• 03/16/2015 01:32 AM
• Source: WashingtonExaminer.com RSS - politics
• by: Byron York

When did the House Select Committee on Benghazi first learn that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton kept a secret email system? When did the State Department finally turn over even some of those emails to investigators? When did State first admit it didn't even possess all the former secretary's documents? That information, and more, is contained in a timeline created by the Benghazi committee as investigators seek to piece together just what the Obama administration did in response to House requests for information about the September 11, 2012 terror attack that left four Americans dead. The timeline isn't an official committee report or publication; it's just an informal summary compiled to help members keep dates straight as they assess the State Department's lack of cooperation. The timeline doesn't include every significant date in the Benghazi investigation, but it does give readers an idea of what Republican investigators have been up against as they've tried to uncover the story of Benghazi. What follows is a fleshed-out version of the timetable — in my words, not the committee's — based on information from committee sources.

September 11, 2012 — The story starts, of course, the day terrorists attacked U.S. facilities in Benghazi, killing Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others. Administration statements in the immediate aftermath — specifically, claims that the attack was a spontaneous reaction to an anti-Muslim video on the Internet — raise suspicion among Republicans, who come to believe they have not been told the whole story.

September 20, 2012 — Nine days after the attack, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the House Subcommittee on National Security, Homeland Defense, and Foreign Operations, which is part of the larger Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sends a document request to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The request is for all information the Department has about the attack, and it specifically includes "any written, recorded, or graphic matter of any nature whatsoever, regardless of how recorded, and whether original or copy, including, but not limited to, the following: memoranda, reports, expense reports, books, manuals, instructions, financial reporters, working papers, records, notes, letters, notices, confirmations, telegrams, receipts, appraisals, pamphlets, magazines, newspapers, prospectuses, inter-office and intra-office communications, electronic mail (e-mail), contracts, cables, notations of any type of conversation, telephone call, meeting or other communication…" The list went on and on. There was no way any State Department official could fail to realize that the request covered Clinton's email. Yet none are handed over.

August 1, 2013 — The first year after the attack brings frustration after frustration for congressional investigators. The State Department was "notoriously tardy in their responses," recalls Chaffetz. "They are not swift, to say the least." So on August 1, 2013, the Oversight committee issued two subpoenas, one for the State Department documents that had been covered but not produced after earlier requests, and the second for documents related to Secretary Clinton's internal, self-exonerating State Department investigation known as the Accountability Review Board. Read more at Washington Examiner. 


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