Ex-President Bill Clinton sprang to the defense of his wife Wednesday, insisting that former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton responded properly to the September 2012 Benghazi attack just as a select House committee has been charged with investigating what happened.
“In my opinion, Hillary did what she should have done,” Mr. Clinton said Wednesday at a summit on fiscal issues sponsored by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.
The former president cited Mrs. Clinton’s establishing a high-level review committee to examine the attack, which left four Americans dead, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
The report from the State Department’s Accountability Review Board (ARB) concluded that systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies within the State Department left security “grossly inadequate” to deal with the attack in the Libyan city.
The board issued a series of recommendations on staffing and security preparation, which the State Department has said it is implementing or has addressed.
Mrs. Clinton has said that Benghazi was her biggest regret from her time at State. She said last week she is “absolutely” satisfied with the information that’s come out in the aftermath.
“I mean, of course there are a lot of reasons why, despite all of the hearings, all of the information that’s been provided, some choose not to be satisfied and choose to continue to move forward. That’s their choice,” Mrs. Clinton told ABC News.
“And I do not believe there is any reason for it to continue in this way, but they get to call the shots in the Congress,” she said.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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