Hillary Clinton secretly removed documents deemed damaging to her political career before submitting them to the independent committee investigating the 2012 Benghazi terror attack, an ex-State Department official alleged.

Former Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs (NEA) chief Raymond Maxwell delivered an account of the document manipulation which was first posted by The Daily Signal. On Monday, Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-Ut.) confirmed the story to Fox News, saying Maxwell said the same thing during a private interview last year.

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Based on Maxwell's account which Chaffetz relayed, both Clinton's chief of staff and deputy chief of staff were running the document scrubbing. The operation reportedly happened in one of the State Department's basement offices during a weekend.

Maxwell said the officials manning the operation aimed to remove information that would damage the reputation of then-Secretary of State Clinton and other senior leaders. The main goal was to prevent the Congress and the Accountability Review Board (ARB) from seeing the lapses in security and during and after the terror attack, the report explained.

After the September 11 attack in 2012, Clinton and other State officials were under fire for denying Ambassador Chris Stevens' repeated requests for additional security officers in the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, the Daily Mail detailed.

Maxwell was one of the four officials blamed for the terror attack, but was later on cleared, the report added.

Maxwell's allegations come as the Benghazi committee is gearing up for its first open hearing this Wednesday. Those who are to testify on that day include assistant secretary for Diplomatic Security Greg Starr, and Independent Panel on Best Practices members Mark Sullivan and Todd Keil.

The Independent Panel on Best Practices was formed to review the ARB's moves.

According to Chaffetz, Maxwell's statement was consistent. He also explained that he only went public with the allegations because Maxwell has also revealed them to the public, the report said.

Meanwhile, State Department spokesperson Alec Gerlach released a statement to Fox News denying the allegations pertaining to the document scrubbing.

The Daily Signal's report detailed Maxwell's claims of seeing stacks of files during a Sunday session in which he was not invited. The former NEA head said Clinton's Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills and Deputy Chief of Staff Jake Sullivan were overseeing the operation involving pulling out of files that could cast the department in a "bad light," the report said.

Maxwell told Sharyl Attkisson of The Daily Signal that Clinton's efforts to conceal the documents from the Congress and ARB was a poor attempt to contain the damage to the State Department's political image.

TagsHillary Clinton, Benghazi incident, Raymond Maxwell, Jason Chaffetz, Benghazi cover-up