happened in benghazi and making sure it doesn t happen again? yes, that is an important question. as you said, these requests never came to the secretary. but i think the elephant in the room and secretary clinton did mention this in her testimony yesterday, was that you had a republican congress that wasn t willing to fund embassy security. and now i think it s really hypocritical for them to come out and make a big issue of this when they in fact wouldn t fund it. they ve done better since. learning the lesson of benghazi, which we all should, but that was a big problem back then for sure. ben, what s your response to that? no one claimed that was involved in security that the security requests were denied, david. again, listen to what she said ben, ben, ben, ben. no, no, ben. peter oskin tore up those papers, saying this is what happened to all those requests. that was the clear implication. no one is claiming the reason why they were denied or extra
debate stage with chris christie, who doesn t have any foreign policy experience. if you look at it that way, i think it only benefits her. i think benghazi is not going to define her legacy long term. speaking of benghazi, there s something we need to compare, the two secretaries of state that preceded her, you find they had several ben gazdyes and it s worth noting there were 13 throughout bush s tenure. the other thing that s important, if you want something to not have a benghazi like debacle you have to fund embassy security. i would never describe hillary as cautious. she was the most traveled first lady in history. even surpassing nixon s wife and i think she is hardly cautious. i actually think she does take less of a risky approach and did during her term as secretary of state than john kerry. i think that more cautious approach does typify her
decision it was to hire them in the first place it was an awful decision. you had a grood group that was ill trained, ill equipped. they were having work problems. i mean, sometimes they would show up. sometimes they wouldn t. sometimes their weapons would be in working order. this was not an organized, trained militia that would have any notion about how to provide security. the thought that anyone would hire them to be security is a problem in the first place. so that was it was just such a compounding of problems in a you have to understand the culture here, and i saw one of the recommendations in the report, andrea, said, gee, we should also consider when you are thinking about security that even though you don t have a direct threat on that facility, you should consider all of the other threat information. if you have to tell the security people at the state department that, we are in a tremendous amount of trouble. that s why i believe you ve got to start over there. you need t
deteriorating, and they knew it, and so the folks there at the special mission were asking for help and asking for higher security. we know that tripoli asked. the report said they didn t ask hard enough. it s really not their responsibility. so what happened was they had all this information, and they processed it through the state department, and that leadership just failed to note the security around that around the ambassador when he traveled to benghazi, and a security of the special mission. not that they had to have it as a standard mission security status because it was a temporary facility, but the physical security part of it was just so wrong to fit the security threat that it resulted in the death of four americans. should we stop relying on local militias? there s security cam video showing that the libyan militias got in their pickup truck and ran at the first shot that was fired. well, i argue whose ever
have the facts. i read the report. i don t want to second guess anyone. certainly not my former colleagues. i can tell you this. we have lived in the age of terrorism, andrea, for the past 25 or 30 years. and everybody i know at the state department wants to do a good job and wants to protect themselves and especially their colleagues who are serving out in the front lines, people like embassy stevens. the fact is the state department never had enough funds to fully fund security and that makes it a very difficult job so that the mind-set has to change, certainly. that s a real takeaway of the report, the accountability review board s report and he is an eminent person whom people will listen to but i think both branches of government, the legislative branch and executive branch need to work together and that message shouldn t be lost in all the attacks, well, the allegations now made against the state department. thanks so much, nick burns. thank you for joining us today. thank yo