Republicans Inexplicably Delay Today’s Interview with General Carter Ham
WASHINGTON—Today, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, Ranking Member of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, issued the following statement after Republicans delayed until June the Select Committee’s interview originally scheduled for today with General Carter Ham, the former Commander of U.S. Africa Command:
“Republicans keep blaming everyone else under the sun for their own repeated delays, but they are the ones who have dragged out this investigation as close as possible to the election. It is inexplicable that Republicans waited until after their widely-criticized hearing with Secretary Clinton to even seek an interview with General Ham, and even more inexplicable that they jerked him around like this.”
Background:
The Select Committee’s Chairman, Trey Gowdy, waited until February 5, 2016, to request an interview with General Ham—638 days after the Select Committee was established. General Ham has already engaged with congressional and other investigators as many as nine times about the attacks.
Gowdy’s request for General Ham’s interview came after his former Republican Chief Counsel stated repeatedly in closed door interviews with other top military officials that “nothing could have affected what occurred in Benghazi” in terms of the military’s response on the night of the attacks.
General Ham agreed to be interviewed by the Benghazi Committee today, and he arranged to fly to Washington and review classified materials in order to prepare for the interview. However, last week, Republicans tried to change the interview to a time they knew General Ham was not available.
The Select Committee has no other scheduled events today that would have prevented Republicans from keeping this interview date. Nevertheless, they have now delayed General Ham’s interview until the week of June 6, 2016.
Even Gowdy’s Republican colleagues are now raising concerns about the delayed timing of the Select Committee’s report. Republican Rep. Tom Cole from Oklahoma stated, “I think the later it goes, the more politicized it seems.”
General Ham, who at the time of the Benghazi attacks was the Commander of U.S. Africa Command, has already spoken to Congress about the Benghazi attacks on multiple occasions.
For example, on June 26, 2013, General Ham told the House Armed Services Committee Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations that in his military judgment, close air support would not have made a difference that night:
“It was a very uncertain situation in an environment which we know we had an unknown surface-to-air threat with the proliferation particularly of shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, many of which remain unaccounted for. But mostly it was a lack of understanding of the environment, and hence the need for the Predator to try to gain an understanding of what was going on. So again, I understand that others may disagree with this, but it was my judgment that close air support was not the right tool for that environment.”
General Ham again confirmed his previous statements in a transcribed interview with congressional staff almost a year later, when he explained:
“[G]iven the uncertainty of the situation, given the complexity of a large urban environment, and the fact that the first attack subsided pretty significantly about an hour or so after it began, that it was my military judgment that strike aircraft, close air support were not the appropriate tool.”
This week, Gowdy conceded on national television during an interview on FOX News that the military could not have gotten to Benghazi in time to save the lives of the four Americans killed that night: “Whether or not they could have gotten there in time, I don’t think there is any issue with respect to that—they couldn’t.”
Also this week, House Republican leaders met behind closed doors to rule “out of order” an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act offered by Rep. Jackie Speier to require the Department of Defense to publicly report within 30 days the total amount of taxpayer funds it has been forced to spend in response to the numerous investigations into the Benghazi attacks.
In his May 2015 interim staff report, Gowdy stated his intention to interview General Ham beginning June 2015, but then waited more than seven months to request it.