Libyans who have been secretly helping the U.S. have had their identities exposed by documents released Friday by House Oversight Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, a senior administration official confirmed to NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell.
Josh Rogin of Foreign Policy’s “The Cable” blog broke the story following Rep. Darrell Issa’s release of State Department communications, part of his effort to demand answers on security failures related to the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi:
House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) compromised the identities of several Libyans working with the U.S. government and placed their lives in danger when he released reams of State Department communications Friday.
An indignant letter Issa and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) sent to President Obama accompanied the 166 pages:
The American people deserve nothing less than a full explanation from this administration about these events, including why the repeated warnings about a worsening security situation appear to have been ignored by this administration. Americans also deserve a complete explanation about your administration’s decision to accelerate a normalized presence in Libya at what now appears to be at the cost of endangering American lives.
The White House and State Department had no prior notice of what is often referred to in Washington as a Friday night “document dump” on the weekend before the presidential foreign policy debate. A senior official tells NBC News that many of these documents weren’t provided by the State Department to the Oversight committee— and there wasn’t any discussion about their sensitivity prior to the committee posting them online. Only about 50 pages of the 166 had been previously released.
“The official says had the State Department been given that opportunity, they would have pointed out which documents needed to be handled with extreme care so as not to endanger anyone. Issa did not redact the names of Libyans mentioned in the cables,” the report continues.
So people may die so that Issa can do a little grandstanding before Mittens goes lightly armed into a foreign policy debate. At this point, we shouldn’t be talking about what a lousy legislator Rep. Darrell Issa is or how he’s a worthless, dishonest partisan hack. The discussion we should be having should involve just what a shitty American this guy is and how to keep him and people like him out of government forever.
