRS staffers at the Cincinnati determinations unit were singling out conservatives because “that’s where they have this secret working group.”

He said these staffers were most likely following orders from above.

“Nobody wipes their own ass in the government without a lawyer clearing it,” Backer said. “The idea that this is not at least a few layers up is nonsense.”

Lois Lerner, the director of the IRS’s Exempt Organizations Division, said she first started looking into whether conservative groups were being unfairly singled out by the division last fall.

But a timeline from the inspector general indicated that Lerner and other high-level officials became aware of the matter as early as 2011.

TheTeaParty.net’s Scottie Nell Hughes said her group was asked to turn over an unreasonable amount of information to the IRS after it applied for tax-exempt status in 2010.

Once the group submitted the first round of documents to the IRS, “they came back and asked for all of our donors and their contact information, as well as a list of all of the previous events … and everything in the future we would do, including the details of who, what, when, where, and how; who was gonna be on the guest list, what interactions we had with congressmen, senators, elected people,” Hughes said.

“We still turned in all the paperwork and thought maybe that was gonna be it. Then round three happened, which was about six months ago,” Hughes added. “They wanted a list of every single email, every single fundraising and marketing email, as well as ever social media post that we’d ever done from the very beginning, which is basically three-and-a-half-to-four years work, which is ludicrous.”

Hughes said TheTeaParty.net was fortunate to have a strong legal team, including Backer, who objected to the unusual requests. But she said she was concerned that smaller conservative organizations may have been intimidated into turning over information about their financial backers—information that Hughes believes could be used to target smaller conservative donors.

Hughes said she has already received complaints from conservative donors about suspicious audits.

“My inbox, my mailbox, and my messages on Facebook have been filled with people saying, ‘You know what’s funny? I’ve never been audited in my life, but two years ago, I actually got audited for no real reason. Nothing had changed on my taxes,’” she said. “Yes, random audits do happen. [But] I think it would be interesting to see how many of these groups actually turned in their donor lists and how many of those people actually got audited.”

The House Ways and Means Committee will hold a hearing on the IRS actions this Friday.

The U.N.’s annual Conference on Disarmament, which Iran is slated to lead from May 27 to June 23, is the organization’s primary multilateral forum for negotiating arms control agreements.

The forum has given way to major international treaties on nuclear non-proliferation, prohibitions on chemical weapons, and bans on nuclear tests.

UN Watch, a Geneva-based watchdog group, blasted the decision to allow Iran to chair the conference.

“This is like putting Jack the Ripper in charge of a women’s shelter,” said UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer in a statement. “Iran is an international outlaw state that illegally supplies rockets to Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas, aiding and abetting mass murder and terrorism. To make this rogue regime head of world arms control is simply an outrage. Abusers of international norms should not be the public face of the U.N.”

The organization said it plans to hold protests with Iranian dissidents outside the U.N. hall.

Neuer called on U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and EU High Commissioner Catherine Ashton to “make clear that when the United Nations imposes four rounds of sanctions on Iran for illicit nuclear activities, condemns it for illegally arming the murderous Syrian regime, and denounces Tehran’s massive abuse of human rights, this kind of appointment just defies common sense and harms the U.N.’s credibility.”

U.N. officials say Iran is simply the next country in rotation for the conference chair slot, according to UN Watch.

The U.S. Mission to the United Nations said Ambassador Rice would not attend any meeting of the disarmament conference presided over by Iran in a statement Monday evening.

The U.S. mission also denounced Iran’s leadership role as “unfortunate and highly inappropriate.”

“While the presidency of the CD is largely ceremonial and involves no substantive responsibilities, allowing Iran—a country that is in flagrant violation of its obligations under multiple UN Security Council Resolutions and to the IAEA Board of Governors—to hold such a position runs counter to the goals and objectives of the Conference on Disarmament itself,” said the statement. “As a result, the United States will not be represented at the ambassadorial level during any meeting presided over by Iran.”

The U.N. Secretary-General’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Iran has not halted its nuclear weapons efforts despite international sanctions and condemnation. The country is a top benefactor of the Syrian regime, which is suspected of using chemical weapons against rebel forces. Iran also supplies rockets and other arms to its terrorist proxy, Hezbollah.

The United Nations has previously hosted the Holocaust-denying Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at its World Conference Against Racism, where he has equated Zionism with racism and claimed Israel exploits the Holocaust to persecute Palestinians.

Neuer said Iran’s record of human rights abuses and U.N. sanctions should make it ineligible for a leadership position.

“Any member state that is the subject of U.N. Security Council sanctions for proliferation—and found guilty of massive human rights violations—should be ineligible to hold a leadership position in a U.N. body,” Neuer said. “The U.S. and Canada have asserted this principle in the past, and should do so again.”

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R., Fla.), who authored the United Nations Transparency, Accountability, and Reform Act of 2011, said Iran chairing the UN Conference on Disarmament “is like allowing the inmates to run the prison.”

