sad that the islamic terrorist in the white house can kill who ever he wants and no one stops him i hope he kills all of you

State Department Rejects Issa’s Demand For Access To Benghazi Whistleblowers, Says Its Investigation Of Itself Was Enough

Apr 29, 2013 1 Comment Jake Hammer
Excerpted from THE HILL
The State Department on Monday defended its decision not to have lower-level employees testify before Congress about last year’s Benghazi attack after Republican investigators demanded access to so-called “whistleblowers.”
House oversight chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry last week demanding access to employees who may have direct knowledge of the attack that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans last Sept. 11.
The department has resisted the request in the past, sending then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her two deputies to answer lawmakers’ questions instead.
“We think that we’ve done an independent investigation, that it’s been transparent, thorough, credible, and detailed, and that we’ve shared those findings with the U.S. Congress,” State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said. “And that should be enough.”
Ventrell said the employees who were present during the attack or were otherwise involved have already provided “extensive testimony” to the FBI and the State Department’s independent review board, which issued a scathing report last year. He said they’re back on duty and at their posts around the world.
“The standard practice, going back for a very long time, is that there are senior officers who are willing to testify on behalf of this department about our operations,” he said. “We don’t sort of have people at the operational level necessarily as witnesses who are testifying.”
“The bottom line is that congressional testimony is at the deputy assistant secretary level and above. And just as you wouldn’t have necessarily a soldier or troops called as witnesses, you have their superior officers. That’s the same practice for the State Department.”
Ventrell defended Congress’s “prerogatives” to investigate allegations of wrongdoing. He then went on to criticize – without naming them – the “many folks who are, in a political manner, trying to sort of use this for their own political means, or ends.”
Issa counters that State Department employees have approached his committee about their concerns with the events leading up to the attack and its aftermath. His committee and four others last week released a 46-page report – lambasted by Democrats – that accuses Clinton of approving lax security and seeking to hide her department’s responsibility in talking points shared with the public after the attack.
“The Department is interfering with its employees’ right to communicate with Congress,” Issa wrote to Kerry on Friday. “To date, the State Department has not even taken [the] modest step to assure whistleblowers that they will not face retaliation from the department.”