[House Report 114-848]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                                                 House Calendar No. 163

114th Congress    }                                      {   Report

                      HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES        
2d Session        }                                      {  114-848
_______________________________________________________________________

                                     

                                                 




                         F I N A L  R E P O R T

                                 of the

                          SELECT COMMITTEE ON
                         THE EVENTS SURROUNDING
                           THE 2012 TERRORIST
                           ATTACK IN BENGHAZI

                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES


                             together with

                     ADDITIONAL AND MINORITY VIEWS


[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]



  December 7, 2016.--Referred to the House Calendar and ordered to be 
                                printed
                                
                                
                                
                                
                                

              FINAL REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE 
        EVENTS SURROUNDING THE 2012 TERRORIST ATTACK IN BENGHAZI









114th Congress    }                                         {    Report
                       HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES                 
2d Session        }                                         {    114-848
_______________________________________________________________________

                                     




                         F I N A L  R E P O R T

                                 of the

                          SELECT COMMITTEE ON

                         THE EVENTS SURROUNDING

                           THE 2012 TERRORIST

                           ATTACK IN BENGHAZI

                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES


                             together with

                     ADDITIONAL AND MINORITY VIEWS


[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]



  December 7, 2016.--Referred to the House Calendar and ordered to be 
                                printed
                                
                                
                                
                                
                             _________ 

                U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
                   
 22-867                  WASHINGTON : 2016       
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  Fax:(202) 512-2104 Mail:Stop IDCC,Washington,DC 20402-001                                    
                                
                                
                                
                                
                   HOUSE SELECT COMMITTEE ON BENGHAZI

                  TREY GOWDY, South Carolina, Chairman
LYNN WESTMORELAND, Georgia           ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland,
JIM JORDAN, Ohio                       Ranking Member
PETER ROSKAM, Illinois               ADAM SMITH, Washington
MIKE POMPEO, Kansas                  ADAM SCHIFF, California
MARTHA ROBY, Alabama                 LINDA SANCHEZ, California
SUSAN BROOKS, Indiana                TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois

                              ------------

This report is dedicated to the memory and service of Glen A. Doherty, 
       Sean P. Smith, J. Christopher Stevens, and Tyrone S. Woods
                            COMMITTEE STAFF

            Philip G. Kiko, Staff Director & General Counsel
              Christopher A. Donesa, Deputy Staff Director
                      Dana Chipman, Chief Counsel

Sarah Adams, Senior Advisor          Sheria Clarke, Counsel
Sara Barrineau, Investigator         Carlton Davis, Counsel
Brian Beattie, Professional Staff    Mark Grider, Deputy General 
    Member                               Counsel
Kimberly Betz, Member Liaison &      Sharon Jackson, Deputy Chief 
    Counsel                              Counsel
Rob Borden, Senior Advisor           Craig Missakian, Deputy Chief 
Luke Burke, Investigator/Detailee        Counsel
                                     J. Mac Tolar, Senior Counsel

                 Jamal D. Ware, Communications Director
             Amanda Duvall, Deputy Communications Director
                     Matt Wolking, Press Secretary

Douglas Alexander, Printing Clerk    Abigail Helvering, Staff Assistant
Anne Binsted, Finance and Personnel  Pat Knudsen, Shared Employee
    Administrator                    Paige Lueken, Executive Assistant
Frank Chang, Legal Intern            Barbara McCaffrey, Documents Clerk
George Gerbo, Staff Assistant        Elizabeth McWhorter, Security 
Elizabeth Gorman, Professional           Manager
    Staff Member                     William Sacripanti, Staff 
Clark Hedrick, Legal Intern              Assistant
                                     Elizabeth Starek, Staff Assistant
                                     Sharon Utz, Professional Staff 
                                         Member

                             Minority Staff

       Susanne Sachsman Grooms, Staff Director & General Counsel
                     Heather Sawyer, Chief Counsel
           Dave Rapallo, Senior Advisor to the Ranking Member

Krista Boyd, Senior Counsel          Laura Rauch, Senior Professional 
Peter Kenny, Senior Counsel              Staff Member
Ronak Desai, Counsel                 Daniel Rebnord, Professional Staff 
Shannon Green, Counsel                   Member
Valerie Shen, Counsel                Brent Woolfork, Professional Staff 
Jennifer Werner, Communications 
    Director                             Member
Paul Bell, Deputy Communications     Erin O'Brien, Investigator/
    Director                             Detailee
Linda Cohen, Senior Professional     Kendal Robinson, Investigator/
    Staff Member                         Detailee
                                     Mone Ross, Staff Assistant

                            Majority Interns

J. Michael Abler                     Clay Bryan
Jeff Beck                            Amanda Gonzalez
Courtney Ballenger                   Francesca Savoia
Michelle Bowling                     Ivy Wilborn




                         LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL

                              ----------                              


                              House of Representatives,
                                        Select Committee on the
                                          Events Surrounding The
                                      2012 Terrorist Attack                                         
                                             in Benghazi,
                                  Washington, December 7, 2016.
                                   
        

Hon. Karen L. Haas,
Clerk, House of Representatives,
Washington, DC.

Dear Ms. Haas:

    Pursuant to H. Res. 567 of the 113th Congress and section 
4(a) of H. Res. 5 of the 114th Congress, I hereby transmit the 
attached report, ``Final Report of the Select Committee on the 
Events Surrounding the 2012 Terrorist Attack in Benghazi.''

            Sincerely,
                                  Trey Gowdy,
                                    Chairman.
                                    
                                    
                                    
                                    



                                                  House Calendar No. 163
                                                 
114th Congress    }                                          {    Report
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
 2d Session       }                                          {   114-848

======================================================================



 
FINAL REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE EVENTS SURROUNDING THE 2012 
                      TERRORIST ATTACK IN BENGHAZI

                                _______
                                

  December 7, 2016.--Referred to the House Calendar and ordered to be 
                                printed

                                _______
                                

Mr. Gowdy, from the Select Committee on the Events Surrounding the 2012 
         Terrorist Attack in Benghazi, submitted the following

                              R E P O R T

                             together with

                     ADDITIONAL AND MINORITY VIEWS

    On July 8, 2016, the Select Committee on the Events 
Surrounding the 2012 Terrorist Attack in Benghazi, approved and 
reported the following investigative report to the House, 
pursuant to H. Res. 567 (113th Congress).

                                CONTENTS

                                                                   Page

Illustrations....................................................     3
Part I. Terrorist Attacks on U.S. Facilities in Benghazi.........     9
Part II. Internal and Public Government Communications about the 
  Terrorist Attacks in Benghazi..................................   133
Part III. Events Leading to the Terrorist Attacks in Benghazi....   263
Part IV. Compliance with Congressional Investigations............   353
Part V. Recommendations..........................................   409
Additional Views of Rep. Jim Jordan and Rep. Mike Pompeo.........   415
Appendix A: Resolution Establishing the Select Committee on the 
  Events Surrounding the 2012 Terrorist Attack in Benghazi.......   453
Appendix B: Significant Persons and Organizations................   461
Appendix C: Questions for the President..........................   467
Appendix D: Significant Events in Libya Prior to the Attacks.....   471
Appendix E: Security Incidents in Libya..........................   475
Appendix F: Deterioration of Benghazi Mission Compound Security..   531
Appendix G: Timelines of the Attacks.............................   559
Appendix H: The September 12 Situation Report and the President's 
  Daily Brief....................................................   575
Appendix I: Witness Interview Summaries..........................   587
Appendix J: Requests and Subpoenas for Documents.................   601
Appendix K: Analysis of Accountability Review Board, House Armed 
  Services Committee, and House Permanent Select Intelligence 
  Committee Reports..............................................   617
Appendix L: Glen A. Doherty, Sean P. Smith, J. Christopher 
  Stevens, and Tyrone S. Woods...................................   643
Minority Views...................................................   645


                             ILLUSTRATIONS
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]


                                PART I:

                 Terrorist Attacks on U.S. Facilities 
                              in Benghazi

``If you guys don't get here, we're all going to f---ing 
die.''\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\Testimony of GRS 4, Cent. Intel. Agency, Tr. at 33 (Mar. 1, 
2016) [hereinafter GRS 4 Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

                        Diplomatic Security Agent in Benghazi 
                        during the
                        attacks

``I'm in Benghazi this week, lurking about with my eyes ever-
peeled for RPG's hurtling towards my motorcade!''\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\Email from J. Christopher Stevens, U.S. Ambassador to Libya, to 
personal account of Dominic A.G. Asquith, U.K. Ambassador to Libya 
(Sept. 11, 2012, 5:40 AM) (on file with the Committee, C05390150).

                        Ambassador Christopher Stevens, to the 
                        U.K.
                        Ambassador on the morning of September 
                        11, 2012

``We're under attack.''\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \3\Testimony of Gregory Hicks, Deputy Chief of Mission, Libya, U.S. 
Dep't of State at 18 (Apr. 11, 2013) [hereinafter Hicks Apr. 2013 
Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

                        Ambassador Christopher Stevens, on the 
                        evening of
                        September 11, 2012

    BACKGROUND: SEPTEMBER 2012 AND THE AMBASSADOR'S TRIP TO BENGHAZI

                Stevens' Decision to Travel to Benghazi

    J. Christopher Stevens, a highly and widely respected 
diplomat, was sworn in as the United States Ambassador to Libya 
on May 14, 2012.\4\ Thirteen months earlier in 2011, while 
Libya was still in the throes of a civil war, Stevens 
courageously arrived in Benghazi, Libya on a Greek cargo ship 
to serve as the United States' Special Representative to the 
Transitional National Council [TNC].\5\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \4\Public Schedule [for the Secretary of State] for May 14, 2012 
found at www.State.gov/pa/prs/appt/2012/05/14/189814.htm.
    \5\U.S. Representative to TNC Stevens provides an update on Libya, 
DIPNOTE, Aug. 3, 2011 found at https://blogs.state.gov/stories/2011/08/
03/us-representative-t-n-c-stevens-provides-
update-libya.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Stevens remained Special Representative to the TNC for more 
than six months in 2011 and witnessed both the dictatorship of 
Muammar Qadhafi topple and the reopening of the U.S. Embassy in 
Tripoli, which had previously been evacuated at the beginning 
of the Libyan revolution in February of 2011.\6\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \6\A Guide to the U.S. History of Recognition, Diplomatic, and 
Consular Relations, by Country, Since 1776: [State Department/Office of 
the Historian] found at: https://history.state.gov/
countries/libya.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Stevens left Benghazi in November of 2011, to return to the 
United States, where he would be nominated and confirmed as 
Ambassador to Libya the following May.\7\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \7\Biography of J. Christopher Stevens, Ambassador, Libya, found 
at: https://state.gov/r/pa/ec/biog/193075.htm.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Stevens had a deep affection for the Libyan people in 
general and the people of Benghazi in particular. He also knew 
Libya as well as anyone in the U.S. Foreign Service. He would 
soon learn much had changed in Libya from the time he left as 
Special Representative in November of 2011 until the time he 
returned as Ambassador in May of 2012.
    The Benghazi Mission compound where Stevens lived for 
several months in 2011 remained open while he was in the U.S. 
awaiting confirmation as Ambassador. The Benghazi Mission 
compound was protected by Diplomatic Security Agents and 
staffed by a Principal Officer who provided political reporting 
on the changes occurring in Benghazi as the country attempted 
to recover after the revolution.
    In August of 2012, three months after Stevens returned to 
Libya as the newly confirmed Ambassador, the Principal Officer 
in Benghazi was nearing the end of his assignment. There would 
be a two-week gap between the Principal Officer's departure 
date and the arrival of the next Principal Officer.\8\ No one 
was scheduled to fill this vacancy until September 15, 2012, so 
Ambassador Stevens chose to send Principal Officer 4, to cover 
the vacancy during the first week in September.\9\ Stevens 
chose himself to cover the second week.\10\ According to 
Gregory N. Hicks, who as the Deputy Chief of Mission was second 
in command at the time, Stevens ``very much wanted to get back 
to Benghazi . . . he had not been able to go since his own 
arrival in Tripoli'' in May of 2012.\11\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \8\See Hicks Apr. 2013 Testimony at 9 (``[Principal Officer 3] left 
at the end of August, and the new Principal Officer was not arriving 
until--scheduled to arrive until September 15th or thereabouts.'').
    \9\See id. at 57 (``And so basically Chris announces at the meeting 
that [Principal Officer 4] is going to go to Benghazi to cover the 
first week in the gap, first week in September, and that he would cover 
the second week.'').
    \10\Id.
    \11\Id. at 9.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The timing of Stevens' visit to Benghazi was important for 
another reason as well. He was spearheading an effort to make 
Benghazi a permanent post, Hicks testified:

        One of the things he [Stevens] said to me was that, in 
        his exit interview with Secretary Clinton, she 
        expressed the hope that we could make the special 
        mission in Benghazi a permanent constituent post. And 
        Chris said that one of the first things he intended to 
        do after his arrival was develop a proposal to move 
        forward on that project.\12\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \12\Id. at 7.

    A trip to Benghazi would allow Stevens to personally assess 
the political and security situation and make a recommendation 
regarding whether the U.S. should have a permanent presence 
there. Discussions were already under way in Washington D.C. on 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
how to fund a permanent post. Hicks stated:

        [W]e are only a month from the end of the fiscal year, 
        so we have to get a [sic] or, we have to help 
        Washington, the executive director's office of the Near 
        East Bureau to put together a package to get it to [the 
        Undersecretary for Management] Pat Kennedy for a 
        decision by September 30th. Otherwise, we lose the 
        money. Because we had surplus money available from 
        Iraq--I can't remember, Iraq contingency fund I think--
        that had been notified by Pat Kennedy for transfer from 
        Iraq--it wasn't going to get spent in Iraq, and so we 
        were going to spend it in Libya and in Benghazi. But we 
        had to get the justification forward to do that.\13\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \13\Id. at 16-17.

    While the end of the fiscal year funding deadline was 
looming, the Diplomatic Security Agent in charge at the Embassy 
in Tripoli was, nonetheless, concerned about Stevens' trip to 
Benghazi. Although his first planned trip to Benghazi in the 
beginning of August 2012 had to be canceled because of 
security,\14\ Stevens was adamant, however, about going in 
September.\15\ The Diplomatic Security Agent testified:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \14\See Email from J. Christopher Stevens, U.S. Ambassador to 
Libya, to Principal Officer 3, Foreign Service Officer, U.S. Dep't of 
State, (Aug. 2, 2012, 2:45 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05390855).
    \15\See Testimony of Diplomatic Security Agent 23, U.S. Dep't of 
State, Tr. at 69-70 (Oct. 10, 2013) [hereinafter Diplomatic Sec. Agent 
23 Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

        Previous to this--to his decisions to going up there, 
        there was--we would meet weekly to discuss the security 
        situation in Libya. . . . [T]here was a specific 
        meeting regarding what was happening in Benghazi. In 
        that meeting, we reviewed incidents and probable 
        causes, what's initiating it. And a lot of discussion 
        was that it was the conflict or the incidents up there 
        were, you know, local population against local 
        population and that that they weren't specifically 
        targeting Americans . . . up there. I expressed my 
        concerns about the incidents that did involve us. And 
        the basic response was that they . . . were anomalies.

                              *    *    *

        It was the persons attending the meeting. I believe it 
        was the Ambassador who actually said its anomalies; we 
        can't account for anomalies. And other members of the 
        group seemed to concur with that. And then this trip 
        was planned because there was a gap in principal 
        officer up there and the opening of the American 
        corner. . . . I knew he was bound and determined to go.

        I've been wracking my memory trying to remember the 
        exact conversations I had with him on this. But I know 
        he knew I didn't--the idea of him traveling there. But 
        I knew he was determined to go. So doing everything I 
        can to make it as safe as possible, given my resources 
        and the environment--safety--compounds--both compounds, 
        all the Americans there.\16\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \16\Id.

    Not only was the looming funding deadline an impetus for 
Stevens' trip, an upcoming trip by Hillary R. Clinton, 
Secretary of State, in the fall of 2012 was also a motivating 
factor for him to travel to Benghazi. The hope was to establish 
a permanent consulate in Benghazi for the Secretary to present 
to the Libyan government during her trip. Hicks discussed this 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
with the Committee:

        Q: Okay. We know that Ambassador Stevens went to 
        Benghazi on September 10th. Was there anything about 
        his trip to Benghazi in September of 2012 that was sort 
        of a precursor for the Secretary's trip?

        A: Well, you know, when we have a visit by a major 
        political figure, like the Secretary of State, like the 
        President, you know, we try to make that visit 
        important publicly. And so we generally will create a 
        list of what we call deliverables, items of importance 
        to the bilateral relationship. So we hoped for the 
        Secretary to announce the opening of a permanent 
        consulate in Benghazi during her visit[.]

        Q: Was there any reason that--was there anything 
        related to making Benghazi a permanent post that was 
        part of the purpose of Ambassador Stevens going to 
        Benghazi in September?

        A: Oh, absolutely. And so again, we had begun the 
        process of developing a political rationale for having 
        a permanent post in Benghazi. I sent in that rationale 
        at the end of August to the executive director of the 
        NEA [Near Eastern Affairs] bureau. We had begun a 
        process of identifying locations and drawing plans for 
        such a post.

                              *    *    *

        And we understood that the situation in eastern Libya 
        was unstable and we wanted to--and Chris Stevens wanted 
        to make sure that what we were doing was going--was the 
        right course of action. And he personally, because he 
        had the contacts in the region, because he had their 
        trust. He was the only person that we felt could go to 
        Benghazi and get a clear picture of the political 
        situation there and the security situation there as 
        well.\17\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \17\Testimony of Gregory N. Hicks, Deputy Chief of Mission at U.S. 
Embassy Tripoli, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 50-51 (Apr. 14, 2016) 
[hereinafter Hicks Apr. 2016 Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

    The Secretary was planning to travel to Libya in October of 
2012.\18\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \18\Email from Huma Abedin, Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, 
U.S. Dep't of State, to Philippe Reines, Deputy Ass't Sec'y for Public 
Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State (Sept. 12, 2012, 9:15 AM) (on file with 
the Committee, SCB0075710).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                Benghazi: September 1-September 10, 2012

    Security deficiencies plagued the Benghazi Mission compound 
in the lead-up to September 2012. With the departure of the 
Diplomatic Security Agent in charge at the end of August, only 
two Diplomatic Security Agents remained to secure the 
compound.\19\ A Diplomatic Security Agent from Tripoli was 
routed to Benghazi to serve temporarily during the month of 
September putting three agents on the ground as of September 1, 
2012.\20\ None of the Diplomatic Security Agents in Benghazi 
had ever served at a high-threat post.\21\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \19\See Email from Deputy Dir. for Maghreb Affairs, U.S. Dep't of 
State, to Diplomatic Sec. Agent 25, U.S. Dep't of State (Aug. 27, 2012 
4:47 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05394203) (``Thanks for your 
call and clarification that DS has had no volunteers for Benghazi for 
the upcoming few months.'').
    \20\See Hicks Apr. 2013 Testimony at 56.
    \21\See id. at 14 (``Principal Officer 4 is chosen to be Acting 
Principal Officer for the first week in September. And he goes to 
Benghazi and is there with three Diplomatic Sec. special agents, all of 
whom are brand new to the service and on temporary duty assignment.'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In addition, the Mission compound's contracted quick 
reaction force, the February 17 Martyrs Brigade militia, which 
provided interior armed security at the Benghazi Mission 
compound, informed the Diplomatic Security Agents two days 
before the Ambassador was scheduled to arrive it would no 
longer provide off-compound security.\22\ This meant the three 
Diplomatic Security Agents on the ground would have no security 
support for any transport or for any meetings held off of the 
compound during Stevens' visit. The Diplomatic Security Agents 
attributed the change in policy to an inter-militia power 
struggle.\23\ The next day, however, the Principal Officer in 
Benghazi, joined a meeting with leading militia officials 
during which time they told him they could no longer guarantee 
the safety of the compound. The Principal Officer described the 
meeting:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \22\See Diplomatic Sec. Agent 23 Testimony at 44-45.
    \23\See Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 3, Diplomatic Sec. 
Service, U.S. Embassy Tripoli, Libya (Sept. 8, 2012 9:29 PM) (on file 
with the Committee, C05396013).

        [T]here was a--it was a growing and nascent group of 
        commanders who--militia commanders who were just 
        becoming kind of players on the security scene. And 
        some of the working assumptions were that they were 
        doing this mainly for personal profit; others for 
        religious and ideological reasons. It is trying to 
        understand motivations of groups of people who may or 
        may not become future leaders for the city of Benghazi 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        or the country of Libya.

        So these folks were identified as people who fit that 
        billet, essentially, security official officials who 
        may or may not have aspirations for larger roles in 
        Benghazi.

                              *    *    *

        Libya Shield was a brand new organization at that time 
        that was kind of emerging from the ranks of the 
        [Supreme Security Council] and from other official 
        organizations. They had numbers to them. What I 
        characterize in here was what was the most fascinating 
        part of the meeting to me. I was sitting with Wissam 
        bin Hamid and Jumaa and I forget his name al Gha'abi. 
        They were debating which militias they belonged to and 
        who was in control of them and what their ideology was 
        and what their ambitions were. And they weren't you 
        know, they disagreed on many of those things.

        And one member was--one of the commanders was a member 
        of the other commander's brigade under that commander, 
        and that commander was a member of that commander's 
        brigade under that commander. So it was really 
        difficult to determine who was in charge, and I think 
        they right there in front of us were, you know, playing 
        that out, which is a great opportunity to really get a 
        sense of what's going on in the rest of the country.

                              *    *    *

        Q: [I]t looks like it's the second to last sentence or 
        third to last sentence, it begins: They criticized the 
        [U.S. Government] for supporting National Forces 
        Alliance leader and prime minister candidate Mahmoud 
        Jibril. Do you recall what their criticism of the U.S. 
        Government was?

        A: Yeah. So ``supporting'' is in quotations, right, and 
        which is a false accusation against the United States. 
        We don't support candidates in a foreign government's 
        internal domestic election. But the general perception, 
        because Mahmoud Jibril is an American citizen as well 
        as a Libyan, is that the United States Government was 
        backing him. He was a big political player, former 
        prime minister and someone who was gaining it seemed to 
        be at that time someone who may end up with another 
        very high ranking position in the Libyan Government. 
        That did not meet these particular militia commanders' 
        idea of a beneficial Libyan structure for them, and so 
        they were complaining about it.

        Q: [Y]ou go on to write: If Jibril won, they said they 
        would not continue to guarantee security in Benghazi, a 
        critical function they asserted they were currently 
        providing. What was your understanding of what they 
        meant when they said they would not continue to 
        guarantee security in Benghazi?

        A: Yeah, I did not take that as a threat against U.S. 
        interests, the U.S. compound, U.S. persons, or anything 
        else. I took that more as a general discussion of 
        Benghazi, the security situation in Benghazi is 
        generally deteriorating, if they at least their 
        assertion that the general condition in Benghazi would 
        deteriorate if they withdrew their security support.

        Q: Did you understand what did they mean by withdrew 
        their security support?

        A: Well, I mean, that's one of the questions I was 
        asking, right. What do you do? Who are you? Why are you 
        Libya 1? Why are you Libya 2? What's your role? How do 
        you fit into the security structure? And, as I said, 
        you know, they didn't really have a very good picture 
        of it themselves, so I couldn't come out with one.\24\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \24\Testimony of Principal Officer 4, Foreign Service Officer, U.S. 
Dep't of State, Tr. at 64-68 (May 8, 2015) (on file with the 
Committee). See also, Email from J. Christopher Stevens, U.S. 
Ambassador to Libya, to Principal Officer 4, Foreign Service Officer, 
U.S. Dep't of State (Sept. 10, 2012 1:51 AM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05395344).

    The meeting underscored that the militias in Benghazi 
controlled what little security environment existed there. Not 
having off-compound support from a militia would significantly 
threaten Stevens' safety.

             Stevens' Trip to Benghazi: September 10, 2012

    Stevens arrived by a commercial airplane in Benghazi on the 
morning of September 10, 2012.\25\ Traveling with him were two 
of the six Diplomatic Security Agents assigned to the Embassy 
in Tripoli. Four Diplomatic Security Agents remained behind at 
the Embassy along with four Department of Defense special 
operators who had previously served as part of the Site 
Security Team [SST].\26\ In addition, the special operators had 
previously augmented security at the Benghazi Mission compound, 
but they were no longer able to do so.\27\ Patrick F. Kennedy, 
the Under Secretary for Management, State Department, 
terminated the SST's responsibilities for the Embassy's 
security in August of 2012.\28\ As a result, the SST was no 
longer able to travel with Stevens or augment security in 
Benghazi.\29\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \25\Testimony of Diplomatic Sec. Agent 2, Tr. at 47 (Mar. 19, 2015) 
[hereinafter Diplomatic Sec. Agent 2].
    \26\Testimony of Gregory N. Hicks, Deputy Chief of Mission at U.S. 
Embassy Tripoli, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 12-14 (Apr. 11, 2013) 
[hereinafter Hicks Apr. 2013 Testimony] (on file with the Committee).
    \27\Hicks Apr. 2016 Testimony at 17.
    \28\Id. at 20, 33-35; see also, Email from Patrick Kennedy, Under 
Sec'y for Mgmt., U.S. Dep't of State, to Robert Neller, Lieutenant 
General, U.S. Dep't of Defense (July 15, 2012,) (on file with the 
Committee SCB0076533).
    \29\See Hicks Apr. 2013 Testimony at 12-13.

      The August 6th attack, or incident, if you will, AFRICOM 
      decided to draw down the SST team from 16 members to 6. 
      Chris concurred in that decision because he didn't really 
      feel like he had, you know, much leverage other than that. 
      And so [the Commander of the Site Security Team] and nine 
      other members of the team left he may have discussed this 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
      in mid -August.

      Full expectation was that when we, as the embassy, and 
      working with the Defense Attache, achieved the agreement of 
      the Libyan Government to proceed with the counterterrorism 
      mission under section 1208, and the training team was given 
      diplomatic immunity, they would return and begin the 
      training mission. So they left. So we have at the time, 
      then, six members of the SST left, divided in two different 
      locations, four and two. But they are still under AFRICOM 
      authority.

      General Ham issued a letter after the negotiation in 
      Stuttgart over Eid al Fitr describing the relationship of 
      the SST to the embassy going forward. I honestly cannot 
      remember whether the contents of that letter are classified 
      or not. I know it was transmitted to us over classified 
      communications. But it was not Chief of Mission authority, 
      I can tell you that. They were not told that they were 
      under the authority of the Ambassador with respect to 
      security, although they were told to cooperate I believe it 
      told them to cooperate with the RSO for internal defense 
      matters, if I remember correctly.
    In fact, during August 2012, the total number of State 
Department security agents assigned to the Embassy in Tripoli 
dropped from 34 individuals to six.\30\ Losing 28 security 
agents reduced not only the security resources available to the 
Embassy, but also those available to the Benghazi Mission 
compound. With limited security agents in Tripoli, there were 
no surplus security agents to send to augment security in 
Benghazi--without leaving the Embassy in Tripoli at severe 
risk.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \30\Id. at 13-14.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Hicks described the impact of the reduction in personnel on 
the overall security platform in Libya:

        [W]hen I arrived on July 31st . . . we had the 16 
        members of the SST and we had about 14 or so State 
        security personnel, who were divided between either 
        special agents or MSD, members of the mobile security 
        detail teams.

        Through August, the MSD personnel are withdrawn until, 
        by August 31st, . . . the security complement in Libya 
        at the time was: In Tripoli is an RSO plus 5 assistant 
        regional security officers protecting approximately 28 
        diplomatic personnel. And in Benghazi we have three DS 
        special agents protecting two State Department 
        personnel in our facilities.

        So the answer to your question . . . we had nine people 
        to draw from when Chris decided you know, [Principal 
        Officer 4] is chosen to be Acting Principal Officer for 
        the first week in September. And he goes to Benghazi 
        and is there with three Diplomatic Security special 
        agents, all of whom are brand new to the service and on 
        temporary duty assignment.

        So when Chris goes to Benghazi on the 10th of 
        September, [Diplomatic Security Agent 23], the RSO, 
        assigns two of our personnel in [Tripoli] to go with 
        him. [N]ow we have, on the morning of September 11th, 
        when [Principal Officer 4] flies back to Tripoli, we 
        now have five Diplomatic security special agents 
        protecting the Ambassador and Sean Smith. In Tripoli, 
        we have four we have a Regional Security Officer and 
        three Assistant Regional Security Officers to protect 
        28 diplomatic personnel.\31\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \31\Id.

    Publicity about Stevens' trip to Benghazi was reportedly 
limited. He previously told his staff and contacts on the 
ground ``for security reasons we'll need to be careful about 
limiting moves off-compound and scheduling as many meetings as 
possible in the villa.''\32\ Stevens said he wanted to ``avoid 
the RPG reception that the UK Amb[assador] got. . . .''\33\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \32\Email from J. Christopher Stevens, U.S. Ambassador to Libya, to 
a Locally Employed Staff, U.S. Dep't of State, and Principal Officer 4, 
U.S. Dep't of State (Sept. 8, 2012, 4:37 AM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05390147).
    \33\Email from Principal Officer 3, U.S. Dep't of State, to J. 
Christopher Stevens, U.S. Ambassador to Libya (Aug. 1, 2012 10:49 AM) 
(on file with the Committee, C05390814).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Upon arriving in Benghazi on September 10, 2012, Stevens 
received a security briefing at the nearby Central Intelligence 
Agency [CIA] annex on the changing threat environment.\34\ Due 
to the worsening security environment in Benghazi, the 
Diplomatic Security Agents at the compound requested support 
from the Annex's security team, the Global Response Staff 
[GRS], to supplement Stevens' movements off-compound in 
Benghazi.\35\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \34\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 2 Testimony at 54.
    \35\Id. at 59.

        Q: You talked during the last hour about the 
        intelligence briefing that you provided to the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Ambassador the night before the attack.

        What type of reaction did you get from the Ambassador 
        from your briefing?

        A: He was interested. He took a lot of notes. It struck 
        me a little bit that he was surprised at how fast the 
        situation had deteriorated in eastern Libya.

        Q: And what did he do to give you that impression that 
        he was surprised at how quickly----

        A: He was called in to go to his next appointment 
        several times, and he refused to leave before we 
        finished.

        Q: Okay, do you know who his next appointment was?

        A: Yes.

        Q: And what was that?

        A: Benghazi City Council, I believe.

        Q: Did the Ambassador ask any questions of you during 
        the briefing?

        A: Yes, yeah, he asked a lot of questions.

        Q: And what were his questions along the lines of if 
        you can recall?

        A: Specifically about the extremist groups that 
        established presence in eastern Libya since the fall of 
        the regime.

        Q: Okay, and do you recall at that time approximately 
        how many extremist groups there were that had 
        established a presence?

        A: Several.

        Q: Several?

        A: Yes.

        Q: Well, from what you can remember, what are the names 
        to the extent that you can remember?

        A: Yes, AQIM; Al Qaeda; and Islamic Brethren; AQAP; Al 
        Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula; AQ Pakistan; EIJ, 
        Egyptian Islamic Jihad. By that time, Ansar al-Sharia 
        Derna had established a presence.\36\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \36\Officer A, Cent. Intel. Agency, Tr. at 116-118. (Mar 2, 2016) 
[hereinafter Officer A Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

    Later in the evening of September 10th, Stevens--with 
Diplomatic Security Agents and GRS security--visited the 
Benghazi Local Council. Media was present upon his arrival.\37\ 
One of the Diplomatic Security Agents testified:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \37\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 2 Testimony at 52.

        Q: So, you knew prior to the council meeting that the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        press was going to show up?

        A: Yes, and we tried to turn that off, but 
        unfortunately, we couldn't. They showed up, but we sent 
        them away.

        Q: Okay. Were you surprised to learn that there would 
        be press at the council meeting?

        A: I was.\38\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \38\Id. at 52-53.

    Stevens' visit to Benghazi therefore became public to the 
extent it was not otherwise known.\39\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \39\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Stevens found the meeting with the Local Council fruitful, 
but noted Council members seemed to feel slighted that no 
sitting U.S. Ambassador had visited the city since the 
revolution ended.\40\ This was a concern among the leaders in 
Benghazi at the time, as they feared the Libyan Government's 
control and power would remain in Tripoli as it had been during 
the Qadhafi regime, thus marginalizing not just Benghazi, but 
the whole of Eastern Libya. Stevens noted this concern in his 
personal diary:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \40\J. Christopher Stevens, U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Personal 
Diary, Unofficial Testimony prepared by Patrick F. Kennedy, et al. 
(Sept. 10, 2012) (on file with the Committee, STATE-SCB0048881).

        They're an impressive & sincere group of 
        professionals--proud of their service on committees, 
        all working as volunteers. Their main problem is a lack 
        of budget & authorities. Tripoli still runs the country 
        & its bureaucrats are an uneven quality. There was a 
        little sourness about why it has taken so long to get 
        to Benghazi, and about Ambassadors who came to talk but 
        don't do anything to follow up. But overall it was a 
        positive meeting.\41\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \41\Id.

          September 10 Phone Call on September 11 Preparedness

    On September 10, 2012, the day Stevens arrived in Benghazi, 
American military forces were reminded to ``do everything 
possible to protect the American people, both at home and 
abroad.''\42\ That day the President conducted a conference 
call with key national security principals to discuss the steps 
taken to protect U.S. persons and facilities abroad and force 
protection. Leon E. Panetta, Secretary of Defense, one of the 
conference call participants acknowledged they ``were already 
tracking an inflammatory anti-Muslim video that was circulating 
on the Internet and inciting anger across the Middle East 
against the United States'' and that they ``braced for 
demonstrations in Cairo and elsewhere across the region.''\43\ 
Due to the Arab Spring, it was a time of heightened concern for 
that region in general. In particular, the discussion focused 
on several areas including Cairo, Tripoli, Tunis, Khartoum, and 
Sana'a, due to intelligence indicating potential demonstrations 
could erupt in those areas.\44\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \42\Readout of the President's Meeting with Senior Administration 
Officials on Our Preparedness and Security Posture on the Eleventh 
Anniversary of September 11th, dated Sept. 10, 2012.
    \43\Leon E. Panetta, Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War 
and Peace 225 (2014).
    \44\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Based on the September 10 conference call with national 
security principals and the President, the Defense Department 
placed its forces on ``higher alert because of the potential 
for what could happen.''\45\ Yet, the intelligence and the call 
for a ``heightened alert'' did not cause any actual adjustment 
in its posture for assets that could respond to a crisis in 
North Africa.\46\ Some assets were in the middle of training 
exercises, and others were in the middle of inspections. No 
fighter jets or tankers were placed on a ``heightened alert'' 
status.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \45\Id.
    \46\Id. See also, letter from Ashton B. Carter, Sec'y of Defense, 
to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, House Select Committee on Benghazi, Apr. 8, 
2015 (``However, it is worth noting that none of the military forces 
listed above were placed on heightened alert ahead of the attacks on 
Benghazi on September 11, 2012.'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                           SEPTEMBER 11, 2012

         Morning in Benghazi: ``Never Ending Security Threats''

    The September 10 visit to Benghazi was Stevens' first since 
becoming Ambassador, and the city had changed since his 
departure in the fall of 2011.\47\ A growing extremist movement 
had taken hold within the city limits and Stevens spent part of 
September 10th being briefed on what was happening from a 
security standpoint. One CIA officer described the declining 
security environment in Benghazi at the time:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \47\J. Christopher Stevens, U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Personal 
Diary, Unofficial Transcript prepared by Patrick F. Kennedy, et al. 
(Sept. 10, 2012) (on file with the Committee, SCB0048881).

