Former U.N. Ambassador Tom Pickering and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen refused an invitation to testify at the Benghazi hearings on Wednesday about their Accountability Review Board (ARB) report on the attack.
The panel of the ARB is required by law to present their findings to Congress. The men told the House Oversight Committee it was not a time issue, but they do not want to testify about their ARB work.
Their ARB report found the State Department at fault for failing to secure Benghazi, but Pickering and Mullen never interviewed then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in preparing their report. Pickering and Mullen defended their report and released this statement on Monday as reported by FOX News:
From the beginning of the ARB process, we had unfettered access to everyone and everything including all the documentation we needed. Our marching orders were to get to the bottom of what happened, and that’s what we did.
On May 2nd, Breitbart News reported the Office of the Inspector General would conduct a review of the ARB panel’s investigative process.