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State Department Deputies Testify On The Hill

Posted in Foreign Policy, Foreign Service, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State, state department, U.S. Department of State, tagged Benghazi, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State, State Department, Thomas Nides, U.S. Department of State, William J. Burns on December 20, 2012| 2 Comments »

Although our Hillary was unable to testify today due to illness and injury, her deputies did, both at SFR and HFA. Because they did so in her place and at her request, I am posting the transcripts of both sets of testimonies for the record.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Benghazi: The Attack and the Lessons Learned

Testimony

William J. Burns
Deputy Secretary

Thomas Nides
Deputy Secretary for Management and Resources

Opening Remarks Before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations

Washington, DC

December 20, 2012

DEPUTY SECRETARY BURNS: Thank you. Mr. Chairman, Senator Lugar, members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity. Secretary Clinton asked me to express how much she regrets not being able to be here today. And I’d like to join you, Mr. Chairman, on behalf of the Secretary and the men and women of the Department of State in expressing our deep respect and admiration for the many years of service of Senator Lugar to our nation.

Since the terrorist attacks on our compounds in Benghazi, State Department officials and senior members from other agencies have testified in four congressional hearings, provided more than 20 briefings for members and staff, and submitted thousands of pages of documents, including the now-full-classified report of the Accountability Review Board. Secretary Clinton has also sent a letter covering a wide range of issues for the record. So today I would like to highlight just a few key points.

The attacks in Benghazi took the lives of four courageous Americans. Ambassador Stevens was a friend and a beloved member of the State Department community for 20 years. He was a diplomat’s diplomat, and he embodied the very best of America. Even as we grieved for our fallen friends and colleagues, we took action on three fronts.

First, we took immediate steps to further protect our people and our posts. We stayed in constant contact with embassies and consulates around the world facing large protests, dispatched emergency security teams, received reporting from the intelligence community, and took additional precautions where needed. You will hear more about all this from my partner, Tom Nides.

Second, we intensified a diplomatic campaign aimed at combating the threat of terrorism across North Africa. We continue to work to bring to justice the terrorists responsible for the attacks in Benghazi, and we are working with our partners to close safe havens, cut off terrorist finances, counter extremist ideology, and slow the flow of new recruits.

And third, Secretary Clinton ordered an investigation to determine exactly what happened in Benghazi. I want to convey our appreciation to the Accountability Review Board’s chairman and vice chairman, Ambassador Tom Pickering and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, and also Hugh Turner, Richard Shinnick, and Catherine Bertini. The board’s report takes a clear-eyed look at serious systemic problems, problems which are unacceptable, problems for which, as Secretary Clinton has said, we take responsibility, and problems which we have already begun to fix.

Before Tom walks you through what we are doing to implement fully all of the board’s recommendations, I would like to add a few words based on my own experiences as a career diplomat in the field. I have been a very proud member of the Foreign Service for more than 30 years, and I have had the honor of serving as a chief of mission overseas. I know that diplomacy, by its very nature, must sometimes be practiced in dangerous places. As Secretary Clinton has said, our diplomats cannot work in bunkers and do their jobs. When America is absent, there are consequences: Our interests suffer and our security at home is threatened. Chris Stevens understood that as well as anyone. Chris also knew that every chief of mission has the responsibility to ensure the best possible security and support for our people.

As senior officials here in Washington, we share that profound responsibility. We have to constantly improve, reduce the risks our people face, and make sure they have all the resources they need. That includes the men and women at the State Department’s Diplomatic Security service. I have been deeply honored to serve with many of these brave men and women. They are professionals and patriots who serve in many places where there are no Marines on post and little or no U.S. military presence in country. Like Secretary Clinton, I trust them with my life.

It’s important to recognize that our colleagues in the Bureaus of Diplomatic Security and Near East Affairs and across the Department, at home and abroad, get it right countless times a day, for years on end, in some of the toughest circumstances imaginable. We cannot lose sight of that. But we learned some very hard and painful lessons in Benghazi. We are already acting on them. We have to do better.

We owe it to our colleagues who lost their lives in Benghazi. We owe it to the security professionals who acted with such extraordinary heroism that awful night to try to protect them. And we owe it to thousands of our colleagues serving America with great dedication every day in diplomatic posts around the world. We will never prevent every act of terrorism or achieve perfect security, but we will never stop working to get better and safer. As Secretary Clinton has said, the United States will keep leading and keep engaging around the world, including in those hard places where America’s interests and values are at stake.

Thank you very much.

CHAIRMAN KERRY: Secretary Nides.

DEPUTY SECRETARY NIDES: Mr. Chairman, Senator Lugar, members of the committee, I also want to thank you for this opportunity. I want to reiterate what Bill has said. All of us have a responsibility to provide the men and women who serve this country with the best possible security and support. From senior Department leadership setting the priorities, the supervisors evaluating security needs, to the Congress appropriating sufficient funds, we all share this responsibility. Secretary Clinton has said that, as Secretary of State, this is her greatest responsibility and her highest priority.

Today I will focus on the steps we have been taking at Secretary Clinton’s direction, and that we will continue to take. As Bill said, the board reports takes a clear-eyed look at serious, systemic problems for which we take responsibility and that we have already begun to fix. We are grateful for the recommendations from Ambassador Pickering and his team. We accept every one of them – all 29 recommendations. Secretary Clinton has charged my office with leading a task force that will ensure that all 29 are implemented quickly and completely, and to pursue steps above and beyond the board’s report.

The Under Secretary of Political Affairs, the Under Secretary for Management, the Director General of the Foreign Service and the Deputy Legal Advisor will work with me to drive this forward. The task force has already met to translate the recommendation into actual 60 specific action items. We’ve assigned every single one to the responsible bureau for immediate implementation, and several will be completed by the end of this calendar year. Implementation of each and every recommendation will be underway by the time the next Secretary of State takes office. There will be no higher priority for the Department in the coming weeks and months. And should we require more resources to execute these recommendations, we’ll work closely with the Congress to ensure that they are met.

As I said, Secretary Clinton wants us to implement the ARB’s findings and do no more. Let me offer some very clear specifics. For more than 200 years, the United States, like every other country around the world, has relied on host nations to provide security for embassies and consulates. But in today’s evolving threat environment, we have to take a new and harder look at the capabilities and the commitments of our hosts. We have to re-examine how we operate in places facing emerging threats, where national security forces are fragmented or may be weak.

So at Secretary Clinton’s direction, we have moved quickly to conduct a worldwide review of our overall security posture, with particular scrutiny on a number of high-threat posts. With the Department of Defense, we’ve deployed five interagency security assessment teams, made up of diplomatic and military security experts, to 19 posts in 13 countries – an unprecedented cooperation between our Departments at a critical time. These teams have provided us a roadmap for addressing emergency – emerging security challenges.

We’re also partnering with the Pentagon to send 35 additional Marine detachments – that’s about 225 Marines – to medium and high-threat posts where they’ll serve visible deterrence to hostile acts. This is on top of the approximate 150 detachments we have already deployed. We are aligning our resources to our 2013 budget requests to address physical vulnerabilities and reinforce structures wherever needed and to reduce risk from fire.

And let me add, we may need your help in ensuring that we have the authority to streamline the usual processes that produce faster results. We’re seeking to hire more than 150 additional Diplomatic Security personnel, an increase of about 5 percent, and to provide them with the equipment and training they need. As the ARB recommended, we will target them squarely at security at our high-threat posts.

I want to second Bill’s praise for these brave security professionals. I have served in this Department for only two years, having come from the private sector. However, I have traveled to places like Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan, and I have seen firsthand how these dedicated men and women risk their lives every day. We owe them a debt of gratitude as they go to work every day to protect us in more than 270 posts around the world. And as we make these improvements in the field, we’re also making changes here in Washington. We’ve named the first-ever Deputy Assistant Secretary for State for High-Threat Posts within the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. We’re updating our deployment procedures to increase the number of experience and well-trained staff serving in those posts. And we’re working to ensure that the State Department makes decisions about where our people operate in a way that reflects our shared responsibility for security.

Our regional assistant secretaries were directed – directly involved in our interagency security assessment process, and will assume greater accountability for securing our people and our posts. We will provide the Congress with a detailed report on every step we’re taking to improve security and implement the board’s recommendations. We’ll look to you for support and guidance as we do this.

Obviously, part of this is about resources. We must equip our people with what they need to deliver results safely, and will work with you as needs arise. But Congress has a bigger role than that. You have visited our posts. You know our diplomats on the ground and the challenges they face. You know our vital national security interests are at stake, and that we are all in this together. We look forward to working with you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your support and counsel and for this opportunity to discuss these important matters. We’d both be happy to take your questions.

House Foreign Affairs Committee

Benghazi Attack, Part II: The Report of the Accountability Review Board

Testimony

William J. Burns
Deputy Secretary

Thomas Nides
Deputy Secretary for Management and Resources

Opening Remarks Before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs

Washington, DC

December 20, 2012

DEPUTY SECRETARY BURNS: Thank you very much, Madam Chair, Mr. Berman, members of the committee. Thank you for this opportunity. Secretary Clinton asked me to express how much she regrets not being able to be here today, and I know she has confirmed to you, Madam Chair, her willingness to appear before you in January.Since the terrorist attacks on our compounds in Benghazi, State Department officials and senior members from other agencies have testified in four Congressional hearings, provided more than 20 briefings for members and staff, and submitted thousands of pages of documents, including now the full classified report of the Accountability Review Board. Secretary Clinton has also sent a letter covering a wide range of issues for the record. So today, I’d like to highlight just a few key points.

The attacks in Benghazi took the lives of four courageous Americans. Ambassador Stevens was a friend and a beloved member of the State Department community for 20 years. He was a diplomat’s diplomat, and he embodied the very best of America.

Even as we grieved for our fallen friends and colleagues, we took action on three fronts.

First, we took immediate steps to further protect our people and our posts. We stayed in constant contact with embassies and consulates around the world facing large protests, dispatched emergency security teams, received reporting from the intelligence community, and took additional precautions where needed. You’ll hear more about all this from my partner Tom Nides.

Second, we intensified the diplomatic campaign aimed at combating the threat of terrorism across North Africa. We continue to work to bring to justice the terrorists responsible for the attacks in Benghazi. And we are working with our partners to close safe havens, cut off terrorist finances, counter extremist ideology, and slow the flow of new recruits.

And third, Secretary Clinton ordered an investigation to determine exactly what happened in Benghazi. I want to convey our appreciation to the Accountability Review Board’s Chairman and Vice Chairman, Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, and also Hugh Turner, Richard Shinnick, and Catherine Bertini.

The board’s report takes a clear-eyed look at serious, systemic problems, problems which are unacceptable, problems for which, as Secretary Clinton has said, we take responsibility, and problems which we have already begun to fix.

Before Tom walks you through what we’re doing to implement fully all of the board’s recommendations, I’d like to add a few words based on my own experiences as a career diplomat in the field. I have been a very proud member of the Foreign Service for more than 30 years, and I’ve had the honor of serving as a chief of mission overseas.

I know that diplomacy, by its very nature, must sometimes be practiced in dangerous places. As Secretary Clinton has said, our diplomats cannot work in bunkers and do their jobs. When America is absent, there are consequences. Our interests suffer, and our security at home is threatened.

Chris Stevens understood that as well as anyone. Chris also knew that every chief of mission has the responsibility to ensure the best possible security and support for our people. As senior officials here in Washington, we share that profound responsibility. We have to constantly improve, reduce the risks our people face, and make sure they have the resources they need.

That includes the men and women of the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service. I have been deeply honored to serve with many of these brave men and women. They are professionals and patriots who serve in many places where there are no Marines at post and little or no U.S. military presence in country. Like Secretary Clinton, I trust them with my life.

It’s important to recognize that our colleagues in the Bureaus of Diplomatic Security and Near East Affairs and across the Department, at home and abroad, get it right countless times a day, for years on end, in some of the toughest circumstances imaginable. We cannot lose sight of that.

But we learned some very hard and painful lessons in Benghazi. We are already acting on them. We have to do better. We owe it to our colleagues who lost their lives in Benghazi. We owe it to the security professionals who acted with such extraordinary heroism that awful night to try to protect them. And we owe it to thousands of our colleagues serving America with great dedication every day in diplomatic posts around the world.

We will never prevent every act of terrorism or achieve perfect security, but we will never stop working to get better and safer. As Secretary Clinton has said, the United States will keep leading and keep engaging around the world, including in those hard places where America’s interests and values are at stake.

Thank you very much.

CHAIRMAN ROS-LEHTINEN: Thank you, sir. Mr. Nides.

DEPUTY SECRETARY NIDES: Madam Chairman, Congressman Berman, members of the committee, I also thank you for this opportunity.

I want to reiterate what Bill has said. All of us who have had the responsibility to provide the men and the women who serve this country with the best possible security and support – from the senior Department leadership setting the priorities to the supervisors evaluating the security needs to the Congress appropriating sufficient funds, we all share this responsibility. Secretary Clinton has said that, as Secretary of State, this is her greatest responsibility and her highest priority.

Today I will focus on the steps we are taking at Secretary Clinton’s direction and will continue to take. As Bill has said, the board report takes a clear-eyed look at the serious, systemic problems for which we take responsibility and that we have already begun to fix.

We are grateful for the recommendations from Ambassador Pickering and his team. We accept every one of them, all 29 recommendations. Secretary Clinton has charged my office with leading the task force that will ensure that the 29 are implemented as quickly and as completely – and to pursue steps above and beyond the board’s report. The Under Secretary of Political Affairs, the Under Secretary for Management, the Director General of the Foreign Service, and the Deputy Legal Advisor will work with me to drive this forward.

