Final Benghazi report details administration failures

The 800-page report was released on Tuesday

Rachael Bade Politico - June 28, 2016

 

In their long-awaited final report, Republicans on the House Benghazi Committee concluded that the Obama administration — including then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — failed across multiple agencies and levels to protect American diplomats in the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack.
The 800-page report was released on Tuesday, and marks the culmination of a two-year investigation that has haunted the 2016 Democratic front-runner on the campaign trail, even as Clinton’s campaign has consistently slammed the probe as a political vendetta.
Republicans have denied those accusations and Chairman Trey Gowdy’s committee offered new details about how Clinton’s State Department failed to protect the diplomatic outpost in Libya. The report also said that the CIA missed the looming threat despite warnings and wrote faulty intelligence reports after the attack. And GOP staff said their findings indicate that the Defense Department did not meet its response times to deploy military assets to Benghazi and follow up to ensure Americans were rescued in a timely fashion.
The report includes new details about a U.S. teleconference convened by White House chief of staff Denis McDonough during the attack. According to the report, some participants on the video conference were unsure about what each agency was doing to rescue Americans.State Department officials on the call also brought up concerns about whether Marines who might have been deployed to Benghazi were wearing uniforms, the report found — something officials previously said could hurt diplomacy in the region. One commander told the committee he and his men over the course of three hours kept having to change from uniforms to civilian clothes.The military never deployed to Benghazi.

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