Lead FBI Benghazi Investigator Has Never Testified Before Congress

Kevin Kolbye, Assistant Special Agent in Charge for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Dallas, served as the on-scene commander for the Benghazi investigation but has not yet testified before Congress about what he knows.

Republican Congressman Frank Wolf wants to know why.

Kolbye addressed the GovSec West Conference in Dallas in late November and discussed various aspects of the Benghazi investigation with attendees. During his presentation, Kolbye noted that, contrary to initial reports, FBI assets were on the scene in Benghazi within a few days after the attack. Breitbart News reported that story when it broke.

Kolbye explained, “We have people in a lot of other foreign countries who are [legal attachés]. We have investigative teams that are well equipped.” In response to claims that the FBI could not access the site because of security clearance issues, he affirmed, “We were there.”

Rep. Wolf was amazed that this information didn’t reach Congress sooner. He told Breitbart News last Thursday:

I’m shocked to find that someone said that they were there in several days and all the reports we’ve had both from the administration and from the news media was that it took several weeks before they got there. Secondly, I don’t understand why this guy, Kevin Kolbye, wasn’t called as a witness by several other committees in Congress.

The Benghazi attacks occurred on September 11, 2012. The Washington Post reported on September 18 that FBI agents had arrived in Libya, but later information indicated that they were delayed en route to Benghazi. On October 4, the Associated Press (AP) reported that a team of FBI agents arrived in Benghazi and stayed for only one day due to clearance issues. “Agents arrived in Benghazi before dawn on Thursday and departed after sunset, after weeks of waiting for access to the crime scene to investigate the Sept. 11 attack,” the report reads.

Kolbye’s claim that FBI staff was on-site at Benghazi flies in the face of these reports.

Rep. Wolf is leading the charge to untangle the complicated web of circumstances surrounding Benghazi. Wolf has been the driving force behind the idea of forming a Benghazi Select Committee to investigate the 2012 attack. While House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) appears unmotivated to appoint members to one, a recent McLaughlin-Caddell poll showed that two thirds of Americans want a Select Committee; this number includes 83 percent of Republicans as well as 58 percent of independents who “believe it is important for a special committee to get the truth about Benghazi.”

Speaking with Breitbart News, Rep. Wolf expressed his outrage at Congress’s lack of critical information:

If [Kolbye] was the on-scene guy leading this investigation, you would think he would be one of the very first people [Congress] actually called, and I think that’s another reason why I think he should be called. Kevin Kolbye should be called publicly. If he can testify or give a speech at a paid event in Texas where people had to pay, I think we can let the American people know for free. Most members of Congress have no idea what happened. And if they don’t have any idea what happened — the American people, they don’t know what happened. This guy ought to be called, and we need to have a select committee to have all these guys called under oath. Here he was at a conference where people had to pay $400, not under oath. And yet nobody in Congress can even talk to him? That’s crazy.