There Just Has to Be a Scandal - Somewhere The American public, Greg Sargent pointed out this morning, does not find a presidential scandal in either the Benghazi talking points or the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of right-wing groups seeking a tax-exempt and disclosure-free status. In a C.N.N. poll released over the weekend, 61 percent of Americans say President Obama's comments about the I.R.S. investigation were mostly or completely true, and 55 percent say the I.R.S. acted on its own. On Benghazi, 50 percent believe that early statements about the attack reflect what the administration believed at the time, compared with 44 percent - 76 percent of them Republicans - who say officials intentionally misled the public. But Republicans are clinging to the idea of scandal, especially Representative Darrell Issa, chairman of the House oversight committee, who is desperately trying to find someone to blame for the murders of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. Most recently, Mr. Issa subpoenaed Thomas Pickering, the former United Nations ambassador, who co-authored a review of the Benghazi attacks with Admiral Michael Mullen, the retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Mr. Issa's committee should interview Mr. Pickering, and Mr. Issa is justified in demanding access to a classified version of the Pickering/Mullen report. But he wants to do it behind closed doors and Mr. Pickering wants to have his say in public. So Mr. Issa issued the subpoena, for a private deposition only. It's not clear why this all has to take place in private - other than the rather obvious notion that it could allow Republicans to leak Mr. Pickering's answers selectively. It is certainly odd that the Pickering-Mullen review team did not interview Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her deputies, but Mrs. Clinton and several other senior State Department officials have testified before Congress. Mr. Issa could instead focus on the C.I.A."s role in the Benghazi tragedy. The State Department did a full a public review of its behavior, as required by law, and accepted the conclusion that "systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels" in the bureaus of diplomatic security and Near Eastern Affairs created "a security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place." Yet the C.I.A., which was the main U.S. presence on the ground in Benghazi, had relationships with local groups and was supposed to have the best fix on what was going on, didn't warn of an untoward risk. Was Benghazi "fundamentally an intelligence failure," as a State Department partisan told my colleague Carol Giacomo? Congress needs to look closely at the C.I.A."s role and insist that the agency do the same, and make reforms as needed. That would be a more useful thing to do than Mr. Issa's endless efforts to find a terrible conspiracy in the drafting of talking points right after the killings.