Boehner: W.H. should release Benghazi emails By: Tarini Parti May 9, 2013 03:10 PM EDT

Speaker John Boehner is calling on the White House to release a series of key emails related to Benghazi following Wednesday’s hearing on the attacks. “We learned that on September 12 — the day after the attacks and four days before [U.N. Ambassador] Susan Rice’s TV appearances — a senior State Department official emailed her superiors to relay that she had told the Libyan ambassador the attack was conducted by Islamic terrorists,” Boehner told reporters during his weekly remarks. “The State Department would not allow our committees to keep copies of this email when it was reviewed. I would call on the President to order the State Department to release this email so the American people can see it.” (PHOTOS: 10 slams on Obama and Benghazi) The Ohio Republican went on to say that the White House has claimed it made “stylistic changes” to Rice’s talking points, but it failed to mention that senior officials directed the changes to the talking points. “Last November, the President said he was ‘happy to cooperate in any way Congress wants.’ This is his chance,” Boehner said. “The truth shouldn’t be hidden from the American people behind a White House firewall. Four Americans lost their lives in this terrorist attack. Congress will continue to investigate this issue, using all of the resources at our disposal.” Boehner’s call comes the day after Gregory Hicks, a foreign service officer and ex-deputy chief of mission in Libya, gave emotional testimony in a House hearing on Benghazi, describing in detail what happened the night of the attacks. Republicans, who have maintained that the White House and the State Department didn’t do enough to help U.S. personnel under attack in September 2012, are seizing on Hicks’ testimony in their claims that the Obama administration is hiding details related to the attacks.

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