Clinton to testify to lawmakers on Benghazi probe

[KiwiElf]

Clinton to testify to lawmakers on Benghazi probe
AFP December 13, 2012, 3:24 pm

http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/world/1...enghazi-probe/

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will publicly testify before Congress next week about findings of an investigation into the deadly attack on a US mission in Libya, a US lawmaker said.

Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said Clinton would appear before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on December 20 to discuss the conclusions of the State Department probe into the Benghazi attack.

Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other American staff were killed in the September 11 assault on the US consulate by dozens of heavily armed militants. The attack has since been linked to elements with Al-Qaeda ties.

The committee will hold an open hearing that "will hear testimony from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the State Department's findings of the Accountability Review Board and how to prevent attacks from happening again at other frontline posts," Ros-Lehtinen, the committee chair, said in a statement.

The much-anticipated hearing will start at 1:00 pm (1800 GMT) and will be closely followed after Republicans accused President Barack Obama's administration of failing to provide proper security, and seeking to cover up the Al-Qaeda links.

Clinton is also due to testify later this month before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, although no date has been publicized.

The State Department review, headed by veteran US diplomat Thomas Pickering, was set up in the days after the attack. It is not yet known whether the report will be publicly released before the hearing.

Clinton is expected to step down near the beginning of Obama's second term in late January, and the Benghazi crisis has figured prominently in the effort to find her successor.

Susan Rice, the US envoy to the United Nations, is widely considered a front-runner for the top diplomatic post. But she has come under sharp criticism from Republican lawmakers for her comments shortly after the attack, when she said it had stemmed from a protest against an anti-Islam film.

Rice has since admitted that the intelligence community's talking points on which she based her remarks "were incorrect in a key respect: there was no protest or demonstration in Benghazi."

Clinton has said she takes responsibility for what happened in Benghazi and called the attack her "worst time" during her four years as secretary of state.

"It's something that is certainly terrible," she told ABC News's Barbara Walters in an interview airing Wednesday.

"We take risks in the work we do. The people who do this work are often in very threatening environments, whether it's our military or our civilian people around the world. I have just the most extraordinary admiration for them."

[Snookie]

Funny, but from what I've read neither she or Bill have had any qualms about "Arkansiding" people who knew too much. This has happened to around 34 people who worked with them. What are the chances of that many deciding to end their own lives, especially when many of them got "two to the head"?

[KiwiElf]

Benghazi fallout grows as US officials resign
AFP Updated December 20, 2012, 12:00 pm

http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/world/1...icials-resign/

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The scandal over a deadly attack on a US consulate grew Wednesday as three officials resigned after a probe denounced security failures and calls mounted for Hillary Clinton to testify to Congress.

Deputy Secretary Bill Burns admitted the months-long investigation into the September assault on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, had taken "a clear-eyed look at serious, systemic problems, which are unacceptable."

He told reporters the department had "learned some very hard and painful lessons in Benghazi," where four Americans, including ambassador Chris Stevens, were killed in an attack by dozens of armed militants linked to Al-Qaeda.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the whole department "take responsibility" for the issues highlighted by the Accountability Review Board (ARB) and accepted all of its 29 recommendations, he stressed.

But top Republican lawmaker Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said the panel made it clear in their 39-page report that a lack of leadership and management "is to blame for the series of errors that resulted in the loss of life.

"The recent resignations of three State Department officials is not the end, as the administration must continue to be held accountable," said Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the House foreign affairs committee.

Clinton, who had to pull out of this week's scheduled congressional hearings due to illness, must "answer for these failures," she added in a statement.

US television networks said Assistant Secretary Eric Boswell, head of the bureau of diplomatic security, and Charlene Lamb, deputy assistant secretary for international programs, had stepped down, citing unnamed officials.

The third person to submit their resignation was not identified. State Department officials would not immediately confirm the reports to AFP.

Only hours earlier the panel blamed "systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels" in the bureaus of diplomatic security and Near Eastern affairs for "grossly inadequate" security in Benghazi.

