The House Select Committee on Benghazi has already lasted almost 18 months and occupied 38 staffers, some of whom are getting paid almost as much as members of Congress.

By comparison, the Senate committee that probed the Watergate scandal employed 45 people and took 17 months.


Clinton and the Democrats call the Benghazi committee’s more than $4.5 million cost a waste of taxpayer money — waving it off as a partisan witch hunt aimed at hurting the 2016 White House contender. And many of the Democratic committee staff have long resumes on the Hill, suggesting they were readying themselves for partisan warfare. They’re led, for example, by a woman who’s helped Elijah Cummings, the committee's ranking Democrat, take on multiple GOP-led political investigations of the Obama Administration.

On the GOP side, the staffer backgrounds may offer some clues to what Hillary Clinton may face when she testifies Thursday about the events preceding the terrorist attacks in Libya on Sept. 11, 2012.

The Republican staff is stacked with investigators from military and national security backgrounds, some with no previous Hill experience. They even have a former Diplomatic Security employee who was working as a State Department special agent during the Benghazi attacks.

Mike Stern, who worked in the non-partisan House Counsel’s office and for Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said Benghazi Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) "clearly wants this to be perceived as being a serious investigation and is trying to do it in most thorough way you can.”

"As far as the size of the staff, that is a fair number of people, but presumably they're trying to do it as expeditiously as possible,” Stern added.

The committee blames the State Department's slow pace of turning over Clinton and her top staff's emails for the prolonged investigation.

But Charles Tiefer, who was special deputy chief counsel for the Democrats in the Iran-Contra investigation of 1987, said Republicans are “striving for the veneer of focusing on national security."

And Tiefer remains deeply skeptical of the endeavor. "It's broken all political records by going against a presidential candidate of the opposing party during an election, and it's a contender in the crowded category of which congressional committee has strayed furthest from its original mandate," along with the House Un-American Activities Committee, he said.

None of the key personnel listed below commented for this story, and Benghazi committee staff are largely prohibited from speaking with the media.

Dana Chipman – GOP chief counsel

Gowdy's biggest-name hire was Dana Chipman, a three-star army lieutenant general.



With virtually no Hill or political experience, Chipman is better known for his 30-year military career, where he served as the 38th Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Army, the highest ranking legal position in the Army. The West Point graduate went to Stanford Law School and has been showered with honors such as the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Legion of Merit and the Bronze Star Medal.

Republicans have held up Chipman to dispute allegations that staffer Brad Podliska was dismissed because he took time off to serve active duty. Since he was fired in June for allegedly having classified information on an unclassified system and apparently not following instructions – allegations that Podliska’s attorneys dispute — Podliska has accused the committee of targeting Clinton and having “wine Wednesdays” and a gun-buying club.

In a recent profile of Chipman in the Stanford alumni magazine, his friends and even his wife told the reporter they didn’t know his party affiliation. Chipman also told the magazine he’s skeptical of conspiracy theories on Benghazi, including the suggestion that Hillary Clinton issued a “stand down” order to the military the night of the attacks.

“The idea of a conspiracy isn't one I'd default toward for anything,” Chipman said. "I worked in the executive branch for 33 years. The people I worked with, on any given day, wake up and say, 'I'm going to work and I'm going to do the right thing.' If there are claims that a conspiracy was done, I want to be sure we've fully addressed them and run them to the ground as best we can.”

Susanne Sachsman Grooms — Democratic staff director and general counsel

Sachsman Grooms, a former IRS and Justice Department lawyer, is well-versed in political investigations, having worked since 2011 for Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) on the House Oversight Committee, which investigates the executive branch and is often embroiled in partisan battles as a result. Cummings is also the ranking member on the Benghazi panel.

Over the past few years she worked as a lead attorney for the Democrats on multiple contentious GOP investigations including the "Fast and Furious" gun-walking operation and the IRS probe of tea party groups. On each of those, Democrats and Republicans butted heads, with the GOP accusing the administration of foul play and Democrats calling the investigations a partisan circus.

She’s also worked Benghazi issues before when former Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) was running his own highly-charged probe of the terrorist attacks. On the other side, Gowdy also has taken on two former Oversight investigators.

Phil Kiko — GOP staff director and general counsel

Kiko, an ex-Hill staffer-turned-high-profile Beltway lobbyist, has donated $29,711.96 since 2001 almost entirely to Republicans, Federal Election Commission filings show. Still, his appointment caused a huge stir among conservatives because of some of his former clients.

Before heading up the Benghazi panel Republicans, Kiko had work as Smith-Free Group vice chairman, where he represented the ACLU in 2013 on the Voting Rights Act as well as the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, which is comprised of left leaning organizations representing labor, gay rights and the environment — not exactly compatible with GOP priorities.

The far right blogosphere was irked that a leadership conference membership included Muslim Advocates, which works with the nationwide college campus group Muslim Student Association.

Kiko's other big-name clients included Mastercard, Sony Pictures Entertainment and the Entertainment Software Association.

Before K Street, Kiko was a longtime Hill staffer, starting in 1997 as a senior member of Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner’s (R-Wis.) staff, then moving to staff director at the House Administration Committee under Chairman Dan Lungren of California. He also worked as legal counsel for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Chris Donesa — GOP deputy staff director

Donesa was chief counsel for the House Intelligence Committee from 2004 to 2013, working on updating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, renewing the USA PATRIOT Act, and yearly Intelligence Authorization bills. Before that, he was chief of congressional and public affairs for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

He’s also been in and out of the private sector, working as an associate at Covington & Burling twice in the 1990s as well as clerking for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Prior to that he worked for then-Rep. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) and Mark Souder (R-Ind.) as well as the House Education and Labor Committee and the House Government Reform committee.

Other national-security types:

Republican deputy general counsel Mark Grider worked in the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, which oversaw post-war rebuilding.

GOP Investigator Sara Barrineau is a former National Security Council who worked in the Situation room and for the Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security during the 2012 Benghazi attacks. Barrineau just came to the Hill in October of last year.

The panel also has a nearly decade long veteran of the CIA, Sarah Adams, as a senior advisor to the committee, since January.