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diplomatic security officers and then eventually by the cia reinforcements that arrived to find his body or to find him, hopefully, were unsuccessful. and they had to withdraw because of the continuing attack back to the cia aneck before we knew what had happened to the ambassador. we were desperate. and we were trying to call everybody we knew in benghazi and libya, get additional help. what appears to have happened at some point later is that libyans found ambassador stevens, and they carried him to the hospital in benghazi. and libyan doctors labored nearly two hours to try to resuscitate him.
i've just got a few seconds. in all of the materials that have been produced to us today, i have not yet found the document that was prepared at your request for post-gadhafi planning. did you have such a document prepared prior to the time that mr. gadhafi was removed? >> we had a number of documents. we had a long list of areas that we were working on and the process for following up on those areas. i don't know if it was one or a dozen, but we had a lot of work that was ongoing both at the state department and at usaid. >> and did you ask for those documents to be prepared? do you know if you had a team working on that? or if it was just something happening of its own accord? >> we had a number of people who were working on that. as i said, i sent both of my deputies out to libya to meet with the libyans. you know, we can do all the planning we want in washington, but it's very important ask the libyans both what they want and what they expect from us. so we had an ongoing dialogue
someone had shot a rocket-propelled grenade through the front door. the security situation there is incredibly serious as well as it is in a whole lot of other places. and those are difficult decisions. but the effort here today seems to be that somehow you personally decided not to do your job in libya. okay? you're with apparently the advocate of the policy. apparently passionate about it. but not passionate enough to care about the security situation in libyap about and chris stevens incredibly passionate about libya, wanted to make that country work. it has proven very, very difficult. do we want to go back to moammar gadhafi in charge? i don't think so. and to make a policy point as long as i have a free minutes, interesting to juxtapose libya with syria. because just as many of my republican colleagues are ripping apart the obama administration on all that's involved for choosing to remove gadhafi, they're ripping apart
>> can i direct your attention to the screen? your familiar with that clip. we came, we saw, he died. is that the clinton doctrine? >> no. that was an expression of relief that the military mission undertaken by nato and our other partners had achieved its end and, therefore, no more american, european or arab lives would be at stake in trying to prevent gadhafi from wreaking havoc on libyans or causing more problems to the region and beyond. >> i want to direct your attention and maybe direct the group's attention right now to something that hasn't really been discussed. there's been this explicit criticism of republicans being partisans today. but i want to direct your attention to what is actually going on with you and your team,
air war to get gadhafi out but not to put anybody on the ground, and that created a situation of chaos that ultimately led to chris stevens' death and the death of three others. had we had people on the ground, it's not clear we would have done any different, and there probably would be hearings under way today about why the united states intervened on the ground in libya and the country still fell apart. >> people, as you know, david in that town and elsewhere, have expressed the frustration there wasn't an 800 number to call in instant air strike as if we had air assets over any potential hot spot. now, granted, it was the anniversary of 9/11, and granted, there were inflamed tensions around the region. but you can't put your chips on all of the potential bets in advance. >> no, you can't.
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i hear him malign the work that was done on an arb as we on our committee also looked into what happened. i want the look a some of the findings from that arb and examine the failures of the blue mountain libya security guards and the february 13 militia on that exact day, september 11, 2012. my understanding is in benghazi, neither the host country's militia forces nor the state department's private local guards were capable of defending our personnel. they either didn't show up, they retreated in face of danger or lacked the tools to fight back ektively. i want to learn the lessons of benghazi and hold everyone accountable. not just the state department but every agency involved as well as congress, ourselves and this committee itself. for implementing significant comprehensive reforms that will prevent future tragedies. so locking at the work that i've done on the armed services committee and oversight
use of private security guards. my understanding is that the country of libya, is host nation in this case did not allow your security contractors to carry firearms. the blue mountain guards. i think the blue mountain guards were not allow to carry firearms, is that right? >> blue mountain was not. certainly our diplomat security officers were. the militia members who were supposed to be providing din etic help for us were. so it was only the static guards that were not. now, i will say that some of those guards did stand their ground. they were basically run over. several of them were injured the night of the attack. so i don't want to cast apersians on all of them and the service they provide d or the service they provided. it was inadequate. >> are we facing those type of restrictions in other nations as well, in other hot spots? we talked about the 19 missions
caliber of weapons that were used, eyewitness accounts, vehicles, armaments, really harrowing thing to read. she took us through some of it but on her own. >> she offered that and trey gowdy gave her the time to go through it. and it was compelling, eugene and lawrence, you have discussed that. i've seen some of this before and covered some of this before but every time you hear it, it is breathtaking what they went through and libyans found chris stevens body and brought them to a hospital. i went through that night in our bureau calling intelligence and state department officials and they did not know where the u.s. ambassador was. that said, i do think that they have a lot of explaining to do, why were they relying on local militias so heavily infiltrated by militant elements? why did they think that they did
by our diplomats, as a reliable source for kinetic support. sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. and the static support proved to be not very useful at all on that night. so i think you're really raising an important issue about how to get more flexibility into the contracting because we're not going to be able to bring american military forces to every place where we are in a high-threat post either because the military can't afford to do that for us or the host country won't invite us in. and the other problem, as you pointed out, is if the host country doesn't have any real resources, it's hard to know how much they can produce. that night i was calling the president of libya and demanding that he find any friendly militia, any friendly anybody to show up and to support us.