"Frankly, the State Department had not given Benghazi the security, both physical and personnel, resources it needed," ARB chairman veteran diplomat Thomas Pickering told reporters, after briefing lawmakers early Wednesday on a classified section of the report.

Incoming Republican House committee chairman Ed Royce said after the briefing that he was "not surprised at all that these three State Department officials have resigned."

"In this day and age, with radical ideologies and weapons spreading, there is no excuse for a leadership failure like this. It is simply unacceptable," he said in a statement.

Asked why the lessons learned from the twin embassy bombings in Africa in 1998 had failed to be fully applied, ARB vice chairman Admiral Mike Mullen said "the world has changed dramatically in this decade."

"I think we are in a much more difficult and challenging position with respect to meeting the needs to be out there and engage and doing so in a way that our people are very specifically secure."

Mullen also stressed that while Clinton has taken responsibility, as head of the department which deploys more than 60,000 people around the world, she had not been made aware of the specific security concerns in Benghazi.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio, who sits on the intelligence committee, insisted however Clinton's testimony was "indispensable to any effort to address this failure and put in place a process to ensure this never happens again."

The Benghazi attack also complicated President Barack Obama's plans for his second term cabinet, as his rumored top favorite to replace Clinton, the US envoy to the United Nations, Susan Rice, was forced to drop out of the running.

Rice had come under relentless Republican fire for saying, days after the assault, that, according to the best intelligence the available, it was triggered by a "spontaneous" protest outside the mission.

The ARB panel confirmed there had been no protest prior to the September 11 attack, nor was there any intelligence of a threat of any kind.

[KiwiElf]

Hillary Clinton has blood clot close to brain
AFP, The West Australian January 1, 2013, 3:10 pm

http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/world/1...lose-to-brain/

Top Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is suffering from a rare blood clot in a vein in her head but should make a full recovery, doctors said as she spent New Year’s Eve in hospital.

A routine follow-up scan on Sunday revealed “that a right transverse sinus venous thrombosis had formed”, doctors Lisa Bardack, of Mount Kisco Medical Group, and Gigi El-Bayoumi, of George Washington University, said on Monday.

They described it as “a clot in the vein that is situated in the space between the brain and the skull behind the right ear”.

But they were also quick to offer reassurances, saying in their statement that “it did not result in a stroke, or neurological damage”.

Mrs Clinton was admitted to the New York-Presbyterian Hospital on Sunday following the discovery and is being treated with blood thinners to dissolve the clot. She will be released “once the medication dose has been established”.

“In all other aspects of her recovery, the secretary is making excellent progress and we are confident she will make a full recovery. She is in good spirits, engaging with her doctors, her family, and her staff,” Bardack and El-Bayoumi’s statement said.

The globe-trotting diplomat has not been seen in public after succumbing to a stomach virus on returning from a trip to Europe on December 7, which forced her to cancel a planned visit to North Africa.

It’s a rare absence for the most popular member of President Barack Obama’s cabinet, who has been a highly visible and loyal supporter of his foreign policy agenda, travelling almost a million miles in her four years in office.

A Gallup poll released on Monday showed Mrs Clinton again topping an annual list of women most admired by Americans, winning support from 21 per cent of those surveyed. It is the 17th time she has topped the list, a landmark for Gallup.

But Mrs Clinton, 65, has made it clear she intends to step down in the coming weeks, once Senator John Kerry, tapped by Obama to replace her, is confirmed by the Senate.

Though once seen as a deeply divisive figure, she now has approval ratings above 60 per cent.

And many believe she will run again for the White House in 2016, despite being narrowly defeated by Obama for the Democratic nomination in 2008.

It is possible however that her health could become an issue in any White House bid, as she would mark her 70th birthday in her first year in office.

Mrs Clinton’s lengthy absence from public life had sparked claims from some of her fiercest critics that she was faking illness to avoid testifying before lawmakers investigating a deadly attack on a US mission in Libya.

The September 11 assault on the US mission in eastern Benghazi, in which the US ambassador and three other American officials were killed, sparked a political firestorm in the United States.