was that -- i did say that it was an al qaeda-related group. we were also -- >> look at the difference in these statements. one says it wasn't pre-planned attack. the other says from your experts in libya it was a well-planned attack. they could not be further apart. they could not be. that's what i'm having a hard time figuring out. the date of this 9/14/12. you know what else happened? another document kind of important, the same day that ben rodes drafted his talking points memo to under score that these protests are rooted in an internet video and not a broader failure of policy because we couldn't have libya, your baby, we couldn't have that fail. so the same day you have jay

carney saying this was no way a pre-planned attack and the experts in libya talking greg hicks saying it was a well-planned attack. the talking points that gets susan rice ready for sunday shows. make sure wrou foyou focus on t video. we have an selection coming. >> i believe the video played a role. i believe the person we have. there were many experts. if you look you probably haven't had an opportunity to read the excellent report issued by the democrats. on september 13 the intelligence community issued the first thorough fully coordinated assessment of what happened in benghazi. it said we assessed the attacks on tuesday against the u.s. consulate in benghazi, began spontaneously following the protests at the u.s. embassy in cairo. extremists with ties to al qaeda were involved in the attacks.

there was no contradiction. the protests because of the video and those affiliated. >> is there a contradiction here? >> there is no contradiction. >> how about this contradiction? well-planned attack, no pre-planned attack. jay carney says no pre-planned attack and the experts in libya said it was -- >> the experts in libya were among the experts looking at this and analyzing it. we went on the isz basis of the intelligence community and they were scrambling to get the information they could. the intelligence unt kmoo assessment served as basis for what ambassador rice said when she appeared on the sunday show. on september 18 when the video footage arrived from the security cameras the deputy cia director has testified it was

not until september 18 when the cia received the libyan government's assessment of video footage that showed the front of the facility with no sign of protesters that it became clear we needed to revisit our analysis and then after they looked at the video footage and fbi reporting from interviews of personnel on the ground in benghazi during the attacks the cia changed its assessment. and that was explained thoroughly in the bipartisan report issued on the committee on intelligence which did a very thorough job. >> i think we will take a quick ten-minute break. two colleagues have asked for ten seconds. i had the third colleague ask for ten seconds. if she holds two ten seconds. >> i wanted to point out the ranking member is incorrect. the august 17 memo i was referring to in my last question

we have not had the opportunity to discuss with secretary clinton and how it effected her decisions and it was just declassified last week. >> with that we will take a ten-minute break and come back. we are watching hillary clinton testify before the select committee on benghazi and through a marathon of questions and some contempt hillary clinton mastered the topic that has been made the gop buzz word this year. up until today republican parties launch a torrent of attack on the former secretary of state. today seven republicans on the congressional committee created to target the handling of the september 2012 terrorist attack on a u.s. facility in libya threw question after question at the 2016 presidential candidate. secretary clinton showed grace

under pressure and enormous command over areas congress could have and did ask about. let's bring in kelly o'donnell. all of this began before the back drop of the admission. it has to be called admission by the must juajority leader of th republican party. i watched it all day. maybe i missed a few minutes of it. i basically watched all day. i thought they never got to it. they never got to a question or a charge. just a question of whether she was derlict of her duties. she was in charge in overseeing work of ambassador there. never once did i get the sense that she dropped the ball or did they get to the point of charging her of dropping the ball. >> hillary clinton insisted again and again there were many

questions about did she bear direct personal responsibility to address concerns raised by ambassador stevens about needs for more security. she made a compelling argument that it would not be appropriate for the figure head of a department, a secretary of state to get in the weeds about specific security decisions. that she felt was better in the hands of people who do diplomatic security at all times. every way they asked that question that was her response. she was very comfortable pushing back on that. i think the hardest thing we watched her deal with happened a few minutes ago and kind of a repeated exchange between jim jordan of ohio and secretary clinton over disparities between what she described about the initial attack about the time it was happening to the egyptian ambassador and to described as family. we know if that was former president clinton or whom ever

where she was clear it was a terrorist attack but more publically she included discussion of the antimuslim video that was a part of other sorts of disturbances around the world. so the video existed and it was certainly influenced what was being covered at that time. what she is making clear in her comments in the e-mails which were discovered because of the committee's work that she in real time described it as a terrorist attack and yet the obama administration took them a while to separate the video. that is something that has always been an issue and there are explanations that was intel and has been really litigated for years now. in terms of an animated moment i think the exchange between jordan and secretary clinton goes back at a central issue here. not much new except we see how she talked about the incident with her family and a diplomat.

