Benghazi and Clinton

From the House GOP Interim Progress Report…on the Terrorist Attacks in Benghazi Libya:

During 2012, in numerous communications with the State Department, officials from the U.S. Mission in Libya stress both the inadequacy of security as well as the need for additional personnel. Two critical cables warrant specific mention:

March 28, 2012, Ambassador Cretz sends a cable to Secretary Clinton requesting additional security assets.

April 19, 2012, the response cable from the Department of State to Embassy Tripoli, bearing Secretary Clinton’s signature, acknowledges Ambassador Cretz’s request for additional security but instead articulates a plan to scale back security assets for the U.S. Mission in Libya, including the Benghazi Mission.

In her testimony before Congress in January, Clinton said,

With specific security requests they didn’t come to me.  I had no knowledge of them.

It’s true enough that the boss’ signature is routinely added to correspondence that has been prepared by subordinates and then sent out.  This, of course, does not absolve the boss of responsibility for the content or outcome of that correspondence.  The addition of the boss’ signature is solely at the discretion of that boss.  Secretary of State Clinton had, to coin a phrase, constructive knowledge of her cable acknowledging the deteriorating security conditions at her Benghazi Consulate, and she ordered the continued withdrawal of security from that Consulate, anyway.  Furthermore, by her position and her decision to delegate the application of her signature to her correspondence, she had imputed knowledge of the situation and of her decision to proceed with her security drawdown.  She simply lied in her testimony before Congress.

The Interim Report can be seen here and here.

Remember this in 2016.

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