House Benghazi probe will issue report by summer

WASHINGTON -- Nearly two years after it was created, the House Benghazi Committee is plowing ahead -- interviewing witnesses, reviewing documents and promising a final report "before summer" that is certain to have repercussions for Democrat Hillary Clinton's bid for the presidency.

The panel's Republican chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, said in an email the committee has made "considerable progress" investigating the deadly 2012 attacks that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens.

Gowdy declined to elaborate on what progress has been made beyond listing new witnesses and documents.

The Benghazi inquiry has gone on longer than the 9/11 Commission took to investigate the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people Sept. 11, 2001, spending more than $6 million, Democrats said. They say the only goal of the investigation is to undermine Clinton's candidacy.

Gowdy declined to be interviewed but said in a statement the committee had advanced in its inquiry in recent weeks, after interviewing national security adviser Susan Rice; her deputy, Ben Rhodes; and other witnesses.

Former CIA director David Petraeus and former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta are among those who have testified before the panel.

Many of the witnesses, including Rice and Rhodes, had not been interviewed before by a congressional committee, Gowdy said. The panel has interviewed a total of 83 witnesses since its creation in May 2014, including 65 never before questioned by lawmakers, he said in an email.

The committee also has gained access to documents from the State Department and CIA and to a cache of emails from Clinton and Stevens, who was killed Sept. 11, 2012, in twin attacks on the diplomatic outpost and CIA annex in Benghazi.

"The American people and the families of the victims deserve the truth, and I'm confident the value and fairness of our investigation will be abundantly clear to everyone when they see the report for themselves," Gowdy said in an email, promising the report "as soon as possible, before summer."

Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time of the attacks, dismissed the panel's work, noting at a recent Democratic debate she testified before Gowdy and other lawmakers for nearly 11 hours last fall.

"Anybody who watched that and listened to it knows that I answered every question that I was asked, and when it was over, the Republicans had to admit they didn't learn anything," Clinton said.