Defiant Clinton: US strengthening embassy security

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton, at times emo­tional and fierce, insisted on Wednes­day that the depart­ment is mov­ing swiftly and aggres­sively to strengthen secu­rity at U.S. mis­sions world­wide after the deadly Sept. 11 raid on the con­sulate in Libya.

In her last for­mal tes­ti­mony on Capi­tol Hill as America’s top diplo­mat — but per­haps not her last time on the polit­i­cal stage — Clin­ton once again took full respon­si­bil­ity for the department’s mis­steps lead­ing up to an assault at the U.S. facil­ity in Beng­hazi, Libya, that killed Ambas­sador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Her voice crack­ing at one point, Clin­ton said the expe­ri­ence was highly personal.

“I stood next to Pres­i­dent Obama as the Marines car­ried those flag-draped cas­kets off the plane at Andrews. I put my arms around the moth­ers and fathers, sis­ters and broth­ers, sons and daugh­ters,” she told the Sen­ate For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee at a jam-packed hearing.

Her voice ris­ing to Repub­li­cans’ chal­lenges at another point, she defended the Obama admin­is­tra­tion and U.N. Ambas­sador Susan Rice, who was vil­i­fied for widely debunked claims five days after the attack that protests pre­cip­i­tated the raid rather than ter­ror­ism. She chal­lenged the GOP focus on Rice’s com­ments, which were based on intel­li­gence talk­ing points.

“The fact is we had four dead Amer­i­cans. Was it because of a protest? Or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill some Amer­i­cans? What dif­fer­ence, at this point, does it make?” a clearly exas­per­ated and angry Clin­ton told Sen. Ron John­son, R-Wis. “It is our job to fig­ure out what hap­pened and do every­thing we can to pre­vent it from ever hap­pen­ing again, senator.”

She insisted that “peo­ple were try­ing in real time to get to the best infor­ma­tion,” and that her focus was on look­ing ahead on how to improve secu­rity rather than revis­it­ing the talk­ing points and Rice’s tele­vi­sion appearance.

Clin­ton said the depart­ment is imple­ment­ing the 29 rec­om­men­da­tions of an inde­pen­dent review board that harshly crit­i­cized the depart­ment as well as going above and beyond the pro­pos­als, with a spe­cial focus on high-threat posts.

The review board report faulted “sys­tem­atic fail­ures and lead­er­ship and man­age­ment defi­cien­cies at senior lev­els within two bureaus of the State Depart­ment” and four employ­ees were put on admin­is­tra­tive leave.

“Nobody is more com­mit­ted to get­ting this right,” she said. “I am deter­mined to leave the State Depart­ment and our coun­try safer, stronger, and more secure.”

Three weeks after her release from a New York hos­pi­tal, Clin­ton was at times defi­ant, com­pli­men­tary and will­ing to chas­tise law­mak­ers. She tan­gled with some who could be rivals in 2016 if she decides to seek the pres­i­dency again.

She will appear before the com­mit­tee on Thurs­day to intro­duce her likely suc­ces­sor, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., a ses­sion cer­tain to be more reserved.

Clin­ton refused to back down from with­er­ing GOP crit­i­cism of the Obama administration’s shift­ing expla­na­tions about the assault.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a Clin­ton friend in the Sen­ate, offered praise along with harsh complaints.

“It’s won­der­ful to see you in good health and com­bat­ive as ever,” McCain told a vis­i­bly slim­mer Clin­ton, whose planned tes­ti­mony last month was delayed because of her illness.

In the same breath, he dis­missed her expla­na­tion of events, the administration’s response to warn­ings about the dete­ri­o­rat­ing secu­rity sit­u­a­tion in Libya and even the atten­tion paid to Libya after rebels top­pled strong­man Moam­mar Gadhafi.

For her part, Clin­ton com­plained about the con­gres­sional holds placed on for­eign aid and bilat­eral assis­tance. “We have to get our act together,” she told the panel.

Her tes­ti­mony focused not only on the attack but the grow­ing threat from extrem­ists in north­ern Africa, point­ing out that Libya was not an iso­lated incident.

“The Arab rev­o­lu­tions have scram­bled power dynam­ics and shat­tered secu­rity forces across the region,” she said. “And insta­bil­ity in Mali has cre­ated an expand­ing safe haven for ter­ror­ists who look to extend their influ­ence and plot fur­ther attacks of the kind we saw just last week in Algeria.”

