The CIA has weighed in on the Republican Benghazi Committee’s investigation of Hillary Clinton, after Democrats in the House asked the spy agency to declassify some of the numerous details which had been redacted in the various government documents which have been presented as evidence against Clinton. So much of the context has been blacked out that it’s been difficult to tell what the documents actually say. The response from the CIA is stunning: the Republicans are simply lying.
All along, Benghazi Committee Chariman Trey Gowdy, a republican congressman from South Carolina, has insisted that the documents in question were heavily blacked out because they contained information which had been classified by the CIA. But Elijah Cummings, a democratic congressman from Maryland, wrote a letter to the CIA asking it to reveal more details. The agency responded by stating that there never was any classified information in the documents and that it hadn’t blacked out anything.
Under pressure, Gowdy has now admitted that he himself redacted portions of the documents without anyone’s knowledge or approval, as dug up by Daily Kos. His claim is that he decided certain details were too sensitive to be released to the public. But now that the CIA has said otherwise, he’ll have no choice but to release the full documents in their proper context. And now that the CIA has confirmed Gowdy has been lying all along, he’ll have to explain that as well. This means that the CIA, the FBI, the State Department, and the Department of Justice have now all sided with Hillary Clinton over the Benghazi committee in various ways.