The task force has already met to translate the recommendations into about 60 specific action items. We’ve assigned every single one to a responsible bureau for immediate implementation, and several of them will be completed by the end of the calendar year.

Implementation of each and every recommendation will be underway by the time the next Secretary of State takes office. There will be no higher priority for the Department in the coming weeks and months. And should we require more resources to execute these recommendations, we will work closely with the Congress to ensure that these needs are met.

And as I said, Secretary Clinton wants us to implement the ARB findings and to do more. So let me offer some very clear specifics.

For more than 200 years, the United States, like every other country around the world, has relied on host nations to provide the security for our embassies and consulates. But in today’s evolving threat environment, we have to take a new, harder look at the capabilities and the commitments of our hosts. We have to re-examine how we operate in places facing emerging threats, where national security forces are fragmented or may be weak.

So, at Secretary Clinton’s direction, we moved quickly to conduct a worldwide review of our overall security posture, with particular scrutiny of a number of high-threat posts. With the Department of Defense, we deployed five interagency security assessment teams, made up of diplomat and military security experts, to 19 posts and into 13 countries, an unprecedented cooperation between the Departments at a very critical time. These teams have provided a roadmap for addressing emerging security challenges.

We’re also partnering with the Pentagon to send 35 additional detachments of Marine security guards – that’s about 225 Marines – to medium and high-threat posts, where they will serve as visible deterrence to hostile acts. This is on top of the approximately 150 detachments we already deployed.

We’re aligning resources in our 2013 budget request to address physical vulnerabilities and reinforce structures wherever needed to reduce the risk from fire. And let me add we may need your help in ensuring that we have the authority to streamline the usual processes that produce faster results.

We’re seeking to hire more than 150 additional Diplomatic Security personnel, an increase of 5 percent, and to provide them with the equipment and training that they need. And as the ARB recommended, we will target them squarely at securing our high-threat posts.

I want to second Bill’s praise for these brave security professionals. I have served in this Department for only two years, having come from the private sector. However, as I’ve traveled to places like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, I’ve seen firsthand how these dedicated men and women risk their lives. We all owe them a debt of gratitude as they go to work every day to protect more than 275 posts around the world.

As we make these improvements in the field, we’re also making changes here in Washington.

We’ve named the first-ever Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for High-Threat Posts within the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. We’re updating our diplomatic procedures to increase the number of experienced and well-trained staff serving in those posts.

And we are working to ensure that the State Department makes decisions about where our people operate in the ways that reflects our shared responsibility for our security. Our regional assistant secretaries were directly involved in our interagency security assessment process and they will assume greater accountability for securing their people and posts. We will provide this committee with detailed reports every step we’re taking to improve our security and implement the board’s recommendation.

We look to you for the support and guidance as we do this. Obviously, part of this is about resources. We must equip our people with what they need to deliver results and safety, and we’ll work with you as needs arise. But Congress has a bigger role than just that. You have visited our posts, you know our diplomats on the ground and the challenges that they face. You know our vital national securities are at stake and that we’re all in this together. We look forward to working with you.

Thank you, Madam Chair, for your support and counsel and for this opportunity to discuss these important matters. And we’d both be happy to answer your questions.

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Video and Text: Briefing on ARB Report

Posted in Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State, state department, U.S. Department of State, tagged Accountability Review Board, ARB, Benghazi, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Michael Mullen, Secretary of State, State Department, Tom Pickering, U.S. Department of State, William J. Burns on December 19, 2012| 1 Comment »

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Briefing on the Accountability Review Board Report

Special Briefing

William J. Burns
Deputy Secretary

Accountability Review Board Chairman Ambassador Tom Pickering and Vice Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen

Washington, DC

December 19, 2012

MS. NULAND: Welcome, everybody. Thank you for joining us. As you know, the Accountability Review Board on Benghazi that the Secretary established has now completed its work, and the classified and unclassified versions have been released to the Hill, and you’ve had a chance to see the unclassified version, as well as the Secretary’s letter to members.

Today, we have invited the Chairman of the Accountability Review Board, Ambassador Tom Pickering, and the Vice Chairman of the Accountability Review Board, Admiral Mike Mullen, to join us here to address your questions. And introducing them will be Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns.

Deputy Secretary.

DEPUTY SECRETARY BURNS: Thank you very much, and good afternoon. As all of you know, Ambassador Pickering and Admiral Mullen appeared today before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee to discuss the findings and recommendations of the Accountability Review Board on Benghazi. Deputy Secretary Nides and I will testify tomorrow, so I’ll make just two quick points and then give the floor to Ambassador Pickering and Admiral Mullen to discuss the report and take your questions.

First, as Secretary Clinton said in her letter to Congress, we accept each and every one of the board’s recommendations and have already begun to implement them. In accordance with the law, Secretary Clinton ordered this review to determine exactly what happened in Benghazi, because that’s how we can learn and improve. And I want to convey our appreciation to Ambassador Pickering, Admiral Mullen, and their team for doing such a thorough job. The board’s report takes a clear-eyed look at serious systemic problems, problems which are unacceptable, problems for which, as Secretary Clinton has said, we take responsibility, and problems which we have already begun to fix.

In the hours and days after the terrorist attacks in Benghazi, at the Secretary’s direction, we took immediate steps to further protect our people and our posts. We launched a worldwide review of the Department’s overall security posture. Interagency teams of diplomatic and military security experts gave particular scrutiny to high-threat posts. The Pentagon agreed to dispatch hundreds of additional Marines to posts around the world. We asked Congress for funds to hire new diplomatic security personnel and reinforce vulnerable facilities. We also named the first-ever Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for High Threat Posts within the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, and we’re updating our deployment procedures to increase the number of experienced and well-trained staff serving at those posts.

Tom and I will be discussing all of this work and more with Congress tomorrow, so for now, let me just make one other point. I have been a very proud member of the Foreign Service for more than 30 years, and I’ve had the honor of serving as a chief of mission overseas. I know that diplomacy, by its very nature, must sometimes be practiced in dangerous places. Chris Stevens, my friend and colleague, understood that our diplomats cannot work in bunkers and do their jobs.

And we have a profound responsibility to ensure the best possible security and support for our diplomats and development experts in the field. It’s important to recognize that our colleagues in the Bureaus of Diplomatic Security and Near East Affairs and across the Department, at home and abroad, get it right countless times a day for years on end in some of the toughest circumstances imaginable. We cannot lose sight of that.

But we have learned some very hard and painful lessons in Benghazi. We are already acting on them. We have to do better. We have to do more to constantly improve, reduce the risks our people face, and make sure they have the resources they need. We owe that to our colleagues who lost their lives in Benghazi. We owe it to the security professionals who acted with such extraordinary heroism that awful night to protect them. And we owe it to thousands of our colleagues serving America with great dedication every day in diplomatic posts around the world.

And so with that, let me turn to Ambassador Pickering and Admiral Mullen.

AMBASSADOR PICKERING: Good afternoon, all of you. Thank you very much, Bill, for those wise and cogent words, which I believe very much reflect the spirit in which we worked and, indeed, the focus on which we put our efforts.

I would also like to thank Secretary Clinton for her steadfast support for our efforts and her ambitious approach to implementing our recommendations. And of course, we wish her speedy recovery.

In late September, Secretary Clinton asked me to serve as Chairman of the Accountability Review Board on Benghazi and asked Admiral Mullen to be the Vice Chairman. And let me say what a pleasure it was to work with Admiral Mullen and, indeed, all the other members of the board. But he in particular brought a special perspective, wisdom, and good sense to a very difficult and trying process.

There are three other members of the board who are not with us today but without whom this report would not have been possible: Catherine Bertini, a Professor of Public Administration at Syracuse University, and former Chief Executive of the United Nations World Food Program, and Under Secretary General for Management of the United Nations; Richard Shinnick, an experienced retired senior Foreign Service Officer who served most recently as Interim Director of the Bureau of Overseas Building Operations; and Hugh Turner, an experienced and retired senior intelligence officer who spent 22 years in the business and served last as Associate Deputy Director for Operations of the Central Intelligence Agency; and to an excellent State Department staff led by FSO Uzra Zeya, who made a major contribution to our work and without whom we wouldn’t be here with you today.

Secretary Clinton convened the Accountability Review Board, or ARB, to examine the facts and circumstances surrounding the September attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya. As you all know, these attacks resulted in the tragic deaths of four brave Americans: Ambassador Chris Stevens, Glen Doherty, Sean Smith, and Tyrone Woods.

Against the backdrop of so many unanswered questions about what happened at Benghazi, I want first to make clear our board’s specific mandate. We were not asked to conduct an investigation into the attacks to find out who the perpetrators were or their motives. That is the statutory role of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the intelligence community. We enjoyed excellent cooperation with both of them throughout the report.

Under relevant statute, Secretary Clinton asked us to examine whether the attacks were security related and whether security systems and procedures were adequate and implemented properly, the impact of the availability of information and intelligence, and whether anything else about the attacks might be relevant to appropriate security management of U.S. diplomatic missions around the world. We were also asked to look at whether any U.S. Government employee or contractor breached his or her duty. Basically, we wanted to find the lessons to be learned, better to protect Americans from future attacks.

To do all that, we interviewed more than a hundred people, reviewed thousands of documents, and watched hours of video. We spoke with people who were on the scene in Benghazi that night, who were in Tripoli, who were in Washington. We talked to military and intelligence officials, including to many State Department personnel, and to experts who do not work for the United States Government. Throughout this process, we enjoyed superb cooperation from the Department of State and its interagency partners, and the decision to brief you on the report’s findings reflects a commitment to transparency at the Department’s highest levels.

Let me just give you a very brief introduction to events that night and then ask Admiral Mullen if he will share with you the findings of the report, and then I will return briefly to talk about some of the overarching recommendations.

What happened on September 11^th and 12^th in Benghazi was a series of attacks in multiple locations by unknown assailants that ebbed and flowed over a period of almost eight hours. The U.S. security personnel in Benghazi were heroic in their efforts to protect their colleagues, including Ambassador Stevens. They did their best that they possibly could with what they had, but what they had was not enough, either for the general threat environment in Benghazi and most certainly against the overwhelming numbers of attackers and the weapons which they faced. Frankly, the State Department had not given Benghazi the security, both physical and personnel resources, it needed. And on that note, let me ask Ambassador – let me ask Admiral Mullen if he will please relay to you our specific findings. I keep promoting him to ambassador, and I apologize.

ADMIRAL MULLEN: Thanks, Mr. Ambassador. I appreciate that. (Laughter.) And I do appreciate your leadership throughout this process as well.

Good afternoon. The board found that the attacks in Benghazi were security related, and responsibility for the loss of life, the injuries, and damage to U.S. facilities rests completely and solely with the terrorists who conducted the attacks. That does not mean there are not lessons to be learned. The board found that the security posture at the Special Mission compound was inadequate for the threat environment in Benghazi, and in fact, grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place that night.

State Department bureaus that were supporting Benghazi had not taken on security as a shared responsibility, so the support the post needed was often lacking and left to the working level to resolve. The buildings at Special Mission Benghazi did not meet Department standards for office buildings in high-threat areas, and in a sense, fell through the cracks bureaucratically by being categorized as temporary residential facilities. While a number of physical security upgrades were done in 2012, at the time of the attacks the compound did not have all the security features and equipment it needed.

The board also found that the rotational staffing system and the inadequacy of the Diplomatic Security staffing numbers in Benghazi to be a major factor behind the weakness of the security platform. The continual rotation of DS agents inhibited the development of institutional and on-the-ground knowledge, and continuity and security decisions and implementation.

The question is not simply whether an additional number of agents would have made a difference on the night of September 11^th, which is very difficult to answer, but whether a sustained and stronger staffing platform in Benghazi over the course of 2012 could have established some deterrence by giving it the continuity and experience on the ground to make it a harder target for terrorists.

Another deficit in the Benghazi security platform was the inherent weakness of the Libyan support element. Absence of a strong central government presence in Benghazi meant the Special Mission had to rely on a militia with uncertain reliability, an unarmed local contract guard force with skill deficits, to secure the compound. Neither Libyan group performed well on the night of the attacks.

Overall, the board found that security systems and procedures were implemented properly by American personnel, but those systems themselves and the Libyan response fell short on the night of the attacks. Personnel performed to the best of their ability and made every effort to protect, rescue, and recover Ambassador Stevens and Sean Smith. Their decision to depart the Special Mission without Ambassador Stevens came after repeated efforts of many U.S. security agents to find him and Sean Smith in a smoke-filled building still on fire and was precipitated by a second armed attack on the compound from the south.

On the night of the attacks, Benghazi, Tripoli, and Washington communicated and coordinated effectively with each other. They looped in the military right away, and the interagency response was timely and appropriate. But there simply was not enough time for U.S. military forces to have made a difference. Having said that, it is not reasonable, nor feasible, to tether U.S. forces at the ready to respond to protect every high-risk post in the world.

We found that there was no immediate tactical warning of the September 11^th attacks, but there was a knowledge gap in the intelligence community’s understanding of extremist militias in Libya and the potential threat they posed to U.S. interests, although some threats were known. In this context, increased violence and targeting of foreign diplomats and international organizations in Benghazi failed to come into clear relief against a backdrop of ineffective local governance, widespread political violence, and inter-militia fighting, as well as the growth of extremist camps and militias in eastern Libya.

While we did not find that any individual U.S. Government employee engaged in willful misconduct or knowingly ignored his or her responsibilities, we did conclude that certain State Department bureau-level senior officials in critical positions of authority and responsibility in Washington demonstrated a lack of leadership and management ability appropriate for senior ranks in their responses to security concerns posed by the Special Mission.

Now I’ll ask Ambassador Pickering to conclude by giving an overview of some of the board’s more overarching recommendations.

