On Wednesday, in a moment of rich irony, Fox News invited Oliver North, a military official who was convicted of covering up the government’s role in the Iran-Contra scandal, to discuss the Obama administration’s alleged cover-up of the Sep. 11, 2012 attacks on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi. North joined host Megyn Kelly to analyze the House Oversight Committee’s hearing featuring three witnesses who claim that the government could have done more on the night of the attack to save American lives.
During the segment, North explained that the administration “falsified talking points provided to people who were going to speak publicly about it” in the days following the incident and manipulated the Accountability Review Board report, which came out months later, to escape political blame.
North specifically singled out Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Admiral Mike Mullen, who headed the review, and accused them of lacking “integrity.” Watch it:
In 1987, while testifying before a joint Congressional committee, North admitted that he lied to Congress about his role in the Iran-Contra scandal — in which officials secretly sold arms to Iran to fund a resistance movement to the government in Nicaragua — and shred documents to cover-up the government’s actions. North was indicted on 16 counts and convicted of three: accepting an illegal gratuity, aiding and abetting in the obstruction of a congressional inquiry, and ordering the destruction of documents.
Throughout Wednesday’s hearing, Republicans sought to portray the lack of military response during the Benghazi attack as evidence of the administration’s negligence in protecting diplomats overseas and a resulting cover-up to avoid scrutiny. But they produced no evidence of a conspiracy and the military has repeatedly said that there were simply no air assets close enough to Benghazi that would have arrived in time to make a difference.