that is probably an area that we learn something new. the whole issue of finding out about the private server which is the work of this committee has really been a separate issue. and while that is really probably the biggest thing that affected her poll numbers that kevin mccarthy sort of bragged about when being pressed for accomplishments as house republicans that didn't play in here as much as might have been expected because the committee didn't want to appear as political. they use the product of the server. the blumenthal e-mails, long-time confident of the clinclin clintons e-mailing her about libya. they hammered that for an extended time today to try to show that she was more in touch with his personal political friend than directly in touch with ambassador stevens.

democrats push back hard on that and hillary clinton seemed to be able to diffuse that as friends may send me things but i was always available to ambassador stevens. she said she had other ways to be in touch with him. this has been a long day. there are not a lot of new areas but they were trying to show that clinton embraced the libya policy as her own and then some of the smaller details raising the question of could she have done more to provide security? she has answers for those and says even now that there might not have been a way to have more effectively protected the installation there. of course, more security was not something that was considered available and it was one of the judgment calls made by someone else at state that certainly plays into this terrible incident. >> you know what i think? i didn't hear connection or bridge work between these

charges made politically. she somehow had something to do with the death of the four americans and these things were discussing how it was spun afterwards or the calls for more security resources to someone else in the agency. the difference between the charges, really personal charges of almost treason up against the evidence today didn't seem to connect. >> i don't think anyone was able to present reason why she would have put the u.s. personnel in greater jeopardy. if anything they are trying to suggest and i don't know that they have made that case, that there was perhaps some more benign neglect if she wasn't more directly engaged. that is a hard case to make and she was certainly prepared for that line of questioning. her preparation certainly showed

today because when we look back to the sort of iconic moment of the 2013 testimony where she let her anger and frustration pop that she has had a lid on all day long. that is i'm sure a product of more time, more study and real careful preparation. that has served her well today. >> i think that was very much the case during the democratic debate earlier because i think when you are really well-prepared your confidence level goes up and the stress level goes down. thank you so much. let's bring in lawrence o'donnell, host of the last word and steve kornacki kpp. lawrence, i guess i get down to this. it seems from the beginning of this saga there have been two areas that the critics have focused on and somehow tried to connect to somehow a charge of delinquency to some kind of basic character failure. the one is that there were requests for more security forces that never reached

hillary clinton's desk apparently and this weird back to the future thing where somehow a dispute over how the tragedy was described to the press on the sunday shows afterwards somehow had something to do going back in time to the deaths of the american foreign service officers themselves and the security forces. somehow they are trying to spin. maybe you can explain this to me. somehow she killed those guys because of the way they spun it afterwards. they seem to do that over and over again. this weird thing with the hard right, this thing called conflation where they take 9/11 and turn it into benghazi or take john kerry's opposition to the war after coming home as a serviceman as a reflection on his service record himself. they conflate things that most people aren't that focused. >> your struggle with what they are going for there which a lot

of people in the audience have is the sign of a badly run hearing. i sat through hearings that i didn't understand anything about and they unfolded like a well-written book over a three-hour period with a lot of different participants in it because they were well-organized hearings designinged to deliver information. we have to step out of this hearing to get back to the spot where the republicans used to theorize about why there was a shifting story or an unclear story coming out of the obama administration immediately after this event. if you recall it was that the obama re-election campaign saw this story as a threat to them that if they could use the video, if they could blame the video then it wasn't their fault and somehow it was the obama administration's fault if this was a terrorist attack. that has always been their claim

l although that didn't come out clearly in this hearing. that is where he was concentrating. that was all litigated. that is something very well evaluated by all previous investigations. this investigation is adding nothing to our understanding of that point. you had a presidential election after all of that was developed publically. the voters spoke on it. this is an irrelevant point at this point in this investigation. >> yet they use that after the fact fight, that dispute over how it was sold originally to somehow track back into hillary's guilt for the death of the americans. it seems what they do -- look at the anger on the faces of the republican members of that committee. they are not arguing about how an issue was spun. all politicians spin things to their relative advantage. they try to put the best edge on something bad. it's not something justifiable but not lethal.

