General David Petraeus Still Expected To Testify On Benghazi [Video]
According to Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, General David Petraeus will still need to give testimony regarding the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, despite his resignation as director of the CIA.
Last week, General Petraeus resigned after admitting that he had carried on an affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell. One of the more popular right-wing conspiracy theories since his resignation has been that he was forced out by the Obama Administration so that he wouldn’t be able to testify about the September Benghazi embassy attack that claimed the lives of four American citizens.
Still, the SIC chair is going to get Petraeus’s testimony one way or another.
“I have no doubt now that we will need to talk with David Petraeus and we will likely do that in closed session. But it will be done one way or another,” Feinstein told NBC News‘ Andrea Mitchell on Monday.
Feinstein may also choose to subpoena reports on a trip that General Petraeus took to Libya last year.
“I believe that Director Petraeus made a trip to the region shortly before this (Petraeus affair) became public,” Feinstein said. “We have asked to see the trip report. One person tells me he’s read it, and then we try to get it and they tell me it hasn’t been done. That’s unacceptable.”
Roughly a week and a half ago, Petraeus went to Tripoli and conducted a personal inquiry into the Benghazi attack. He has not commented on this trip publicly.
Feinstein has also questioned Paula Broadwell’s role as Petraeus’s biographer.
“It’s a rather confused situation because at one point she was an Army reservist doing intelligence-related work, at the same time she was doing a journalist’s work, a biography on David Petraeus,” Feinstein said. “It seems to me these two things don’t go together, it seems to me someone who becomes active military should not be writing a book.”
The Benghazi embassy attack has been the subject of controversy since early September. Many Republican lawmakers and the Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney have criticized the administration’s response to the terrorist attack, and there’s a general sense among some media outlets that the American public is not being told the full story.
Do you think that David Petraeus should testify on Benghazi? Is he being set up as a fall guy?
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