U.S. defense officials briefed lawmakers Thursday about the Islamic State ambush attack in Niger earlier this month that killed four American soldiers.
The Pentagon’s assistant secretary for international security affairs, Robert Karem, and Air Force Major General Albert Elton, the deputy director for special operations and counterterrorism, discussed the October 4 firefight in a closed-door session of the Senate Armed Forces Committee. The House Armed Services Committee held a separate hearing.
Defense Department officials are in the midst of an investigation of the attack that occurred near the Niger-Mali border and took the lives of the four servicemen, all U.S. Special Forces troops. Even as details remain murky of how the attack unfolded, several key lawmakers have voiced surprise that the United States has had about 1,000 troops in the West African nation, and said they are uncertain what the troops’ mission is.
After the House hearing, Congressman Marc Veasey, a Texas Democrat, said, “I think that you’re going to see more and more troops in Africa because … as ISIS continues to get pushed out of the Middle East and their so-called caliphate … they’re going to be looking for places to regroup.”
He said the jihadists are “looking for people that may sympathize with them – may want to bolster their own reputation in these certain areas. And you have a lot of ungoverned space in Africa, particularly along these borders. When you look at what happened in Niger and how close it was to Mali it’s almost very similar to the Middle East and that those spaces are ungoverned – yeah, no man’s land.”
President Donald Trump said Wednesday he did not specifically authorize the Niger mission.
“But I have generals that are great generals. These are great fighters, these are warriors,” he said. “I gave them authority to do what’s right so that we win. That’s the authority they have. I want to win and we’re going to win.”
Congresswoman Jackie Speier, a California Democrat, said Trump “is the commander in chief and it’s about time he stops trying to shift responsibility to others. That’s what a commander in chief is all about.”
Trump has been embroiled in days of contentious public statements about his condolence call to the widow of one of the soldiers killed, Sergeant La David Johnson.
The widow, Myeshia Johnson, pregnant with her third child, told ABC News earlier this week that Trump’s call to her only made her cry more because she heard him stumbling trying to remember my husband’s name.
“That’s what hurt me the most because if my husband is out there fighting for our country, and if he risks his life for our country, why can’t you remember his name? And that one made me upset and cry even more because my husband was an awesome soldier.”
She said that Trump told her that her husband “knew what he signed up for [in joining the military], but it hurts anyway. It made me cry. I was angry at the tone of his voice.”
Trump has disputed her account, saying, “I certainly respect La David, who I, by the way, called La David right from the beginning. Just so you understand, they put a chart in front, ‘La David,’ it says ‘La David Johnson.’ So I called right from the beginning.”
“I was extremely nice to her,” Trump said. “She sounds like a lovely lady. I’ve never seen her, I’ve never met her, but she sounds like a lovely lady. But I was extremely nice to her, I was extremely courteous, as I was to everyone else.”