http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/07/25/clinton-to-testify-to-benghazi-committee-in-october/?hpid=z1By Anne Gearan July 25 at 10:14 AM
Hillary Rodham Clinton will testify on Oct. 22 before the House select committee investigating her role in connection with the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill said Saturday.
The testimony will be public, Merrill said. It follows months of wrangling between the Republican-led committee and Clinton, whose allies accuse the panel of conducting a fishing expedition for damaging material that might be used against her as she runs for president in 2016.
Clinton had long offered to testify in public, but the committee chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy, had initially said he preferred a private interview. Although he said he was trying to keep the session from becoming a circus, Clinton's team objected on grounds that a closed session could allow Republicans to selectively leak unflattering details.
Clinton's lawyer has also accused the committee of trying to drag out its investigation into 2016, the better to use it as a cudgel against the Democratic front-runner.
U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three others were killed when militants overran two U.S. compounds in the restive Libyan city in September 2012, in the waning months of Clinton's term as secretary of state. She has long said she had no direct role in security decisions surrounding the U.S. facilities, but Republican critics claim that her State Department denied protections that might have prevented the attack.
