The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee argued on CNN yesterday that the Obama administration’s blaming of the Libya attack on an anti-Muhammad video “gave a permission slip to every bad guy across the Middle East to use that to their advantage.”
And, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) said, it then “resulted in U.S. taxpayer money being spent in Pakistan to try to defend the video that they believed was the problem” with a “significant ad buy” in the country.
“So they made all of these decisions and I argue maybe served to inflame the Middle East, inflame our troubles, and are just now and they can’t even quite yet get out of this you know circling of the wagons, if you will,” he said.
Rogers said he wants to go through all of the information on what the administration knew when, but so far has seen some “incredibly disturbing information.”
“I think Americans have the right and deserve the right to know it was their ambassador that was killed. There is certainly lots of misinformation flowing and I think political interpretation of intelligence is always a dangerous thing,” he said. “And I don’t care who does it. And lastly, what are we doing to track these people down and send the signal that we will not tolerate this? We risk another serious attack by not taking this seriously and that’s my concern.”
The chairman said it would have been “great” if the administration “would have come out and said we didn’t know what happened, we’re going to take a few days and try to figure this out.”
“That’s not what they did,” he added.
Congress is currently in the campaign recess, but Rogers said his panel intends to get to the bottom of the Benghazi scandal.
“As an intelligence committee we have other sources and our own methods to go out and collect information that we on an investigation will review like this,” he said.
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