        It was a really unique and difficult environment to 
        operate in in eastern Libya. It was really a unique 
        environment. It's a country that we have not had--I 
        mean, as you know, it was a closed country and it was a 
        police state, and it's not like it's a country that we 
        had a ton of experience in how to operate in.

                              *    *    *

        New groups are forming. New groups are dissolving. 
        Outside groups are interfering and starting to 
        establish presence. So it was an extremely dynamic and 
        fluid situation.

        As I said, you know, we had the handicap of not having 
        good SIGINT coverage within the country. And that goes 
        back to the fact that Libya, in general, was a denied 
        area for a long, long time for us, and it's an area 
        that was very difficult to operate in.

        Q: Now, [redacted text]. And I've noticed you've used 
        the same word three times, ``deteriorating.'' And one 
        would think that a post-revolutionary country probably 
        would be in not the greatest of positions to begin 
        with.

        A: Right.

        Q: And what you're saying is it deteriorated even from 
        that.

        A: That's correct.

        Q: And tell me why you have chosen to use that word and 
        what you mean by ``deteriorating''?

        A: The level of armed conflict and fighting between the 
        various groups increased. The level of assassinations, 
        attacks on foreign entities increased. There were 
        entire towns, specifically Derna and around it, that 
        became very difficult to travel to; checkpoints that 
        were manned by individuals dressed in Afghan garb, 
        jihadi garb; a lot of evidence of foreign fighters 
        coming in from outside the country.

        Specifically in June of 2012, right before the 
        elections, the Islamist militia had an overt show of 
        force, where they had a military parade roll in from 
        eastern Libya to downtown Benghazi. I mean, I guess it 
        was a message to the Libyan electorate that we are here 
        and we have a presence and we want to establish Islamic 
        State inside Libya and we want sharia to be the law of 
        the country. So there was, like, a lot of attempts to 
        intimidate the populace in Libya by these extremist 
        groups.\48\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \48\Officer A Testimony at 147-49.

    Security concerns and the anniversary of September 11 kept 
Stevens on the Benghazi Mission compound for his day full of 
meetings.
    According to his prepared agenda Stevens had meetings with 
the 17th February Brigade, the Arabian Gulf Oil Company, and 
the head of the al-Marfa Shipping and Maritime Services 
Company.\49\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \49\Schedule for J. Christopher Stevens, Ambassador, Benghazi 
Libya: September 10-14 (on file with the Committee, C05396585).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Early on the morning of September 11th, one of the 
Diplomatic Security Agents in Benghazi was notified of an 
individual dressed in a uniform typically worn by the local 
police force conducting surveillance of the Mission.\50\ The 
Diplomatic Security Agent in charge reported the incident to 
the head security officer in country at the Embassy in Tripoli 
and to staff at both the Benghazi Mission compound and the 
Annex, including Stevens.\51\ The Diplomatic Security Agent 
described the incident:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \50\Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 2 (Sept. 11, 2012, 5:00 PM) 
(on file with the Committee, C05271656).
    \51\Id.; see also Diplomatic Sec. Agent 5 Testimony at 104-105; 
Diplomatic Sec. Agent 2 Testimony at 80.

        We received word from our local guards that this 
        morning they observed a member of the police force 
        assigned to the Mission at a construction site across 
        the street from our main gate taking pictures of our 
        compound. I briefed the Ambo and provided him drafts of 
        letters notifying the [Libyan Ministry of Foreign 
        Affairs] and police. Will let you know any further 
        details.\52\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \52\Email from a Diplomatic Sec. Agent (Sept. 11, 2012, 5:00 PM) 
(on file with the Committee, C05271656).

    In Benghazi, the Supreme Security Council was the ``most 
prominent'' official police force, ``assembled from former 
members of the various militias as an interim security 
measure.''\53\ It was ``designed to be an interim security 
measure'' following the revolution but had not coalesced into 
an established force and had little impact on the security 
incidents in Benghazi.\54\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \53\U.S. Dep't of State, Cable, The Guns of August: security in 
eastern Libya (Aug. 8, 2012) (on file with the Committee, C055782149).
    \54\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Stevens' last meeting of the day was with the Turkish 
Consul General. He escorted the Turkish diplomat to the front 
gate of the compound that evening at 7:39 p.m. [1:39 p.m. in 
Washington D.C.].\55\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \55\Comprehensive Timeline of Events--Benghazi (on file with the 
Committee, SCB0047843).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Stevens' last entry in his personal journal, dated 
September 11, 2012, read: ``Never ending security threats . . . 
''\56\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \56\J. Christopher Stevens, U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Personal 
Diary, Unofficial Transcript prepared by Patrick F. Kennedy, et al. 
(Sept. 10, 2012) (on file with the Committee, SCB0048881).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                A Protest Begins at the U.S. Embassy in 
                      Cairo, Egypt on September 11

    In the hours preceding the attacks in Benghazi, a protest 
of approximately 2,000 demonstrators assembled outside the U.S. 
Embassy in Cairo, Egypt.\57\ Cairo is some 600 miles east of 
Benghazi. Plans for a demonstration in Cairo first began to 
coalesce in late August 2012 with the designated terrorist 
organization, Jamaa Islamiya, calling upon its supporters to 
protest the continued incarceration of its leader, Sheikh Omaar 
abdel Rahman, also known as the ``Blind Sheik.''\58\ Rahman is 
serving a life prison sentence for his role in the 1993 World 
Trade Center bombing.\59\ Additionally, in the days preceding 
the September 11 demonstration in Cairo, an Arabic version of a 
trailer for a little known anti-Islamic film, produced in the 
United States, was posted on YouTube.\60\ This trailer caught 
the attention of Muslims in Egypt and calls were made on 
television, in newspapers, and on social media, to protest the 
denigration of the Muslim faith as depicted in the movie 
trailer at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo on September 11, 2012.\61\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \57\Email to Susan E. Rice, U.S. Permanent Representative to the 
U.N. (Sept. 11, 2012, 7:55 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05390691) 
(re: FOR SER INFO: More on Cairo Embassy Attack).
    \58\See Larry Bell, Muslim Brotherhood Fox Was Hired To Protect Our 
Benghazi Consulate Henhouse, Forbes (Dec. 2, 2012), http://
www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/12/02/muslim-
brotherhood-fox-was-hired-to-protect-our-benghazi-consulate-henhouse-
interview.
    \59\Id.
    \60\The original trailer, in English, was posted in July 2012. See 
Phil Willon and Rebecca Keegan, Timeline: ``Innocence of Muslims'' 
Unrest, LA Times (Sept. 13, 2012), http://
articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/12/entertainment/la-et-mn-antiislam-film-
sparks-violence-20120912.
    \61\Nancy A. Youssef and Amina Ismail, Anti-U.S. outrage over video 
began with Christian activist's phone call to a reporter, McClatchy 
Newspapers (Sept. 15, 2012), http://www.
mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/article24737101.html; see also, 
Email from State Department Press Office, U.S. Dep't of State, to State 
Department Press Office, U.S. Dep't of State (Sept. 13, 2012 4:54 PM) 
(on file with the Committee, C05580045) (The film trailer ``had 
actually been circulating at a relatively low level for some months out 
there in cyberspace and that it only caught fire in the region on the 
day or just before that day that we began to see these various 
protests.'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Multiple agencies of the U.S. government were aware of the 
impending demonstration in Egypt. The U.S. Embassy in Cairo 
notified the State Department, coordinated with Egyptian 
leaders, and ordered most of its personnel not to report to 
work that day.\62\ The Department of Homeland Security issued 
an intelligence report on September 10, 2012 advising that the 
Cairo Embassy might be targeted as a means to call for the 
release of the Blind Sheik as well as in response to an anti-
Islam film.\63\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \62\See id. (``in the day or days prior to the protests that became 
violent at our Embassy in Cairo, the film had been shown on Egyptian 
television and was being quite heavily watched, and our social media 
tracking indicated that . . . we expected it to be localized to 
Egypt.'').
    \63\Catherine Herridge, DHS report warned last week of call for 
`burning the embassy down' in Cairo, Fox News, (Sept. 19, 2012), http:/
/www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/19/dhs-report-warned-last-week-call-
for-burning-embassy-down-in-cairo.print.html; see also Intel agencies 
warned U.S. embassy in Egypt of possible violence over film, Al Arabiya 
News (Sept. 18, 2012), http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/09/18/
238658.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Shortly after noon in Cairo [6 a.m. in Washington D.C.] on 
September 11, 2012, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo posted a tweet 
condemning those who would ``hurt the religious feelings of 
Muslims.''\64\ A few hours later, demonstrators began gathering 
outside the perimeter wall of the Embassy in Cairo.\65\ The 
crowd of demonstrators grew to nearly 2,000 people.\66\ Armed 
with spray paint, a handful of demonstrators scaled the walls, 
tore down the American flag, ripped it to shreds, and replaced 
it with a black militant Islamic flag.\67\ According to 
Kennedy, there were no weapons shown or used during the protest 
in Cairo.\68\ Within hours, the Egyptian police were able to 
``move the protesters off the compound peacefully.''\69\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \64\Email from Victoria J. Nuland, Spokesperson, U.S. Dep't of 
State, to Wendy Sherman, Under Sec'y for Political Affairs, U.S. Dep't 
of State, et al. (Sept. 12, 2012, 6:08 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05580024) (Subject: Today's Benghazi backgrounding points) (``The 
statement was issued from Embassy Cairo just after noon Cairo time on 
September 11, well before the incident at the Embassy.''); see also 
Karen Yourish and David A. Fahrenthold, Timeline 
on Libya and Egypt: Attacks and response, Wash. Post, (Sept. 12, 2012), 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/timeline-on-libya-
and-egypt-attacks-and-response/2012/09/12/85288638-fd03-11e1-a31e-
804fccb658f9_story.html?hpid=z1.
    \65\Email to Susan E. Rice, U.S. Permanent Representative to the 
U.N. (Sept. 11, 2012, 7:55 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05390691) 
(re: FOR SER INFO: More on Cairo Embassy Attack).
    \66\Id.
    \67\Id.
    \68\Email from Legislative Mgmt. Officer, U.S. Dep't of State, to 
H_Egypt, et al. (Sept. 12, 2012 7:55 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05562234) (Subject: Write up of U/S Kennedy Call with Hill re Libya) 
(``Attack in Cairo was a demonstration. There were no weapons shown or 
used. A few cans of spray paint.'').
    \69\Email to Susan E. Rice, U.S. Permanent Representative to the 
U.N. (Sept. 11, 2012, 7:55 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05390691) 
(re: FOR SER INFO: More on Cairo Embassy Attack) (``Egyptian police did 
finally move the protesters off the compound peacefully.'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    United States Africa Command [AFRICOM] was the U.S 
Combatant Command with responsibility for all of Africa, except 
Egypt. Despite Egypt not being in its area of responsibility, 
AFRICOM observed the Cairo protest throughout the day. Vice 
Admiral Charles J. Leidig, the Deputy Commander for Military 
Operations at AFRICOM, discussed AFRICOM's actions that day:

        [W]e had been observing the events on that day in Cairo 
        and the protests, and we were concerned that those 
        protests would cause other protests throughout the 
        region, and particularly in North Africa. Even though 
        Egypt is not in our area of responsibility, it surely 
        has an affinity with the other countries that are in 
        Northern Africa. So we were watching that carefully.

        So I actually recall staying at work until almost 1900 
        [7:00 p.m. in Libya] because we wanted to see if any 
        riots or protests would break out, and they didn't.\70\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \70\Testimony of Vice Admiral Charles J. Leidig, Deputy Commander 
for Military Operations, U.S. Africa Command, Tr. at 25-26 (Mar. 20, 
2014) [hereinafter Leidig 2014 Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

    Despite the size of the crowd of demonstrators in Cairo and 
the length of the demonstration, the protest in Cairo prompted 
no change in force laydown for the forces that might respond to 
unrest in North Africa. In other words, neither the President's 
meeting with his Cabinet which included a discussion of the 
anti-Muslim film nor the anniversary of September 11, 2001, nor 
the demonstration in Cairo prompted any change in U.S. military 
posture or asset readiness in the region.

            The Anti-Muslim Film was a ``Nonevent'' in Libya

    The protests in Cairo had little to no impact on the 
Benghazi Mission compound or throughout Libya. While the anti-
Muslim film was one of the reasons protests were called for in 
Egypt, it was virtually unknown in Libya. Hicks testified 
regarding the reaction in Libya to the film:

        Q: Was it your understanding that the Cairo protest had 
        been planned and called for?

        A: I believe I understood that at the time.

        Q: Okay. Had there been any similar protest in Libya 
        that were planned and called for prior to that day?

        A: No there were not. And so we were interested in 
        monitoring all our contacts, and monitoring social 
        media, news outlets, to see if anything erupted in 
        Libya that was comparable to what was happening in 
        Cairo. And we wanted to do that, but we wanted to do 
        that as safely as possible.

                              *    *    *

        Q: Okay. We have heard reports that the demonstrations 
        in Cairo were at least in part if not solely based on 
        some sort of video or film trailer that was out that 
        was demeaning to the Prophet Mohammed. Did you have 
        that understanding at the time?

        A: Of the Cairo----

        Q: Yes.

        A: --demonstrations?

        Q: Yes.

        A: I think maybe I did. I'm not sure.

        Q: . Were you monitoring within Libya for any type of 
        reaction to this film?

        A: Yes.

        Q: Okay. And how long had you been monitoring in Libya 
        for any type of reaction to this film?

        A: I think we had begun monitoring since about 
        September 8th.

        Q: Okay. And had you had any reaction or hits on your 
        monitoring?

        A: Very few, if any.

        Q: So it appeared to be a nonevent in the country of 
        Libya?

        A: It was a nonevent in the country of Libya.

        Q: Did you have any conversations with Ambassador 
        Stevens regarding the demonstrations in Cairo and the 
        actions that you were taking in response to that?

        A: I had texted him and said, hey, are you watching TV? 
        Embassy Cairo is under attack.

                              *    *    *

        Q: And did he respond?
        A: He said, really? And I can't remember exactly what 
        he said, but anyway it was, what's going on? And I 
        said, the embassy's been breached, the flag's been 
        taken down, the black flag has been raised in its 
        place.

        Q: Was that the sum total of your communication back 
        and forth.

        A: That was the sum total of our communication.\71\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \71\Hicks Apr. 2016 Testimony at 64-68.

    One of the Diplomatic Security Agents in Benghazi told the 
Committee what happened after Stevens learned of the Cairo 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
protests:

        Q: Did you hear at any point during the day at some 
        time about a protest in Cairo?

        A: Yes. I can't remember exactly when, but I was made 
        aware of the protests in Cairo, and the Ambassador had 
        asked about it.

        Q: And were you actually in a conversation with the 
        Ambassador?

        A: I was in a conversation with the Ambassador when he 
        said, hey, something's going on in Cairo, and he asked 
        me if I would be able to find out something about it 
        for him.

        Q: And were you able to?

        A: I made some phone calls to the command center, in 
        D.C. but there was no other information that I received 
        other than that there was a protest, and they were 
        actually in the process of evaluating the 
        situation.\72\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \72\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 2 Testimony at 82-83.

    As in Tripoli, the agents in Benghazi monitored social 
media for any planned or called-for demonstrations. On 
September 11, there was no indication in Benghazi that any 
protests over the film trailer were planned.\73\ With the film 
being a virtual nonevent in Libya, the Diplomatic Security 
Agents saw no reason to change their security posture that day. 
One Diplomatic Security Agent recounted:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \73\Email from Agent 5, Diplomatic Sec. Agent, U.S. Dep't of State, 
to J. Christopher Stevens, U.S. Ambassador to Libya (Sept. 11, 2012 
1:39 AM) (on file with the Committee, C05393199) (Subject: Daily 
Security Update).

        Q: And do you remember any conversations about whether 
        or not, because of what the Ambassador had been hearing 
        and asked you to follow-up on, or any other reasons, of 
        potentially changing anything about the security setup 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        for that evening?

        A: No, no I--no, I can't think of any changes that we 
        talked about making or made based on that.\74\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \74\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 2 Testimony at 84-85.

                          Evening in Benghazi

    On the evening of September 11, 2012, there were a total of 
seven U.S. personnel, including Stevens, on the ground at the 
compound at the time of the attack.\75\ Sean P. Smith, who 
prior to working for the State Department served in the United 
States Air Force, was one of the U.S. personnel there. Smith 
was serving as the Information Management Officer. He had been 
in Benghazi on a temporary tour of duty from The Hague for 30 
days. He arrived on September 1 and his role was to run the 
administrative component of the Mission. The other five U.S. 
personnel at the compound that evening included the two 
Diplomatic Security Agents who travelled with Stevens from 
Tripoli to Benghazi, and the three Diplomatic Security Agents 
assigned to Benghazi.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \75\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 3 Testimony at 142.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Stevens' last event of the day was a meeting with the 
Turkish Consul General, [redacted text]. The Consul General 
departed at 7:39 p.m. local time, and four British security 
team members departed at 8:27 p.m.\76\ No other visitors were 
on the Mission compound that night. There was no evidence of 
any group assembled outside the Mission compound gate: large, 
small, peaceful or otherwise.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \76\Video: DVR Footage of the Mission (Sept. 11, 2012, 1940 and 
2027, respectively).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                          THERE WAS NO PROTEST

    All five Diplomatic Security Agents on the ground that 
night in Benghazi were consistent in their testimony--before 
the attack began, there was no protest.
    One agent testified:

        Q: So the intelligence in and around Benghazi was that 
        there was no planned protest?

        A: I did not hear of a planned protest, no.

        Q: No one communicated that to you.

        A: No, I did not hear that.\77\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \77\Testimony of Diplomatic Sec. Agent 1, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. 
at 50-51 (Mar. 6, 2015) [hereinafter Diplomatic Sec. Agent 1 Testimony] 
(on file with the Committee).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Another agent testified:

        Q: Do you recall at any time during the day seeing any 
        type of crowd form outside of the mission compound.

        A: Other than?

        Q: Other than normal activity that would have occurred 
        in Benghazi, just people coming and going.

        A: So other than the attack and the attackers, no.

        Q: Okay. So there was no protest, to the best of your 
        knowledge, the day of the attack.

        A: Not to my knowledge.\78\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \78\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 2 Testimony at 123-124.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Yet another agent testified:

        Q: From your perspective, had there been a protest?

        A: No. There was nothing out there up until, well, up 
        until there was. I had been out of the gate at 8:30 
        that night. We had had personnel leaving the compound, 
        and they drove away from our compound and didn't report 
        anything, and I spoke with them subsequently, there was 
        nothing out there.\79\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \79\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 3 Testimony at 31-32.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    A fourth agent testified:

        Q: Prior to the attack occurred [sic], did you hear 
        anything on the outside, such as chanting or any type 
        of sounds [that] would be a protest?

        A: No, I never heard any sort of chanting or protest or 
        anything.

        Q: Would it then be an accurate description to describe 
        the attack as a sort of stealth attack?

        A: It was very sudden. As I had mentioned, conditions 
        immediately before the only warning that I had that 
        something was amiss was that--kind of that cry that I 
        heard at assault on the main gate.

        Q: So it was very sudden. And the first attackers that 
        you saw enter, were they armed?

        A: Yes.\80\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \80\Testimony of Diplomatic Sec. Agent 4, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. 
at 144 (Mar. 16, 2015) [hereinafter Diplomatic Sec. Agent 4 Testimony] 
(on file with the Committee).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The fifth agent testified:

        Q: If there had been something about a planned protest 
        in Benghazi, would that be the type of information that 
        you would have been interested in?

        A: Yes.

        Q: Do you recall any such information?

        A: No.\81\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \81\Testimony of Diplomatic Sec. Agent 5, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. 
at 105 (Apr. 1, 2015) [hereinafter Diplomatic Sec. Agent 5 Testimony] 
(on file with the Committee).

    Hicks was asked ``if there was . . . a protest [outside the 
facility], would that have been reported?''\82\ In his view:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \82\Hicks Apr. 2013 Testimony at 81.

        [A]bsolutely, I mean, we're talking about both security 
        officers who know their trade, even though they are 
        brand new, and one of the finest political officers in 
        the history of the Foreign Service. You know, for there 
        to have been a demonstration on Chris Stevens' front 
        door and him not to have reported it is unbelievable. 
        And secondly, if he had reported it, he would have been 
        out the back door within minutes of any demonstration 
        appearing anywhere near that facility. And there was a 
        back gate to the facility, and, you know, it 
        worked.\83\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \83\Id. at 81-82.

                  THE MISSION'S EMERGENCY ACTION PLAN

    The Mission's emergency action plan relied on the 
Diplomatic Security Agents as well as the two contracted 
internal security support entities: The Blue Mountain Guard 
Force and the February 17 Martyrs Brigade. The Blue Mountain 
Guard Force consisted of unarmed guards whose primary role was 
static surveillance of the three entrance gates as well as the 
interior of the compound. These guards had access to an alarm 
should any danger present itself. According to one Diplomatic 
Security Agent:

        The primary purpose of a local guard force is to man 
        the perimeter and the gates in order to delay and deter 
        potential security risks and to afford us additional 
        notice . . . if there were to be a security risk. In 
        addition, they were in charge of access control, so 
        screening people as they were coming in the compound, 
        screening vehicles as there were coming in the 
        compound.\84\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \84\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 4 Testimony at 16.

    The February 17 Martyrs Brigade consisted of a rotating set 
of three to four armed guards who lived on compound to operate 
as a quick reaction force to respond to any security incidents 
against the Mission. Their role was to augment security 
provided by the Diplomatic Security Agents. In addition, the 
February 17 Martyrs Brigade was supposed to send additional 
armed guards if an event occurred at the Mission compound. 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
According to one Diplomatic Security Agent:

        Q: And [how] did their role and responsibility differ 
        from the local guard force [Blue Mountain Group]?

        A: Well, they were armed primarily. But really what we 
        counted on them to do was make a phone call to the 17th 
        February Martyrs Brigade so that we could receive 
        backup in case something happened.

        Q: Okay. So you were aware that they had a larger 
        contingent of people that was to be available to----

        A: Right. Right.\85\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \85\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 5 Testimony at 22.

    One Diplomatic Security Agent provided a description of the 
emergency action plan at the compound and how the local guards 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
were expected to supplement this plan:

        The reaction plan, whether it was something small on 
        the first or something larger ultimately on the 11th or 
        12th, and this is the plan that we actually followed, 
        but the reaction plan is to shelter in place. That you 
        would take the principal officers, you secure them in 
        Villa C. The agent or whoever was in the [Tactical 
        Operations Center] building would go operate the 
        communications and reach out to the security elements 
        that were supposed to react.

        The security elements that were supposed to react 
        includes the local guard is supposed to just give us an 
        alert, a heads up of what's going on. The three to four 
        [February17 Martyrs Brigade] members that live on the 
        compound are supposed to take an active role in our 
        internal defense; additionally, the 20 person [February 
        17 Martyrs Brigade] with heavy weapons and heavy 
        vehicles 2 kilometers away that had responded in the 
        past and were expected to respond to any event that 
        necessitated them in the future. The security element 
        encompassing other Americans was part of the react plan 
        as well to support the [February 17 Martyrs Brigade] 
        elements that were going to come as well.

        So we're talking almost 30 armed personnel where 
        arrangements were made for them to respond to our 
        location, and had done so in training and in actuality 
        in past events. So whether the attack had happened--
        whether something had happened on the first, and it 
        didn't, although we had somebody armed armed personnel 
        on the roof all night, a rotating presence, or 
        something that did happen on the 11th or 12th, the 
        expectations were for these elements to respond as they 
        had done in the past.\86\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \86\See Diplomatic Sec. Agent 3 Testimony at 46-47 (for additional 
details on the reaction plans); see also Diplomatic Sec. Agent 4 
Testimony at 20 and 82, and Diplomatic Sec. Agent 5 Testimony at 88 and 
90.

    The unarmed Blue Mountain Guard Force was fully staffed the 
evening of September 11, 2012, with five guards. Two of those 
guards were assigned to the main entrance of the Benghazi 
Mission compound.\87\ Three of the four armed February 17 
Martyrs Brigade guards were at the compound at the time of the 
attack. One of the guards left early for a reported ``family 
obligation'' with no replacement. The three remaining guards 
were within the vicinity of the main gate just prior to the 
attack.\88\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \87\Letter from U.S. Dep't of State to Blue Mountain Group (Feb. 
17, 2012) (on file with the Committee, C05395135) (Subject: Notice of 
Contract Award Contract No. SAQMMA-12-C-0092 Local Guard Services 
Benghazi, Libya).
    \88\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 3 Testimony at 147.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                     ALL IS QUIET AT THE FRONT GATE

    The Diplomatic Security Agents at the compound did not 
observe any activity at the main gate during the hour leading 
up to the attack.\89\ The only movement of note was the arrival 
of a local police vehicle at the main gate at approximately 
9:02 p.m. [3:02 p.m. in Washington D.C.].\90\ According to one 
of the Diplomatic Security Agents, the one security component 
consistently lacking at the compound on a regular basis ``was 
the police support on the exterior of the compound.''\91\ On 
September 6, 2012, in the lead-up to Stevens' visit, the 
Mission requested the Libyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs 
provide one vehicle at each gate of the Mission ``round the 
clock (24 hours/day) from Sept 10, 2012 to September 15, 2012'' 
to supplement security during Stevens' visit.\92\ As the 
morning began on September 11, no police vehicle was located at 
any of the compound gates.\93\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \89\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 4 Testimony at 127; see also Diplomatic 
Sec. Agent 5 Testimony at 113-114; Diplomatic Sec. Agent 2 Testimony at 
85; Diplomatic Sec. Agent 4 Testimony at 36 (``We did have visibility 
issues, especially at night with our CCTV system. For that reason one 
of the efforts that I tried to lead was having the ESO, Engineering 
Sec. Office, come out to install new CCTV cameras that we had received. 
Unfortunately, it wasn't to be. They were scheduled to arrive I believe 
the week after the attack.'').
    \90\DVR: Footage of the Mission. (Sept. 11, 2012).
    \91\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 3 Testimony at 109.
    \92\U.S. Dep't of State, Diplomatic Note #59 prepared for the 
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Dir. of Gen. 
Protocol Dep't Branch, Benghazi Office (Sept. 6, 2012) (on file with 
the Committee, C05389670).
    \93\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 1 Testimony at 7.

        Q: Who was--what was your understanding of who the SSC 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        was?

        A: The Supreme Security Council. I knew that it was a 
        pseudo militia/police force/military elements, of, 
        again, different militia groups.

        Q: And do you know what the request had been for 
        increased security?

        A: For at least two vehicles, I believe at each gate.

        Q: And how--had that request been granted?

        A: They told me the request went in. I don't know 
        specifics of whether it was granted. The first day 
        [September 10] I do remember two vehicles outside, 
        though.

        Q: And did they express to you any concerns about the 
        status of their request, that it hadn't been granted 
        and that had caused concern for them?

        A: That day, no, but the next day, there were--two 
        vehicles weren't on--on stations, at the mission, so 
        yeah, that was a concern.

        Q: Okay. So that would have been on 9/11----

        A: Yes.\94\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \94\Id.

    That evening, however, a vehicle arrived outside of the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mission compound's front gate at 9:02 p.m.

              WARNINGS AND INDICATORS PRIOR TO THE ATTACKS

    Shortly before the attacks began, a [redacted text] 
extremist indicated [redacted text] on their way to attack the 
[Mission compound's front gate] in Benghazi.\95\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \95\[Redacted text].
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Committee also found evidence that a former TNC 
security official also claimed he attempted to pass threat 
information directly to the CIA Benghazi Annex prior to the 
attack. A few days after the attacks, on September 15, 2012, 
the [redacted text]\96\ [redacted text]\97\ [redacted text]\98\ 
[redacted text] the former TNC official tried to relay the 
information to the Director of the Libyan Intelligence Service 
and his assistant, who were both out of the country. [Redacted 
text].''\99\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \96\[Redacted text].
    \97\Id.
    \98\Id.
    \99\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    [Redacted text], however--but what the Committee has 
uncovered and verified--was the former TNC security official 
also claimed he attempted to pass this threat information 
directly to the CIA Benghazi Annex prior to the attack. This 
claim was acknowledged by both the Chief of Base in Benghazi 
and another CIA officer:\100\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \100\Officer A Testimony at 100; see also, Testimony of Chief of 
Base, Cent. Intel. Agency, Tr. at 130 (July 16, 2015) [hereinafter 
Chief of Base Testimony] (on file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Prior to the attacks, [redacted text]\101\ [redacted 
text]\102\ [redacted text].\103\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \101\Officer A Testimony at 57, 59-60.
    \102\Officer A Testimony at 85.
    \103\See Officer A Testimony at 86. But see, Chief of Base 
Testimony at 139 ([redacted text].'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    [Redacted text], the CIA was unable to confirm whether or 
not the former TNC security official's claim is true. A 
[redacted text]\104\ [redacted text]\105\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \104\Officer A Testimony at 63-64.
    \105\Id. at 64.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The CIA also reviewed [redacted text]\106\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \106\Attestation regarding [redacted text].
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    A third person also claimed he tried to contact the U.S. 
government prior to the attack. A Libyan Special Advisor on 
Security ``claimed he had tried to warn the U.S. government of 
the potential for an attack on the Consulate prior to the 
attack taking place.''\107\ This individual ``left Libya 
immediately after the attack'' and ``was afraid of potential 
threats against him, based in part on his assumption that there 
were documents in the Consulate likely found by the attackers, 
that they might interpret as him sympathizing with the U.S. 
Government.''\108\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \107\See Email to [Tripoli Station], Sept. 21, 2012 [REQUEST 
1000790 to REQUEST 1000795].
    \108\Id.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
            THE FIRST ATTACK ON THE BENGHAZI MISSION BEGINS

    At 9:42 p.m., the Libyan police vehicle at the front gate 
of the Benghazi Mission compound rapidly departed at the same 
time attackers advanced toward the main entrance.\109\ Prior to 
that, the Libyan police did not warn the Diplomatic Security 
Agents at the compound, the unarmed Blue Mountain Guards, or 
the armed February 17 Martyrs Brigade members of the surging 
attackers or of their own departure.\110\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \109\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 3 at 140 (``I can say within 30 seconds 
to a minute, before the attack started the single police car that was 
out there was a truck and it departed the scene.''); see also, DVR 
Footage of the Mission (Sept. 11, 2012, 9:42 PM).
    \110\Id. at 141.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    As the police vehicle fled, dozens of armed men rushed the 
compound and an explosion occurred near the main gate.\111\ It 
was the beginning of what would be not one, but several attacks 
on the Benghazi Mission compound.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \111\See Diplomatic Sec. Agent 4 Testimony at 144. See also, 
Diplomatic Sec. Agent 2 at 85-86; DVR Footage of the Mission (Sept. 11, 
2012, 2142.53).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Diplomatic Security Agents recalled first hearing 
taunts and chants when the attackers rushed the compound and 
then a loud explosion. They knew they were in imminent danger. 
According to one Diplomatic Security Agent:

        Q: And how did you find out about the attack?

        A: I heard a loud explosion and chanting outside.

        Q: When you say chanting, what would be----

        A: Yelling, screaming.\112\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \112\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 1 Testimony at 55.

    Attackers quickly breached the main gate pouring onto the 
compound.\113\ One Diplomatic Security Agent described his 
reaction:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \113\DVR Footage of the Mission (Sept. 11, 2012, 2143.50).

        I see the men on the compound. I immediately picked up 
        the PA system, and I say, attention on compound, 
        attention on compound, this is not a drill. Repeat, 
        this is not a drill.\114\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \114\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 3 Testimony at 137.

    The Diplomatic Security Agent immediately activated the 
alarm in accordance with the Compound's Emergency Action Plan 
calling for shelter in place.\115\ He stated: ``The react plan 
is exactly what happened: shelter in place, contact your 
support elements, and wait for their arrival.''\116\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \115\Id.
    \116\Id. at 142.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    As the alarm was sounding, two unarmed Blue Mountain Guards 
fled through the main gate.\117\ Immediately upon the initial 
breach of the main gate, the attackers were engaged briefly by 
gunfire by one or more February 17 Martyrs Brigade guards. 
According to one Diplomatic Security Agent, one of the guards 
was shot during this engagement:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \117\DVR Footage of the Mission (Sept. 11, 2012, 2142).

        At least one of them got shot. One of the local guards 
        at least one, if not two, of the local guards were 
        shot, as well, in the process. It was as this group 
        moved from building to building and we sheltered per 
        our react plan.\118\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \118\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 3 Testimony at 147.

    With minimal resistance at the main entrance, the attackers 
quickly pushed onto the compound and cornered the armed 
February 17 Martyrs Brigade guards inside their barracks and 
set fire to the barracks.\119\ The guards incurred no 
fatalities that evening. Besides the initial exchange of 
gunfire at the main entrance, no additional gunfire was 
directed toward the attackers on the compound prior to the end 
of the first wave of attacks at the Benghazi Mission compound.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \119\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    After the alarm was initiated, the Diplomatic Security 
Agent in the Tactical Operations Center [TOC] immediately 
called the GRS personnel at the Annex, located approximately 
one mile from the Benghazi Mission compound.\120\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \120\Id. at 141.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Diplomatic Security Agents were able to establish an 
open line of communication through a shared radio [redacted 
text] with the Annex during the attack allowing the two 
locations to have continuous communication.\121\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \121\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    At the same time, another Diplomatic Security Agent 
relocated to the TOC and tried to call the 17th February guards 
on the Mission compound for help.\122\ After this attempt 
failed, the Diplomatic Security Agent called the Annex compound 
and asked them to contact the headquarters of the February 17 
Martyrs Brigade to request support.\123\ The Diplomatic 
Security Agent also called the Libyan Ministry of Foreign 
Affairs for support.\124\ The agents in the TOC then notified 
the lead security officer in Tripoli.\125\ One Diplomatic 
Security Agent described their actions:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \122\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 4 Testimony at 129.
    \123\Id.
    \124\Id. at 148; Diplomatic Sec. Agent 3 Testimony at 141.
    \125\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 3 Testimony at 141; see also, Email to 
Principal Officer 4, U.S. Dep't of State (Sept. 14, 2012, 8:07 AM). 
(Subject: Re: Log of events on 9/11/12-9/12/12) (on file with the 
Committee, SCB00472640).

