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Correct The Record Wednesday September 17, 2014 Afternoon Roundup:
Tweets:
Correct The Record @CorrectRecord: Visit the Benghazi Research Center to get the facts and stay informedhttp://benghazicommittee.com/ [9/17/14, 11:50 a.m. EDT]
Correct The Record @CorrectRecord: In a “blur of back to back meetings” @HillaryClinton met w/ 21 leaders in 4 days at 2012 #UNGA #HRC365 http://cnn.it/1gYcBtr [9/16/14, 5:57 p.m. EDT]
Headlines:
CNN: “Clinton supporters launch counterattack on Benghazi claims”
“Correct the Record, the outside group handling communications for Clinton and urging her to run for president in 2016, launched a rapid response the same day ‘to rebut, fact check, and respond to the upcoming Benghazi Select Committee hearings.’”
MSNBC: “It’s Benghazi day again on Capitol Hill”
“Meanwhile, the Democratic super PAC American Bridge and its pro-Clinton offshoot Correct the Record have created a website to defend Clinton and the White House from charges the group dismisses as ‘conspiracy’ theory.”
Roll Call blog: 218: “Parties’ Shared Benghazi Goals: Win the Hearings, Control the Narrative”
“American Bridge, a Democratic ‘super PAC,’ had partnered with a pro-Hillary Clinton group called ‘Correct the Record’ to launch the ‘Benghazi Research Center,’ an online rapid-response hub devoted entirely to discrediting the seven Republicans on the panel and their alleged ‘partisan witch hunt.’”
National Review: “Clinton ‘Correct the Record’ Site Lies About the Record on Benghazi”
"This site, CorrectRecord.org, is a slick operation run by American Bridge 21st Century, a group founded by David Brock that conducts opposition research for Democratic candidates."
Associated Press: “House Panel on Benghazi Aims for Bipartisan Tone”
“The House Select Committee on Benghazi set a bipartisan tone Wednesday as it opened its first public hearing.”
MSNBC: “When interest in Benghazi spins out of control”
“Yes, we’ve reached the point at which Fox News can at least try to connect anything and everything to the 2012 attack that left four Americans dead in Libya.”
CNN: “Iowa Democrats to Hillary Clinton: Slam the door in Iowa, win the nomination”
“Their message is simple: If you win in Iowa, you will be the nominee. If you let someone hang around -- or win -- you could cost yourself the nomination.”
The Hill blog: Ballot Box: “Ready for Hillary's helping hands”
“Ready for Hillary, the super-PAC focused on boosting Hillary Clinton in a potential presidential race, is stepping in to help Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa).”
Medpage Today: “Hillary to TCT: Fee-for-Service Days Are Numbered”
“Hillary Clinton says fee-for-service medicine is probably an idea whose time has passed.”
Time: “Elizabeth Warren and Suze Orman Call for Student Debt Reform”
“Orman said that while she would vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016, she would much prefer to vote for Warren, who she described as her ‘political voice.’ Warren smiled but didn’t respond.”
The Wire: “StopHillary PAC Wants Clinton to Answer for Benghazi in Key Presidential Primary States”
“StopHillary PAC, the group dedicated to smothering Hillary Clinton's unofficial presidential campaign in its crib, has released a new commercial demanding Clinton ‘break the silence’ on Benghazi.”
Articles:
CNN: “Clinton supporters launch counterattack on Benghazi claims”
By Dan Merica
September 17, 2014, 11:26 a.m. EDT
Hillary Clinton supporters launched a counteroffensive this week against claims that documents related to the Benghazi attack investigation were sanitized and ahead of another congressional hearing.
A Clinton spokesman responded quickly to the story released Monday, calling it "patently false," and a group helping with the former secretary of state's communications and rapid response mobilized an entire communications strategy, website and talking points around the issue.
The strategy has a directness that has not always been seen from Clinton aides and affiliated groups, which have generally waited for a story to fully emerge before taking it on.
A GOP-led House Select Committee on the Benghazi attack holds its first public meeting Wednesday, with seven Republicans and five Democrats looking into the September 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. compound in Libya that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.
The issue has been white hot politically since then. It loomed as an issue that Republicans used against President Barack Obama in the closing months of the 2012 election, and with the prospect of Clinton running for president in 2016, the issue has continued to burn.
Sharyl Attkisson, who resigned from her job as a CBS News correspondent in 2014 for what she said was liberal bias, published a report Monday alleging that a State Department official close to Clinton had withheld and sanitized documents during the department investigation.
The story, which many conservative outlets branded as a "bombshell," was hung on Deputy Assistant Secretary Raymond Maxwell, one of the men reprimanded over the attack.
The State Department flatly denied the story.
The Accountability Review Board "had full and direct access to State Department employees and documents. Any accounts to the contrary like that one you mentioned are completely without merit, completely ill-informed," said Marie Harf, the department's deputy spokeswoman. "These reports show a complete lack of understanding of how the ARB functioned. It collected its own documents directly from anybody in the department. There was a department-wide call for information to be given directly to the ARB."
Nick Merrill, Clinton's spokesman, followed up Tuesday with a statement to CNN.
"This is patently false, as the State Department said yesterday about the process that allowed unfettered access to the Accountability Review Board."
