Overnight Defense: Benghazi panel challenges State on emails


By Kristina Wong and Martin Matishak - 06/22/15 07:16 PM EDT

THE TOPLINE: The House panel investigating the deadly 2012 siege in Benghazi, Libya released 60 emails from Hillary Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal on Monday and is challenging the State Department on whether it already had those communications.

"These emails should have been part of the public record when Secretary Clinton left office and at a bare minimum included when the State Department released Clinton's self-selected records on Libya," House Select Committee on Benghazi Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said in a statement.

"For that reason, the committee has made the decision to release the latest set of Clinton's public records unearthed by the committee."

Gowdy gave the department until the end of the day on Monday to determine whether it has copies of the 60 emails Blumenthal himself turned over to the select committee earlier this month.State said it is working "right now to determine" if any of Blumenthal's memos match the nearly 300 emails from Clinton's private email server that it made public last month, spokesman John Kirby said during a press briefing.

That first batch showed Clinton received about 25 memos from Blumenthal regarding Libya while she was secretary of State.
Clinton, a 2016 presidential candidate has said that she turned over all work-related emails to State before erasing the remaining personal messages from her server.

Gowdy also rejected a request from the panel's Democrats and Blumenthal's attorney to release a transcript of the nearly nine-hour long deposition that Blumenthal gave the select committee last week.

The nearly 180 pages of emails released Monday stretch from February 2011 to December 2012. They cite intelligence from a number of sources, including some inside the Libyan transitional government, about security conditions on the ground during and after the country's civil war.

The memos also include a number of press clippings written about the conflict.

ADDITIONALLY IN THE SAME BRIEF:

STRIKE HITS BENGHAZI 'PERSON OF INTEREST':

The Pentagon announced Monday that a U.S. airstrike in Mosul earlier in June killed an Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorist believed linked to the 2012 Benghazi attack.

Ali Awni al-Harzi was a known ISIS "operative and organizational intermediary who was a person of interest" in the Sept. 11, 2012 attack against the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, said Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Steve Warren in a statement.

The airstrike took place on June 15 in Mosul, a key Iraqi city that fell to ISIS fighters in June 2014.

Al-Harzi operated "closely with multiple ISIL-associated extremists throughout North Africa and the Middle East," Warren said, using another name for the terror group.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the Intelligence committee, said al-Harzi was "responsible for planning hundreds of suicide attacks across the world" and was one of the first foreign fighters to join ISIS.

Schiff said al-Harzi had a previous leadership role in Al Qaeda in Iraq, and was also responsible for recruiting foreign fighters and sending them to fight in Syria.

"He is also suspected of involvement in their hostage program, and to have played a role in the 2011 attack on the US consulate in Benghazi that tragically killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens," Schiff said.
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/ov...tate-on-emails