Tensions are rising in anticipation Hillary Clinton’s testimony in front of House Select Committee on Benghazi on Thursday.
She will face Trey Gowdy as well as others on the panel with deep military and national security experience. Her supporters insist that the Benghazi committee was little more than an exercise in partisan politics.
But on another level, she will be facing down the panel’s majority staff, a team with deep military and national security experience.
Leading the charge is the committee’s top lawyer, Dana Chipman, a three-star general who served as the Army’s chief counsel during the first years of the Obama administration. After retiring in 2013, Chipman joined the panel in August of 2014.
Chipman’s top deputy, Mark Grider, also has overseas experience, having worked in the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, the independent government agency responsible for exercising congressional oversight of the post-war rebuilding effort.