House Foreign Affairs chairman calls for more accountability after Benghazi

By Julian Pecquet - 01/23/13 03:26 PM ET

Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.) faulted a bipartisan board for failing to hold high-ranking officials to account for the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.

Royce, in his inaugural hearing as chairman of the Foreign Affairs panel on Wednesday, made the statements ahead of Hillary Clinton's last appearance before the House before she hands over the reins to Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.).

Clinton took responsibility for her department's failures during a Senate hearing Wednesday morning. But she said the deficiencies lay with lower ranking officials, whose job it was to read and appropriately respond to the embassy's requests for more security ahead of the attack that claimed the lives of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

The Accountability Review Board “found that responsibility stopped at the assistant secretary level, below the Department’s most senior management,” Royce said. “This seems to contrast with the recommendation of the 1999 Accountability Review Board on the East Africa bombings, which said that 'the secretary of State should take a personal and active role' in security issues.

“This Committee is concerned that the Department’s most senior officials either should have known about the worsening security in Benghazi – or did know. Either way, security requests were denied.”

Clinton said Wednesday that four State Department officials are on administrative leave as the department weighs “next steps.” She said the review board did not find cause to automatically fire them.

Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), the new ranking member on the committee, echoed Clinton's comments that attacks on U.S. diplomatic posts are not unusual.

“I hope we can use this as an opportunity to seriously examine the steps we need to take to prevent a repeat of the tragedy in Benghazi, rather than engaging in 'gotcha' politics that make it more difficult to achieve this bipartisan goal,” he said. “We must do what we can to minimize the threats faced by our diplomats and aid workers, but we must also recognize that some risk is inherent in the practice of effective diplomacy. We can’t advance America’s interests around the world if we isolate ourselves behind embassy walls or limit the deployment of our diplomats to low-risk environments. Let’s not learn the wrong lesson from today’s hearing.”

Royce's criticism was more measured than what Clinton heard from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) a few hours earlier.

“I think ultimately with your leaving you accept culpability for the worst tragedy since Sept. 11,” Paul said. “If I'd been president at the time and I'd found that you did not read the cables from Benghazi, you did not read the cables from Ambassador Stevens, I would have relieved you of your post.”

“Not to know of the requests for security, really I think cost these people their lives.”