“When the absurd at the U.N. becomes the norm it should be a clear indication that the objectives of that body have run afoul of its original intent and founding mission,” said Ros-Lehtinen in a statement provided to the Washington Free Beacon. “Sadly, having Iran—an international pariah state that is under UN sanctions for its illicit nuclear activities—chair this year’s Conference on Disarmament nears the top of the list of absurdities to come out of the UN in recent years.”

Ros-Lehtinen added that the administration has failed to hold the United Nations accountable for its actions, which is why she will be reintroducing her U.N. reform bill from last Congress.

“To continue to send billions of hardworking American taxpayer money to the U.N. without calling for reforms is indefensible in our current economic situation; and even if we weren’t in tough economic times, continuing to accept the mediocrity of the U.N. is irresponsible,” she said.

The families of Aaron Vaughn, Michael Strange, and Patrick Hamburger claim they were misled during the investigation and believe that flawed U.S. military “rules of engagement” policy contributed to the downing of a Chinook helicopter by the Taliban in Wardak province. All 38 people on board the Chinook, which included 15 SEAL Team Six members and seven Afghan National Army commandos, were killed.

The families also alleged the U.S. military allowed an imam to pray their sons’ “souls into eternal fire” at a ceremony at Bagram Air Base.

Billy Vaughn, father of Aaron Vaughn, said he contacted numerous members of Congress to ask for help with his inquiries about the attack. He said he received no response from House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) or Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.).

“Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.), chairman of the [Armed Services Committee] in the Senate, I called him. I called him numerous times. Told him who I was, who my son was, what had happened. They told me to ‘stop harassing the senator,’” said Vaughn. “Thank you, Sen. Levin.”

Levin’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

The attack occurred three months after the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound. The families said Vice President Joe Biden’s public disclosure in May 2011 that SEAL Team Six carried out the raid put the entire elite unit at risk of retribution attacks.

“We’re very concerned that the administration disclosed that the Navy SEALs were involved,” said Patrick Hamburger’s father, Doug Hamburger.

Charles Strange, the father of Michael Strange, was infuriated by what he characterized as an unprecedented disclosure.

“This is our vice president?” said Strange. “Come on, man!”

Vaughn said his son called him after Biden’s comments and warned that there was chatter that the unit might be targeted.

Vaughn added he was dismayed that 15 members of SEAL Team Six were all placed on the same chopper, a Boeing CH-47 Chinook that was last refurbished in the 1980s, and sent on a route that was rife with enemy fire. He said the helicopter is primarily used to transport troops and is not ideal for an attack environment.

He also said the U.S. military’s “rules of engagement” prevented the men from firing back when they were attacked.

“If my son had gone in on an MH-47 that night with guns blazing and they’d been shot out of the sky, it’d by much easier to live with,” said Vaughn. “Why were they not riding on the right chopper? Why did they not [shoot back] when the RPGs were fired?”

Karen Vaughn, Aaron Vaughn’s mother, said that when she asked military officials why the group did not engage in pre-assault fire, she was told it would have damaged efforts to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people.

“In other words, the hearts and minds of our enemies are more valuable than my son’s blood,” she said.

The families also blasted the military for allowing an imam to pray at a ceremony for the fallen troops, which included the Afghan security forces killed in the attack, at Bagram Air Base.

According to a translation played at the press conference, the imam said, “The companions of the fire are not equal with the companions of heaven. The companions of heaven are the winners. Had we sent this Koran to a mountain, you would have seen the mountain prostrated in fear of Allah.”

Karen Vaughn said the imam had condemned her son to eternal fire.

“As if dying, due to, in no small part this nation’s submission to its enemy, was not enough, our sons’ bodies were then subjected to the final act of betrayal by our government, as military leaders stood by and not only allowed and imam to pray their souls into eternal fire, proclaiming the Muslims ‘the winners,’ but went on foolishly to praise the beautiful relationship between our two nations, fighting together as one,” she said.

Dina James, who represented the families at yesterday’s press conference, also criticized the ceremony.

“The fact that the imam prayed over these boys’ bodies and essentially desecrated them and cast them into hell, in my mind, is a big deal,” she said.

Others said the imam’s prayer may not have been intentionally inflammatory.

“We don’t know what he was thinking. He could have known [it was inflammatory] … and it was a dig to get in,” Stephen Coughlin, a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy who has briefed law enforcement officials on jihadist threats, told the Blaze. “But it’s also possible that he was going through the [typical] motions that an imam would go through at this point.”

The families also expressed concern that Afghan security forces, which have occasionally been infiltrated by Taliban sympathizers, were privy to the details of the mission, including flight times and routes.

Concerned Veterans for America’s Pete Hegseth, who was in Afghanistan during the August 2011 shoot down, told the Washington Free Beacon that infiltration of the Afghan security forces would be suspect in an ambush attack like this. He said he was concerned about the families’ claim that the military did not interview the Afghan security forces during its investigation.

“The first people you would have to suspect is anybody on the Afghan side that had access to the flight plan,” said Hegseth.

Hegseth also said the amount of infiltration has been exaggerated by the Taliban.

“I don’t think their infiltration is as wide or deep as they say it is, but it is clearly a psychological tactic to make us pull back,” he said.