it didn't cause anybody to die. they seem to make it all connected that somehow those americans are dead because of her. that is how they sell it to themselves. >> i guess if we are generous and try to connect the dots that they didn't today in their hearing what they were probably trying to say is the libya policy was hillary clinton's idea. chris stevens was there to serve hillary clinton's idea. he is dead because he went over there in service of hillary clinton's idea and hillary clinton did not provide him with enough security after he went over there. but they didn't actually lay it out that way because it is impossible to prove the connecting tissue in that argument. >> they were working their way in the early part of the session when they seem to be a bit more concentrated when they were building those circles. first she wrote the policy and then put chris stevens in there as the person to carry on the work and then later got in as

ambassador and the time she was aware of security problems. steve kornacki, you are thinking about this because i think it is a hard time to write the main piece except hillary wrote over and over again responds well to the charges. i don't see a coherence except that somehow she let those people die. >> i was surprised by jim jordan like all of the members of this committee had two shots at hillary clinton on this. he decided to concentrate both rounds of questioning on the video, on the initial explanation for how the state department perceived the attacks and where the intelligence landed. he said that he thought that she perceived this to be a threat to the narrative, the obama campaign's narrative in the 2012 election of libya as a success of an administration that kept the country safe from terrorist attacks. he explicitly said that and

continued to press that point. as he pressed it it didn't occur to me the rationale for what he was saying was in your first formal public statement you cited the videos as a potential factor and then you talk to the egyptian prime minister and it raises the question if there is a cover up going on why would she admit the true nature of it to anybody in. >> such a hard thing to argue. let's go to adam smith. thank you congressman. what do you think we accomplished today as a government, as a congress? as if we are all in this together? is it all zero sum? >> nothing good. i think all we accomplished was to further undermine the american public's confidence in congress and what we are doing here. if there was any doubt that this panel led by the majority republicans is purely a partisan exercise to go after secretary

clinton today we moved any of that doubt. it has been just aggressive attack on secretary clinton. we have learned absolutely nothing new. from one line of questioning to the next they asked the same questions over and over again, all stuff contained in previous reports, eight previous reports done on this. so at the very beginning i was skeptical that anything new could be found. this committee is proving it. >> goudy put out before that he was doing before, during and after the attack. they talked about before and the messages asking for more resources and then they talked about after, the question of how they spun or accused of spinning the cause of the whole thing. what was missing was the heart of this thing. it didn't seem anybody got to any question of hillary's narrative which she presented so well about what she did when she heard her ambassador was under assault and everything she did to try to deal with it no one

really questioned. that is the heart of the charge against her. they never really challenged that. >> the problem with that charge is it is completely untrue as those previous reports indicated. they responded as quickly and tried to do everything they could under the circumstances. so there was nothing there. that is why they didn't go after that. they had to sort of circle around the issue all trying to criticize the secretary. this shouldn't primarily be about secretary clinton. i think one of the most damming things about this where is the then-secretary of defense? where is the then-cia director? if we want to get at what happened let's bring in the key players that were all involved. this wasn't just the state department. it is just the then-secretary of state who is running for president. >> why do you think they keep saying the two urds with sid

blumenthal. always sid blumenthal. i don't know if it was mentioned 200 times today as if we know who he is. nobody outside of the washington media list has any idea who we are talking about? >> they are obsessed with him. i think it is all part of the broader effort to embarrass secretary clinton politically. chairman goudy said he doesn't want to talk about the clinton foundation and then he does. then he focuses on that and focuses on the fact that sydney blumenthal worked for media map. what happened in benghazi was incredibly serious and deserved a thorough investigation. i've never denied that. i feel that it got that thorough investigation from the eight separate panels and that this panel is not giving a thorough investigation. it is being purely partisan and purely political. that is not good for the

