Hillary Clinton tells Benghazi panel: ‘America must lead in a dangerous world’

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WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton, testifying Thursday before the House committee investigating the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, said “America must lead in a dangerous world.”

Clinton, who was secretary of State at the time of the attacks, said her testimony, a milestone in the panel’s 18-month history, would honor the service of the four men, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, killed when terrorists overran a temporary State Department outpost in Benghazi.

She said Stevens understood that “our diplomats must continue representing us in dangerous regions.”

“Retreat from the world is not an option,” Clinton told the committee’s chairman, Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina and the other panel members. “America cannot shrink from our responsibility to lead … We have learned the hard way when America is absent from unstable places, there are consequences.”

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Clinton is currently the Democratic presidential front-runner.

Earlier, Gowdy delivered an opening statement saying his panel’s work was necessary because “previous investigations were not thorough.”

“How did they miss Ambassador Stevens’ emails?” he said. “How did they miss Secretary Clinton’s emails?”

Gowdy, addressing Clinton directly, said frequent criticisms that the committee’s main purpose is to damage her politically, are unjustified.

“This investigation is about four people who were killed representing our country on foreign soil,” Gowdy said. “Not a single member of this committee signed up to investigate you or your email.”

The committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, used his opening statement to counter that view, saying Republicans “are squandering millions of taxpayer dollars on this abusive effort to derail Secretary Clinton’s presidential campaign.”

Clinton’s comments Thursday offer a contrast to her approach when she testified in January of 2013 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Then, she provided a detailed account of the September 2012 events when the U.S. embassy in Libya came under attack.

Her appearance is the first public hearing the committee has held since January.

The interview promises to be a combination of hard-nosed investigation into Clinton’s management of the State Department and political drama that could shape the 2016 campaign for the White House.

The seven Republicans and five Democrats on the committee will grill Clinton about inadequate security at the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, the foreign policy reason for having Americans in such a dangerous region, why Clinton allowed a family friend who didn’t work for the government to advise her directly about conditions inside Libya, and why the administration mischaracterized the nature of the attacks for several days afterward.

The violence began the night of Sept. 11, 2012, and carried over into the following morning at a CIA annex about a mile away.

Republican Rep. Susan Brooks of Indiana said Clinton’s emails make it appear as though the Benghazi facility was no longer important to Clinton in 2012.

“Most of my work was not done on emails,” Clinton responded.

Responding to questions from Democratic Rep. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, Clinton said the military tried repeatedly to deploy to Benghazi to protect the U.S. outpost, but Libyans had made it clear they did not want U.S. soldiers there. She said the military protects diplomats in war zones, but “ we have a lot of hot spots now in very dangerous places that are not in conflict areas where we have an American military presence.”

Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., called Clinton the “chief architect” of the policy that led the U.S. to intervene in Libya.

“You saw it, you drove it, you articulated it and you persuaded people,” he said, adding that, “After your plan, things in Libya today are a disaster.”

Clinton acknowledged she eventually decided to honor requests from the international community that the U.S. intervene against Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi.

Rep. Adam Smith, D-Washington, said Roskam’s line of questioning was more appropriate to a foreign policy debate during a presidential campaign, and wasn’t specifically relevant to the Benghazi tragedy.

Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., questioned why Ambassador Stevens’ requests for additional security didn’t personally reach Clinton.

“I did talk to him about the substance of the policy… but with respect to security, he took his requests to where they belong – to the security professionals,” Clinton said.

Westmoreland said, “They missed something here, and we lost four Americans.”

Clinton said Stevens never advocated closing the Benghazi compound because of rising violence in the area.

“He never said to anybody in the State Department, ‘You know what? We just can’t keep doing this and we can’t stay here,’” she said.

Seven previous congressional investigations, plus an independent review of the State Department, concluded that security at the agency’s outpost was insufficient, despite multiple requests for improvement, and the U.S. military was too far away to attempt a rescue. They also concluded that while there was increased violence in the region, the intelligence community did not have a specific warning about the threat to Benghazi.

In May 2014, prompted by the disclosure of additional Benghazi-related documents, House Republicans reorganized their investigations into one select committee and put Gowdy, a fiery former prosecutor, in charge.

“While violence was going up in Libya, why was our security profile going down?” Gowdy said on Face the Nation

Clinton is not the only one under scrutiny Thursday.

Republicans are defending their investigation against accusations it’s a taxpayer-funded political attack on Clinton. Democrats have long alleged political motivations, but when House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a top Republican, recently applauded the committee’s ability to drive down Clinton’s poll numbers, Democrats pounced. A second Republican congressman and a former committee investigator made similar remarks.

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On Thursday, Democratic Rep. Adam Smith of Washington said the Benghazi committee has learned “absolutely nothing” not already uncovered by previous probes.

“Have we found anything substantive that tells us something different about what happened in Benghazi?” Smith said. “The answer to that question is no.”

Gowdy and Republicans deny a political motive and say Clinton is a small part of the overall probe.

Although much of the panel’s work has been done in private, Gowdy has released information about its interest in Sidney Blumenthal, a longtime Clinton family friend, who was emailing Clinton with information and advice about the chaotic situation inside Libya in 2011 and 2012. The committee alleges that Blumenthal had a personal financial interest in a company that was seeking contracts with the transition government in Libya after the fall of Moammar Gadhafi.

Gowdy already has contrasted the Blumenthal emails with requests from State Department employees in Libya, including from Ambassador Stevens, to ramp up diplomatic security in Benghazi.

“I want to know why certain things made it to your inbox, Madam Secretary, but the plaintive pleadings of our own ambassador that you put in place for more security never bothered to make it to your inbox. I think that’s a fair question,” Gowdy said.

The Benghazi committee, created by a House vote in May 2014, spent about $4.3 million through the end of August, mostly on staff salaries. Each side has a team of investigators, lawyers and communications staff.

Gowdy has said Clinton is just one of dozens of witnesses, including several more yet to be interviewed, indicating the committee’s investigation will continue well past Clinton’s appearance.

Republicans on the committee include Gowdy, Brooks, Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia, Mike Pompeo of Kansas, Brooks, Jim Jordan of Ohio, Peter Roskam of Illinois, and Martha Roby of Alabama.

The Democrats on the panel are Cummings, Adam Smith of Washington, Adam Schiff of California, Linda Sanchez of California and Tammy Duckworth of Illinois.

Contributing: Heidi Przybyla. Follow @orndorfftroyan

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