CNN "Newsroom" - Transcript: House Select Committee on Benghazi

Interview

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

COSTELLO: My next guest agrees. He's called this proposed committee, quote, "a colossal waste of time, a red herring and a waste of taxpayer money." He is Congressman Adam Schiff, a Democrat from -- California.

Good morning, Congressman.

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D), CALIFORNIA: Good morning, Carol. How are you?

COSTELLO: I'm good. So I'll put it right out there. It's nearly two years later and we still don't know who killed those four Americans in Libya. So how could this be a waste of time? Don't we owe it to the families of the victims to find out?

SCHIFF: Certainly not a waste of time to be going after their killers. And that is something that we're doing and something that we're following on the Intelligence committee. But this subcommittee is really set up with a wholly different purpose. It's a select committee on talking points.

It's a fundraising vehicle for the Republican Party and that, frankly, is really, you know, destructive and yet again partisan exercise that gets us unfortunately farther from a focus on bringing these people to justice, farther from a focus on where are we in terms of protecting our diplomatic facilities around the world.

That is really not what this select committee is interested in. It is really just interested in talking points and trying to embarrass the administration or trying to score political points against Hillary Clinton.

COSTELLO: Well, I must say House Speaker John Boehner was reluctant to form this committee. But as "The Washington Post's" Dana Milbank writes, quote, "If Republicans succeed in turning the Benghazi scandal from a nothing burger into a double Big Mac the Obama White House can blame its own secrecy and obsessive control over information."

And what he's specifically talking about is, had a memo allegedly suggesting Secretary Susan Rice's spin her TV talking points been released without a fight, this select committee would not be in the mix. And to make matters worse, Jay Carney denied the memo was even about Benghazi. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAY CARNEY, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Jon, again --

JONATHAN KARL, ABC NEWS: Why did it take a court case for you to release this?

CARNEY: Jon, I can say it again and again and I know you can keep asking again and again. This document was not about Benghazi.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: But it was. And if there's nothing to hide, why the secrecy? Why not just get all the information out there and get it out of the way?

SCHIFF: When you say that the e-mail from Ben Rhodes was about Benghazi, that's true if you consider that only two sentences of a four-page memo were about Benghazi. And those two sentences in the Rhodes memo about Benghazi made no mention of a video. So it really is I think conflating all the rest of what was discussed in that which really was focused on --

(CROSSTALK)

COSTELLO: Well, then why didn't they turn it over? If it was only two lines, what difference did it make? Why didn't they just turn it over?

SCHIFF: Well, I don't know the explanation for that. The White House, I think, has said that it wasn't -- the person who wrote the memo wasn't the subject of the subpoena. But I'm not part of the production team. I can't answer that. But I can tell you this, to use this e-mail as the justification for why all of a sudden the speakers had a change of heart really I think is just a pretext because the e-mail sheds absolutely no new light.

Those two sentences in the e-mail about Benghazi track the CIA talking points completely, so they were not at all inconsistent with anything that has been released in the 25,000 other pages. That's why this is a red herring. And of course, the formation of this committee has a lot more to do with Republican fundraising and Republican base motivation than it does in the Rhodes e-mail. I think it really has to be --

(CROSSTALK)

COSTELLO: And -- and you are right about --

SCHIFF: -- called for what it is.

COSTELLO: You are right about Republican fundraising, they are trying to fundraise off this Benghazi controversy.

You've also said it doesn't make sense for members of your party to participate in this panel. So if it's approved, will you boycott?

SCHIFF: Well, look, I'm going to accept whatever the leadership decides on this and I know it's a tough question. There are obviously strengths from not participating in my view. The advantage is not giving credibility to this partisan exercise, but if leadership ultimately concludes that it needs to have a seat at the table to make sure that they don't completely distort what the witnesses say, I will accept whatever decision that the leadership makes.

COSTELLO: Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff of California, thank you so much for joining me this morning. I appreciate it.

SCHIFF: You bet.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source