institution of congress. >> you know, you and i have watched over the years ever since we had a problem with the middle east and turmoil over there and just going back to bobby kennedy being assassinated this issue of east and west and islamic terrorism has been going on for a long time. the attacks on embassies in east africa and middle east losing people like foley years ago it all is considered the stuff that happens. it's a dangerous area, dangerous people. you can't isolate our envoys. the republicans act like this is the only time it has ever happened and worthy of a permanent investigation. how do they justify it? how do they say it is different than the marines blown up in barics in 1983? all the stuff happened over the years, how do they say this is the one we must never let go? >> i don't know how they would

do it in any sort of justifiable manner. the only way that makes sense is they see a political advantage in pushing it. i don't accept that these things should happen. i think we should have investigated this and do everything we can to prevent it happening in the future. we have done that. this committee has an entirely different agenda that is partisan and political. >> thank you so much. it's great watching you out there. thank you very much congressman adam smith. >> robert costa has been up at capitol hill all day day taking break from the campaign. i thought my hunch is they don't have much. hillary clinton looked good in the debate. she is clean except they could keep barking on this one, hitting this one and saying benghazi so many times that people think there is something there even if they didn't think about it.

the old comedians heard all the old jokes. what is there to get after this day after today? what is there that they can say benghazi? >> i was yus outside the house floor for an hour. it was a muted response. privately many of the republicans say clinton had a strong day, stronger than they expected. they don't think this is part of the 2016 narrative in a major fashion. they think clinton came prepared. she was poised. there was no celebrating tonight at the capital among republicans. >> elijah cummings, will he run for the senate now? >> he showed some vigor tonight. he is trying to have a national stage. that is a tough race. he has a tough decision. >> who benefitted today? i think hillary clinton benefitted. some of the republicans came off to me as a bit too testy

especially when you have a woman on the witness chair. really angry faced. their faces looked angry when addressing her. >> some of them were actually tired. last night i was there when the house freedom caucus was meeting. they were in all of this leadership drama up until midnight last night. when they were trying to prepare for this today they were also involved in the talks with paul ryan about whether he could become speaker. there wasn't a sole focus on the hearing. >> trump may be fading in iowa. carson is coming up. rubio may be coming up. they don't seem to have a strong front runner to run against her yet. it could be any of five people at this point. through an anger building on the

republican side that things are not working out in 2016 the way they thought history should make it work out? >> there is a lot of anger and a lot of anger among the party establishment. the party leaders tried to build critique against secretary clinton for over a year bringing in benghazi. now the presidential race is being led by outsiders. the whole narrative that republicans worked to build is being cast to the side. it is shelved by trump and carson and others. they are dominating the discussion. >> do you see a parallel where the guys, people like jim jordan, a tea party guy. they seem to be really out there with their rage. >> it's a hard in line theme. paul ryan had to work to the end

of this week. the entire party is together on most issues how you counter president obama and go after secretary clinton. those on the hard right want more and want to see quotes and attacks coming out of the hearings. that's what is overshadowing all of this. they are 0-3 right now. thank you for coming on. we are expecting the hearing to rey resume. we will take a very quick break and come back.

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>> we haven't had other than impeachment saga we didn't have a lot of big investigative hearings of this size, certainly not one investigating potential candidate leaving the questioning to the council shows you how you can get a clear narrative out of what the hearing is going for. what trey gowdy did was assi assign -- it's very hard to make that cohesiveness especially because when you do it and use the system of having the members ask the questions you go back and forth from one party to the other. so your republican story cannot

be told in consecutive sets of questions that way. this demonstrates exactly how not to do an investigative hearing. it's just a perfect textbook version of it and also takes up at least ten times the amount of time it would take to get special council to ask sharp questions. >>. >> the array of people -- >> welcome back. the chair would recognize gentleman from illinois. >> thank you. madame secretary, the other side