        So we are in the TOC office. The other agent and I 
        began to make our calls. I notify the second American 
        compound via radio. The other agent notifies the 
        February 17 Martyrs Brigade members. And then I 
        subsequently notify Tripoli, who subsequently notifies 
        D.C.; it is either State ops or the command center. We 
        basically have an open line via radio with the other 
        Americans at the second compound. And I keep Tripoli on 
        speakerphone almost the whole time as we are working 
        through and relaying what is going on.\126\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \126\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 3 Testimony at 141; Diplomatic Sec. 
Agent 4 Testimony at 128-29.

    Meanwhile, Stevens, Smith, and one Diplomatic Security 
Agent retreated to the safe haven of Villa C, a dedicated area 
within the Villa that was reinforced with a metal barred-
door.\127\ The Diplomatic Security Agent who was with Stevens 
and Smith described what happened:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \127\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 3 Testimony at 141; see also Diplomatic 
Sec. Agent 5 Testimony at 114.

        I remember hearing the chants. I mean, they were fairly 
        close already. I mean, yelling distance, which is 
        pretty close especially in a city setting. So my 
        impression is that I don't have much time. So I ran 
        right to my room, you know, put my helmet on, put my 
        vest on, grabbed my weapons, my additional weapons, and 
        I turned to lock the gate, and basically, it was a jail 
        cell door with three locks on it. I locked all three 
        locks. And at about that time Ambassador Stevens and 
        Sean Smith were coming out to their rooms. Sean Smith 
        was already, you know, donning his helmet and vest. I 
        guided them both into the safe haven, and set myself up 
        in the safe haven with--I was holding my M4.''\128\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \128\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 5 Testimony at 114.

    Two other Diplomatic Security Agents attempted to ``go back 
to Villa C to also provide protection for Stevens, but not to 
shoot at this large group.''\129\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \129\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 3 Testimony at 142.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The agents in Villa B attempted to go to Villa C, but they 
were met with a very large hostile force of 7 to 10 attackers 
with ``AKs and RPGs.''\130\ The two agents made the tactical 
decision not to shoot at this large group because, ``if we 
would have taken one of them out at the time, it could have 
gone substantially worse.''\131\ The Agents believed the 
attackers would have been ``out for blood'' and it would have 
inflamed an already bad situation.\132\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \130\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 1 Testimony at 58.
    \131\Id.
    \132\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 3 Testimony at 142.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Because of this concern, the agents chose to return to 
Villa B, which also served as the cantina or cafeteria for the 
Mission compound.\133\ After seeking refuge, one of the agents 
in Villa B then contacted the TOC in Tripoli and the other 
agent contacted the State Department's Diplomatic Security 
Command Center [DSCC] in Washington D.C. at 9:49 p.m. Benghazi 
time [3:49 p.m. in Washington, DC].\134\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \133\Id. at 141-142.
    \134\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 2 Testimony at 86; see also, Email from 
the Diplomatic Sec. Command Ctr. to the Special Assistants for the 
Secretary, et al. (page 1) (Subject: Benghazi--Attack on Compound--
09112012) (Sept. 11, 2012, 6:34 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05578314).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Unknown to the Diplomatic Security Agents on the Mission 
compound, the attackers were a mix of local extremist groups, 
including the Benghazi-based Ansar al-Sharia, al-Qaeda in the 
Lands of the Islamic Maghreb, and the Muhammad Jamal Network 
out of Egypt. Members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al-
Qaeda in Iraq and Abu Ubaydah Ibn Jarah Battalion also 
participated.\135\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \135\The Committee found no evidence of involvement by the Iranian 
government, specifically the Iranian Revolutionary Guard-Quds Force 
(IRGC-QF) as has been reported. Email from the State Department 
Operations Center (Sept. 11, 2012, 6:06 PM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05272001). At the time, there were two Ansar al-Sharia 
(AAS) branches in Libya, the one in Benghazi that was involved in the 
attack, and one in Darnah that was led by former Guantanamo detainee 
Abu Sufyian bin Qumo. There is no evidence that Qumo had any direct 
involvement in the attacks on the Mission or the Annex on 11 and 12 
September 2012. See Terrorist Attack in Benghazi: The Secretary of 
State's View, hearing before H. Comm. on Foreign Affairs, 113th Cong. 
35 (2013). The other Ansar al-Sharia, the Abu Ubaydah Ibn Jarah 
Battalion, was led at the time by Ahmed Abu Khattalah, the lone person 
charged in connection with the attack. NCTC: Libya: Terrorists and 
Extremists Reportedly Associates with the Benghazi Attacks (Sept 9, 
2013); NCTC Current: Libya: Update on Benghazi Suspects (Sept. 11, 
2013); CIA WIRe: Libya: Terrorists and Extremists Reportedly Associated 
with the Benghazi Attacks (Jan 28, 2013); CIA WIRe: Libya: Terrorists 
and Extremists Reportedly Associated with the Benghazi Attacks (Feb 26, 
2013); CIA WIRe: Libya: Terrorists and Extremists Reportedly Associated 
with the Benghazi Attacks (Aug. 12, 2013); CIA WIRe: Libya: Terrorists 
and Extremists Reportedly Associated with the Benghazi Attacks (Sept. 
9, 2013); CIA WIRe Libya: Terrorists and Extremists Reportedly 
Associated with the Benghazi Attacks, (Mar. 24, 2014); CIA WIRe: Libya: 
Terrorists and Extremists Reportedly Associated with the Benghazi 
Attacks (July 24, 2014).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Diplomatic Security Agent located in the safe haven 
with Stevens and Smith described the weapons he saw during a 
direct encounter with the attackers:

        I could hear outside explosions, yelling, chanting, 
        screaming, gunfire, and I reported all of this on the 
        radio just saying, this is what my senses are telling 
        me. Then people started banging on the doors of the 
        building, so I reported that. Hey, there is banging on 
        the doors. They are trying to come in, you know, we 
        need immediate assistance. And there wasn't any 
        response on the radio. Shortly after that, to my 
        recollection, the doors were blown open. And about 70 
        individuals, you know, rushed into the building, all of 
        them carrying AK-47s, grenades, RPGs, you know, a 
        mixture throughout everyone.\136\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \136\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 5 Testimony at 115.

    The attackers were unable to gain access to the safe haven 
because the access point had been fortified by the Diplomatic 
Security Agent inside. Instead the attackers started a diesel 
fire just outside the safe haven at approximately 10 p.m.\137\ 
At that time, the agents in the TOC reported to the Diplomatic 
Security Command Center that Stevens and Smith were located in 
the safe room.\138\ Meanwhile, notice of the attack was 
disseminated in Washington D.C. at 4:05 p.m. [10:05 p.m. in 
Benghazi] through an ``Ops Alert'' by the State Department 
Operations Center, which notified senior Department officials, 
the White House Situation Room, and others the Benghazi Mission 
compound was under attack.\139\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \137\DVR Footage of the Mission (Sept. 11, 2012, 2202.07 and 
2202.25, respectively).
    \138\U.S. Dep't of State, DSCC's Timeline for Benghazi and Tripoli 
Events [hereinafter DSCC Timeline] (on file with the Committee, 
C05391498) (``Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and for 
[sic] COM personnel are in the compound safe room.'').
    \139\Email from the State Department Operations Center (Sept. 11, 
2012, 4:05 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05272001).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    As news of the attack spread in Washington D.C., Villa C, 
the main diplomatic building, was quickly engrossed in flames 
and heavy smoke.\140\ Within minutes, Diplomatic Security 
Agents reported to the lead security agent in Tripoli that 
contact with Stevens had been lost.\141\ A Diplomatic Security 
Agent described what happened next inside the Villa:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \140\DVR Footage of the Mission (Sept. 11, 2012, 2201-2207); see 
also, Email to Principal Officer 4, U.S. Dep't of State (Sept. 14, 
2012, 8:07 AM). (Subject: Re: Log of events on 9/11/12-
9/12/12) (on file with the Committee, SCB00472640).
    \141\Email to Principal Officer 4, U.S. Dep't of State (Sept. 14, 
2012, 8:07 AM). (Subject: Re: Log of events on 9/11/12-9/12/12) (on 
file with the Committee, SCB00472640).

        And then slowly, people started to kind of trickle out. 
        And then the lights started to kind of dim. My initial 
        response or my initial thought was, well, they just 
        knocked out the generators. You know, we have regular 
        city power, but we also have backup generators. So 
        flickering would be a likely, you know, cause of this. 
        But in reality, it was smoke. And it took me about, you 
        know, 2 or 3 seconds after that to determine that it 
        was smoke. As soon as I realized it was smoke, I turned 
        to the Ambassador and Sean Smith and I said, we are 
        moving to the bathroom.\142\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \142\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 5 Testimony at 117.

    As Villa C filled with smoke, the two Diplomatic Security 
Agents in the TOC also realized it was on fire:\143\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \143\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 4 Testimony at 131-132.

        Q: At what point did you notice that there was also--
        buildings had been put on fire, and how did that come 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        to your attention?

        A: Well, as--it seemed like a long time. Of course, I 
        can't say exactly how much time elapsed between when we 
        began our call for help and to when help finally 
        arrived. I can't say certainly. But monitoring what was 
        going on on the ground via the security cameras, I 
        could see that Villa C--I could see flames starting to 
        lick out of the windows and black smoke started to pour 
        out of the windows, and that's when I became aware that 
        they were in very big trouble over there.\144\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \144\Id.

    The Diplomatic Security Agent inside Villa C with Stevens 
and Smith attempted to lead them to the bathroom in the safe 
haven.\145\ Once in the bathroom he realized Stevens and Smith 
had not followed him. Due to the thick toxic smoke, he was 
unable to see them and did not hear a response from them when 
he called out.\146\ Because of the flames, the agent became 
weak and overcome with smoke and heat. He left the bathroom and 
crawled to his bedroom where he eventually escaped through a 
window. After catching his breath, over and over again he 
crawled back through the bedroom window of Villa C to search 
for Stevens and Smith.\147\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \145\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 5 Testimony at 117.
    \146\Id. at 114; see also, Diplomatic Sec. Agent 3 Testimony at 
147; Comprehensive Timeline of Events--Benghazi, produced by the U.S. 
Dep't of State (Last Edit Nov. 1, 2012) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0047845); Hicks Apr. 2013 Testimony at 25-26.
    \147\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 5 Testimony at 117-120.

        The last time I went out, you know, I decided that if I 
        went back into the building that I wasn't going to come 
        back out. The smoke and the heat were way too powerful, 
        and way too strong, and it was extremely confusing 
        feeling my way in a smoke-filled building. And I didn't 
        want to get lost, and so I decided to climb up the 
        ladder to the roof. I climbed up the ladder, and pulled 
        up the ladder behind me and that's the moment that I 
        knew the Ambassador Stevens and Sean Smith were 
        probably dead.\148\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \148\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 5 Testimony at 121.

    As the agent retreated to the rooftop of Villa C, he began 
taking gunfire.\149\ At 10:14 p.m. [4:14 p.m. in Washington 
D.C.], he reported to the agent located in the TOC that Stevens 
and Smith were missing and unaccounted for.\150\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \149\Id. at 122; see also, Comprehensive Timeline of Events--
Benghazi, produced by the U.S. Dep't of State (Last Edit Nov. 1, 2012) 
(on file with the Committee, SCB0047845).
    \150\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 3 Testimony at 147.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    While some of the attackers were trying to break into Villa 
C's safe haven, other attackers broke through Villa B's main 
door.\151\ The attackers were unable to gain access to the 
Diplomatic Security Agents and local guard seeking refuge in 
the back because they had successfully barricaded the 
doors.\152\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \151\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 1 Testimony at 61-62.
    \152\Id.

        Q: So you said that the attackers who tried to come 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        into the room were unsuccessful?

        A: Yes, they tried to breach it one time.\153\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \153\Id.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                THE MISSION CALLS THE ANNEX FOR SUPPORT

    When the attack started at 9:42 p.m. [3:42 p.m. in 
Washington D.C.], the Diplomatic Security Agent in the TOC 
immediately called the Annex for backup.\154\ The agent 
testified:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \154\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 3 Testimony at 141.

        Several requests were made. Unbeknownst to us at the 
        time, the situation outside our compound was hostile. 
        Apparently the militia that attacked us had set up 
        heavy gun trucks on all four corners of the block we 
        were on, had prohibited traffic from entering from any 
        location, and it was difficult for the reaction forces 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        to get to us.

        I can't tell you exactly when they arrived on compound. 
        It is my assessment that it was approximately an hour 
        and 5 minutes after. So if the attack started at 9:42, 
        I don't think we see them on compound until 10:00, 
        10:45, 10:50, something along those lines.

        Now, it is my understanding that they fought their way 
        in, and they ultimately split up into two groups, one 
        of which literally fought their way in and climbed 
        blocks and blocks of 10 to 12 foot high concrete walls, 
        as well as the secondary group, who rallied with some 
        February 17 Martyrs Brigade elements to come in through 
        a different approach angle.

        So it was not as if they literally could have just 
        walked across the street and walked in. The compound 
        was overtaken, it was overrun. And it is my 
        understanding it wasn't as simple as what it would have 
        seemed on the surface.\155\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \155\Id. at 143-44.

    Once the request for assistance was made to the Annex, the 
security team there immediately began packing up and preparing 
to respond.
    The GRS Team Lead described what happened after the 
Diplomatic Security Agent called and requested their help.

        [A]pproximately 20 [minutes] to 10:00 [p.m.], I got a 
        cell phone call on my phone from one of the ARSOs, 
        State Department Regional Security Officers.

        Give or take a few minutes or whatever it was, I'd get 
        that phone call from [Diplomatic Security Agent 3], and 
        he's obviously a bit worked up, and he says: Hey, we're 
        under attack. And he tells me he's sitting in the TOC, 
        their Tactical Operations Center, which is a separate 
        building at the facility. And he says: I can see 
        approximately 20 guys have come through the front gate, 
        they are armed, and they are amassing on the soccer 
        field, which is, you know, just in front of their--one 
        of the living quarters buildings.

        And I said: Okay. Gotcha. I said: Look, do me a favor, 
        before you hang up or before I lose you on the cell 
        phone network--we had previously given them one of our 
        secure [redacted text] radios. I said: Pick up that 
        radio in the TOC and just start giving me a play by 
        play, just keep transmitting, and you know, once you 
        get that radio, hang up the phone, and you know, we'll 
        deal with it.

        So once he hung up, I called--I made a radio call to 
        all the guys, the GRS guys to return to the team room, 
        and then, you know, within a few minutes guys start 
        trickling in. Some guys kind of, you know--you know, 
        it's in the evening, so some guys in shorts and T-
        shirt, other guys, you know, clearly just, you know, 
        thrown pants, T-shirt or whatever on, you know, just 
        asking: Hey, what's going on? Hey, I don't know. I 
        don't have a lot of specifics other than I just got a 
        call from [Diplomatic Security Agent 3]. He said the 
        facility is under attack. So at that point, you know, I 
        don't need to tell anybody what to do. As the guys 
        trickle in, it's, you know, word of mouth, hey, start, 
        you know, gathering gear, start getting your kit, you 
        know, your helmet, night vision gear, ballistic armor, 
        you know, weapons, all that good stuff.

        And you know, shortly thereafter, the deputy chief of 
        base walks in, and he says: Hey, what's going on. I 
        heard you say call the guys to the team room. I said: 
        Hey, Chief, not exactly sure, but the State facility, I 
        just got a call and they're under attack.

        And he asked me, he said: Well, did you tell chief of 
        base yet?

        I said: No, I'm just getting--he said: All right. Don't 
        worry about it. I'll go tell him.

        So we continue to kit up. The guys, you know, are doing 
        their thing, start bringing our heavier weapons, 
        equipment out to the car. We get the linguist, kind of 
        get him--you know, get him some body armor, get him a 
        helmet, and you know, kind of give him a quick brief. 
        We kind of gravitate out to the vehicles.\156\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \156\Testimony of GRS-Team Lead, Cent. Intel. Agency, Tr. at 20-23 
(Apr. 19, 2016) [hereinafter Team Lead Testimony] (on file with the 
Committee).

    Once the Chief of Base was alerted, he met with the Team 
Lead and the Deputy Chief of Base to determine if they had 
received any additional information about what was happening at 
the Mission. The Chief of Base then began calling partner 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
militia organizations for assistance.

        So he starts working phones. I can hear him. You know, 
        sometimes he's able to get through to people, and you 
        know, I remember one conversation where he's given a 
        quick data dump, and the guys says: All right. Hey, you 
        know, call me back in 2 minutes.

        So when he hangs up, he says: Hey, while--you know, I 
        don't remember who he said it was, but while that 
        person is making some phone calls, I'm going to call, 
        you know, the other guy and just--you know, I said: 
        Hey, look, Chief, what we want is technicals. So what 
        we want is, you know, the trucks with bigger guns than 
        what we have because I don't know what we're going 
        into. So whether it be Dishka-type weapons or some type 
        of heavy machine gun mounted on a truck, that's what I 
        definitely want.\157\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \157\Id. at 23-24.

    While the Chief of Base was trying to generate assistance 
for the Annex team, the team members finished loading up their 
gear into two vehicles. The Team Lead was standing outside of 
the vehicles while the Chief of Base contacted their partner 
organizations. Meanwhile, the Annex team members became anxious 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
to depart.

        So while this is going on, one of my--like I said, the 
        guys there are pretty much just kind of wrapping up, 
        getting, you know, the ammo, and you know, first aid 
        kits, all that stuff, and then they're basically 
        standing by loading in front of the building. And one 
        of the officers, my officers comes out, and he says: 
        Hey, look, you know, we got to get going. We got to go. 
        We got to go.

        I said: Yeah, I know that, but I don't know what we're 
        getting into, and the chief's trying to make some phone 
        calls. I want to get some technicals to go with us 
        because I don't know what we're--what we're going to 
        get into.

                              *    *    *

        So he goes back into the car. Chief continues to, you 
        know, work the phones. He makes contact with maybe 
        another two or three guys, and then he circles back 
        with that first person he made the phone call to, and 
        the phone is shut off. And he tells me: Hey, it's not 
        going through. It's shut off. I said: All right. Can 
        you try the other guys back?

        So he proceeds to, you know, try to make follow up 
        phone calls. You know, [one Team Member] pops out 
        again, and he's like, hey, we got to go, we got to go, 
        and at that point Chief is like, hey. Yeah, I know. I'm 
        just trying--like, hang on. I'm trying to make some--
        we're trying to get the technicals. We're trying to, 
        you know, get you guys some weapons.

                              *    *    *

        And then one of the other officers,[] came out. He's 
        like, hey, you know, what do we got? I said: Look, 
        Chief's trying to make phone calls. I really want to 
        get some technicals.

                              *    *    *

        So at some point, you know, whatever, couple of 
        minutes, it becomes kind of clear that there's nothing 
        readily coming, or there's--like Chief isn't making 
        positive coms with anybody who's saying, hey, I've got, 
        you know, two, three, four, five technicals, they're 
        going to meet you at whatever location. That's not 
        happening. So I tell the chief, I say: Hey, Chief, 
        look, we're going.

        And to be honest with you, I don't recall Chief saying 
        anything. Deputy chief, you know, kind of looks at me, 
        and he's like, well, he's like, you know, [GRS-Team 
        Lead], God speed, hopefully we'll see you guys back 
        here shortly.

        So at that point, we roll out. I can tell you between, 
        you know, the time stamp on our CCTV, like I said 
        roughly, I think my phone call came at like 21:43, 
        depending on what timestamp you look at, we roll out at 
        like 22:04, so 21, 23, 24 minutes, whatever.\158\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \158\Id. at 24-26.

    The Chief of Base described his actions after he learned 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
about the attacks.

        I was calling everybody I could think of. I think I 
        called the police, LIS, other militia groups that--we 
        were, you know, in an information-gathering mode, and 
        trying to see who might be able to respond quickly to 
        the Consulate, to the mission.

        Q: How much success were you having in actually getting 
        through to people at the police, at Libyan intel with 
        other militias?

        A: I didn't get through to Libyan intel, I don't think. 
        They weren't actually very helpful to us in Benghazi at 
        all.

        Q: Okay.

        A: But otherwise, I was getting through to the people.

        Q: Okay. And what kind of response were you getting on 
        the other end?

        A: Well, there was a lot of disbelief and confusion, 
        and trying to understand what was happening, what--
        basically, it was, as what you might, expect when 
        something like that happens.\159\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \159\Testimony of the Chief of Base, Cent. Intel. Agency, Tr. at 
24-25 (Nov. 19, 2015) [hereinafter Chief of Base Testimony] (on file 
with the Committee).

    Despite multiple attempts, the Chief of Base found his 
phone calls unfruitful. He was unable to generate any 
additional assistance from the partner organizations he called. 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
He described his conversations with the organizations.

        A: Well, there was a lot of disbelief and confusion, 
        and trying to understand what was happening, what--
        basically, it was, as you might, expect when something 
        like that happens.

        Q: Did you hear anything that would give you any pause 
        or reason for concern?

        A: Well, I was already concerned, to be honest with 
        you. I mean, you know, we could hear the gunfire. There 
        were even some tracer bullets flying overhead so we 
        were, again, I was trying to get as much information as 
        possible.\160\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \160\Id. at 25.

    The Chief of Base described what happened after the Annex 
team members finished loading their gear and were ready to 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
depart.

        Q: So at some point, the GRS folks were kitted up, and 
        what happened at that point that you can recall? Do you 
        recall seeing them all kitted up?

        A: I was standing right in the area that they were 
        getting their stuff. It took them, I would say, about 
        15 minutes to get ready. It was a very--to me, the time 
        passed by very quickly.

        And people were going to CONEXes and getting ammunition 
        and water, and getting batteries and MPGs and such. At 
        one point, [the Team Lead] came to me, I would say 
        maybe 15 minutes into it and said that he wanted to see 
        if I could arrange a technical, or a gun truck, from 
        17th February. So I called back to 17th February and 
        was working on getting that gun truck. So I was in 
        contact with [the Team Lead].\161\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \161\Id. at 29.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                              *    *    *

        Well, their response was, okay, but I don't have one, 
        or it's going to be difficult. I have got to check. It 
        was--it was not like immediately we are going to be 
        able to--the person who I was talking to, who was one 
        of their commanders whose name I don't remember.

        Q: And did you relay that back to [the Team Lead]?

        A: Yes.

        Q: What was his response?

        A: That's when they left to go on the rescue.\162\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \162\Id. at 29.

    The Chief of Base was adamant that he never told the Annex 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
team members to ``stand down.''

        You said that you let them go. Did you give them an 
        affirmative order for them to go?

        A: I think I was working with [the Team Lead] the whole 
        time----

        Q: Okay.

        A: --in an effort to get them to get them gone, to have 
        them go. So whether or not I gave an affirmative order, 
        but I wanted them to go. They were cleared to go. And 
        they went.

        Q: When you say they were cleared to go, is that you 
        giving the clearance?

        A: Yes.

        Q: Did you have any discussions--do you recall having 
        any discussions with the deputy chief of base about 
        allowing the guys to go?

        A: I don't recall any. It was never--I never had any 
        doubt about the GRS people going to the State 
        Department compound. I had great concerns and great 
        worry about it but I did not, I did not tell anybody to 
        stand down.\163\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \163\Id. at 31-32.

    The Chief of Base acknowledged he may have told the team to 
wait while he was attempting to secure additional resources for 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
them.

    I may have said wait because we were trying to get this 
technical truck that the team lead wanted. But it wasn't 10 
minutes, or 5 minutes. It was a short period of time. And the 
only time I remember ever talking to [Annex team member] was 
when he came up, and I said I'm trying to get a technical truck 
for [the Team Lead]. There was nobody, myself or anybody else 
in Benghazi, that did anything to hold up the GRS deploying. 
The team lead was always cleared to go.\164\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \164\Id. at 58-59.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    He further added:

        People were coming and going the entire time. But I did 
        not issue a stand-down order. And if there was a delay, 
        there was a very short delay, basically the team lead 
        we have to try to get this gun truck.

                              *    *    *

        I was doing everything, and to my knowledge, everybody 
        on that base was doing everything. I think I carried an 
        ammo can at one time to get those guys out the door.

        So it's, you know, our GRS folks were very brave that 
        night. But I, everything that I saw from during the 
        kitting up of the team, to their departure till their 
        return and heard in between, very much [the Team Lead] 
        was in charge of it. Listening to the radio, he was in 
        charge of it. So when [the Team Lead] was satisfied, I 
        think, that we weren't going to get the support that 
        we--that he wanted to get this gun truck to try to link 
        it up--although I think they did link up at some 
        point--that he left. He took the team and left.\165\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \165\Id. at 59-60.

    One GRS agent did not recall the Chief of Base telling the 
team to ``stand down'' but he did recall the Chief of Base 
telling them to ``wait.''\166\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \166\Testimony of GRS 3, Cent. Intel. Agency, Tr. at 52 (May 29, 
2015) [hereinafter GRS 3 Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Q: And what did you think when he told you to wait?

        A: I believe at first I just said, okay, maybe he's 
        talking to somebody that can help, and, you know, I 
        respected the fact that he wanted us to wait and see if 
        he can gather additional fire power to help. At some 
        point, though, the wait was too long, and we decided, 
        you know, we couldn't wait any longer and we left. We 
        didn't know if that wait was going to be an indefinite 
        wait and you're-not-going wait or a real wait or--but 
        nothing was happening for several minutes.

        And so we can hear the State Department's cries for 
        help on the radio, and we just reached a point where we 
        decided to leave on our own.\167\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \167\Id. at 50.

    The agent also acknowledged during the time the team was 
``kitting up'' and after they loaded into the vehicles, the 
Chief of Base and the Team Lead attempted to obtain additional 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
support from the Libyan partner organizations.

        Q: When you said nothing happened--nothing was 
        happening for several minutes, you're referring to what 
        exactly? There were individuals on the phone?

        A: Yes.

        Q: So that was occurring, but for your purposes----

        A: For our purposes, we were getting in and out of the 
        vehicles, ready to go. We were just waiting for someone 
        to say go. My understanding is they were trying to get 
        us to link up with 17 Feb or have 17 Feb go there 
        first, something to do with 17 Feb helping out. But 
        there was never a clear, definitive, this is what's 
        going on. Everything was chaotic. . . .\168\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \168\Id. at 50-51.

    Another Annex Team Member also recalled that the team was 
told to wait while the Chief of Base and the Team Lead were 
making phone calls. This member testified that once the team 
was ready to depart he approached the Chief of Base and the 
Team Lead, who were both making phone calls at the time. He 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
explained what happened.

        A: Yep. Grab my machine gun, grab my night vision, grab 
        my helmet and get back outside, and everybody else is 
        doing their job. Cars are already staged. Looked at Ty. 
        His car was up. He gave me a thumbs up. Had [GRS 3] and 
        [GRS 1] in the car. And I went up to our chief of base 
        and team leader, and they're standing in the courtyard, 
        and I said, hey, we're ready to go.

        Q: Now the team leader at this point, you said you saw 
        him on the way into the team room. He was not geared 
        up. You saw him with his phone. You didn't see him on 
        the phone?

        A: Not at first. When I came back out they were both on 
        their phones.

        Q: Now, team leader and----

        A: And [the Chief of Base] were both on their phones. I 
        looked at [the Chief of Base] and the team leader and 
        said, hey, we're ready to go. [The Chief of Base] 
        looked at the team leader, and he said tell these guys 
        they need to wait. The team leader looks at me and says 
        you guys need to wait. It's about 9:37. It's no more 
        than 5 minutes if that.

                              *    *    *

        So at this point in time, the chief told the team 
        leader to wait.

        Q: Team leader told you to wait?

        A: Yes.

        Q: All right. What did you do next?

        A: Waited. Went back to the car and just radioed, hey, 
        we got to wait guys. Just because the guys needed to 
        know the information.

                              *    *    *

        Q: All right. So you go back in the car. You're in the 
        second car, in the SUV. You're with [GRS 5], and go to 
        the radio and say we got to wait?

        A: And everybody is pretty cool about it. Nobody is 
        getting upset.\169\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \169\Testimony of GRS 4, Cent. Intel. Agency, Tr. at 26-29 (Mar. 1, 
2016) [hereinafter GRS 4 Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

    The team member was able to see what the Chief of Base and 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
the Team Lead were doing when he returned to the vehicle:

        What I'm seeing, and I'm looking at [the Chief of Base 
        and the Team Lead] off and on and they're just talking 
        on their phones. And all I can see, as time goes on and 
        we start getting calls, from [Diplomatic Security Agent 
        3] on the radio, saying, hey, the Consulate has been 
        overrun. GRS, where the bleep are you? We do start 
        getting a little bit more agitated.\170\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \170\Id. at 30.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The team member continued:

        Q: All right. So you said you heard [Diplomatic 
        Security Agent 3] on the radio, and what did he say?

        A: [Diplomatic Security Agent 3], and I can't recall 
        his exact words. It's been 3 years, but I can recall 
        the gist of it, and I can recall the emotions of it. It 
        was, GRS, where are you? Consulate's been overrun. 
        Where are you? Where are you? Get your asses over here. 
        We need your help. Where are you? Another 10 minutes go 
        by, and that's when I see [GRS 1] get out of his car. 
        He goes to the driver's side. And I have my door 
        closed, and I see him yelling at [the Chief of Base]. 
        He's going like this. Now, I didn't hear it, but I 
        asked him after what he said to him. He was just there. 
        Him and [the Chief of Base] are jaw jacking.

        He gets in the car. I said what's going on, dude? He 
        said he's telling us to stand down. Now [GRS 1] told me 
        that on the radio, but I said my vehicle was doors were 
        closed, armored vehicle, but I remember seeing him go 
        to the driver's side and just----

        Q: So it was just you and [GRS 5] in your vehicle?

        A: Yeah. And then I also reconfirmed that when I asked 
        [GRS 1] later. He wasn't happy.

                              *    *    *

        We waited another 10 minutes, so it's been about 25 
        minutes.

        Q: The first time you said you were ready to go in 5 
        minutes. Then you said there was 10 minutes. Then you 
        waited another 10 minutes?

        A: Close to 25 minutes.\171\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \171\Id. at 30-32.

    Although this team member's testimony regarding the amount 
of time that elapsed between the Mission's request for help and 
the team's departure was consistent with the testimony of other 
witnesses and the time indicated by the surveillance footage of 
the Annex, his testimony about when the attack began, and thus 
when the Mission called for help, differed. The witness, one of 
the co-authors of the book ``13 Hours: The Inside Account of 
What Really Happened in Benghazi,'' testified that the attack 
began at 9:32 p.m., ten minutes earlier than other witnesses, 
documents and the surveillance footage indicates. He was asked 
why he believed the attack began at 9:32 p.m. and provided this 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
explanation:

        A: I remember hearing a call on the radio that all GRS 
        needed to muster in the team room. I remember there was 
        not a sense of urgency in the voice. I remember looking 
        at my watch. I remember it saying 9:32. And I have said 
        that many times. I know it differs, but I know that's 
        what it said.

        Q: So let me stop you there. I know you said it many 
        times. I've read that in the book. Everywhere else I've 
        seen it's 9:42. How do you account for the difference?

        A: Differences of what people want to hear, want to 
        know. I was on the ground. I was looking. I was pissed 
        off because somebody was bothering me at 9:32 at night 
        because I wanted to go home.

        Q: You were home.

        A: I wanted to get the day over with. Nothing good 
        comes when you get bothered at night, especially if 
        you're in the military, and you're getting called by 
        your leadership at 9:00 at night, nothing good comes of 
        it. The difference, you'd have to ask the person that 
        says it's 9:42. I don't know. I didn't see anybody else 
        with me on that report there that night, though. We get 
        a call 30 seconds later, roughly.

                              *    *    *

        Q: And I don't mean to pick apart your statement. So 
        the book I believe--let me just quote you from the 
        book. It says: At 9:02 p.m. an unexpected vehicle drove 
        down the gravel road outside the compound. And a little 
        bit later the SSC vehicle pulled away 40 minutes after 
        it arrived. A little while later. Almost the moment the 
        SSC pickup pulled away from the compound, shots and an 
        explosion rang out?

        A: Sure. And what Mitchell was doing with that is he 
        was pulling stuff off the report. We had to get the 
        book cleared.

        Q: Okay.

        A: So if you read it, too, he also says that [GRS 4] 
        looked at his watch, and he has assured that it was 
        9:32 that he was called. So we're getting both what 
        other people were saying. That's what we were trying to 
        do, and [GRS 2] can help me out with the book here if I 
        get too far into it. But we're trying to show that 
        there are differences in what people saw. I know what I 
        saw. I'm not going to say what other people saw, and 
        what those other nine reports that went through, but I 
        know what I saw on my watch.\172\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \172\Id. at 22-24.

    Another Annex Team member described his recollection of 
what happened between the time the Mission called for help and 
the Annex team departed. After the Team Lead told him the 
Mission was under attack, he got dressed, packed his gear, and 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
loaded into a vehicle.

        [I] Ran back in, told [Annex Team Member], we got all 
        of our clothes on, ran out of the team room, got the 
        big weapons . . . and we loaded up in the vehicles. It 
        was probably about 5 minutes or so after we learned of 
        the ongoing attack. And we're probably sitting there 
        for a little while. We're sitting in the car, you know, 
        just going over, double checking our weapons, double 
        checking our gear, you know, kind of saying, hey, you 
        know, what's going on, what's taking so long.

        We're probably sitting there a good 15 minutes, and I 
        get out of the car. I have the Chief of Base, the 
        Deputy Chief of Base, and the team leader on the front 
        porch. They're all three on the phone doing something.

        And I just say: Hey, you know, we've got to get over 
        there. We're losing the initiative. The Chief of Base 
        looks at me, he says: Stand down, you need to wait. You 
        need to come up with a plan.