She said the Obama admin­is­tra­tion is press­ing for a greater under­stand­ing of the hostage-taking there and res­cue effort that left three Amer­i­cans dead.

Clin­ton par­ried tough ques­tions from Repub­li­cans, offer­ing a detailed time­line of events on Sept. 11 and the Obama admin­is­tra­tion efforts to aid the Amer­i­cans in Libya while simul­ta­ne­ously deal­ing with protests in Cairo and other countries.

GOP law­mak­ers repeat­edly ques­tioned Clin­ton about whether she had seen ear­lier requests for beefed-up security.

“I did not see these requests. They did not come to me. I did not approve them. I did not deny them,” she said.

That pro­voked a testy response from Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a poten­tial pres­i­den­tial can­di­date in 2016. He exco­ri­ated Clin­ton and expressed dis­be­lief that she hadn’t read the cables about secu­rity concerns.

“Had I been pres­i­dent at the time and I found that you did not read the cables from Beng­hazi, you did not read the cables from Ambas­sador Stevens, I would have relieved you of your post,” Paul told Clin­ton. “I think it’s inexcusable.

Clin­ton took Repub­li­cans to task, chid­ing House GOP mem­bers for recently strip­ping $1 bil­lion in secu­rity aid from the hur­ri­cane relief bill and the Sen­ate panel for fail­ing for years to pro­duce an autho­riza­tion bill.

In north­ern Cal­i­for­nia, Stevens’ step­fa­ther, Bob Com­man­day, said the fam­ily has avoided dis­cus­sions of whether secu­rity was ade­quate. He said Clin­ton had been in con­tact with the fam­ily on sev­eral occa­sions since the attack.

“We’re very aware of her sym­pa­thy because of our con­tact with her and the way she has con­nected with us and writ­ten to us,” he said. “It’s a tragedy and noth­ing that is said or done can bring him back, so we are just going on with life.”

In some­thing of a vale­dic­tory, Clin­ton noted her robust itin­er­ary in four years and her work, nearly 1 mil­lion miles and 112 countries.

“My faith in our coun­try and our future is stronger than ever. Every time that blue and white air­plane car­ry­ing the words “United States of Amer­ica” touches down in some far-off cap­i­tal, I feel again the honor it is to rep­re­sent the world’s indis­pens­able nation. And I am con­fi­dent that, with your help, we will con­tinue to keep the United States safe, strong, and exceptional.”

Clin­ton was the sole wit­ness at back-to-back hear­ings before the Sen­ate and House for­eign pol­icy pan­els on the Sep­tem­ber raid. She had been sched­uled to tes­tify before Con­gress last month, but an ill­ness, a con­cus­sion and a blood clot near her brain forced her to post­pone her appearance.

Absent from the hear­ing was Kerry. Sen. Bob Menen­dez, D-N.J., the incom­ing chair­man, presided over the hearing.

Clinton’s tes­ti­mony was focus­ing on the Libya attack after more than three months of Repub­li­can charges that the Obama admin­is­tra­tion ignored signs of a dete­ri­o­rat­ing secu­rity sit­u­a­tion there and cast an act of ter­ror­ism as mere protests over an anti-Muslim video in the heat of a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Wash­ing­ton offi­cials sus­pect that mil­i­tants linked to al-Qaida car­ried out the attack.

Pol­i­tics play an out­sized role in any appear­ance by Clin­ton, who sought the Demo­c­ra­tic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion in 2008 and is the sub­ject of con­stant spec­u­la­tion about a pos­si­ble bid in 2016. The for­mer first lady and New York sen­a­tor — a polar­iz­ing fig­ure dogged by con­tro­versy — is about to end her four-year tenure at the State Depart­ment with high favor­able ratings.

A poll early last month by the Pew Research Cen­ter for the Peo­ple & the Press found 65 per­cent of Amer­i­cans held a favor­able impres­sion of Clin­ton, com­pared with 29 per­cent unfavorable.

On the panel at the hear­ing were two pos­si­ble 2016 Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates — Florida’s Marco Rubio and Paul, a new mem­ber of the committee.

Clin­ton did lit­tle to quiet the pres­i­den­tial chat­ter ear­lier this month when she returned to work at the State Depart­ment after her ill­ness. On the sub­ject of retire­ment, she said, “I don’t know if that is a word I would use, but cer­tainly step­ping off the very fast track for a lit­tle while.”

Posted by Matt Echelberry on Jan 23 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.