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Republicans have continued to accuse Secretary Clinton and other Administration officials of intentionally interfering with or delaying the military response on the night of the attacks and preventing it from saving lives. These claims were not substantiated during the Select Committee’s investigation.

In February 2014, at a Republican Party event in New Hampshire, Rep. Darrell Issa, then the Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, stated:

We need to have an answer of when the Secretary of Defense had assets that he could have begun spinning up. Why there was not one order given to turn on one Department of Defense asset? I have my suspicions, which is Secretary Clinton told Leon [Panetta] to stand down, and we all heard about the stand down order for two military personnel. That order is undeniable.77

On February 21, 2014, the Washington Post Fact Checker awarded Rep. Issa “Four Pinocchios” for his claim:

It is correct that Issa poses a series of questions, but his repeated use of the phrase “stand down” and his personalizing of the alleged actions (“Secretary Clinton;” “Leon”) leave a distinct impression that either Clinton or Obama delivered some sort of instruction to Panetta to not act as forcefully as possible. He even incorrectly asserts that not a single order was given to use any DOD asset. One could argue the response was slow, bungled or poorly handled. But Issa is crossing a line when he suggests there was no response—or a deliberate effort to hinder it. Four Pinocchios.78

Nevertheless, Republicans continued to perpetuate these claims against the Administration and the military. As The Hill reported:

“The president of the United States said they did everything they could

said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), a vocal critic of the administration’s handling of the attacks. “You cannot name a single military asset that was ordered to go into Benghazi during those hours.”

“Somebody in that food chain said ‘stand down,’” he said. Chaffetz is not on the Benghazi panel. “It’s one of the myriad questions that continues to perpetuate the problem. If we can’t figure out that, then how will we make sure it never happens again?”79

Similarly, Rep. Louie Gohmert told Fox News in September 2014:

They let those people die at Benghazi, they could have gotten planes there sooner, they could have gotten people there sooner, and anybody that knows anything will disregard what some of these high intelligence people have said and will get straight to the truth.80

In his interview with the Select Committee, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta emphatically rejected these Republican accusations that Secretary Clinton or anyone else ordered him to stand down on the night of the attacks:

Q: Did the Secretary of State ever tell you to stand down or slow the Department of Defense response?

A: Not at all. You know, that’s a—that’s a big word, “stand down.” And let me tell you, not only did I never hear that word mentioned, but if somebody had said that, I think, you know, it would not have interfered with my orders to proceed.81

Secretary Panetta explained that no one ever ordered military forces to stand down that night:

Q: And I just want to be clear. To your knowledge, there was no stand- down—I mean, to your knowledge, any stand-down orders given with regard to this operation on that night?

A: No. Never, never. It would have been against everything that the military stands for. You know, the military, their whole focus is on being able to protect particularly their own. That’s what they do. To even imply that somehow the military, or someone would have said, maybe we shouldn’t go, it’s too risky, it’s crazy. It’s just not the way our military operates.82

Secretary Panetta also rejected repeated Republican allegations that he or anyone else in the military intentionally slowed the response on the night of the attacks:

My directions were very clear; those forces were to be deployed, period. And, you know, just because of the timeline involved, you know, my whole

to try to respond. And as I am sure you’re all aware, we’re dealing with a lot of time and distance in order to make it happen. So I wanted no interference with those orders to get them deployed.83

He continued in this exchange:

Q: Was protecting American lives the top priority for you and everyone you worked at that night?

A: Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. And you know, as I said, there’s a fundamental principle that those in the military really treat as one of their most important callings, which is, you leave nobody behind. And when it comes to lives, American lives, they will do whatever is necessary to try to protect those lives.

Q: Did you have any sense that the people in the military that you worked with would have slowed down or taken their time at any point in that evening?

A: Absolutely not.84

This account was corroborated by previous testimony by General Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, before the Senate Armed Services Committee on February 7, 2013. General Dempsey testified:

I want to make just one comment related to your chronology because I think it’s important. Once we started moving forces, nothing stopped us, nothing slowed us. The only adaptation we thought about making was for a period of time we thought we were going to be entering a hostage rescue because we didn’t know where the Ambassador was. But once we started forces moving,

they didn’t slow, they didn’t stop.85

General Carter Ham, the Commander of U.S. Africa Command, addressed these allegations in an exchange with Ranking Member Cummings:

Q: Was protecting American lives the top priority for you and everyone you worked with and spoke to that night?

A: Yes, sir.

Q: And does that include everyone at the Department of Defense? A: Yes, sir.

Q: Did the President ever tell you to stand down or slow the military response?

A: Mr. Cummings, I had no direct communication with the Commander in Chief, but no one ever passed any order like that to me.

Q: Did Secretary Panetta ever tell you to stand down or slow down the military response? And I understand your previous answer, but I want to make it clear. We’re establishing a record for the tenth time, but go ahead.

A: He did not.

Q: Did the Secretary of State or anyone else ever tell you to stand down or slow down DOD’s response?

A: No, sir, and I had no communication with the Secretary of State during this incident.86

Admiral Kurt Tidd, the Director for Operations for the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, corroborated the testimony of Secretary Panetta and General Dempsey:

Q: Sir, since the Benghazi attacks, there’s been sort of multiple allegations that somehow the Defense Department was told to stand down, whether it was, you know, Secretary Clinton telling Secretary Panetta. On your SVTC [secure video teleconference] or throughout the night, did anyone ever indicate that you should stand down?

A: I don’t—I don’t recall hearing anybody saying stand down. I’ve read the same allegations, the same stories, and I—I don’t know where that came from.

…

Q: And just to be very clear, did the Secretary of State ever tell you or anyone at DOD to stand down?

A: I never heard that from her.

Q: Did the President ever tell you or anyone at the Department to stand down or slow the response?

A: I never communicated with the President.87

General Philip Breedlove, the Commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe, had the following exchange with the Select Committee:

Q: Sir, you mentioned that your staff began—that you directed your staff to proactively spin up once you heard about what was going on and— A: Actually, it was the chief of the AOC [air operations center], the JOC

[joint operations center]—the AOC directed that started the spinning up the 24/7 crew that was there, and then they started running the recall that eventually got me headed to the AOC.

Q: And during the course of those events, as they are preparing, did anyone ever tell them to slow down or stand down in their efforts to sort of spin up?

A: No.

Q: Did anyone ever slow down their efforts for any reason? A: That’s not in our DNA.88

Vice Admiral Charles Leidig, the Deputy to the Commander for Military Operations at Africa Command, also had the following exchange with a previous congressional committee in 2014:

Q: And just to follow up on that point, there have been some statements to this effect, and I would just like to ask you for your comment on them, but on the night of the attacks, did you or to your knowledge anyone in your command receive any order from then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to stand down?

A: I never received any orders from the Secretary of State or heard of any orders from the Secretary of State.89

Secretary Panetta’s Chief of Staff, Jeremy Bash, also rejected Republican accusations that the military response was intentionally slowed or delayed:

Q: There have been a lot of sort of questions and theories over the years that speculate that there were more resources that weren’t sent to Benghazi on the night of the attack. And they imply that you or other officials within the military or the interagencies had resources at your disposal that you chose not to send. Can you respond to that?

A: That’s false. And as Secretary Panetta and as Chairman Dempsey and as other senior officials have spoken about multiple times to Congress and to the public, and Secretary Panetta wrote about in his memoir, any available unit, asset, with the ability that could respond to the situation in Libya that night was deployed.90

Mr. Bash also told the Select Committee:

[I]t’s important for the clarity of the record and the completeness of the Committee’s review that people reviewing this matter understand that nothing slowed down the United States military response with regards to what