Correct the Record, the outside group handling communications for Clinton and urging her to run for president in 2016, launched a rapid response the same day "to rebut, fact check, and respond to the upcoming Benghazi Select Committee hearings."
The effort includes a website -- BenghaziCommittee.com -- that highlights statements from the group, points out questions already addressed by past Benghazi panels and fact-checks some critics' claims. The group says it hopes to model its response after the way campaigns respond during debates.
"The loss of life in Benghazi was a tragedy but the questions of what happened that night have already been asked and answered," the group said in an email. "Republicans have no credibility on this issue and are wasting taxpayer dollars on these sham hearings to ask questions that have already been answered, all for political gain: both to drive up their base turnout in 2014 and to go after Secretary Clinton for 2016."
Clinton has taken responsibility in the attacks and has told a number of groups that it was her biggest regret at the State Department. In her memoir, "Hard Choices," she knocks those "who exploit" Benghazi for political gain and says, "Those who insist on politicizing the tragedy will have to do so without me."
The passage is considered a flat no to any suggestion that Clinton would testify before the House's latest Benghazi committee.
Despite that, committee chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-South Carolina, is undeterred from proceeding with the investigation.
A statement Tuesday from the committee said, "As Chairman Gowdy has said, he is willing to risk answering the same question twice rather than risk it not be answered at all."
MSNBC: “It’s Benghazi day again on Capitol Hill”
By Alex Seitz-Wald
September 17, 2014, 7:39 a.m. EDT
Two years, seven congressional committee investigations, 25,000 pages of documents, 50 briefings, nine reports, and at least eight subpoenas later, Congress is trying once again to get to the bottom of Benghazi.
On Wednesday, the House Select Committee on the 2012 terror attack in Libya will hold its first hearing, putting the incident front and center again just as Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of state during the attack, is stepping out onto the 2016 stage with a visit to Iowa.
Republicans, led by Select Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, say they’re just after the truth, but Democrats view the revival of the issue as pure partisan politics, and criticize the GOP for spending millions of dollars on a new investigation they say isn’t needed.
Members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus are calling on Speaker John Boehner to do away with the Benghazi committee and “refocus its attention” on issues they say are more important to Americans.
“We urge you to establish a Select Committee on Income Inequality to focus on the issues that everyday people face instead of spending more than $3.3 million of taxpayer money on an investigation that will not help families put food on the table,” they wrote in a letter to Boehner obtained by msnbc.
“If House Republicans are serious about focusing on jobs and our economy,” the 25 progressive members of Congress continue, the GOP would create a committee to “investigate and develop common sense solutions to our country’s widening income gap.”
Of course, there’s almost zero chance that Boener will heed the call, but the letter underscores Democrats’ lack of faith in Republicans’ ability to keep politics out of any Benghazi investigation.
On Thursday, the anti-Clinton Stop Hillary PAC will launch a $100,000 advertising campaign in the early presidential states of Iowa, South Carolina, and New Hampshire demanding that Clinton testify under oath before the committee. The ad will run in key media markets, including Gowdy’s district.
“We still need to hear answers,” the commercial says. “But Hillary Clinton prefers silence.”
Meanwhile, the Democratic super PAC American Bridge and its pro-Clinton offshoot Correct the Record have created a website to defend Clinton and the White House from charges the group dismisses as “conspiracy” theory.
Gowdy faces tremendous pressure from the conservative base to subpoena Clinton and use the committee to try to stymie her presidential ambitions, but he has repeatedly promised that he won’t let politics get in the way of the committee’s work.
While the Democratic members of the select committee include the ranking members of relevant committees, such as the House Oversight and Armed Services committees, Republicans did not include the chairman of those committees on their roster, suggesting they wanted a start fresh. That means many of their members are less likely to be familiar with the work that has already been done on the Benghazi, Democrats fear.
Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the committee, said in a statement that he “sincerely hopes” the Select Committee will “make full use of the extensive investigations that have already been completed to define our scope, avoid duplication, and conserve taxpayer dollars.”
Gowdy has so far inspired some confidence among the Democratic members of his committee, in part by selecting an idea proposed by a Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff for the first hearing.
That first meeting will focus on the implementation of recommendations from the internal State Department report probing the Benghazi attack to determine whether the government is following through on its own ideas. Improving the security of American diplomatic outposts is an uncontroversial topic that even Democrats say is important.
And it’s a topic that gets to the heart the policy questions at the center of the controversy over the attack, says Mitchell Zuckoff, a journalism professor who co-wrote a new book on Benghazi with members of the team that defended the CIA complex in the Libyan city that night.
Even so, Zuckoff acknowledged, it will be difficult to divorce the policy questions from the politics. “I think it’d be naive for anyone at this point to not worry about politics when they talk about Benghazi. The story became political before it became factual. We’ve been playing catch up for the past two years,” he told msnbc.
Roll Call blog: 218: “Parties’ Shared Benghazi Goals: Win the Hearings, Control the Narrative”
By Emma Dumain
September 17, 2014, 5:00 a.m. EDT
Reps. Trey Gowdy and Elijah E. Cummings say they don’t want the Select Committee on Benghazi to be driven by partisanship, and both have made overtures over the past four months to prove they mean it.
