fp | Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, has requested that former CIA director David Petraeus testify under oath in a new public hearing on Benghazi in a letter to Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA).
The request comes in response to Issa’s recent remarks that Petraeus
was pressured into toeing the administration line in the aftermath of
last year’s Benghazi attack. "David Petraeus said what the
administration wanted him to say," Issa told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday.
In the letter, Cummings challenges Issa to make those allegations to
Petraeus’s face. "These are some of the most serious charges you can
make against our nation’s top military and intelligence officials, and I
believe the American people deserve to hear their responses in the same
forum in which you made them — a public hearing before our Committee,"
writes Cummings.
When asked if Issa would consider calling on Petraeus to attend a public hearing, Issa spokesman Frederick Hill
left the possibility open, saying "We always welcome the minority to
make suggestions." Petraeus’s lawyer and Washington heavyweight Robert Barnett, who has handled media requests for the retired general in recent months, did not respond to a request for comment.
Interestingly, in this highly politicized investigation, it’s not
clear which partisan interest a Petraeus testimony would serve.
