WASHINGTON — The State Department had “clear warning signs” of a deteriorating security situation in Libya prior to the deadly Sept. 11 assault on the diplomatic mission, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said Thursday as he also faulted Congress for failing to provide sufficient funds to protect facilities worldwide.
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee — and possibly the next secretary of state, said a recently completed independent probe pulled no punches and “clearly mistakes were made” at the State Department.
Deputy Secretary of State William Burns told the committee, “we must do better.”
Kerry complained that lawmakers have provided far less money to the State Department, forcing it to scramble to cover the costs of securing diplomatic installations. The department is seeking $1.4 billion in next year’s budget for increased security.
Joining Burns was Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Nides, who is in charge of management, at back-to-back congressional hearings.
Their public testimony comes two days after an independent review panel issued a blistering report blaming management failures at the State Department for the lack of security at the Benghazi compound. It also comes as fallout from the report forced four State Department officials to step down Wednesday.
“Why, if we quickly did find out it was in part a terrorist attack, why wasn’t there better security on that evening with the ambassador in Benghazi and in the consulate and what do we need to do to make sure?” said Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
“People keep forgetting that was about a nine-hour attack moving from the consulate to the annex. We had already called up troops from Fort Bragg (North Carolina) and got them to Sicily before the attack was over,” he said. “We knew it was a big-time attack. We flew in two planes from Djibouti, additional assets from Croatia. We need to find out who knew what when.”
U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed in the attack along with information specialist Sean Smith and former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, who were contractors working for the CIA. Stevens was the first U.S. ambassador killed in the line of duty since 1979.
An unclassified version of the report by the Accountability Review Board concluded, “Systematic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department resulted in a Special Mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place.”
The report singled out the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and the Bureau of Near East Affairs for criticism, saying there appeared to be a lack of cooperation and confusion over protection at the mission in Benghazi, a city in eastern Libya that was relatively lawless after the revolution that toppled Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi.
Obama administration officials said those who resigned were Eric Boswell, assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security; Charlene Lamb, deputy assistant secretary responsible for embassy security; and Raymond Maxwell, deputy assistant secretary of state who oversees the Maghreb nations of Libya, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss personnel matters publicly.
Some of the three may have the option of being reassigned to other duties, said the officials.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the department had accepted the resignations of four people: Boswell and three others she declined to identify.
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