But no matter how many times the South Carolina Republican and Maryland Democrat huddle in the Speaker’s Lobby and pledge to treat the committee’s mission with dignity, the chairman and ranking member probably won’t be able to drown out the partisan voices on sidelines just 48 days from the midterm elections.
On the eve of the committee’s first public hearing, set for Wednesday morning, Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and progressives, on Capitol Hill and off, were already drawing battle lines.
American Bridge, a Democratic “super PAC,” had partnered with a pro-Hillary Clinton group called “Correct the Record” to launch the “Benghazi Research Center,” an online rapid-response hub devoted entirely to discrediting the seven Republicans on the panel and their alleged “partisan witch hunt.”
Conservatives, meanwhile, were uniting behind the Benghazi Accountability Coalition, an organization encouraging the select committee to probe the “official failures,” “decision to deny military support to Americans under assault” and the “administration’s campaign of duplicity.”
The Democratic National Committee as recently as last week re-sounded an alarm bell from earlier this year to let the public know that a Republican member of the Benghazi committee — this time Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga. — headlined a fundraiser billed as an “update on the Benghazi investigation.”
And the “Stop Hillary PAC” was warning that the public hearing was an early opportunity for Clinton backers to “stonewall” the “truth” about what happened in Benghazi in order to lay the groundwork for the former secretary of State’s potential 2016 presidential bid.
The committee’s own origin story is rooted in politics. In the spring, House Republican leaders decided that the Democratic administration had failed to work with Congress to address concerns about how the attacks transpired and decided to appoint a special panel to take over the investigation. Democrats were so incensed with how Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., had handled the matter in the Oversight and Government Reform Committee that they at first threatened to boycott the select committee.
It didn’t make Democrats feel any better that Republicans insisted on an unfavorable ratio of majority-to-minority panel members.
Issa told CQ Roll Call on Tuesday afternoon he thought Gowdy would lead the committee with professionalism, but said it was idealistic to think it could be divorced from politics.
“Mr. Cummings and the staff from the oversight committee … is highly partisan,” Issa said. “They have said they have repeatedly wanted to shut this down at every juncture, and they purport that it’s a phony scandal. … That makes it very hard for it to be nonpartisan.”
“It’s unfortunate that Chairman Issa feels that way, but it is simply not true,” a Democratic aide with the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, of which Cummings is the ranking member, rebutted in a statement. “As many House Republicans know, Rep. Cummings always tries to be as bipartisan as possible, and he is hopeful he will find a willing partner in Chairman Gowdy.”
Gowdy and Cummings, for all their talk about wanting to facilitate a fair, balanced and courteous process, have to contend not only with the committee’s politically loaded history but also with the subsequent sound and fury from their own colleagues and allies.
On Tuesday morning, Cummings held a news conference to unveil a sprawling interactive website called “Benghazi on the Record.” He and the four other Democrats on the committee said they hoped the site would provide lawmakers, staffers and the American people with the resources they need to educate themselves about the current status of the investigation and see that almost every question about what transpired that fateful night has already been answered.
“If you look at the website, it has almost no commentary. It’s actual statements and findings,” Cummings said in a follow-up phone interview on Tuesday, adding that he wanted the website to be a “just the facts ma’am” clearinghouse that could help the panel avoid duplicative work.
But the underlying assumption in touting such a resource is that Republicans are harping on an investigation many Democrats think should just be closed. It was enough to ruffle the feathers of the Benghazi committee communications director, Jamal Ware, who put out a statement before the news conference had even wrapped.
“As Chairman Gowdy has said, he is willing to risk answering the same question twice rather than risk it not be answered at all,” he wrote. “Since all documents responsive to Congressional inquiries into the Benghazi terrorist attack have not been produced, it is fair to say that not all questions have been asked and answered.
“Chairman Gowdy sincerely hopes that all sides will not prejudge the outcome of the investigation — before even the Committee’s first hearing, which is on a topic suggested by the Democrats — and instead allow a constructive and thorough investigatory process that produces a final report on Benghazi that is beyond any doubt,” Ware continued.
Speaking with CQ Roll Call on Tuesday, Cummings acknowledged that it wasn’t easy to forge ahead given the political realities on either side.
“I don’t know exactly what kind of pressure he’s under,” Cummings said of Gowdy, “but I can tell you that I don’t feel pressure from Democrats. I think they trust that we’re going to go out there as defenders of the truth.”
Just a few days earlier, on the anniversary of the 2012 attacks, Gowdy, a former prosecutor, also sought to rise about the fray, issuing the following statement: “It is for [the victims] that we must establish all the facts of what happened in Benghazi, beyond any reasonable doubt. And it is for the American people, and those hwo serve our nations overseas — to restore their faith and confidence — that the Committee will establish the facts in a fair and impartial manner.”
National Review: “Clinton ‘Correct the Record’ Site Lies About the Record on Benghazi”
By Fred Fleitz
September 17, 2014, 11:32 a.m. EDT
We all know many politicians lie and play games with the truth. But when supporters of an American politician find it necessary to set up an elaborate website devoted to “correcting the record” on that politician’s statements and actions, we’re talking about a champion prevaricator. That is, we’re talking about a Clinton.
This site, CorrectRecord.org, is a slick operation run by American Bridge 21st Century, a group founded by David Brock that conducts opposition research for Democratic candidates. The site is aimed at promoting Hillary Clinton’s possible presidential run and particularly geared to defend her against the many growing controversies stemming from her tenure as secretary of state, especially how she handled the 2012 terrorist attacks on the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi.