of the aisle has admonished the republicans for not having a theory. let me tell you a little bit of theory that i have developed from my reading and research and listening today. it's this. that you initiated a policy to put the united states into libya as the secretary of state and overcame a number of obstacles within the administration to advocate for military action and you were successful in doing that. ultimately the decision was the president's. you were the prime mover. you were contemplating something called the clinton doctrine and were concerned about image. you were concerned about credit which is not something unfamiliar to people in public life. i think something happened. my theory is that your attention

waned. i think the e-mails that mrs. brooks put forth you had an answer which is that you had a lot of information from a lot of different places. you basically gave a victory lap sort of mission accomplished quote in october 2011. this is very declarative. we set into motion a policy on the right side of history on the right side of our values, on the right side of our strategic interests in the region. it has all of the feel of a victory lap but there was a problem and the problem, madame secretary, was that there were storm clouds gathering. and the storm clouds that were gathering was a deteriorating security situation in benghazi. and you had a lot to lose if

benghazi unravelled, if libya unravelled you had a lot to lose based on the victory lap, based on the sunday shows, based on the favorable accolades that were coming. if it went the wrong direction it would be on you. if it was stable and the right direction you were the ben fishiary of that. the question is how is it possible that these urgent requests that came in, how did they not break through to the very upper levels of your inner circle? people who were here today and served you. how did those requests from two ambassadors that came in on these dates all of 2012, how is it possible that those didn't break through? you told us that wasn't your job basically. you said i'm not responsible.

here is my theory. i think this is what was going on. that to admit a need for more security was to admit that there was deteriorating situation. to admit a deteriorating situation didn't fit your narrative of a successful foreign policy. where did i get that wrong? >> look, we knew that libya's transition from the brutal dictatorship of gadhafi which basically destroyed or undermined every institution in the country would be challenging. we planned accordingly. we worked closely with allies in europe, partners in the region to make sure that we tried to get position to help the libyan people. and, yes, the volatile security environment in libya complicated our efforts but we absolutely

and i will speak for myself. i absolutely did not forget about libya after gadhafi fell. we worked closely with the interim government and we offered a wide range of technical assistance. we were very much involved in helping them provide their first parliamentary elections. that was quite an accomplishment. a lot of other countries that were post-conflict did not have anything like the positive elections libya did. in july of 2012 the transitional government handed over power to a new general national congress in august. we were doing everything we could think of to help libya succeed. we tried to bolester the effectiveness. we worked hard to get chemical weapons coordinating with transition libyan authorities, with the u.n. and others. by february of 2014 you had assisted in destroying the last

of gadhafi's chemical weapons. we were combatting the spread of shoulder -- anti-aircraft shoulder fired missiles because of the danger that they posed to commercial aircraft and we were providing assistance, some of which i discussed earlier. we are humanitarian assistance. we brought people for health to europe and to the united states. much of what we offered despite our best efforts we had the prime minister come to washington in the spring of 2012. much of what we offered was difficult for the libyans to understand how to accept. i travelled, as you know, to libya. and met there. i stayed in close touch with libya's leaders throughout the rest of my time as secretary.

both of my deputies went there. we talked with the libyan leadership frequently by phone from washington and communicated regularly as i have said with our team based in tripoli. all of this was focused on trying to help stand up a new interim government. we were making progress on demilitarization, demobilization trying to reintegrate to something resembling a security force. i think it is important to recognize. of course i was ultimately responsible for security. i took responsibility for what happened in benghazi. >> what does that mean? when mr. westmoreland asked that question you said contracting and so forth? when you say you are responsible for something what does that mean? if you are responsible what action would you have done differently? what do you own as a result of

this? so far i have heard since we have been together today i have heard one dismissive thing after another. it was this group. it was that group. i wasn't served by this or that. what did you do? what do you own? >> well, i was just telling you some of the many related issues i was working on to try to help the libyan people. >> what is your responsibility to benghazi? that's my question. >> my responsibility was to be briefed and to discuss with the security experts and the policy experts whether we would have a post in benghazi, whether we would continue it, whether we would make it permanent. as i have said repeatedly throughout the day no one recommended closing the post. >> no one recommended closing but you had two ambassadors that made several requests. here is basically what happened to their requests, they were torn up. >> that is not true.