AMBASADOR PICKERING: Thank you, Admiral Mullen. With the lessons of the past and the challenges of the future in mind, we put forth recommendations in several key areas. We are recommending that the State Department undertake an urgent review to determine the proper balance between acceptable risk and mission tasks and needs in high-risk and in high-threat areas. The answer can’t be not to go into dangerous places, but there must be: one, a clear mission; two, a clear understanding of the risks; three, a commitment of enough resources to mitigate those risks; and four, an explicit acceptance of whatever costs and risks cannot be mitigated. This balance needs to be reviewed regularly and continuously because situations change.

Next, we recommend the Department develop a minimum security standard for the occupation of temporary facilities in high-risk, high-threat environments, and that posts receive the equipment and the supplies they need to counter various types of threats. We also believe the State Department must work with the Congress to expand funding to respond to emerging security threats and vulnerabilities and operational requirements in high-risk, high-threat posts. We found that a number of recommendations from past ARBs had not been implemented fully, and they relate very much to some of the recommendations we will be making or we have made to the Secretary that the Congress will have to play its role in fulfilling.

Because Benghazi did not fit the mold of the usual diplomatic post as a result of its temporary status, this meant it was unable to get some of the security upgrades and some of the security oversight which it needed. We recommended various improvements in how temporary and high-risk, high-threat posts are managed and backstopped both on the ground and from Washington so that they have the support they need. There should be changes in the way the State Department staffs posts like Benghazi to provide more continuity and stability, and so that posts have sufficient DS agents, Diplomatic Security agents, with other security personnel as needed.

We also are recommending the Department re-examine the Bureau of Diplomatic Security’s organization and management to ensure that all posts get the attention they need from upper management. A special review should urgently look at the use of fire as a weapon and how to counter it. The State Department should establish an outside panel of experts with experience in high-risk, high-threat areas, a kind of red team, to watch changing events and make recommendations to the Department’s security officials.

We are delighted to see that the Secretary is committed to the expeditious and, indeed, urgent implementation of all of our recommendations. And now we would be happy to take your questions and appreciate your giving us this opportunity to brief you on our report.

MS. NULAND: (Inaudible) wait for me to call the questions. (Inaudible.) Let’s start with Matt Lee from AP, please.

QUESTION: Thank you very much for doing this briefing. The report, to a layman, seems to indicate either rank incompetence or a complete lack of understanding of the situation on the ground in Benghazi. And my question is: Why is such poor performance like that from senior leaders in these two bureaus that you mention, why is not a breach of or a dereliction of duty? Why is it not grounds for disciplinary action?

And then secondly, after the 1998 bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, the ARB report – the ARB that was formed then came out with a series of recommendations, and many of your recommendations today, the broader ones, are very similar. Those bombings in East Africa were supposed to have been a never-again moment. What happened between then and now that this could possibly have happened?

AMBASSADOR PICKERING: Without accepting your characterization of the problem, it is very clear that under the law and in connection with the State Department regulatory practice, one has to find willful misconduct or similar kinds of action in order to find breach of duty. And indeed, one of our recommendations is – there is such a large gap between willful misconduct, which leads, obviously, to conclusions about discipline, letters of reprimand, separation, the removal of an individual temporarily from duty, that we believe that gap ought to be filled. But we found, perhaps, close to – as we say in the report – breach, but there were performance inadequacies. And those are the ones that we believe ought to be taken up, and we made recommendations to the Secretary in that regard.

MS. NULAND: Michael Gordon – I’m sorry –

QUESTION: I’m sorry, just the second one – what happened between – how did the lessons of Kenya and Tanzania get forgotten?

AMBASSADOR PICKERING: Well, I think that – let me just mention that, and then Admiral Mullen may have some things to say. We, of course, have made a recommendation that the unimplemented or only partially implemented recommendations of all previous boards be reviewed rapidly by the State Department Inspector General with the idea in mind of assuring that they are carried out. And if you will read our report, you will see in part recollections from the past leading each chapter, as well as a citation to the Nairobi and Dar es Salaam recommendations that need to be carried out. So we very much agree with the impetus of your question.

ADMIRAL MULLEN: I think it begs the question of why did that happen. I mean, obviously, a lot of time. That’s always a factor. Clearly, no specific follow-up over time. One of the major recommendations was the building plan, which fell off from 10 buildings – 10 new embassies a year to three, tied to budget constraints, et cetera. So I think it was a combination of factors, and while 1999 is certainly close to this decade, I mean, the world has changed dramatically in this decade, and the risks that are associated with that world are – I think we are in a much more difficult and challenging position with respect to meeting the needs to be out there and engage, and doing so in a way that our people are very specifically secure.

AMBASSADOR PICKERING: Just picking up on that, there’s a specific recommendation for a 10 year program at a very significant level of funding specifically to meet the point that Admiral Mullen made that our building program has fallen off from 10 to three, and it needs to go back to that original target.

MS. NULAND: Let’s go to New York Times. Michael Gordon, please.

QUESTION: Ambassador Pickering, your report was extremely critical of the performance of some individuals in the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and the NEA, the Middle East Bureau. And – but these bureaus don’t exist in a vacuum; they’re part of an hierarchical organization known as the Department of State, and each has a chain of command. The NEA reports up the policy chain, and Diplomatic Security, I presume, reports up the management chain, their Under Secretaries, and indeed deputy secretaries, and the Secretary herself, who oversees these bureaus. What is the highest level at the Department of State where you fix responsibility for what happened in Benghazi?

AMBASSADOR PICKERING: We fixed it at the Assistant Secretary level, which is in our view the appropriate place to look, where the decision-making in fact takes place, where, if you like, the rubber hits the road. And one of the interesting things about the statutory basis for the Review Board was that it clearly was biased against the idea that one could automatically hold, as one often does, the leader of a particular department or agency responsible without pinpointing the place where the failures took place and where the lessons that we derived from that ought to be important to fixing the problem. And so fixing the problem and finding the locus of the difficulties was the major task we had to undertake.

ADMIRAL MULLEN: And I would add to that, Michael, that, I mean, certainly that was a concern that we had as we initiated the review and we just found. And as someone who’s run large organizations, and the Secretary of State has been very clear about taking responsibility here, it was, from my perspective, not reasonable in terms of her having a specific level of knowledge that was very specifically resident in her staff, and over time, certainly didn’t bring that to her attention.

MS. NULAND: CNN, Elise Labott, please.

QUESTION: Thank you. I was going to ask about these personnel issues, but a couple of others. You offer – the Secretary said in her letter that there were 29 recommendations. And in the unclassified, there were only 24. I’m wondering, without getting into any classified material, if you could at least characterize what these recommendations – do they have to do with intelligence matters that you can’t discuss or at least the area of those recommendations.

And then also you said that there was – in the report that there was no protest, that there was no mob. How did you come to that conclusion?

AMBASSADOR PICKERING: Two very brief answers. Your suspicion the missing recommendations involved classification is correct. It would not be untoward to assume that some of those involve intelligence. We arrived in October 4^th, 2012 for our first meeting. At that point, we found the intelligence community had clearly concluded and provided us that conclusion, that there was no protest.

QUESTION: Can I just quickly follow up on the intelligence? Will you be doing – because it’s – this is – you’re reporting to the Secretary, and you said that perhaps she’s involved intelligence, will you also be reaching out to members of the intelligence community and briefing them and helping them implement some recommendations?

AMBASSADOR PICKERING: This report is now the Secretary’s. I think, without stretching a point, we of course remain at the Secretary’s disposal for whatever use she would like to make of us.

MS. NULAND: And she has made it available to all pertinent agencies.

Let’s go to Washington Post, Anne Gearan, please.

QUESTION: Two things: Can you confirm the resignations of Department personnel today in association with this report and give us any detail on that? And secondly, Admiral Mullen, you talked about poorly understood – understanding of – or poor understanding, rather, of the nature of the militia threat. Whose responsibility should that have been to have a better matrix for that?

And if that information had been provided as it should have been provided, do you think it would have been still advisable for Ambassador Stevens to make that trip?

AMBASSADOR PICKERING: On the first question, that’s obviously a Department issue and you should address that to the Department of State.

ADMIRAL MULLEN: Secondly, the – I mean, it was very clear this is a country in transition. And one of the umbrella organizations that come out with respect to lack of support that night for a security response, which was the expected response, was Feb. 17. But as we dig into – or dug into Feb. 17, it is a very loose group of local militias that float in and out of that umbrella over time. And I think that’s representative of the gaps – the intelligence gaps that existed at that time in eastern Libya broadly – not just for us but for many countries that were out there.

So I think you have to take that into consideration in terms of understanding the environment in terms of what was out there and what the potential was.

AMBASSADOR PICKERING: I think you should also take into account the fact that the Libyan Government was almost absent from the scene, in terms of its responsibilities under the Geneva or Vienna Convention, to provide support. And that in many ways, February 17^th, as difficult as it was, while it had responded positively to less threatening questions in the past, was the best that anybody could find.

MS. NULAND: Let’s go to CBS, Margaret Brennan, please.

QUESTION: Thank you for doing this briefing. In the report, you specifically refer to the idea that the Ambassador did not keep Washington fully informed about his movements. Why is that relevant here? I mean, what role did the Ambassador have being a lead person in Libya in terms of determining security? It’s my understanding that ambassadors don’t normally notify each and every movement. Why was that specifically referred to?

AMBASSADOR PICKERING: Because, in fact, it is a question that occurred to many people that we felt we should answer it, but particularly because the Ambassador is the person who has the responsibility for security at his post.

ADMIRAL MULLEN: And does not have the requirement and normally does not notify anybody outside the country of his or her movements.

QUESTION: So when you were talking about the understanding of the militias, February 17^th, et cetera, is it correct to understand that Ambassador Stevens had a role in deciding their security position?

ADMIRAL MULLEN: Sure. As the chief of mission, he certainly had a responsibility in that regard, and actually he was very security conscious and increasingly concerned about security. But part of his responsibility is certainly to make that case back here, and he had not gotten to that point where you would – you might get to a point where you would be considering it’s so dangerous, we might close the mission – I’m sorry, the compound, or something like that.

AMBASSADOR PICKERING: And as you know, on the anniversary day, 9/11, he, on the advice of his security officials, spent his entire day inside the mission with appointments coming to him.

MS. NULAND: Our two principals are little bit time-constrained today, so we’ll just take one more from Fox News, Justin Fishel.

QUESTION: Thanks, Toria. Thank you both for doing this. Just a follow-up on that last question: Would you say then that Ambassador Stevens does share some of the blame here for the lack of security? Is that what you’re saying here?

AMBASSADOR PICKERING: We very clearly in the report, if you read it, made our indications open and transparent about where we felt the problems were in terms of decision-making. Ambassador Stevens on several occasions was supportive of additional security in addition to watching it very carefully and to knowing what was going on. Ambassador Stevens had perhaps the best knowledge of Benghazi of any American official. And that was taken in Washington, certainly, as a very serious set of conclusions on his part about going.

QUESTION: Okay. And just two follow-ups for Admiral Mullen: Why such a passing reference to military involvement? Can you explain why they couldn’t have done more? And also —

ADMIRAL MULLEN: We looked at the force posture very specifically, and while we had a lot of forces in Europe both at sea and on land, it was not – it is not reasonable that they could have responded; they were – in any kind of timely way. This was over in a matter of about 20 or 30 minutes with respect to the Special Mission specifically. And we had no forces ready or tethered, if you will, focused on that mission so that they could respond, nor would I expect we would have.

QUESTION: And I noticed also that there was no mention of the CIA in the report despite the fact that their post was attacked and they had more personnel there than there were diplomats. Did they share some blame for the lack of security here?

AMBASSADOR PICKERING: We don’t discuss intelligence questions, unfortunately, in this briefing.

QUESTION: It’s not a classified organization.

MS. NULAND: Thank you all very much and thank you to our two, Chairman and Vice Chairman. I’ll see them out.

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Hillary Clinton’s Cover Letter to Congress and the Unclassified ARB Report

Posted in Foreign Policy, Foreign Service, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State, state department, U.S. Congress, U.S. Department of State, U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Senate, tagged Accountability Review Board, ARB, Benghazi, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State, State Department, U.S. Department of State on December 19, 2012| 12 Comments »

These are pdfs so I can only link to them.

Here is the cover letter. Here is the unclassified ARB Report.

I just read the letter. It is brilliant. It should stand as yet another extraordinary response to an existing problem in the same vein as her 1000 Days and clean cookstove efforts. What she has managed to do here is agree with the ARB’s findings and involve the Congressional committees in the effort to address them at every turn. So while she is saying that there were weaknesses, she is also saying that she has already initiated steps to address them that can succeed only if Congress cooperates. I like to read documents myself rather than have media interpret them for me. This letter is a masterpiece from the best secretary of state I have seen in my life. It is a must read!

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Hillary Clinton: This is what your brain on rest looks like?

Posted in Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State, state department, U.S. Department of State, tagged Accountability Review Board, ARB, Benghazi, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State, State Department, Victoria Nuland on December 17, 2012| 5 Comments »

On CNN a few nights ago, reporting that Mme. Secretary had sustained a concussion when she fainted earlier last week, Dr. Sanjay Gupta said that she had been ordered on “brain rest.” Simultaneously almost, the State Department was reporting that it expected the Accountability Review Board (ARB) ordered by the secretary to investigate security prior to and at the time of the attack on the Benghazi consulate in September to complete its work perhaps by today. Apparently, the ARB has delivered and the report is in Mme. Secretary’s possession. So it appears her “light reading” while recuperating will be a pretty heavy report. Brain rest, huh!
I thought some might be interested in reading the portion of today’s press briefing concerning the report. It got a little contentious at one point, and I do not know who Justin is or represents, but he sounds like one of those Victoria refers to as “Foxies.” He is nearly rabid in his pursuit of an affirmation that the SOS will appear before the committees at some point soon. So here is a snip, but first a picture of Hillary because we all miss her so much. Rest and recover, Mme. Secretary. Take your time. We want to see you glowing and well once again.