One of these controversies is whether Secretary Clinton and her staff engaged in a cover-up of the Obama administration’s statements and policies related to the Benghazi terrorist attacks. New life was breathed into this issue this week due to a report by journalist Sharyl Attkisson that Clinton confidants were part of an operation to “separate” damaging documents before they were turned over to a State Department Accountability Review Board formed to investigate the Benghazi attacks.
After a quick review of the Benghazi area of the Correct the Record site, I quickly found a false statement. In a box that begins with “COVER UP FALSE,” there is this language:
“The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence bipartisan report concluded there ‘were no efforts by the White House or any other Executive Branch entities’ to cover-up facts or make alterations to talking points for political purposes. Former CIA Director David Petraeus confirmed the Benghazi talking points process was normal.”
But the citation in this box is not from the bipartisan body of the January 2014 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on the Benghazi attacks – it’s partisan language taken from pages 4 and 5 of an appendix containing the additional views of the committee’s Democratic members.
It’s fine for Correct the Record to cite this language, but it only reflects views of the Democratic members of the committee. Republican members held very different views.
In fact, six of the committee’s seven Republican members were harshly critical of the Obama administration’s truthfulness about the Benghazi attacks and said the following in their own additional views to the report:
“Rather than provide Congress with the best intelligence and on-the-ground assessments, the Administration chose to try to frame the story in a way that minimized any connection to terrorism. Before the Benghazi attacks—in the lead-up to the 2012 presidential election, the administration continued to script the narrative that al-Qaeda had been decimated and on the run. The Benghazi terrorist attacks inconveniently, and overwhelmingly, interfered with this fictitious and false narrative.”
The additional views by the six Republicans also rejected the charge that the CIA was at fault for erroneous language in the Benghazi talking points, noting that e-mails reluctantly released to the committee clearly show the White House was asked to coordinate on the talking points from the earliest moments and had the final say in approving them. The six Republican members noted that this does not comport with what Acting CIA Director Morell told the intelligence committees in November 2012.
“. . . in spite of his [CIA Director Petraeus] own misgivings, the final content of the talking points was the ‘[National Security Staff’s] call, to be sure.’ In contrast, the Acting Director’s testimony perpetuated the myth that the White House played no part in the drafting or editing of the talking points.”
So a pro-Clinton group is trying to discredit allegations that Hillary Clinton was involved in a cover-up of how the Obama administration handled the terrorist attacks on the Benghazi consulate by falsely claiming a bipartisan Senate report exonerates her.
How Clintonian.
— Fred Fleitz is a former CIA analyst and senior staff member with the House Intelligence Committee. He is currently a senior fellow with the Center for Security Policy and chief analyst with LIGNET.com.
Associated Press: “House Panel on Benghazi Aims for Bipartisan Tone”
By Bradley Klapper
September 17, 2014, 10:33 a.m. EDT
The House Select Committee on Benghazi set a bipartisan tone Wednesday as it opened its first public hearing.
Republican chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina says he'll pursue the facts of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on a U.S. post in eastern Libya that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.
Gowdy credited a Democrat on the 12-member panel with recommending the subject of the first hearing, embassy security. He says the U.S. must learn from the past to prevent repeat incidents.
Rep. Elijah Cummings, the panel's top Democrat, also stressed the importance of improving diplomatic security.
The hearing's tone starkly contrasted with the fights that have marred some of Congress' previous, highly partisan inquiries into Benghazi.
The House Select Committee on Benghazi gets its public debut Wednesday, two years after militants in the eastern Libyan city killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans, and four months after Republicans launched their special investigation.
The panel is using its first open hearing to focus on what the Obama administration has done since the Sept. 11, 2012, attack to improve security at U.S. embassies and other diplomatic missions around the world. The State Department's chief of diplomatic security was to be the committee's first witness.
It was unclear whether the big allegations that prompted the probe will be examined - that U.S. forces were directed not to respond and that administration officials lied about the nature of the attack.
"This is truly an effort to do fact-finding," Rep. Mike Pompeo of Kansas, one of seven Republicans on the 12-member committee, said in a telephone interview, stressing the thoroughness of the investigation, not its urgency. "Much of the work we're going to do won't be in hearings like we're having this week."
On the surface, the hearing should be noncontroversial. It will center on the State Department's implementation of an independent review board's recommendations to correct "systemic failures" that led to grossly inadequate security in Benghazi. The department endorsed the recommendations and there is little disagreement between congressional Democrats and Republicans about them.
But on almost everything else related to Benghazi - interpretations of what happened before, during and after the attack - far greater partisan divide prevails.
Republicans have issued a range of accusations, from the military holding back assets that could have saved American lives to President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and others misleading the public about the attack as Americans prepared for a presidential election. Democrats deride the continued interest in Benghazi as a right-wing obsession designed to maintain talk of scandal and harm a potential Clinton bid for the presidency in 2016.
When House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, called for the select committee's establishment in May, he accused the Obama administration of "obstructing the truth about Benghazi." The new body, Boehner vowed, will work "quickly" to get answers.
