The deputy chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss, said the hearing with US intelligence officials Thursday made clear that “mistakes were made.”
Chambliss said there would eventually be public hearings and “the American people are going to have the opportunity to see the questions asked and get the answers to questions that they have had since September 11th of this year.”
Republican Senator Roy Blunt told CNN that, based on the video of the hours-long consulate attack, “it’s not hard to establish that there was no demonstration, there was no crowd.
“When this started, it started as an act of violence. And that should have been obvious to anybody talking about that from the very start,” Blunt added.
But Democrat Adam Schiff said after a House Intelligence Committee hearing that acting CIA director Michael Morell told the panel Rice was briefed with the same unclassified information that lawmakers received.
Schiff said those who suggest Rice was “misrepresenting” intelligence “are either unfamiliar with the facts, or wilfully disregarding them.”
Critics have seized on Rice’s remarks to argue that the White House misled or even lied to Americans during a heated election season.
Rice has been floated as a possible successor to Clinton, who is stepping down early next year, but some Republicans have threatened to block her appointment over Benghazi.
Obama has accepted responsibility for any failings related to the attack and on Wednesday scolded Republicans for going after Rice.
The inquiry into Benghazi has been further complicated by the downfall of Petraeus, who resigned after his affair was uncovered by an FBI investigation into threatening emails sent by Broadwell to Florida socialite Jill Kelley, whom she apparently viewed as a competitor for the general’s affections.
The investigation also uncovered a trove of correspondence – some described as “flirtatious” – between Kelley and General John Allen, Petraeus’s successor as the top US commander in Afghanistan.
The married Allen – whose promotion to NATO commander in Europe has been held up over the probe – says he has never been in the same room alone with Kelley, who is also married and was a family friend of both Petraeus and Allen.
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