MSNBC "Meet the Press" - Transcript: Benghazi
Interview
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REP. DARRELL ISSA (R-CA/Chair Oversight and Government Reform Committee): The fact is we want the facts. We're entitled to the facts. The American people were effectively lied to for a period of about a month. That's important to get right.
GREGORY: And I just want to be clear what you believe the lie was.
REP. ISSA: This was a terrorist attack from the get-go. It was never about a video.
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GREGORY: Do you-- have you changed your mind based on The New York Times investigation? Were you wrong about that?
REP. DARRELL ISSA (R-CA/Chair Oversight and Government Reform Committee): Well, The New York Times, quite frankly, David, did some very good-- David Kirkpatrick did some very good work. But interviewing people in Benghazi after the fact, after the world has been told about this video, is really not real-time. So we have seen no evidence that the video was widely seen in Benghazi, a very isolated area, or that it was a leading cause. What we do know is September 11 was not an accident. These are terrorist groups, some of them linked to or self-effacing or self-claimed as al Qaeda linked, but I think David made a-- and before I go on, I wanted to make a very good point that David put out. Look, it is not about al Qaeda as the only terrorist organization any more than Palestinian, Islamic, jihad or Hamas or Hezbollah.
GREGORY: But you-- no, no, but you said repeatedly that it was al Qaeda, and the reason that matters is that
REP. ISSA: No
GREGORY: you and other critics said the president specifically won't acknowledge it's al Qaeda because it's an election year and he wants to say that after bin Laden, it's been decimated and would make him look bad if it were al Qaeda.
REP. ISSA: al Qaeda is not decimated and there was a group there that was involved that is linked to al Qaeda. What we never said, and I didn't have the-- the security look behind the door, that's for other members of Congress, of what the intelligence were on the exact correspondents with al Qaeda, that sort of information. Those sources and methods I've never claimed. What I have claimed, and rightfully so, is Ambassador Stevens and others alerted well in advance that they had a security threat, including, of course, the attempt-- two attempts to kill the ambassador, the British ambassador, the closing down of these facilities and so on. On the day that the ambassador was killed, he said it was-- in a cable, it was not a question of when-- or if but when there would be an attack. So we had warning beforehand, and we-- instead of increasing security, we reduced security.
GREGORY: Right.
REP. ISSA: During the attack, eight and a half hours, we didn't launch so much as one F-16. There's a lot of questions about not what the military capability is today, which has been improved. But what the military capability in response was there and why there wasn't a greater attempt.
GREGORY: But-- but when you
REP. ISSA: And then lastly, there was this clear attempt, and Andrea said it very well, there was an attempt to put a-- put a bright spot, and maybe it was to cover up CIA activities, but they went out on five stations and told a story that was at best a cover-up for CIA, and at worst, something that cast-- cast away this idea that there was a real terrorist operation in Benghazi. And by the way, there is nobody from the U.S. government in Benghazi today. It is too dangerous to go there.
GREGORY: Andrea, question on this?
MS. MITCHELL: One point is that they were denying a CIA outpost in the initial days because it was still too dangerous and because we don't talk about intelligence.
REP. ISSA: We still call it the annex officially.
MS. MITCHELL: We still call it the annex. But to the point of why use the-- the term al-Qaeda. Because you and other members of Congress are sophisticated in this and know that when you say al Qaeda, people think central al Qaeda. They don't think militias that may be inspired by bin Laden and his-- and his other followers. So it-- it is a hot button for political reasons from the administration's view.
REP. ISSA: But Andrea, it was accurate. There was a group that was involved that claims an affiliation with al Qaeda. Now, al Qaeda is not a central command in control. It was, in fact, a loose group that could take general statements and act on them. The important thing in our investigation and the Oversight Committee investigation, where people have said under oath repeatedly they were not given the security they asked for in advance, they can't understand why there were not clear attempts to help them during those eight and a half hours.
GREGORY: All right. But these -- these are separate issues, chairman.
REP. ISSA: And-- and then afterwards, the facts were not properly stated.
GREGORY: But the key-- the key question is, do you stand by that the administration lied about who was behind it and what initially happened given this reporting?