Democrats on the panel are trying to pressure majority Republicans into providing a time frame and scope for the investigation- the eighth conducted by a congressional committee. The initial budget is $3.3 million but no limits have been placed on what the select committee can look at or when the probe must finish.
"We can't keep re-litigating the same issues over and over," Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said at a news conferenceTuesday.
Democrats have created a website pulling together various Benghazi claims of GOP House and Senate members alongside the conclusions of past congressional investigations. Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., said the goal was to prevent the select body from becoming "another partisan witch hunt."
Despite the attention devoted to the Benghazi attack, the panel clearly was being overshadowed this week.
Lawmakers, eager to return this week to campaigning for the Nov. 4 midterm election, were racing to seal a spending bill that would avert a government shutdown and authorize Obama to train and arm moderate Syrian rebels to fight Islamic State militants in the Middle East.
MSNBC: “When interest in Benghazi spins out of control”
By Steve Benen
September 17, 2014, 8:40 a.m. EDT
It was probably only a matter of time. A Fox News personality yesterday noted the ongoing controversies surrounding the National Football League and suggested Americans should demand “that same transparency” about Benghazi.
Yes, we’ve reached the point at which Fox News can at least try to connect anything and everything to the 2012 attack that left four Americans dead in Libya.
Then again, given the latest report from Media Matters, the comments hardly come as a surprise.
“Fox News’ evening lineup ran nearly 1,100 segments on the Benghazi attacks and their aftermath in the first 20 months following the attacks. Nearly 500 segments focused on a set of Obama administration talking points used in September 2012 interviews; more than 100 linked the attacks to a potential Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential run; and dozens of segments compared the attacks and the administration response to the Watergate or Iran-Contra scandals. The network hosted Republican members of Congress to discuss Benghazi nearly 30 times more frequently than Democrats”
The total of 1,098 evening segments – an average of about 13 segments per week, every week, for 20 months – would arguably have been higher, but Media Matters didn’t include Megyn Kelly’s program, which wasn’t on the air for part of the study.
Ed Kilgore noted in response to the numbers, “Short of gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Watergate hearings, I’m not sure we’ve seen anything quite like it in modern electronic media.”
I think that’s right, though there are a couple of ways to look at this. The first takeaway is simple: “Good lord, that’s a lot of coverage for one network on one story.” At a certain point, phrases like “unhealthy obsession” probably have to enter into the conversation.
But that’s not the only takeaway. Indeed, I might even offer a tepid defense of sorts.
In theory, there’s nothing wrong with a news organization really sinking its teeth into a story and sticking with it. Journalists – genuine media professionals – chase after a story all the time, day after day, considering different angles, shining a spotlight on developments, etc. A dogmatic commitment to a story can be admirable and worthwhile.
And I suppose that’s ultimately what I found so shocking about Media Matters’ tally: the total number is astounding, sure, but more important is the fact that one network devoted nearly 1,100 segments over 20 months and somehow managed not to advance the story in any meaningful way at all. After 1,098 segments, Fox produced no scoops. It aired no new revelations of import. It didn’t increase the public’s understanding of the Benghazi attack in any meaningful or substantive way.
On the contrary, many of the segments arguably did the exact opposite: the network aired 100 segments – including 43 just from Sean Hannity – “promoting the lie that the administration issued a ‘stand-down order.’”
If a network is going to air 1,100 segments, shouldn’t they at least be good segments?
In related news, the House Republicans’ new Benghazi committee – the eighth congressional committee to investigate the 2012 attack – is getting to work this week, and its first task may actually have some value. At the behest of Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the panel is starting with a review of how the State Department is responding to recommendations from the Accountability Review Board (the first independent panel to investigate the attack).
The panel will get to the conspiracy theories later.
Also note, Democrats on the new Select Committee have created a website helping the public understand frequently asked questions about what happened in Benghazi two years ago. There are probably some Fox hosts who’d benefit from taking a look.
Postscript: There’s apparently some new conspiracy theory about a State Department cover up, being pushed by the far-right Heritage Foundation. It’s kind of bizarre and hard to take seriously, though it’s a safe bet it’ll be the subject of several hundred segments on a certain cable news network.
MSNBC: “GOP treads carefully in low-key Benghazi hearing”
By Zachary Roth
September 17, 2014, 12:18 p.m. EDT
Those looking for fireworks from the first hearing of the special Benghazi committee were disappointed, as the low-key session focused on the State Department’s implementation of security recommendations.
In his opening statement, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), the panel’s chair, pushed back against Democrats who have questioned the value of the 12-member select committee.
“We know that all the documents have not yet been produced, and we know that there are still witnesses to be examined,” Gowdy said.
But Gowdy, a former prosecutor, didn’t invoke a cover-up over the September 2012 attacks, as some in his party have. Instead, he noted that past attacks on U.S. facilities overseas hadn’t prompted effective reforms—framing the committee, which was established in May with a $3 million budget, as a good-faith effort to improve security.
“To those who believe it is time to move on, to those who believe there is nothing left to discover,” said Gowdy, “we have heard all of that before, and it was wrong then.”
Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the ranking Democrat on the panel, made a plea to his fellow members to keep the focus on constructive solutions from improving security.
“It would be a disservice to everyone involved to be lured off this path by partisan politics,” Cummings said.