        And I say: No, it's too late to come up with a plan. We 
        need to get over in the area, get eyes on, and then we 
        can come up with a plan.

        And that's kind of where I left it because they left it 
        at that, and I got back in the car.\173\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \173\GRS 1 Testimony at 73.

    The Annex Team Member's testimony was consistent with the 
other witnesses that while the team was ``kitting up'' and 
loading their gear into the vehicles, the Chief of Base and the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Team Lead were making phone calls.

        Q: So you were the only one out of the lead vehicle. 
        And you got out of the vehicle and you said you saw the 
        chief of base, the deputy chief of base, and the team 
        lead. And where were they?

        A: On the front porch of the building 3

                              *    *    *

        Q: And what were each of them doing?

        A: They were on the phone.

        Q: Okay. They were all on the phone?

        A: Yes.

        Q: Okay. And you said that--I'm just paraphrasing: 
        We've got to get over there. We're losing the 
        initiative. Did you say that? Does that sound right?

        A: Yes.

        Q: And did you say that to anybody in particular or all 
        three of them?

        A: Pretty much all three of them because I was looking 
        directly at them.

        Q: Okay. And what was the response that you got from 
        all of them or any of them?

        A: ``Stand down. You need to wait.'' That was from the 
        chief of base.

        Q: Okay. Do you remember exactly what the chief--is 
        that a paraphrase? Did he use those exact words? Do you 
        remember?

        A: He used those exact words.\174\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \174\Id. at 78-79.

    When asked why the team member had not disclosed the 
``stand down'' order during previous testimony to Congress, he 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
stated:

        A: At the time, because a lot of it was that no--I 
        mean, I didn't know why the stand down order was given. 
        I mean, I guess [GRS team member] got told to wait, you 
        know, that's what he says. I just know when we got told 
        to stand down and when [the Team Lead] kind of gave the 
        brief of kind of like why we're told to stand down, it 
        was kind of understandable, you know.

        But, yes, it shouldn't take you 23 minutes or 50 
        minutes to link up with the QRF, because even after we 
        left there was still no link up. There was no 
        communication between us and the 17 Feb. that I knew 
        of. Because when we rolled in, we didn't know who we 
        were going to be meeting.\175\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \175\Id. at 80.

    The team member believed that no matter what phrase the 
Chief of Base conveyed that night to direct the team, they 
would not have left unless they made the decision on their own 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
to leave at the moment they did.

        A: I mean, just like for the stand down. I don't think 
        it came from anywhere else but [the Chief of Base]. . . 
        .

        So my biggest thing, I think, it was--I don't believe, 
        you know, stand down. I think it was just like a heat-
        of-the-moment kind of thing. But to me, no matter what, 
        when he said stand down, or wait, or don't go, 
        whatever, he still--I believe if we didn't leave on our 
        own, we would have never left.\176\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \176\Id. at 130-31.

    The Deputy Chief of Base also described what happened 
between the time the Annex was notified of the attack and the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
time the GRS Team departed.

        I was sitting in my--I was sitting at my desk in the 
        SCIF and I was working on--I was working on a cable I 
        was writing regarding a meeting I had been to earlier 
        in the day with the chief of base, and I remember 
        looking at the clock that was in the lower corner of 
        the computer screen noting that--for some reason it 
        just stuck out--that it was 9:40 or 9:42. I remember 
        looking at the time. And the GRS team leader, [redacted 
        text], came in, and grabbed me and pulled me out into 
        the GRS room and said--said he had just received 
        communication from [Agent 3] at the special mission 
        that they had people inside the wire there. They had 
        people inside the compound. And he said: We are going 
        to go, we are going to go over there, you know, and get 
        those guys, get them out of there. And I said: Okay, 
        you know, got that, but we got to let the boss know 
        about this and he needs to make the call before we do 
        that. And he said, ``yeah.'' So I went back in.

        I got the Chief of Base, brought the Chief of Base out 
        into the GRS team room where we were. The GRS team 
        leader advised the chief of base what the situation was 
        and said: We got to go get those guys. And the chief of 
        base responded, ``Absolutely.'' ``Absolutely.'' Not, 
        ``I got to go call the chief of station.'' Not, ``I got 
        to go check with somebody in Washington.'' All he said 
        was, ``Absolutely.'' So I want to make that very clear 
        because I know there's conflicting accounts about that 
        discussion. There were three people in that discussion: 
        myself, the GRS team leader, and the chief of base. And 
        anybody writing any books or making movies, or whatever 
        else, I can tell you none of those guys were in the 
        room when that discussion occurred.\177\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \177\Testimony of Deputy Chief of Base, Cent. Intel. Agency, Tr. at 
101-02 (June 4, 2015) [hereinafter Deputy Chief of Base Testimony] (on 
file with the Committee).

    The Deputy Chief of Base indicated the GRS team was loaded 
and ready to depart approximately 10 minutes after the Team 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lead told them what was happening at the Mission.

        So [the Team Lead] advised me that he had just gotten 
        the call from [Diplomatic Security Agent 3] and then 
        I--and then I told him, we got to, you know, we got to 
        check with the chief of base on this. And I went and 
        got him, and then we had that short discussion. And 
        then, shortly thereafter, he advised the GRS team 
        members to start gathering their equipment that they 
        were going over there.

                              *    *    *

        And that took--that took about 10 minutes for them to 
        get everything together.\178\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \178\Id. at 103.

    The Deputy Chief of Base raised a concern with the Chief of 
Base that they needed to attempt to confirm whether 17th 
February or any other friendly militia was at the base or would 
be arrive shortly in order to prevent that force from attacking 
the GRS team or vice versa. The Deputy Chief noted because one 
GRS team member was away from the base at the time, and the 
remaining were preparing to go to the Mission compound, the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Annex effectively was without any defensive capability.

        But what happened was, I said to the chief of base: 
        Look it, you know, we got a real issue here with 
        potential green-on-blue because we were still operating 
        under the assumption that 17th February was going to 
        show up.

        And, in fact, a bunch of them about did, although it 
        appears to be an uncoordinated response. They did, in 
        fact, show up. So you got to remember that these guys 
        that went over there, the GRS guys, the six of them, 
        [redacted text]. And I was really worried about that. 
        If the city is blowing up, I got to make sure we get 
        them back safely because what we were doing in making 
        this decision, again, which the chief of base made 
        instantly on the spot, without equivocation, was we 
        were giving up all of our shooters to go over there and 
        rescue the State Department people, as well as any QRF 
        capability we would have had to rescue the case officer 
        and the lone GRS guy [redacted text] if they got into 
        an in extremis situation.

        Now, on top of that, what the GRS guys took with them 
        when they responded over there was every piece of heavy 
        automatic weapons, and every really solid defensive 
        weaponry capability that we had on the base. So while 
        the chief of base agreed to do this right away, this 
        was not a light--a decision taken lightly.

        And, again, I feel like the narrative that I have seen 
        in public does not account for this and does not 
        account for the consideration that there was a green-
        on-blue situation that could have wiped all of those 
        guys out. And then where would we have been? We 
        wouldn't have had the ability to do anything to help 
        the State Department people, and we wouldn't have had 
        the ability to evacuate ourselves or defend ourselves 
        if we came under attack.\179\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \179\Id. at 104-05.

    One GRS Agent explained it is not unusual for people to 
have a different recollection of what happened during the time 
the Diplomatic Security Agents called the Annex to request 
help.\180\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \180\GRS 4 Testimony at 95.

        Q: Is it unusual in your perspective to have 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        individuals with different accounts?

        A: It's not--of course it's not unusual to have people 
        have different accounts.\181\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \181\Id.

    The Annex Team departed at 10:05 p.m., twenty-three minutes 
after the Diplomatic Security Agent at the Mission called and 
asked for their help.\182\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \182\DVR Footage of the CIA Annex (Sept. 11, 2012, 2005).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    After departing the Annex, the Annex Team faced a roadblock 
at the intersection of the main road leading to the Benghazi 
Mission compound. A militia was blocking the most direct route 
to the Mission compound. One GRS Team Member described what 
they encountered:

        When we arrived, to the corner of the street that leads 
        to the front gate, there was at least a couple vehicles 
        there and some Libyans standing around outside. We 
        slowly approached. We didn't know if they were friendly 
        or hostile. They didn't appear to be a threat to us. 
        They didn't raise their weapons at us, so we got out of 
        the vehicles.

        And at that time, the interpreter and [the Team Lead], 
        I believe, started talking to somebody. We were 
        receiving ineffective, sporadic fire. We returned fire 
        and moved up the street. At that point, that's when our 
        group split up.\183\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \183\GRS 3 Testimony at 53-54.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Team Lead also described the roadblock:

        Q: And describe what happened when you left the base?

        A: So we roll out, and at this point there obviously 
        was no communication via telephone that's got us 
        anything. So my plan now is the route that we're going 
        to take to get to the mission facility, I know there's 
        two--three militia and/or proper Army compounds on the 
        way. So my intentions are to basically stop into one of 
        those facilities along the way, get the technicals that 
        we were trying to get for support, and then roll to the 
        mission facility.

        So we come out to one of the main roads. One of the 
        gates, back gates to one of the militia compounds, 
        which is always sealed up and closed, is wide open, and 
        there's militia guys moving all over the place.

        I look up the street, and there is--I can see, you 
        know, a bunch of other movement and what have you, 
        personnel, militia guys, whatever, and we have to go 
        north anyways, so I said: Hey, push on to, at that 
        corner, there is what used to be a Libyan National Army 
        base or compound right at the corner. I said: Hey, 
        we're going to go to that compound because that's the 
        direction we have to travel.

        We get to that corner, and as I'm looking to pull in--
        and there's guys, you know, standing out in front. And 
        as I'm looking there, and then I look at--essentially 
        the path of the travel is across the main intersection 
        and across the street, and generally speaking, where we 
        would--the access road to the State facility is kind of 
        up a couple of 100 yards or so on the right, and as I 
        look up, there is--I can see a couple of technicals and 
        a bunch of dismounted personnel with AKs or some type 
        of rifle on them.

        So I said: All right. You know what, guys, we're 
        pushing to--through the intersection to that corner. 
        Because there was already some type of force where we 
        need to be, so I figured with the linguist there, roger 
        that, we can try to utilize these guys to assist 
        us.\184\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \184\GRS Team Lead Testimony at 32-34.

    At the same time, the Diplomatic Security Agents at the 
compound were working to clear it. After they cleared Villa B, 
the Diplomatic Security Agents began searching Villa C, which 
was still on fire, for Stevens and Smith.\185\ One Diplomatic 
Security Agent described the smoke in Villa C as so thick it 
prevented him ``from see[ing] your hand in front of your face. 
There are no lights; the electricity [was] down.''\186\ Because 
the toxic smoke and heat were so overwhelming, the Diplomatic 
Security Agents retrieved gas masks, which were ineffective:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \185\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 2 Testimony at 98.
    \186\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 3 Testimony at 150.

        So I put the mask on. And we are being told repeatedly 
        through this whole time by the other Americans that are 
        there, ``There is no good air in there. The device that 
        you have does not provide air.'' I am aware of this. 
        All you are going to do is go in there and become a 
        victim, is what they are implying, which is 
        accurate.\187\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \187\Id. at 155.

    As the agents are making their second round of attempts in 
and out of Villa C to locate Stevens, at 10:38 p.m. [4:38 p.m. 
in Washington D.C.], a local force, arrived at the 
Mission.\188\ A few minutes later, the Annex Team arrived on 
the compound. After three of the Annex Team members cleared the 
main road and the main gate they entered the compound.\189\ Two 
minutes later, the Annex Team Lead and the CIA linguist arrived 
through the main gate of the Mission.\190\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \188\Comprehensive Timeline of Events--Benghazi, produced by the 
U.S. Dep't of State. (Last Edit Nov. 1, 2012) (on file with the 
committee, SCB0047843); see also, Video: DVR Footage of the Mission 
(Sept. 11, 2012, 2239-2240).
    \189\Video: DVR Footage of the Mission (Sept. 11, 2012, 2245).
    \190\Video: DVR Footage of the Mission (Sept. 11, 2012, 2247).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Over the course of the next 20 minutes, members of the 
Annex Team continued to clear portions of the compound while 
other Annex Team members joined the Diplomatic Security Agents 
in searching for Stevens and Smith.\191\ One of the Diplomatic 
Security Agents described his attempts to find them:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \191\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 3 Testimony at 155.

        One of my biggest concerns is one of us in this 
        recovery effort was going to go in there and become a 
        victim ourselves, requiring our elements to stay on the 
        X later, which is a bad situation. I would not want to 
        put our guys at risk, any greater risk, by having to 
        fish me out of that same situation where you are trying 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        to pull somebody else out of.

        So I go in there a fourth time. I got the mask on. I go 
        in as far as I have gone. I go directly in the safe 
        haven, and I stay there longer than I should. I am 
        stomping on the ground, I am feeling around, I am 
        yelling for the Ambassador. I got nothing. The only 
        and, again, the only guidance I had from the agent that 
        was in there at the time was that he had him in the 
        safe haven. I wasn't aware of any other location he may 
        have been at that point.

        So I am in there, I don't know how long, a minute, 
        [two], I don't know. I couldn't tell you how long 
        exactly. But I start to feel the effects of oxygen 
        deprivation. You start feeling it in the back of your 
        head. Because I am just not getting air, because there 
        is no good air in there. So I start thinking about, you 
        know, putting our team in a worse position having to 
        come retrieve me. I back out.

        So, as I come out, I am grabbed by the team leader of 
        the other Americans, who says, ``You guys need to'' . . 
        . ''get the fuck out of here.'' That is a quote.

        And we pushed this off for the last 20 minutes, 
        basically, where they repeatedly told us, you need to 
        go, you need to go, and we have been adamant that we 
        need to stay and recover or locate the Ambassador and 
        Sean Smith. We have stayed up until this point.\192\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \192\Id. at 155-156.

    Diplomatic Security Agent 4 found Smith unresponsive inside 
Villa C.\193\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \193\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 4 Testimony at 136.

        I go into the safe haven with the intention of 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        recovering Smith and Stevens

        Immediately upon entering the safe haven, it becomes 
        very clear to me that it would be a very--that would be 
        very difficult. The smoke is extremely thick and acrid. 
        From what I understand now, that was a result of the 
        accelerants used to start the fire. But open flame is 
        not so much an issue; it's the volume and the toxic 
        nature of the smoke that made it very difficult. Even 
        immediately entering the room, I became very 
        disoriented.

        But using my internal map, my memory of the layout of 
        the safe-haven area, I make my way along the wall 
        searching and feeling my way. I make my way into the 
        safe-haven closet, the safe room, where, according to 
        our plan, everyone would've been staged. And I don't 
        find anybody there. I go and make sure that--I go and 
        work my way around the wall to the gate, the locked 
        gate of the safe haven itself. And I'm able to confirm 
        that the gate is still locked, it was locked by padlock 
        from the inside. So I can make the assumption that 
        nobody has entered the safe haven and nobody has left. 
        So that limits the search area.

        So I continue to search. I just kind of follow along 
        the walls, calling out to the Ambassador and Smith and 
        doing my best to feel around for them.

        Q: So, at this point, you have zero visual visibility 
        and you're feeling along the walls?

        A: Uh-huh.

        Q: And so did that mean that you were just necessarily 
        a little limited in the surface area you could cover in 
        terms of----

        A: Right. Yeah. You're right; there was no visibility. 
        So I was just trying to feel with my limbs, my hands 
        and feet, and still maintain contract with the wall so 
        that I wouldn't lose myself. But, nevertheless, I 
        started to feel very disoriented myself. I started to 
        be worried that, you know, I was really craving oxygen 
        by that point, and I eventually found myself in the 
        bathroom. I broke a window out to try and ventilate the 
        space and to get some fresh air for myself. And I 
        cleared my head a little bit.

        I was able to get lower to the ground, and then I 
        worked my way back out the way that I had come. And it 
        was at that point in the hallway that I came across the 
        body of Sean Smith. He was unresponsive. So I grabbed 
        him and dragged him back down the hallway to the safe-
        haven window and then handed him off to the people 
        waiting outside. It was when we had him outside in the 
        clear air that--and we had a brief check of him, he 
        had--he was unresponsive, not breathing, no pulse, and 
        so felt that at that point he was already expired.\194\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \194\Id. at 136-137.

    At 11:01 p.m. [5:01 p.m. in Washington D.C.], Smith was 
reported as killed in action.\195\ He was an only child, a 
husband and father of two. He was posthumously awarded the 
Thomas Jefferson Star for Foreign Service on May 3, 2013.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \195\Comprehensive Timeline of Events--Benghazi, produced by the 
U.S. Dep't of State. (Last Edit Nov. 1, 2012) (on file with the 
Committee, SCB0047843).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                            Embassy Tripoli

    At the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, the Deputy Chief of 
Mission, the most senior member of the State Department team in 
Tripoli, and the Chief of Station, the most senior member of 
the CIA team in Libya, learned of the attack soon after it 
began.\196\ At 9:45 p.m., three minutes after the attacks 
began, the senior Diplomatic Security Agent notified Hicks of 
the attack. After realizing he had a few missed calls on his 
cell phone, Hicks attempted to redial the number and reached 
Stevens:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \196\Hicks Apr. 2013 Testimony at 18.

        I jumped up and reached into my phone at the same time 
        I tried to connect with John which I did not do, he ran 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        out immediately.

        And I looked at my phone, and I saw two missed phone 
        calls, one from a number I did not recognize, and the 
        second from the Ambassador's telephone.

        I punched the number that I did not recognize and 
        called it back, to call it back, and I got Chris on the 
        line. And he said, ``Greg, we are under attack.''\197\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \197\Id.

    The line went dead. Hicks was unable to reach Stevens 
again.
    Individuals in the tactical operations center, the command 
center at the Embassy in Tripoli, quickly alerted other 
relevant Embassy staff when the attack was first reported.\198\ 
Within minutes, the individuals in Tripoli took quick and 
decisive actions to execute two steps in response to the 
attacks that night. First, they submitted a request to divert 
an intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance asset-- 
colloquially referred to as a ``drone''--flying over another 
location in eastern Libya to Benghazi to provide tactical 
awareness of the situation on the ground. Second, the Chief of 
Station of the Annex in Tripoli prepared a rescue team, called 
``Team Tripoli,'' to respond forthwith to the attacks in 
Benghazi.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \198\See Hicks Apr. 2016 Testimony at 72.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                         Team Tripoli Response

    In Tripoli, when word of the attacks reached the Embassy 
and the CIA Station, a team consisting of four Tripoli Station 
GRS members, one of whom was Glen Doherty, two Defense 
Department special operators, and a CIA linguist sprang into 
action. Using their initiative coupled with previously 
established contacts, in less than an hour, they managed to 
assemble a response team and acquire an aircraft for transport. 
The Chief of Station authorized this team, dubbed Team Tripoli, 
to respond to the attacks in Benghazi:

        [M]y specific direction to Team Tripoli was to provide 
        quick reaction force to shore up base and to assist the 
        [Benghazi Mission compound], the consulate there, and 
        in so doing render any assistance to the Ambassador. So 
        that was all kind of--they were a complementary set of 
        objectives.

        One of the things, on a more tactical level, was the 
        entire GRS contingent in Benghazi, save one officer, 
        was forward deployed to the temporary mission facility. 
        So they were, in my opinion, very vulnerable.

        At that time, I made the decision to deploy all except 
        one of our GRS officers to Benghazi. That gave me 
        certainly a sense of trepidation because that left us 
        vulnerable to any sort of attack or follow on things. 
        So that was part of my thought calculus doing that. I 
        didn't hesitate, but I certainly thought about that and 
        the ensuing consequences of leaving one GRS.\199\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \199\Testimony of Chief of Station, Cent. Intel. Agency, Tr. at 
112-13 (July 16, 2015) [hereinafter Chief of Station Testimony] (on 
file with the Committee).

    While the mission of Team Tripoli was supported by the 
Department of State at Embassy Tripoli and supported by 
AFRICOM, it was a mission orchestrated solely by the CIA Chief 
of Station in Tripoli. As reported by one of the military 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
members of Team Tripoli to the Committee:

        Q: Did AFRICOM headquarters or SOCAFRICA have any role 
        in planning your deployment from Tripoli to Benghazi?

        A: No, sir.

                              *    *    *

        Q: How about the Embassy itself there in Tripoli, were 
        they directing the deployment from Tripoli to Benghazi?

        A: Not that I recall, sir.\200\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \200\Testimony of Special Operator, U.S. Dep't of Defense, Tr. at 
44-45 (Sept. 22, 2015) [hereinafter Special Operator Testimony] (on 
file with the Committee).

    Fortuitously, earlier that day a CIA member of the team had 
brokered an initial agreement with the owner of an aircraft to 
charter the aircraft as needed.\201\ During the morning 
meeting, the CIA officer had queried the operator of the 
aircraft as to ``How fast can you respond?'' and the [redacted 
text] owner replied, ``I am not sure; probably within 24 
hours.''\202\ Because of this, Team Tripoli was able to quickly 
secure the aircraft for transport from Tripoli to Benghazi that 
night.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \201\Id. at 37.
    \202\Id.

        A: Called back again that night and said, ``We need you 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        right now,'' and he was there. He showed up.

        Q: That was good timing, wasn't it?

        A: It was good timing, sir, convenient.\203\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \203\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                              *    *    *

        Q: And how long did it take from the time that call was 
        made to the aircraft owner, what did he say about his 
        ability to take off from Tripoli to Benghazi? How long 
        a timeframe do you recall?

        A: I don't remember what time he said, but I know we 
        had got there around 11:30 or midnight, but he was 
        ready to go when we had gotten there. And they actually 
        had expedited us through the airport. We didn't go 
        through any--the actual airport procedures. We had 
        weapons and ammo, obviously.

                              *    *    *

        Q: And was there no limitation on daylight only flight 
        ops with this [redacted text], as I understand was the 
        limitation on the Libyan military C-130?

        A: I don't think they could fly at night, but he could 
        because he was a privately owned company. The [redacted 
        text] was privately owned.

        Q: But your understanding was, at least with respect to 
        the Libya C-130----

        A: Daytime, sir.

        Q: That was limited to daytime ops?

        A: Yes, sir.\204\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \204\Id. at 47-48.

    At 12:30 a.m. [6:30 p.m. in Washington D.C.], the Team 
Tripoli departed the Tripoli Mitiga Airport with four GRS 
officers, including former U.S. Navy SEAL Glen A. Doherty, two 
military personnel, and a CIA officer acting as a 
linguist.\205\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \205\See U.S. Dep't of Defense, Timeline of the Department of 
Defense Actions on September 11-12, 2012 (May 1, 2013) (on file with 
the Committee) [hereinafter U.S. Dep't of Defense Timeline] (``A six-
man security team from U.S. Embassy Tripoli, including two DoD 
personnel, departs for Benghazi''); see also, Special Operator 
Testimony at 41.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

            The Defense Department is Alerted of the Attack

    News of the attack traveled at varying speeds within the 
Defense Department. AFRICOM was the first combatant command to 
receive an alert about the attacks. By 4:32 p.m. in Washington 
D.C. [10:32 p.m. in Benghazi], news of the attack reached the 
Pentagon.

                     AFRICOM ALERTED OF THE ATTACK

    Members within the AFRICOM command structure learned of the 
attack just more than 30 minutes after it began. At AFRICOM 
headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, Vice Admiral Charles J. 
Leidig Jr., the second in command for military operations, 
learned of the attack just over a half hour after it 
began.\206\ He testified:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \206\Leidig 2014 Testimony at 20.

        The night of the attack, when I received the initial 
        report at my quarters that night that there had been--I 
        remember it exactly. I got a report at [10:15]. I tell 
        people I saw the same Indiglo watch, and I was asleep 
        in my bed. I went to bed, got up early, and it was my 
        routine. So at [10:15], I rolled over and got a report 
        that . . . the facility in Benghazi [had been overrun], 
        but that the Ambassador was in a safe room and was 
        safe. And that was the initial report I got at 
        [10:15].\207\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \207\Id.

    Following notification, Admiral Leidig recalled his command 
center staff and returned to work.\208\ Although the initial 
reports he received were that Stevens had been secured in a 
safe haven, he learned shortly upon returning to work that 
Stevens was missing:\209\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \208\Id. at 26.
    \209\Id.

        When I got to the command center, the focus was on 
        where is the Ambassador and trying to locate him. At 
        that point I didn't know where the location that folks 
        had went to. I didn't know who they were. I would later 
        learn over the intervening hours that that was some 
        folks from [the annex] who had come to move State 
        Department personnel to the other facility. Again, it 
        was several hours before I knew what the facility was, 
        or the location, or where they were at. I just knew 
        that they had moved to another location, and the 
        reports we were getting from--most of our reporting at 
        that point were coming from the defense attache', our 
        defense attache' in Tripoli--was that they were safe, 
        and they were fine, and that they were at this other 
        facility. Our focus was trying to help gather 
        information to see if we could locate where the 
        Ambassador was.\210\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \210\Id. at 28.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                       PENTAGON ALERTED OF ATTACK

    Almost an hour after the attacks started, at 4:32 p.m. in 
Washington D.C. [10:32 p.m. in Benghazi], nearly the same time 
the Diplomatic Security Agents and the Annex security team 
members began clearing the Mission compound in Benghazi half a 
world away, word of the attack finally reached the 
Pentagon.\211\ Although the Embassy in Tripoli and the 
Diplomatic Command Center at the State Department in Washington 
received word almost immediately that the Benghazi Mission 
compound was under attack, that notice did not make its way to 
the National Military Command Center, the operations center at 
the Pentagon, until 4:32 p.m. local time in Washington 
D.C.\212\ Vice Admiral Kurt W. Tidd, the Director of Operations 
for the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time of the attacks, 
testified his staff immediately alerted him about the 
attacks.\213\ His staff simultaneously contacted AFRICOM to 
obtain additional information regarding the situation on the 
ground, while he notified members of the Secretary of Defense's 
staff.\214\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \211\U.S. Dep't of Defense Timeline.
    \212\U.S. Dep't of Defense Timeline; see SCC Timeline (indicating 
the Diplomatic Security Command Center received notification of the 
attack at 3:49 PM EDT).
    \213\Testimony of Vice Admiral Kurt Tidd, Assistant to the Chairman 
of the J. Chiefs of Staff, Dir. for Operations (J3), U.S. Dep't of 
Defense, Tr. at 8 (Apr. 4, 2016) [hereinafter Tidd Testimony] (on file 
with the Committee).
    \214\Id. at 8-9.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                      ASSETS IDENTIFIED TO DEPLOY

    As officials in Washington D.C. began to react to the 
attacks in Benghazi, it is important to describe and understand 
the assets available to respond, the state of those assets, and 
the military's policies and planning in force that applied to 
the assets' use and deployment.

          AFRICOM'S Posture and Force Laydown on September 11

    In the days leading up to September 11, 2012, General 
Carter F. Ham, the Commander of the United States Africa 
Command [AFRICOM] conducted a ``deep dive'' into intelligence 
reports to guide their decision regarding whether any 
adjustment to the force posture needed to be made.\215\ Leidig 
testified:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \215\Leidig 2014 Testimony at 22.

        [B]ased on General Ham's guidance, we actually did--we 
        had been--the military always does planning for 
        September 11th. We always know that there's a potential 
        for, you know, some sort of terrorist activity on 
        September 11th since its anniversary. General Ham had 
        actually directed in the days running up to it that we 
        do what we call a deep dive or a deep look at the 
        intelligence to see if there was anything to indicated 
        that there might be anything in our [area of 
        responsibility]. We found nothing in any intelligence 
        that would indicate that there was an attack or an 
        incident being planned by terrorists in our [area of 
        responsibility].\216\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \216\Id. at 22-23.

    Although AFRICOM's area of responsibility consists of the 
continent of Africa, with the exception of Egypt, its 
headquarters are based in Stuttgart, Germany. With the 
exception of a contingent stationed in Djibouti, a country on 
the Horn of Africa approximately 2,000 miles from Libya, 
AFRICOM did not have assigned forces.\217\ As a result, AFRICOM 
had to use United States European Command troops, aircraft, and 
bases in Europe including Ramstein, Germany; Sigonella and 
Aviano, Italy; and Rota, Spain to respond to events occurring 
on the African continent.\218\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \217\Panetta Testimony at 13.
    \218\Id. at 14-15.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                             Planned Assets

                             FAST PLATOONS

    The assets AFRICOM would mostly likely call upon in 
response to a crisis situation were the Fleet Antiterrorism 
Security Team [FAST] platoons stationed in Rota, Spain. Those 
platoons were required to be ready to deploy within a certain 
time frame. FAST platoons, as of September 2012, were typically 
used to reinforce embassy security and operated from a fixed 
location within an embassy. FAST platoons did not deploy with 
their own vehicles, so they were dependent on other means for 
ground mobility. That reality made the FAST platoon less 
capable to rapidly respond as a quick-reaction force. Moreover, 
the FAST platoon's ability to move on a given timeline required 
the allocation of aircraft for deployment in a timely manner.
    At the time, FAST platoons did not have dedicated airlift. 
This meant prior to being able to deploy, airlift would need to 
arrive from some other location, most likely Ramstein, Germany, 
to pick up the platoon for an onward deployment. The air base 
in Ramstein, Germany housed C-130s, large transport airframes 
that typically would be used to move the FAST platoons and 
associated equipment. In the days leading up to the attack, 
none of the C-130s in Ramstein were on any heightened alert. To 
effectuate movement, the Commander of United States Air Forces 
in Europe would need to take a series of steps to generate 
aircraft and prepare an air crew for deployment.\219\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \219\Testimony of General Philip G. Breedlove, Commander, U. S. 
European Command, Tr. at 21-22 (Apr. 7, 2016) [hereinafter Breedlove 
Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                     COMMANDER'S IN EXTREMIS FORCE

    Another asset AFRICOM could call upon when circumstances 
warranted was the Commander's in Extremis Force [CIF] owned by 
European Command; it is one of the most capable quick response 
forces. General Ham described this force as ``the force of 
first choice should there be an emergent situation.''\220\ It 
is a special operations response team that offers capabilities 
for emergency action in missions such as hostage rescue, 
noncombatant evacuation when the security situation is 
uncertain, or convoy security. The CIF can and does work with 
the U.S.-based Special Operations Force that also ultimately 
deployed the night of the attacks in Benghazi. Theoretically, 
since any deployment from the U.S. to the Middle East or North 
Africa will require significant time for the U.S.-based force 
to reach its destination, the CIF provides a more responsive 
capability when an emergency arises. It has dedicated aircraft 
for transportation. The CIF is tasked to be airborne in a set 
number of hours once alerted, and the military's air traffic 
management system is supposed to provide two aircraft to ensure 
the CIF is airborne on the specified timeline. Unlike other 
assets deployed that night the CIF deploys with its own 
vehicles giving it the ability to drive from an airfield where 
deposited to a crisis site.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \220\Testimony of General Carter F. Ham, Commander, U.S. Africa 
Command.Tr. at 28 (June 8, 2016) [hereinafter Ham 2016 Testimony] (on 
file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Typically stationed in Germany, in the days leading up to 
September 11 the CIF was actually deployed to Croatia to 
perform a joint exercise.\221\ This training exercise had been 
planned for over a year.\222\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \221\Testimony of Army Major General Michael S. Repass, Commander, 
Special Operations Command Europe, Tr. at 18 (Apr. 15, 2016) 
[hereinafter Repass Testimony] (on file with the Committee).
    \222\Id.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                  U.S.-BASED SPECIAL OPERATIONS FORCE

    One other asset that can be used in events similar to the 
attacks in Benghazi is a U.S.-based Special Operations Force 
[U.S. SOF]. That force offers capabilities that complement and 
expand upon the assets brought by the CIF.\223\ Secretary of 
Defense Leon E. Panetta described the U.S. SOF as a ``hostage 
rescue unit from our special operations team.''\224\ [redacted 
text].\225\ By design, the CIF would typically be able to reach 
an overseas target first, due to the distance required to 
deploy from the U.S.\226\ If required, the CIF can assault a 
target immediately. If time permits, the preferred option is to 
hand the target over to the U.S. SOF, given its more robust 
capabilities.\227\ Since the U.S. SOF deploys from the U.S., 
however, to respond to the attacks in Benghazi it must travel 
much farther than the CIF and other assets closer to Libya.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \223\Id.
    \224\Leon E. Panetta, Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War 
and Peace 225 (2014).
    \225\Repass Testimony at 8.
    \226\Id. at 8-9.
    \227\Id. at 9.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                              Other Assets

                        F-16S AT AVIANO AIR BASE

    Aviano Air Base--situated in Aviano, Italy, approximately 
50 miles north of Venice--is home to the 31st Fighter Wing of 
the United States Air Forces Europe. At the time of the attack, 
two squadrons each consisting of 21 F-16s were stationed at 
Aviano.\228\ No tankers to provide air refueling for these F-
16s were stationed at Aviano.\229\ The assigned tankers were 
stationed in Mildenhall, England.\230\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \228\Testimony of Brigadier General Scott Zobrist, Commander, 31st 
Fighter Air Wing, U.S. Air Forces Europe, Tr. at 15 (Mar. 12, 2014) 
[hereinafter Zobrist Testimony] (on file with the Committee).
    \229\Id. at 20.
    \230\Id. at 21.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On September 11, 2012, the air squadrons in Aviano were not 
on any heightened alert status, despite the call for a 
``heightened alert'' during the President's call with Cabinet 
members--an alert sequence that would require the pilots and 
the aircraft to be ready in a short amount of time. Rather, 
they were in a training posture.\231\ In fact, on that day, the 
31st Fighter Wing was in the middle of a two-week inspection to 
ensure the Fighter Wing met Air Force requirements.\232\ The 
aircraft were in a ``true training configuration'' which meant 
nothing was pre-loaded on the aircraft.\233\ This also meant 
any live ordnances available at Aviano were not assembled, 
thus, prior to loading onto an F-16, the bomb had to be put 
together piece by piece.\234\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \231\Id. at 25.
    \232\Id. at 32.
    \233\Id. at 36.
    \234\Id. at 29-30.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In addition to the fact that none of the F-16s was on any 
alert status but rather in a true training configuration on the 
anniversary of September 11, the distance between Aviano and 
Libya is approximately 1,000 miles or the equivalent of two-
hour's flight time.\235\ Because of that distance, an F-16 
would have needed two air refuelings by the tankers that were 
stationed nearly 700 miles away in Mildenhall, England, at the 
time.\236\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \235\Id. at 56.
    \236\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    These impediments to any fighter aircraft response from 
Aviano to North Africa were well known prior to September 11. 
Yet the alert posture of the aircraft at Aviano did not change 
in advance of that date, nor did the alert posture change after 
the protests in Cairo, Egypt.
    General Ham testified he had not ordered any fighter 
aircraft at Aviano to be placed on alert in the days leading up 
to September 11 based on his assessment of the threat 
intelligence and the probability the type of attacks that would 
most likely occur would be small scale attacks.\237\ Because of 
this, he believed if any attack were to occur, fighter aircraft 
would not be the right tool to respond.\238\ Some other 
military officials agreed with General Ham's assessment that 
fighter aircraft would likely not be the right tool to respond 
to potential events in North Africa.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \237\Ham Testimony at 28.
    \238\Id.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                  REMOTELY PILOTED AIRCRAFT ``DRONES''

    At the time of the attacks, the Air Force operated four 
remotely-piloted aircraft--colloquially referred to as 
``drones''--from a base in southern Europe, approximately four 
hours from Benghazi. These drones were flown by a United States 
Air Force squadron located in the continental United States, 
and conducted missions over several countries including 
Libya.\239\ None of the drones were armed, [redacted 
text].\240\ A pilot operating a drone on the night of the 
attack explained why:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \239\Testimony of Remotely Piloted Aircraft Pilot 1, U. S. Air 
Force, Tr. at 10-11 (May 25, 2016) [hereinafter Drone Pilot 1 
Testimony] (on file with the Committee).
    \240\[Redacted text].

