UPDATE | Benghazi report faults security; no new Clinton allegations

Benghazi report faults security; no new Clinton allegations

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans on the House Benghazi Committee harshly faulted the Obama administration Tuesday for lax security and a slow response to the deadly 2012 attacks at the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Libya. But they produced no new allegations about then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The attacks, which killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, have been repeatedly cited by Republicans as a serious failure by the administration and by Clinton, who now is the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.

But the committee’s 800-page report, released by Republican members, offered no “smoking gun” about Clinton’s role. Rep. Trey Gowdy, the panel’s chairman, has repeatedly said the report was not aimed at her, though Democrats have accused the committee’s Republican majority of targeting her throughout.

The report from the two-year, $7 million investigation severely criticizes the military, CIA and administration officials for their response as the attacks unfolded the night of Sept. 11, 2012, and their subsequent explanation to the American people.

Eight hours after the two assaults began, “Not a single wheel of a single U.S. (military) asset had turned toward Libya,” Gowdy, R-S.C.., told reporters at a Capitol Hill news conference. “Think about that for a second.”

The Libya attacks became immediate political fodder, given their timing in the weeks before Obama’s re-election, and that has not abated despite seven previous investigations. There has been finger-pointing on both sides over security at the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi and whether the White House initially tried to portray the assault as a protest over an offensive, anti-Muslim video, instead of a calculated terrorist attack.

The GOP report offers no major revelations, but that won’t quiet the criticism of Clinton from conservatives, likely Republican rival Donald Trump and other detractors.

There was division even among the panel’s seven Republicans. Two of them, Mike Pompeo of Kansas and Jim Jordan of Ohio, wrote what amounts to a dissenting report that is far more scathing toward Clinton and Democrats generally.

Pompeo called Clinton’s actions in the wake of the attacks “morally reprehensible,” and he and Jordan said her public comments about the attacks differed sharply from her private assessments to members of her family and diplomats from other countries.

Gowdy said he was not prepared to pass judgment on Clinton and said that opinions about her do not appear in the panel’s report.

“This is not about one person,” he said.

Republican insistence that the investigation was not politically motivated was undermined last year when House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., suggested that the House committee could take credit for Clinton’s then-slumping poll numbers.