Republicans have lobbed a grab bag of claims about the administration’s handling of the attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. They’ve said administration officials lied to the public about the cause of the attacks, and ordered troops to stand down rather than defend the Embassy. But despite seven congressional probes, 25,000 pages of documents, 50 briefings, and subpoenas of eight people, they’ve uncovered little evidence to justify those charges.
Given the lack of evidence, Gowdy can’t afford to raise conservative expectations too high, or risk alienating independent voters by seeming to conduct a partisan witch-hunt. Raising the political stakes is the potential presidential bid of Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time of the attacks.
Democrats have aggressively stoked skepticism about the panel. As the hearing began, they unveiled a website, “Bengahzi on the Record: Asked and Answered,” that uses information gathered in the earlier probes to rebut some of the key Republican charges. And on Tuesday, members of the Progressive Caucus called on Speaker John Boehner to scrap the committee altogether, and instead set up a committee on income inequality.
Wednesday’s hearing was focused on the State Department’s progress in implementing the security recommendations made in late 2012 by the Accountability Review Board, an independent organization. The idea was proposed by Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat, and agreed to by Gowdy.
Gregory Starr, the State Department’s diplomatic security chief, said 22 of the ARB’s 29 recommendations had already been implemented.
But questioning a group of State Department officials, Rep. Susan Brooks (R-Ind.) raised the concern that responsibility for implementing the ARB’s reforms is being handled by a department official who ranks only in the fourth tier. Todd Keil, a witness who was a member of an expert panel on security practices, agreed that responsibility for security was too low on the organizational chart.
Keil also noted that the department doesn’t have an effective process to determine whether the upsides to having outposts in certain cities outweigh the risks. He mentioned Peshawar, in Pakistan, as well as Benghazi, as locations that might be ripe for such an analysis.
CNN: “Iowa Democrats to Hillary Clinton: Slam the door in Iowa, win the nomination”
By Dan Merica
September 17, 2014, 12:24 p.m. EDT
Hillary Clinton opened the door to a presidential bid a little wider over the weekend at the Harkin Steak Fry in Iowa.
And now veterans from her 2008 campaign and Iowans urging her to run in 2016 are calling for her to use the state's first-in-the-nation caucus to slam the door shut on the Democratic nomination.
Their message is simple: If you win in Iowa, you will be the nominee. If you let someone hang around -- or win -- you could cost yourself the nomination.
"I think that Secretary Clinton can close the door in Iowa. It is going to take a lot of work, but it is out there to be done," said Jerry Crawford, Midwest co-chairman for Clinton's 2008 campaign. "I think if she wins ... it would be very difficult, very unlikely that anybody could mount a challenge after Iowa."
Crawford, who also ran Bill Clinton's 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns in Iowa, said he has expressed this sentiment to Hillary Clinton's closest advisers and aides.
There is a level of bluntness in those who advocate for Clinton to run hard in Iowa, and it stems largely from her history in the state.
Some of it is self-serving. The more active Clinton is in Iowa, the more other candidates will be forced to campaign in the state. That means money for Iowa's economy -- some economists estimate that more than $51 million was spent in Iowa in 2008 around the caucuses. And it raises Iowa politicos' profiles.
The other reason has more to do with Clinton's record in Iowa. Most Clinton supporters in the state feel that the nomination was hers to lose in 2008 and don't want the same thing to happen in 2016.
During Clinton's failed 2008 bid, the former first lady finished a dismal third in Iowa. She blundered several times in the state, none more stinging than when a memo written by then-Deputy Campaign Manager Mike Henry about skipping Iowa was leaked to The New York Times.
"I propose skipping the Iowa caucuses and dedicating more of Senator Clinton's time and financial resources" to other primary states, Henry wrote. The plan was considered and then rejected.
CNN reached out to Henry for a comment, but the now-chief of staff to Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, was not available.
The fallout was swift and added fuel to the fire that Clinton was running a detached campaign in Iowa. She began to cool down in the state just as then-Sens. Barack Obama and John Edwards (who would go on to finish second) got hot. Clinton has called the defeat "excruciating."
She went into Iowa in 2008 with a shrinking lead over Obama and Edwards. She is better positioned now, with 53% of all registered Democrats contacted in Iowa saying they would support her if the 2016 caucuses were held today, according to a recent CNN/ORC poll. That number is triple the nearest potential Democratic candidate.
Others have landed in Iowa
While she played coy in the beginning, for the last few months Clinton has regularly admitted the worst-kept secret in the United States: She is thinking about running for president.
She has company. Vice President Joe Biden is in Iowa on Wednesday to speak to a group of nuns on the steps of the Iowa Capitol. Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont held three events in Iowa over the weekend. And Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley has visited the state three times this year and has 11 staff members on the ground.
They and others have said they are thinking about running in 2016.
A call for competitive primaries
Not all longtime Clinton organizers are convinced that slamming the door in Iowa is the best strategy to be ready for the general election.
Bonnie Campbell, a longtime Iowa politician and Clinton's campaign co-chairwoman in 2008, thinks that competitive primaries will "make her stronger, both politically ... and as a candidate."
"If Hillary can come here and compete with other candidates and put it away, I am all for that," said Campbell, who also chaired the Iowa Democratic Party from 1987 to 1991. "But I think it is important to recognize that it is healthy, it is a healthy thing, to have different points of view offered and discuss and it also usually happens."
