Clinton to testify before Benghazi committee

Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will testify in October before the House Select Committee investigating the 2012 Benghazi attack, according to Clinton's presidential campaign.

A spokesman for Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, said on Saturday she had accepted an invitation from the Benghazi investigation committee to testify on October 22.

Nick Merrill said that Clinton will testify during a public hearing before the committee.

"Earlier this week we were pleased for Secretary Clinton to receive an offer from Congressman Gowdy to appear before the committee in a public hearing in October, and yesterday accepted his invitation," Merrill said.

House Select Committee on Benghazi Chairman Trey Gowdy had urged Clinton to appear before the panel.

However, hours after the Clinton campaign announced her planned appearance, a spokesman for the Benghazi committee, said the date was not confirmed yet.

"Secretary Clinton's campaign may want to reach out to her lawyer, Mr. David Kendall, with whom the Committee has had ongoing conversations," said Jamal Ware, the committee's communications director.

"As of last night, Mr. Kendall was still negotiating conditions for her appearance," Ware added.

He stated that Kendall wants Clinton's testimony to be limited to the Benghazi attack and not the controversy over her personal email server.

Earlier this month, Clinton’s campaign denounced the House committee on the 2012 Benghazi attack as a “charade.”

In a video released on July 1, the Clinton campaign accuses the panel and its Republican chairman of wasting taxpayer money on politics.

The video said the Benghazi Select Committee is “spending $8,000 a day in taxpayer money to keep digging” things about the attack on the US diplomatic compound in the Libyan city of Benghazi that left four US diplomats, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, dead.

“How long will Republicans keep spending tax dollars on this political charade?” it said.

According to CNN, up to 35 CIA operatives were working in Benghazi during the attack on September 11, 2012, but it has never reported how many of them died or were injured.

Congressional Republicans have been pushing for a wide-ranging investigation into suspicions that the Obama administration has withheld details of its activities in Benghazi.

Democrats and Republicans in the US Congress are playing political football over the September 2012 Benghazi attack, according to an anti-war activist and radio host in New York.

Don DeBar told Press TV last year that instead of holding President Barack Obama responsible for destroying Libya, the Republicans “fight over the killing of the US ambassador, who also apparently was the CIA station chief there during the entire takeover of the country -- and several of his aides.”

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