Rep. Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.) reacted to a Monday's "Special Report" segment in which an anonymous Benghazi whistleblower alleged military assistance was available to assist the compound in Benghazi while it was under attack Tuesday on "America's Newsroom."
Gowdy said he was particularly interested in hearing from more eyewitnesses to supplement accounts in the Accountability Review Board (ARB) and testimony from public officials.
Despite the ARB relatively absolving the State Department of responsibility for the Benghazi attack, Gowdy noted he remains unconvinced that the report was unbiased given the State Department was in effect critiquing itself:
MARTHA MACCALLUM: I thought it was interesting when we got the Accountability Review Board to look at all this and there was definitely an effort to close the book on this thing after that. That you know, we've done our research, we know what happened. The Pentagon was not to blame was one of the outcomes of that report. There is no way they could have gotten any one there in time. We heard from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen also basically said the same thing. This is coming from very high up that there was no way they could have made it there. So this is a huge revelation if it is true, Congressman?
TREY GOWDY: Well, welcome to Washington. Here's my question, Martha. How did they know they couldn't have made it there? They had no way to know when it was going to end. They knew when the attack started but how in the world could they possibly have known when it was going to end while it was going on? Nobody would have for seen this lasting seven hours. So that is the middle tranche. Let me say with respect to the Accountability Review Board. Martha there's a reason we don't let students grade their own papers and we don't let defendants sentence themselves or investigate themselves. People lack the objectivity to question themselves. So the fact that the State Department may have cleared the State Department doesn't matter. I could care less. It is Congress' job to provide the oversight. The other point that I think Speaker Boehner hopefully will make is this. We know Susan Rice was wrong. We know that she was demonstrably wrong. What I want to know is whether her intentional misleading of her fellow citizens actually hampered the investigation going forward? We know she contradicted the evidence. We know she contradicted the president of Libya. What I want to know, is did her misrepresentations affect our ability to investigate what happened in Benghazi in the hours and days thereafter? Because we know the crime scene wasn't secured. We know the Bureau didn't go for two weeks. What I want to know was it because Susan Rice directly contradicted the president of Libya with her Sunday morning talk show appearances, because there's a difference between just being wrong and being intentionally misleading.