An expert who served on a panel overseeing State Department recommendations in the aftermath of the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya, told a congressional committee Wednesday the department has failed to follow through on key proposals for improving diplomatic security.
“Clear the smoke. Remove the mirrors. Now is the time for the Department of State to finally institutionalize some real, meaningful and progressive change,” said Todd Keil, one of three witnesses interviewed by a new special House panel tasked with investigating the Benghazi attacks.
“Words and cursory actions by the Department of State ring hollow absent transparency and verifiable and sustainable actions to fully put into practice the letter and the intent of our recommendations.”
The special House committee held its first hearing Wednesday, spending almost three hours looking into the implementation of security recommendations made by the State Department’s Accountability Review Board, established to investigate the surroundings that led to the attacks.
The review board issued 29 recommendations in late 2012 after concluding that “systemic” State Department failures led to inadequate security at the diplomatic outpost.
Gregory Starr, assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, defended the State Department’s handing of the recommendations, telling lawmakers the department is now “better prepared, better protected and informed to manage the risk” of terrorist attacks.
“We have made what I consider to be tremendous progress on the 29 Benghazi ARB recommendations,” he said. “The ARB recommended that we expand the number of diplomatic security personnel, and we have done just that. We are well on our way to just finishing that off and hitting all of our targets.”
Keil also said the State Department “lacks a risk management process” needed to adequately the access the need to send diplomats to dangerous places.
“The department does not have that process to determine, ‘do we need to be there, and do we need to stay?’ ” he said.
Starr rebutted that the State Department has made significant strides to better assess how and where to deploy its personnel overseas.
“Perhaps it should be past tense — ‘lacked’ as opposed to ‘lacks?’ ” said Starr, referring to Keil’s accusation. “This is one of the things that we’ve concentrated on most over the past two years. It is the heart of the vital presence validation process.”
The House panel during the hearing generally pushed aside — at least for now — bitter inter-party bickering that has dominated the Benghazi debate the past two years.
Gowdy, R-S.C., vowed to doggedly pursue answers to questions he suggests the Obama administration has sidestepped during previous Benghazi congressional probes.
“I am willing to reconsider previously held beliefs, in light of new facts and evidence, and I would encourage my colleagues and others to do the same,” he said.
“We know that all the documents have not yet been produced, and we know that there are still witnesses left to be examined, and we also know that there are witnesses who have been examined in the past but for whom additional questions may be warranted.”
Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the committee’s senior Democrat, and others in his party have been highly critical of the panel, saying it’s nothing more than Republican grandstanding since five other House committees — most notably the Oversight and Government Reform Committee led by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif. — have already investigated the attacks.
But Cummings, who held a news event a day earlier that questioned the new committee’s relevance, held back criticisms during the hearing, saying the panel could be useful if it helped “save lives.”
“It would be a disservice to everyone involved to be lured off this path by partisan politics,” he said. “The things that we do today and over the next few months will have lasting effects even when we’re gone on to heaven, and that’s how we have to look at this.”
The last special joint committee convened on Capitol Hill was 2011’s so-called supercommittee, which was set up to find ways to reduce the federal government’s ballooning deficit. Its failure trigged the automatic “sequester” spending cuts that began in early 2013.