TRANSCRIPT:

12:58 p.m. EST

MS. NULAND: All right, everybody. Happy Monday. I have nothing at the top, so why don’t we go to what’s on your minds.

QUESTION: Okay, assuming there’s no update on the Secretary’s health, am I correct that everything is the same?

MS. NULAND: Well, other than saying that she is on the mend, we thank all of you for your good wishes, and she’s obviously going to be fine. But as we put out on Saturday, she’s going to be working at home this week.

QUESTION: Okay. Then I just have some logistical questions about the ARB.

MS. NULAND: Mm-hmm.

QUESTION: What’s the plan?

MS. NULAND: What’s the plan, how? Would you like to be a little more specific?

QUESTION: Well, when is it going to go up to the Hill? Does – is it – let’s start at the beginning. Is it done? If it is, where is it? Who has seen it? Has it been presented to anybody? When is it going to go to the Hill? When might we expect to see at least the unclassified portion of it?

MS. NULAND: Let me tell you what I can, for the moment. The ARB has completed its work. Its report has gone to the Secretary this morning; she now has it. Our current plan is that we expect that the ARB leads Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Admiral Mullen will brief the SFRC and the HFAC on Wednesday at their request in closed session. And then the Secretary’s deputies – Deputy Secretary Burns and Deputy Secretary Nides – will brief SFRC and HFAC on Thursday at their request in open session, responding to the report and talking about the path forward.

So that’s our current plan, and obviously, we will give you more as we can.

QUESTION: Okay, well, the most important part about this is when are we going to see it?

MS. NULAND: Is what happens with you all. Well, first of all, my understanding is that the report has both an unclassified and a classified section. The entire report, at the Secretary’s direction, will be made available to the Hill sometime before the classified briefings —

QUESTION: On Wednesday?

MS. NULAND: — on Wednesday, sometime before they do their testimony in closed session, so that the members will have had a chance to look at it. We will make available to you the open parts of the ARB report as soon thereafter as we can.

QUESTION: So you can expect that on Wednesday?

MS. NULAND: Again, I think it’s probably going to be Wednesday when you see it, but I’m just not in a position to completely confirm all those details at the moment.

QUESTION: Okay.

QUESTION: Toria, can you expand on why Secretary Clinton can’t testify on Thursday about this? It seems that she has not been available to testify on the Benghazi situation on some very key dates, including the Sunday after 9/11 and now this Thursday.

MS. NULAND: Well, first of all, Justin, let me say again, the Secretary had anticipated testifying; she had committed to do so with the two committee chairs. As we put out on Saturday, she is still under the weather. She was diagnosed as having suffered a concussion, and her doctors have urged her to stay home this week. So it’s on that basis that she’s asked for the committees’ understanding, and the two committees have been very understanding to have her two deputies come up this week to testify in open session as they will on Thursday. But it was her intention to be there. If she had not been ill, she would be there. And she’s also committed, including in a letter today to the committee chairmen, that she looks forward to having an ongoing conversation with them herself.

QUESTION: Can you say why – or when rather – she suffered the concussion and why then on last Friday did this podium say that she was expected to testify on Thursday?

MS. NULAND: Well, without getting into all of the back and forth between her and her doctors, you’ll recall that on Thursday I was trying to make clear here that assuming the ARB was finished – and we weren’t sure then exactly when they were going to be finished – that we expected to be able to meet the committees’ requested dates of testifying on Thursday. Patrick then confirmed on Friday that we did expect the ARB to be delivered in time for the Secretary to testify on Friday. But it was on Saturday morning that we concluded that the Secretary needed to follow doctors’ advice and rest this week. So the committees were made aware and we requested to send the two deputies, they accepted that, and as you know, we put out a statement to that effect in literally hours thereafter.

QUESTION: Okay. My last question on this: Does she want to testify on Benghazi, and will she commit to sliding the date so that she can make herself available at a later date?

MS. NULAND: As I said, she was ready to testify, she very much wanted to, she was preparing to, and except for this illness she would have been up there herself. So her deputies will go up on Thursday and she will —

QUESTION: Let me make it clear. My question is: Does she want to do it later?

MS. NULAND: Can I finish mine? Can I finish mine?

QUESTION: You can start.

MS. NULAND: Yeah. Absolutely. So she has, including in a letter today to the two committees, made clear that she looks forward to continuing to engage them in January, and she will be open to whatever they consider appropriate in that regard.

QUESTION: Can we move on?

MS. NULAND: Yes.

QUESTION: Hold on.

MS. NULAND: Anything else?

QUESTION: No. What was the purpose of the letter today? What was —

MS. NULAND: Just to say thank you for your understanding, I wish I could have been there myself, my deputies will make this date that we had together on Thursday, and I look forward to continuing to work with you on these very important issues.

QUESTION: Okay. Does she say in the letter that Nides and Burns’s testimony doesn’t preclude her from going up? Or is that just understood?

MS. NULAND: I mean, I don’t she gets into that kind of – it’s understood that she remains open thereafter to continuing to work with the committees.

Okay?

QUESTION: You said in January. To be clear, she’s saying she could testify in January if they want?

MS. NULAND: I don’t – let’s see – yeah, I guess, I mean, this is probably the last week that the committees are going to be working as well. They’re probably not going to work in the Christmas week.

QUESTION: Right. But she set a month to say – she said the following month I could be available to do this, is what you’re saying?

MS. NULAND: She’s making clear in her communication with the committee that she expects that they’re going to have to have ongoing conversation in January, and she’s available for that. Okay?

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Hillary Clinton A Hitchcock Blonde?

Posted in Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State, state department, U.S. Department of State, tagged Alfred Hitchcock, Benghazi, Libya, Maureen Dowd, New York Times, Secretary of State, State Department, Susan Rice, Victoria Nuland on December 2, 2012| 4 Comments »

In the passive-aggressive tradition of women journalists like Tina Brown who casts herself as a Hillary Clinton supporter while charging in 2009 that Obama was keeping her in the shadows and that her famous *snap* in Democratic Republic of Congo happened because she was hot and “feeling fat,” Maureen Dowd cast Hillary as a Hitchcock blonde of the Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly “survivor” type in an editorial, Spellbound by Blondes, Hot and Icy, in yesterday’s New York Times.

The piece is a kind of left-handed compliment dubbing Hillary “America’s blonde obsession” while a sub-theme plays out of Hillary neatly escaping blame for Benghazi while Republicans jump all over Susan Rice whom MoDo characterizes as “rough-elbowed” compared to the “smooth Hillary.” She goes as far as speculating that Hillary is secretly enjoying watching Rice “walk the plank.”

Judge Judy would call all of that “a lot of who shot John,” but one charge is a shot across the bow and requires an answer.

While Republicans continue their full-cry pursuit of Susan Rice, the actual secretary of state has eluded blame, even though Benghazi is her responsibility. The assault happened on Hillary’s watch, at her consulate, with her ambassador. Given that we figured out a while ago that the Arab Spring could be perilous as well as promising, why hadn’t the State Department developed new norms for security in that part of the world? After 200 years of expecting host countries to protect our diplomats, Hillary et al. didn’t make the adjustment when countries were dissolving.

I guess MoDo missed this: Aftermath … Benghazi, The Great Debate, and Hurricane Hillary. I have repeatedly countered such charges here in the nearly three months since the assault on the consulate using Victoria Nuland’s concise explanation of how all embassy security for all countries in all countries works: Clearing The Air On How Embassy Security Works. The truth is that Hillary et al. did make adjustments by evacuating personnel, closing embassies and consulates as necessary when revolutions were hot, and reinstating personnel and reopening as situations cooled. What Dowd is expecting is very unrealistic. Countries exchange diplomats according to The Vienna Convention. Host countries are responsible for the security of diplomats and staff outside embassy walls.

While the fighting was ongoing in Libya and we were participating in a No Fly Zone, many friends were betting that in the end we would have boots on the ground. We did not. But now some of those same people are implying that we should have when the fighting was over, a new government was installed, and we reopened our missions. You cannot have it both ways. Boots on the ground on foreign soil is invasion, so MoDo is dead wrong on this.

One thing I think we all would agree about is that Hillary Clinton is cool in all the right ways.

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Hillary Clinton, those emails, and the truth

Posted in Hillary Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State, state department, U.S. Department of State, tagged AP, Benghazi, CNN Elise Labott, emails, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Matthew Lee, Secretary of State, State Department, U.S. Department of State, Victoria Nuland on October 24, 2012| 7 Comments »

In the dust up around the leaked emails and among the events of her busy day, Hillary Clinton made the following remarks regarding the emails and the attack on the Benghazi consulate in a press availability today.

Now finally, on Benghazi, look, I’ve said it and I’ll say it one more time. No one wants to find out what happened more than I do. We are holding ourselves accountable to the American people, because not only they, but our brave diplomats and development experts serving in dangerous places around the world, deserve no less. The independent Accountability Review Board is already hard at work looking at everything – not cherry-picking one story here or one document there – but looking at everything, which I highly recommend as the appropriate approach to something as complex as an attack like this.

Posting something on Facebook is not in and of itself evidence, and I think it just underscores how fluid the reporting was at the time and continued for some time to be. What I keep in mind is that four brave Americans were killed, and we will find out what happened, we will take whatever measures are necessary to fix anything that needs to be fixed, and we will bring those to justice who committed these murders. And I think that that is what we have said, that is what we are doing, and I’m very confident that we will achieve those goals.

This was in partial response to a complex series of questions from CNN’s Elise Labott.

Later in the day, at the daily press briefing, AP’s Matthew Lee further pursued the story of the emails. In response, Victoria Nuland shed a great deal of light on the nature of those emails. What kind of emails they were and from where provides perspective on their significance and much needed context. Here is the exchange.

TRANSCRIPT:

MS. NULAND:All right. Happy Wednesday, everyone. The Secretary did all they work this morning, so we can handle this with dispatch, I hope. I have nothing at the top.

QUESTION: She did all of the work this morning?

MS. NULAND: She did a lot of the work, yeah.

QUESTION: Well, let’s just start with something that she did say, which was about these emails that have been – that are being reported on now. Do you have anything to add to what she said about them? And can you explain – these were emails sent by this building to various other agencies, including the White House. Do you know, was it people in this building who noticed the claim of responsibility on Facebook and Twitter, or was it people in Tripoli or somewhere else?

MS. NULAND: Well, first of all, in terms of where this piece fits into the general effort to gather information before, during, and after the events in Benghazi, I think the Secretary’s spoken to that, Jay Carney’s spoken to that. The reason you have an ARB is so that you can look at all of the information that we had, not only unclassified information and information —

QUESTION: Fair enough, but I —

MS. NULAND: — that appeared on Facebook.

QUESTION: But considering these things are now out there, can you —

MS. NULAND: So just to give some context, as you know, our Operations Center is responsible for providing fast-breaking news to principals in this Department. We obviously share with other national security agencies. So on the unclassified side, they will collect information that they are seeing in real time, whether it’s from Facebook, Twitter, press reporting, all of your fine work, that kind of thing, and make sure that people see it if it’s a breaking story. So what —

QUESTION: Sorry. So it was the Ops Center specifically that noticed this claim of responsibility?

MS. NULAND: I think the —

QUESTION: Or was it the Crisis – the Rapid Response Team or – I’m just looking for – or was it someone out in the field?

MS. NULAND: That particular piece was disseminated —

QUESTION: I know where it was disseminated from.

MS. NULAND: — by our Operations Center. Whether it was —

QUESTION: Where did they get it from?

MS. NULAND: Whether they saw it themselves or whether it was highlighted by our people in the field, I can’t speak to that. I, frankly, don’t know. It can happen any of a number of ways.

QUESTION: In instances such as this, is it standard practice to relay all claims of responsibility sort of no matter —

MS. NULAND: Yes.

QUESTION: — where they come from, who they might be?

MS. NULAND: Yes.

QUESTION: So I mean, it could be somebody waving a flag in the air and saying, “I’m responsible,” and that would also be reported?

MS. NULAND: Yes.

QUESTION: So there’s no sort of value judgment on the reliability of the claim implied by having it relayed through this system that you have?

MS. NULAND: And in fact, there are instances where the Ops Center might send out messages that three different groups are claiming responsibility for the same event. But it’s standard practice for them, when we have breaking news, for them to inform all of the principals in this building so that everybody knows what’s moving.

QUESTION: Well, fair enough. But I mean, if a claim is ludicrously unbelievable – I don’t know, I mean, like if someone forged the Quaker Church or something and said that they were – that would be passed on as well?

MS. NULAND: Well, they obviously use their judgment as to whether they think it’s important for principals in this building to be aware of what’s out there, particularly what’s out there in the public domain.

QUESTION: Okay. So it was deemed important enough – and I’m going to assume that important enough means that it was presumably credible to pass on to other – to pass on to the principals in other agencies, correct?

MS. NULAND: Again —

QUESTION: I’m just – I mean, if I had said that I take responsibility for this, would that have gone up the chain?

MS. NULAND: They definitely would not have passed on your personal claim of responsibility, Matt.

QUESTION: Okay. All right. Fine. So – because it wouldn’t have been credible. Now maybe – I mean, it wouldn’t – what I’m getting at is that if it wasn’t a claim that had the possibility of credibility, it wouldn’t have been passed on, correct?

