Page 124 - Security Professionals News Today

How do you square that? >> well, there are a couple of important points to make about this, congressman. first, i made a number of decisions to close embassy, chanceries and other. and i had to evacuate all the americans out of libya. we had to lease ferries that came from malta. we closed embassies and other facilities when we had a strong consensus recommendation that it was necessary to do. so that is a statement, secretarial responsibility. now, with respect to looking at every security requ...

Leading civic leaders in benghazi. so he felt very comfortable. it was his decision. ambassadors do not have to seek permission from the state department to travel around the country that they are assigned to. he decided to go to benghazi. by taking two security officers with him and having three there, he had the requisite five, that had been the discussion between the embassy and state department security professionals. im not going to in any way suggest that he or the embassy got everything t...

Quote, maximum alert for benghazi. you several times made the statement and we believe you that ambassador stevens was your friend. and im wondering why with all of this in front of you, secretary of state, why did it not occur to you to pick up the phone and call your friend? i know youve mentioned experts, i know youve said ambassador stevens and other diplomats go into these high threat situations with their eyes wide open, but i just want to hear from you why with all of this information in ...

40 instances? 50 instances? how many instances would you have been made aware of that would have made you say, i dont care whatever anybody else says well protect our people. chris stevens is a good friend of mine, well look at him. how many would it have taken? >> congressman, of course i made it abundantly clear we had to do everything we could to protect our people. what i did not, and do not believe any secretary should do was to substitute my judgment, from thousands of miles away, for the ...

Security officials, and i think what mike morell told you in the intelligence committee investigation you would hear from anyone in the government at a high level who has to deploy americans around the world. we see that with the defense department. you know, we see breaches of security on our military bases and we know that everybody is struggling to get it right and as i have said, the vast majority of cases our security professionals do and then unfortunately, there are some instances where t...

Tell you that i know a number of requests were fulfilled and some were not. but from my perspective again, these were handled by the people that were assigned the task of evaluating them, and you know, i think its important to again reiterate that although there were problems and deficiencies discovered by the accountability review board, the general approach to have security professionals handle security requests i think still stands. >> yes, maam. i wish you had listened to those security prof...

And some were not. but from my perspective, again, these were handled by the people that were assigned the task of evaluating them. you know, i think its important to again reiterate that although there were problems and deficiencies discovered by the accountability review board, the general approach to have security professionals handle security requests i think still stands. >> yes, maam, i want you to listen ton those security professionals. you described mr. stevens as having the best knowle...

Professionals -- our development professionals? because the first thing i heard when i got to the state department was a litany of complaints from a lot of our most experienced diplomats that they were being hamstrung, that the security requirements were so intense that they were basically unable to do their jobs. and, of course, then from the security professionals who were all part of this what we call the qddr, they were saying we dont want you to go beyond the fence. we cant protect you in a...

Represented, then we leave a vacuum and we lose our eyes and our ears about what people are thinking and doing. it is certainly the hardest part of the job in many of our agencies and departments today. and it was for me in the state department. thats why i relied on the security professionals. because by the time i got there in 2009, the diplomatic security professionals had been taking care of american diplomats in iraq, in afghanistan, in pakistan, for years. and they had learned a lot of les...

And development professionals. because the first thing i heard when i got to the state department was a litany of complaints from a lot of our most experienced diplomats that they were being hamstrung. that security requirements were so intense that they were basically unable to do their jobs. and, fof course, from the security professionals who were all part of this -- what we call the qddr, they were saying we dont want you to go beyond the fence. we cant protect you in all of these dangerous ...