Benghazi committee chairman Trey Gowdy (left) has said he hopes to finish his probe by 2016. | AP Photo Benghazi panel denied ex-Hillary aide's request to publicly testify Hillary Clinton's former chief of staff Cheryl Mills had requested a public session to thwart GOP leaks.

The House Benghazi Committee rejected a request from Cheryl Mills, Hillary Clinton’s former chief of staff at the State Department, to have her testimony occur in a public session later this week, a source close to Mills said.

Mills’ desire for open testimony — a request made because she fears Republicans will leak selected information that casts her in a negative light — is just the first disagreement in what’s likely to be a tense session Thursday, when she appears before the panel a day before Jake Sullivan, Clinton’s top policy guru, is also hauled in for questions.


The private interviews with Clinton’s top brass represent the highest-profile grillings yet for the panel probing the cause of, or avoidable factors that could have led to, the 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya that left four Americans dead.

Lawmakers — who don’t often attend the closed-door interviews with Benghazi witnesses, allowing staff investigators to take the lead — are making the rare move of returning to Washington, D.C., early from their summer break to be present for the interviews with Mills, who no longer works for Clinton, and Sullivan, who remains Clinton’s No. 1 policy staffer on the campaign.

The interrogations come less than two months before Clinton herself will appear before the committee in a public hearing and represent a turning point for the committee as it moves into the final stages of its investigation, bringing in more senior officials.

The work of the panel, which led to the discovery that Clinton exclusively used private email instead of a State.gov account, has been the driving force of the protracted controversy that has dogged the Democratic front-runner's campaign and promises to do so for the foreseeable future. Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) have recently opened their own spinoff probes of Clinton's email use, and the FBI is now investigating whether any sensitive material was mishandled.

Benghazi Committee chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), for his part, has said he hopes to finish his probe by 2016, but has delayed sessions with top advisers because he has not received all their relevant State Department communications, which he says they need to formulate questions.

State, for example, still has not turned over to the committee all the messages it has received from Mills and Sullivan or other top Clinton staff. But Republicans — feeling pressure from Democrats accusing them of trying to drag their probe into the presidential election — are moving forward regardless. The committee in recent weeks has brought in or scheduled dozens of interviews with relevant figures from all different agencies with knowledge about U.S.-Libya policy in the months leading up to the attack.

Mills’ and Sullivan’s interviews stand out, however, because of their relationship with Clinton. Her top aides were also found to have used personal emails for work and have been drawn into the multiple probes.

Huma Abedin, Clinton’s closest aide and current vice chairwoman of Hillary for America, is also expected to testify in another closed-door session soon.

Details are still being worked out, but lawmakers are expected to question both Mills and Sullivan about any Libya-related policies, security concerns in the Middle Eastern nation and also touch on the ongoing emails controversy. Both often forwarded to Clinton’s unsecured email account, messages that the intelligence agencies argue are, were or should have been classified. Questions remain, however, about whether staff realized the information was sensitive, who approved Clinton’s use of a personal server and why she chose a small, mom-and-pop Colorado company that housed servers in a bathroom closet to store the technology.

The sessions are expected to last several hours, with Republicans and Democrats taking turns questioning the witnesses. Gowdy will be there, flanked by GOP firebrand Jim Jordan of Ohio, Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia and Martha Roby of Alabama, all panel conservatives, as well as the typical Benghazi staff. Democratic members, including Ranking Member Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the administration’s go-to defender on the House Oversight Committee, are also expected to make appearances.

One of the issues still being resolved specifically surrounding Mills’ interview includes the types of questions lobbed at her and answers she can give: Mills no longer has a security clearance, potentially complicating what interrogators can or cannot discuss in the private session.

A source close to Mills said she requested that the testimony be public because of fear that Republicans will leak parts of her interview. Republicans, who have done all their interviews so far behind closed doors, declined the request — just as they did for Sid Blumenthal, a top Clinton confidant who also answered questions for the committee earlier this year about unconfirmed intelligence memos he forwarded the secretary of state. Republicans did not wish to comment specifically on the Mills request but have said they’ll release the information after they’re completed their entire investigation and issued their final report.