A terrorist attack on a U.S. diplomatic facility resulted in the deaths of multiple Americans. Before the attack, an Ambassador’s requests for more security were denied. The year was 1998.
In a The Wall Street Journal op-ed, Victoria Toensing says that after the 1998 terrorist attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania the United States government took measures to ensure it wouldn’t happen again. After the attacks, an Accountability Review Board was formed in 1999. It 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.”
Despite this warning that the Secretary of State should take an active role in security, Clinton has maintained security was not her responsibility. Toensing writes that, “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.’” In her book she said she shouldn’t have seen these requests.
Well not only should she have, she was required to by law.
As the attacks in Benghazi demonstrate, despite being in the White House at the time of the 1998 attacks it seems Hillary Clinton didn’t learn any lessons from the deaths of the State Department employees in Kenya and Tanzania.