September 11, 2001 carries the heavy weight of the tragedy from the notorious terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Eleven years later, another terrorist attack happened. While that attack wasn’t in the United States, a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya suffered from the attacks of Islamic terrorists. U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans died in the attacks.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was responsible for the safety of the people at the diplomatic compound as a part of her job. On Oct. 22, the Republican Benghazi Committee hosted a 10 hour-long hearing seeking gain what information Mrs. Clinton may have known about the attacks. In March 2015, Mrs. Clinton was caught using her private email address for work related purposes which may have contained classified information regarding the attack.
Ohio Representative Jim Jordan, one of the members of the Benghazi committee grilled Mrs. Clinton about her claim about herself. Mrs. Clinton said that she was, “being as transparent as possible and more transparent than anybody else has been.” The Representative defined transparency as “being honest and straightforward right from the get-go.” In order to prove Mrs. Clinton’s dishonesty, he pointed out that Mrs. Clinton kept on changing her story as more bits of information were released regarding Mrs. Clinton’s emails. Jordan asked, “If your story about your emails keeps changing, how can we accept your statements that you have turned over all work-related emails and all emails about Libya?"
Mrs. Clinton responded to Jordan and said, “I take responsibility for my use of personal email. It was allowed but not a good choice.” She continued to defend herself and said that email was not her primary source of communication. She said, “We were faced with a global financial crisis when I entered the [State] Department. Email was not a primary source of communication. I didn’t have a computer on my desk and I worked in meetings and in secure and unsecure phone calls.” She continued to say that all her 52,000 emails were under attorney investigation.
Jordan continued to pry more information out of her. He asked if somebody looked over the 52,000 emails she wrote. She said insisted that she was not looking over the attorneys’ shoulders when they were investigating all of her emails. Jordan asked Mrs. Clinton about the investigation process, to which she again repeated that she was not looking over the attorneys’ shoulders.
After probing about the process, Jordan again brought up the issue of transparency. He reminded Mrs. Clinton, again, of her claim that she was “more transparent than anybody else ever.” In light of her own statement, Mrs. Clinton defended herself and said that the Department of Justice was already doing the investigation and her emails have been released to the public. She stated, “I’m the only government official who has ever done that.”
Towards the end of the long, grueling day, Mrs. Clinton broke into a coughing fit and paused the testimony for two minutes. After the long, restless day, Mrs. Clinton confidently walked out of the Longworth House Office Building waving to the sea of journalists and press who were still in search of the hidden knowledge of Mrs. Clinton’s scandal.
Author's note: Everything I've written is my firsthand account. While other news sources have released more information, this is the last session of the hearings.
