Petraeus agrees to testify on Benghazi before Congress and Senate

I had read somewhere that Petraeus didn’t want to testify. So either he changed his mind or the report was wrong:

FOX NEWS – Former CIA Director David Petraeus has agreed to testify before the House and Senate intelligence committees, Fox News has learned.

Prior to his abrupt resignation last week, Petraeus had been scheduled to testify this Thursday on the burgeoning controversy over the Libya terror attack.

Also, just to make the post more interesting, here is Krauthammer from last night explaining the importance of this sex scandal and how it impacts Benghazi. In short, he says the White House held the sex scandal over Petraeus’ head, threatening his job with it, which likely influenced him to give false information to Congress on the Benghazi attacks (via Newsbusters):

KRAUTHAMMER: I think the really shocking news today was that General Petraeus thought and hoped he could keep his job. He thought that it might and it would be kept secret, and that he could stay in his position. I think what that tells us is really important. It meant that he understood that the FBI obviously knew what was going on. He was hoping that those administration officials would not disclose what had happened, and therefore hoping that he would keep his job. And that meant that he understood that his job, his reputation, his legacy, his whole celebrated life was in the hands of the administration, and he expected they would protect him by keeping it quiet.

And that brings us to the ultimate issue, and that is his testimony on September 13. That’s the thing that connects the two scandals, and that’s the only thing that makes the sex scandal relevant. Otherwise it would be an exercise in sensationalism and voyeurism and nothing else. The reason it’s important is here’s a man who knows the administration holds his fate in its hands, and he gives testimony completely at variance with what the Secretary of Defense had said the day before, at variance with what he’d heard from his station chief in Tripoli, and with everything that we had heard. Was he influenced by the fact that he knew his fate was held by people within the administration at that time?

KRAUTHAMMER: Of course it was being held over Petraeus’s head, and the sword was lowered on Election Day. You don’t have to be a cynic to see that as the ultimate in cynicism. As long as they needed him to give the administration line to quote Bill, everybody was silent. And as soon as the election’s over, as soon as he can be dispensed with, the sword drops and he’s destroyed. I mean, can you imagine what it’s like to be on that pressure and to think it didn’t distort or at least in some way unconsciously influence his testimony? That’s hard to believe.


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