Issa: ‘I Will Get to the Top of Benghazi’

U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-CA, was in Concord on Feb. 17, to offer some thoughts about the 2016 presidential primaries and speak about his work as chairman of the House Oversight Committee.

About 250 people attended the fundraising dinner described as one of the most successful events put on by the Concord Republican City Committee and the Merrimack County Republicans.

During a short question and answer period, Issa was asked about Benghazi, the attack on the American Embassy in Libya, and whether or not the committee had been able to track the timeline of the phone calls between the president, the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, and other people involved.

Issa said that the only public information available was that the Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Gen. Carter Ham, the commander of Africom, all told President Barack Obama about the attacks, sometime during the afternoon of the day in question, and then the president went back to the White House.

The question that needed to be answered, Issa said, was why Panetta didn’t act or ask American allies to act to save those who were killed at the embassy.

Issa said he suspected that either Clinton or Obama told Panetta to stand down and not act or Panetta was told to do something and just didn’t do his job.

“Those questions have to be answered,” he said. “So when people ask me, ‘When are you going to get to the bottom of Benghazi?,’ you can tell them, he answered, ‘I will get to the top of Benghazi’ … and that’s where we have to go.”