Capitol Thunderdome, as Night Follows Day

The Benghazi Select Committee hearing is still going on as we approach 8PM. I'm home trying to catch up while having a brew, and so far I have to give this match to Hillary.

One interesting thing happened right around 7PM, when Rep. Susan Brooks played the SECCA card. SECCA is the Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act of 1999, and it creates certain legal requirements for physical security at overseas diplomatic facilities. Rep Brooks quoted to Hillary Clinton from Foreign Affairs Manual 12 FAM-315, which concerns SECCA and the SecState's authority to waive certain requirements of the law if he or she finds it is in the national interest.

BTW, that Foreign Affairs Manual is a publicly available source of information which you may read for yourself here.

Anyway, Rep. Brooks evidently thought she had Hillary dead to rights on the question of whether or not she had signed a waiver for the Benghazi Special Mission facility. That sounded like Hillary is in quite a fix. Either she deliberately waived security standards - which would be politically explosive - or else she was at fault for not complying with the law. So which was it? Did she or did she not sign a waiver?

It was neither. A waiver was not required, because SECCA did not in fact apply to the Benghazi Special Mission. Evidently, neither Rep. Brooks nor her staffers bothered to actually read much of that Foreign Affairs Manual, or else she would have read 12 FAM-313, para b., in which it states that "for purposes of applying SECCA, a U.S. diplomatic facility is any chancery, consulate, or other office notified to the host government as diplomatic or consular premises ..." The Special Mission was not a chancery or consulate or any other kind of office so notified.

So, to quote White Goodman of the great movie Dodgeball, "you can put away your rule book on that one, Poindexter." Point: Hillary.

Now, will this hearing ever end so I can go to bed?