The chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi told reporters Tuesday that the White House, State Department and Pentagon were watching when a single mortar strike killed CIA contract security officers Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, as the two former Navy SEALS where defending the CIA’s Benghazi annex.
The panel was charged by the House and led by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), to investigate the circumstances, events and causes of the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attacks on American diplomatic and intelligence personnel and facilities at Benghazi, Libya. In addition to Woods and Doherty, Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and IT specialist Sean Smith were killed earlier in the attack – all part of a 13-hour multiple wave assault by Al Qaeda-linked militia.
“I know the drone was in place at the time of the mortar attacks,” said . “I do not know the degree of granularity and particularity of the drone video footage.”
Gowdy, who was visibly shaken by the gravitas of his words, said when he spoke to family members of the four men killed at Benghazi, they ask him a different set of questions than the ones reporters ask him.
“When you meet with the families privately,” he said. “There are incredible personal questions. While these are ‘four fellow Americans’ to us, they are sons and husbands and brothers to people we talked to in the very beginning and the last group that I talked to – the questions are very, very different.”
Gowdy said, “Even though it is not in the report, I am also happy that we were able to answer some of the intimate questions that were asked by the families.”