The bitter political undercurrents surrounding the Benghazi attacks erupted Thursday with Democrats and Republicans feuding over the role of a special investigative panel while Hillary Clinton came under intense fire for her handling of the tragedy.
The panel's top Republican, Trey Gowdy, and Democrat, Elijah Cummings, began shouting and interrupting each other over what information the committee should release while Clinton sat silently in the witness chair, watching the heated exchange and nodding her agreement with Cummings.
The Democratic presidential front-runner -- who seemed collected and in command for the first phase of the hearing -- mounted a passionate defense of her response to the violence, telling the Republicans arrayed against her that she had lost more sleep over the deaths of four Americans in Libya than anyone else on the panel.
"I would imagine I have thought more about what happened than all of you put together," she said. "I have lost more sleep than all of you put together. I have been wracking my brain about what more could have been done or should have been done."
22 photos: Photos: Attack on U.S. mission in Benghazi
But she came under repeated attack from Republicans, who didn't accept her explanations and, in some cases, version of events.
Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio submitted the former secretary of state to a dramatic period of questioning when he alleged that she and other Obama administration staff tried to blame the attack on the consulate on an anti-Muslim YouTube video to avoid undercutting President Barack Obama's claims that he had crushed Al-Qaeda.
"You could live with a protest about a video, that won't hurt you, but a terror attack would," Jordan said, saying that Americans could accept, reluctantly, compatriots being killed abroad but "what they can't live with is when their government is not square with them."
Clinton rejected the claim, saying in the desperate hours after the attack on September 11, 2012, that information on the true nature of the assault on the compound by a mob was unclear.
"I am sorry that it doesn't fit your narrative congressman, I can only tell you what the facts are."
Another Republican, Rep Mike Pompeo of Kansas, tried to rile Clinton by asking why her old friend and political operative Sidney Blumenthal had been able to send her personal emails, requests for more security from U.S. staff in Libya did not reach her desk.
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