What the Benghazi attack taught me about Hillary Clinton
By Gregory N. Hicks
Published September 11, 2016
Last month, I retired from the State Department after 25 years of public
service as a Foreign Service officer. As the Deputy Chief of Mission for
Libya, I was the last person in Tripoli to speak with Ambassador Chris
Stevens before he was murdered in the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on our Benghazi
post. On this, the fourth anniversary of the Benghazi tragedy, I would like
to offer a different explanation for Benghazis relevance to the
presidential election than is usually found in the press.
Just as the Constitution makes national security the Presidents highest
priority, U.S. law mandates the secretary of state to develop and implement
policies and programs "to provide for the security
of all United States
personnel on official duty abroad.
This includes not only the State Department employees, but also the CIA
officers in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012. And the Benghazi record is clear:
Secretary Clinton failed to provide adequate security for U.S. government
personnel assigned to Benghazi and Tripoli.
The Benghazi Committees report graphically illustrates the magnitude of her
failure. It states that during August 2012, the State Department reduced the
number of U.S. security personnel assigned to the Embassy in Tripoli from 34
(1.5 security officers per diplomat) to 6 (1 security officer per 4.5
diplomats), despite a rapidly deteriorating security situation in both
Tripoli and Benghazi. Thus, according to the Report, there were no surplus
security agents to travel to Benghazi with Amb. Stevens without leaving
the Embassy in Tripoli at severe risk.
Had Ambassador Stevens July 2012 request for 13 additional American
security personnel (either military or State Department) been approved
rather than rejected by Clinton appointee Under Secretary of State for
Management Pat Kennedy, they would have traveled to Benghazi with the
ambassador, and the Sept. 11 attack might have been thwarted.
U.S. law also requires the secretary of state to ensure that all U.S.
government personnel assigned to a diplomatic post abroad be located at one
site. If not, the secretary and only the secretary with the concurrence
of the agency head whose personnel will be located at a different location,
must issue a waiver. The law, which states specifically that the waiver
decision cannot be delegated, was passed after the 1998 bombing of two U.S.
embassies in Africa, when deficient security was blamed for that debacle
under Bill Clinton's presidency.
When asked about security at Benghazi on Sept. 11, Mrs. Clinton has
repeatedly asserted her lack of responsibility. Initially, she said that she
never read any of the reporting on security conditions or any of the
requests for additional security, claiming that she delegated security to
the professionals. More recently, she stated that [I]t was not my ball to
carry. But the law says otherwise. Sound familiar?
Her decision to allow the Benghazi consulate to be separate from the CIA
annex divided scarce resources in a progressively deteriorating security
environment. U.S. personnel assigned to Benghazi tried to overcome this
severe disadvantage through an agreement that the security personal from
each facility would rush to the other facilitys aid in the event it was
attacked. The division of our security resources in Benghazi is the root
cause of the stand down order controversy so vividly portrayed in the
movie 13 Hours.
Notably, one of the primary goals of Ambassador Stevens fatal visit was to
begin consolidating our Benghazi personnel into one facility, which would
have concentrated our security posture in Benghazis volatile and violent
environment.
There are no punitive measures for breaching these two laws. Mrs. Clinton
will not have to appear before judge and jury to account for her failures.
Is this why she felt these laws could be ignored? Because she is now the
Democratic presidential candidate, only the American electorate will have
the opportunity to hold her accountable.
Candidate Clinton and her campaign point to her record as secretary of state
as a positive qualification for the presidency.
However, the record shows that Secretary Clinton persuaded the president to
overthrow Qaddafi and advocated maintaining a diplomatic presence in
Benghazi after the Libyan revolution. And then she abandoned her diplomats
by ignoring her security obligations. She sent Ambassador Stevens to
Benghazi during the 2011 revolution and then induced him to return in the
first few months of his tenure, which accounted for his September visit
there. Despite the fact that Sidney Blumenthal had alerted her to the
increasing danger for Americans in Benghazi and Libya, Mrs. Clinton
apparently never asked security professionals for an updated briefing on the
situation in Libya. Either she could not correlate the increased tempo of
attacks in Libya with the safety of our diplomats, demonstrating fatal
incompetence, or she was grossly negligent.
If Mrs. Clinton was unable to fulfill her security obligations to the
federal employees she was legally obligated to protect as secretary of
state, how can we trust her with the security of our entire country? I
wont.
The opinions and characterizations in this piece are those of the author,
and do not necessarily represent official positions of the United States
Government.
EM
On the 49th Parallel
Thé Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja and Dr. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda is in
anarchy"
Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi
"Pamoja na Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja na Dk. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda ni
katika machafuko"
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