Secretary of State Mike Pompeo snapped at Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., on Wednesday after Meeks asked if it’s fair to say he “does not care about diplomatic security.”
“No,” Pompeo said in an angry exchange during his first appearance before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “You should not conclude that.”
The question from Meeks was just the most heated example of House Democrats venting their frustration over Pompeo’s role as a member of the select committee that investigated the Benghazi terrorist attack when he was a member of the House. That investigation took place during then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s tenure at Foggy Bottom.
“I think you can draw a line from this moment straight back to the most egregious example in recent memory of playing politics with foreign policy — and with a tragedy: the Benghazi Select Committee, on which you sat,” Rep. Eliot Engel, the top Democrat on the panel, said in the hearing. “The political circus that was set up to tear Hillary Clinton down, as the Majority Leader admitted — that was used to impugn the character of one of your predecessors.”
The rebuke passed without comment at the time, but tempers flared when Meeks took up the refrain later in the hearing.
“You scolded her!” Meeks said. “You went after her with venom!”
Meeks recalled that Pompeo had faulted Clinton for putting insufficient emphasis on the topic of diplomatic security in a major State Department report released after the Benghazi attack.
“The insinuation was that therefore [that Clinton] was not interested in diplomatic security,” Meeks said. “If [the investigation] wasn’t about bringing Hillary Clinton down at the time, then I ask you, Mr. Secretary, should we conclude that because you’ve not mentioned it one time, not once, should we conclude based upon that fact that you do not care about diplomatic security, Mr. Secretary?”
After Pompeo’s initial denial, Meeks tried to stop him from saying more, leading to the two talking over each other in an unusually-tense moment for such hearings.
“You should know, the very first briefing I received as a nominee was from the head of diplomatic security,” Pompeo said, raising his voice over Meeks’ crosstalk. “Never make an accusation [like that].”
“Oh, now the real secretary is coming out!” Meeks taunted.
“We had an ambassador killed in Benghazi, Libya,” Pompeo replied.
Exchange between @RepGregoryMeeks & @SecPompeo on diplomatic security.
Sec. Pompeo: “I’ll take a back seat to no one with respect to caring about and protecting the people…”
Rep Meeks: “Nor did Hillary Clinton take a back seat to no one…”
Full video: https://t.co/w6A2mtgcsB pic.twitter.com/0QRLDmjujl
— CSPAN (@cspan) May 23, 2018
Meeks affirmed that Pompeo personally cares about the diplomatic security, before faulting the administration for proposing steep spending cuts in that area. “I’m taking him at his word because something was not mentioned in a report does not mean that he doesn’t care,” Meeks said. “But, I think we can conclude that what does matter is how much money is appropriated for diplomatic security.”
Pompeo contradicted Meeks bluntly, in comments that doubled as an implicit defense of his role in the Benghazi probe.
“Diplomatic security is not about dollars expended,” he said. “It’s about delivering real security, its about getting the right outcomes. It’s about having the right people in place. It’s about being thoughtful about where you put people. We’re going to take risks. We’re going to be an expeditionary State Department. I think President Trump demands it, I think each of you do as well, but I’ll take a backseat to no one with respect to caring about and protecting the people [of the State Department].”
Meeks replied, “nor did Hillary CLinton take a backseat to no one for what she did about diplomatic security.”
Pompeo, as a member of the Benghazi committee during his time as a representative from Kansas, put special blame on Clinton in an annex to the main report that was co-authored with Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.
“Months before the attack one State Department diplomatic security agent viewed the situation as a ‘suicide mission’ where ‘there was a very good chance that everyone was going to die,’” the lawmakers wrote. “While we may never know for certain exactly why the State Department left Benghazi open in the face of such dangerous conditions, the most plausible answer is troubling. Secretary Clinton pushed for the U.S. to intervene in Libya, which at the time represented one of her signature achievements. To leave Benghazi would have been viewed as her failure and prompted unwelcome scrutiny of her choices. But when faced with a dire situation in Libya, Secretary Clinton had an obligation to act. And she had a clear chance to do so in August 2012 when presented with the facts in a memo from Assistant Secretary Beth Jones that painted a bleak picture of conditions in Libya. Yet, she failed to lead.”