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Q: Was the aircraft armed?

        A: No, the aircraft did not have Hellfires on it.

        Q: Could it have been armed?

        A: I guess ``could'' is a very subjective term in this 
        case. So the aircraft had pylons which you could put 
        Hellfires on, yes.

        Q: If it was capable of being armed. Why wasn't it 
        armed?

        A: So as far as, like, the details of that decision, 
        they're above my level as to why that wasn't armed. But 
        from my understanding, the two reasons were--one is the 
        political environment between Libya, Italy, America, 
        and Europe was that we no longer needed missiles on our 
        aircraft in Libya because it had stabilized from the 
        Qadhafi regime, post-Qadhafi regime.

        The second reason is, whenever we don't need missiles 
        on the aircraft, we want to pull them off as soon as we 
        can, because it provides an opportunity to put more gas 
        on board, and with more gas on board, we can fly longer 
        missions and we can provide more intelligence, 
        surveillance, and reconnaissance to the Combined Air 
        Operations Center.\241\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \241\Drone Pilot 1 Testimony at 24-25.

    Armed drones had not been flown out of southern Europe 
since the fall of the Qadhafi regime. Another pilot who 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
operated the drone that night added:

        A: [W]e hadn't been armed in Libya since at some point 
        after the Qadhafi stuff had happened. So at some point 
        after that, it was--we knew we were no longer going to 
        be armed in that theater.

        Q: How did you know that?

        A: I don't remember who mentioned it, but I remember 
        hearing at some point that the--my understanding of it 
        was that the [government hosting the drone base] did 
        not want us flying an unmanned aircraft that was armed 
        over their country, so therefore they restricted us 
        from having armed unmanned aircraft.

        Q: And did you ever hear anything like--was that 
        through your chain of command or that was a fellow 
        pilot?

        A: My best guess would be that it was probably our 
        operations supervisor who basically runs the mass brief 
        at the beginning of each shift, you know, would have 
        just mentioned one day: Hey, due to, you know, the 
        [government hosting the drone base] not wanting us to 
        have armed unmanned aircraft over their country, we're 
        no longer going to be armed in Libya.\242\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \242\Testimony of Remotely Piloted Aircraft Pilot 2, U.S. Air 
Force, Tr. at 15 (May 25, 2016) [hereinafter Drone Pilot 2 Testimony] 
(on file with the Committee).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    One of the pilots added:

        To the best of my knowledge, that is my understanding 
        for what the trigger was for no longer arming the 
        remote-piloted aircraft flying over Libya, was the 
        takedown of Qadhafi.\243\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \243\Id. at 27.

    To utilize armed drones in a close air support environment, 
such as in Benghazi, a pilot would typically receive targeting 
instructions and clearance from a Joint Terminal Attack 
Controller [JTAC] on the ground.\244\ One of the drone pilots 
explained:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \244\Id. at 25-26.

        In a close air support environment, which is more akin 
        to what [Benghazi] would be, that's where we would 
        coordinate with a joint terminal attack controller, 
        JTAC, on the ground, and he would give us what is 
        called a nine-line in order to strike in that close air 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        support environment. And that would be the clearance.

        And then the only other option would be to get a nine-
        line, which is equivalent to a strike clearance, from 
        the actual Combined Air Operations Center via a chariot 
        directed straight from the Combined Forces Air 
        Component commander.\245\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \245\Drone Pilot 1 Testimony at 23.

    Although there were no JTAC's on the ground in Benghazi 
that night, several of the GRS agents possessed the skillset 
from their prior military experience.\246\ One agent testified:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \246\GRS 5 Testimony at 43-45; see also, Drone Pilot 1 Testimony at 
67 (``there were no JTACs in all of Libya.'').

        Q: And so how many of you had that, what [do] you call 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        it again? What did you call it again?

        A: A nine line.

        Q: Nine line?

        A: Yes, sir. It's just calling for fire. Now they call 
        them JTACs. When most of us were in the military it 
        wasn't as specialized, but everyone on that team could 
        have called in, called for fire.

        Q: Anybody----

        A: On our team, yes.

        Q: --could have called it?

        A: Yes, sir.

        Q: So how were you able to--I guess your capabilities--
        I'm talking about you personally, you were able to 
        provide a nine line?

        A: Sure.

        Q: And how did you know how to do that?

        A: From the military. From prior training in the 
        military.

        Q: Okay. Would you have had any way to communicate with 
        the pilot if a pilot----

        A: We could have, yes.

        Q: All right. How could that have----

        A: Through radio.

        Q: Through radio. When you say we were all able to 
        provide precision fire, are you talking about the GRS 
        individuals?

        A: Only the GRS individuals, yes.

        Q: Okay. Do you know if everybody was able to do that 
        or----

        A: Yes, I do.\247\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \247\GRS 5 Testimony at 43-45.

    When asked whether former military personnel were capable 
of serving as a JTAC, one of the drone pilots acknowledged such 
a person could possess the skills necessary to direct a 
strike.\248\ According to the witness from his perspective, the 
problem would be whether the military, without approval from 
the President, would have the authority to launch a missile 
toward a target at the direction of a skilled civilian.\249\ 
However, as the pilot pointed out, authority to strike without 
a military JTAC on the ground could also have been provided by 
the Combined Forces Air Component Commander.\250\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \248\Drone Pilot 1 Testimony at 65-66.
    \249\Id. This appears to be a concise statement from his 
perspective of more complex legal and operational constraints.
    \250\Id. at 30-31.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The year before the attacks in Benghazi, the Defense 
Department had operated drones over Libya during Operation 
Odyssey Dawn, the U.S. led campaign against Qadhafi troops, and 
Operation Unified Protector, the NATO mission against Qadhafi 
troops. During both of those operations, the drones had been 
used to launch missiles toward targets in Libya.\251\ During 
these operations, the drones were pre-loaded with missiles 
while stationed in southern Europe and always carried weapons 
during missions over Libya. At some point after the fall of 
Qadhafi, the drones operating over Libya no longer carried 
missiles.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \251\Testimony of Remotely Piloted Aircraft Sensor Operator, U. S. 
Air Force, Tr. at 26 (June 9, 2016) [hereinafter Sensor Operator 1] (on 
file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    After the fall of Qadhafi, the Defense Department continued 
to use drones and other ISR assets to gather intelligence 
information in Libya, especially regarding the growing number 
of Islamic extremist in country.
    In August 2012, the Libyan government restricted the types 
of missions that could be flown in Libyan air space, primarily 
over Benghazi. General Ham explained:

        Q: General, in the summer of 2012, August timeframe, 
        ISR missions over Benghazi and Tripoli were suspended 
        due to complaints from Libyans. I believe those ISR 
        assets were Predators and they were under your command. 
        Is that correct?

        A: Yes.

        Q: And what do you recall about the suspension or the 
        complaints from the Libyans about those ISR assets 
        operating in Libya?

        A: There were complaints by the Libyan Government to 
        the Embassy about overflights. [Redacted text].

        Q: Did those complaints impact your ability to operate 
        those Predator assets at all during that time?

        A: I do not recall the complaints about the unmanned 
        systems. I do recall complaints about the manned 
        systems. And the manned systems, we would have to very 
        carefully manage the time slots and when they could 
        fly.

        Q: Were those P-3s?

        A: Yes.

    General Ham described his assessment of the Libyans's 
request:

        Sir, I think there were some honest Libyans who didn't 
        like the noise. I mean, they're just kind of a constant 
        buzz. They're low, and they're intrusive.

        I think there were some Libyans who voiced concern to 
        their government about a foreign power being intrusive.

        And I believe there were Islamic terrorist 
        organizations who were influencing members of the 
        Libyan Government, because they knew what those 
        aircraft were doing.\252\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \252\Ham 2016 Testimony at 168.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                       ASSETS AT SOUDA BAY, CRETE

    While conducting oversight in Souda Bay, Members of the 
Committee received a briefing regarding special operations 
aircraft that were stationed at Souda Bay on the night of the 
attacks in Benghazi and could have been utilized in response to 
the attacks. The Committee sought confirmation of this 
information through interviews and requests for information 
from the Defense Department. The Defense Department has not 
denied the presence of these assets.

                      MILITARY PERSONNEL IN LIBYA

    The only Defense Department asset in Libya not considered 
that night were the military members of Team Tripoli. This was 
true because the Secretary was not even aware of their presence 
in Libya. At the time of his meeting with the President and for 
a period subsequent to that, the Secretary was not informed 
military personnel were making their way to Benghazi. In fact, 
he did not learn of this until the next day.\253\ This means 
the only U.S. military asset to actually reach Benghazi during 
the attacks was an asset the Secretary did not know about, was 
not told about by his subordinates, and did not learn about 
until after the fact.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \253\Panetta Testimony at 45.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                     FOREIGN EMERGENCY SUPPORT TEAM

    The Foreign Emergency Support Team [FEST] is ``the U.S. 
government's only interagency, on-call, short-notice team 
poised to respond to terrorist incidents worldwide.''\254\ 
Consisting of representatives from the Defense Department and 
other agencies, FEST deploys overseas at the request of the 
Chief of Mission or the State Department, and can augment both 
U.S. and host nation capabilities with specialized crisis 
response expertise.\255\ Historically, it has deployed overseas 
in response to attacks on U.S. interests. For example, in 2000, 
after the USS Cole was attacked, a FEST team was deployed to 
Aden, Yemen.\256\ Two years earlier, two FEST teams were 
deployed to Kenya and Tanzania. FEST has also been deployed in 
response to a hostage-taking crisis and abductions of 
Americans.\257\ Typically, the State Department requests 
deployment of the FEST in conjunction with the Joint Staff. 
Once that decision is made, the FEST is capable of launching 
within four hours.\258\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \254\Foreign Emergency Support Team (FEST) found at www.state.gov/
j/ct/programs/fest/index.htm.
    \255\See id.
    \256\Foreign Emergency Support Team (FEST), http://2001-
2009.state.gov/s/ct/about/c16664.htm.
    \257\Id.
    \258\Email from Mark I. Thompson (Sept. 11, 2012 9:58 PM) (on file 
with the Committee, C05562162) (``The team can launch within 4 hours of 
Deputies Committee decision.'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Despite all of these capabilities, the Secretary recalls no 
discussion of a potential FEST deployment in response to the 
Benghazi attacks.\259\ Mark I. Thompson, the person in charge 
of the FEST, contacted Kennedy about deploying the FEST on the 
night of the attacks. According to an email response sent to 
Thompson that evening, Kennedy ``did not feel the dispatch of 
such a team to Libya is the appropriate response to the current 
situation.''\260\ Charlene R. Lamb, Deputy Assistant Secretary 
for Diplomatic Security, State Department also did not believe 
the FEST was an appropriate asset to be deployed that evening. 
Although in direct contrast to the State Department's own 
description and the historical record of prior deployments of 
the unit, Lamb described the FEST as ``primarily focus[ing] on 
providing a strong communications package, policy experts, and 
investigative abilities.''\261\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \259\Panetta Testimony at 182.
    \260\Email to Mark I. Thompson (Sept. 11, 2012 10:43) (on file with 
the Committee, C05562162).
    \261\Testimony of Charlene Lamb, Deputy Ass't Sec'y for Diplomatic 
Sec., U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 26 (Jan. 7, 2016) [hereinafter Lamb 
testimony] (on file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    David H. Petraeus, Director, CIA, viewed the FEST as a 
``support element for the conduct of an operation to do a 
counter-terrorism or hostage rescue operation.''\262\ [Redacted 
text].\263\ Yet with Stevens considered missing for hours in 
Libya after the death of Smith, FEST expertise could have 
augmented the capabilities of the U.S. Embassy in Libya.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \262\Petraeus Testimony at 49
    \263\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Tidd stated a FEST deployment was discussed briefly during 
the 7:30 meeting with the White House, but dismissed.\264\ 
Kennedy and others at the State Department did not want to 
deploy the FEST in response to the attacks in Benghazi. Tidd 
indicated the State Department was concerned about putting 
individuals in country who were not ``trigger pullers'' and 
would potentially need rescuing.\265\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \264\Tidd Testimony at 22.
    \265\Id. at 23.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

 The Practical and Policy Implications Associated with Deploying Assets

    Throughout the course of the investigation, Defense 
Department witnesses provided insight into how various assets 
might have been employed to respond to the events in Benghazi, 
and the constraints--whether imposed by policy or imposed by 
capability--of employing such assets.

                           TIME AND DISTANCE

    Given that the attacks occurred in Libya, military 
officials repeatedly emphasized any asset that would respond to 
the events would be necessarily constrained by the ``tyranny of 
time and distance.'' The CIF commander described the 
difficulties of responding to events in Africa:

        So a lot of people that deploy to Africa or work on 
        AFRICOM--work for AFRICOM--use the term ``tyranny of 
        distance'' because it takes so long to move what could 
        seemingly look like smaller distances. And there's not 
        a robust network of airfields and staging points that 
        there are, say, in a more developed area of the world, 
        like Europe. So Europe is a much smaller area, and 
        there's many developed airfields, fueling sites. 
        Whereas, when you have Africa, it's, relatively 
        speaking, much more undeveloped and exponentially times 
        larger; so you are limited in your ability to move 
        around with fuel, with time. And we call it the 
        ``tyranny of distance'' because it's hard to get from 
        point A to point B, and it takes a while.\266\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \266\Testimony of CIF Commander, Special Operations Command Europe, 
Tr. at 98 (Aug. 26, 2015) [hereinafter CIF Commander Testimony] (on 
file with the Committee).

    With respect to the response to Benghazi, the Secretary 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
explained:

        I knew it was going to take some time [to move an asset 
        into Libya], just because of the preparedness for the 
        units and then the time and distance involved. You 
        know, you've heard the term ``tyranny of time and 
        distance,'' and it's tough in this area.\267\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \267\Panetta Testimony at 47.

    Tidd discussed the challenges faced to move forces as 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
quickly as possible that night:

        Q: Admiral, one of the lingering questions that we have 
        been trying to get a handle on is why it seemed to take 
        so long to get the response forces off the ground. The 
        FAST team was in Rota on a [specific] timeline. They 
        were ready to move prior to that. They sat on the 
        tarmac for about 6 hours before the planes got there.

        A: That is because we had no alert aircraft in 
        Ramstein. So, literally, it was the middle of the night 
        there. And I don't know all of the exact actions that 
        they had to go to, but at Ramstein, they had to go and 
        generate the airplanes, get the air crews, wake them 
        up, brief them, tell them what we knew, and have the 
        planes ready to go. We did not have an alert posture 
        set for the aircraft.\268\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \268\Tidd Testimony at 16.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                              *    *    *

        Everybody wanted them there instantaneously. And we 
        were getting a lot of questions . . . Are they mov[ing] 
        yet, are they moving yet? It was just taking a long 
        time.\269\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \269\Id.

    Dr. James Miller, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy 
at the time, provided a civilian's perspective on the 
logistical challenges faced by the Defense Department that 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
night in response to the attacks:

        The logistical issues were the tyranny of distance and 
        time, first and foremost. So moving an asset from the 
        [U.S.], the longest move, moving the FAST team, getting 
        it prepared to deploy--the FAST teams, I should say, 
        both from Rota--and then the EUCOM [CIF].

        So there is, first, the distance to be traveled, the 
        fact that it takes time. Second, they need time to spin 
        up. And I later became deeply familiar with the various 
        postures and so forth, but it is challenging to sustain 
        a very short timeline for an extended period of time. 
        And so each of the individual units we're talking about 
        had a specific timeline for readiness. My impression 
        was they were all working to shorten that timeline and 
        to get prepared and to deploy even more rapidly than 
        their timelines. But that I would consider a matter of 
        logistics as well.\270\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \270\Testimony of Dr. James N. Miller, Under Sec'y of Defense for 
Policy, Tr. at 71-72 (May 10, 2016) [hereinafter Miller Testimony] (on 
file with the Committee).

    Several witnesses also talked about the logistical 
obstacles to deploying F-16s in response to the attacks in 
Benghazi. Being able to deploy an aircraft and being able to 
actually utilize an aircraft in response to the events are 
separate questions. From the Defense Department's perspective, 
even if a F-16 was activated quickly and was able to fly to 
Benghazi before the final mortar attack, logistical constraints 
would still have impacted the capability to actually utilize 
the F-16s that night. Admiral James A. Winnefeld, the Vice 
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, discussed those 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
constraints:

        But let's say you could just snap your fingers and 
        there were F-16s suddenly over Benghazi immediately. 
        It's the middle of the night; there's no joint tactical 
        air controller on the ground. You don't even have any 
        communications with the people on the ground. You don't 
        even know where this is happening. If you're lucky and 
        you've got a latitude and a longitude to point your 
        systems at, you might be able to see the action going 
        on on the ground, if there was action going on on the 
        ground, but for most of the night there wasn't.\271\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \271\Testimony of Vice Admiral James A. Winnefeld, Vice Chairman, 
J. Chiefs of Staff, Tr. at 35-36 (Mar. 3, 2016) [hereinafter Winnefeld 
Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

    Rear Admiral Richard B. Landolt, the Director of Operations 
for AFRICOM also explained the logistical and policy 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
constraints of employing F-16s in response to the attack:

        A: You still have 3 to 4 hours of the flight time to 
        get to, say, Benghazi. And then you need to spin up 
        tanker aircraft because it can't do a round trip 
        without them. And Admiral Leidig talked to General 
        Franklin on that, so there was nothing on strip alert 
        there in Aviano.

        And tankers I believed were up in England, Mildenhall, 
        I believe.

                              *    *    *

        Q: Were the F-16s--perhaps ``dismissed'' isn't the 
        right word, but--pick a better word if you have one--
        but were they dismissed because of the [time it would 
        take to activate] issue, or were they dismissed because 
        there wasn't a viable mission for you to employ them?

        A: I would almost say both reasons, because--yeah. So 
        we spin it up, what are we going to do with it? I mean, 
        you've got to put ordnance on it, you've got to refuel 
        it, you've got to brief a mission. We don't know what 
        the mission is. You know, this is an urban environment 
        so--and we don't have people on the ground that can 
        direct targeting. There were not tactical action 
        controllers in Benghazi, as far as I know.\272\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \272\Testimony of Rear Admiral Richard B. Landolt, Dir. of 
Operations for U.S. Africa Command, Tr. at 38 (May 5, 2016) 
[hereinafter Landolt Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

    Even if F-16s were generated in a timely manner and were 
able to arrive in Benghazi before the attacks ended, policy 
restrictions would have impacted their utility that night. As 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Winnefeld explained:

        No Air Force or Navy pilot will ever drop a bomb into 
        an area where they are not certain who's there and 
        what's going on unless there's communications with 
        people on the ground and a JTAC or what we call a 
        forward air controller airborne.

        So I mean, it was highly unlikely that we were going to 
        be able to make a difference, even if we could get 
        there in time with air power, so we chose not to do 
        it.\273\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \273\Winnefeld Testimony at 36.

    As mentioned previously, many of the GRS agents on the 
ground had the JTAC capabilities from prior military 
experience. Of course all of what is laid out above was well 
known beforehand. There was nothing new about the time and 
distance concerns in Africa or the positioning of U.S. assets 
that might be called upon to respond.
    Not only did the Defense Department know any response to 
events in North Africa would be hampered by distance, the State 
Department also knew the military had such concerns because 
they were constantly reminded. Winnefeld testified he 
repeatedly warned the State Department of this issue:

        The tyranny of distance, in particularly North Africa, 
        as I'm sure you've probably seen a picture of the U.S. 
        imposed upon--you know, the entire continental U.S. 
        fits neatly into North Africa. It's a big place. We've 
        constantly reminded State while I was the Vice Chairman 
        and also, you know, National Security Council staff, 
        gently, politely, that if you're counting on reactive 
        forces from DOD to pull your fat out of the fire, 
        basically, when there's an event going on, you're 
        kidding yourselves. It's just too hard to get there. 
        Usually, an event is over fairly quickly, and even in 
        the best alert posture we can be in, it's going to be a 
        couple of hours, two or three hours, before we can be 
        someplace.

        So what you should really be counting on is using these 
        forces to either preemptively reinforce an area, like 
        an embassy, or preemptively evacuate an area, like an 
        embassy. Don't count on us to drop in in the middle of 
        the night and stop a situation that's going on.

        Now that won't prevent us from trying, certainly. If 
        there's an event in a place that--you know, like a 
        Benghazi and if we're postured in order to get there, 
        we'll certainly try, we'll always try, but I've made it 
        very clear to them--and they understand this--that they 
        need to be very careful in their risk assessments. And 
        it's a lot easier to reinforce and get out early than 
        it is to save something that's under fire. And that has 
        a lot to do not only with the tyranny of distance and 
        how long it takes to get there, but you know, it's not 
        easy to take a force and just drop it into the middle 
        of an unknown area at night, and it's even harder when 
        you're under fire. You know, V-22s don't like to fly 
        when they're under fire, that sort of thing. So we've 
        tried to make it very, very clear to [State], try, 
        please, please, to do good risk assessment and evacuate 
        or reinforce so that we don't have to rescue you in the 
        middle of a firefight.\274\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \274\Winnefeld Testimony at 74-75.

          The President's Directive and The Secretary's Order

    Just minutes after word of the attack reached the 
Secretary, he and General Martin E. Dempsey, Chairman of the 
Joint Chiefs of Staff, departed the Pentagon to attend a 
previously scheduled 5:00 p.m. meeting at the White House with 
President Obama and National Security Advisor Thomas E. 
Donilon.\275\ The Secretary recalled two details about the 
attack on the U.S. facility in Benghazi: a building was on fire 
and Stevens was missing.\276\ As the Secretary and Dempsey 
briefed the President on the evolving situation in Benghazi, 
Libya, the Secretary recalled the following guidance:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \275\Panetta Testimony at 22.
    \276\Id. at 22-23

        The President made clear that we ought to use all of 
        the resources at our disposal to try to make sure we 
        did everything possible to try to save lives 
        there.\277\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \277\Id. at 24.

    Immediately following the meeting with the President, at 
roughly 6:00 p.m., the Secretary and Dempsey returned to the 
Pentagon and convened a meeting that included Ham, who was in 
Washington D.C. at the time, and relevant members of the 
Secretary's staff and the Joint Staff.\278\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \278\Id. at 22.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    During the meeting, three distinct capabilities were 
identified to deploy in response to the attacks in Benghazi: 
two FAST platoons, the CIF, and the U.S. SOF, capable of 
response to crises worldwide.\279\ Again, the Secretary was not 
aware, and was not told, of any assets in Tripoli.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \279\Id. at 24-25
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Defense Department provided copies of maps identifying 
assets present in European Command, AFRICOM, and Central 
Command's areas of responsibility on September 11, September 
12, and September 13 to the Committee. The assets identified on 
the maps were purportedly considered during this meeting, 
although the Joint Staff at the time did not keep a daily 
updated list of assets and their locations.\280\ During its 
investigation, the Committee determined the maps failed to 
include assets that actually were deployed in response to 
Benghazi. For example, a C-17 medical airplane was deployed to 
Tripoli on September 12 to evacuate the wounded, deceased, and 
other American citizens. That asset was not identified on the 
maps provided by the Defense Department to the Committee. Given 
this discrepancy, the Committee requested it confirm whether 
there were any additional assets not identified on the maps or 
any assets withheld due to special access programs 
restrictions. It did not respond to the Committee's request. 
This failure to respond unnecessarily and unadvisedly leaves 
questions the Defense Department can easily answer, and it is 
in the public interest that it do so.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \280\See Winnefeld Testimony at 45.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    According to the Secretary, within an hour of his return to 
the Pentagon, he issued an order to deploy the identified 
assets.\281\ The testimony of record is that the President's 
direction that night was clear: use all of the resources 
available to try to make sure we did everything possible to try 
to save lives there.\282\ When asked whether he expected or 
needed the President to later extrapolate, clarify, or reissue 
that order, the Secretary said ``no.''\283\ The Secretary 
insisted he understood the President's directive and no further 
communication with the President was necessary. Nor did any 
further communication with the President take place.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \281\Panetta Testimony at 25-26.
    \282\Id. at 23.
    \283\Id. at 49.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Similarly, the Secretary insists his own intentions and 
actions that night, in the aftermath of the President's orders, 
were also clear: deploy the identified assets immediately. The 
Secretary said his orders were active tense. ``My orders were 
to deploy those forces, period. . . . [I]t was very clear: They 
are to deploy.''\284\ He did not order the preparation to 
deploy or the planning to deploy or the contemplation of 
deployment. His unequivocal testimony was that he ordered the 
identified assets to ``deploy.''\285\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \284\Id. at 26.
    \285\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    By 7:00 p.m. in Washington [1:00 a.m. in Benghazi], nearly 
three hours after the attacks began, the Secretary issued what 
he believed, then and now, to be the only order needed to move 
the FAST platoons, the CIF, and the U.S. SOF.\286\ Yet nearly 
two more hours elapsed before the Secretary's orders were 
relayed to those forces. Several more hours elapsed before any 
of those forces moved. During those crucial hours between the 
Secretary's order and the actual movement of forces, no one 
stood watch to steer the Defense Department's bureaucratic 
behemoth forward to ensure the Secretary's orders were carried 
out with the urgency demanded by the lives at stake in 
Benghazi. For much of the evening of September 11, principals 
in Washington D.C. considered Stevens to be missing and 
reliable information about his whereabouts was difficult to 
come by. For those on the ground and in the fight in Libya, the 
reality of a second American death was sinking in.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \286\Id. at 49.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                   THE SECOND ATTACK ON THE COMPOUND

                          Evacuation to Annex

    In Benghazi, the Diplomatic Security Agents determined 
Stevens would not have survived the fire in Villa C, and they 
were now engaged in a recovery mission.\287\ According to 
Diplomatic Security Agent 4, ``[W]e were unable to find 
Stevens. I was very--at that point, I think it was decided that 
this was probably a recovery mission. We were looking to 
recover his body.''\288\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \287\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 4 Testimony at 137-138.
    \288\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    At 11:10 p.m. [5:10 p.m. in Washington], an explosive 
device detonated several meters inside the back gate, starting 
the second wave of attacks at the Benghazi Mission 
compound.\289\ Around the same time, the drone arrived on 
station over the compound.\290\ GRS officers returned fire 
after being fired on by the attackers, while the Diplomatic 
Security Agents loaded their vehicle and departed the compound 
under fire at 11:16 p.m. [5:16 p.m.].\291\ Prior to leaving the 
compound, the Diplomatic Security Agents did not fire their 
weapons during the attacks. As one Diplomatic Security Agent 
explained:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \289\Video: DVR Footage of the Mission (Sept. 11, 2012, 2310).
    \290\See U.S. Dep't of Defense Timeline (``[At 11:10 PM EET t]he 
diverted surveillance aircraft arrives on station over the Benghazi 
facility.'').
    \291\Committee analysis of DVR Footage of the Mission (Sept. 11, 
2012, 2210 to 2216).

        I feel now, and I felt then at the time, that I had the 
        support. At that time there was no opportunity to 
        shoot. There was a situation, it was a moment where it 
        was myself and [another Diplomatic Security Agent], and 
        we were very close quarters with an overwhelming force 
        of armed combatants, and at that situation it would not 
        have been the smart thing, it would not have been the 
        tactical thing to fire your weapon at that time.\292\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \292\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 2 Testimony at 156.

    The Diplomatic Security Agents loaded Sean Smith's body in 
their vehicle and departed the compound through the main gate. 
One Diplomatic Security Agent described what they saw as they 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
exited the compound:

        As we were turning left to go outside the compound, we 
        could see at the end of that access road a lot of cars 
        and lights and people milling about. I ascertained that 
        was probably a checkpoint or a blockade. And so we 
        turned around and went the other way. It was at that 
        point the attacking force kind of crossed paths with 
        us, had then they opened fire on our vehicle, and we 
        continued out.\293\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \293\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 4 Testimony at 138.

    Another Diplomatic Security Agent provided further detail 
about the extensive attacks they encountered as they fled the 
Mission compound.\294\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \294\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 3 Testimony at 158-162; See also, 
Comprehensive Timeline of Events--Benghazi, produced by the U.S. Dep't 
of State. (Last Edit Nov 01, 2012) (State-SCB0047846).

        The situation on the perimeter was getting 
        substantially worse. As we loaded into the vehicle, the 
        agent that had been taking in the most smoke that was 
        in the safe haven with the Ambassador ultimately ends 
        up being the one to drive. I still don't know why we 
        allowed him to do that. He did a great job. That 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        adrenaline kicked in.

        As we pull out of the compound . . . we start taking 
        fire. So, as we suspected, the individuals that 
        attacked us, some of them had remained hidden in the 
        fruit grove on the compound and were waiting for a 
        situation to kill us.

        So as soon as we got out of the way of the Libyans, 
        they started shooting the side of our armored vehicle, 
        on my side of the car actually. Ting ting, ting ting. I 
        don't know, maybe 10 rounds is what hit us on our left 
        side.

        As we exit the compound, we turn right . . . There is a 
        large crowd, 40, 50, 60 people. We can't tell if they 
        are facing us, we can't tell if they are waiting for 
        us, we don't know. We get, I don't know, 20 or 30 yards 
        down this road; we see this crowd. We decide it is 
        something we would rather not encounter. We turn 
        around.

        We go back close to the compound, and there is someone 
        we presume to be a 17 February member waiting off to 
        the side by the wall who is waving at us, ``Don't go 
        this way.'' That is enough for us to turn around. So we 
        turn around again back toward the crowd, the large 
        crowd that we don't know their intentions.

                              *    *    *

        Okay. So we are heading back in the direction we 
        initially attempted to go. As we get about probably a 
        third to two thirds to halfway down this road, we 
        encounter an individual that is pulled off from a small 
        group of people at a compound. . . . This individual is 
        waving us into his compound as if to say, you know, 
        this is somewhere safe, come in and we will protect 
        you. We decide this is a terrible idea. We all advise 
        for the driver to just keep going.

        The second we pull alongside of this individual he 
        raises an AK 47 and shoots at pointblank range, 
        literally pointblank, inches. His gunfire impacts the 
        entire right side of the vehicle. The ballistic glass 
        and the armor proofing works, just like it is supposed 
        to.

        He shoots through all the way around the right side, up 
        in the back window, breaks through the exterior glass, 
        which is just factory glass, and impacts the ballistic 
        resistant glass on the inside, which holds.

                              *    *    *

        So, at the same time this individual is shooting us 
        with his AK 47, I don't think it is him but another 
        member of his group throws two grenades under our 
        vehicle. I specify that they were grenades because they 
        went off immediately as opposed to being a fuse-lit 
        explosive like the gelatin bombs we discussed earlier. 
        Those would have taken a few seconds for the fuse to 
        burn out. We didn't realize it at the time, but two of 
        our tires had been blown out.

        So, as we pass this gun, possibly a full magazine of 
        AK-47 fire at pointblank range and two grenades under 
        our vehicle, and we continue on. We didn't realize it 
        at the time, but two of our tires had been blown out.

        We approach the intersection with the next major road, 
        where the large group was positioned, and, to our 
        relief, they are not even paying attention to what is 
        going on down the road. They have their backs to 
        us.\295\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \295\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 3 Testimony at 158-163.

    As the Diplomatic Security Agents drove away from the 
Mission compound toward the Annex, they noticed they were being 
followed.\296\ The individuals following the agents detoured to 
a warehouse in the vicinity of the Annex near the parking area 
where attackers later staged the first attack on the 
Annex.\297\ One Diplomatic Security Agent described what 
happened when the team arrived at the Annex:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \296\Id.
    \297\Id. See also, Diplomatic Sec. Agent 1 Testimony at 74-75; 
Diplomatic Sec. Agent 4 Testimony at 138; Diplomatic Sec. Agent 5 
Testimony at 125.

        Finally, we were able to turn, kind of get off the main 
        road there where it was a lot quieter, and then we made 
        our way to the Annex. Upon arrival at the Annex, you 
        know, we pulled in, and immediately people came out and 
        I parked the car, got out of the car, and you know, 
        their eyeballs were about the size of saucers, just 
        seeing the car, and seeing us. And immediately, they 
        brought me into kind of a, you know, the kitchen area, 
        which is where the med area was. And they just started 
        pumping me, you know, with fluids, just chugging water, 
        eating fruit, and my goal was just to get back up on my 
        feet, get back out and keep fighting.\298\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \298\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 5 Testimony at 127.

