Benghazi Report Released by Republicans Places No New Blame on Hillary Clinton

A long-awaited report on the 2012 Benghazi attacks released Tuesday by House Republicans criticizes then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other top officials, but it provides no new evidence of wrongdoing on Clinton's part.

The 800-page report following a two-year investigation comes one day after Democrats issued their own preemptive report saying that the Pentagon could not have done anything on the night of the attacks to prevent the death of four Americans.

While the Republican-led report provides new details on the breakdown in the military's response to the attack and further explains why Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens was at the diplomatic compound in Benghazi with only two bodyguards, it appears to place less blame squarely on Clinton than anticipated and does little to change established narratives from previous investigations or news accounts.

The authors write in the GOP report that Clinton and State Department aide Patrick Kennedy should have been more aware and proactive regarding the deteriorating security condition in Libya, but they fell short of accusing her of wrongdoing.

"It is not clear what additional intelligence would have satisfied either Kennedy or the secretary in understanding the Benghazi Mission compound was at risk — short of an attack. The intelligence on which Kennedy and the secretary were briefed daily was clear and pointed — Al Qa’ida, al Qa’ida like groups, and other regional extremists took refuge in the security vacuum created by the Libya government," the report said.

On Tuesday morning, one of the authors of the GOP report appeared on cable news to preview the report, as well as to express the dissenting view that some Republican committee members had with the final draft.

"The overall report, it's about the facts, what happened," Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of the report's authors, told CNN ahead of the release. "But [Rep. Mike Pompeo of Kansas] and I thought it was important to ask the questions. Why were we still in Benghazi when almost every other country had left? Why did we stay in Benghazi when the security situation was so terrible, so dangerous? And why did the administration mislead us?"

Jordan and Pompeo did not completely agree with the committee's final draft and released their own 51-page report arguing that Clinton intentionally misled the public about what she knew about the Benghazi attacks to help President Obama's 2012 reelection.

"Secretary Clinton had the last clear chance to provide adequate protection or, failing that, to close the facility and pull our people out," wrote Jordan and Pompeo. "She did neither."

The two-year probe was initially set up by then-House Speaker John Boehner to clarify conflicting accounts of what happened in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11, 2012, when heavily armed Islamic militants launched a coordinated attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission. The probe also looked into the later mortar rounds launched at a CIA outpost a mile away. It was the first time a U.S. ambassador was killed in the line of duty since 1979, when Ambassador Adolph Dubs was killed in Kabul.

Gowdy and his Republican colleagues were forced to release their report early when, on Monday, Democrats on the committee preemptively released their own report just weeks before each party has their conventions before the 2016 elections in November. Democrats have called the Benghazi investigation a witch hunt designed by the GOP to undermine Clinton's presidential campaign.

Committee Democrats, led by Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, wrote that it was necessary to release a separate report because Republicans refused to issue a bipartisan report that incorporated opinions shared by Democrats on the committee.

"We are issuing our own report today because, after spending more than two years and $7 million in taxpayer funds in one of the longest and most partisan congressional investigations in history, it is long past time for the select committee to conclude its work," Democrats said in the 339-page report.

[Photo credit: House Committee on Oversight and Reform via Flickr Commons]