The report faulted the government for failing to secure the diplomatic facility that came under attack.
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Military leaders have testified repeatedly that they didn’t have intelligence information on what was happening or the resources on alert to respond in time to the attacks, which occurred at two separate locations over 13 hours.
However, it appears that the infamous “stand down” order was never given, though some of the Central Intelligence Agency security contractors who were the first to respond to the attacks said that their station chief had told them to wait while additional resources could be marshaled.
Department spokesman Mark Toner says Benghazi was an important outpost during the civil war and nobody believed in the importance of being there more than Chris Stevens did.
Republicans on the House Benghazi Committee are divided over whether to directly blame then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the events that killed four Americans in Libya in 2012. It said the military did not act although President Obama and then Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta had ordered action.
The report also said that the investigation by the so-called Accountability Review Board was tainted by the influence of Clinton’s former Chief of Staff, Cheryl Mills.
On Tuesday, Clinton said the nation must “learn the right lessons from this tragedy”, noting that she’d “immediately” assembled “an independent committee” to investigate the matter.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign is slamming Republicans in Congress over the final report of their investigation of the deadly 2012 attacks on a US outpost in Benghazi, Libya.
The findings are sure to fuel attacks on Clinton on the presidential campaign trail, where she faces the Republicans’ presumptive nominee, Donald Trump, but they do not reveal any new substantial evidence of Clinton’s culpability with regard to the attack.
“After more than two years and more than $7 million in taxpayer funds, the committee report has not found anything to contradict the conclusions of the multiple, earlier investigations”, Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said in a statement, adding that “this committee’s chief goal is to politicize the deaths of four fearless Americans in order to try to attack the Obama administration and hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign”.
The report details numerous requests the embassy made to bolster the security presence in Benghazi but finds that those requests were either ignored or rejected by officials in Washington.
The committee claimed in a news release that the report “fundamentally changes the public’s understanding of the 2012 terrorist attacks that killed four Americans”.
Already bitterly partisan, Tuesday’s release of the report exposed divisions within Republican ranks.
“Hillary Clinton was in charge, knew the risks, and did nothing” to protect personnel on the ground in Libya, he said.
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But Democrats, who released their own report on Monday to pre-empt the GOP version, say Republicans have been on a political witch hunt against Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton without uncovering anything new.