REP. ISSA: I think David Kirkpatrick very clearly says that the statements made were false and misleading. He says that in his report, I don't have to state anything. I'll stand, quite frankly, behind what the Kirkpatrick
GREGORY: Misleading based on the amount of information they had at the time.
REP. ISSA: No, not at all.
GREGORY: Isn't there a distinction between fog of war and an attempt to deceive?
REP. ISSA: Gregory Hicks hearing the last words of Ambassador Stevens to the outside world was told, we're under attack. And under oath when asked, if you-- if the ambassador had seen a protest or anything else earlier, would he have reported it, he said of course, yes. The fact is people from this administration, career professionals, have said under oath there was no evidence of any kind of reaction to a video and, in fact, this was a planned attack that came quickly. That's the evidence we have by people who work for the U.S. government and were under oath.
GREGORY: And again, the reporting today indicating that there was no evidence to be found of di-- of direct al Qaeda-- core al Qaeda link to all, this was clearly an attack as people on the ground felt it was.
REP. ISSA: Look, David-- David, in fairness, Kirkpatrick doesn't have the classified information that Mike Rogers and others have, and neither do I. I have never asserted that there was
GREGORY: Classified information can also be based on incomplete information. It's real-time. If intelligence were always right, we wouldn't have a lot of the oversight in this country we have. Initial reports are often wrong, are they not?
REP. ISSA: What we know, David, is that the initial reports did not name this video as the prime cause. There was a small piece of information in a cable, they seized on it along with a lot of other information and chose to use that as a talking point. And Andrea, I think you hit it right on the head. If this was always about trying to deflect the fact that there was a larger other facility, fine, but the administration should honestly say that. We've already had Director Clapper say he effectively, he lied as little as possible before the Congress.
MS. MITCHELL: But didn't the administration-- Mister Chairman, didn't the administration's own review board, the independent review board, Admiral Mullen and Ambassador Pickering come to the conclusion that the security failures you cited from Gregory Hicks and other witnesses were accurate? And it was a slamming report in terms of the security.
REP. ISSA: It was a slamming report. My concern with that report is it doesn't go high enough. It doesn't go to Undersecretary Kennedy and others who had direct responsibility. But having said that, yes, they made it clear that they should have had security they didn't have. Admiral Mullen in front of my committee, when asked, if they had had a fast team like Yemen had or like Libya has today, would there have been an attack and in his opinion, with those kinds of forces behind the walls, there wouldn't have been an attack.
GREGORY: Let me-- I want to turn to Congressman Castro just before I let you go, I quickly want to touch on Obamacare, which is a big area of concern for you, especially the Oversight Committee. Your colleague in the Senate, Senator Ron Johnson told The New York Times this on Friday. And I want to put it on the screen. "It's no longer just a piece of paper that you can repeal and it goes away. There is something there. We have to recognize that reality. We have to deal with the people that are currently covered under Obamacare." Some 400,000 in your state of California have signed up and have enrolled in Obamacare. Will Obamacare survive, whether you like it or not?
REP. ISSA: Obamacare is a reality. Unfortunately, it's a failed program that is taking a less than perfect health care system from the standpoint of cost and making it worse. So the damage that Obamacare has already done and will do on January 1st, 2nd and 3rd will have to be dealt with as part of any reform. Some of these things that the administration talks about as good are, in fact, large expansions in Medicaid. The fact that people right-- well into the middle class are going to get subsidies, is going to cause them to look at health care differently. Health care sort of in a Third World way of do we get subsidies from the government for our milk, for our gasoline and, oh, by the way, for our health care? So as Americans, we're going to have to ask the question of have we done anything to drive down the cost of health care? The answer obviously is no, we're going up. Are we making it more affordable with government subsidies? Yes, but are government subsidies the answer or do we really need to look at the cost drivers of health care to get effective health care delivered at an affordable price which was the stated goal of the Affordable Care Act.
GREGORY: All right. Congressman Issa, thank you very much.
REP. ISSA: Thank you.
GREGORY: A lot to get to this morning. I would have loved even more time on health care, but we're out of time this morning.
REP. ISSA: NSA next time.
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