    The team of five Diplomatic Security Agents arrived with 
Smith's body at the Annex at 11:23 p.m. [5:23 p.m. in 
Washington].\299\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \299\Video: DVR Footage of the CIA Annex (Sept. 11, 2012, 2338).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Back at the Benghazi Mission compound, the GRS team were no 
longer facing direct fire. The GRS departed through the 
compound's main gate and followed a different route to ensure 
no attackers were tailing them.\300\ They arrived at the Annex 
approximately 20 minutes later and quickly took up fighting 
positions on the roofs of the Annex buildings.\301\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \300\Video: DVR Footage of the Mission (Sept. 11, 2012, 2219).
    \301\GRS 2 Testimony at 53.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    After the agents and the GRS departed the compound, attacks 
continued on the Mission compound with RPGs, small arms fire, 
and unknown explosions.\302\ A mix of armed and unarmed 
individuals re-entered the compound through the back gate and 
subsequently looted the armored vehicles, removed paper and 
gear from the TOC, reset fires, and stole an armored Land 
Cruiser.\303\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \302\Committee analysis of DVR Footage of the Mission (Sept. 11, 
2012, 2219).
    \303\Committee analysis of DVR Footage of the Mission (Sept. 11, 
2012, 2219); see also Email to the DSCC Watch Team and the DSCC Mgmt. 
Team (Sept. 11, 2012, 7:59 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05409685). 
The Twitter account with handle @hadeelaish belonged to Hadeel al-
Shalchi, a journalist for Reuters news.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                     The First Attack on the Annex

    As the situation continued to unfold in Benghazi, the 
Diplomatic Security Agents on the ground were periodically 
reporting back to the tactical operations center in Tripoli 
about the events on the ground. The Tripoli Chief of Station 
discussed requests for a medical evacuation:

        So the initial question that I asked for our GRS team 
        lead: Do they need a Medevac, and what Medevac 
        assistance do they need? At that time they didn't know, 
        so that was one of our communications to AFRICOM was to 
        put a warning order or we may be needing Medevac 
        assistance.

        At that time also the location of--we had no 
        indication--our main priority was the personnel at 
        the--at the temporary mission facility and the 
        whereabouts of the Ambassador.\304\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \304\Chief of Station Testimony at 101.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                              *    *    *

        A: I think there was a--and some of the decisions were 
        an ongoing conversation that I had with our rep in 
        Stuttgart was about do we need Medevac and where that 
        Medevac would go. So initially in that, when we were 
        still looking for the Ambassador and our team was at 
        the airport, they just got--I didn't say we wanted a 
        medical--a Medevac at that point because we didn't have 
        any--I did have conversations with the GRS team lead in 
        Benghazi: What is the status of your personnel? Do you 
        need Medevac? And that answer was no at that time, and 
        the Ambassador was unlocated.

        But what played into some of my calculus at that time 
        was I didn't want to send a U.S. aircraft in Benghazi 
        and maybe have the same dynamic of getting off the 
        airport and not knowing what were going to be the 
        parameters of that situation.

        So that was--and the Defense Attache was in that same 
        conversation with elements in AFRICOM.\305\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \305\Id. at 109.

    Just before 12:30 a.m. [6:30 p.m. in Washington D.C.], 
individuals congregated and staged gun trucks at the far east 
intersection near the Annex. It was unclear to the agents at 
the Annex if these individuals were friend or foe. The GRS 
agents on the roof asked Annex management whether they were 
able to determine who was congregating outside of the 
Annex.\306\ The next wave of attackers then used the east field 
as cover and concealment to advance toward the Annex wall.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \306\GRS 1 Testimony at 94.

        [B]y that time, we had started to see people massing on 
        that east side parking lot and starting to utilize that 
        little house that had the family in it. They were 
        coming through that front door. They would disappear 
        where the front door was, and you could see them coming 
        out the back door, and that's when we're trying to get 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        our lights turned off, all the lights, get them off.

        Q: So were there floodlights looking out or lighting 
        the base?

        A: Both. We were trying to get the ones looking in. We 
        were trying to get those floodlights turned off. And 
        the ones looking out, let them stay on. In the 
        meantime, I'm calling on the radio going are we 
        expecting friendlies from chief of base and our team 
        leader. Are we expecting any friendlies? Are we 
        expecting any friendlies? And I'm getting, I don't 
        know, maybe, I don't know. In the meantime, they're 
        coming towards us, and I'm asking [redacted text], I 
        said do you see any weapons? Because we're not going to 
        shoot anybody unless we see a weapon. And you could 
        tell they're moving tactically. They're moving 
        sideways. They're playing hide and go seek. They don't 
        realize we have night vision. Eventually, I'm not going 
        to call that we got bad guys coming.\307\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \307\GRS 4 Testimony at 106-107.

    The first assault on the Annex itself began at 12:34 a.m. 
[6:34 p.m in Washington D.C.], when attackers directed small 
arms fire at the Annex hitting the northeast portion of the 
property, where Annex Building 2 was located.\308\ An IED was 
thrown over the wall near the Annex north recreation area in 
the vicinity of a GRS officer on the ground.\309\ One GRS 
officer described the beginning of the first attack.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \308\Video: DVR Footage of the CIA Annex (Sept. 11, 2012, 0034).
    \309\GRS 1 Testimony at 94. See also, Video: DVR Footage of the CIA 
Annex (Sept. 11, 2012, 0036).

        But then you could hear, like there's a mass of cars 
        that is forming. We're trying to figure out if it's 17 
        Feb. or if it was the police or who was it, you know. 
        Of course, we got nothing back from the TL or the Chief 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        of Base.

        But as I was walking the water back, something flew 
        over the wall, exploded about 15 feet or so away from 
        me. And at the same time, an RPG came up over the wall, 
        and that's when the first assault on our compound 
        happened.\310\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \310\GRS 1 Testimony at 94.

    For the next 10 minutes, rounds of small arms fire, RPG 
fire and IED explosions impacted the Annex near the northeast 
corner.\311\ Concurrently, starting at 12:41 a.m. [6:41 p.m. in 
Washington D.C.] the Annex took small arms fire and likely IED 
attacks from the east wall also aimed at Annex Building 2.\312\ 
Over the next 10 minutes, there were attackers that were 
visible along the east wall and an explosive impacted against 
the east side of the Annex.\313\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \311\Committee analysis of DVR Footage of the CIA Annex (Sept. 11, 
2012, from approximately 0034 to 0045).
    \312\Video: DVR Footage of the CIA Annex (Sept. 11, 2012, 0036 and 
0041, respectively).
    \313\Committee analysis of DVR Footage of the CIA Annex (Sept. 11, 
2012, from approximately 0040 to 0052).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    After being repelled from the first assault, attackers were 
still visible in the east field at 12:59 a.m.; however, GRS 
refused to fire on their location at this time because their 
position was too close to a residence where a local family 
lived including children.\314\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \314\GRS 4 Testimony at 119-120.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                     The Second Attack on the Annex

    After being overwhelmed in the first attack, the attackers 
regrouped with a more aggressive second attack. At 1:10 a.m., 
this second attack was directed at the Annex, with a RPG 
striking Building 2.\315\ The second attack included even 
heavier sustained fire and a larger number of attackers.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \315\Video: DVR Footage of the CIA Annex (Sept. 11, 2012, 0110).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Over the next five minutes, there was sustained and heavy 
small arms fire from the east perimeter wall, small arms fire 
from the northeast corner, RPG strikes from the east field, and 
sustained fire.\316\ The attackers retreated after taking heavy 
return fire from the Annex. One GRS agent described this 
attack:\317\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \316\Committee analysis of DVR Footage of the CIA Annex (Sept. 11, 
2012, from approximately 0110 to 0115).
    \317\Committee analysis of DVR Footage of the CIA Annex (Sept. 11, 
2012, from approximately 0110 to 0200).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Q: Okay. So the second attack, what happened?

        A: It was a lot more force, lasted probably twice as 
        long as the first one. I got a little bit of shrapnel 
        from something. I got a bunch of shrapnel from the 
        light. That was pretty much it. We just repelled that 
        one. And that was it until 5:15 when the mortars came 
        in.\318\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \318\GRS 1 Testimony at 97-98.

                       Local Libyans Find Stevens

    Shortly before the second attack on the Annex began, at 
approximately 1:00 a.m. [7:00 p.m. in Washington] local Libyans 
found the remains of Stevens in a bedroom in the main 
diplomatic building at the Benghazi Mission. One of the Libyans 
asked a member of the Libyan Army to help pull Stevens out of 
Villa C. A neighbor from a nearby compound who knew Stevens 
interceded and transported Stevens to the hospital.
    The Libyan Army officer who helped pull out Stevens' 
remains kept the phone that had been with Stevens and began 
calling the numbers listed in the phone to report that an 
American was located at the hospital. These calls started 
around 2:03 a.m [8:03 p.m. in Washington D.C.].\319\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \319\Officer A Testimony at 36-37.

        I started receiving calls from somebody who claimed to 
        have the Ambassador's--well, he didn't know that it was 
        the Ambassador's phone, but he was calling from the 
        Ambassador's phone, claiming that, you know, he had 
        come in contact with some, what he suspected, Americans 
        and found their phone, and he wanted to return the 
        phone. So, at that point, I was also involved in trying 
        to find out about the Ambassador's fate at this point 
        and how this individual was in possession of his 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        telephone.

        Q: All right. So you said you received a call from 
        somebody who allegedly had the Ambassador----

        A: A Libyan, yes.

        Q: Okay. And how did that person reach out to you? How 
        did they know to reach out to you?

        A: He used the Ambassador's phone and dialed a phone 
        number that was stored on the phone. And that phone on 
        the other end belonged to one of the Diplomatic 
        Security----

                              *    *    *

        So how did that first conversation go with the 
        individual on the other end of the line?

        A: I tried to get as much information from him as 
        possible. Initially, he was coy, and he said several 
        Americans, and I said, okay, well, put them on the 
        phone. And he said, well, they're not around me right 
        now. And that was kind of odd. And I asked him if they 
        were injured or why can't you put them on the phone. 
        And eventually he said that, yeah, they are in the 
        hospital, and they cannot talk right now.\320\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \320\Id.

    The Chief of Station described learning about Stevens' 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
location:

        Q: So at some point in the evening you learned the 
        Ambassador is probably not being held hostage, is 
        probably deceased. Do you remember about when that was 
        and what--how you learned that?

        A: I learned that--so I had two telephones for the two 
        different Libyan cellular services. So I learned that 
        from the Prime Minister's office representative who I 
        was in contact with. He previously said: Oh, we believe 
        the Ambassador is at a hospital, we believe he's 
        unconscious, we believe--you know, can I speak with 
        him? Oh, no. I'll try to get someone to speak with him. 
        That was that line.

        And then I got indications from the Libyan intelligence 
        service, the President's office, and the charge or the 
        DCM at about the same time. We got indications at the 
        same time base was getting someone to go to identify a 
        person because we had a base officer in telephonic 
        communication with someone that had the Ambassador's 
        phone.

        Q: Yeah.

        A: So during that whole time we were--knew the 
        Ambassador's phone was located at that hospital. We had 
        people telling us the Ambassador's at that hospital. We 
        didn't know the status of the Ambassador, so--but all 
        of those things happened within a relatively narrow 
        timeframe.\321\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \321\Chief of Station Testimony at 122.

                Team Tripoli Arrives at Benghazi Airport

    At 1:30 a.m. [7:30 p.m. in Washington D.C.], Glen Doherty 
and the other members of Team Tripoli landed at the Benghazi 
Benina International Airport.\322\ Meanwhile at the Annex, 
there was a lull in the fighting.\323\ One of the Team Tripoli 
members explained to the Committee the steps taken to obtain 
transportation from the Benghazi airport to the Annex:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \322\U.S. Dep't of Defense Timeline.
    \323\Special Operator Testimony at 52-53. See also, Video: DVR 
Footage of the CIA Annex (Sept. 11, 2012, 0158).

        Q: Was anyone present from the Libyan armed forces or 
        local militia that you could liaison with upon arrival 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        in Benghazi?

        A: Not as soon as we landed sir.

        Q: Okay. And you arrived at Benina airport?

        A: We did.

        Q: And what was the nature of activity going on at 
        Benina at 02 in the morning?

        A: It was completely dead. We were the only plane that 
        had landed in quite some time, it looked like, and the 
        guard actually came out in his pajamas and asked us 
        what was going on.

        Q: Okay. So there was no airport personnel. This was 
        not a 24/7 airport?

        A: I don't think so, sir. It didn't appear to be. Only 
        one individual came out to meet us once we had landed, 
        and it was clear that he had been sleeping before 
        that.\324\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \324\Special Operator Testimony at 52-53.

    When Team Tripoli arrived at the airport, ``the Ambassador 
was still missing.''\325\ While trying to secure transport at 
the airport, Team Tripoli was receiving information Stevens was 
located at a hospital in Benghazi. One Team Tripoli member 
said, ``One of the local militia had told us that he--they 
thought he was at the hospital. Reporting had indicated he was 
at the hospital.''\326\ The Chief of Station added details 
about their concern regarding the information they were 
receiving:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \325\Id. at 55.
    \326\Id. at 55-56.

        That whole atmosphere of getting drawn into that 
        correspondence that our officer had with that 
        individual who had the Ambassador's phone had a lot of 
        the hallmarks of some type of entrapment. It wasn't 
        straight up. It didn't--it wasn't: We have the 
        Ambassador here, you want to come and get him. It was 
        much more convoluted than that. So we were very leery 
        of--that was just a very high security posture as we 
        were going through.\327\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \327\Chief of Station Testimony at 125.

    Based on their coordination and planning prior to leaving 
Tripoli, the Team expected to be met at the airport by elements 
of the Libyan Shield militia. When they arrived, however, no 
one was present at the airport.\328\ One of the Team Tripoli 
special operators described what they encountered:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \328\Special Operator Testimony at 52.

        We didn't have a mode of transportation that was ours, 
        so we were depending on those local militias. So it 
        took us that long to find one that was capable of 
        taking us into town. Again, initially we were trying to 
        go to the hospital, which we were all being told, ``No, 
        we can't take you to the hospital. We can take you to 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        the annex.''

        So that fight went on for a little while, with us 
        thinking that he could possibly be at the hospital 
        needing medical care. So we were pushing hard enough to 
        go there that it prolonged our time at the airport. 
        Then once we found out he was deceased, we had 
        obviously gave that up, and they had no problem taking 
        us to the annex.\329\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \329\Id. at 58-59.

    While at the airport, Team Tripoli was alerted that 
Stevens' [redacted text] personal tracking device--was pinging 
``within 25 meters of their current location on the 
airfield.''\330\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \330\Request 1-004067 IntBook 6-044.

        Q: Okay. So I want to direct your attention to the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        first page of exhibit 1, the last bullet?

        A: Okay.

        Q: It reads: ``Note: TF Green member informed [redacted 
        text] that the AMBOs [redacted text]''--does that mean 
        [personal tracking device]?

        A: Correct.

        Q: ``It was pinging, and its location was within 25 
        meters of their current location on the airfield. 
        Several militia members and vehicles were on the 
        airfield and vehicles at the time.'' So just to be 
        clear, how did you learn about that [personal tracking 
        device] pinging?

        A: My TL told me at the time because when that militia 
        drove up, [redacted text] and I were unpacking gear, 
        and we were situating. And I was checking my gear and 
        that's when our TL came up and advised us what was 
        going on in reference to the ping.

        Q: So the TF Green individual would have informed the 
        TL and he told you?

        A: Could have been.

        Q: What was your assessment at the time of the 
        significance of that attack?

        A: That someone was near the Ambassador, or at least 
        recovered some of his gear or his phone or his 
        [personal tracking device] system. Somehow they had his 
        belongings.

        Q: And they were standing very close to your team?

        A: Correct.

                              *    *    *

        Q: So obviously, you talked about how one of your 
        primary missions was to locate the Ambassador. And then 
        you learned while you were at the airport that the 
        Ambassador's [personal tracking device] is pinging 
        within 25 meters of your current location. Did you or 
        the other team members find that odd?

        A: Yes.

        Q: Can you elaborate on that?

        A: It was unusual that somebody had some of the 
        Ambassador's belongings.

        Q: Okay.

        A: Especially his [personal tracking device]. I don't 
        know if it was his cell phone pinging, how they got the 
        ping, or his personal [tracking device], but it was odd 
        that they had some of his equipment.\331\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \331\Testimony of GRS Tripoli, Cent. Intel. Agency, Tr. at 32-35 
(June 23, 2015) [hereinafter GRS Tripoli Testimony] (on file with the 
Committee).

    For the next three-plus hours after their arrival in 
Benghazi, Team Tripoli attempted to secure transportation from 
the airport to the hospital. Because Team Tripoli did not have 
full awareness of the local militias operating in Benghazi, nor 
relationships with local militias to contact for assistance, 
they relied on a Libya Shield official in Tripoli to vet the 
local militia elements that showed up at the airport offering 
assistance. Much of their time at the airport was spent 
identifying the ``least of several bad options'' as it related 
to choosing a militia for transport.\332\ The Team's Tripoli 
contact recommended seeking transport with another branch of 
the Libya Shield, as the branch prearranged to transport them 
never arrived.\333\ One Team Tripoli member stated:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \332\Special Operator Testimony at 56-57.
    \333\Id. at 57.

        Q: Did you have any sense during the 2 and-a-half hours 
        that you spent at Benina airport that you were being 
        prevented from departing the airport? Could you have 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        left at any time from 02 to 0430?

        A: We didn't have a mode of transportation that was 
        ours, so we were depending on those local militias. So 
        it took us that long to find one that was capable of 
        taking us unto town. Again, initially we were trying to 
        go to the hospital, which we were all being told, ``No, 
        we can't take you to the hospital. We can take you to 
        the Annex.'' So that fight went on for a little while, 
        with us thinking that he [the Ambassador] could 
        possibly be at the hospital needing medical care. So we 
        were pushing hard enough to go there that it prolonged 
        our time at the airport. Then once we found out he was 
        deceased, we had obviously gave that up, and they had 
        no problem taking us to the Annex.\334\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \334\Id. at 62-63.

    The group that escorted Team Tripoli to the Annex was a 
branch of Libya Shield operating that night under [redacted 
text].\335\ According to a member of Team Tripoli, this was 
their ``less bad'' option for transport that night given the 
difficulty of trusting militias in a city where many have 
Islamist leanings and an anti-Western sentiment after the 
involvement of NATO in the Libya Revolution.\336\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \335\Id. at 55.
    \336\Id.

        Q: And how were you going to proceed? What was the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        nature of your transport from Benina to the Annex?

        A: The Libya Shield commander had several gun trucks 
        that we were using, as well as some Land Cruisers, to 
        get us to the Annex.

        Q: And this again, Libya Shield 2, the less bad element 
        of the militia?

        A: Less bad, yes.\337\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \337\Id.

    Team Tripoli left the airport at approximately 4:30 
a.m.\338\ A team member provided the Committee the following 
background information for their intended mission at the time, 
as it had transitioned from locating and potentially rescuing 
Stevens to an effort to start evacuating nonessential personnel 
from Benghazi back to Tripoli.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \338\Id. at 51.

        Q: [W]hat did you understand about your mission as you 
        were heading from Benina airport to the Annex? Was your 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        mission then evacuation of nonessential personnel?

        A: It was nonessential personnel only prior to the 
        mortar attack happening . . . we were going to take 14 
        personnel back with us to the airport, let the jet take 
        off, take them back to Tripoli. We were going to come 
        back to the Annex and help hold up with the GRS guys 
        until further notice . . . the majority of those people 
        [the GRS would have stayed there. Shooters, if you 
        will.\339\ . . . [W]e did not make the decisions for 
        that [airplane] to come back. We didn't know how long 
        we were going to have to stay at the Annex. We were 
        under the understanding they wanted to stay. They did 
        not want to leave. So we were just trying to get the 
        nonessential personnel out to get further direction 
        from Chief of Station back in Tripoli on what he wanted 
        them to do . . . I believe it was the Chief of Base 
        that wanted to keep some individuals there.\340\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \339\Id. at 69-70.
    \340\Id. at 70.

                   THE WHITE HOUSE CONVENES A MEETING

    While Team Tripoli was urgently seeking transportation from 
the Benghazi airport to either the hospital or the Annex, Denis 
McDonough, the Deputy Assistant to the President for National 
Security Affairs convened a secure video teleconference meeting 
at 7:30 p.m. in Washington with the State Department and the 
Department of Defense.\341\ The State Department attendees 
included: Cheryl D. Mills, Chief of Staff; Jacob J. Sullivan, 
Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Planning; Stephen D. Mull, 
Executive Secretary; Wendy R. Sherman, Under Secretary for 
Political Affairs; and Kennedy and the Secretary.\342\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \341\See Email from Cheryl D. Mills to Beth E. Jones et al. (Sept. 
11, 2012 7:03 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0066272) (``SVTC AT 
7:30PM WITH WHITE HOUSE'').
    \342\See id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Defense Department was represented by Jeremy B. Bash, 
Chief of Staff to the Secretary of Defense, and Tidd.\343\ The 
two representatives who normally would have participated in the 
meeting--the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the 
Under Secretary of Defense for Policy--did not do so that 
night.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \343\See id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In the four hours since the initial attack on the Benghazi 
Mission compound, the Diplomatic Security Agents in Benghazi, 
with help from the team from the Annex, survived the initial 
onslaught, located the remains of their fallen colleague Smith, 
frantically searched for Stevens, escaped under heavy gunfire 
from the Mission compound to the Annex, avoided an ambush along 
the route, and arrived at the Annex only to withstand and repel 
additional attacks there.\344\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \344\Email to Victoria Nuland, et al. (Sept. 11, 2012 5:32 PM) (on 
file with the Committee, SCB0068365-67) (forwarding chain of emails 
regarding updates on the events in Libya).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Team Tripoli, after learning of the attack in Benghazi, 
quickly developed a plan to render assistance, secured private 
aircraft in Tripoli, packed gear, planned a mission, flew from 
Tripoli to Benghazi, and urgently negotiated with unknown 
militias seeking transportation to either the hospital or the 
Annex.
    By stark contrast, in those same four hours, principals in 
Washington had merely managed to identify forces that could 
potentially deploy to Libya and convened a meeting to discuss 
those forces.
    Despite the Secretary of Defense's clear directive and his 
intention that forces would move and move quickly, no forces 
had yet moved. Over 13 hours after the attack began, the first 
force--the farthest away--deployed. It would take nearly 18 
hours for the FAST team to move, and over 20 hours from the 
beginning of the attack before the CIF moved.

                Forces are ``Spinning Up As We Speak.''

    Moments before the White House meeting began, Bash emailed 
several people including Mills and Sullivan, notifying them of 
the assets the Secretary had ordered to respond to the attacks. 
He wrote:

        After Consulting with General Dempsey, General Ham and 
        the Joint Staff, we have identified the forces that 
        could move to Benghazi. They are spinning up as we 
        speak. They include a SOF element that was in Croatia 
        (which can fly to Suda [sic] Bay, Crete) and a Marine 
        FAST team out of Roda [sic], Spain.

        Assuming Principals agree to deploy these elements, we 
        will ask State to secure the approval from host nation. 
        Please advise how you wish to convey that approval to 
        us. Burns/Nides/Sherman to Miller/Winnefeld would be my 
        recommended course.\345\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \345\Email from Jeremy Bash to Jacob J. Sullivan (Sept. 11, 2012 
7:19 PM) (on file with the Committee, STATE-SCB0060705).

    Even though the Secretary had already issued the order to 
deploy the identified forces and testified he fully expected 
his order was being carried out at the time, the plan was to 
``work through this issue'' during the White House 
meeting.\346\ As the Secretary reinforced: ``I had the 
authority to deploy those forces. And I didn't have to ask 
anyone's permission to get those forces into place.''\347\ The 
Secretary further said his approach was ``we need to move them 
and move them as fast as we can in order to respond. So I 
wanted no interference with those orders to get them 
deployed.''\348\ In fact, the Secretary added that during the 
meeting at the Pentagon, his orders were simultaneously being 
conveyed to those forces.\349\ He noted: ``[T]hese are elite 
units, and the purpose of these units is to move when I give 
the order to move, and that's what I expected.''\350\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \346\Email from Jacob J. Sullivan to Jeremy Bash, et al. (Sept. 11, 
2012 7:21 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0075439).
    \347\Panetta Testimony at 32.
    \348\Id. at 33.
    \349\Id. at 34.
    \350\Id. at 37.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Curiously, the two members of the Defense Department Bash 
identified in his ``spinning up'' email as the proper persons 
to ``convey'' ``approval from the host nation''--Winnefeld and 
Miller--were not part of the White House meeting. In fact, 
Winnefeld was not even at the Pentagon. He had left to return 
to his residence to host a dinner party for foreign dignitaries 
and testified he received one update on the events during the 
dinner. After the dinner concluded around 10 p.m., he went to 
the secure communications facility in his home. An hour later, 
the mortar attacks began. Likewise, Miller was not at the 
Pentagon due to an unexpected family emergency. He asked Bash 
to participate in the White House meeting in his stead.\351\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \351\Miller Testimony at 63-64. Miller testified he attempted to 
participate in the meeting from his home, but was unable to connect to 
the call.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                           Purpose of Meeting

    Despite the Secretary's expectation the assets he ordered 
to deploy would move as fast as possible in order to respond, 
the individuals who participated in the White House meeting, 
nevertheless, felt the need to ``work through'' the assets the 
Secretary had already ordered to deploy.\352\ At the time of 
the White House meeting, the final decision about which assets 
to deploy had apparently not been made, according to them, 
despite the Secretary's recollection and testimony to the 
contrary. Tidd testified:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \352\Email from Jacob J. Sullivan to Jeremy Bash, et al. (Sept. 11, 
2012 7:21 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0075439).

        Q: And at the time of the meeting, what was the status 
        of the assets that you all discussed? Were they 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        preparing to deploy?

        A: They were alerted. The final decision had not yet 
        been made definitively, as I recall, but we came out of 
        that meeting basically: send everything.\353\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \353\Tidd Testimony at 23-24; see also, Email from Jacob J. 
Sullivan to Jeremy Bash, et al. (Sept. 11, 2012 7:21 PM) (on file with 
the Committee, SCB0075439) (``We should work through this issue in that 
venue.'').

    Tidd described the purpose of the meeting convened by the 
White House as an opportunity to share information across 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
agencies.

        It was an information exchange to cross-level what does 
        everybody know, is there any new information. The 
        intelligence community was obviously providing 
        information on other things that were going on, other 
        locations that State was providing information on, 
        other embassies where they had concerns. FBI. It was a 
        general kind of a roundtable and round robin of 
        everybody going around and passing out what information 
        they had, what did they know. And then what were the 
        asks. And then an opportunity for us to be able to say 
        -- when we got to the military, we talked about these 
        are the type of forces that we can deploy, and here's 
        what we know, here's what we think, and here's what our 
        recommendations are.\354\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \354\Tidd Testimony at 21-22.

    Mills said essentially the same thing: ``[T]he [White House 
meeting] was called because everyone was seeking both to 
exchange information and figure out how to coordinate resources 
to support our team.''\355\ Kennedy said this about the White 
House meeting:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \355\Mills Testimony at 47.

        The [meeting] was mainly, to the best of my 
        recollection, simply a conforming of information, a 
        sharing of information. Make sure everybody had the 
        same understanding and everyone was doing whatever they 
        could in their lane of responsibility to proceed.\356\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \356\Testimony of Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Sec'y for Mgmt., State 
Dep't, Tr. at 112 (Feb. 3, 2016) [hereinafter Kennedy Testimony] (on 
file with the Committee).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    He elaborated:

        Conforming, conforming means, in effect, reconciling. 
        That I have heard this, you have heard that, what have 
        you heard? Trying to make sure that we all, meaning 
        across the entire U.S. Government, had the clearest 
        coherent understanding of what was going on in the fog 
        of war.\357\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \357\Id. at 155.

    Winnefeld typically would have participated in the meeting 
that night. However, after being notified of the attacks, he 
departed the Pentagon that night to attend a dinner engagement. 
Despite not participating in the discussion, Winnefeld 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
explained why the White House meeting would be called:

        [W]henever something like this happens, whether it's a 
        hostage rescue, or you name it, particularly an 
        emergent event, there's always a [meeting] like this, 
        and there are a lot of really good points brought up by 
        interagency partners about considerations and--in 
        stream. They're very useful events, and we can very 
        quickly resolve questions, like, does anybody have any 
        objections if we sent forces into Tripoli? My 
        supposition here is that that was a very quickly 
        resolved; nobody has objections.\358\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \358\Winnefeld Testimony at 80-81.

    From the Defense Department's perspective, it was an 
opportunity to notify the State Department and the White House 
of the assets it could deploy in response to the attacks as 
ordered by the Secretary and to seek concurrence.\359\ 
Winnefeld explained:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \359\See Email from Jeremy Bash to Jacob J. Sullivan (Sept. 11, 
2012 7:19 PM) (on file with the Committee, STATE-SCB0060705).

        [M]y sense is that the deputies sort of coordinated on 
        what DOD intended to do. So the Secretary has decided 
        he wanted to deploy the CIF and the [U.S. Based SOF] 
        and the FAST platoons. That was exposed to the deputies 
        in the deputies SVTC, and they all concurred with that.
        . . .\360\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \360\Winnefeld Testimony at 84. Winnefeld further explained that 
had there been a disagreement ``the Secretary probably would have said: 
Look, get them moving anyway. And then he would be on the phone with 
the White House.'' Id. at 79-80.

    Of course, Winnefeld did not participate in this particular 
White House meeting. Witnesses who actually were present and 
appeared before the Committee were surprisingly unable to 
recall details regarding the various issues and discussions 
during the White House meeting.
    The Committee was, however, able to uncover several emails 
from participants summarizing the meeting. In striking contrast 
to the Secretary's testimony, one summary of the White House 
Meeting listed the theme of the meeting, not as deploying 
forces in an active tense, but as ``getting forces ready to 
deploy'' in a future tense.\361\ Another summary described the 
deployment of assets in response to Benghazi as ``likely'' and 
``possibly'' that evening.\362\ According to these summaries, 
the conclusion from the meeting was that forces were not going 
to deploy ``until order comes, to go to either Tripoli or 
Benghazi.''\363\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \361\Email from State Dep't Operations Ctr. Watch Officer, to 
P_StaffAssistants & D(N)_StaffAssistants (Sept. 11, 2012 9:46 PM) (on 
file with the Committee, C05562037).
    \362\Email to Harold Hongju Koh, et al. (Sept. 11, 2012 10:40 PM) 
(on file with the Committee, C05528017) (``There is likely to be a 
deployment very quickly, possibly this evening.'').
    \363\Email from State Dep't Operations Ctr. Watch Officer, to 
P_StaffAssistants & D(N)_StaffAssistants (Sept. 11, 2012 9:46 PM) (on 
file with the Committee, C05562037).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    But the Secretary was unequivocal the order had already 
come: President Obama, as the Commander in Chief, said do 
everything you can to help our people in Libya.\364\ As the 
Secretary of Defense, he ordered assets to deploy--active tense 
with no further explanation, amplification, or instruction 
needed.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \364\Panetta Testimony at 23.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The two-hour ``meeting''--in which neither the Commander in 
Chief nor the Secretary of Defense participated--was in fact 
much more detailed and involved than witnesses suggested and 
presents a new perspective on what was happening and being 
discussed in Washington D.C. even while an Ambassador was 
missing and a second U.S. facility was under attack half a 
world away.

            Discussions During the 7:30 White House Meeting

                          DIPLOMATIC CLEARANCE

    The issue of securing host nation approval, the last aspect 
of Bash's email, was discussed during the 7:30 White House 
meeting. According to a write-up of notes taken by Mull, the 
State Department emphasized any deployment of U.S. Forces into 
Libya needed approval from the Government of Libya.

        Overall theme: getting forces ready to deploy in case 
        the crisis expands and a real threat materializes 
        against Embassy Tripoli. DOD will send the details to 
        U/S/Kennedy (i.e. plane numbers, troop numbers, 
        airfield support needs, etc.) for us to make request to 
        government of Libya (GOL).

                              *    *    *

        Congressional angle: If any deployment is made, 
        Congress will need to be notified under the War Powers 
        Act . . . Libya must agree to any deployment.\365\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \365\Email from State Dep't Operations Ctr. Watch Officer, to 
P_StaffAssistants & D(N)_StaffAssistants (Sept. 11, 2012 9:46 PM) (on 
file with the Committee, C05562037).

    On the ground in Tripoli, the Defense Attache had already 
begun working to obtain flight clearances from the Libyan 
government before the White House meeting even began.\366\ 
Initially, he notified the Libyan government of a potential 
request for flight clearances as the night progressed.\367\ 
Because he had given advance notice to the Libyan government 
that potential flight clearances would be needed, he fully 
expected the Libyan government to approve any formal request 
when it was made. He noted, however, that to submit a formal 
request, specific information about the tail numbers, expected 
arrival of the aircraft, the number of personnel, and types of 
weapons had to be conveyed to the Libyan government.\368\ Not 
only did a formal request have to be made, a representative of 
the Libyan government had to be available to receive the 
paperwork for that request. There was no Libyan representative 
on duty overnight.\369\ As to when formal approval was 
received, the Defense Attache testified:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \366\Testimony of Defense Attache, U.S. Embassy Tripoli, U.S. Dep't 
of Defense, Tr. at 113-114 (Jan. 31, 2014) [hereinafter Defense Attache 
2014 Testimony] (on file with the Committee).
    \367\Id.
    \368\Id.
    \369\Id. at 114.

        Q: Can you recall when the actual--the relevant 
        information that was needed, like tail numbers and 
        things, when was that transmitted to the Government of 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Libya?

        A: I don't. But I would also come back to the fact that 
        we had a green light from the Government of Libya to 
        bring it in. It was just a question of when we were 
        going to know the specific information that goes into a 
        standard flight clearance request. So it had to have 
        been, I would say, sometime midmorning to noon on the 
        12th. It could have been, I would say, sometime 
        midmorning to noon on the 12th. It could have been a 
        little bit after that.

        Q: And that's when you received the relevant 
        information you need to pass on, or what happened?

        A: Probably both. In the course of the morning, leading 
        up to the afternoon, we got the information we 
        required, and then we were able to subsequently 
        transmit it to the Libyans.\370\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \370\Defense Attache Testimony at 159-160.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                            CIVILIAN CLOTHES

    A request for the FAST Platoon to wear civilian attire 
appears to have generated from Kennedy during the White House 
meeting.\371\ Kennedy, during his interview with the Committee, 
was unable to recall when the discussion regarding civilian 
attire was held that evening, but provided the following 
information about the substance of the discussion:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \371\See Email from Benjamin I. Fishman, Nat'l Sec. Council (Sept. 
11, 2012 9:19 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB000029-30).

        [Y]ou wanted to make sure that the steps we were taking 
        would enhance the security of our personnel, not 
        potentially diminish the security of our personnel. Our 
        personnel had been consolidated in Tripoli in one 
        location, and all of them were there with the 
        multiplied security forces of both the prime building 
        and the Annex building. And I recall this discussion, 
        generally speaking, and it was determined that the 
        delay was not going to be significant and it was better 
        to have the forces arrive in civilian clothes[.]\372\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \372\Kennedy Testimony at 173.

