http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=DC163E62-3EB9-478D-ADD9-C9AA0CA4CD56 Pro-Clinton groups gear up for Benghazi hearings
By: Maggie Haberman
September 16, 2014 05:04 AM EDT
As a select House committee probing the 2012 attacks in Benghazi convenes Wednesday, three Democratic outside groups are mobilizing to protect Hillary Clinton from any fallout.
In a plan shared with POLITICO, officials with the pro-Hillary Clinton group Correct the Record, working with the Democratic research super PAC American Bridge, said they will launch a new website,
www.benghazicommittee.com. It’s a research hub that is designed like a news site and will issue detailed, rapid responses to charges against Clinton — mimicking the way a campaign would defend a candidate in real time during a presidential debate.
Also defending the former secretary of state against Benghazi criticism will be Media Matters, the watchdog founded by David Brock, a Clinton ally who also created both American Bridge and Correct the Record. In addition to using an army of researchers, Media Matters has been aggressively hitting Fox News, which has covered Benghazi extensively since the attacks two years ago.
Media Matters is releasing a new chapter of an e-book Brock co-authored last year, called “The Benghazi Hoax,” as well as a new website of its own, with 1,000 pieces of research aimed at debunking claims related to the Sept. 11 attack.
The issue of Benghazi has lingered for Clinton since early 2013, when she testified at the first round of congressional hearings. Pressed on why administration officials initially said the attacks that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans sprang from a protest — an explanation they later retracted — Clinton said, “What difference at this point does it make?”
Republicans have repeatedly invoked that remark to argue that Clinton was trying to shirk responsibility. She ripped that notion in her book “Hard Choices” and slammed Republicans for taking her out of context.
Still, the issue hasn’t gone away and threatens to be problematic for Clinton politically.
Clinton has no rapid-response organization of her own, let alone a campaign structure (she insists she hasn’t made up her mind about 2016). Brock’s Correct the Record has stepped in to fill the void.
Brock, who believes Republicans are using the issue in repeated sets of hearings to damage Clinton ahead of a potential campaign and to boost GOP turnout in the fall midterms, said the idea for Correct the Record came to him watching the hearings last year.
“One of the reasons that I created CTR last fall was that the Republicans seemed to have the field to themselves in the round of hearings around 2013,” Brock said. “Ability to respond to false accusations was limited … we’re not going to let that happen again.
“There is hope that the committee discharges their duty reasonably, but we’re ready if they don’t,” he said.
Brock added that the Correct the Record/Bridge site “prebuts” much of what he expects in the hearing: “All the questions have already been asked and answered.”
The focal point of the hearings is expected to be the Accountability Review Board, which examined the attacks and made more than two dozen recommendations. Critics of the board have argued it was never truly independent because members were appointed by Clinton and say it represented a whitewashing.
Brock insisted that by implementing the board’s recommendations, “Clinton has already done more to get to the bottom [of what occurred in Benghazi] than any of the Republicans who will be attacking her in the coming weeks.”
