Shortly after Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) announced that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would testify before her Foreign Affairs Committee on Benghazi, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) followed suit.
The House committee will hear from Clinton a week from today at 1 p.m. Kerry’s panel will get first crack at her in a 9 a.m. hearing the same day.
“We ask our diplomats and development personnel to operate in some of the most dangerous places on the planet,” Kerry said late last night. “We owe it to them, and we owe it to the memory of Ambassador Chris Stevens and his three fellow Americans who lost their lives in Benghazi to get past the politics and focus on the substance of what happened and what it tells us about diplomatic security going forward.”
Kerry has been one of the more vocal congressional supporters of UN Ambassador Susan Rice. However, Kerry also wants the job for which Rice is also presumed to be under consideration: Clinton’s job.
Clinton will be presenting the findings of the State Department’s Accountability Review Board, a probe led by former UN Ambassador Thomas Pickering. Members of the board include former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen (ret.).
The hearings could reignite furor over the Benghazi attacks that has cooled with the Hill’s intense focus on fiscal cliff negotiations.
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