Africon News Today

Over to capitol hill, privately seemed to brief both mccain and grar graham. did you get a briefing? >> no, i did not. i spoke to secretary mattis on the phone thursday evening and friday i was in providence, rhode island and glad he got over there. as you know, the secretary left the following day for his asia tour. >> what do you feel -- was this -- let me ask you this. both lindsey graham and chuck schumer didnt know there were 1,000 troops in niger. was that knowable by a member of congress?...

Know when the media reports where we have troops. some of it was very surprising. i would not have come anywhere close to a number like 144. are we supposed to know all this stuff? and i guess there are people like john mccain who should know things because hes chairman of the armed services committee maybe the rest of us dont know. does it come as a surprise how many places we have u.s. troops in? >> i tend to follow it pretty closely. it doesnt surprise me, but specifically with africon. there...

Like senator mccain was entirely satisfied with all of the answers he got and he didnt give secretary mattis by any sense of the pentagon, a clean bill of health. given several opportunities to do that, he didnt do it. what mccain actually wants in terms of subpoena and testimony again, i didnt quite understand what he meant having someone from the cyber side testify. because this has to do with africon, not necessarily cyber security. >> hans, thanks for that and kelly as well. for more on the ...

Attempt? >> first of all, we are at the -- at the highest level of the u.s. government. the people that will answer those questions will be the people at the other end of the military pyramid. im sure the special forces group is conducting -- i know theyre conducting an investigation. that investigation, of course, under the auspices of africon will ultimately go to the pentagon. ive read the same stories you have. actually i know a lot more than im letting on, but im not going to tell you. ther...

So that we dont have to send our soldiers and marines there, in their thousands. thats what they were doing there. now, there is an investigation, theres always an -- unless its a very, very conventional death in a conventional war, theres always an investigation. of course, that operation is conducted by africon that is, of course, works directly for the secretary of defense. there is a, i talked to jim mattis this morning, i think he made statements this afternoon. theres an investigation ongo...

>> africon is reviewing closely the security procedures. >> the army chief of staff openly acknowledging a full investigation is under way. >> theyre evaluating the mission, enemy terrain, time, all of that to come up with the appropriate risk mitigation factors. >> a u.s. special operations team quickly organized a high-risk rescue mission, ready to move in. president trump was briefed. military officials are now looking into reports that a locater beacon emitted a signal from the area indicati...

We started some really in-depth work with the french in north africa, back in 2008, 2009, when the french were taking the lead. so i think different parts of the u.s. government has shared better at times with the french. africon has done very well. the central command responsible for syria probably doesnt have that in-depth relationship that other countries have with france in the past. so i think its opening up that spigot a little more. we are very open with the french, they are very open wit...

Committee loses credibility. david petraeus was in charge of that. he has not been in front of this committee. why not the head of africon? it does make it appear that all they care about is one person, hillary clinton. >> well, were hear from her less than an hour from now. amid all of this you see the clinton racedense on the left, you see the hearing room on the right. we have to go across town in washington for some breaking news at this hour of all things. jim miklaszewski on duty with that...

Than the white house at stake. it all comes to a head tomorrow as the house benghazi committee grills hillary clinton. im joined now by republican congressman peter roskam. congressman, welcome to "meet the press daily." >> thank you very much. >> let me start with a question that i asked congressman p mama on sunday. that is, there were a lot of people that were involved in decisions that were made that night that have yet to be called in front of your committee. im talking about the general in...

General hamm who was the head of the u.s. command in africa at this time, which had military control over u.s. forces in that region, and he testified back in the summer before congress and that testimony was released this week. he testified that within minutes of the attack, quote, to me it started to become clear pretty quickly that this was certainly a terrorist attack and not just something sporadic. again, thats directly contradicting the narrative that came out of the white house in the da...