Page 125 - Security Professionals News Today

The state department has historically and certainly before this terrible incident 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 that the high-threat post should move to a higher level of scrutiny, and we had immediately moved to do tha...

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, 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 professionals. you described mr. stevens as having the best ...

Effective guard entrance. there was an effort to try to make sure that the facility itself was hardened so that it could withstand attacks if that came to pass. it was in a series of decisions made by the security professionals in november of 2011 our people in benghazi said they needed to hire additional local guards. money was approved that day in december of that year. they asked for money to buy jersey barriers. funds were sent by the end of the week. in january 2012 regional security office...

Down, if we were to pull out from all of them, we would be blinding ourselves. so its a constant balancing act. what are the risks and what are the rewards for opening, maintaining and/or closing a site. i dont know theres any hard and fast rule we can adopt. we just have to get better at making that assessment, congressman. your question really goes to the heart of it. when you were as a member of congress in peshawar, you were guarded by our diplomatic security professionals. they had to asses...

Have an opportunity to talk with him about the substance of the policy, but with respect to security, he took those requests where they belonged. he took them to the security professionals and i have to add, congressman, the diplomatic security professionals are among the best in the world. i would put them up against anybody. and i just cannot allow any comment to be in the record in any way criticizing or disparaging them. they have kept americans safe in two wars and in a lot of other really ...

Opportunity to talk with him and, about the substance of the policy. but, with respect to security, he took those requests where they belonged. he took them to security professionals. have to add, congressman, the diplomatic, security professionals are the among the best in the world. i would put them up against anybody. and i just can not allow any comment to be in the record, in any way criticizing or disparaging them. they have kept americans safe in two wars and in a lot of other really terr...

Have an opportunity to talk with him and -- about the substance of the policy, but with respect to security, he took those requests where they belonged. he took them to the security professionals. i have to add, congressman, the diplomatic security professionals are among the best in the world. i would put them up against anybody. and i just cannot allow any comment to be in the record in any way criticizing or disparaging them. they have kept americans safe in two wars and in a lot of other rea...

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...

Pakistan, iraq, yemen, other places, they were the ones making the assessment. no one ever came to me and said we should shut down our compound in benghazi -- >> maam, im not saying shut it down, im saying protect it -- >> well, it was -- >> -- im not saying shut it down, im just saying protect it. >> right. >> when you say security professionals, im not trying to be disparaging with anybody, but i dont know who those folks were, but -- >> well, they were people who risk thread lives to try to s...

It got so bad nordstrom said he was fighting members of the state department. it was like having the taliban on the inside of the building. >> well, the accountability review board that i commissioned went into this in great detail, and they made some recommendations. the question is why? >> that is left to the security personnels, jake. in the reports, the ones that were done that were nonpolitical and independent in their efforts to try to sort this through i think concluded that the security ...