e-mails in between there we re going to look at? well, congressman, i asked my attorneys to oversee the process. i did not look over their shoulder. reporter: in the end, the committee broke very little new ground as republicans tried to paint clinton as directly responsible or negligent on the assault on the u.s. mission in benghazi that claimed the lives of u.s. ambassador chris stevens and three other americans. they highlighted asks for extra security that were denied by state department officials. here s basically what happened to their requests. they were torn up. reporter: and questioned whether clinton was involved enough in diplomatic efforts in the country where she had pushed for u.s. intervention. did you ever talk to ambassador stevens when all of this was going on in the hot bed of libya? that is a yes or no question, madam secretary. i m sorry. i believe i did. when was that? i don t recall. reporter: but there is still no smoking gun. even committee ch
security was because of funding. i don t know why democrats brought that in there. it wasn t like the security requests were denied because of funding saying we re not sending security to benghazi because we don t have the money, the united states of america. that never happened. that s a false narrative put out by the democrats. you re saying we don t know why we still don t know why they were declined? what s the answer? what s the answer? i would love for hillary clinton since she s in charge of the state department at the time to try to figure that out. we already heard we already heard 11 hours of testimony. we would have been better off showing her testimony from three years ago and saving the $5 million. the chairman of this committee if we would have done that hold on. he s on tape saying there was nothing new in her testimony. guys. if we would have done that. quickly. we would not have ever seen the e-mail that went to hillary clinton s daughter.
taken to improve security. so frankly i thought she was impressive. i thought she was honest an straightforward and comported her swfl a lot of dignity. one of the areas that s been under question since 2012 is why requests for more security in benghazi, why these requests were not granted. this was asked in different ways repeatedly to the former secretary of state yesterday. she faced questions from representative peter roscom about her personal responsibility for the diplomatic outpost in benghazi listen to this exchange. what s your responsibility to benghazi? that s my question. well, my responsibility was to be briefed and to discuss with the security experts and the policy experts whether we would have a post in benghazi, whether we would continue it, whether we would make it permanent. as i ve said repeatedly throughout the day, no one ever recommended closing the post in
clear view point of what our policy was. even our own staff members said i m not sure hillary clinton even knew we had a presence in benghazi in their e-mails. there are two takeaways from this. the big one is, what were we doing there and did we even know what our game plan was or goal? ben, ben it doesn t seem hillary clinton understood that. one thing came out in the hearing, hillary clinton claims she didn t send christopher stevens to benghazi. he made the decision to go to benghazi from tripoli on his own. i want to ask david a question, though, that was not answered in this hearing. it s not really been answered since 201, one that keeps coming up, which is why weren t the requests for security, why were they not granted over time? more requests for security, hundreds of requests for security. i understand hillary clinton explaining that they never got to her. that s a separate issue. but she has never explained why she believes that they were not granted. isn t that imp
benghazi. no one recommended closing but you had two ambassadors that made several, several requests and here s basically what happened to their requests. they were torn up. well, that s just not true. they were dismissed. the tearing up the papers obviously theatrical. the basic question is why were the requests for security not granted? i understand hillary clinton said they never got to her. so it wasn t her decision. but why weren t they granted by the people whose decision it was? you know, i think what was misleading about the hearing yesterday was that there s, i think, a lot of members of congress perhaps don t recognize how the state department and federal agencies actually work. we have more than 266 embassies and consulates. the secretary of state, i ve worked for many secretaries of state, of both parties, cannot make individual, specific decisions on embassy a or consulate b. you have to leave to that your assistant secretary for diplomatic security and the o