Page 3 - Leafing Benghazi News Today

Planning and training exercises, this may have actually helped the state and dod to identify existing vulnerabilities in the temporary mission facility in benghazi. moreover, regular communications between africom -- which is the dod command -- and the special mission benghazi could have facilitated the prepositioning of military assets in a region where there were very real questions over the host countrys ability to protect our diplomatic personnel. secretary clinton, within the weeks of the t...

Dont have enough security, they are on lockdown, end quote. and i say that this is very troubling to me because it raises several issues that id like to ask you about. im struck by the first part, quote, the secretary asked last week if we still have a presence in benghazi. now, you pointed out to mrs. brooks in her last line of questioning based upon the e-mail stacks here that you engaged in a lot of conversations and briefings, so im assuming that this conversation with this member of your st...

To speak. and from your own records that we have, we saw a drop in your interest in libya and benghazi in 2012. not only did the record show your drop in interest in benghazi, it was even noticed by your own staff. i want to point this out to -- say this because i want to point you to an e-mail in early february 2012 between two staffers at your libya desk that says you didnt know whether we still even had a presence in benghazi. lets not use my words, lets use theirs. this can be found at tab 3...

In their country. and what i concluded is that we needed to have these assessments, because even if we couldnt post our own military in the country, we needed to have a faster reaction. now, i certainly agree 100% with the findings of the armed services committee here in the house and other investigations. our military did everything they could. they turned over every rock. they tried to deploy as best they could to try to get to benghazi. it was beyond the geographic range. they didnt have asse...

Not really feel that they could welcome a peacekeeping mission. they couldnt welcome foreign troops to their, to their soil. that made it really difficult, and it didnt have to be american troops, it could have been troops from anywhere in the world under a u.n. mandate that might have helped them begin to secure their country. >> secretary clinton, if i may, i hear what youre saying, but this e-mail says something very, very -- >> well, you know, i cant speak to that. i can just tell you what i...

>> thank you, mr. chairman. secretary clinton, im pleased that you finally have the opportunity to be here. before i start my line of questioning, i just want to clarify with regards to the april/june 2012 incidents, i believe that the procedure that the state department had for these types of incidents was to actually hold what are called emergency action committee hearings on the ground immediately. and, in fact, there were at least five on records for june alone on the ground in both tripoli ...

Had five security officers. a lot of security professionals who have reviewed this matter, even those who are critical that the state department did not do enough, have said that the kind of attack that took place would have been very difficult to repel. thats what we have to learn from, congresswoman. you know, there are many, there are many lessons going back to beirut, going back to tehran and the takeover of our embassy and going all the way through these years. and sometimes we learn lesson...

Not had the amount of money that we thought would be necessary to do what was required to protect everyone, so, of course, there had to be priorities. and that was something that the security professionals dealt with. i think that both admiral mullen and ambassador pickering made it very clear that they thought the high threat posts should move to a higher level of scrutiny, and we had immediately moved to do that. >> thank you. >> thank the gentleman. the chair would now recognize the gentlelad...

Ill give you, i have a minute and seven seconds. >> well, thank you, congressman. i think there has been some confusion, and i welcome the opportunity to try to clarify it to the best of my ability with respect, as you rightly point out, the claims that were made about the cables. i think you have explained the fact which is that its the longstanding tradition of the state department for cables from around world to be sent to and sent from the state department under the signature, over the signa...