Benghazi investigationLawmakers want Benghazi ARB examined
The Department of State appointed an Accountability Review Board (ARB), headed by Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Adm. Mike Mullen, to look into the Department’s performance before and during the Benghazi attack. The ABR submitted its conclusions in mid-December 2012. The ARB offered unsparing criticism of different aspects the State Department’s decision making in the months before the attack regarding the security of the Benghazi compound, but it did not find anything rising to the level of criminality or gross negligence in the department’s policies toward security in Benghazi. The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee wants the State Department’s Inspector General to examine the way the Benghazi ARB conducted its investigation.
Benghazi attacker celebrates as U.S. mission burns // Source: alwatanvoice.com
The investigation into the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on 11 September 2012 has looked into three separate, but related, clusters of issues:
- First, the decisions made by Department of State officials regarding the security of the Benghazi compound
- Second, whether or not there was a military option available to the United States during the 7-hour on-and-off battle around the compound on the night between the 11 and 12 September
- Third, the changing public statements made by administration officials about the nature of the attack and its perpetrators
In several hearings before different congressional committees – the last one held last Wednesday in the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee – lawmakers raised sharp questions about all aspects of the attack, what came before it, and what followed it.
The Department of State also appointed an Accountability Review Board (ARB), headed by Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Adm. Mike Mullen, which submitted its conclusions in mid-December 2012 (see here the unclassified version of the ARB’ conclusions).
The ARB offered unsparing criticism of different aspects the State Department’s decision making in the months before the attack regarding the security of the Benghazi compound, and then-Secretary of States Hillary Clinton took responsibility for the departmental shortcomings the ARB report identified. The report also made nearly thirty recommendations on how the improve decision making procedures in the future.
The ARB report, however, did not find anything rising to the level of criminality or gross negligence in the department’s policies toward security in Benghazi. The report also concluded that there were no meaningful and effective military options that could have been used in the 7-hour window during which the attack on the Benghazi consulate unfolded.
Critics of the State Department’s performance before, during, and after the Benghazi attack are now directing their fire at the ARB.
House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Ed Royce (R-California), argued that the way the ARB arrived at its conclusions highlighted flaws in the ARB investigation of the Benghazi attacks. On Friday Royce called on the State Department’s acting Inspector General to focus his ongoing general review of ARBs on the most recent Benghazi ARB.
The Inspector General’s Office announced last week that it has launched a review of the work of the Benghazi ARB, as well as all previously convened ARBs. The Benghazi ARB members were appointed by Clinton, and, Royce says, its members subsequently failed to interview the senior-most Department officials, including Clinton, Deputy Secretary William Burns,
