Congress grills Clinton on Libya attack

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was at times confrontational in her Senate committee appearance.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was at times confrontational in her Senate committee appearance.

— Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton testified Wednesday that she had moved quickly to improve the security of U.S. diplomats after the September attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans and prompted a scathing review of State Department procedures.

“As I have said many times since Sept. 11, I take responsibility,” Clinton said in a prepared statement. “Nobody is more committed to getting this right. I am determined to leave the State Department and our country safer, stronger and more secure.”

Appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the morning in what may have been one of her last major public appearances as secretary of state, Clinton sought to avoid the dispute over whether the attack was the work of terrorists that dogged Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. She suggested that she was inclined to see the attack as a terrorist act from the start.

“The very next morning, I told the American people that heavily armed militants assaulted our compound and vowed to bring them to justice. And I stood with President [Barack] Obama as he spoke of ‘an act of terror,’” she said.

In a rare moment of confrontation, Clinton responded to persistent questions from Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., by saying that there was too much focus on how the Benghazi attack was characterized in its early hours and not enough on how to prevent a recurrence.

“What difference at this point does it make?” she said, noting that there were “four dead Americans.”

“It is our job to figure out what happened and to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” she said.

Later, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said Clinton had failed to answer lingering questions about the assault in Benghazi and about Obama administration policy in Libya before the episode.

McCain asserted that the Obama administration’s aversion to nation-building precluded it from adequately helping Libya organize and train its own forces. Specifically, McCain said that the administration failed to provide the kind of training, equipment and other assistance that would help the fledgling civilian government in Tripoli confront the growing menace from militias in Benghazi and other parts of Libya.

He said there were a number of obvious warning signs before the September attack in Benghazi, including an attack on the British ambassador’s convoy in that city in June.

“Well, senator, I understand your very strong feelings,” Clinton responded, adding, “And we just have a disagreement.”

In response to McCain’s criticism that the administration had failed to help the new Libyan government deal with its numerous security challenges, Clinton said Congress had delayed aid to Libya and that she would provide a list of steps that had been taken to train and equip Libyan forces.

Referring to the collective ability of Congress and the administration to agree on a coordinated, effective response to Libya, Clinton said, “We’ve got to get our act together.”

After jousting with Republican senators at the morning hearing, Clinton testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in the afternoon. Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., chairman of the House panel, set the tone for that session in his prepared opening statement, one that rejected the assessment by an independent State Department review that the fault for the inadequate security in Benghazi lay principally at the assistant-secretary level.

“This committee is concerned that the department’s most senior officials either should have known about the worsening security in Benghazi - or did know,” he said.

In her testimony to the Senate committee, Clinton asserted that she was never made aware of the security requests from Benghazi by Ambassador Christopher Stevens and his subordinates. “I did not see these requests,” she said. “They did not come to me. I did not approve them. I did not deny them.”

“These requests do not normally come to the secretary of state,” she added. “They are handled by security professionals in the department.”

She insisted that the measures she was taking would ensure that requests received high-level attention in the future.

Clinton choked up as she recounted the grim moment in September when she and the president received the bodies of the four Americans killed in the Benghazi attack at Joint Base Andrews, outside Washington.

“I stood next to President Obama as the Marines carried those flag-draped caskets off the plane at Andrews,” she said. “I put my arms around the mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters.”

Clinton was to have testified in December, but her appearance was delayed by illness and then a concussion, which led to her brief hospitalization. Republicans have been insistent that Clinton needed to testify about her own role before leaving her State Department post, and she readily agreed.

Clinton first publicly took responsibility for the September attack in an Oct. 15 interview with television reporters. Since then, however, she has committed herself to putting in place all of the recommendations of the independent review that was led by Thomas Pickering, the former U.S. ambassador, and Mike Mullen, the retired admiral who served as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Clinton said she could not confirm reports from Algerian security officials that militants who attacked an Algerian natural-gas complex last week participated in the attack on the diplomatic compound in Benghazi. But she said the attackers in Algeria and the Islamists in Mali were armed with weapons looted from the former arsenals of deposed Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

She also asserted that headway was being made on putting in place the panel’s recommendations, repeating themes that had been made to Congress by senior State Department officials last month.

“And, as I pledged in my letter to you last month, implementation has now begun on all 29 recommendations,” Clinton said. “Our task force started by translating the recommendations into 64 specific action items. All of these action items were assigned to specific bureaus and offices, with clear timelines for completion. Fully 85 percent are on track to be completed by the end of March, with a number completed already.”

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is still led by John Kerry, D-Mass., whose confirmation hearing as secretary of state is today. Kerry was not leading the Wednesday hearing to avoid the perception of a conflict of interest. The hearing was led by Robert Menendez, D-N.J., who is the incoming chairman. Kerry was not present as the hearing began.

Information for this article was contributed by Eric Schmitt of The New York Times.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/24/2013

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