    Tidd elaborated on the State Department's request for the 
FAST platoon to arrive in Libya in civilian clothing. He 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
testified:

        Again, like I said, they wanted to minimize the 
        signature that looked like a big military invasion, a 
        big military arrival there. And the reason that I 
        remember the discussion was I had to go back and find 
        and make sure, as the FAST had moved out and was 
        waiting for lift, and the question that I had to go 
        back and ask AFRICOM was: in their rucksacks did they 
        have civilian clothes that they could put on, or was 
        this going to entail having to go back to their 
        barracks and draw that equipment. They had what they 
        needed, and so they didn't have to go anyplace.

        At the [White House] meeting, I couldn't speak for 
        them. And I wanted to go back and verify that. Because 
        what I wanted to know is: is it more important to get 
        them there or to have the signature in civilian 
        clothes? As it turned out, it didn't matter, because 
        they had the civilian clothes with them already.\373\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \373\Tidd Testimony at 28.

    Tidd did not agree that requiring the FAST platoon to wear 
civilian clothes was a step that would enhance security.\374\ 
The Defense Department assessed the impact of the requirement 
as quite the opposite: it created an increased risk to the FAST 
platoon members as they traveled through Tripoli.\375\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \374\See State Dep't Email (Sept. 11, 2012 10:40 PM) (on file with 
the Committee, C05528017) (``[T]here was discussion of the option of 
entering in plainclothes. . . .'').
    \375\See id. (``[The Joint Chiefs of Staff] explained . . . that 
the risks to the forces [] remaining in plainclothes increased as they 
transited from point of entry to the relevant location of action'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Summaries of the White House meeting did not, in fact, 
highlight the potential security-enhancing benefit of the FAST 
platoon wearing civilian clothes. Instead, the benefit of 
having the FAST platoon wear civilian clothing was to cater to 
unexpressed Libyan government concerns about military 
appearances and to avoid ``any impression of a U.S. invasion of 
Libya.''\376\ As Benjamin J. Rhodes, Deputy National Security 
Advisor for Strategic Communications, stated in an email to his 
colleague at the end of the meeting: ``[T]he time for being 
overly sensitive to Libyan concerns about military appearances 
seems to be over.''\377\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \376\Email from State Dep't Operations Ctr. Watch Officer, to 
P_StaffAssistants & D(N)_StaffAssistants (Sept. 11, 2012 9:46 PM) (on 
file with the Committee, C05562037) (``We made a request that any 
deployments should be in plain clothes to avoid any impression of a 
U.S. invasion of Libya.''); see also State Dep't Email (Sept. 11, 2012 
10:40 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05528017) (``Apparently Pat K 
expressed concern on the SVTC about Libyan reaction if uniformed US 
forces arrived in country in military aircraft''); Email from Benjamin 
I. Fishman (Sept. 11, 2012 9:19 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB000029-30) (``I don't know why Pat Kennedy is so concerned about 
what extra securit y [sic] folks are wearing. Does that come from Greg 
[Hicks]? The time for being overly sensitive to Libyan concerns about 
military appearances seems to be over.'').
    \377\Email from Benjamin I. Fishman (Sept. 11, 2012 9:19 PM) (on 
file with the Committee, SCB000029).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                       The Plan from the Meeting

    Although the Secretary told the Committee he fully expected 
his order to deploy was the only step needed to move forces in 
response to the attacks, records obtained by the Committee 
reflect a different understanding by others on the night of the 
attacks.
    One email seems to indicate others may not have viewed the 
order as being as clear and immediate as the Secretary 
recalled. It read in relevant part:

        Per Amb. Mull, ROUGH notes from the 1930 [7:30 p.m.] 
        EDT SVTC meeting:

        Overall theme: getting forces ready to deploy in case 
        the crisis expands and a real threat materializes 
        against Embassy Tripoli. DOD will send the details to 
        U/S Kennedy (i.e. plane numbers, troop numbers, 
        airfield support needs, etc.) for us to make requests 
        to government of Libya (GOL).\378\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \378\Email from State Dep't Operations Ctr. Watch Officer, to 
P_StaffAssistants & D(N)_StaffAssistants (Sept. 11, 2012 9:46 PM) (on 
file with the Committee, C05562037).

        There were 10 Action items from the White House 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        meeting:

    The first two action items in that email were redacted and 
not provided to the Committee. The next three items read as 
follows:

        3) LFleet Antiterrorism Security Team (FAST): about 
        [redacted text] Marines, they need six hours to 
        prepare. They're currently at the Rota Air Base in 
        Spain and will wait to deploy. Will not deploy until 
        order comes to go to either Tripoli or Benghazi. We 
        made a request that any deployments should be in plain 
        clothes to avoid any impression of a U.S. invasion of 
        Libya.

        4) LCongressional angle: If any deployment is made, 
        Congress would need to be notified under the War Powers 
        Act. Counselor Mills is working with L and H on this 
        and it may come through Ops. Libya must agree to any 
        deployment.

        5) LEfforts are continuing to locate Ambassador 
        Stevens. 
        A/S Beth Jones will work to reach out to the hospital 
        to confirm the identity of the patient. . . .\379\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \379\Id.

    Phrases such as ``getting forces ready to deploy'' and 
forces ``will not deploy until order comes to go to either 
Tripoli or Benghazi'' do not reflect an imminent deployment of 
the assets as ordered by the Secretary and as he testified 
before the Committee.
    The declarative ``Libya must agree to any deployment'' is 
also inconsistent with what the Secretary testified to and 
similarly inconsistent with what the Secretary recalled 
President Obama telling him. At no point, according the 
Secretary of Defense, did a U.S. response to the attacks in 
Benghazi hinge on Libya agreeing with the actions ordered.\380\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \380\Panetta Testimony at 67.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Mull's summary of the White House meeting is, however, more 
consistent with Tidd's recollection of the meeting.\381\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \381\Email from State Dep't Operations Ctr. Watch Officer, to 
P_StaffAssistants & D(N)_StaffAssistants (Sept. 11, 2012 9:46 PM) (on 
file with the Committee, C05562037).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Another email regarding the meeting with the White House 
reads in relevant part:

        All, I just got off a conference call with [State 
        Department employee] who reported on a [White House 
        meeting] this evening concerning the violence against 
        USG facilities and personnel in Libya and Egypt, of 
        which you likely have gotten separate notice. 
        S[ecretary Clinton], Pat K[ennedy], and Beth Jones 
        (possibly among others) attended for State. In short, 
        there was a significant attack in Benghazi on the US 
        consulate where the US Ambassador and 7 other USG 
        employees were present[.]

        There is likely to be a deployment very quickly, 
        possibly this evening, of forces to assist in Libya. 
        Beth Jones is tasked with seeking consent of the GOL 
        asap for entry into the country. Options under 
        consideration for the deployment include: (1) a FAST 
        team; (2) a [U.S.-Based SOF] . . . ; and (3) a 
        Commander's Force. . . . DOD indicated they would 
        circulate additional information on the options/
        decisions in the morning and we will need to be 
        prepared to do a quick War Powers assessment and 
        probably report by COB tomorrow.

                              *    *    *

        Apparently Pat K[ennedy] expressed concern on the 
        [White House meeting] about Libyan reaction if 
        uniformed US forces arrived in country in military 
        aircraft; there was discussion of the option of 
        entering in plainclothes, which JCS explained was 
        possible but noted that the risks to the forces to 
        remaining in plainclothes increased as they transited 
        from point of entry to the relevant location of 
        action.\382\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \382\State Dep't Email (Sept. 11, 2012 10:40 PM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05528017).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Another email framed the issue as follows:

        4The U.S. military has begun notifying special units of 
        likely deployment, with ultimate disposition pending 
        State coordination with the Libyan government and final 
        approval by the White House.

        State remains concerned that any U.S. military 
        intervention be fully coordinated with the Libyan 
        Government and convey Libyan concerns that [sic] about 
        U.S. military presence, to include concerns that 
        wheeled military vehicles should not be used and U.S. 
        Military Forces should consider deploying in civilian 
        attire.\383\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \383\Testimony of Jeremy Bash, Chief of Staff, U.S. Dep't of 
Defense, Tr. at 98-99 (Jan. 13, 2016) [hereinafter Bash Testimony] (on 
file with the Committee).

    The plan described in this email was later conveyed to the 
Combatant Commands. While Bash's ``spinning up'' email 
indicated these forces were prepared to go to Benghazi vice 
Tripoli, it was clear by the end of the White House meeting 
that no forces were going to Benghazi.\384\ It is worth noting 
that while this meeting was ongoing and even after it ended, 
Diplomatic Security Agents, the team from the Annex, and Team 
Tripoli were under attack at the Annex and Stevens was still 
missing.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \384\Email from Jeremy Bash, Chief of Staff, U.S. Dep't of Defense, 
to Jacob Sullivan, Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, U.S. Dep't of 
State (Sept. 11, 2012 1919) (on file with the Committee: STATE-
SCB0060705).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    These emails confirm the understanding among the 
individuals participating in the White House meeting that 
deployment to Benghazi was not imminent. As the Defense 
Department timeline shows, none of the orders given to the 
assets that night contained an order to deploy to 
Benghazi.\385\ The FAST platoons were ordered to prepare to 
deploy, not to deploy.\386\ The CIF and the U.S. based SOF were 
ordered to deploy only to an intermediate staging base, not to 
Benghazi or Tripoli.\387\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \385\See generally, U.S. Dep't of Defense Timeline.
    \386\Id.
    \387\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In fact, once the decision to activate the U.S. based SOF 
was made, the CIF was no longer an option to deploy to Libya as 
its mission then became to prepare for the arrival of the U.S. 
based Special Operations Force at the intermediate staging 
base.
    Once the forces were ready to deploy, a subsequent execute 
order would then have to be given by the Secretary of Defense. 
This is inconsistent with the Secretary's belief that no 
further order was necessary from either the President or 
himself.
    Admiral Tidd had this to say about deploying a FAST Team to 
Benghazi:

        We were looking at two FAST teams, but it very, very 
        soon became evident that everybody was leaving 
        Benghazi. And so I don't remember if it was just before 
        the [White House meeting] or during the [meeting] or 
        just right after. By the time we came out of the 
        [meeting], it was pretty clear that nobody was going to 
        be left in Benghazi. And so the decision--I think, at 
        the [meeting], there was some discussion--but as I 
        recall, we weren't going to send them to Benghazi, 
        because everybody was going to be back in Tripoli by 
        the time we could actually get them there.

                              *    *    *

        And I think even at this point we knew that everybody 
        had moved--they had moved from the temporary diplomatic 
        facility, they moved to the Annex, and they were moving 
        or going to be moving, if they had not already begun 
        moving, from the Annex to the airport, and would be 
        leaving at the airport as quickly as they could.

        So it was pretty clear we weren't going to be able to 
        get anything into Benghazi before the last people left. 
        So, I don't think we ever went beyond the notion of 
        moving the FAST into--the FAST platoon into 
        Tripoli.\388\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \388\Tidd Testimony at 25-27.

    While it may have been ``pretty clear'' to Tidd that 
``nobody was going to be left in Benghazi,'' it was not at all 
clear to those in Benghazi who were manning a rooftop 
exchanging gunfire with attackers.\389\ Furthermore, the 
Diplomatic Security Agents and team from the Annex had to fight 
their way even from the Benghazi Mission compound to the Annex 
a short distance away while Team Tripoli had to negotiate with 
unknown militias for transportation from the Benghazi airport 
to the Annex. So, how the principals in Washington were certain 
U.S. personnel in Benghazi were going to be leaving Benghazi 
and how they were going to be leaving is itself unclear.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \389\Id. at 25-27.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    There is uncertainty attached to other statements made 
during the White House meeting too:

        ``State remains concerned that any U.S. military 
        intervention be fully coordinated with the Libyan 
        Government and convey Libyan concerns that [sic] about 
        U.S. military presence, to include concerns that 
        wheeled military vehicles should not be used and U.S. 
        Military Forces should consider deploying in civilian 
        attire.''

        ``DOD indicated they would circulate additional 
        information on the options/decisions in the morning and 
        we will need to be prepared to do a quick War Powers 
        assessment and probably report by COB tomorrow.''

        ``Libya must agree to any deployment.''

        ``Overall theme: getting forces ready to deploy in case 
        the crisis expands and a real threat materializes 
        against Embassy Tripoli.''

    This sentence is illuminating on a number of levels, 
including: ``getting forces ready to deploy in case the crisis 
expands'' begs the question of expanding how and where? At the 
time of the White House meeting, Sean Smith was dead, 
Ambassador Stevens was missing, and the remaining State 
Department personnel had to be rescued by the Team from the 
Annex while sustaining gunfire en route back to the Annex. 
Moreover the second clause in that sentence references a ``real 
threat'' materializing against ``Embassy Tripoli.'' The real 
threat at the time was and remained in Benghazi.
    Among the questions left even in the aftermath of 
investigating what happened before, during and after the 
attacks in Benghazi is how so many decision makers in 
Washington and elsewhere were unaware of the Annex in Benghazi 
and how the Washington decision-makers expected U.S. personnel 
remaining in Benghazi to evacuate or defend themselves for a 
prolonged period of time without assistance.

           The Orders: Prepare to Deploy and Deploy to an ISB

    At 8:39 p.m., more than five hours after the attacks in 
Benghazi began and more than two hours after the Secretary gave 
his order to deploy, the Pentagon finally transmitted orders to 
the combatant commands regarding the FAST platoons, the CIF, 
and the U.S. Based Special Operations Force.\390\ Specifically, 
the FAST platoons were ordered to ``prepare to deploy.''\391\ 
The CIF and the U.S. Based Special Operations Force were 
ordered to deploy to an intermediate staging base.\392\ No 
asset was ordered to deploy to Benghazi.\393\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \390\Email from Tidd (Sept. 11, 2012 8:53PM) (on file with the 
Committee, SCB001376). See also, Letter from Ashton B. Carter, Sec'y of 
Defense, to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, House Select Committee on Benghazi, 
Apr. 8, 2015, providing an explanation regarding the unclassified 
timeline:

      Has the U.S Department of Defense identified any 
      information that would warrant any adjustments, correction 
      or modification to the unclassified timeline it provide to 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
      Congress on November 9, 2012?

      One Point of clarification: the unclassified timeline has 
      the SecDef Vocal Order (VOCO) for moving response forces at 
      0000-0200. This authorization was relayed and recorded at 
      0239 for FAST and CIF and at 0253 for [the U.S. SOF]. This 
      is not to imply that timing of the VOCO as reflected in the 
      unclassified timeline is inaccurate, but rather that 
      receipt of this vocal order at [sic] was at 0239 and 0253, 
      respectively.'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \391\Id.
    \392\Id.
    \393\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Tidd provided authorization for each of those forces to 
move in an email transmitting the orders at 8:53 p.m. [2:53 
a.m. in Benghazi]. The email reads in relevant part:

        discussions at Deputies, and followed up between [the 
        Office of the Secretary of Defense] and the Chairman--
        --

        [The Secretary of Defense] has directed deployment of 
        the CIF to the [intermediate staging base] determined 
        most suitable by AFRICOM . . .

        [The Secretary of Defense] has directed deployment of 
        the [U.S. Based Special Operations Force] to the same 
        [intermediate staging base] as the CIF.

        [The Secretary of Defense] has directed FAST to make 
        all preps to deploy but hold departure until we are 
        sure we have clearance to land in Tripoli. We'll work 
        with State to nail that down, but intent is to get 
        security force augmentation into [Tripoli/Tripoli] (not 
        Benghazi, at least not initially) ASAP. Embassy making 
        efforts to move all [American citizens] from [Annex] 
        Compound Benghazi to Tripoli, possibly using same 
        [commercial] Air that 5-pax team arrived on.

                              *    *    *

        Remember [the Secretary of Defense] holds final 
        approval to deploy FAST, pending receipt of Tripoli 
        country clearance. But the point is to get the Marines 
        on the ground securing the embassy in Tripoli as 
        rapidly as we can move them.\394\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \394\Id.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Tidd testified about his email:

        I'm looking at the timelines here, and I'm--I am 
        thinking that--that [Deputy Director for Operations] 
        had a conference call with the various watch centers of 
        the commands that are listed here as a result of the 
        decisions that came out of the [White House] meeting.

        And so the things that you see upfront--the [Secretary 
        of Defense] [vocal order], the things to move, and then 
        also forwarded request for information from AFRICOM and 
        EUCOM for the following--I am guessing at this point 
        now, but I think this might have been in response to--I 
        gave him a verbal dump from the Deputies Committee 
        meeting. He had this conference call. This is a report 
        back with the information from the conference call. And 
        then I turned around and replied on top of that with 
        subsequent information that had been provided from 
        phone calls that I had had at the same time.\395\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \395\Tidd Testimony at 33.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Winnefeld also provided his understanding of Tidd's email:

        All this is doing is reporting out what the Secretary 
        has directed to do. And [Tidd] would not put this out 
        unless the deputies had concurred with it. If the 
        deputies had not concurred with the SecDef deciding to 
        do these things, that would have been a big issue, but 
        it wasn't. The deputies obviously concurred, so [Tidd] 
        put it out: Hey, this is now official; Secretary says 
        do this.\396\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \396\Winnefeld Testimony at 85. Winnefeld further explained that 
had there been a disagreement ``the Secretary probably would have said: 
Look, get them moving anyway. And then he would be on the phone with 
the White house.'' Id. at 87.

    It is unclear why concurrence from anyone attending the 
White House meeting was needed. The National Command Authority, 
the lawful source of military orders, consists of two people: 
the President and the Secretary of Defense.\397\ Neither of 
them attended that meeting. Both the President and Secretary 
Panetta had already issued their orders. As the Secretary made 
clear:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \397\See Panetta Testimony at 32. Panetta elaborated, ``My 
directions were clear; those forces were to be deployed, period. . . . 
So I wanted no interference with those orders to get them deployed.'' 
Id. at 33.

        I had the authority to deploy those forces. And I 
        ordered those forces to be deployed. And I didn't have 
        to ask anybody's permission to get those forces in 
        place.\398\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \398\Id.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                           PREPARE TO DEPLOY

    The orders issued to the forces that night were different 
from the orders the Secretary gave earlier that evening. The 
Secretary had this to say about the orders he issued that 
night:

        Q: I just want to make sure this portion of the record 
        is fair to you and that your testimony has the clarity 
        that I think it has, but I'm going to give you an 
        opportunity if I'm wrong.

        You did not issue an order to prepare to deploy. You 
        issued an order to deploy.

        A: That's correct.

        Q: So no one would have been waiting on you to issue a 
        subsequent order?

        A: That's correct.\399\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \399\Id. at 49.

    Leidig described the difference between a ``prepare to 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
deploy'' order and an ``execute'' order:

        They are two very distinct orders in the military. The 
        first is prepare to deploy. And that's basically 
        guidance from my boss, in this case, the Secretary of 
        Defense and the Chairman, that you have permission to 
        make every preparation necessary to execute this 
        mission. But you do not have permission to actually to 
        deploy them yet--you don't have permission to execute 
        the mission.\400\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \400\Leidig 2014 Testimony at 64-65.

    In contrast, Miller testified his understanding was an 
order to deploy has no operational distinction from an order to 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
prepare to deploy:

        The initial order was to deploy to forward basing in 
        order to be able to then refuel if necessary, prepare 
        to any additional degree necessary, which can largely 
        be done in flight for these forces, to the extent that 
        they weren't already as they got on the plane, and then 
        to deploy into Libya.

        [T]he order could have come in one of two ways, and 
        it's a technical difference that in this instance and 
        in any other instance has no operational impact, one 
        form of the order says deploy to the intermediate 
        staging base and prepare to deploy into Libya, and that 
        additional authorization will be given prior to 
        deployment into Libya; a second says deploy to the 
        intermediate staging base and proceed to Libya unless 
        given direction not to do so.

        I don't know which of those--I don't recall which of 
        those was in the order, but in any event, it's well 
        understood that no time should elapse awaiting. In 
        other words, if the form was to go to the ISB, go to 
        the intermediate staging base and then get additional 
        authority, it's incumbent on the commander to request 
        that authority well in advance of when the force would 
        be prepared to then deploy into Libya, and it's 
        incumbent on the Secretary of Defense and the team 
        supporting him to ensure that he makes a timely 
        decision so that there's not additional time added to 
        the timeline.\401\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \401\Miller Testimony at 80-81.

    Bash considered the orders that night a distinction without 
a difference because the intent of the Secretary was clear: the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
forces were to move.

        This was a real-time, very fluid, very dynamic set of 
        meetings in which the Secretary, with his senior 
        military, uniformed military advisers, the Chairman, 
        the Vice, and the combatant commanders and others, were 
        making real-time decisions

        So I just want to set that context, because I'm sure 
        some people could look at this and say: Why were these 
        words used or that discussion or this phrase used, 
        ``prepare to deploy'' or ``deploy''? My recollection 
        was he was told of the situation, he was told about 
        which units could respond, and he said: Go get them, do 
        it, move.

        Q: So there would've been no further order necessary 
        from him?

        A: Correct.

        Q: Wheels could have taken off and he would not have 
        had to say another single, solitary word?

        A: Correct, and I believe that actually was the case.

        Q: All right. So he never amplified, clarified, 
        withdrew, changed his instructions, which were deploy?

        A: He did not.\402\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \402\Bash Testimony at 26-27.

    Leidig, whom Ham described as his ``most trusted advisor'' 
and an ``extraordinarily competent officer,'' testified because 
he was moving forces between two combatant commands' areas of 
responsibility he needed to receive a subsequent ``execute'' 
order to move the FAST Platoon into Libya.\403\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \403\See Ham Testimony at 51-52.

        Q: At what point did you receive an order to execute? 
        At what point did you have the authority to launch 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        assets into Libya?

        A: We were never given an execute order to move any 
        forces until we got to move in the C-17 to evacuate 
        folks out of Tripoli later that next morning. There was 
        never an execute order to move any forces from 
        Sigonella into Africa or from Rota into Africa until 
        later. So, I mean, we did get an order eventually to 
        move the FAST team into Tripoli to provide security, 
        but during that evening hour, that incident, there were 
        no execute orders to move forces into our AOR.

                              *    *    *

        Q: You said that you were never given an execute order 
        until later. Who provides that execute order?

        A: Execute order comes from the Secretary of Defense. 
        So we were not given an--there was an order given to 
        move forces to Sigonella. There was never an execute 
        order given to move those forces into Libya.

        Q: And when you received the execute order later on to 
        deploy the forces into Libya, the FAST platoon into 
        Tripoli, and then the C-17 to evacuate the medically 
        injured, do you recall how that order was conveyed?

        A: Do you mean, was it verbal, or was it in--usually in 
        every case--I don't know specifically for those, but 
        normally it's a VOCO, a vocal command, followed up by a 
        written command. And so, in that case, it was probably 
        both. It was probably a vocal command to get things 
        moving, followed by a written command----

        Q: And do you----

        A: --but I don't know for sure.

        Q: And do you recall the timeframe for when you 
        received the vocal command to execute the movement of 
        the FAST platoon into Tripoli and the----

        A: No, I don't recall. It's on the timeline.

        Q: Do you recall if it was before or after the mortar 
        attacks occurred?

        A: Oh, it was after.

        Q: Okay. Thank you.

                              *    *    *

        Q: And just to be clear for the record, prior to 
        receiving the vocal execute order, would you have----

        A: Which vocal execute order?

        Q: For either of the assets that were deployed into 
        Libya, the FAST platoon or the C-17, did you have the 
        authority to move those assets into Libya prior to 
        receiving that VOCO?

        A: No. I wouldn't move those without a--without an 
        order from the Secretary or the Chairman. They're 
        moving across COCOM boundaries.

        Q: Okay. Thank you.\404\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \404\Testimony of Vice Admiral Charles J. Leidig, Deputy Commander 
for Military Operations, US Africa Command, Tr. at 45-48 (Apr. 22, 
2016) [hereinafter Leidig 2016 Testimony] (on file with the Committee). 
But see, Leidig 2016 Testimony at 48 (Q: There was some discussion 
about the term ``prepare to deploy'' and an ``execute order,'' and I 
just wanted to ask you a couple questions about that. Would a lack of 
an execute order, or did a lack of an execute order on the night of the 
attacks ever slow down your forces? A: No.).

    Ham's recollection of the extent of the authority he had to 
move forces that night differed from Leidig and differed from 
the email Tidd sent to the combatant commands relaying the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Secretary's order.

        Q: Can you explain what he means by the [Secretary of 
        Defense] holding final approval to deploy FAST?

        A: I think it means what it says. That is different 
        than my recollection. Again, my belief is the Secretary 
        had given authority to me to do that. So I think this 
        is the J3 issuing instructions, but my recollection is 
        different than what Vice Admiral Tidd has written here.

                              *    *    *

        Yeah. Right. The last sentence there I think is the 
        important one.

                              *    *    *

        A: ``But the point is to get the Marines on the ground 
        securing the embassy in Tripoli as rapidly as we can 
        move them.''

        Q: Well, I think one thing that we would like to try to 
        kind of marry up is, even on the timeline, the orders 
        that were given to some of the--specifically the FAST 
        platoon was a prepare-to-deploy order. And there has 
        been testimony that a prepare-to-deploy order is 
        different from a deploy order. Perhaps you can provide 
        us what the distinction is and how that played out on 
        this night.

        A: I can try to explain the distinction between the 
        two. A prepare-to-deploy order simply is notifying a 
        force that you must be prepared to deploy within a 
        specified timeframe, so that you have to adjust your 
        activities, whatever they may be, your personnel 
        posture, your readiness, your training, the prestaging 
        of equipment, depending on what the timeline is, so 
        that you are prepared to deploy on the designated 
        timeline. This is not an uncommon occurrence.

                              *    *    *

        And a deploy order simply says, ``Go now,'' or whatever 
        the specified timeframe is. So it's prepare to deploy, 
        ``I think I may need you, so I want you to be ready.'' 
        A deploy order says, ``I do need you. Deploy.''

                              *    *    *

        So the three units that were of highest importance to 
        me--the Commander's In-extremis Force, the Fleet 
        Antiterrorism Security Team, and the [U.S.-Based SOF]--
        all already had prepared to--my understanding is all 
        had prepared to deploy. They were already on various 
        timelines to deploy. So that's what I believe their 
        status was.

        And my belief is that--and my recollection differs a 
        bit from what Vice Admiral Tidd says--that when the 
        Secretary made his decisions, my understanding of that 
        was that the Secretary of Defense was transferring 
        operational control to me for those forces for their 
        deployment and employment.

        Q: So if the Secretary of Defense's order was, in fact, 
        ``prepare to deploy'' and not ``deploy,'' was there an 
        additional step needed to be--did the Secretary of 
        Defense have to do anything additional to deploy those 
        forces?

        A: I don't know because I'm not familiar with the 
        specifics. Typically, in a prepare-to-deploy order, 
        there is a designated official who can order that unit 
        to deploy. It doesn't always have to go back to the 
        Secretary of Defense. It could be a combatant 
        commander, it could be the Chairman of the Joint 
        Chiefs, it could be a joint task force commander. But, 
        in this particular case, I'm just not familiar with the 
        specifics of the order.\405\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \405\Ham Testimony at 133-136.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                            DEPLOY TO AN ISB

    The CIF, the force most capable of quickly responding to 
the attacks in Benghazi, was ordered instead to go to an 
intermediate staging base. Ham discussed this decision:

        Q: Sir, given the fact that the CIF was on the 
        continent, per se, did you ever consider employing the 
        CIF for the hostage-rescue mission or the NEO by 
        sending them directly to either Benghazi or to Tripoli?

        A: I don't recall specifically, but I feel confident in 
        saying that, as we weighed the options, the various 
        courses of action of how the Commander's In-extremis 
        Force might be employed, that there was some 
        consideration to, you know, do they go somewhere other 
        than the intermediate staging base. Should they go to 
        Benghazi? Should they go to Tripoli?

        My recollection is that the situation was certainly 
        evolving. And, as previously discussed, my view was the 
        situation, after an initial spike, the fighting had 
        largely subsided, that Benghazi was probably not the 
        right place for them to go. Get them to the staging 
        base, where we now have many, many options.

        One of the challenges, of course, is with a force like 
        the Commander's In-extremis Force, once you 
        operationally employ it someplace--so if you were to 
        deploy into any place and they're on the ground, you 
        now no longer have that force for other emergent 
        contingencies. So we're very careful about making a 
        decision as to where to go.

        There are other complexities with inserting a force 
        into Benghazi, to be sure, but, for me, it was, where's 
        the best place for that force to be right now? And, in 
        my view, I believe that--you know, certainly supported 
        and with recommendations from the AFRICOM operations 
        and intelligence staff--that the best place for them 
        would be at the intermediate staging base so that they 
        would be well-postured for subsequent missions.\406\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \406\Id. at 93-94.

    Tidd testified one reason the CIF and the U.S. SOF were 
ordered to an intermediate staging base and not to Libya 
directly was due to concerns expressed by the State Department 
regarding the number of military personnel that would arrive in 
country.\407\ He testified:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \407\Tidd Testimony at 24.

        Q: Sir, was it your decision, then, to send them back 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        to an ISB first?

        A: Yes . . . State was very, very concerned about what 
        the footprint would look like in Tripoli. They didn't 
        want it to look like we were invading.

        That was the gist or that was the genesis of the 
        discussion that occurred over whether or not when the 
        FAST arrives at the airport in Tripoli--because they 
        wanted to reinforce security at the embassy--but there 
        was concern that it not have this image of a big, 
        invading force.

        And we knew that the FAST, when it arrived, did not 
        have its own mobility. The embassy was going to have to 
        provide trucks and vehicles to move them from the 
        airport to the embassy. And there was just concern of 
        parading a bunch of trucks or buses full of Marines in 
        uniform, what kind of image that would present, 
        recognizing it was going to be daylight when they 
        arrived.\408\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \408\Id. at 22-23.

                 TEAM TRIPOLI NEGOTIATES TRANSPORTATION

    Team Tripoli left the airport at approximately 4:30 a.m. A 
team member provided the committee the following background 
information for their intended mission at the time, as it had 
transitioned from locating and potentially rescuing Stevens to 
an effort to start evacuating nonessential personnel from 
Benghazi back to Tripoli.

        Q: What did you understand about your mission as you 
        were heading from Benina airport to the Annex? Was your 
        mission then evacuation of nonessential personnel?

        A: It was nonessential personnel only prior to the 
        mortar attack happening . . . we were going to take 14 
        personnel back with us to the airport, let the jet take 
        off, take them back to Tripoli. We were going to come 
        back to the Annex and help hold up with the GRS guys 
        until further notice . . . the majority of those people 
        [the GRS] would have stayed there. Shooters, if you 
        will. . . . We did not make the decisions for that 
        [airplane] to come back. We didn't know how long we 
        were going to have to stay at the Annex. We were under 
        the understanding they wanted to stay. They did not 
        want to leave. So we were just trying to get the 
        nonessential personnel out to get further direction 
        from Chief of Station back in Tripoli on what he wanted 
        them to do . . . I believe it was the Chief of Base 
        that wanted to keep some individuals there.\409\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \409\Special Operators Testimony at 65.

                       FINAL STAGES OF THE ATTACK

                       Team Tripoli at the Annex

    After Team Tripoli secured transportation, it arrived at 
the Annex just after 5:05 a.m. Former U.S. Navy SEAL Glen A. 
Doherty, one of the members of Team Tripoli, immediately joined 
Tyrone S. Woods, Diplomatic Security Agent 4, and other GRS 
agents on the rooftops of the Annex buildings. Within 10 
minutes of the arrival of Team Tripoli, a new small arms attack 
began. One member of Team Tripoli described the small arms 
attack:

        Once we had gotten to the annex, we called probably 
        three minutes out, and the GRS Team Lead was actually 
        out there to meet us with the gate open. We didn't take 
        any of the vehicles inside. We exited the vehicles and 
        walked inside.

        We took the Libyan Shield commander inside with us so 
        his guys would stay there, ultimately. Went directly to 
        the main house where the TOC was. I think it was 
        Building Three. Team leader started talking to chief of 
        base, and I was talking to the [GRS Team Lead] on the 
        security situation, wounded personnel, what did he need 
        from us that he didn't have already, and how we could 
        help the security posture.

        Shortly after us being there, we were all sitting 
        outside while we were talking about this on the front 
        patio of Building Three. We had some sporadic gunfire 
        over the top of Building Three, and immediately 
        following, the first mortar round hit. I believe it 
        went long, hit out in the road where our convoy had 
        been. The gate is obviously closed to the compound now. 
        Next one hit short just behind Building Three on the 
        wall towards the warehouse. The other three or four 
        mortars hit directly on top of Building Three.\410\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \410\Id. at 61.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    One GRS agent described the mortar attack:

        It was about 5:30 in the morning--the sun was just 
        coming up--because me and Tyrone had been talking 
        about, you know, if they're going to attack us, it's 
        going to happen here shortly because usually the time 
        to attack is right before the sun comes up. About that 
        time, [Doherty] came up on the roof after the guys from 
        Tripoli had came in. I never met [Doherty]. He walks 
        over to Tyrone and says hi to Tyrone. They had worked 
        together on the teams. Tyrone introduced him to me, 
        said that he was a sniper.

        I told him: Well, that's good. I hope we don't need 
        you, but it will be great having another rifle up here.

        He had turned to walk away, and it was about that time 
        that there was an explosion against the back wall, and 
        there was a mortar that hit the top of the back wall, 
        which from our building was maybe 8 or 10 yards from 
        the building.

        [Agent 4] was in the corner where the ladder was at. Me 
        and Tyrone were in the opposite corner facing out 
        towards what we call Zombieland, and when that hit, 
        small arms fire started coming from that direction, and 
        Tyrone opened up with a machine gun. I started shooting 
        with my assault rifle. I heard [Agent 4] yell out that 
        he was hit.

        I kind of glanced over. I saw his shadow sitting 
        because the wall at the top of our building was about 3 
        feet tall, so there was a box that you had to step on 
        to get up on to the ladder. So he was--I saw his image 
        or the silhouette of him sitting on that box, and he 
        was holding his head. What went through my mind is that 
        he's breathing, so his heart is beating . . .

        We're shooting. I kneel down to change magazines. As I 
        come back up after changing magazines, the first mortar 
        hits the top of the roof, hits almost directly into the 
        wall, where the roof and the arc of the parapet or wall 
        comes up, right into the corner of that. When that hit, 
        it blew me back a little bit, knocked me back. I kind 
        of caught myself. I saw Tyrone go down. . . . The 
        mortar hit on my right.

        As I come up, I bring my arm up to grab my gun, and 
        from about here down, it was kind of hanging off at a 
        90 degree angle. I continued to try to grab my gun. 
        Another mortar hit, and I kind of glanced over my right 
        shoulder, and I saw [Doherty] go straight down. . . . 
        As I tried to keep firing, my weapon is pretty much 
        inoperable. I can't grab it with my hand. The third 
        mortar hits and peppers me again with shrapnel. The 
        best way I can describe it is it felt like I got stung 
        by a thousand bees. At that point, I figured I might 
        better get to cover because if another one comes, I'll 
        be lucky if I survive that.

