House speaker John Boehner said that he wants an email released that showed the U.S. State Department believed that the U.S. consulate in Benghazi in Libya involved terrorists, UPI.com reported. "The State Department would not allow our committees to keep copies of this email when it was reviewed," Boehner said. "I would call on the president to order the State Department to release this email so that the American people can see it."
The September 11, 2012 attack killed four diplomatic employees, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.
Republicans on the committee criticized the Obama administration and Democrats for not cooperating with the committee's investigation, news reports said. One Republican member called the aftermath a "political cover-up that resulted from that mismanagement."
Democrats had said the hearing before the House Government Operations Committee is a not-so-subtle effort to blemish the credentials of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
During Wednesday's hearing, South Carolina Representative Trey Gowdy read an excerpt from the e-mail, quoting what he said was a reference to the local militant group that carried out the attack, Ansar al-Sharia, as having links to "Islamic terrorists."
Gowdy and other Republicans said the email's significance was its timing -- the day after the attack -- and in its description. They said the distinction between the words "extremists" and "terrorists" was without difference.
"Four Americans lost their lives in this terrorist attack," Boehner said Wednesday, "and Congress is going to continue to investigate this issue using all the resources at our disposal."
Many Democrats believe this is an orchstrated campaign to rehash an issue that Clinton addressed last fall when she appeared before Congress.
"'Old news' is an understatement; maybe Speaker Boehner just didn't realize that this exact same issue was already addressed last October," said Democrat Maryland Representative Elijah E. Cummings.
Cummings raised questions about the motive behind the hearing during his opening remarks.
ABC News also reported that it obtained 12 different versions of the talking points that show they were extensively edited as they evolved from the drafts first written entirely by the CIA to the final version distributed to Congress and to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice. She appeared on five talk shows the Sunday after that attack.
White House emails reviewed by ABC News suggest the edits were made with extensive input from the State Department, including requests from the State Department that references to the Al Qaeda-affiliated group Ansar al-Sharia be deleted as well references to CIA warnings about terrorist threats in Benghazi in the months preceding the attack.