Karen Vaughn said military officials withheld information about the imam’s prayer ceremony and lied to her repeatedly about the investigation. She also said Admiral William McRaven, commander at U.S. Special Operations Command, blew up at her when she questioned him about withholding information.

“[McRaven] made the statement to [my husband and I] … that the military will never withhold any truth from the parents of a fallen soldiers,” said Karen Vaughn. “And I quickly said, not meaning any disrespect, ‘What about [fallen soldier, Corporal] Pat Tillman?’ And he nearly came across the table at me, flashed with anger, vessels popped out of his neck, and he said ‘What about Pat Tillman? That was simply a case of friendly fire.’”

“We knew at that point, our discussion was over,” she added. “And it was embarrassing that this was one of the highest ranking admirals in our Navy.”

When contacted for comment, a spokesperson for U.S. Special Operations Command said it “extends its deepest sympathies to the Vaughn family and all of the families that lost loved ones in the Extortion 17 crash.”

The spokesperson added that the investigation was conducted by U.S. Central Command, could be viewed online, and that McRaven was not involved.

A spokesperson for the Pentagon did not comment directly on the allegations from the family members but defended its policies.

“We cannot provide details, but the operational planning and execution of this mission was consistent with previous missions, and the forces and capabilities were appropriate given the agility required to maintain pressure on insurgent networks. This was thoroughly investigated and the investigation results are publicly available,” said spokesperson James Gregory.

A U.S. counterterrorism official dismissed the concerns of the families as political posturing, arguing that SEALs would be targeted in war zones regardless of whether they were publicly linked to the bin Laden raid by Vice President Biden.

“If you follow this train of logic from these people then other SEALs would never, ever be targeted,” said the official. “Come on, please. It’s BS. It just doesn’t comport with reality.”

As for the SEALs having an inadequate chopper, the official said there were only minor differences between MH-47s and CH-47s and that the military is often limited by its resources.

“There are not enough night stalkers to fly Navy SEALS everywhere,” the official said.

Gregory Hicks, the deputy to slain Ambassador Christopher Stevens, told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that he was bullied by higher-ups when he expressed concerns about the department’s public response to the attack, was ordered not to discuss the attack with a congressional investigator, and was not able to obtain the requisite clearance to discuss the attack with his attorney.

Hicks said Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Beth Jones dressed him down shortly after he criticized U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice’s claim that the attack stemmed from a spontaneous demonstration.

“Jones counseled me on my management style, she said staff was upset,” Hicks said. “[She] delivered a very blistering critique of my management style and said ‘I don’t know why Larry Pope would want you back.’”

State Department attorneys also allegedly instructed Hicks not to discuss the attack with Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah) when he was in Libya as part of a congressional inquiry into the attack.

Hicks said he has effectively been demoted to a desk job below his capability since he began raising questions about the State Department’s response to the attack.

“Between my curtailment and the job I have now, I had no meaningful employment,” Hicks said. “I’ve been effectively demoted … to desk officer.”

Hicks also testified that his attorney was denied a security clearance and barred from attending classified meetings with him.

Hicks added that he spoke to Clinton the night of the attack, and there was no mention of a protest outside the mission. The former secretary of state, as well as other State Department and administration officials, claimed that the attack stemmed from a spontaneous protest for two weeks following the assault.

“The only report that our mission made through every channel was that there had been an attack on a consulate,” Hicks said.

An April 19, 2012 cable signed by Clinton denied requests for additional security at the mission and ordered the planned removal of security elements.

Clinton would have had to sign off on security cuts to the mission, said Eric Nordstrom, regional security officer in Tripoli.

Clinton told Congress in January that she “didn’t see those requests. They didn’t come to me. I didn’t approve them. I didn’t deny them.”

Democrats on the committee said Clinton’s name was on the cable because she was the head of the department, but that she did not personally approve or deny the security requests.

Nordstrom testified that Clinton would have been required to sign off on any waiver of Security Environment Threat List requirements and that the mission did not meet these standards.

“Waiver requirements for buildings solely occupied by the U.S. government overseas must be approved by the Secretary of State and cannot be delegated,” Nordstrom said.

Nordstrom said he had long raised concerns about the security at the mission, but was dismissed by his superiors.

“The response I got from the regional director when I raised the issues [of security] … was that my ‘tone’ was not helpful,” Nordstrom said.

Democrats at the hearing downplayed it as a politically motivated witch-hunt, while being careful to avoid any appearance that they were attacking the witnesses personally.

Ranking Member Elijah Cummings (D., Md.) called the hearing an attempt to “smear public officials,” but praised the whistleblowers for their courage.

“We all feel your pain,” Cummings told the witnesses. “It is your bravery that brought your here today.”

Democrats continued this line after the hearing.

“Really there wasn’t anything new that we hadn’t already seen before and that hadn’t already been rehashed again and again. So there isn’t much news today,” Rep. Matt Cartwright (D., Pa.) said on MSNBC.

However, it may be difficult for the Obama administration to continue to portray the Benghazi investigation as purely political after today’s emotional testimony from three long-time State Department officials, who teared up at points when discussing the death of Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans.