Benghazi Committee demands interview with DOD official

The House Select Committee on Benghazi is demanding to interview a senior Pentagon official who earlier this year criticized its Republican leaders over their “multiple and changing requests” for information.

On Friday, the committee issued a subpoena to Stephen Hedger, the assistant secretary of Defense for legislative affairs, claiming that he had misled the public and the committee about the Pentagon’s efforts to follow up its requests.

{mosads}The request came a day after the panel announced that it had interviewed an Air Force drone operator whose appearance the Pentagon had appeared to be stonewalling.

In April, Hedger said that the Pentagon had “expended significant resources” to locate the man, who identified himself on a conservative talk radio show as “John from Iowa” three years ago, but had come up empty. Moreover, the request was “unnecessary,” Hedger claimed, because the panel had already received videotape from drones active when four Americans were killed during 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

However, the unidentified operator is an active duty member of the Air Force, the Benghazi committee has said, and the Pentagon should have been able to locate him easily.

“This Pentagon political appointee claimed in an official letter to the committee the Department of Defense could not find a requested witness, despite expending ‘significant resources’ searching for him,” Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said in a statement on Friday. “Mr. Hedger will now have the opportunity to detail exactly what ‘resources’ he ‘expended’ and how.

“I look forward to him explaining the serious questions that have arisen with respect to this matter, including whether they are related to incompetence or deliberate concealment of the witness from a congressional inquiry.”

The committee’s move to issue a subpoena for Hedger is an escalation of the simmering tensions between the Benghazi panel and the Pentagon, which have percolated in recent weeks.

Democrats have long said the panel is a waste of time and a thinly veiled partisan attack on the Obama administration and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. “John from Iowa”’s appearance before the committee this week yielded no new information, committee Democrats have said.

“This latest abuse of authority by House Republicans is ridiculous and a desperate distraction from a failed investigation,” Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the panel’s ranking member, said in a statement.

“There was absolutely no reason to unilaterally subpoena the legislative staff of the Pentagon — after ignoring their request for a meeting — except to retaliate against the Defense Department for exposing the select committee’s abuses, delay this partisan investigation even further into the election season, and distract from the fact that the Republicans have come up empty in their three-year attack on Hillary Clinton.”

The Benghazi panel was created in May of 2014.

The committee said that Hedger had been asked to testify behind closed doors next Wednesday.