New Benghazi Emails? Depends on What the Meaning of ‘New’ Is

To start the week that will bring former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to a high-profile hearing Thursday at the House Select Committee on Benghazi, Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., appeared on “Face the Nation” and spoke of new emails he’d extracted that were sent in 2011-2012 by the late Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

“I understand there's more attention associated with [Clinton], but, from my perspective, I am much more interested in Chris Stevens' emails, which we just received, than I am her emails, which we just received,” Gowdy said.

Host John Dickerson asked Gowdy what facts he’d uncovered that hadn’t already been revealed in seven previous investigations into the deaths of Stevens and three other Americans at the hands of terrorists in the U.S. compound in Benghazi. Gowdy said, “I do hear that there have been seven [investigations], which makes me smile because I wonder, how did they miss Ambassador Stevens' emails? None of the seven previous committees bothered to access the emails of our ambassador.”

Thrown on the defense in recent weeks by remarks from members of his own party saying the Benghazi probe is a political tool to discredit Clinton, Gowdy said, “If you want a window into Libya and what was happening in the weeks and months before these four were killed, why would you not look at the ambassador's emails? He was a prolific emailer. I will give you a one-week time period in June. He's just been put in place as the ambassador, just accepted, on June the 7th. And he is already asking for more security. He knows that there's an uptick in violence and he's asking for more security.”

Gowdy’s suggestion that important new information has surfaced from Stevens’ emails has been countered by both the State Department and Democrats on the Benghazi panel who’ve spent months preparing detailed rebuttals to the majority’s charges and tactics, though no final committee report is near ready.

The new emails, Gowdy’s critics argue, have either already been released or fail to alter the existing story on an issue that has become a political football.

“Over recent weeks, the State department has produced over 7,000 pages ‎of emails and documents sent and received by Ambassador Chris Stevens between 2011 and September 2012, including 2,588 pages provided Friday,” State spokesman Alex Gerlach told Government Executive. “The committee has long had possession of emails and cables from Ambassador Stevens pertaining to Benghazi and Libya. In response to a recently prioritized request from the committee, the department has provided additional emails from Ambassador Stevens’ account. The Benghazi Committee’s requests are broader than previous committees’ requests.”

In addition, Gerlach said, “These emails do not change the essential facts that have been known since the independent Accountability Review Board report came out in December 2012. They do not change our understanding of what happened before, during or after the attacks.”

Democrats on the committee, a spokeswoman said, argue that the recently released emails from Stevens “confirm what we already knew.” Gowdy’s critics argue that his announcement was a “strategy to revive debunked allegations” that Clinton was “personally involved with denying requests for additional security” at the Benghazi compound.

The spokeswoman cited an Oct. 19 Fox News story “reporting on a supposedly new cable from Ambassador Stevens on July 9, 2012, requesting additional security. However, this very cable was released publicly by House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., three years ago—in October 2012,” she said via email. The independent Accountability Review Board held others accountable for decisions on diplomatic outpost security, the Democrats have long argued.

The House Benghazi panel staff did not respond to queries seeking further comment on the new emails.