MS. NULAND: What I’d like to say here is that in keeping folks informed, the Ops Center obviously is looking at the totality of what’s out there in the public domain. When things begin to become picked up, when they become something that people are talking about, they obviously have a responsibility to inform principals. But it is not the job of the Operations Center in passing these things on to analyze them, to weight them in any way, shape, or form. They’re just —

QUESTION: Well, but in fact, they are weighting – had there been a hundred claims of responsibility that night and 99 of them had been from a group or a person that couldn’t possibly have done it, they wouldn’t have passed those on, correct?

MS. NULAND: In all likelihood, if there had been a hundred claims of responsibility that night, they would have done a summary which said more than a hundred groups, including Matt Lee, have claimed responsibility for this attack, is what they would have reported.

QUESTION: And then said that —

MS. NULAND: And not evaluated them one way or the other.

QUESTION: Really? So they would have given my alleged claim of responsibility equal weight with that of a known terrorist group in Libya?

MS. NULAND: Again, Matt, you’re – we’re getting into crazy land here. My point is simply that if the environment is saturated with claims of responsibility, they’re going to make sure that principals know that we’ve got competing claims. That’s my only point here.

QUESTION: And again, just while we’re on this sort of procedure, while we’re in crazy land – (laughter) – what’s the —

QUESTION: Who’s the ambassador here?

QUESTION: Exactly. That’s what I was wondering. (Laughter.)

The objective – I realize that they go to all the principals, but is it then that the analysis comes from the intel community?

MS. NULAND: Correct.

QUESTION: And so they’re really the ones who are charged with assessing the reliability or the plausibility of any of these claims in that case? But the principals are kept informed just so that they know what’s out there, or what —

MS. NULAND: For example – let me just give you an example. My BlackBerry, on any given day, will have between 6 and 60 alerts from the Ops Center about what you all are writing, about what other things are moving in the press from around the world, about unclassified information that we’re receiving from our embassies, about things of interest that might be moving in the public domain around the world. These are to keep people informed of what’s out there in public. They are not designed to be intelligence products. They’re not designed to be finished analysis. They are simply to keep folks informed, particularly on the unclassified side.

Please.

QUESTION: One more on this. And I don’t know if this is in crazy land or not, but do you – it’s on they specifics of this email in question. Do you have any reason to believe that it could actually have just been wrong, that there was not a Facebook posting at all, or —

MS. NULAND: Again —

QUESTION: Does that happen? I mean —

MS. NULAND: Does it – I mean, it —

QUESTION: That occasionally these emails come around when there’s a developing situation and they’re not accurate?

MS. NULAND: Again, these are designed to keep people informed of what’s moving. I didn’t actually look at it to see whether it was a press report about a Facebook posting or whether it was the Operations Center itself saying that there was a Facebook posting, so I can’t evaluate one way or the other. But —

QUESTION: It was the Embassy in Tripoli.

MS. NULAND: Is that – was that what it says? Anyway, I’d have to look at it. But again, they report what they get. So if they reported Embassy in Tripoli says, then it is based on something that Embassy in Tripoli said. Whether that can be right or that can be wrong is something to be evaluated later.

QUESTION: Why didn’t you have the tape?

MS. NULAND: Again, back to the sort of overall question of what was happening that night, who is responsible, what do we learn from it, all of these things are being looked at by the Accountability Review Board. They are not simply looking at classified, they are looking at unclassified as well. So as the Secretary said today, this piece has to be put into the larger mosaic.

QUESTION: That’s actually my second question. Are you concerned at this point that the integrity of this ARB investigation is being slaughtered by a climate of all these leaks of emails and – it seems like every couple of days, there’s potentially classified or unclassified, recently unclassified information that’s getting leaked to the media. Is that jeopardizing the integrity of this ARB?

MS. NULAND: Well with due respect to the Fourth Estate and all of you, the ARB’s job is to sit back away from the press swirl, the public swirl, the political swirl, and try to look at what actually happened before, during, and after; what we knew, when we knew it, and what lessons we can draw from it. So they are responsible for standing back from all of this news environment, et cetera.

QUESTION: So you don’t think that people are pushing these things out to smear the – for political reasons? That’s what I’m asking.

MS. NULAND: Well, obviously I’m not —

QUESTION: I’m trying to ask it in a way that doesn’t immediately get into politics, because I know you don’t like to talk about politics.

MS. NULAND: I sure don’t like to talk about politics, and I’m not going to get into the motivations of various folks here. But you can think about the way the ARB operates much as you think about a sequestered jury, if you will. They are separated from the larger process and they look at everything that we knew at the time and during and after, and they are – their process is designed to have integrity in and of itself without reference to the current climate now.

So! While everyone is bouncing off the walls, pointing fingers, and playing the blame game, the truth about the emails is that they were a product of a quotidian process to alert officials of stories that are circulating with no evaluation made at that point regarding the validity of the story. The story itself goes out as is unvalidated.

Now if everyone would just settle down and let the ARB do its work we might actually get to the truth of the matter.

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Video: Hillary Clinton with Brazilian FM Patriota

Posted in Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State, state department, U.S. Department of State, tagged Antonio Patriota, Benghazi, Brazil, Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State, State Department, Syria, U.S. Department of State on October 24, 2012| 2 Comments »

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Remarks With Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio de Aguiar Patriota After Their Meeting

Remarks

Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State

Treaty Room

Washington, DC

October 24, 2012

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, hello, everyone. And once again, it is a great delight for me to welcome a colleague and friend here to the State Department. The Foreign Minister and I have had an excellent working relationship. Earlier this year, I traveled to Brazil for the third meeting of the U.S.-Brazil Global Partnership Dialogue as well as the Rio+20 Conference, and I commend the Brazilian Government for its excellent stewardship of the Rio+20 Conference. And today, the Foreign Minister is here for the fourth meeting of the Global Partnership Dialogue.

It is our assessment that this dialogue has strengthened and broadened our relationship and helped us make progress in many areas of shared concern by bringing both our governments and our people closer together. We have not only worked bilaterally but regionally and globally. For example, we have signed Memoranda of Understanding on cooperation in third countries, including in development and food security. We’re working to support greater agricultural development in Honduras.

We are strong supporters of the Brazilian plan, the Scientific Mobility Program, one of President Rousseff’s signature initiatives to send top Brazilian students in science and math to universities abroad. We are similarly focused on implementing President Obama’s initiative, the 100,000 Strong in the Americas, and have welcomed thousands of Brazilian students to the United States and are eager to welcome more. And because social inclusion is critical to both of our societies, we are working together to ensure that we promote social inclusion as part of the missions of our foreign relations as well as, of course, domestically.

We are also working very – in great cooperation in Haiti, and I thank the Minister for the excellent leadership that Brazil has provided for MINUSTAH and so much else that Brazil has done for Haiti.

So there’s a lot that we have covered, and our teams have gone in-depth into. And Antonio, it’s a great pleasure for me to have you here.

FOREIGN MINISTER PATRIOTA: Thank you so much. Let me say how pleased I am to be in Washington for this fourth edition of our Global Partnership Dialogue. We’ve had frequent high-level contacts between Brazil and the United States over the past two years. We were very happy to welcome President Obama last year to Brasilia, and President Dilma was delighted to come to the White House this year. We had two visits by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Brazil: one in the context of the Global Partnership Dialogue and also the Open Government Partnership that we have been working on together; then for Rio+20. And of course, we appreciated greatly the U.S. participation and Secretary Clinton’s statement at the Conference on Sustainable Development.

This is my second time in Washington. We are not only having frequent high-level contacts, but I think the quality of the dialogue has also been improving and more in-depth discussions on issues such as possibilities for cooperation in Africa. This time around, we concentrated on the Middle East and the Far East, and I know that the two Under Secretaries who came with me, they found this extremely useful. So we would like to pursue and institutionalize, as you said, Hillary, this mechanism so that we continue deriving the greatest possible benefit from these discussions.

On the bilateral front, President Dilma, of course, is extremely interested in enhancing our relationship with the United States on science, technology, and innovation. We’re looking forward to two events on innovation in 2013 that come out of this agenda and that will bring in the private sector as well as government officials. We’re very pleased with the advances that we’ve identified in our aviation partnership. There are new initiatives on energy, on sports. If you look at the joint communiqué that we are putting out, it actually is very eloquent on a number of fronts and shows that from April to October there have been many advances. So this is the spirit in which we would like to continue moving forward.

Of course, we’re extremely grateful for the U.S. in their readiness to receive an increasing number of Brazilian students in the sciences. Already 2,400 are studying under the Science Without Borders program. We’d like to take that number to 48,000, and I think we can get there. We can reach this goal.

Let me just mention that on another front, there have been discussions on visas and how to facilitate travel between the two countries. This is a discussion that has started in a new spirit, also under instructions from our leaders, President Obama and President Rousseff, and we are confident that they will continue advancing over the coming years.

Thank you for mentioning Haiti. I think it’s a good example of how Brazil and the United States can work today. And today, we discussed some new ideas for looking at energy in Haiti, food security, trade, business. I am confident that we will also continue cooperating very effectively.

And finally, I think it was very useful for me to have a discussion on the Middle East. We’re, of course, concerned with lack of progress on the peace process between Israel and Palestine. I’ve just come back from the region extremely concerned with the situation in Syria. But I think it’s extremely important that with these discussions we’re having with the United States and a number of – a growing number of countries, among which the Permanent Members of the Security Council, our partners in IBSA, India and South Africa, that we can mobilize international diplomatic strength to resume the peace process and to find a negotiated solution for Syria.

Thank you.

MS. NULAND: We’ll take two today. We’ll start with CNN. Elise Labott, please.

QUESTION: Two per each two people. (Laughter.) Mr. Foreign Minister, it’s nice to see you again. I’m sure you’re following our political campaign with great fanfare, I just want to ask you: We had a debate the other night on foreign policy, and the hemisphere and the continent wasn’t even brought up once. And I’m just wondering, given the robust partnership with Brazil – Brazil’s a rising power – and the cooperation with the region and a lot of other dynamic, growing countries, whether that’s symptomatic of some – of a problem in America that you think this – the American people don’t – aren’t interested in or don’t understand how important this cooperation is.

Secretary Clinton, on Syria, I was wondering if you have any thoughts on the ceasefire, whether you think the government or the rebels will adhere to this. What are you advising the rebels? And whether you think the current Lebanese Government is able to protect the Lebanese sovereignty from getting involved in this Syrian crisis.

And just beg my indulgence, one more – (laughter) – just beg my indulgence. I just want to ask you very quickly about these emails that have surfaced from the State Department on the night of the Benghazi attack. Given the fact that there was some information that an extremist group with links to al-Qaida affiliates was – could have been involved, why wasn’t this more heavily weighed in your assessment in the days after. Thank you. (Laughter.) Thank you.

SECRETARY CLINTON: I may forget one or two of the questions.

FOREIGN MINISTER PATRIOTA: Well, briefly on the debate, of course, well, as the two largest democracies in the Americas, we are firm believers in pluralism, and elections are always an interesting moment for us to identify that. (Laughter.) But yes, it’s true that Latin America was not present, to my knowledge, and Brazil was not mentioned, but I think that the debate concentrated really on problem issues and concerns. And today, Brazil, South America in particular, is more of a region of the world that offers solutions than problems. So we interpret that in this positive light.

At the same time, I think it’s very important to note that the contacts have been frequent, at high-level, the quality of the dialogue between Brazil and the United States is improving continuously, the agenda’s broadening, as Secretary Clinton was saying. So we are confident that whoever wins, and it’s up to the American people to choose, the relationship will continue to thrive, and we will have at our disposal a number of dialogues and mechanisms to continue to enhance this relationship.

SECRETARY CLINTON: That was such a good answer. We don’t need any more. (Laughter.) That was brilliant. That’s right, it is about problems, and I can’t say enough to support the Minister’s positive description of our relationship and really what’s happened in our hemisphere, which has been remarkable.

Regarding Syria, let me begin by expressing thanks to Brazil for their support of the Syrian people. This is an important call by Brazil, which has consistently said the government must stop the ongoing violence and has provided much needed humanitarian support. And, in fact, I think it’s right to say that Brazil is home to one of the largest Syrian diasporas anywhere in the world. So they know better than many what is at stake.

Now we’re looking forward to hearing the details of Special Envoy Brahimi’s report to the UN Security Council today. We have been in close touch with him and his team. We support his call for a ceasefire for the Eid al-Adha holiday so that Syrians could celebrate in peace. We’d like to see the violence come to an end, there’s no doubt about this, and we’d like to see a political transition take hold and begin. We’ve been calling for that for more than a year. We worked very hard in Geneva, as you know, some months ago to come up with a framework for ending the violence and beginning a political transition. And we would like to see the Security Council adopt such a framework, but to include some consequences for all parties in the event that there is not a ceasefire respected or a political transition begun.

Now we are supporting and increasingly, actually, that support for the Syrian opposition through nonlethal assistance and training, including working directly with local councils inside Syria so that they can learn what they need to do to serve their people in areas that they have taken over from the regime. And we are also working extremely hard and closely with a number of likeminded countries to help support a leadership council to come out of meetings beginning in Doha in a few weeks so that we can have a leadership structure that endorses inclusion, democratic process, peaceful political transition, and reassure all Syrians, particularly those who are in minority groups, that there is a path forward if everyone supports it. And that’s of particular concern to us, and I discussed it with Antonio. And we want to make it possible for there to be a credible interlocutor representing the opposition and prevent extremists from hijacking a brave revolution that is meant to fulfill the aspirations of the Syrian people.

