In her interview with
ABC's
Diane Sawyer
last week,
Hillary Clinton said "I was not making security decisions" about
Benghazi, claiming "it would be a mistake" for "a secretary of state" to
"go through all 270 posts" and "decide what should be done." And at a
January 2013 Senate hearing, Mrs. Clinton said that security requests
"did not come to me. I did not approve them. I did not deny them."
Does the former secretary of state not know the
law? By statute, she was required to make specific security decisions
for defenseless consulates like Benghazi, and was not permitted to
delegate them to anyone else.
The Secure Embassy Construction and
Counterterrorism Act of 1999, or Secca, was passed in response to the
near-simultaneous bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar
es Salaam, Tanzania, on Aug. 7, 1998. Over 220 people were killed,
including 12 Americans. Thousands were injured.
Then-Secretary of
State Hillary Rodham Clinton testifying on Capitol Hill in Washington
before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the Benghazi
attack in January. Associated Press
Bill Clinton was president. Patrick Kennedy, now
the undersecretary of state for management, was then acting assistant
secretary of state for diplomatic security.
Susan Rice,
now the national security adviser, was then assistant secretary of state
for African affairs.
As with the Benghazi terrorist attacks, an
Accountability Review Board was convened for each bombing. Their
reports, in January 1999, called attention to "two interconnected
issues: 1) the inadequacy of resources to provide security against
terrorist attacks, and 2) the relative low priority accorded security
concerns throughout the U.S. government."
Just as U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens did in
2012, the U.S. ambassador to Kenya, Prudence Bushnell, had made repeated
requests for security upgrades in 1997 and 1998. All were denied.
Because the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania had
been existing office structures, neither met the State Department's
security standard for a minimum 100 foot setback zone. A "general
exception" was made. The two review boards faulted the fact that "no one
person or office is accountable for decisions on security policies,
procedures and resources."
To ensure accountability in the future, the
review boards recommended "[f]irst and foremost, the Secretary . . .
should take a personal and active role in carrying out the
responsibility of ensuring the security of U.S. diplomatic personnel
abroad" and "should personally review the security situation of embassy
chanceries and other official premises." And for new embassy buildings
abroad, "all U.S. government agencies, with rare exceptions, should be
located in the same compound."
Congress quickly agreed and passed Secca, a law
implementing these (and other) recommendations. It mandated that the
secretary of state make a personal security waiver under two
circumstances: when the facility could not house all the personnel in
one place and when there was not a 100-foot setback. The law also
required that the secretary "may not delegate" the waiver decision.
Benghazi did not house all U.S. personnel in one
building. There was the consulate and an annex, one of the two
situations requiring a non-delegable security waiver by the secretary of
state.
In October 2012 the
Benghazi Accountability Review Board convened, co-chaired by Amb. Thomas
Pickering (Ms. Rice's supervisor in 1998) and Adm. Michael Mullen. It
failed even to question Mrs. Clinton for its report about the attacks.
It also obfuscated the issue of her personal responsibility for key
security decisions by using a word other than "waiver," the passive
voice, and no names. Recognizing that the Benghazi consulate (like the
Nairobi and Dar es Salaam embassies) was a previously nongovernmental
building, the Benghazi review board reported that this "resulted in the
Special Mission compound being
excepted
[my emphasis] from
office facility standards and accountability under" Secca. No Hillary
fingerprints revealed there.
Mrs. Clinton either personally waived these
security provisions as required by law or she violated the law by
delegating the waiver to someone else. If it was the latter, she shirked
the responsibility she now disclaims: to be personally knowledgeable
about and responsible for the security in a consulate as vulnerable as
Benghazi.
Ms. Toensing
was chief counsel for the Senate Intelligence Committee and deputy
assistant attorney general in the Reagan administration.