Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) announced that she and vice-chairman Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) will move forward with plans to call David Petraeus before their panel to testify on Benghazi.
Petraeus was supposed to testify on Thursday, but that was called off when he resigned as CIA director on Friday. Acting Director Mike Morell will testify in his place.
“It’s also my intention — this has not yet been announced — to talk with General Petraeus, Director Petraeus. This ties into his trip that he made just before all of this broke to some Middle Eastern countries, including Libya,” Feinstein told Wolf Blitzer on CNN.
“This afternoon, I’ll be meeting with the ranking member, our vice chairman, Saxby Chambliss. We will go over the plan for this. We will both meet with Mr. Morell, and then we will proceed,” she said.
Such testimony would be in a classified setting.
On the Petraeus scandal, the chairwoman said she has “many questions about the nature of the FBI investigation, how it was instituted.”
“…I understand protecting people. I don’t understand doing it all under a cloud of secrecy, even people with responsibilities are not even notified so they can ask questions about its propriety.”
Feinstein said she and Chambliss — along with the House intelligence leaders, Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.) — met with the latest scandal-embroiled general, Afghanistan commander John Allen, in late spring in Kabul.
“He talked about his mission, how it was going, and I think the four of us came away with a sense that he is, in fact, a fine commander,” she said. “I don’t know exactly what the situation is here. We will look at it, we will ask for a report, we will gather the materials, we will ask to see classified documents that may have been on Ms. Broadwell’s — that’s another — Ms. Broadwell’s computer.”
Feinstein said she spoke with Attorney General Eric Holder last night, and he agreed to present those to the committee.
She wouldn’t speculate, though, on whether Petraeus or Allen were allowing access to classified information.
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