security capacity. we cannot forget that israel will also benefit palestinians next door. the israeli government has recognized this, which is why it will be taking in the next days and weeks, a number of steps in order to improve conditions in the west bank and in gaza. so what does he mean that you re going to be taking a number of steps in the next few days and weeks to improve conditions not only in the west bank but in gaza as well? secretary of state kerry has set down a fundamental ground rule to the negotiations. and that is everything that goes on in the negotiations stays in the negotiations and he ll be the only source reporting what is going on in those. and we are very much going to respect that ground rule. i m not going to go into great detail, but what i can say is in the past we have discussed with the united states and palestinians ways in which to build confidence. ways to enhance living conditions in the west bank. and gaza as well? well, in the past we have
attack. reporter: two weeks afte aftr state department whistleblowers challenged the white house account of benghazi, raymond maxwell, the deputy assistant secretary of state forced into administrative leave five months ago, considers himself a scapegoat in the affair. he s the only one of the four state department officials placed on administrative leave after benghazi who does not work for diplomatic security, and he told the daily beast, quote, the flaws in the process were perpetrated by the political leadership at state with the complicity of the senior career leadership. they should be called to the did, unquote. to remain on administrative leave until a decision is made on their status, they re not currently performing a job for the department during this period. reporter: late today the republican chair of the house armed services committee emerging from closed door testimony by two top pentagon officials disclosed that military personnel sent to benghazi to serve in a se
capacity, those kinds of things. so i have been very clear since it wasn t our mandate, i didn t do the investigation. and i m not prepared or able to give you a thought on that. did you learn anything new in the hearings this week that you did not know at the accountability review board? i would say yes because i m always interested in seeing what s new. i honestly did not. as far as you are concerned you think benghazi has been investigated and that information put out to the public as thoroughly as possible? no. because the fbi is responsible for the criminal investigation. and that s ongoing. and i think you have to separate the two. ours was securities. theirs is criminal. that is yet to be done. we may find out much more. they re obviously interested in who perpetrated this, for what reasons? were they criminally culpable under u.s. law? those kinds of things, yep. okay. ambassador pickering, thanks for coming, appreciate it.
decisions were made. and she did not make the security decisions that we felt was that a problem, do you think? no, not at all. i think it was behind the legislation. we looked in to what the congress was saying at the time it passed the legislation to set up the process. and they said it is traditional for heads of agencies to take responsibility then nobody goes down and finds where the decisions were made. and that s what we d like to see. and we would like to have people held responsible for those performance in those decisions. what do you make of the back and forth on the talking points which we know were scrubbed of any kind of mention of terror and certainly when u.n. secretary rice came on this show and four others it was all about this tape and that s what they thought at the time. what do you make of that? candy, that was not in our mandate. we were looking into security, security warnings, security capacity, those kinds of things. so i have been very clear since i
levers to pull. what we ve been trying to do, and we need your help to help us pay for what we are trying to do, we are trying to help them build a descent security force to try to reign in the militias as best they can. this was a constant conversation. before the attack in benghazi what had we done to help them build their security capacity? there is a long list and i ll be happy to provide that to you because it is filled with, you know, training, with equipment, with the kind of planning that they had not done before, and i d be happy to send you the detail on that, senator. senator casey. madam secretary, thank you for being here today to provide this testimony. i m going to ask you a question that relates to the implementation of the accountability review board recommendations. but before i do that i want to express what i think is a widely shared sentiment today, both by