This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/us/politics/obama-addresses-benghazi-and-irs-controversies.html

The article has changed 5 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 2 Version 3
Obama Scoffs at Libya Outcry but Vows to Act on I.R.S. Audits Obama Dismisses Benghazi Furor but Assails I.R.S.
(about 4 hours later)
WASHINGTON — An exasperated President Obama on Monday called Republican criticism of his handling of the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, “a sideshow” and said that any accusation of a cover-up by his administration “defies logic.” WASHINGTON — President Obama, facing re-energized Republican adversaries and new questions about the administration’s conduct, on Monday dismissed a furor over the handling of last year’s attacks in Benghazi, Libya, as a political “sideshow” but joined a bipartisan chorus of outrage over disclosures that the Internal Revenue Service had singled out conservative groups for special scrutiny.
Speaking to reporters for the first time since his Republican adversaries used Congressional hearings to renew their political assault, Mr. Obama was dismissive of the continuing controversy, saying that those in Washington who are playing politics with the issue “dishonor” the four people who died in Benghazi last fall. Mr. Obama called the I.R.S. reports “outrageous” and “contrary to our traditions,” adding his voice to those of Republicans and isolating the agency as the House scheduled a hearing on Friday in what is likely to be an extensive Congressional review of the agency’s actions.
“Suddenly, three days ago, this gets spun up as if there’s something new to the story. There’s no there there,” Mr. Obama told reporters during a news conference with David Cameron, the British prime minister. “I’ve got no patience with it,” Mr. Obama said during a joint news conference at the White House with Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain. “I will not tolerate it. And we will make sure that we find out exactly what happened on this.”
The president took a strikingly different tone about the other controversy that is riveting attention in the nation’s capital: the revelation that Internal Revenue Service employees targeted conservative groups for audits. Four months into his second term, the president was under increasing assault from Republicans who accused the administration of political bullying and a lack of transparency. Kathleen Sebelius, Mr. Obama’s secretary of health and human services, has drawn criticism in recent days for soliciting corporate donations to pay for the rollout next year of the new health care law.
Mr. Obama said he learned about those allegations from news media reports on Friday. He repeatedly called the charges “outrageous,” if true, and said that anyone found to be guilty of such actions should be held accountable. And on Monday evening, The Associated Press reported that the Justice Department had secretly obtained two months of telephone records of its reporters. The company’s editors called it a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into its news gathering, and Republicans quickly seized on the report.
“I’ve got no patience for it,” he said. “I will not tolerate it.” Mr. Obama’s blunt condemnation of the I.R.S. appeared designed to head off fallout as Republicans and Democrats called for hearings and investigations into the matter. But on Benghazi, he seemed exasperated and angry to be facing a continuing barrage of accusations that he deemed recycled and partisan.
The president’s blunt condemnation of the I.R.S. appeared designed to head off fallout from the scandal, as Republicans — and some Democrats — called for hearings and investigations into the matter. “We don’t have time to be playing these kinds of political games here in Washington,” Mr. Obama said, saying any inquiry should be focused on the four people who died in Libya and how to prevent future attacks. “We dishonor them when we turn things like this into a political circus.”
But on Benghazi, the president seemed resigned to a continuing barrage of political accusations, which he said were not designed to actually help the State Department make sure that similar attacks do not happen again. “Suddenly, three days ago,” he added, “this gets spun up as if there’s something new to the story. There’s no there there.”
Responding to Republican accusations over the weekend that his administration tried to cover up that the Benghazi attacks were linked to terrorism, the president pointed out that he sent the head of the counterterrorism center to brief lawmakers three days after Susan E. Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, delivered the now-disputed talking points on several Sunday talk shows. A few hours later, at a Democratic fund-raiser in New York City, Mr. Obama bemoaned “hyper-partisanship in Washington” and said he had hoped that Republicans might have been more willing to cooperate after his re-election last year.
“Who executes some sort of cover-up or effort to tamp something down for three days?” he said. “This whole thing defies logic.” “My thinking was when we beat them in 2012 that might break the fever, and it’s not quite broken yet,” Mr. Obama told supporters at the five-story West Village home of the film mogul Harvey Weinstein. “But I am persistent. And I am staying at it.”
