Washington (GoinsReport.com) -- After a long, near-five hour wait, the Senate Select Intelligence Committee
emerged from their first closed hearing with intelligence officials on
Thursday evening (November 15, 2012) tight-lipped. But of what they could say, the committee
acknowledged that they did view a rendition of events put together by
the National Counter-Terrorism center.
"We saw a real-time film put together by NCTC of exactly what happened," Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) said Thursday evening.
For
almost four hours, members of the committee held a closed hearing with
intelligence officials. Scheduled witnesses included Director of National
Intelligence James Clapper, acting CIA director Michael Morrell, FBI
Deputy Director Sean Joyce, Undersecretary of State for Management Pat
Kennedy, and National CounterTerrorism Center Director Matthew Olsen.
All but one member of the Senate
Select Intelligence Committee was in attendance at the closed hearing
Thursday evening, Feinstein said, but did not name who.
"I’m not
going to tell you what questions were asked or what answers given. This
is just the first step in the inquiry," Feinstein said.
But Feinstein announced that the committee will hold another two full
hearings, when members of Congress come back to work, presumably after
the Thanksgiving holiday, and said she anticipates a public hearing to
"make our findings that can be unclassified released."
"I think
it was a good hearing," Feinstein said. "I think it gave us an idea as
to the depth and breadth of this future areas to question. We have just
to continue to do so and plow through this until we believe we have
enough information."
Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) said that he learned that "mistakes were made" and that "we got to learn from that."
"Our
membership asked some very hard and very tough questions of our
witnesses today and were going to continue to do that at our subsequent
hearings Mrs. Chairman outlined," Chambliss said.
Chambliss
praised the "professionalism" of all who were involved in the hearing,
namely, the "men and women who are in the intelligence committee and who
are in the armed services who were involved here obviously as well as
the State Department."
"There were some very heroic acts that
took place," Chambliss said. "That does not in any way
minimize obviously the fact that we lost four Americans."
General
David Petraeus is scheduled to testify Friday morning. To her
understanding, General Petraeus went to Tripoli and interviewed many of
the people involved. Additionally, she said the purpose of the closed
hearing was Benghazi and she was not willing to comment on the FBI
investigation.
When asked if she could say when the Intelligence
Comittee obtained the film "to help us with the timeline of what they
knew and when they knew it." Feinstein didn't comment on when the film
was put together, but noted that the film was a "composite" created from
"a number of sources."
"It is real time," Feinstein said, adding
that it does begin from before the incident started and goes through
the "incident and the exodus."
When asked whether Ambassador Stevens was in the film, Feinstein again didn't comment.
While
she did not comment on whether the version of events she learned
Thursday held up to the version presented by the Obama administration
shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks or if what she learned called into
question some of the talking points being raised at the time, she
avoided answering those questions not based on the confidentiality of
the matter but because there are three more hearings ahead and she
doesn't "have all the information" she needs.
However, she said that "a lot of light" was shown on what happened on September 11, 2012 at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.
"One
of the things that we want to do is give any real opinions or analysis because we dont have all the facts," Feinstein said.
"We are in effect fact finding," she continued.
When
asked if the CIA asked for back up from Special Ops units in the region
and in Europe, she was informed on what "assets were there and what
assets were not there" in Benghazi.
[Editor's Note: This is previously unpublished news]
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