Disgraced former CIA director Petraeus slipped into closed door hearings before the House and Senate intelligence committees this morning to testify about what he learned first-hand about the Sept. 11 attack in the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.
Petraeus spoke and was questioned by the House committee for about 90 minutes, and then spent another 90 minutes before the Senate panel, but Congressional officials made sure that no one else got speak to or even see the former four-star general.
He was brought into the House before reporters were aware of his presence and Capitol Hill police cleared out a passage way from the House to the Senate, even requiring congressional staff to stay out of the hallways and elevators.
The committees had been pushing to hear from Petraeus about the Benghazi attack, particularly since he traveled to Libya and carried out his own investigation into what happened.
Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said the sex scandal that forced Petraeus to abruptly resign was not a factor in the hearing, which was confined to the terror attack that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens.
"Ten seconds into it, that was off to the side," King said, referring to the scandal.
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Watch Video The congressman said that what Petraeus told the panel "will all be classified other than it was clear it did not arise from a demonstration and it was a terror attack."
King said that Petraeus maintained that he said early on that the ambush was a result of terrorism, but King added that he remembered Petraeus and the Obama administration downplaying the role of an al Qaeda affiliate in the attack in the days after Stevens was killed. The administration initially said the attack grew out of a spontaneous demonstration against a video that lampooned the Prophet Mohammed.
"That is not my recollection" of what Petraeus initially said, King said today.
The congressman suggested that pressing Petraeus was awkward at times.
"It's a lot easier when you dislike the guy," King said.
Little emerged from the Senate hearing, but Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., came out of the hearing to say that Petraeus' testimony supported U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice.
Rice, who could be nominated for Secretary of State by President Obama, has been accused by Republicans of trying to mislead the country by saying the attack was a spontaneous eruption rather than a failure to defend against a terrorist attack.
"Ambassador Rice used the unclassified talking points that the entire intelligence community signed off on, so she did the appropriate thing," Conrad said.
"So much of this confusion arises because of the difference between what is classified and what is unclassified," Conrad said. "And so you hear people saying different things at different times because what is classified cannot be discussed publicly... because it would reveal potentially the sources and the methods of gathering intelligence that are critically important to our country."
Petraeus resigned last week after disclosing an extramarital affair with his biographer Paula Broadwell.
The committee was more interested in finding out what Petraeus learned from his trip to Libya in the days after the killings.
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