with that, mike, i m certain that with your experience specifically with your involvement in the house select committee, benghazi, you understand how valuable intelligence can be to oversight. if asked by the committee, will you provide the raw intelligence and sourcing behind agency finished products and assessments if, in fact, this committee needs it to complete its job? it senator, i have been on the other side of this and i know how central it is to make sure you have all that you need to perform at your oversight function four intelligence collection activities and all the agency does. you have my commitment that i will always do everything i can to make sure i get you the information that you need, including an expanded set of information. i understand on a handful of issues you have reached agreement, i heard director clapper testified before you i believe it was last week, and a promise to honor the commitment that director clapper made to this committee.
participate fully in the house select committee investigating what happened in benghazi. we re awaiting a news conference at this hour from the house minority leader, nancy pelosi, after she appointed five democrats to that committee. joining us now with some reaction, basil smichael, also angela mcglowan. there was all kinds of back and forth about whether democrats should participate at all, whether they should put one person on the committee or a full complement, nancy pelosi decided to go the whole banana. [laughter] what do you think about that? you know what? i think it was a great decision on her part because, ultimately, what the democrats want to do is be a conversation. if the democrats had not been seated on this committee, republicans would have an unfettered opportunity to push out their argument, their talking points without the democrats really being able to
republicans have been pursuing one benghazi investigation after another for 19 months, in at least 50 congressional hearings, they have asked the same questions over and over and over. that includes this hearing in the house select committee. former acting cia director michael morrell was called to the hill for a third time today. he testified about the now debunked theory that the benghazi talking points given to susan right rice soon after the attack were deliberatery doctored. we did not deliberately downplay the role of terrorists in the benghazi attack in our analysis or in the talking points. in response to a democratic inquiry, the pentagon now says that at least six congressional investigations of the benghazi disaster have cost americans an unspecified millions of dollars