State Department made "grievous mistake" over Benghazi: Senate report

The U.S. Consulate in Benghazi is seen in flames during a protest by an armed group said to have been protesting a film being produced in the United States September 11, 2012.

Credit: Reuters/Esam Al-Fetori

By Tabassum Zakaria and Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON | Mon Dec 31, 2012 1:24pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The State Department made a "grievous mistake" in keeping the U.S. mission in Benghazi open despite inadequate security and increasingly alarming threat assessments in the weeks before a deadly attack by militants, a Senate committee said on Monday.

A report from the Senate Homeland Security Committee on the September 11 attacks on the U.S. mission and a nearby CIA annex, in which the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans died, faulted intelligence agencies for not focusing tightly enough on Libyan extremists.

It also faulted the State Department for waiting for specific warnings instead of improving security.

The committee's assessment, "Flashing Red: A Special Report On The Terrorist Attack At Benghazi," follows a scathing report by an independent State Department accountability review board that resulted in a top security official resigning and three others at the department being relieved of their duties.

Joseph Lieberman, an independent senator who chairs the committee, said that in thousands of documents it reviewed, there was no indication that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had personally denied a request for extra funding or security for the Benghazi mission. He said key decisions were made by "midlevel managers" who have since been held accountable.

Republican Senator Susan Collins said it was likely that others needed to be held accountable, but that decision was best made by the Secretary of State, who has the best understanding "of how far up the chain of command the request for additional security went."

The attacks and the death of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens put diplomatic security practices at posts in risky areas under scrutiny and raised questions about whether intelligence on militant activity in the region was adequate.

The Senate report said the lack of specific intelligence of an imminent threat in Benghazi "may reflect a failure" by intelligence agencies to focus closely enough on militant groups with weak or no operational ties to al Qaeda and its affiliates.

"With Osama bin Laden dead and core al Qaeda weakened, a new collection of violent Islamist extremist organizations and cells have emerged in the last two to three years," the report said. That trend has been seen in the "Arab Spring" countries undergoing political transition or military conflict, it said.

NEED FOR BETTER INTELLIGENCE

The report recommended that U.S. intelligence agencies "broaden and deepen their focus in Libya and beyond, on nascent violent Islamist extremist groups in the region that lack strong operational ties to core al Qaeda or its main affiliate groups."

Neither the Senate report nor the unclassified accountability review board report pinned blame for the Benghazi attack on a specific militant group. The FBI is investigating who was behind the assaults.

President Barack Obama, in an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, said the United States had "very good leads" about who carried out the attacks. He did not provide details.

The Senate committee said the State Department should not have waited for specific warnings before acting on improving security in Benghazi.

It also said it was widely known that the post-revolution Libyan government was "incapable of performing its duty to protect U.S. diplomatic facilities and personnel," but the State Department failed to fill the security gap.

"Despite the inability of the Libyan government to fulfill its duties to secure the facility, the increasingly dangerous threat assessments, and a particularly vulnerable facility, the Department of State officials did not conclude the facility in Benghazi should be closed or temporarily shut down," the report said. "That was a grievous mistake."

The Senate panel reviewed changing comments made by the Obama administration after the attack, which led to a political firestorm in the run-up to the November presidential election and resulted in U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice withdrawing her name from consideration to replace Clinton, who is stepping down early next year.

Rice had said her initial comments that the attack grew out of a spontaneous protest over an anti-Islam film were based on talking points provided by intelligence agencies.

Lieberman said it was not the job of intelligence agencies to formulate unclassified talking points and they should decline such requests in the future.

The report said the original talking points included a line saying "we know" that individuals associated with al Qaeda or its affiliates participated in the attacks. But the final version had been changed to say: "There are indications that extremists participated," and the reference to al Qaeda and its affiliates was deleted.

The report said that while James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, had offered to provide the committee with a detailed chronology of how the talking points were written and evolved, this had still not been delivered to Capitol Hill because the administration had spent weeks "debating internally" whether or not it should turn over information considered "deliberative" to Congress.