Some Clinton supporters in Iowa have also been cautiously watching some of those other candidates, impressed with their operations and commitment to the Hawkeye State. Though they all said Clinton would win if she ran, there is a clear concern that someone could organize effectively and get hot at the right time -- like Obama did in 2008.
But even Scott Brennan, the chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party, who remains neutral in nomination fights, sees an Iowa win as a way Clinton could lock down the nomination early.
"It seems to me that it is reasonable to think that way," he said at an interview in Des Moines. "Why give somebody that opportunity to get that national presence if in fact she is serious about running?"
Brennan, who was party chairman during the caucuses in 2008, said that while Clinton finished third, it wasn't because she didn't have a lot of support from state Democrats. Instead, he said, it was because she ran into Obama's force-of-nature campaign.
The Hill blog: Ballot Box: “Ready for Hillary's helping hands”
By Cameron Joseph and Ben Kamisar
September 17, 2014, 11:16 a.m. EDT
Ready for Hillary, the super-PAC focused on boosting Hillary Clinton in a potential presidential race, is stepping in to help Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa).
The group will help the Democratic Senate hopeful with fundraising for his tight race and look to boost Democratic field operations across the map. They sent out an email highlighting Clinton's praise of Braley at last weekend's Harkin Steak Fry and asking people to contribute to his Senate bid.
The organization has previously promised to help Democrats in tough midterm races, though fundraising help this late in the game isn't as useful as if it had come earlier in the cycle.
The group is also aiming to help Democrats on the ground, and is planning on dispatching field staffers to 14 states starting Oct. 1.
Ready for Hillary spokesman Seth Bringman says the fundraising email is "the first of likely several such fundraising efforts for Democratic candidates in critical races this year."
"We are committed to doing everything we can to help Democrats maintain control of the U.S. Senate and to engage our supporters in critical races up and down the ballot this year," he told The Hill in an email. "We have a unique opportunity as an organization with already 2.5 million Hillary supporters to focus on the immediate goal of helping Democrats come out on top this November. It's a win-win."
Braley is locked in a close race with Iowa state Sen. Joni Ernst (R) — a new poll out Wednesday morning from Quinnipiac Universityfound her leading by six points, but most other recent polling has found the race within the margin of error.
The other states the group is focused on are Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, all of which have competitive Senate or gubernatorial races.
Medpage Today: “Hillary to TCT: Fee-for-Service Days Are Numbered”
By Peggy Peck
September 16, 2014
WASHINGTON -- Hillary Clinton says fee-for-service medicine is probably an idea whose time has passed.
"The fee-for-service model, which made a lot of sense for a long time, may not make sense for physicians, for hospitals, or any other providers and may not make sense for patients and other payers," Clinton told a packed house of 3,000 cardiologists at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) meeting here.
Answering a question from TCT president Jack Lewin, MD, she said, "We need to have as evidence-based and mature a conversation as we can have about [fee-for-service]."
The Clinton appearance was billed as a keynote address, but was treated as a private event.
Press were not barred, but no seats were reserved for it, and the TCT asked members of the press to acknowledge that they were asked not to write about Clinton's remarks.
At the same time, many at the TCT were clearly delighted to have Clinton -- a former Secretary of State, former Senator, former First Lady, and current (although unannounced) front-runner in the 2016 presidential race -- featured on the program, especially since, as one highly-placed TCT official told MedPage Today, Clinton was "speaking about healthcare."
Clinton spent about 20 minutes sharing very softball observations on the state of health, especially cardiovascular health, in the U.S. and the world and another 40 minutes answering questions from Lewin, who has a long association with Hillary Clinton and her husband Bill, the former president, including work on their failed healthcare reform plan in 1993-1994.
Just as fee-for-service may be sunsetting, Clinton said that employer-paid health insurance may also be a time-honored tradition that "we can no longer afford." But, a move away from healthcare as an employment benefit "should not be mandated."
The Affordable Care Act generally won praise from Clinton, who noted, "more than 8 million have gained coverage through the healthcare marketplaces and another 7 million through Medicaid expansion and the children's health. I think it is fair to say that Kentucky reduced its rate of uninsured by 40% and Arkansas hit almost the same percentage -- so there are success stories."
She agreed that more work needed to done on implementation of Obamacare, but offered no specifics.
Asked about another issue that bedeviled her husband's administration -- tort reform -- Clinton pointed to use of checklists to eliminate procedural errors and initiatives such as that at University of Michigan "where they have created an environment in which saying you are sorry and going immediately to patients cut down litigation."
But, "whether the malpractice is lawyers who betray clients' confidence or doctors who are negligent, you need to really isolate that very small group of professionals who cause a lot of problems for everybody else," she said.
Clinton was not asked about her future plans, but she sounded more like a candidate than a diplomat when she chastised the gridlock in Congress and she made a personal plea for bipartisan support of the children's health insurance plan, which will be defunded unless Congress reauthorizes it.
On nonhealth issues Clinton said she supported President Obama's economic stimulus, but admitted that it did not result in the type of robust recovery that the country wants and needs.
