Hillary Clinton testifies before Benghazi committee

WASHINGTON (AP) — The latest from the House Benghazi committee’s hearing featuring testimony from former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton:

UPDATED 1:40 p.m.: The White House says it hopes the House Benghazi committee’s hearing will bring finality to the issue.

White House spokesman Eric Schultz says President Barack Obama didn’t have specific plans to watch the hearing. But the spokesman says Hillary Rodham Clinton’s testimony is a reminder of why Obama chose her to be secretary of state.

Schultz says Clinton is committed to the safety and security of Americans serving in diplomatic posts, and he says she’s someone who takes responsibility when something goes wrong.

UPDATED 1:15 p.m.: Republican Rep. Jim Jordan is accusing Hillary Rodham Clinton of not telling the American people that terrorists were responsible for attacking the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya.

The Ohio lawmaker suggests Clinton was motivated to portray Libya as a success story for the Obama administration — and the attacks came only 56 days before voters were to decide whether to re-elect President Barack Obama.

Jordan is citing Clinton’s public statement after the 2012 incident — the statement said some people believed the attack came in response to an anti-Muslim video that prompted a protest at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.

Jordan has produced copies of emails Clinton wrote her family, saying it was a terrorist attack by an al-Qaida-like group.

Jordan notes she also told Egypt’s prime minister that she knew the Benghazi attack had nothing to do with the film — that it was a planned terrorist strike.

Clinton disagrees with Jordan’s portrayal of what happened and is defending her actions. She says there was much conflicting intelligence in the fast-moving aftermath.

UPDATED 12:45 p.m.: A Republican member of the House Benghazi committee wants to know why Hillary Rodham Clinton didn’t fire anybody over the 2012 attacks that killed four Americans.

Clinton was secretary of state at the time.

Rep. Mike Pompeo of Kansas notes that no one lost a single paycheck over the attacks — and it was the first time an U.S. ambassador had been killed since 1979.

Clinton says an independent review board did single out several State Department employees for what the board felt was adequately carrying out their duties — but the board didn’t find any breach or dereliction of duty.

Four senior State Department officials were put on paid leave after the board said security at the Benghazi mission on the night of the attacks was “grossly inadequate.”

After a review, the department reassigned three officials to positions of lesser responsibility, and one official resigned.

Pompeo says his constituents don’t think that amounts to “accountability.”

UPDATED 12:40 p.m.: The seats in the House hearing room are all taken, and dozens of photographers are on hand as Hillary Rodham Clinton testifies about the deadly attacks against Americans in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012.

But the cameras didn’t show the former secretary of state raising her right hand and swearing to tell the truth.

A spokesman for the House Benghazi committee says the chairman — Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina — offered to conduct a private swearing-in — before the hearing began — out of respect for Clinton.

Spokesman Jamal Ware says the hearing is “not about politics” but about the four Americans who died in the attacks.

UPDATED 12:15 p.m.: Hillary Rodham Clinton says it’s clear the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, wasn’t provided with all the requested security.

The former secretary of state says neither Ambassador Chris Stevens — who died in the 2012 attacks — nor the diplomatic mission got everything that was asked for.

Clinton tells a House committee that was the finding of earlier congressional investigations and an independent review board conducting its own investigation of the attacks.

But Clinton also says even critics of the level of security in Benghazi have said the type of attack that took place would have been difficult to repel.

Still, Republican Rep. Martha Roby of Alabama says the review board found that security was “grossly inadequate”

Clinton says the board uncovered deficiencies within the State Department — and the Obama administration has tried to make fixes.

UPDATED 11:30 a.m.: Rep. Susan Brooks is using a collection of emails as a way to suggest that the Obama administration and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton lost interest in Libya in the months before to deadly attacks in Benghazi in September 2012.

At a House committee hearing on Benghazi, the Indiana Republican is brandishing two piles of printed emails that she says show messages related to Benghazi and Libya.

Brooks says he pile from 2011 has 795 emails, and the pile from 2012 has 67 emails.

Here’s what Brooks is telling Clinton: “I can only conclude by your own records a lack of interest in Libya in 2012.”

Clinton denies there was any diminished interest in Libya. She says most of her work wasn’t done by email, but in personal meetings and briefings, secure telephone calls, diplomatic cables and other types of communication.

Clinton says she didn’t even have a computer on her desk.

UPDATED 11:10 a.m.: Hillary Rodham Clinton is pleading with the Republican-led House Benghazi committee to put — in her words — “national security ahead of politics and ideology.”

The former secretary of state says that after deadly attacks against Americans abroad during the Reagan, Bush and Bill Clinton administrations, leaders from both parties in Congress and the executive branch came together to figure out what went wrong and how to respond.

Clinton says that what’s happened after the Sept. 11 attacks, after the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 and after attacks against Americans in Lebanon when Ronald Reagan was president.

She’s telling committee members that “Congress has to be our partner as it has been after previous tragedies.”

The committee is examining the deadly 2012 attacks on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya. Four Americans were killed.

UPDATED 10:50 a.m.: The top Democrat on the House Benghazi committee is offering a vigorous defense of Hillary Rodham Clinton and unleashing a scathing critique of the Republican-led panel.

Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland cites comments by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy — the California Republican who credited the committee with driving down Clinton’s presidential poll numbers.

Clinton is the front-runner for her party’s nomination in 2016.

Cummings is mocking the committee chairman, GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, for saying it was hard to conduct the inquiry in such a partisan atmosphere.

Cummings wants to know why Gowdy was telling fellow Republicans to “shut up when they are telling the truth” — and not when they made what Cummings calls “baseless claims” against Clinton.

Cummings says it’s time to end the “fishing expedition” by the committee against Clinton.

UPDATED 10:40 a.m.: Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is telling a House committee there were “no delays in decision-making” immediately after the deadly 2012 attacks on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya.

Clinton is the star witness in the GOP-led investigation.

She’s also says that in the U.S. response, there were “no denials of support from Washington” or from the U.S. military.

She’s calling for transparency in the investigation — which critics say is focused on hampering Clinton’s run for the White House in 2016. She’s the Democratic front-runner.

Four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, died in the attacks.

The committee chairman — GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina — accuses Clinton and the Obama administration of withholding information, including Clinton’s emails, about what happened in Washington following the attacks.

UPDATED 10:15 a.m.: The chairman of the House committee investigating the deadly attacks on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012 is telling former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that the investigation is not about her.

That’s the message in Rep. Trey Gowdy’s opening statement at a public hearing where Clinton — the Democratic front-runner for president in 2016 — is testifying.

The South Carolina Republican says the investigation is focusing on the four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, who died in the attacks.

Gowdy say the committee is looking for the truth about the diplomatic compound’s request for more security, equipment and personnel — and what was being discussed in Washington while the Americans were under attack.

After months of buildup, Clinton is taking center stage as the star witness in the Republican-led investigation.

UPDATED 9:50 a.m.: Hundreds of people are gathering outside the Longworth House Office Building before the highly anticipated public hearing where Hillary Rodham Clinton is to testify before the House Select Committee on Benghazi.

News photographers are packing the well of a hearing room normally used by the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee. It’s the largest hearing room on the House side of the Capitol.

Clinton — the Democratic front-runner for president in 2016 — is the sole witness at the hearing.