Now, you’re right to raise Lebanon because it was a terrible blow to the Lebanese people one more time to see a high-level assassination carried out by a brutal bombing that devastated a neighborhood in Beirut and killed others and injured many more. I spoke with the Prime Minister over the weekend to express our condolences. We were asked for support to provide FBI investigative services, and we will – and are doing so. The Lebanese armed forces has actually performed admirably in restoring order, in going after anyone who is attempting to commit violence or disrupt that order, and urging all parties to remain calm. We don’t want to see a vacuum of legitimate political authority that could then be taken advantage of by the Syrians or by others that could create even greater instability and violence. So we call on all parties in Lebanon to support the process that President Suleiman is leading to choose a responsible, effective government that can address the threats that Syria faces and hold accountable those responsible for last week’s bombing.

So we’re not going to prejudge the outcome of what the Syrians themselves are attempting to do. This must be a Lebanese process. But the Lebanese people deserve so much better. They deserve to live in peace and they deserve to have a government that reflects their aspirations, not acts as proxies and agents for outside forces.

Now finally, on Benghazi, look, I’ve said it and I’ll say it one more time. No one wants to find out what happened more than I do. We are holding ourselves accountable to the American people, because not only they, but our brave diplomats and development experts serving in dangerous places around the world, deserve no less. The independent Accountability Review Board is already hard at work looking at everything – not cherry-picking one story here or one document there – but looking at everything, which I highly recommend as the appropriate approach to something as complex as an attack like this.

Posting something on Facebook is not in and of itself evidence, and I think it just underscores how fluid the reporting was at the time and continued for some time to be. What I keep in mind is that four brave Americans were killed, and we will find out what happened, we will take whatever measures are necessary to fix anything that needs to be fixed, and we will bring those to justice who committed these murders. And I think that that is what we have said, that is what we are doing, and I’m very confident that we will achieve those goals.

MS. NULAND: Last one today, Luis Fernandez (inaudible) from Globo TV, please.

QUESTION: Minister Patriota, Madam Secretary, I would follow the example of my colleague.

SECRETARY CLINTON: (Laughter.) Don’t pick up bad habits, please.

QUESTION: Minister, if I – if you don’t mind, I would ask the question in English and be so – if you could give the answer in Portuguese. This is, as one would assume, the very last time that the two of you meet at these particular posts that you are holding. Are you – is – are you less than happy with the fact that Brazil and the United States do not have a trade agreement? I would like to know as well, when will Americans be able to get into Brazil without a visa and Brazilians get in to the United States without a visa?

Madam Secretary, once Brazil and Turkey brokered a solution to the problem of Iran, and that was an initiative that was met with less than enthusiasm. If Brazil were to broker a solution for the problem in Syria, since there is this partnership established with Turkey and, as you pointed out, Brazil has many Lebanese and Syrians in Brazil, how would the United States Government react to that?

FOREIGN MINISTER PATRIOTA: (In Portuguese.)

I essentially said that the absence of a free trade agreement does not prevent trade between Brazil and the United States from thriving. In fact, the figures have been better than those for countries with which the U.S. does have free trade agreements. The visa situation is being discussed in a constructive way, and even in the absence of an agreement on foregoing visas, the days that are taken for the processing have diminished considerably at U.S. consulates and Brazilian consulates. There are new consulates that the United States has opened in Brazil to help processing, and Brazil has 10 consulates in the United States.

And on Syria, I just mentioned our support for the communiqué of the Geneva Action Group, which we believes continues to provide a good platform for progress through peaceful, non-militarized means.

SECRETARY CLINTON: He’s an all-purpose Foreign Minister. (Laughter.) I’m very grateful to you.

And on your question, we would, of course, welcome Brazilian participation in any effort to bring about the ceasefire, to implement it, to help with the political transition. The Minister and I discussed the ways in which both the United States and Brazil, as large pluralistic democracies, stand as examples for what we hope could come someday in Syria.

So the Minister mentioned the communiqué that came out of Geneva as a result of our meeting there several months ago. I’m in close touch with Special Envoy Brahimi. And we are looking for a way to support his work, and this kind of framework will need the strong support of Brazil, which has a very important voice in trying to resolve this ongoing tragic situation.

Thank you all very much.

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Aftermath … Benghazi, The Great Debate, and Hurricane Hillary

Posted in Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, state department, White House, tagged Barack Obama, Benghazi, Candy Crowley, Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, State Department, White House on October 17, 2012| 35 Comments »

Monday night, suddenly and without warning, Hurricane Hillary hit every shore of the United States from a location in Peru.

On CNN to Elise Labott:

QUESTION: You say you don’t want to play the blame game, but certainly there’s a blame game going on in Washington. In fact, during the presidential debate, Vice President Biden said, “We didn’t know.” White House officials calling around saying, “Hey, this is a State Department function.” Are they throwing you under the bus?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Oh, of course not. Look, I take responsibility. I’m in charge of the State Department, 60,000-plus people all over the world, 275 posts. The President and the Vice President certainly wouldn’t be knowledgeable about specific decisions that are made by security professionals. They’re the ones who weigh all of the threats and the risks and the needs and make a considered decision.

That this came the night before a presidential debate some thought significant. Others considered it high time someone in the administration stepped up with a definitive statement of responsibility. The probability that this issue would arise in the debate the next evening loomed, and many expected Mitt Romney to be the one to inject it. That is not, however, the way the debate rolled out. It was a question from the audience that brought up the topic, and in his response, Romney focused not on the secretary of state or responsibility, but rather on the president, the White House, and their remarks on the cause.

Hmmmmmm … some of us thought Romney might take this opportunity to grandstand – make a “buck will stop with me” sort of statement. He did not. Instead he remained locked on the confusion that emanated from the White House for weeks following the Benghazi attack.

Just when it appeared that Hurricane Hillary was not going to hit Long Island, the moderator chimed in.

CROWLEY: Because we’re – we’re closing in, I want to still get
a lot of people in. I want to ask you something, Mr. President, and
then have the governor just quickly.

Your secretary of state, as I’m sure you know, has said that she
takes full responsibility for the attack on the diplomatic mission in
Benghazi. Does the buck stop with your secretary of state as far as what went on here?

Aha! Now that was along the lines of what we expected from Romney. It provided Obama the opportunity for this response.

OBAMA: Secretary Clinton has done an extraordinary job. But she works for me. I’m the president and I’m always responsible, and that’s why nobody’s more interested in finding out exactly what happened than I do.

The day after the attack, governor, I stood in the Rose Garden and I told the American people in the world that we are going to find out exactly what happened. That this was an act of terror and I also said that we’re going to hunt down those who committed this crime.

And then a few days later, I was there greeting the caskets coming into Andrews Air Force Base and grieving with the families.And the suggestion that anybody in my team, whether the Secretary of State, our U.N. Ambassador, anybody on my team would play politics or mislead when we’ve lost four of our own, governor, is offensive. That’s not what we do. That’s not what I do as president, that’s not what I do as Commander in Chief.

Wait a minute. What was that? Someone was playing politics? Where did that come from? Who said anyone was playing politics? Romney did not. In fact he did not take this bait . He never mentioned the secretary of state at all! Oh wait! Someone had … earlier in the day. It came from the Obama camp.

Obama spokesman says Clinton taking responsibility ‘absolutely not’ political

By Justin Sink – 10/16/12 05:00 PM ET

Obama campaign traveling press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday that Hillary Clinton’s statement Monday night that she was taking responsibility for the attack on the American diplomatic mission in Libya was “absolutely not” a political move to shield the president.

“President Obama takes responsibility for the safety and security of all diplomats serving overseas,” Psaki told Fox News. “Secretary Clinton, of course, has a great amount of responsibility as Secretary of State and she was doing interviews yesterday as she often does on the first day of a foreign trip and said, ‘Look, we do own, the State Department does own decisions around funding for diplomats.’ ”

Read more >>>>

So for weeks no one in the administration accepts responsibility for whatever security lapses might have failed to sustain two stations in Benghazi and their occupants (arguably perhaps nothing and no force could have held off that attack). The Secretary of State steps up to the plate and says it is her department, they are her people and her structures, and she is responsible for them. The administration’s reaction, rather than taking a positive and supportive stand, is negative – a denial. She is not playing politics. First from Psaki, then from Obama, and a little while ago Ohio State Senator Nina Turner.

There is something disingenuous in the denial. First Psaki, then Obama:

“President Obama takes responsibility for the safety and security of all diplomats serving overseas,” Psaki told Fox News.

“Secretary Clinton has done an extraordinary job. But she
works for me. I’m the president and I’m always responsible….”

Arguments about what precipitated the attack aside, if Obama accepts responsibility, why did he not say so until after Secretary Clinton did so? In fact, why did he send a spokesperson out to say it before we heard it from him in the debate last night?

There is a ring of familiarity to this.

2008 primary debates: Hillary got the hard questions first, and Obama’s frequent refrain was “Senator Clinton is right about that.”
2009: HRC holds a town hall meeting at the State Department (February, I think). Someone asks if she would consider extending benefits to domestic partners of employees. She promises to look into it. In June, she comes back to the LGBT association at the department and announces that they studied the possibility, found it doable, and were going ahead and extending the bennies. Months later Obama does the same at the White House.
Earlier this year Joe Biden said he has no problem with gay marriage. First everyone freaks. There’s old Joe again shooting his mouth off. Second some wonder how Joe can be so definitive on this issue while Obama claims to be evolving. Days later, Obama finally evolves.

This is a pattern. Yes, we knew about this well before Obama was nominated in 2008. At the time, many of us thought this indicated a lack of imagination and absence of real plans. Today, it indicates something even more serious, a Commander-in-Chief who not only leads from behind, but leads only on second thought. And he is out there right now asking for your vote. As Uppity Woman has been reminding us lately, you coulda had a V-8.

We continue to accord Mme. Secretary a standing ovation for her courage, maturity, and professionalism in stepping up on this. Someone had to, and, as you said, Mme. Secretary, it is your department. Until you said it, apparently the president forgot the hierarchy.

FTR Mr. Obama: You do not write her paycheck. The American people do. She works for us, not for you. Very interesting phraseology in contrast to what she said about State Department staff.

Look, I take responsibility. I’m in charge of the State Department, 60,000-plus people all over the world, 275 posts.

She knows for whom she and they work.

The transcript of the debate is available here.

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Hillary Clinton’s Media Interviews on Benghazi

Posted in Hillary Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State, state department, U.S. Department of State, tagged Benghazi, CBS, CNN, FOX News, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, NBC, Secretary of State, State Department on October 16, 2012| 7 Comments »

These are transcripts of some of the interviews Secretary Clinton gave last night beginning with the one who broke the news of that she was publicly accepting responsibility for security failures in Benghazi , Elise Labott of CNN followed by Wendell Goler of FOX News who probably was the second as I gathered from Gretawire.

Interview With Elise Labott of CNN

Interview

Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State

Lima, Peru

October 15, 2012

QUESTION: Secretary Clinton, thank you so much for joining CNN. I want to talk a little bit about the Benghazi attack. September 11th, the evening of this horrible day you get a call that the consulate in Benghazi was attacked, and the Ambassador has died. What goes through your head at that moment?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, Elise, this was a many-hour ordeal that we were all involved in, and I was deeply concerned, as you would obviously assume, to hear about an attack, an attack that –

QUESTION: On 9/11.

SECRETARY CLINTON: On 9/11, an attack that was just overwhelming, the many-armed men, numbers not clear, not only at our post but at our annex, and then we couldn’t find Ambassador Stevens, and we were trying desperately to figure out what had happened to him and to Sean Smith and the others who were there. So it was an intense, long ordeal for everybody at the State Department and in Libya.

QUESTION: Now, I know the investigation is going to play itself out –

SECRETARY CLINTON: Right.

QUESTION: — but in the short term, the State Department officials and Diplomatic Security admit that requests for security were denied because they said that it was adequate based on the threat level. Did you get bad intelligence about the threat level, or was this a bad security decision?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Elise, one of the things we’re going to explore in the Accountability Review that I have ordered is exactly what happened and what can we do to make sure that we learn lessons from it. Nobody wants to get to the bottom of this more than I do. I knew Chris Stevens. I’ve had a chance to meet the families of the other three men who we lost. I take this very personally. So we’re going to get to the bottom of it, and then we’re going to do everything we can to work to prevent it from happening again, and then we’re going to bring whoever did this to us to justice.

QUESTION: I understand, but eastern Libya, known to be a hub for extremist groups, on 9/11; the Ambassador clearly didn’t have enough security.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I’m not going to reach any conclusions. Obviously, what happened that night was unprecedented. The waves of armed attackers that went on for hours, this was a long attack.

QUESTION: Well, do you think you got wrong intelligence then?

SECRETARY CLINTON: I’m not going to get into the blame game either about what we don’t fully yet know from our own investigation. What I think is important is to make it clear that we were attacked. And what does that mean? That means that we have to do everything we possibly can to keep our people safe. At the same time, we have to continue to be out in the world. That’s a very difficult balance to make, and I’m trying to make that balance all the time, because we can’t retreat. We have to continue to lead. We have to be engaged. We can’t hang out behind walls. Chris Stevens understood that better than anybody. He believed in what he was doing in Libya, and we want to do this right in his honor and the honor of all the men who were lost.

QUESTION: You say you don’t want to play the blame game, but certainly there’s a blame game going on in Washington. In fact, during the presidential debate, Vice President Biden said, “We didn’t know.” White House officials calling around saying, “Hey, this is a State Department function.” Are they throwing you under the bus?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Oh, of course not. Look, I take responsibility. I’m in charge of the State Department, 60,000-plus people all over the world, 275 posts. The President and the Vice President certainly wouldn’t be knowledgeable about specific decisions that are made by security professionals. They’re the ones who weigh all of the threats and the risks and the needs and make a considered decision.

