PUSH TO APPOINT A "SELECT" WATERGATE-STYLE COMMITTEE TO HANDLE ALL BENGHAZI MATTERS GETS OFF THE GROUND IN THE ONCE AND FUTURE REPUBLICAN-CONTROLLED HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Certain House Republicans are hopeful they will gain the support of the House leadership and enough votes  to establish a select committee to get to the bottom of what happened in Benghazi ---  before, during and after September 11, 2012.   A "Select Committee" is the kind  of special committee that had been used to probe the White House following the Watergate and Iran-Contra scandals.

Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) says that his effort set up a Select Committee on Benghazi in the House of Representatives  already has some legs, with 14 co-sponsors on  his newly-introduced resolution, which also  is backed up with new research from the Heritage Foundation.

A Heritage web posting published on Wednesday outlines  the precedent supporting the creation of such a committee.  It further argues that whereas the Watergate and the Iran-Contra affair, while massive political scandals, they were bloodless and that  Benghazi obviously was not.  Historically,  such  select committees were also impaneled  to elicit information concerning the 1941 attack on  Pearl Harbor  and the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

The committee would include the chairmen and ranking members in each of the Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, Judiciary, Armed Services and Oversight and Government Reform committees, as well as five Republicans and two Democrats appointed by respective party leadership, according to Wolf’s proposal.

One stumbling block for now is that the House Speaker, John Boehner (R-Ohio), has expressed reluctance to go along with the proposal, because  at this stage he thinks the existing investigations are sufficient.  With the reorganization of the House in January things will be more fluid, and other members of the House and the GOP leadership may well get behind Wolf's proposal then.

The creation of  this kind of a special committee would also involve the public to a greater extent, in that the proposal establishing the select committee would mandate mostly open and unclassified hearings on  the events related to the Benghazi attacks of  September 11, 2012.