By Fred Fleitz ~ According to congressional Democrats, the mainstream media and even some conservative journalists, Hillary Clinton “won” last week’s marathon Benghazi Committee hands down with a masterful performance that showed her to be a leader who is calm under pressure. But is this what most Americans saw at the hearing?
Clinton’s defenders claim she was cool and made no mistakes. She was helped by the committee’s Democratic members who stuck to a script of bashing the Benghazi investigation as a witch hunt to damage Clinton’s presidential bid and repeatedly claiming the committee has spent millions on an investigation that has accomplished nothing.
But despite furious efforts to spin the hearing as a win for Clinton by Democrats and their media allies, many Americans saw something else.
Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy’s questioning of Clinton about her friend and advisor Sidney Blumenthal is a good example of this.
When Clinton was asked if she knew where Blumenthal worked, she said, “I think he had a number of consulting contracts with different entities.”
When pressed, Clinton said, “I think he did some work for my husband.” Clinton later admitted Blumenthal worked for her family foundation — the Clinton Foundation.
When asked if Blumenthal worked for the left wing group Media Matters or the Clinton advocacy group “Correct the Record,” she twice gave the evasive response, “I’m sure he did.”
Even Clinton’s supporters must have seen these as dishonest and evasive answers.
Then there were emails and documents revealed by Republicans at the hearing proving that Clinton told her daughter and the Egyptian prime minister hours after the Benghazi violence that it was a terrorist attack by an al-Qaida-like group.
This contradicted what Clinton said at Andrews Air Force Base three days later when she claimed in a speech and in private comments to Charles Woods, father of Tyrone Woods, a retired Navy Seal killed in the attack, that the attacks were due to outrage over an anti-Muslim video.
Many Republicans have long claimed Clinton lied about the nature of the Benghazi terrorist attacks as part of an Obama administration effort to mislead the American people so this tragedy would not hurt Mr. Obama’s reelection chances. The hearing conclusively proved this claim to any objective observer.
There were other damaging revelations at the hearing. These include dismissing State Department employees who did not work for her personal staff as “not on my staff.”
It was noteworthy that Clinton had no email or phone contacts with Ambassador Stevens but exchanged hundreds of emails with Blumenthal. Multiple requests for enhanced security from Stevens never reached Clinton’s desk.
There also were unseemly emails from Clinton’s staff to Stevens on how to put political spin on earlier terrorist attacks in Libya.
Clinton’s supporters and the mainstream media are trying to define in the minds of Americans that last week’s Benghazi hearing was a great injustice when a courageous American withstood 11 hours of questioning by partisan Republicans trying to detail her presidential campaign.
I believe many Americans — especially independents and those who live in the heartland — saw something else. They saw a slippery and calculating politician giving evasive and dishonest answers. They saw obvious mismanagement and lack of accountability. They saw a former U.S. official blame her failures on others.
Clinton will get away with this if Republicans let her. Clinton’s mendacity at the Benghazi hearing should be a central issue for all GOP presidential candidates.
Instead of attacking each other, they need to explain to the American people what really happened at the Benghazi hearing, especially concerning the lies Clinton told that an anti-Muslim video was the cause of the Benghazi attacks.
Hillary Clinton’s performance at the Benghazi Committee hearing was a preview of the dissembling and lack of accountability that would constitute her presidency.
Republicans need to fight back against Democratic and mainstream media narrative of the Benghazi hearing to make sure the American people realize this.
Fleitz is senior vice president for policy and programs for the Center for Security Policy. He previously worked for CIA, the State Department, and the House Intelligence Committee. Follow him on Twitter @fredfleitz.
