WASHINGTON — From the start, investigations of the September 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead, including the U.S. ambassador, have focused on three questions: Why was security insufficient at the Benghazi diplomatic compound? Why was there no timely U.S. military response? And why did the administration initially describe the attacks as a spontaneous protest, rather than a planned terrorist assault?
As the House Select Committee on Benghazi prepares to question former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday, those questions seem almost beside the point.
The answers, however unsatisfactory to some, have been provided repeatedly by Clinton and many other senior administration and intelligence officials over the past two years, as well as in a series of independent and bipartisan congressional reports, and are unlikely to change.
Instead, attention will be focused on how well Clinton, now the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, and her Republican critics behave during what is expected to be at least eight grueling hours of testimony.
Scheduled to begin at 10 a.m., the hearing is to consist of four rounds of questions lasting 10 minutes from each of its seven Republicans and five Democrats.
On the Republican side, members have been cautioned by their chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, a former prosecutor, to stick to the facts and avoid providing ammunition to Democrats who accuse them of having a political vendetta against Clinton.
Expecting Republicans to use a rapid-fire prosecutorial technique that allows little time for long answers, Democrats are prepared to restate the majority’s questions and try to elicit more thoughtful responses, while also seeking to focus attention on what the administration has done to avoid future such attacks.
Clinton has doubtless carefully studied her previous answers to the same questions at House and Senate hearings in January 2013, just one week before she left office, most of which passed the buck for security lapses to her subordinates.
The investigation, now in its 17th month, is one of the longest by a select committee. The panel has become a partisan food fight.
In the buildup to the hearing, the first time Clinton has testified on the matter since January 2013, accusations have flown back and forth like dinner rolls across a table. In the past week alone, Republicans have accused committee Democrats and the administration of continuing to withhold crucial information about the attacks.
Democrats have countered that Gowdy and his team are lying about what documents they have seen and what they prove. “It’s a bunch of hooey,” Rep. Adam B. Schiff, D-Calif., told MSNBC on Tuesday.
