Wednesday, January 15th would have been the birthday of security officer Tyrone Woods had he not been murdered in the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012, Breitbart News has learned.
House Speaker John Boehner resists forming a select committee to investigate the terrorist attack that took Woods’ life.
“January 15, 1971, 6:33 a.m., your arrival — Happy 43rd Birthday, Tyrone,” a Facebook posting on the Tyrone Woods’ Memorial page reads. “Today, many family members, friends, and strangers are thinking of you with honor and respect, holding you in their hearts with love, and wishing you a very special birthday. We celebrate you!”
Woods’ Facebook page, the Tyrone Woods Memorial page, has seen a spike in traffic in the past couple days. According to analytics on the site, about a thousand people have liked the page in the past few days, bringing the page to more than 7,500 likes.
“Tyrone Snowden Woods, Sr., Senior Chief Petty Officer, US Navy SEAL (ret.), perished September 12, 2012, while defending the U.S. Diplomatic Post and the CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya,” the page reads. It continues:
He was 41. The bravery of Tyrone and his SEAL teammate, Glen Doherty, saved the lives of thirty staff when they took up arms in an effort to protect the facilities as they were attacked by insurgents. Tyrone and several security guards left a secure annex location a kilometer away to make their way to the diplomatic outpost where they were able to gather the staff and safely transport them back to the CIA annex. There was approximately a 4-hour lull without any militant activity. It was about 4 a .m. that US Navy SEAL Glen Doherty and 7 US Marines arrived at the CIA annex. He then joined Tyrone on the roof to provide protection for all those occupying the annex. About 5 a.m. insurgent activity took the form of bursts of mortar fire directed to the annex roof. It was during this approximately 11-minute attack that Tyrone and Glen perished instantly.
Woods’ father, Charles Woods, was one of the signers of a recent letter to House Speaker John Boehner pressuring him to install a select committee, as a bill from Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) would do, to investigate the Benghazi attacks. Pat Smith, the mother of Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith, and Sean Smith’s uncle, Michael Ingmire, also signed the letter, as did a consortium of conservative and military community leaders.
“To date, five (5) different committees of the House have conducted separate hearings, uncovering information in a piecemeal fashion lacking professional investigators,” the coalition wrote to Boehner on Monday, January 6. “The five committees’ efforts are disjointed and uncoordinated. The Obama administration has benefited from that dysfunctional process to hide the truth.”
“Hardly any Obama administration witnesses have testified – publicly or privately,” they continued. “You have resisted repeated calls for the creation of a select investigative committee with subpoena authority. It appears that you are satisfied to allow that state of investigative incoherence and ambiguity to continue. The last public hearing by any of the five committees was held in September – four (4) months ago.”
According to the Library of Congress, Boehner has been resisting the efforts to install a select committee for months, despite the fact that Wolf’s bill H. Res 36 now has 181 cosponsors, including Wolf. Just this week, two more congressmen, Reps. Gary Miller (R-CA) and Vance McAllister (R-LA), cosponsored Wolf’s bill.
As Speaker of the House, Boehner is a member of what is called the “Super 8” in Congress. Other members include House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA); Senate Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV); Senate Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY); House Intelligence Committee Chairman and ranking member Reps. Mike Rogers (R-MI) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD), respectively; Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and ranking member Saxby Chambliss (R-GA). Because of their seniority in Congress, the “Super 8” gets briefed on intelligence matters in a much more intensive manner than other members.
“Some analysts believe your inaction and passivity towards getting to the truth concerning Benghazi is because you were briefed on the intelligence and special operations activities in Libya as a member of the ‘Super 8,'” they wrote, adding:
You may possess ‘guilty knowledge.’ We recall how then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi developed a form of ‘amnesia’ concerning a documented briefing she received on so-called ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ – later termed ‘torture’ for political purposes. Are you in the same position as your predecessor? Are you dodging a legitimate, thorough, coordinated investigation of Benghazi because it will damage your political position as Speaker?
In response to the families’ and leaders’ call for such a “legitimate, thorough, coordinated investigation” of the Benghazi scandal, rather than Boehner’s proceeding to install a select committee, an anonymous House GOP leadership aide told the Washington Examiner, “These complaints are absurd and factually inaccurate. The committees’ efforts are coordinated by a full-time leadership staffer, administration witnesses have testified publicly and privately, and the committees have both professional investigators and subpoena authority.”
Boehner’s aide, Michael Steel, told the Examiner that Boehner still wants to investigate Benghazi. “House Republicans are committed to finding the truth about what happened in Benghazi and why the White House failed to level with the American people,” Steel said.
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