Clinton, GOP clash in day on Benghazi

Democrats at hearing rap it

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton testifies Thursday before the House committee that’s investigating the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton testifies Thursday before the House committee that’s investigating the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

WASHINGTON -- Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday defended her actions as secretary of state during the 2012 terrorists attacks in Benghazi, Libya, as she testified for a special House committee hearing that lasted 11 hours.

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U.S. Rep. Susan Brooks, R-Ind., sits behind stacks of documents Thursday during Hillary Rodham Clinton’s testimony. Brooks said the papers were copies of emails that Clinton received or sent in regard to Libya in 2011 and 2012.

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U.S. Reps. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., (left) and Elijah Cummings, D-Md., have a heated discussion Thursday during the Benghazi hearing on Capitol Hill.

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Hillary Rodham Clinton testified Thursday that she and former U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens shared a common philosophy on the need for American leadership in the most troubled parts of the world.

Pressed about events before and after the deaths of four Americans, Clinton had confrontational exchanges with several GOP lawmakers but also fielded queries from Democrats. Many questions focused on accusations about President Barack Obama's administration shifting early public accounts of the attacks.

However, there were few questions for Clinton, now running for the Democratic presidential nomination, about the specific events of Sept. 11, 2012, which Clinton said she continues to lose sleep over.

"I have been racking my brain about what more could have been done or should have been done," she told the House Benghazi committee.

The panel's chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy, portrayed the investigation as focused only on facts, after comments by fellow Republicans described it as an effort designed to hurt Clinton's presidential bid. Democrats have pounced on those earlier remarks and pointed out that the probe has now cost U.S. taxpayers more than $4.5 million and, after 17 months, has lasted longer than the 1970s Watergate investigation.

Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor from South Carolina, said the Republicans' efforts were not a prosecution.

Contradicting him, Rep. Adam Smith, a Democrat from Washington state, told Clinton, "The purpose of this committee is to prosecute you."

In one tense moment, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, accused Clinton of deliberately misleading the public by at first linking the Benghazi violence to an Internet video insulting the Muslims' Prophet Muhammad.

"Where did the false narrative start? It started with you Madame Secretary," Jordan said, citing a conversation Clinton had in a call with the Egyptian foreign minister.

Clinton, stone-faced for much of the hearing, smiled as Jordan cut her off from answering. Eventually given the chance to comment, she said only that "some" people had wanted to use the video to justify the attack that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans and that she rejected that justification.

"There were probably a number of different motivations" for the attack, Clinton said, describing a time when competing strands of intelligence were being received and no clear picture had yet emerged. Speaking directly to Jordan, she said, "The insinuations that you are making do a great disservice to the people at the State Department" and others who did their best "during some very confusing and difficult days."

"I'm sorry that it doesn't fit your narrative. I can only tell you what the facts were," Clinton said.

Clinton never raised her voice as she had at a Senate hearing on Benghazi in January 2013, when she said, "What difference, at this point, does it make?"

Instead, it was the panel's members who engaged among themselves in the fight, with Clinton merely observing. Democrats pressed for the release of the full transcript of a Clinton adviser's private testimony, drawing Gowdy into an angry debate. The panel eventually voted against the release, all five Democrats in favor, all seven Republicans against.

At another point, a shouting match broke out between Gowdy and two Democrats on the committee about the focus on Clinton's email exchanges with Sidney Blumenthal, a former aide to her husband and a personal friend.

'Questions linger'

Gowdy said important questions remain unanswered: Why was the U.S. in Libya; why was the military not ready to respond quickly on the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; and why did the Obama administration change its story about the nature of the attacks in the weeks afterward?

"Why were there so many requests for security equipment and personnel, and why were those requests denied in Washington?" he asked in his opening remarks as Clinton sat across from him at the witness table. "What did our leaders in Washington do or not do, and when?

"These questions linger because previous investigations were not thorough," Gowdy said.

Clinton said that as secretary of state she had not personally approved or denied requests for extra security for the facility where those making the requests were based. And she insisted that the United States must not back away from diplomacy because of the episode.

"Retreat from the world is not an option," Clinton told lawmakers. She called accusations that she contributed to the death of Stevens, a personal friend, "personally painful" and "deeply distressing."

Clinton, in turn, focused on the bigger picture, starting with a plea for the U.S. to maintain its global leadership role despite the threat posed to its diplomats. She said Benghazi already had been exhaustively scrutinized and that perfect security can never be achieved, drawing on the various attacks on U.S. diplomatic and military installations overseas during the presidencies of her husband, Bill Clinton, in the 1990s and Ronald Reagan a decade earlier.

"In Beirut, we lost far more Americans, not once but twice within a year," she said of the 1983 attacks in Lebanon that killed more than 250 Americans and dozens of others. "People rose above politics. A Democratic Congress worked with a Republican administration to say, 'What do we need to learn?'"

After a series of questions by Republicans focused on what kind of communications she had had on security in Benghazi, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., accused them of pursuing a kind of prosecution against Clinton to damage her presidential campaign.

"I think the core theory is this -- that you deliberately interfered with security in Benghazi and that resulted in people dying," Schiff told Clinton. "I think that is the case they want to make, and notwithstanding how many investigations we've had that have found absolutely no merit to that, that is the impression they wish to give."

Gowdy, in a quick response, said, "This is not a prosecution, Mr. Schiff."

600 security requests

Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., quizzed Clinton on why she did not personally respond to more than 600 requests for security from State Department employees in Benghazi.

Pompeo expressed surprise that none of those requests made it to Clinton's email inbox when she received more than 100 emails from Blumenthal on the subject of Benghazi.

"The folks that worked for you didn't have the same courtesy," Pompeo said.

Clinton responded that Blumenthal is "a friend of mine," but she insisted that it had been proper to leave questions about the provision of security in Benghazi to the State Department officials who regularly handled security matters.

Gowdy pressed Clinton on why requests to get supplies to Libyans made their way to her, yet emails requesting more security from Stevens never reached her inbox. Clinton repeatedly told Gowdy that Stevens had communicated with her staff, including a senior policy aide, Jake Sullivan, and security personnel in the State Department.

"He did not raise security with the members of my staff," she said. "He raised security with the security professionals."

She added: "I know that's not the answer you want to hear. But those are the facts."

Clinton appeared somber before the panel, holding her chin in her hand while Gowdy interrogated her. She nodded occasionally, such as when the committee's top Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, described the entire probe as a partisan campaign replete with conspiracy theories.

The Republican criticism has included contentions by some lawmakers that Clinton personally denied security requests and ordered the U.S. military to "stand down" during the attacks. None of these contentions were substantiated in the independent Accountability Review Board investigation ordered by Clinton after the attacks or by seven subsequent congressional investigations.

Information for this article was contributed by Bradley Klapper and Matthew Daly of The Associated Press and by Michael D. Shear and Michael S. Schmidt of The New York Times.

A Section on 10/23/2015

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