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Hillary Clinton was in the hot seat in the U.S. Capitol Thursday, testifying before the Select Committee on Benghazi about the 2012 attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya. During the nearly 11-hour hearing, Clinton faced an aggressive line of questioning by Republican members of the committee about her actions as Secretary of State during and after the attack that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens. Republicans members used emails obtained from Clinton’s private email server to question whether she paid enough attention to the level of unrest in Libya leading up to the attack. They also tried to determine if she knew at the time that the initial explanation given to the public that protesters had carried out the attack was wrong, since it later became clear that militants had done it. Clinton defended her actions and that of the State Department at the time, saying that she received no information telling her that the ambassador and his staff were in imminent danger. She again took full responsibility for the loss of Stevens and the other three Americans and said their death weighed heavily on her. Democrats on the committee accused the Republican members of using the investigation to try to publically damage Clinton’s presidential campaign. They charged that no new information was being revealed by the drawn-out questioning. “The question is, have we found anything substantively that tells us something different about what happened in Benghazi? And the answer to that question is no,” said Congressman Adam Smith of Washington State. Republican Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy of South Carolina outright denied the allegations and said the committee’s goal has always been understanding what happened in order to prevent similar incidents in the future. “(N)ot a single member of this committee signed up to investigate you or your e-mail,” Gowdy said. The committee expects to finish its investigation by January.Vocab
Benghazi
– city in Libya and U.S. diplomatic outpost where four Americans died in a terrorist attack in 2012
U.S. Department of State
– a federal body responsible for carrying out international relations and making foreign policy
Secretary of State
– the leader of the State Department, nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate; a member of the President’s cabinet
House Select Committee
– a small legislative committee created to examine a specific issue or bill
Warm up questions
- What does the Secretary of State do?
- What do you know about Hillary Clinton?
- Who is running for president and what do you know about the candidates?
Critical thinking questions
- How would you describe the tone of the exchanges between Hillary Clinton and the House Select Committee?
- If the representative from your district was part of the House Select Committee, what would you want her or him to do in this situation?
- Do you think the State Department should continue to send diplomats to danger zones? Explain.
