House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers responded Sunday to blistering criticism from some of his fellow Republicans on his panel's Benghazi report, saying it was never meant to be definitive.
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said a week ago that it was
"full of crap," and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said it was
"co-opted by the CIA."
Appearing Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union. " Rogers defended the bipartisan report, saying some of the most vocal critics never read it.
"Actually, some of the most vocal critics never accessed the classified evidence or the classified annex to the report," he said.
Rogers said his committee decided to use only facts and then corroborate those facts to come to a conclusion. It is narrowly tailored to the intelligence community, he said, and the State Department and White House were not part of the investigation.
Rogers said the report mirrors the Senate Intelligence Committee's and the House Armed Services Committee's reports because all were fact-based.
Many on the left wanted an exoneration of the administration while many on the right wanted damnation, Rogers said.
"There are a lot of unanswered questions in the State Department and the White House," he said. "That's where the Select Committee, I think, can get in on this."
Rogers also talked about the failed hostage rescue attempt in Yemen Saturday that left American Luke Somers and South African Pierre Korkie dead.
Rogers commended President Barack Obama for acting, since al-Qaida members had threatened to kill Somers anyway.
"These are very, very, very difficult undertakings," he said. "Sometimes we get numb to the fact when they're successful that they must be easier or we must be so good that no mistake can happen."
Rogers said the case should re-engage the debate about paying ransoms, which some countries have done. U.S. policy is to never pay ransoms.
"When you pay ransom you get more kidnappings," Rogers said. And, he added, ransom money is used to continue al-Qaida's terrorist activities.
Rogers also said he opposes Obama sending six Guantanamo Bay prisoners to Uruguay. Such deals never work, he said, because the people the United States pays to watch them aren't able to do the job.
He also opposes a Democratic plan for the Senate to release its report on torture used on captives during the George W. Bush administration.
Rogers said America's allies and our own intelligence community have said the released would lead to violence and deaths because it would be used much like the anti-Muslim cartoons in Denmark or burnings of Qarans to incite extremists.
Besides, he said, the techniques described in the report were stopped long ago.
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