Billboards demanding a Watergate-style committee to investigate Benghazi have gone up in House Speaker John Boehner’s (R., Ohio) district, with the organizers contending he’s the man standing in the way of getting answers to the terrorist attack.
"We know this is a bold step, and it may raise some well-coiffed hairs on the back of John Boehner’s neck," Larry Bailey, Capt. (SEAL), U.S. Navy (Ret.), and cofounder of Special Operations Speaks (SOS), a veterans group running the billboards, said in a press release.
"But the fact is that, he, and he alone, is blocking a full-scale Watergate-style investigation of one of the deadliest scandals in U.S. history—a scandal that reaches into the inner sanctum of the Oval Office," Bailey said.
Starting on Friday, three billboards up to 80 feet long will run in Boehner’s 8th District of Ohio. The billboards will run for a month, through the one-year anniversary of the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012.
"If four members of Congress were KILLED in Benghazi would we have a Watergate-style select committee today?" the billboards ask. Pictured below the message are the four leaders in the House and Senate, including Boehner, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.), and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.).
The billboards ask constituents to call their member of Congress and demand they sign a discharge petition, which would force a vote on a bill to set up a select committee to investigate the attack.
Rep. Frank Wolf (R., Va.) sponsored the bill. Wolf has previously said he opposes the discharge petition, though he appreciates attention drawn to the bill, which currently has 162 cosponsors.
"Anything to get support and draw attention can get the leadership to tremble a little bit," Joshua Delano, a spokesperson for SOS, told the Washington Free Beacon. Delano said the group is pursuing the petition because it will bypass the House leadership.
"We need 218 or one to form a select committee," said Larry Ward, political director of SOS. "We need 218 House members to sign the discharge petition or one speaker of the House to come to his senses."
Boehner has repeatedly denied that a select committee is necessary, saying in April that the standing committees investigating the attack are "getting the job done."