>> madame secretary, they didn't get through. it didn't help them. were those responded to? is that your testimony today? >> many were responded to. there were affirmative responses to a number of requests for additional security. >> you said earlier he knows where to pull the levers. aren't you implying that it is his responsibility to figure out how he is supposed to be secure because chris stevens knows how to pull the levers? >> ambassadors pass on security recommendations and requests. that is true throughout the world. >> when he does -- what is his remedy if they are not responded to? what is his remedy if it is no? >> as i testified earlier, he was in regular e-mail contact with some of my closest advisers. he was in regular e-mail contact and cable contact.

>> cables didn't get through. you created an environment where the cables couldn't get through. >> that is inaccurate. cables as we have testified. >> they didn't get through to you and break into your inner circle. that was your testimony earlier. you can't say all this information came into me and i was able to process it and yet it all stops at the security professionals. >> that's not what i was saying. i think we have tried to clarify that millions of cables come in. they are processed and sent to the appropriate offices and personnel. >> they didn't get through. they didn't make any difference. they couldn't break into the inner circle of decision making. let me draw your attention to testimony that you gave before the house foreign affairs committee in january 2013. you said some wonderful things about ambassador stevens similar to what you said in your opening

statement today. words that were warm and inspirational and reflecting on his bravery. i think in light of the facts that have come out since your testimony and i think in light of things that the committee has learned he is even braver than you acknowledged. in january 2013 this is what you said. nobody knew the dangers or opportunities better than chris. during the first revolution and then during the transition a weak libyan government and terrorist groups, a bomb exploded in the parking lot of his hotel. he never waivered, never asked to come home, never said let's shut it down, quit or go somewhere else because he understood it was pivotal for america to be represented in that place at that time. secretary clinton, i think you should have added this. chris stevens kept faith with the state department i headed even when we broke faith with

him. he accepted my invitation to serve in benghazi even though he was denied security. i and my colleagues were distracted by other matters and opportunities and ambitions and breached opportunity. that would be more accurate, wouldn't you say? >> of course, i would not say that and i think it is a disservice for you to make that statement, congressman. >> who does it disserve? >> it is a disservice of how hard the people who are given the responsibility of making tough security decisions. >> the people disciplined? >> chris stevens was someone who had a commitment to our presence in libya. >> there is no question. >> we want to honor that by continuing to do what we can to support the libyan people's

transition. it is very much in my view in america's interest to continue to try to do so. >> i yield back. >> the chair will recognize the gentle lady from illinois. >> thank you, mr. chairman. madame secretary, i want to talk a little bit more about what has been done for embassy personnel security since then. my understanding is in benghazi there were some security improvements that were made. could you talk about some of those both prior to the attacks as well as some things perhaps you alluded to with more ventilation in the safe rooms. >> there were a number of security improvements that were made to the facility. again, there was an emphasis on trying to butress the outer walls to try to create a more

effective guard entrance. there was an effort to try to make sure that the facility itself was hardened so that it could withstand attacks if that came to pass. it was in a series of decisions made by the security professionals in november of 2011 our people in benghazi said they needed to hire additional local guards. money was approved that day in december of that year. they asked for money to buy jersey barriers. funds were sent by the end of the week. in january 2012 regional security officer requested all personnel deploying to tripoli and benghazi complete specialized foreign affairs counter threat training course which was implemented. in january 2012 they asked for money for sand bags, security lights, steel door upgrades, car barriers promptly sent.