Time: “Elizabeth Warren and Suze Orman Call for Student Debt Reform”
By Haley Sweetland Edwards
September 17, 2014, 12:00 p.m. EDT
[Subtitle:] Warren didn't touch the question of whether she would run in 2016
Senator Elizabeth Warren and personal finance expert Suze Orman teamed up Wednesday morning for a spirited, hour-long discussion about student loans, for-profit colleges and the staggering debt crisis facing tens of millions of Americans today.
The two women, who first met at a 2009 TIME 100 event, clearly saw eye-to-eye on nearly every issue, surprising absolutely no one, anywhere. They often echoed one another in their condemnation of “the biggest banks,” “the crooks” selling exploitative student loans, and corporate control over the lawmaking process.
“Washington works for those who have money and power, for those who can hire armies of lobbyists and lawyers,” Warren said.
“Private banks are financially raping—and I use that word truthfully—raping our children,” Orman said. “It’s ludicrous.”
The question of whether Warren will run for president in 2016 was defused right off the bat, when Orman jokingly announced her own candidacy. Warren remained silent on the issue throughout the panel discussion, hosted by Politico and Starbucks in downtown Washington, D.C., choosing instead to draw attention to her student loan reform bill, which was blocked by a Republican filibuster in June.
The bill would require the federal government and private banks to allow the roughly 25 million Americans, each of whom carry an average of $30,000 in student debt, to refinance their student loans at today’s lower interest rates. It would also cap undergraduate loans at interest rates below 4%. The current interest rate for federal Stafford student loans is as high as 8%; private loan rates often top 14%.
Warren and Orman argued that since Americans collectively carry more than $1.2 trillion in student debt alone—a sum that doesn’t take into account mortgages or other personal debt—they cannot buy houses or cars or make other purchases that would stimulate the economy. Senate Republicans blocked another effort to bring the bill to vote on Tuesday. Warren promised Wednesday to “keep hitting at” it this term.
Both Warren and Orman pointed out repeatedly that student loans, unlike any other type of loan, cannot be forgiven under any circumstances, including bankruptcy or death. Those carrying student debt through retirement “will have their social security garnished,” Orman said, as an appalled Warren echoed her: “Your social security check gets garnished!” Americans who die with student loans often pass on that debt to surviving family members.
One of the challenges in passing the student loan reform bill, Warren said, is that the U.S. government currently makes $66 billion every year off of the interest from federally-backed student loans. Her bill would reduce that profit substantially, but proposes making up the difference through a stipulation in the tax code requiring that those making more than a million dollars per year pay taxes at the same rate middle class families pay, she said.
Toward the end of the discussion, the moderators, Politico’s Mike Allen and Maggie Haberman, changed the topic to the upcoming 2014 and 2016 elections. Orman said that while she would vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016, she would much prefer to vote for Warren, who she described as her “political voice.” Warren smiled but didn’t respond.
Allen later asked Warren who her favorite Republican is, to which Warren quickly answered, much to the delight of the crowd, “Living or dead?” When Allen pressed her to come up with her favorite living Republican, Warren suggested Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who voted for the student loan reform bill and is working on housing finance reform.
Allen later asked what Warren what her reaction would be if Republicans win the majority in the Senate in November, and Mitch McConnell, who is facing a tight race in Kentucky, succeeds and rises to Senate majority leader. “I’ll be blunt,” Warren said. “I hope that he doesn’t come back.”
In one of the final questions, Haberman asked Warren which Republican she would like to see run in 2016. Warren just laughed. “No,” she said. “No.”
"We don't want them. We won't allow them"
Iraq neither wants nor needs foreign ground troops in its battle against Islamist militants who have strongholds in the norther part of the country, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Wednesday.
“Not only is it not necessary,” Abadi told the Associated Press. “We don’t want them. We won’t allow them. Full stop.”
Abadi argued that Iraq’s army is capable of waging the ground campaign against the militant group Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS). His wariness of help from foreign troops comes with U.S. lawmakers questioning the scope of American involvement in the campaign against ISIS, which Obama Administration officials have said will not involve ground troops in combat.
The Wire: “StopHillary PAC Wants Clinton to Answer for Benghazi in Key Presidential Primary States”
By Arit John
September 17, 2014
StopHillary PAC, the group dedicated to smothering Hillary Clinton's unofficial presidential campaign in its crib, has released a new commercial demanding Clinton "break the silence" on Benghazi. The ad will air in New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina, the group told The Washington Post.
The ad calls for people to sign a citizen's subpoena of Clinton, who is accused of being silent on Benghazi. Of course, the former Secretary of State did testify — in front of both the House and the Senate — in January 2013. She was grilled by several Republicans, including Sen. John McCain and Rep. Jeff Duncan, who brought up her famous "what difference does it make?" comment over what prompted the attack.
But as The Post notes, part of the benefit of getting people to sign the citizens' subpoena is getting their names and email address to build email lists. The commercials will also coincide with the first meeting of the House Benghazi Select Committee which was formed four months ago.
And, of course, wherever Clinton goes Benghazi questions are sure to follow. A recent analysis by Media Matters found that Fox News covered Benghazi an average of 13 times a week between September 11, 2012 and May 2, 2014. Out of nearly 1,100 segments, there were 105 attempts to tie the attack to Clinton's presidential ambitions. More recently, Fox News visited the New York stop of Clinton's book tour to ask people if they thought Benghazi would hurt her 2016 chances.