No stranger to being the topic of discussion on the pages of NewsBusters, MSNBC writer and Rachel Maddow Show producer Steve Benen was at it again on Friday as he bemoaned the House Select Committee on Benghazi as the “longest congressional investigation in the history of the United States” despite even liberal sites like Politifact debunking this talking point.
After a backlash from various readers and Twitter users, Benen was forced to publish a correction to his blog, update it, and admit that other congressional committees have run far longer (including one about defense contracts from World War II).
Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) announced the closing of the investigation into the deadly 2012 Islamic terrorist attack in Libya on Friday and so Benen took to MSNBC.com to summarize the complaints among the left and right (including MRC President Brent Bozell to be fully transparent), but his claim about the Gowdy-led effort being the longest in history was swiftly denounced.
Hours later, Benen issued this lengthy correction that he begrudgingly tried to spin:
* Correction: A couple of alert readers noted that Congress launched a seven-year investigation into WWII defense contracts in the 1940s, which lasted longer than the Benghazi investigation. The Benghazi probe is among the longest in U.S. history, but not the longest. (That said, when it comes congressional scrutiny of specific individual events – Pearl Harbor, 9/11, the Kennedy Assassination, etc. – the Benghazi investigation is, in fact, the longest, a detail Republicans generally prefer to ignore.)
