Replies

ISSA: The gentlelady’s time is expired, but if anyone wants to respond, they may.

Hearing none, we’ll go to the gentleman from Utah, Mr. Chaffetz.

CHAFFETZ: Thank you, Chairman.

And thank you all three for you being here. And thank (inaudible) the families of loved ones who’s (ph) passed away.

Mr. Hicks, I want to go back to that first plane from Tripoli. It went from Tripoli as — as the — noted in the ARB report. Included seven rescue team members, including two U.S. military personnel. That plane then returns to Tripoli. And the first rescue team that is there is now really engaged in the attack. You have no idea, it’s my understanding, as to when the attack is going to end, so the second rescue team is preparing to go.

And I want — you mentioned it in your opening statement, but if you could please go back to what this second team — now, the second team included four U.S. military. These are highly trained special forces personnel, one of which is a medic. And yet these military personnel do not operate under your authority and your permission is not enough for them to go. Explain to me again exactly what happened.

HICKS: Again, we determined that we needed to send a second team from Tripoli to secure the airport for the withdrawal of our personnel from Benghazi after the mortar attack.

CHAFFETZ: But were any of these U.S. military personnel not permitted to travel on a rescue mission or relief mission to Benghazi?

HICKS: They were not authorized to travel.

CHAFFETZ: What happened with those personnel?

HICKS: They remained in Tripoli with us. The medic went with the nurse to the hospital to lend his skills to the treatment of our — and care of our wounded.

CHAFFETZ: How did the personnel react to being told to stand down?

HICKS: They were furious. I can only say — well, I will quote Lieutenant Colonel Gibson. He said, “This is the first time in — in my career that a diplomat has more balls than somebody in the military.”

CHAFFETZ: So the military’s told to stand down, not engage in the fight. These are the kind of people willing to engage. What did — where’d that message come down? Where did the standdown order come from?

HICKS: I believe it came from either AFRICOM or SOC Africa.

CHAFFETZ: Now, my understanding is that General Ham was actually not in Stuttgart or AFRICOM’s headquarter but he was in Washington, D.C., is that correct?

HICKS: I don’t know the whereabouts of General Ham on that night.

CHAFFETZ: Mr. Chairman, this is something that we’re gonna have to continue to explore.
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[THOMPSON testimony begins]

I need to move quickly now to Mr. Thompson, if I could. You were leader there at the — what’s called the FEST within the State Department. According to the State Department website, the FEST is the Foreign Emergency Support Team, the U.S. government’s only interagency on-call short notice team poised to respond to terrorist attacks worldwide.

I want to read to you an excerpt of an e-mail sent by you to Kathleen Austin-Ferguson on Tuesday, September 11th, 2012 at 9:58 p.m. Could you help me understand, who is Kathleen Austin-Ferguson?

THOMPSON: She is Undersecretary Kennedy’s deputy.

CHAFFETZ: You wrote, quote, “I am told that Pat Kennedy participated in a very senior conference call with the White House and discouraged the FEST option. To remind, FEST has dedicated aircraft able to respond in four (ph) hours, is Department of State-led and provides the below skills. When FBI was contacted they responded that this situation would be better addressed via a FEST response, thus there are others who are thinking the same way. Ready to discuss further as needed.”

Mark, two questions.

(CROSSTALK)

*** [The transcript bracketed by asterisks is an interruption in the questioning of THOMPSON]
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ISSA: Can the gentleman suspend for a moment?

Earlier there was one document that had not been placed in the record because it hadn’t been provided through official channels. And I’d ask that we get that. I think it came from Mr. Gowdy.

And then Mr. Chaffetz, if you could make your document available so we could make copies.

ISSA: And then for any other members on either side of the dais, if you plan to use a document that is not currently committee record — and I realize, since we’ve gotten very little, there’s very little committee records — please do us the favor of having copies so they can be distributed at or prior to the beginning of the questioning.

I’m sorry to interrupt...

(CROSSTALK)

(UNKNOWN): Mr. Chairman, one — one thing.

Mr. Chairman, as you recall yesterday I said — I reminded you that we had never, with regard to Mr. Thompson, this is for some — we’ve gotten a syllable from him.

ISSA: All right and we have no transcript...

(UNKNOWN): Right.

ISSA: ... either.

(UNKNOWN): But let me go on.

One of the things I said in our conversation is that they — if there were any documents that were going to be used, we would have liked to have had them yesterday. But — but with the regard to this document, it sounds like it’s a crucial document and in fairness to everybody, to all of us, and to Mr. Nordstrom who said he wanted a complete hearing, we’d like have the document, if we suspend — so he — before — we’d like to see the document that he’s talking about.

ISSA: OK, I’m — in the case of this particular document, Mr. Chaffetz is — my understanding is you do have the document. So I’ll let staff work on that and provide additional time, if — if need, if that turns out to not to be true.

For our witnesses, if you have any documents you’re going to refer to that we don’t have, if you’d have counsels allow copies to be made. Again, I want to make sure everyone has it as soon as possible. Obviously, if the State Department had made the documents they show as so-called in-camera, if they’d allowed us to have copies we’d all have more documents but...

(UNKNOWN): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

ISSA: ... that’s a different — different argument. Mr. Chaffetz, I’m sorry, we’ll give you back a couple of seconds. And the gentleman may continue.
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CHAFFETZ: Mr. Thompson, do you recall that e-mail?

THOMPSON: I do.

CHAFFETZ: Two questions.

Were you ever given a detailed explanation as to why the fest (ph) was not considered for deployment?

And number two, did you attend or attempt to attend any senior meetings to plead your case for a fest (ph) deployment? And if so, what happened?

THOMPSON: The reason I was given was that this was not the time for the fest (ph). It might be too unsafe for the fest (ph) and I got that through Miss Austin Ferguson. I — I readdressed that with her, I readdressed it with her staff two days later.

CHAFFETZ: Did you attempt to attend any meetings?

THOMPSON: The next morning there were VTCS. I presumed I would be part of that. I was told not to attend those, although C.B. was represented there, the fest (ph) portion and the response portion of the Counterterrorism Bureau was not represented there.

CHAFFETZ: So, why were you not called into action? This is what you trained for. It’s what tabletops are for. It’s what you’re prepared to do. Why was fest (ph) not called into action?

THOMPSON: I do not know.

CHAFFETZ: Mr. Chairman, it’s one of great mysteries. Here we have this expertise, we’ve invested heavily in it, they tabletop it, they understand it, this is exactly what they train for and they were never asked to go into action. We had no idea how long or when this was going to end.

Yield back.

ISSA: I thank the gentleman.

The gentleman is correct.