Obama administration officials have threatened whistle-blowers on Benghazi, lawyer says

From Fox News:

At least four career officials at the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency have retained lawyers or are in the process of doing so, as they prepare to provide sensitive information about the Benghazi attacks to Congress, Fox News has learned.

Victoria Toensing, a former Justice Department official and Republican counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, is now representing one of the State Department employees. She told Fox News her client and some of the others, who consider themselves whistle-blowers, have been threatened by unnamed Obama administration officials.

“I'm not talking generally, I'm talking specifically about Benghazi – that people have been threatened,” Toensing said in an interview Monday. “And not just the State Department. People have been threatened at the CIA.”...

Toensing disclosed that her client has pertinent information on all three time periods investigators consider relevant to the attacks: the months that led up to the attack, when pleas by the ambassador and his staff for enhanced security in Benghazi were mostly rejected by senior officers at the State Department; the eight-hour time frame in which the attacks unfolded, and the eight-day period that followed the attacks, when Obama administration officials incorrectly described them as the result of a spontaneous protest over a video.

“It's frightening, and they're doing some very despicable threats to people,” she said. “Not ‘we're going to kill you,’ or not ‘we're going to prosecute you tomorrow,’ but they're taking career people and making them well aware that their careers will be over [if they cooperate with congressional investigators].”

In a related development, Rep. Trey Gowdy told Fox News over the weekend that “explosive” congressional hearings on the Benghazi terrorist attacks are “coming quickly.” [Source Washingtom Times]

“There are more Benghazi hearings coming; I think they’re going to be explosive,” said Gowdy.

“[The hearings] are coming sooner rather than later," he added.

Gowdy also intimated that eye-witnesses to the attacks might testify in the upcoming hearings.

“Direct evidence, direct testimony by eyewitnesses is always the most compelling,” he said.

“Trust me when I tell you you will want to follow the hearings that are coming up," Gowdy said.