QUESTION: Intelligence community initially called it a protest. State Department never did. You never did. The story has changed now. And as you know, Republicans are charging that this was a cover-up. Was it a rush to judgment, or was it bad intelligence as Vice President Biden suggests?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Elise, I take a very different view of this. I have now for 20 years been very much in the administration decision-making first with my husband; then after 9/11 working with President Bush; now, of course, in President Obama’s cabinet. In the wake of an attack like this in the fog of war, there’s always going to be confusion, and I think it is absolutely fair to say that everyone had the same intelligence. Everyone who spoke –

QUESTION: Bad intelligence it seems, though.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Everyone who spoke tried to give the information they had. As time has gone one, the information has changed, we’ve gotten more detail, but that’s not surprising. That always happens. And what I want to avoid is some kind of political “gotcha” or blame game going on, because that does a disservice to the thousands and thousands of Americans not only in the State Department and USAID, but in the military, who serve around the world. Everyone wants to make sure they are as safe as possible, but they are doing the job that they were sent out to do.

QUESTION: Well, Ambassador Stevens’ father this week said his death is being politicized. Democrats are calling it a witch hunt. Is that what’s happening here?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I’m not going to get into the political back-and-forth. I know that we’re very close to an election. I want just to take a step back here and say from my own experience we are at our best as Americans when we pull together. I’ve done it with –

QUESTION: Are you saying we’re not doing that?

SECRETARY CLINTON: — Democratic presidents and Republican presidents. I’ve seen it happen where people say, “Look, first and foremost we’re Americans.” We’ve lost four brave men, dozens more had to fight for their lives over a very long battle. They had to get evacuated because of the dangers that they were facing.

QUESTION: Well, I mean, we have an election coming up. Rationale is that this is to go against President Obama. But some people think it’s to stop Hillary Clinton from making any gains for 2016.

SECRETARY CLINTON: That is just so far from anything that anybody should be thinking about.

QUESTION: They still see you as a threat, Secretary Clinton.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I can’t speak to that. The only threats I’m worried about are the threats to my men and women on the ground every day as we speak. It’s what I’m obsessed with. It’s what we’ve worked so hard to evaluate, and of course we’re part of a team. We’re a team with the – with DOD, we’re a team with the intelligence community, we’re a team with the White House, and other assets of the government.

QUESTION: What about the funding now? I mean, you’ve talked –

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, we’re also a team with the Congress, too.

QUESTION: You’ve talked about that a lot that that’s an issue.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I think it’s important for us to work closely with the Congress. I have every reason to believe that the leadership of the Congress cares as much as anybody about protecting our men and women, and we’ll have time to talk about what we need and how we can best deploy financial assistance.

QUESTION: You’re here in Peru talking about women’s issues, women as part of the economy. In the United States, you have 50 percent of women in the workforce, they’re not getting all the tools they need, and this is becoming an issue in this election.

SECRETARY CLINTON: It is important that we do everything we can to open the doors of opportunity for everyone. And the biggest group that is not fully participating around the world are women. And so, as you know, this has been a point I’ve made repeatedly, that if we tear down the barriers to women’s full participation in the economy, whether it’s in the United States or Peru or Japan, it will be an opportunity for those economies to grow. Actually, the gross domestic product will increase.

I’m also here to see the new President. We have a lot of important relationships with him and his government on counternarcotics, counterterrorism, the problems that we’re dealing with in this very complex world of ours today.

QUESTION: Going to watch the debate?

SECRETARY CLINTON: I am. I am. We’re going to try to get home in time to be sure that I see every minute of it.

QUESTION: You’ve debated President Obama. You’ve watched many debates. What does he need to do in this debate?

SECRETARY CLINTON: He just needs to be himself and answer the questions and get out there and tell people – not just those in the audience, but in our country – what he has done and what he will do. I think that this is a consequential election for both domestic and international reasons, and although I am out of politics, I am still an American and care deeply about what happens in my country.

QUESTION: Secretary Clinton, thank you so much for joining us.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Thanks very much, Elise.

# # #

Interview With Wendell Goler of FOX News

Interview

Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State

Lima, Peru

October 15, 2012

QUESTION: Forgive me – this is the first time we’ve had to talk since the Benghazi tragedy, and with respect to your hosts, I’d like to focus my questions on that. There’s a lot of discussion of the decision not to extend the mission of the additional security team in Tripoli. Would that have made a difference in the Benghazi situation?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, Wendell, we’re going to find out through our Accountability Review investigation that’s going on exactly what did happen. There’s been testimony it wouldn’t have made a difference, but I’m not going to draw any conclusions until we have these very distinguished Americans given the chance to review everything and draw their own conclusions and make recommendations, because nobody wants to get to the bottom of this more than I. And I want to do everything I can to protect our people, and I also want to make sure that we track down whoever did this and bring them to justice.

QUESTION: Did that request come to you or does it come to a specialist in the Department on security?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I’m responsible for the State Department, for the more than 60,000 people around the world. The decisions about security assets are made by security professionals. But we’re going to review everything to make sure that we’re doing what needs to be done in an increasingly risky environment around the world. There’s no doubt that our men and women from the State Department, USAID, the rest of our government are having to balance all the time how to do their jobs and not stay behind high walls, but to do it as safely as possible. And that’s an ongoing, daily calculation around the world.

QUESTION: There was an IED attack in June. Did you know about that? Was the White House informed about that?

SECRETARY CLINTON: I can’t speak to who knew what about that. We knew that there were security breaches and problems throughout Libya that was something that came about as the aftermath of the revolution to topple Qadhafi, with so many militias formed, so many weapons loose, and it was certainly taken into account by the security professionals as they made their assessments.

QUESTION: Now, a week after the attack, Ambassador Rice was still saying basically this is something that grew out of a protest against the anti-Islam movie. Can you explain that?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I think the first thing to know is that everyone had the same intelligence. But I’ve been around long enough to know that it takes time to assess all the information that you have. And as the intelligence community has now said, their assessment over the last now more than a month changed, but everyone in the Administration was trying to give information to the best of their ability at the time, with the caveat that more was likely to be learned and that there would be most likely changes.

So the fog of war, the confusion that you get in any kind of combat situation – and remember, this was an attack that went on for hours. Our post was overrun by a significant number of armed men. Our annex was attacked. There had to be a lot of sorting out. And the intelligence community, as you know so well, they look backwards. They start going through everything: Did they miss something? Was there something else out there? Then they have to put out feelers to find out what people knew. And they’ve been doing that in a very vigorous way, and we’re learning more all the time about what happened.

QUESTION: So it’s possible you could have had the same information and drawn different conclusions?

SECRETARY CLINTON: I think it’s possible that everyone said here’s what we know, but it’s subject to change; it’s what we know at present. And I think that is what people tried to do. But I also understand, having been around for a while, how impatient people are to figure out what went on, what happened. We lost four really brave Americans. And come on, somebody tell me. And so it’s not very satisfying to say, look, we’re going to do this right, we’re going to get the information, and then when we do tell you, we will tell you as fully as we possibly can, which is why I immediately stood up the Review Board.

QUESTION: What do you make of the Republican claim that the Administration was reluctant to admit that al-Qaida is not on its heels, as the President often says?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I don’t understand it completely, because we have certainly degraded core al-Qaida, including, of course, bin Ladin. But we have been very focused on al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. I spoke about that in the past, even a few weeks ago.

So al-Qaida in its affiliate form, if you will, poses a threat, not to the same extent as what we faced coming out of 9/11 in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but let’s be very clear: This Administration knows all too well that we face extremists, wannabe al-Qaida types, new groups popping up that want to do harm to their own people, to the United States and our friends and allies. And we are as vigilant as we possibly can be around the clock.

QUESTION: Is Libya, with its militias and weapons, an example of why you don’t want to provide weapons to the rebels in Syria?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Every case is different. I do think that the disarming of the militias is particularly difficult in Libya because there were no institutions. There was no institutional, professional army. And we face a very challenging environment in Libya, as does the new Libyan Government, who we are certainly trying to support. I think it’s a different situation in Syria. It’s a different situation in Yemen. I mean, every situation has to be evaluated.

But I can say, generally, dangerous weapons in the hands of extremists is a problem that we pay a lot of attention to and we spend an enormous amount of energy – not just the State Department, but DOD and intelligence community – trying to figure out how to prevent these groups from getting access to more and more powerful weapons. So it’s a problem.

QUESTION: Thank you, Madam Secretary.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Thank you very much, Wendell. Good to see you.

QUESTION: And you.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Thanks.

# # #

Interview With Reena Ninan of ABC News

Interview

Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State

Lima, Peru

October 15, 2012

QUESTION: When I first met Chris Stevens, it was in a Benghazi elevator of a hotel. He really knew that area well. There was – there are some reports that he was concerned about the rise of al-Qaida. When did the U.S. become aware of transnational extremists operating in Eastern Libya, and what was the U.S. policy to deal with it?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, we have long known that extremists have come out of Libya, and certainly after the fall of Qadhafi we understood that there would be an effort to try to reestablish a presence of extremist bases and operations. But we also knew that aside from those individuals and groups, there were so many militias that had formed in the wake of the revolution, there were so many weapons in the country. So it was something that we were very focused on and working on.

QUESTION: If there is that solid evidence of who killed Chris Stevens – and obviously these guys aren’t coming in in handcuffs – would this Administration be willing to strike them before a U.S. election?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, let me say this. I think there are three points that are very important to me. First, we will get to the bottom of what happened. Secondly, we will learn whatever lessons can be gleaned in order to protect our people. And third, we will track down whoever did this and hold them accountable, bring them to justice.

QUESTION: Any closer to finding suspects?

SECRETARY CLINTON: There’s a lot of work going on. There’s an intense effort in our government. And I think our track record is pretty good that eventually we will find you.

QUESTION: President Biden last week said, I’m quoting here, “We’re leaving in 2014, period,” referring to Afghanistan. Was he wrong?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, that is the plan. In 2014, according to the decisions that were made by NATO – and that, of course, includes the United States – we would end major combat operations in 2014, the end of the year. There would be —

QUESTION: Do you believe there’s evidence to stay beyond 2014?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I think that there is an enduring commitment that a number of countries have already made to the Afghans, including the United States, but also the UK, France, and others have said we don’t want Afghanistan to end up the way it did after the Soviet Union left and those countries that had been funding the fight against the Soviet Union retreated. So no one wants that to happen. No one wants Afghanistan to become a safe haven for terrorists again. But what that will look like, who will be involved – all of that is still to be considered.

QUESTION: So he hasn’t torpedoed, has he, security talks with – last week with the Afghan Foreign Minister on staying beyond 2014?

SECRETARY CLINTON: I think he – what he meant was that major combat operations will end. There’s never been any discussion of continuing that. What has been discussed is how to train and support and provide specific forms of assistance to the Afghan National Security Forces.

QUESTION: We’re seeing al-Qaida strengthen in some parts – in Mali, in Syria, in Iraq. What’s the real status of al-Qaida, and are they strengthening?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I think it’s absolutely fair to say that the major leadership of al-Qaida, including bin Ladin, has been decimated. There has been an effort to have other al-Qaida affiliate-like organizations – al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb – to try to take up the mantle of al-Qaida, but the core of al-Qaida has been severely damaged.

But we know that there will be terrorists, if they call themselves that or they call themselves something else, who will continue to terrorize people in the countries where they are based and continue to threaten the United States and our friends and allies. So we have never taken at all our eye off the ball of how we have to keep going after those extremists who pose a threat.

QUESTION: President Assad has started using his air force in Syria. The casualties have risen significantly. When the U.S. decided to go into Libya, it was because of on the grounds of an impending emergency humanitarian situation. The situation in Syria is far worse. Why not set up a no-fly zone there?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Obviously, this has been under discussion among allies in many conversations, and I think that the planning that has been taking place is important. There has been no decision made. But everyone knows that what the Assad regime is doing is just a brutal assault on the Syrian people. And what we need is a very clear commitment of support to the opposition inside of Syria and outside —

QUESTION: Would you be willing to talk to the military opposition?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I think that there are conversations going on with those who are in the military – in fact, I know there are – by many different likeminded countries.

QUESTION: The debates are tomorrow. Is it do or die for President Obama? What advice would you have for him?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Oh, I think he’ll do find. I have no doubt about that. And I’m racing back from Peru, where we are talking, in order to be able to see all of it.

QUESTION: What would you tell him? What advice would you give him?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, actually just to go out and be himself and talk about what he’s done – he has a great record – and what he wants to do. I mean, this is a very consequential election for our country, and I’m out of politics but I am an American and I care deeply about what happens to our country and our people. And I think he’ll do fine.

QUESTION: When they look back and examine this election cycle, what will they say about the impact your husband, President Clinton, has had in helping him (inaudible)?

SECRETARY CLINTON: I will leave that to historians. But I was very proud of the speech that Bill gave at the convention, because I think it made the case very strongly for the policies that President Obama has pursued and why they’re the right policies for our country.

QUESTION: When you leave your position as Secretary of State, what unfinished business will you regret leaving behind the most?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I will miss the extraordinary people. I have more than 60,000 people around the world who are working hard every single day to promote peace and prosperity and who want to advance America’s interests and values and keep us safe here at home. So I will miss the people and I will miss a lot of the extraordinarily important work. But it’s work that never ends. I mean, we’re living at a time when the world is so complex, so many challenges and threats going on simultaneously. So I will be there cheering on whoever my successor is.

QUESTION: Thank you very much.

# # #

Interview With Margaret Brennan of CBS

Interview

Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State

Lima, Peru

October 15, 2012

QUESTION: Madam Secretary, thank you very much for making time. The assault on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi lasted well over six hours. Did you at any point consider sending reinforcements or assets from outside of Libya in?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, we considered everything, and we did, as you know, send additional assets from Tripoli, but it was a fast-moving, very difficult assault to try to figure out. As you know, the assault on the post ended. There was a gap of time, then the assault on the annex, so everybody who had any responsibility was scrambling very hard to figure out what more could be done.

