Republican members of the House Select Committee on Benghazi grilled Hillary Clinton Thursday on why hundreds of requests for more security from State Department officials in Libya were ignored.
Rep. Elijah Cummings, the committee’s top Democrat, led fellow minority members in defending Clinton from suggestions that she was personally liable for agency decisions that left Amb. Chris Stevens and three other Americans without adequate protection on Sept. 11, 2012.
Clinton said requests for more security “were rightly handled by security professionals in the department,” she said, citing findings from Accountability Review Board members.
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“I was not going to second guess them,” she said of the decisions made by diplomatic security officials.
Democrats have frequently pointed to Clinton’s lack of involvement in approving or denying security requests in Benghazi as evidence that she bears little blame for the failures that led to the deaths of four Americans.
“Nothing we have obtained … changes the basic facts we have known for three years,” Cummings said of Clinton’s participation in denying security requests.
He cited a now-debunked claim from Rep. Darrell Issa, former chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, that Clinton personally signed off on a cable discussing diplomatic security in Benghazi.
The cable in question was ultimately determined to have been stamped with a form version of her signature, as millions of State Department cables are each year.
Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., asked Clinton why more than 600 requests for more security in Libya went ignored in the run-up to the Benghazi attack.
Like other Republicans on the panel, Pompeo pressed Clinton on why security matters did not rise to the level of her office but informal memos from her friend, Sidney Blumenthal, did.
Rep. Susan Brooks, R-Ind., asked Clinton about detailed discussions among high-level State Department officials on the nature of the Benghazi mission, which was not a formal mission at the time it was attacked.
“There was not an active plan for a consulate in Benghazi,” Clinton said.
Brooks pointed out that if the diplomatic compound had been upgraded to a consulate, it would have had a higher level of protection.
Stevens himself had asked the State Department to designate the diplomatic compound as an official consulate, but his request languished as the agency continued to use it as a temporary post, freeing them from the obligation to provide more security.
