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(CNN) -- Hillary Clinton supporters launched a counteroffensive this week against claims that documents related to the Benghazi attack investigation were sanitized and ahead of another congressional hearing.

A Clinton spokesman responded quickly to the story released Monday, calling it "patently false," and a group helping with the former secretary of state's communications and rapid response mobilized an entire communications strategy, website and talking points around the issue.

The strategy has a directness that has not always been seen from Clinton aides and affiliated groups, which have generally waited for a story to fully emerge before taking it on.

A GOP-led House Select Committee on the Benghazi attack holds its first public meeting Wednesday, with seven Republicans and five Democrats looking into the September 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. compound in Libya that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.

The issue has been white hot politically since then. It loomed as an issue that Republicans used against President Barack Obama in the closing months of the 2012 election, and with the prospect of Clinton running for president in 2016, the issue has continued to burn.

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Sharyl Attkisson, who resigned from her job as a CBS News correspondent in 2014 for what she said was liberal bias, published a report Monday alleging that a State Department official close to Clinton had withheld and sanitized documents during the department investigation.

The story, which many conservative outlets branded as a "bombshell," was hung on Deputy Assistant Secretary Raymond Maxwell, one of the men reprimanded over the attack.

The State Department flatly denied the story.

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Clinton supporters launch counterattack on Benghazi claims