QUESTION: Why not send in assets from outside the country in addition to those coming from Tripoli?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, partly because of the difficulties of trying to do that. But I think all of this will be examined in the Accountability Review Board, because after all, we have this independent board to sort through everything: what happened, because we have to get to the bottom of it; what we need to learn from it, because we have to do whatever it takes to protect our people; and then of course to follow up and follow any lead to track down whoever did this and bring them to justice. So we are very focused on finding out everything we can and then learning from it. But we’re also, at the same time, doing a very big analysis of what’s happening right now, making sure we do what we can to protect people, and it’s a terrible tragedy what happened in Benghazi, and we want to make sure that those four men will be remembered because of the changes that we possibly can do to help others.

QUESTION: There are people within the Foreign Service looking at what happened in Benghazi and saying, “This shows that there are soft, vulnerable American targets that can be hit.” So when you look at your decisions that night, do you expect your own decision not to send in assets from outside of Libya to be in question?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, Margaret, I don’t want us to reach any conclusions about what we did or didn’t do without the full context. I mean, I understand why people want to ask questions, but I just caution that we need to look at everything, and everything needs to be explained at the same time. We have 275 posts around the world. We have more than 60,000 people. We live in a dangerous, risky environment today in many places around the world, and we are constantly calculating, particularly led by our security professionals, about what needs to be done, where assets need to be. We partner with DOD whenever we can. But it’s a constantly calculating analysis that has to go on in order to make the best decisions.

QUESTION: And there are usually emergency action plans in place for all those embassies and posts. Was there one in Benghazi?

SECRETARY CLINTON: There’s always emergency plans in place, and there are always constant updates to it. Now, as you know, Benghazi was not a permanent facility. It was a post with an annex, and there’s no doubt that it was overrun, some have said in an unprecedented attack that could not have been foreseen and could not have been stopped. But I want to know the answers. I want to know if that’s true.

QUESTION: So there was not a contingency plan in Benghazi because it wasn’t –

SECRETARY CLINTON: There’s – no, there’s always an emergency plan for every post.

QUESTION: Okay. On September 16th, Ambassador Susan Rice made a number of TV appearances. Did you approve her speaking points that she delivered on the TV shows that day?

SECRETARY CLINTON: She got the same information that everyone got, and I think she very clearly said here’s what we know now, but this is going to change. This is what we have at present, but it will evolve, and the intelligence community has said the same thing. I’ve seen this happen over and over again. I mean, you feel an obligation to say something, because something terrible has happened, but more likely than not there will be additional details, what people thought might be changed by new information, or in the case of the intelligence community, something that they are able to pull from their review of all available intelligence.

So I think that what’s important is we were attacked. We were attacked, and this was not the only place where our people were at risk. We were facing serious problems in many places over – from September 11th over the following weeks, and what we were trying to do was to stay ahead of it and to try to make sure that we were prepared. In many places, there were governments, governments that have a responsibility under international law to protect diplomatic facilities and were able to do so. In Libya, as you know, they don’t yet have control over security. It’s something that we are trying to help them with, but unfortunately, they were not able to be very responsive in Benghazi.

QUESTION: Who briefed Ambassador Rice that day? Did you sign off on that briefing and those speaking points?

SECRETARY CLINTON: You would have to ask her.

QUESTION: You didn’t speak to her before that appearance?

SECRETARY CLINTON: No, but that – everybody had the same information. I mean, I’m – I have to say I know there’s been a lot of attention paid to who said what when, but I think what happened is more important. We were attacked, and four brave Americans were killed. Others were injured. Dozens had to fight for their life and had to get evacuated. Everybody in the Administration had – has tried to say what we knew at the time with the caveat that we would learn more, and that’s what’s happened. So I think that – I’ve seen it before not just in respect to this. I think it’s part of what the fog of war causes.

QUESTION: There are those who because of the vulnerability look at this and say why was Ambassador Rice saying there was no information, which is what she said on CBS, no information that this was a preplanned attack when just days before Libya’s President had publically and repeatedly said there was evidence?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, those are all pieces of information that people will have evaluated in the overall assessment. I can only speak for the United States Government and the information that was given was given to everyone. That information evolved. The intelligence community has said that. So I think that we can –

QUESTION: It wasn’t an intelligence failure?

SECRETARY CLINTON: I’m not going to get into the blame game. I think intelligence is very hard to do, and what we’re going to find out as we do this accountability review and we get what will be the best possible chronology that will be attached to what we knew when, which takes time. It cannot be just produced automatically. Then you and the media, the Congress, and others will have a good basis of information.

I understand the anxiety and the desire to try to get answers. Nobody wants to get answers more than I do. These were people who I cared deeply about. I knew Chris Stevens. I asked him personally to be in Benghazi during the Libyan revolution. I personally nominated him to be ambassador, because I could not think of a better person to represent the United States, somebody who understood what was at stake for Libya, what was at stake for the United States, how these revolutions could be so positive or could be hijacked. He understood that, and he was instrumental in working with the Libyans. So I care deeply about what happened that night. I care deeply about what we’re going to be doing going forward. And I want everybody to know that we’re going to get to the bottom of this, and when we do, that information will all be public, and people will be able to draw their own conclusions.

QUESTION: And lastly, Madam Secretary, before I let you go, coming up on these last three months of your term, what do you have to do to consider it a success?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I think we’re just going to keep doing what we’re doing. We’ve had a lot of very important challenges over the last now nearly four years. The world has changed dramatically. We’ve had economic crises, we’ve had Arab Springs, we’ve had all kinds of challenges in places large and small, but I think what’s important is that we have asserted American leadership, American values, American interests, and we’ve also made it very clear that when it comes to our security, it may take time, but if you kill Americans, we will find you, and we will hold you accountable and bring you to justice one way or the other. And that’s what we intend to do when it comes to Benghazi. It’s what this Administration, it’s what the American people expect. And we will continue to advance our interests, promote our values, and protect our security.

QUESTION: Madam Secretary, thank you for your time.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Thank you very much.

# # #

Interview With Catherine Chomiak of NBC News

Interview

Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State

Lima, Peru

October 15, 2012

QUESTION: Thank you so much, Madam Secretary, for doing this. I wanted to start with Libya and then move on to Pakistan. On September 11th in Benghazi, things were calm until around 9:40, officials tell us, and at that point a security officer saw dozens of heavily-armed men coming in through the front gate. And that security officer notified the Embassy in Tripoli, and then Washington as well, and then kept in contact and gave updates. I’m wondering, was it not apparent that evening that this was a coordinated terrorist attack and not just a protest spun out of control?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, that’s one of the questions that will be answered by the review once everything is looked at. Because the intelligence committee information that was available in the immediate aftermath was given to everyone, and everyone saw the same information but said, look, we will tell you what we know now but we expect it to change, we expect it to get more detail. And that’s what’s gone on over the last weeks.

I think the important thing is we were attacked. At the same time, there were protests and attacks going on across the region and even beyond. So what we had to do in the State Department was keep focused not on why something happened – that was for the intelligence community to determine – but what was happening and what could happen. And that’s what I was very much working on day and night, to try to make sure that we intervened with governments, we did everything we could to keep our people safe, which is my primary responsibility.

QUESTION: And you mention the intelligence that was given, and some have been critical and the intelligence agency has come out and revised and put out that statement. Some have called this an intelligence failure. Is that fair?

SECRETARY CLINTON: I don’t think we want to get into any blame game. I think what we want to do is get to the bottom of what happened, figure out what we’re going to do to protect people and prevent it from happening again, and then track down whoever did it and bring them to justice.

So from my perspective, I have a great deal of concern about what we have to do to make sure this doesn’t happen, and that means even while we’re doing the investigation about Benghazi, we’re constantly reaching out, making sure that our posts have what they need, doing reviews all the time so that we can try to stay ahead of whatever might happen. Because this was unprecedented – significant numbers of armed men coming into a post like that. We’ve seen things like this from Tehran to Beirut to Nairobi. We see it, but we have to constantly be learning new ways to prevent it.

QUESTION: And there has been criticism of the intelligence, and there’s also been criticism of the Administration. Yesterday, Senator Graham said this Administration is either misleading the American people or incredibly incompetent about what happened in Benghazi. That’s a very, very serious charge that he’s making. What do you say to him and to others?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I highly respect him and others who share the deep concern I do that something terrible happened, and we have to find out what it was. My only point is that the Administration has tried to provide information with the caveat that more would be learned, but everyone has done their best to get information out. What I’m interested in is getting to the facts: What did happen? And I was at the – from the time it started until this minute as we’re sitting here really focused on trying to make sure that we had everything that our people needed, and if there are changes that we have to make or that our security professionals need to do, we’re going to learn what it is and we’re going to do it.

QUESTION: One of those issues around security that has been raised is: Was the State Department too concerned with Libyan political sensitivities about contractors coming into the country after the revolution? Could you talk a little bit about that? Was there an emphasis on – in the security posture of relying on local Libyans, and could that have been an issue that led to what happened in Benghazi?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I think specifically we need to really sort that out to see whether that had any effect. It’s something that I don’t want to make a judgment about until I get all the facts. But in a more general way, we can’t bring people into any country unless we take military action against that country. But in the ordinary course of dealing with other countries, we can’t bring anybody in who doesn’t get a visa, who isn’t approved to be there by the country.

So when some people say, well, we should have just put people in, that’s not the way it works. You have to get the visas. You have to get the approval. Now, the military, as we know, they went to Afghanistan, they went to Iraq, they’ve gone other places in the past. But other than those kinds of exceptions, even they have to get approval to have what we call boots on the ground.

So I want the American people to understand more about how all of this works, but I want to do it once we get all the facts.

QUESTION: And speaking of the American people, after 9/11, when New York City was attacked, Americans really rallied together. We really haven’t seen that with Benghazi. It’s become very quickly a political issue. I’m wondering why you think that is. And do you think it serves the American public and America’s interests that Benghazi has been so politicized?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I can only say that based on my experience the last 20 years, when our country was attacked in the ‘90s and my husband was President; when we were attacked when George W. Bush was President; now, of course, I serve President Obama – we’re at our best when we rally around. That doesn’t mean that we don’t want to get to the bottom of what happened, because we should, and we should then hold people accountable, make changes where necessary.

But I really believe that tragedies like what happened in Benghazi should be viewed in a nonpolitical way. Everybody should pull together as Americans.

QUESTION: And changing topics, I imagine you’ve been following the updates of the 14-year-old girl who was shot by the Taliban in Pakistan. And I’m wondering, what would you say to her today if you could? And what do you want to say to all the other school girls just like her who have flooded the streets of Pakistan in outrage?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I think that the people of Pakistan are saying what needs to be said so eloquently now – that children, boys and girls, deserve to go to school; they deserve to have the chance to make the best of their God-given potential, to make a contribution to their society. And any country that doesn’t stand up against extremism in order to protect its children has to really take a hard look, and I think that’s what’s happening in Pakistan. And I certainly hope so because there are so many thousands of young girls who deserve to go to school, who deserve to have an education, and those who are committing these terrible acts of violence need to be brought to justice.

QUESTION: And just one quick one if I may. Madam Secretary, you’ve been in your fair share of high-profile debates. (Laughter.) I’m wondering if you have anything for the President? Any advice to give him for tomorrow?

SECRETARY CLINTON: I think he’ll do fine. I think he just has to get out there and talk about what he’s done for the country and what he wants to do for the next four years. I am out of politics, but I do care deeply about what happens to the country that I love and that I’ve served, and I think he will do fine in explaining what needs to happen next.

QUESTION: That you so much.

SECRETARY CLINTON: Thank you so much.

# # #

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Hillary Clinton: “The buck stops with me.”

Posted in Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State, Secretary of State Travel, state department, U.S. Department of State, tagged AP, Benghazi, CNN, Elise Labott, Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Matthew Lee, Secretary of State, State Department on October 15, 2012| 30 Comments »

Elise Labott of CNN, in Lima, Peru with Secretary Clinton just reported that Hillary Clinton, in an interview there, has assumed full responsibility for the raid in Benghazi that killed the U.S. Ambassador and three others. According to Labott, Mme. Secretary said, buck stops with me.”

Clinton: ‘I take responsibility’ for security ahead of Benghazi attack

From Elise Labott, CNN

updated 8:08 PM EDT, Mon October 15, 2012

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Lima, Peru (CNN) — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the buck stops with her when it comes to who is to blame for security ahead of a deadly assault on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.

“I take responsibility” for what happened on September 11, Clinton said in an interview with CNN’s Elise Labott soon after arriving in Lima, Peru, for a visit. The interview, one of a series given to U.S. television networks Monday night, was the first she has given about the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

Clinton insisted President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are not involved in security decisions.

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AP’s Matt Lee, also traveling with the Secretary, filed this report.

Clinton in Peru amid questions about Libya

By MATTHEW LEE | Associated Press

Associated Press/ Evan Vucci, File – FILE – In this Oct. 2, 2012 file photo, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks at the State Department in Washington. Clinton headed to Peru Monday, where she will talk about women’s empowerment. But overshadowing her trip is the lingering political drama in Washington over the Obama administration’s handling of last month’s deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci, File)

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday embarked on her first overseas trip since last month’s deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya, traveling to Peru for a conference on women’s empowerment amid the lingering political drama in Washington over the Obama administration’s handling of the incident.

Clinton arrived for the long-planned women’s event in Lima after another weekend of criticism from Republicans over the Obama administration’s initial explanation of the Sept. 11 attack and security at the consulate in Benghazi, where the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans died.

Her arrival coincided with a call from the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., for Clinton to answer more questions about what was known about the security situation in Libya in the period leading up to the attack as well as the State Department’s priorities on paying for and protecting diplomatic missions abroad.

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