later that month they were sent extra helmets, wmd response equipment. in february of 2012 requested support for major renovation of walls surrounding the complex including adding wire. that project was completed. in march 2012 they asked to construct two extra guard positions. april 2012 they needed help from experts in technical security and by may a special team visited to enhance security equipment and security lighting. in june 2012 a regional team was sent to enhance the perimeter and additional funding was approved for more guards. in july 2012 they said that they needed a minimum of three american security officers in benghazi from then on through july, august and september. they always had three, four or five agents overseeing

contingent of guards on site. those are some requests and affirmative responses, congress woman, that were provided specifically for benghazi. >> thank you. we know that short of putting people in bunkers and never allowing them outside of embassy compounds we are going to have some sort of a threat to our diplomatic personnel security. obviously it was not enough. what i would like to know is in light of that, what efforts have been put into provide for contingency operations especially for known potentially volatile periods in the calendar year. september 11 comes through every year. 2016 september 11 is probably especially volatile time period. can you talk a little bit about would you have done or put into place and any difficulties you may have come across in

coordinating with d.o.d., intelligence agencies, across the government, is there a move. i know this is not a secure room so we cannot talk about secrets. but september 11 is coming. are we moving aircraft carriers nearby? are we putting an air wing on a six-hour leash with one lift of aircraft on a two hour leash? do we have fast teams gearing up and ready to go? what is going on in light of the lessons learned in benghazi and what did you personally direct to happen especially at your level of interagency cooperation? >> excellent question and really at the heart of what i hope will come out of this and the prior investigations. in december of 2014 assistant secretary star from the state department testified before the select committee that 25 of the 29 recommendations made by the

a.r.b. have been completed and a september 2013 inspector general's report noted the recommendations were made in a way that was quickly taken seriously and that i took charge directly of oversight for the implementation process. here are some examples. more diplomatic security and d.o.d. personnel are on the ground at our facilities today. we have increased the skills and competency by increasing training time in the high threat course. we have expanded the foreign affairs counter threat course so that the skills are shared by not just the diplomatic security agents but people like chris stevens and sean smith, as well. we have also been working hard to up the interagency cooperation. the interagency security teams that you asked about earlier,

congress woman, that is a continuing commitment we are working on. i know because of this terrible tragedy d.o.d. is much more focused on what needs to be thought through with respect to planning and reaction. you know, we had problems in the past with the pastor from florida, terryens jo, jones, ig riots and protests resulting in deaths of others. so we are trying to stay in very close touch between the state department and d.o.d. secretary gates called him and asked him not to get involved in what he was doing because it was dangerous to our troops and civilians. unfortunately, you know, he has a mind apparently of his own. so we are tying to have a closer coordinated planning and

response effort. with respect to your specific questions that are really within the purview of the department of defense like deployment of certain navy vessels, air wings and the like, i think that d.o.d. is trying hard to think about how particularly in north africa and the middle east they can respond because one of the claims that was made that was proven to be untrue was that d.o.d. withheld sending air support. indeed, the closest air support that would have been in any way relevant was too far away. they are trying to think about how they better deploy and station various assets so that they can have a quicker response time. i have not been involved intimately in this for two

years. i guess more than two years. i know this was part of the important work that was underway when i left. >> you spoke about you making personal phone calls to ask for help from the heads of local government. and you spoke a lot about the power of the chief of the mission, the trust that you put into these professionals that are there. when an embassy comes under attack especially after this eng beattack, from this time forward, do ambassadors need to call you to ask for help from other agencies of u.s. amount good or do they have the ability if there is a d.o.d. or a cia or d.o.d. force nearby, a marine fast team does it have to go through security or have you?

>> there is an example out of the benghazi attack. there was a pre-existing understanding between the diplomatic compound and the cia annex. there was no need for anybody at the compound to call washington to alert the cia annex. they immediately contacted the cia annex and they sprang into action to try to come to the assistance of our team at the compound. so we are trying to have more pre-existing arrangements like that and that goes to your question, if there are assets in the region how do we plan for contingencies so that they can be immediately triggered and try to respond. i obviously spoke to the white house. i spoke to general petraeus. i spoke to lots of other people that evening trying to get whatever help we could get.

