CBS News reported that a survivor of the attack in Benghazi told three senators that the State Department renewed a one-year lease on the Benghazi facility in July 2012, just two months before the attack that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. The facility was designated as “temporary,” allowing it to be exempted from normal security standards. The State Department’s own Accountability Review Board has said a “key driver behind the weak security platform in Benghazi was the decision to treat Benghazi as a temporary, residential facility.” The lease renewal came on the heels of an assault on the compound in July. In August 2012, a regional security officer requested stronger security, but the request was denied.
The survivor, a State Department diplomatic security agent whose name isn’t being disclosed, spoke behind closed doors in late November to Senators Graham, Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Robert Menendez, D-N.J. The previously-undisclosed existence of the year-long lease calls into question the State Department’s designation of the compound as “temporary” and therefore exempt from normal security requirements.
According to the Accountability Review Board (ARB) that investigated security shortfalls, a “key driver behind the weak security platform in Benghazi was the decision to treat Benghazi as a temporary, residential facility…This resulted in the Special Mission compound being excepted from office facility standards and accountability” under federal law. The ARB said Benghazi’s security was “far short” of standards from the start in November 2011 and “remained so even in September 2012, despite multiple field-expedient upgrades funded by [diplomatic security].”