(Editing by Warren Strobel and David Brunnstrom)

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Inquiry harshly criticizes State Department over Benghazi attack

A Libyan government militia guarding the main entrance of the U.S. consulate that was attacked last week, fixes a note written by Libyans against the attack, in Benghazi city September 18, 2012.

Credit: Reuters/Asmaa Waguih

By Arshad Mohammed, Anna Yukhananov and Tabassum Zakaria

WASHINGTON | Tue Dec 18, 2012 11:55pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Security at the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya was grossly inadequate to deal with a September 11 attack that killed a U.S. ambassador and three others because of failures within the State Department, an official inquiry found on Tuesday.

In a scathing assessment, the review cited "leadership and management" deficiencies at two department offices, poor coordination among officials and "real confusion" in Washington and in the field over who had the responsibility, and the power, to make decisions that involved policy and security concerns.

The attack killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans and set off a political furor as Republicans used the issue to attack President Barack Obama before the November 6 election in which he won a second term in office.

The report's harsh assessment seemed likely to tarnish the four-year tenure of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who said in a letter accompanying the review that she would adopt all of its recommendations.

"Systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department ... resulted in a special mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place," said the unclassified version of the report by the official "Accountability Review Board."

The board specifically faulted the department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, the regional office which is responsible for the Middle East and North Africa, and the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, its law enforcement and security arm.

The five-member board said U.S. intelligence provided no "specific tactical warning" of the attack and that there was "little understanding of militias in Benghazi and the threat they posed to U.S. interests" in the eastern Libyan city, where the central government has little influence.

The incident has raised questions about the adequacy of security at U.S. embassies around the globe and where to draw the line between protecting American diplomats in dangerous places while giving them enough freedom to do their jobs.

Jon Alterman, head of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the assessment reflected poorly on Clinton and its recommendations would probably make life harder for diplomats in the field

"This is a mark against Secretary Clinton. While she was not singled out, the report highlighted the lack of leadership and organization on security issues, and those fall into her bailiwick," Alterman said.

"The report, however, relies a little too much on bureaucratic fixes," he added. "Sprinkling people throughout the system who are not only empowered to say 'no,' but have an institutional interest in doing so, will make it harder for diplomats to get out of tightly guarded facilities."

DID LOCAL GUARDS LEAVE GATE OPEN?

The report faulted as "misplaced" the mission's dependence for security support on the "armed but poorly skilled" Libyan February 17 Martyrs' Brigade militia members and unarmed guards hired by State Department contractor Blue Mountain Libya.

No Blue Mountain guards were outside the compound immediately before the attack to provide early warning, which was their responsibility. The report raised the possibility that Blue Mountain guards left the "pedestrian gate open after initially seeing the attackers and fleeing the vicinity. They had left the gate unlatched before."

The board found little evidence that the February 17 guards alerted Americans to the attack or swiftly summoned more militia members to help once it was under way. There had been questions of reliability in the weeks preceding the attack.

"At the time of Ambassador Stevens' visit, February 17 militia members had stopped accompanying special mission vehicle movements in protest over salary and working hours," the report said.

The board recommended that the State Department create a new, senior position to oversee security at "high threat" posts, to strengthen security at such posts beyond what is usually provided by host governments, and to consult outside experts on "best practices" for operating in dangerous environments.

The department should also hire more security personnel at dangerous posts, ensure key policy and security staff serve there for at least a year and consider making it easier to punish those who perform poorly in future security incidents.

The political uproar in the United States over the Benghazi attack has already claimed one victim.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, widely tipped as a front-runner to replace Clinton when she steps down as secretary of state early next year, last week withdrew her name from consideration, saying she wished to avoid a potentially disruptive Senate confirmation process.

Republican lawmakers had blasted Rice for comments she made on several television talk shows in the aftermath of the attack in which she said preliminary information suggested the assault was the result of protests against an anti-Muslim video made in California rather than a premeditated strike.

The review, however, concluded that no protest took place before the attack. Rice has said she was relying on talking points drawn up by U.S. intelligence officials.

(Additional reporting by Paul Eckert and Andrew Quinn.; Editing by Christopher Wilson)

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