we did get a surveillance plane above the location but it took some time to get there. it had to be diverted. >> an unarmed droen. >> uav. so we asked for everything we could get and everybody immediately tried to provide it but i think now there is more awareness that maybe we should be doing these scenarios ahead of time to try to figure out what could be done without having to reinvent it every time. >> thank you. i'm out of time. >> thank the gentle lady from illinois. the chair would recognize the gentle woman from indiana. >> i'm going to follow up on what the congress woman from illinois is discussing which is facility and i appreciate the laundry list that you just listed with respect to the

security improvements or whatever happened with respect to benghazi. but i have to ask you if you are familiar with the fact that in the wake of the 1998 bombing attacks congress passed something referred to as the secure embassy construction and counter terrorism act which requires the secretary of state to issue a waiver if under two conditions if u.s. government personnel work in separate facilities or if u.s. oversees facilities do not meet security setback distances specified by the bureau of diplomatic security. the law specifies that only the secretary of state may sign these waivers and that requirement is not to be delegated. was a waiver issued for the temporary mission in benghazi and the cia annex after the temporary mission compound was

authorized through december of 2012? and did you sign that waiver, madame secretary? >> i think that the cia annex i had no responsibility for so i cannot speak to what the decisions were with respect to the cia annex. that is something that i know other committees -- >> you acknowledge you were responsible for the temporary mission caompoundcompound? >> of course. you put them together but i had no responsibility for the cia annex. the compound in benghazi was neither an embassy nor a consulate. those are the only two facilities for which we would obtain a formal diplomatic notification. and those were the only kinds of facilities that we would have sought waivers for at the time

because we were trying to, as has been testified to earlier, understand whether we were going to have a permanent mission or not. that means you have to survey available facilities, try to find a secure facility. and the standards that are set by the agency security policy board are the goals we try to drive for. but it is very difficult if not impossible to do that in the immediate after math of a conflict situation. the temporary mission in benghazi was set up to try to find out what was going on in the area, to work with the cia where appropriate and to make a decision as to whether there would be a permanent facility. so we could not have met the goals under the overseas

security policy board nor could we have issued a waiver because we had to set up operations in order to make the assessments as to whether or not we would have a permanent mission, whether that mission would remain open and we made extensive and constant improvements to the physical security some of which i mentioned before. >> thank you. so it is obvious that a waiver was not signed and you have given a defense as to why a waiver was not signed. and it was temporary because it was made up. it was something different. the compound had never become official. so therefore you did not sign a waiver which when most of our people are stationed in such dangerous places -- let me get into that with respect to the dangerous places. we know that libya, you have testified before, was incapable

of providing host nation support. that involves protecting our diplomats and other u.s. government officials who travel there. if the libyan people didn't have a government capable of providing security and we didn't have u.s. military in libya we either leave when it gets too dangerous or the state department makes sure that they provide that protection. i want to just chat with you a little bit about the fact that when ambassador stevens returned there in late may after being named the ambassador less than four months later he was killed. the number of violent attacks that occurred during that summer are off the charts. they are against westerners. i would like you to refer to tab six. it is a 51-page document prepared by your head security guy in libya. for security incidents, serious security incidents 51 pages

long, 235 significant security incidents, 235 attacks in one year. in benghazi there were 77 serious attacks in one year. 64 in 2012. let me just tell you as i flip through this and i'm not talking benghazi is a large city about the size of d.c. or boston. i'm not talking about violent attacks like every day robberies, burglaries, hold ups. i'm talking about assassination attempts, bombings, kidnappings, attacks on the red cross. the red cross gave up and pulled out. the people who always go in when disaster strikes, they pulled out. that doesn't include 20 other major incidents. bombings on police departments, the courts. think about this. if you are in the city of washington, d.c. or boston and we're now over in benghazi and these types of bombings are

happening and these security incidents are happening, there are hundreds more actually i could talk with you about but i don't have time. i hope i have painted the picture because i'm baffled you sent chris stevens to libya and to benghazi. granted he never raised the flag and said i want out. and granted he never said shut down benghazi. and i understand and appreciate that you deferred to him but you also -- we have no record of you ever talking to him. that you never talked to him personally after may of 2012 when you swore him in as our ambassador. am i wrong? did you ever talk to ambassador stevens when all of this was going on in the hot bed of libya? that is a yes or no question, madame secretary? did you ever personally speak to