Mr. Obama repeated that his administration was as transparent as it could have been in the hours after the attacks at the diplomatic facility in Benghazi on Sept. 11. He said “nobody understood” what exactly had happened there in the first few days after the attacks and that Republicans in Washington were not being helpful in fixing what went wrong that day. Mr. Obama’s comments about the I.R.S. left the agency and its leadership alone in answering charges that its employees had put added demands on Tea Party and other conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status from 2010 to 2012, even though none appeared to have been denied the classification.
Mr. Obama also said that he did not “have time to be playing these political games in Washington” and that the focus should be on the four people who died, including the ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens. “We dishonor them when we turn things like this into a political circus,” he said. Leaders of the House Ways and Means Committee from both parties announced that the acting director of the I.R.S., Steven T. Miller, as well as the Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration, would appear at the first hearing.
Scrutiny in Congress appeared to be focused on a detailed timeline of events from early 2010, when I.R.S. workers in Cincinnati began using key words like “Tea Party” and “patriot” to winnow out tax-exemption applicants, to this past Friday, when the head of the I.R.S. division on tax-exempt organizations, Lois Lerner, apologized.
On March 14, 2012, amid a rash of news reports alleging harassment by the I.R.S., a group of Republican senators sent a letter to Douglas Shulman, the I.R.S. commissioner at the time, asking whether Tea Party groups were being treated different from other applicants for tax-exempt status. On April 26, 2012, Mr. Miller, who was then a deputy commissioner, wrote back and assured them that all applicants were receiving the same treatment.
But Congressional officials investigating the matter said that on March 29 of the same year, Mr. Miller had sent senior I.R.S. officials to Cincinnati to explore charges of harassment. That same day, the Treasury’s inspector general informed the agency that he was starting an investigation.
On April 26, 2012, Ms. Lerner’s superior, Joseph H. Grant, was briefed on the issue by officials returning from Cincinnati. Those officials briefed Mr. Miller on May 3 of that year, Congressional aides said Monday.
But lawmakers seeking information were kept in the dark. On June 18, Republican senators wrote to senior I.R.S. officials to request more information. Mr. Miller responded on Sept. 11, again saying nothing about the brewing controversy.
Meanwhile on Monday, the furor over the Benghazi attack showed few signs of abating. Representative Darrell Issa, the California Republican who heads the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said he was seeking testimony from Thomas R. Pickering, a former United States ambassador, and former Adm. Mike Mullen, the authors of report by a panel known as an accountability review board.
In a letter to the two, Mr. Issa cited accusations that their review was “incomplete” and “flawed.” Republicans in Congress have seized on testimony from senior State Department employees in Libya to raise new questions about the administration’s decisions before the attack and their explanations afterward.
“The president may want Americans to believe there’s no ‘there’ there,’ but he can’t hide from the facts,” said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John A. Boehner. “After four Americans died at the hands of terrorists, the administration was less than upfront about how it happened, and they continue to deny requests for further disclosures.”
Mr. Pickering, in a telephone interview on Monday, defended for the second straight day the five-member panel’s work, and said he and Admiral Mullen had agreed to testify before Mr. Issa’s committee.
Specifically, Mr. Pickering supported the panel’s decision not to question Hillary Rodham Clinton, the secretary of state at the time, when it discussed its preliminary findings with her toward the end the review, for which it interviewed more than 100 people.
Mrs. Clinton publicly took responsibility in October for the attack, but Mr. Pickering said the panel’s mandate was to assign accountability to specific individuals who decided security measures.
The panel was authorized by a 1986 law intended to strengthen security at United States diplomatic missions. The law requires that a panel be created any time there is a loss of life, serious injury or significant property destruction at a diplomatic mission overseas.
Mrs. Clinton immediately embraced the review’s 29 recommendations when the panel issued its report in December.
Since then, Congress has approved $1.4 billion to carry out the changes, which include hiring hundreds of additional diplomatic security agents and Marine guards at embassies, improving training for employees assigned to dangerous posts, and revamping deployment procedures to increase the number of experienced and well-trained people serving in high-risk posts.
Responding to Republican accusations that the administration had tried to cover up the fact that the Benghazi attacks were linked to terrorism, Mr. Obama noted that he sent the head of the National Counterterrorism Center to brief lawmakers three days after Susan Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, appeared on Sunday-morning talk shows.
“Who executes some sort of cover-up or effort to tamp things down for three days?” he said. “This whole thing defies logic.”

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.