        I kind of dove down to the wall, . . . and everything 
        had went quiet. I kind of sat up and thought I was 
        bleeding out because everything was wet around me. I 
        realized that it was water because it was cold, and 
        there was a water tank right there beside us that had 
        gotten perforated. I don't know what the timeframe was.

        I pulled out a tourniquet, and I was trying to get the 
        tourniquet on. . . . At that point, I saw [GRS 1] come 
        up over top of the roof, which I didn't know it then--I 
        saw a shadow come up, and at that point, he had at 
        first put two tourniquets on [Agent 4]; one on his leg, 
        one on his arm. Then he come over to me, and he was 
        sitting there. He told me to quit messing with my arm 
        because I was trying to put it back in place. He 
        grabbed my tourniquet, put it on, stood me up, and 
        asked if I could walk myself over to the ladder so he 
        could tend to Tyrone and [Doherty], and I said, yeah.

        He had called for help on the radio, that we had 
        wounded up there. By the time I got over to the ladder, 
        there was three guys that had come up on the roof. I 
        remember one later to find out it was one of the TF or 
        the task force guys. He asked me if I could get off the 
        roof.

        I said, ``Yeah, I'm going to have to'' because I knew 
        they had to tend to the guys up there. So I kind of put 
        myself up on the parapet, hooked my good arm around the 
        ladder, and kind of scooted myself over. I ended up 
        climbing down the ladder.

        I come around past the swimming pool to the front, and 
        that's when I ran into [GRS Tripoli]. [GRS Tripoli] 
        walked me in, laid me down in the building, building 3, 
        and he went back--I think at that time, he went back 
        out to help up top. Everybody inside was just kind of 
        looking at me. I told them somebody needs to cut my 
        clothes off because I know I'm bleeding from other 
        spots. [redacted text] case officer I was with earlier 
        that night, [redacted text], asked me where the shears 
        were. [redacted text] to cut my clothes off with. 
        [redacted text] got those, come back, cut my clothes 
        off. I wasn't bleeding profusely from anything else; I 
        just had a bunch of little holes in me that were kind 
        of oozing blood. And later they came down. I think [GRS 
        Tripoli] came in and gave me an IV. They finally got 
        [Diplomatic Security Agent 4] off, and that was pretty 
        much the night there.\411\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \411\GRS 2 Testimony at 57.

    As GRS agents on Building 3 fired back in response to the 
new attack, a well-aimed mortar attack commenced on the Annex 
mortally wounding Woods and Doherty and severely wounding 
another GRS agent and one Diplomatic Security Agent.\412\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \412\Video: DVR Footage of the CIA Annex (Sept. 11, 2012, 0517.40).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In total, six 81-millimeter mortars assaulted the 
Annex.\413\ Three mortars, including the first one, landed near 
the north perimeter wall. Three additional mortars landed on 
the roof of Building 3 within one minute at 5:18 a.m. Overall, 
the six mortar attacks were launched within 1 minute and 13 
seconds.\414\ A member of Team Tripoli testified:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \413\Special Operator Testimony at 61.
    \414\Committee analysis of DVR Footage of the CIA Annex (Sept. 11, 
2012, from 0517 to 0519).

        Once the mortar round--the first mortar round hit 
        outside the gate where the convoy was, we saw the 
        vehicles driving away, the gun trucks that were out 
        there driving away.\415\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \415\Special Operator Testimony at 66.

    Libya Shield sub-commander, [redacted text], who was left 
behind during the mortar strike suggested, that attackers were 
well-aware that Team Tripoli was held up at the Benghazi 
airport while seeking transport and that the attackers may have 
planned an ambush that coincided with the arrival of the Team 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tripoli members at the Annex:

        ``It began to rain down on us. I really believe that 
        this attack was planned. The accuracy with which the 
        mortars hit us was too good for any regular 
        revolutionaries.''\416\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \416\Libya Rescue Squad Ran Into Fierce, Accurate Ambush, Reuters 
(Sept. 12, 2012; 17:11), http://www.reuters.com/article/libya-
ambassador-battle-idAFL5E8KCMYB20120912.

    One witness told the Committee Libya Shield departed the 
Annex when the mortar strike began at the direction of an 
individual who was standing next to Abu Khattala during the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
attacks. He recounted what happened during the mortar attack:

        Q: When Team Tripoli arrived, were you outside? Were 
        you inside?

        A: No, when they arrived, I was outside.

        Q: You were outside. Okay. And did you go inside at any 
        point after they arrived?

        A: Yes. Luckily we went inside, because then the 
        mortars landed.

                              *    *    *

        Q: Did anybody from the Libyan Shield militia go inside 
        as well?

        A: Yes.

        Q: All right. And can you explain the situation?

        A: When the Tripoli team arrived, they brought with 
        them a commander of that force that escorted them from 
        the airport to the Annex.

        Q: Okay. And he ended up going inside one of the 
        villas?

        A: Yes.

                              *    *    *

        I asked him to shut off his phone and stop talking on 
        the phone after the mortar--especially specifically 
        after the mortar landed.

                              *    *    *

        He was talking to his force and wondering why they left 
        him behind and informed them that we had just got hit 
        with mortars, and he was trying to find out why they 
        left him behind.\417\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \417\Officer A Testimony at 118.

    The witness stated the Commander of the force was frantic 
and was ``surprised that the attack took place when he thought 
that his force outside was securing the perimeter.''\418\ He 
testified about the Commander's actions:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \418\Id.

        When he came inside, he was under the impression that 
        the force that he brought with him, the commander that 
        he left behind and his forces will secure the area. But 
        when he called them on the phone, he realized they had 
        departed the area. And he asked them, why did you 
        depart the area? And they said that the commander of 
        the militia, Wissam bin Hamid, gave them orders to 
        return to their base on the other side of town. And he 
        asked them, why are you going back to the base and 
        leaving me behind? And they told him that, oh, we are 
        going to get more weapons and more additional 
        forces.\419\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \419\Id.

    Wissam bin Hamid was standing with Abu Khattala during the 
attack[.]\420\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \420\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    One GRS member of Team Tripoli provided his assessment of 
the mortar attacks in an after-action interview conducted by 
the CIA. The GRS member was:

        100% confident that the enemy was waiting for the QRF 
        to arrive at the Annex so they could hit them upon 
        arrival. Communication was given to local militias and 
        police upon the arrival of the QRF team to Benghazi 
        airport. Many Libyan militia members and police knew of 
        the QRF team's arrival and movement to the annex.

        He [was] confident it was a well-trained mortar team 
        that hit the compound.\421\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \421\CIA Document 1-004067 at 71.

    A military member of Team Tripoli described his assessment 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
of the mortar attacks that evening:

        Q: And so what's your opinion on the skill of those who 
        were actually employing the mortars that evening in the 
        attack on the Benghazi Annex?

        A: I would say personally that it was probably a 
        skilled mortar team. It's not easy. And you, being a 
        trained mortar man, know how hard that would be to 
        shoot inside the city and get something on the target 
        within two shots. That's difficult. I would say they 
        were definitely a trained mortar team or had been 
        trained to do something similar to that . . . I was 
        kind of surprised. I had not heard of or seen anybody 
        or talked to anyone that had been trained on mortars at 
        all [during my time in Tripoli]. So it was 
        unusual.\422\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \422\Special Operator Testimony at 82-83.

    The mortar attack was reported at 5:32 a.m. and a medical 
evacuation was requested.\423\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \423\DSCC Timeline.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    One CIA agent discussed his actions:

        A: [M]inutes later is when we got attacked by the first 
        few mortars.

        Q: And you were in the SCIF when the mortar attack 
        happened?

        A: The initial, correct, yes, sir.

        Q: Well, actually I was trying to go to the bathroom; 
        so I put my gear back on, and we were all stacked at 
        the front door, myself, the team leader, the two DOD 
        personnel, and there were several more volleys of 
        impacts on the building, mortar fire. And I heard small 
        arms going out from our team, and then small arms 
        coming in on our building. And as soon as it subsided, 
        I asked for [GRS Agent] because . . . he had [s]ome of 
        my gear . . . and that's when he didn't answer up. And 
        that's when one of the other GRS personnel said they 
        were all down on the roof. So as soon as it subsided, 
        we made our way to the roof.

        Q: Okay, and then what actions did you take at that 
        point?

        A: I came around a few seconds after the main element . 
        . . so I stepped back . . . and that's when I was met 
        halfway down the ladder by the GRS operator [GRS 2]. 
        And I put my light on him because I heard a funny 
        noise, and it was obvious that he was severely injured. 
        And that's when he came down on top of me. I noticed he 
        was severely wounded, bleeding a lot and everything 
        like that.

                              *    *    *

        Well, they actually put bathroom tile outside there, 
        and so it was real slick. He ended up falling on top of 
        me, and I ended up hyperextending my leg to the rear. 
        So now I'm injured, so I drug him out because we 
        started getting hit by small arms fire. So I dragged 
        him around the corner. I started putting a tourniquet 
        on his arm. He was bleeding from his left arm. He had a 
        hole in his neck, and he had a hole in his chest.

        So I put tourniquets on his arm and started patching up 
        with the help of others from the shrapnel wounds. And 
        it seemed like seconds later when I heard somebody say 
        [GRS Tripoli] I have another one for you. That's when 
        the second State Department guy, [Agent 4] . . . came 
        down. And I pushed [GRS 2] up on to the couch, and 
        that's when [Agent 4] was there.

                              *    *    *

        So I readjusted the tourniquet on his right leg, put 
        another one on his right leg, and ended up putting a 
        tourniquet on his left arm and packing his neck with 
        combat gauze to help stop the bleeding. I ended up 
        starting an IV on him. And then I went back to [GRS 2], 
        put an IV in him. That's one of the State Department 
        personnel--I don't know who it was--had morphine, and I 
        made the call to give [Agent 4] morphine because he was 
        in so much pain he started pawing at the tourniquets 
        and the gauzes, some of the dressings I put on. And 
        that seemed like seconds.

        During this process is when [redacted text] asked me to 
        . . . contact Tripoli and give them a SITREP. That's 
        when I called Tripoli . . . [and] asked them for blood 
        for [Agent 4] because I didn't think he was going to 
        make it much longer.

                              *    *    *

        We had two severely injured, so I asked for blood, 
        because I thought our plane, the one we rented, had 
        taken off already. . . . And then, right after that, I 
        went back in, made sure both patients were stable, and 
        I worked on [Agent 4] more. I started another IV 
        because he had sucked that one down so fast. And that's 
        when I went outside, and the sun was actually up. I 
        know it doesn't sound significant, but it was to me 
        because I really felt with the sun up, it would give us 
        time, room to breath, because hopefully it would drive 
        away the attackers.

        I was still handling care of the patients . . . And I 
        was in the back of the truck with the wounded GRS guy 
        because I had no--there was no more room to sit inside 
        a vehicle, so we put a stretcher in the back of a small 
        truck. I jumped in the back with him and held on to 
        him, and we drove out the gate; and that's when we were 
        met by several gun trucks and militia that were there 
        to escort us. And we drove out, and it looked to be 
        several militias or several different groups because it 
        looked like they were trying to determine which way 
        they were going to go to the airport.

        So there was a few minutes delay there before we 
        actually started to drive towards the airport. And 
        that's when we made it back to the airport. And I 
        loaded on a plane with the nonessential personnel, and 
        the two wounded, and made it back to Tripoli where we 
        landed in Tripoli because the hospital was close to the 
        Tripoli airport.

                              *    *    *

        I gave [Agent 4] another morphine on the plane. I 
        adjusted [GRS 2] bandage. And then when I was moving 
        [Agent 4] off the plane--we were bring him off without 
        the stretcher because the stretcher was so big and the 
        plane was so small--he stopped breathing, so I had to 
        give him CPR. Got him back breathing, and that's when 
        the State Department nurse met me on the plane. . . .

        And then we loaded them on to an ambulance, and at that 
        point, the ambulance took them to Afia Hospital in 
        Tripoli. And I went back in a Suburban with all the 
        other State Department personnel and gear. And that was 
        it. I received a call from the flight medic from 
        Ramstein, the military airlift, and I went over the 
        view of what I did and what I gave them as far as 
        tourniquets, morphine, and IV bags, how much, and the 
        times and stuff. And that was it in reference to my 
        medical service.

        Q: You said they asked if the patients were capable of 
        going directly to Germany. Was that the request?

        A: I believe, yeah. And I said, no, they need to go to 
        the hospital now. This is when I just got [Agent 4] 
        breathing again. But I made the suggestion, you know, I 
        remember they said can they wait for the Ramstein bird. 
        And I was like no, because I really think [the agent] 
        was going to die any minute.

        Q: We're coming close to the end of our hour. This is 
        the last question. Setting modesty aside, do you 
        believe that [the agent] or [GRS 2] would have survived 
        to make it to Tripoli without your intervention?

        A: No.\424\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \424\Officer A Testimony at 37-46.

                  At the Time of the Mortar Attacks, 
                     No Asset was rn route to Libya

    At 11:45 p.m. in Washington [5:45 a.m. in Benghazi], Denis 
R. McDonough sent an email to Sullivan, Sherman, Rhodes, Bash, 
Winnefeld, and other high level representatives of the 
Executive Branch with the subject line, ``Quick level set 
before we head into tomorrow AM SVTC.''\425\ McDonough wrote:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \425\Email from Denis R. McDonough to Wendy R. Sherman, et al. 
(Sept. 11, 2012 11:45 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05562167).

        The situation in Benghazi remains fluid. Amb. Chris 
        Stevens remains unaccounted for; one State Department 
        officer is confirmed dead (next of kin notification is 
        complete); five State Department officers are accounted 
        for and at another USG compound in Benghazi, which had 
        been taking fire earlier in the evening (until at least 
        2030 EDT). . . . Five DOD personnel arrived in Benghazi 
        about an hour ago from Tripoli to reinforce security 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        there.

        On our people in Libya, the Joint Staff is deploying 
        three sets of teams into the region appropriate to the 
        mission(s).

                              *    *    *

        And on getting the video(s) in question taken down, I 
        reached [out] to YouTube to ask them to take down two 
        videos: one that was not developed by Pastor Jones but 
        which he is promoting, and another--of him burning the 
        Prophet in effigy--that he did film. Sec. Panetta has 
        also reached out to Pastor Jones to ask him to pull 
        down his video, knowing that even if YouTube takes the 
        video down, Pastor Jones can put it up somewhere else. 
        . . .\426\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \426\Id.

    This McDonough email was sent more than six hours after 
President Obama and the Secretary first met to discuss the 
initial attack in Benghazi, more than six hours after the 
Commander in Chief said to do everything possible to help our 
people, more than five hours after the Secretary of Defense 
issued an order to deploy elements--active tense--and more than 
four hours after the Secretary's Chief of Staff sent an email 
saying elements were ``spinning up.'' McDonough writes: ``[T]he 
Joint Staff is deploying three sets of teams into the region 
appropriate to the mission(s).''\427\ This ``deploying'' was 
supposed to occur hours earlier at the order of the Secretary.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \427\Email from Denis R. McDonough, Dep. Nat'l Sec. Advisor, Nat'l 
Sec. Council, to Wendy R. Sherman, Under Sec'y for Political Affairs, 
U.S. Dep't of State, et al. (Sept. 11, 2012 11:45 PM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05562167).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Moreover, McDonough references ``five DOD personnel arrived 
in Benghazi about an hour ago from Tripoli to reinforce 
security there.''\428\ This reference to DOD personnel is 
noteworthy because this ``asset'' or ``element'' was not even 
on the list of ``assets'' and ``elements'' provided to the 
Secretary of Defense. As discussed above, these individuals 
went to Benghazi from Tripoli at the direction of the Chief of 
Station in Libya, not at the order of anyone in Washington, 
D.C.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \428\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    By this time, both McDonough and the Secretary of Defense 
had made calls to have the YouTube video removed from the 
internet.\429\ Yet, none of the forces the Secretary ordered to 
deploy had actually moved.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \429\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Moments after McDonough sent this email, word of the mortar 
attacks on the Annex would make its way through the State 
Department, the White House, and the Defense Department.
    At 1:40 a.m. in Washington, the assets the Secretary 
ordered to deploy more than six hours earlier had still not 
deployed, though Libya had finally given approval for assets to 
fly into Tripoli.\430\ At that time, Winnefeld emailed 
McDonough and others relaying to them diplomatic clearance had 
been obtained from Libya allowing the FAST platoon to fly into 
Tripoli.\431\ Of course, all State and CIA personnel had 
already evacuated the Annex in Benghazi, and the first aircraft 
evacuating the American personnel was preparing to depart for 
Tripoli within minutes. Winnefeld wrote:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \430\Email from James A. Winnefeld, Jr., Vice Chairman, J. Chiefs 
of Staff, U.S. Dep't of Defense, to Benjamin J. Rhodes, Dep. Nat'l Sec. 
Advisor, White House, et al. (Sept. 12, 2012 1:40 AM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05562167).
    \431\Id.

        Two C-130s will move to Rota then Tripoli. One departs 
        at 0600z, the other at 0700z. 3+40 transit time to 
        Rota, 1 hour load time. Estimated arrival at Tripoli is 
        1300z. We now have country clearances for Spain and 
        Libya. Working to expedite movement (for example, 
        faster load time than one hour), but not sure we can go 
        faster now that aircrews are on the ramp.\432\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \432\Id.

    Winnefeld's email meant this: Now that host nation approval 
had been obtained, the transport aircraft would depart Ramstein 
Air Base in Germany in 20 minutes to pick up the FAST team that 
was waiting in Rota, Spain.

                     Evacuation to Benghazi Airport

    After the lethal mortar strikes, the team at the Annex was 
determined to evacuate all personnel. A member of Team Tripoli 
testified:

        We decided that the situation we had was untenable to 
        stay at the compound. We didn't have enough shooters 
        and there were too many wounded, and we were definitely 
        going to lose our State Department wounded if we had 
        stayed there much longer. So we were pushing to get out 
        as fast as we could.\433\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \433\Special Operator Testimony at 68.

    A key issue remained in that, ``There was no security 
vehicle, no gun trucks that would help us get to the airport. 
And we determined we could probably not make it with the 
vehicles we had inside the compound.''\434\ At 6:16 a.m., a 50-
vehicle motorcade arrived at the Annex to provide transport 
support by the Libyan Military Intelligence. The motorcade 
included technical, pick-up trucks retrofitted with mounted 
machine gun-like weapons.\435\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \434\Special Operator Testimony at 69.
    \435\DVR Footage of the CIA Annex (Sept. 11, 2012, 0616); LMI 
insignia is printed on vehicles.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The forces that arrived at the Annex shortly after the 
mortar attacks were able to transport all State Department and 
CIA personnel safely to the airport. The forces, known as 
Libyan Military Intelligence, arrived with 50 heavily-armed 
security vehicles.\436\ Libyan Military Intelligence was not 
part of the Libyan government, nor affiliated with any of the 
militias the CIA or State Department had developed a 
relationship with during the prior 18 months since the Libyan 
revolution took place.\437\ Instead, Libya Military 
Intelligence--whom the CIA did not even know existed until the 
night of the attacks--were comprised of former military 
officers under the Qadhafi regime who had gone into hiding in 
fear of being assassinated, and wanted to keep their presence 
in Benghazi as quiet as possible so as to not attract attention 
from the militias in control of Benghazi.\438\ In other words, 
some of the very individuals the United States had helped 
remove from power during the Libyan revolution were the only 
Libyans that came to the assistance of the United States on the 
night of the Benghazi attacks.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \436\TRIPOLI 27900, Sept. 19, 2012 [REQUEST 1-002982 to REQUEST 1-
002991].
    \437\Officer A Testimony at 71.
    \438\Id. at 71-72.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The reason Libyan Military Intelligence was able to rescue 
the Americans from the CIA base after the mortar attacks--
likely saving over two dozen lives--was due solely to the 
extraordinary efforts of Officer A, [redacted text] stationed 
in Benghazi. Officer A, [redacted text], spent a lot of time on 
the night of the attacks trying to secure help. In the early 
morning hours of September 12, a commander in the February 17 
militia told Officer A that February 17 would be unable to 
protect the Base and that they were leaving.\439\ This 
commander referred Officer A to the National Police, who the 
commander said was taking over their duties. Officer A 
described the National Police as ``next to helpless.''\440\ An 
officer in the National Police told Officer A ``There's nothing 
I can do. . . . I cannot continue to secure the perimeter [of 
the Base].''\441\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \439\Id. at 19-20.
    \440\Id. at 20.
    \441\Id.

    After some convincing by Officer A, the police officer 
referred Officer A to a colonel in Libyan Military 
Intelligence.\442\ Officer A had never spoken to this 
individual before, nor was he even aware of Libyan Military 
Intelligence. Officer A first had a conversation with this 
individual around 4:30 am, and testified:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \442\Id. at 23-24.

        And I immediately made contact with this commander. He 
        asked how he could help, and I told him, again, our 
        general location, and I said, you know, we need you to 
        come and secure this area. He had an idea, at that 
        point, of events happening in that part of the city, 
        and he told me that he would need to put a big force 
        together, he cannot just come with one of his--I mean, 
        like, two or three vehicles, that he would need to put 
        a large force together and for me to give him some time 
        to put that force together.\443\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \443\Id. at 24.

    Immediately after the mortar attacks, Officer A called the 
colonel back and said, ``[We] now really need you to come 
here.''\444\ Within minutes, the 50-truck force from Libyan 
Military Intelligence arrived and all American personnel safely 
evacuated to the airport.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \444\Id. at 27.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The group that ultimately came to the rescue of and 
facilitated the evacuation of the Americans in Benghazi was not 
the Libyan Government the State Department had worked 
tirelessly to appease; nor was it the February 17 Martyrs 
Brigade, recommended by the Libyan Government and contractually 
obligated to provide security to the Mission Compound. Instead, 
the group that came to rescue the Americans that night, the 
Libyan Military Intelligence, was a group most U.S. Government 
personnel did not even know existed. This group, ironically, 
had close ties to the former Qadhafi regime--the very regime 
the United States had helped remove from power. It was also 
this group, not groups previously given credit by previous 
investigations, that came to the rescue of the Americans in 
those early morning hours --likely saving dozens of lives as a 
result.
    It was the hard work and ingenuity of a single CIA case 
officer that located and developed this evacuation lead--a 
witness no other committee of Congress interviewed and a 
witness the CIA was reluctant to allow the Committee to 
interview.\445\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \445\Id. at 25-28.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Despite the ``assurance'' some principals in Washington had 
that U.S. personnel in Benghazi were evacuating earlier, it was 
not until the rescuing convoy actually arrived to at the Annex 
that the evacuation of all U.S. personnel was fully understood 
by those on the ground in Benghazi.
    Officer A described what happened after the Libyan Military 
Intelligence arrived: ``We lined up the trucks in order of 
movement. And then everybody that was a non-shooter was in an 
up-armored vehicle, and all the shooters were in thin-skinned 
vehicles to be able to shoot out of their cars.''\446\ After 
loading into the available vehicles at the Annex, at 6:34 a.m. 
the majority of Annex personnel and all the Diplomatic Security 
Agents evacuated in the LMI motorcade.\447\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \446\Special Operators Testimony at 71.
    \447\DVR Footage of the CIA Annex (Sept. 11, 2012, 0634).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    A few minutes later, two GRS and two CIA Staff officers 
evacuated the Annex alone in a Toyota pick-up truck after an 
attempted destruction of the CIA equipment.\448\ One CIA 
personnel described the actions he took to destroy sensitive 
equipment:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \448\Video: DVR Footage of the CIA Annex (Sept. 11, 2012, 0637).

        Q: So you said the last four folks there was yourself, 
        [GRS 5], it was the chief of base, it was the GRS team 
        lead. Did you see any type of interaction between the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        GRS team lead and the chief of base, any argument?

        A: No, and actually I felt bad because once the stuff 
        detonated--whew.

                              *    *    *

        A: You know, I looked down and I was kneeling in a 
        bunch of blood. I jumped in the truck, and the chief 
        didn't say a word, you know, but I was pretty happy, 
        you know, because the device went off and smoke was 
        already billowing out of the office. The door was 
        jammed open, and so I was pretty thrilled about that, 
        you know, and then I jumped in and said, let's go, you 
        know. And of course, the chief knew that [Woods] is 
        dead, and anyway, it is--I felt bad about that. And 
        then we took off and caught up with the rest of the 
        convoy.\449\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \449\Testimony of [redacted text], Cent. Intel. Agency, Tr. at 61-
64 (Jun 19, 2015) [hereinafter [redacted text] Testimony] (on file with 
the Committee).

                     AMERICANS IN BENGHAZI EVACUATE

                         Evacuation to Tripoli

    The survivors and four Diplomatic Security Agents departed 
at 7:31 a.m. local and landed in Tripoli at 8:38 p.m. 
local.\450\ The same private aircraft secured by Team Tripoli 
to come to the aid of those being attacked in Benghazi was the 
aircraft used to evacuate the first wave of Americans from 
Benghazi to Tripoli.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \450\See, U.S. Dep't of Defense Timeline.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    At 8:25 a.m. GRS and one Agent 3 received the body of 
Stevens from individuals delegated by the Libyan Ministry of 
Foreign Affairs.\451\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \451\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 3 Testimony at 170-172.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The second aircraft, a C-130 provided by the Libyan Air 
Force, departed with the remaining security officers and the 
remains of Stevens, Smith, Woods, and Doherty at 9:54 a.m. and 
arrived in Tripoli at 11:33 a.m.\452\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \452\U.S. Dep't of Defense Timeline (estimating the times of 
arrival and departure).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                         Evacuation to Germany

    At 2:15 p.m. on September 12, a C-17 departed Germany en 
route to Tripoli to evacuate the Americans.\453\ This departure 
occurred over eight hours after the 6:05 a.m. AFRICOM order to 
deploy the C-17 for use as part of the Medevac (medical 
evacuation).\454\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \453\U.S. Dep't of Defense Timeline.
    \454\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    At 7:17 p.m. the C-17 departed Tripoli returning to 
Ramstein, Germany with the Benghazi-based U.S. personnel, non-
essential U.S. Embassy State Department personnel and the 
remains of the fallen and arrived at 10:19p.m.\455\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \455\Id.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                FOUR DIED. OTHER LIVES UNDOUBTEDLY SAVED

    The initiative shown during the attacks by those on the 
ground in Benghazi and Tripoli not only embodied the service 
and sacrifice of those in military and the Foreign Service but 
undoubtedly saved the lives of other Americans.
    The Diplomatic Security Agents followed their training and 
responded appropriately after the Mission compound was 
attacked. The Diplomatic Security Agents showed heroism in 
their efforts to protect Sean Smith and Chris Stevens and to 
enter a burning building in search of their missing colleagues.
    Team Annex moved quickly and decisively to help fellow 
Americans at the Mission compound. Their actions during the 
night/early morning hours provided not only much needed 
intelligence about what was happening on the ground but also 
helped secure their State Department colleagues and saved the 
lives of fellow Americans.
    Likewise, Team Tripoli, which included military personnel 
based at the Tripoli Annex, acted with purpose, precision and 
ingenuity that night. The Secretary and the Joint Staff did not 
know those personnel were in Tripoli, much less were they 
considered as one of the potential assets to respond to the 
events in Benghazi. In fact, they represent the only military 
``asset'' to reach Benghazi during the attacks. They deployed 
themselves because fellow Americans needed them.
    The creativity, valor and selfless sacrifice of the 
Diplomatic Security Agents, the team from the Benghazi Annex 
and Team Tripoli stand in some contrast to the discussions held 
during the White House meeting occurring at roughly the same 
time, half a world away, in the safe confines of the U.S.

    THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT'S RESPONSE TO THE ATTACK WAS INSUFFICIENT

    When the attacks in Benghazi began, the Defense Department 
was unprepared to respond. Despite there being a missing U.S. 
Ambassador, its response--from the start of the attack at 9:42 
p.m. in Libya, to the amount of time it took for the forces to 
actually deploy late the next morning in Libya--at best 
illustrates a rusty bureaucratic process not in keeping with 
the gravity and urgency of the events happening on the ground.
    The decisions made earlier in the year by senior State 
Department officials to maintain a presence in Benghazi without 
adequate security forces and an inadequately fortified Mission 
compound contributed to what amounted to a worst case scenario 
of circumstances that would test the military's preparedness 
and ability to respond. Nevertheless, the Defense Department 
did not pass the test. Whether this failure is shouldered by it 
alone, or rests in part on decisions made by the State 
Department in Washington D.C. or with the White House who 
presided over a two hour meeting where half of the action items 
related to an anti-Muslim video wholly unconnected to the 
attacks, is one of the lingering questions about Benghazi.
    To muster forces actually capable of responding to the 
second lethal attack in Benghazi, the Defense Department needed 
to overcome the ``tyranny of distance.'' From the moment the 
first attack occurred, the clock began to tick, and with each 
passing hour, the need to immediately deploy forces became more 
crucial. Any forces deployed by AFRICOM faced two inherent 
challenges.
    First, AFRICOM did not have a significant number of 
assigned forces. It had a standing arrangement with EUCOM to 
enable it to have access to EUCOM forces when a contingency 
arose. In essence, AFRICOM had to ask for help, creating 
another level of bureaucracy that ultimately played out in the 
orders to deploy forces.
    Second, since any force AFRICOM would use in response to 
the attack were EUCOM assets, those forces would deploy from 
bases in Europe, not Northern Africa. In fact, elements of the 
forces that were ordered to deploy, although based in southern 
Europe, needed C-130s or other transport aircraft to fly from 
central Europe to their location to transport them on to Libya.
    Of course, these challenges were known well in advance and 
came as no surprise. Whereas the facts and circumstances 
surrounding security related events in North Africa may change, 
the map and the time it takes to respond to the geographic 
challenges does not.
    Whether any of this was taken into account when no change 
in force posture was ordered on September 10 following the 
meeting with the President or on September 11 as the situation 
in Cairo unfolded is unclear. What is clear is the Secretary of 
Defense testified he was clear on both what the President 
ordered and what he ordered subsequent to the initial attack. 
Yet, no asset was ever ordered to respond to Benghazi and the 
decisions made--and not made--coupled with a lack of urgency in 
Washington D.C. delayed the response even, in some instances, 
with an Ambassador missing.

                   The Forces did not Meet Timelines

                      ISSUES WITH FAST DEPLOYMENT

    One of the FAST platoons ordered to deploy by the Secretary 
arrived in Tripoli at 8:56 p.m. local time [2:56 p.m. in 
Washington D.C.] the evening of September 12, nearly 24 hours 
after the attacks began.\456\ As military witnesses have 
posited on many occasions, the mission of a FAST Platoon is not 
hostage rescue but to ``put that layer of steel around a 
critical infrastructure of the United States to say to our 
enemy, `Don't mess [with us].'''\457\ Nevertheless, the timing 
of the FAST Platoon's arrival is problematic. When the 
Secretary identified a FAST Platoon as an asset to deploy and 
said ``go,'' one U.S. facility in Libya had already been 
attacked, Sean Smith had been killed, Chris Stevens was 
missing, and the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli was facing threats of 
another attack. The fact that nearly 24 hours elapsed until 
those forces actually arrived in Tripoli to reinforce the 
security there belies the expectations of the American people 
that the U.S. Military can and will move expeditiously. The 
Secretary said this on the time it took for forces to arrive in 
Libya:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \456\U.S. Dep't of Defense Timeline.
    \457\Testimony of FAST Platoon Commander, U.S. Marines, Tr. at 35 
(Sept. 2, 2015) [hereinafter FAST Commander Testimony] (on file with 
the Committee).

        Q: Mr. Secretary, did you know it was going to take 23 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        hours to get the first assets in country?

        A: No.

        Q: So what did you expect it was going to take?

        A: I knew it was going to take some time, just because 
        of the preparedness for the units and then the time and 
        distance involved. You know, you've heard the term 
        ``tyranny of time and distance,'' and it's tough in 
        this area.

                              *    *    *

        But I didn't--and I assumed these units moved as 
        quickly as possible and that, you know, we can get them 
        in place as quickly as possible, recognizing that there 
        is a time element that's involved. And, you know, I 
        understand the time element involved here just because 
        of the nature of moving the military.

        I mean, as Secretary, I used to sit down with 
        deployment orders all the time of units. And you go 
        through a whole series of discussions about, you know, 
        units that have to be deployed. And, normally, the 
        timeframe to get these units deployed--it takes time. 
        It takes time to put them on a plane. It takes time for 
        them to locate, I understand that. But when you're 
        dealing with the kind of elite units we're talking 
        about here, my expectation is that they move as fast as 
        they can.\458\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \458\Panetta Testimony at 47-48.

    The Commander of the FAST Platoon testified he first became 
aware of the attack on the Mission compound in Benghazi through 
reports on Fox News.\459\ At the time, the FAST Platoon was 
stationed in Rota, Spain.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \459\FAST Commander Testimony at 26.

        So, that evening, I recall I was actually talking to my 
        dad on Skype, watching the Armed Forces Network news 
        channel, which rotates through news affiliates, and I 
        think it was Fox News that night. And all of a sudden 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        we see a consulate building on fire.

        As soon as I hung up with him, I got on the phone with 
        my commanding officer, and we had a short talk. . . . 
        And he said something more or less in the lines of, 
        ``Make sure you do your laundry and you got enough 
        soap.''

        A couple of hours later, he was calling me, telling me 
        he was going to go down to the commander of CTF 68, who 
        is the higher headquarters of FAST Company Europe, and 
        that I needed to start getting my Marines together. 
        This was around midnight [local time in Rota, Spain], 
        so it would be on September 12.

        Around midnight is when my platoon sergeant and I 
        initiated the recall.

                              *    *    *

        Q: Let's back up a little bit. In terms of the Rota 
        Naval Station, were there any air assets typically 
        stationed at Rota?

        A: No, sir. No. What we always planned upon is 
        primarily aircraft coming from Ramstein, because that's 
        where the preponderance of Air Force C-130s 
        were[.]\460\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \460\Id. at 27.

    Almost three hours after the FAST Platoon Commander 
initiated the recall order, which required his Marines to 
return to base, he received official notification at 2:39 a.m. 
[8:39 p.m. in Washington D.C.] the platoon was activated and he 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
was to prepared to deploy.

        Q: When did you receive VOCO [vocal order] or a warning 
        order that the FAST platoon was going to be mobilized?

        A: Around 0230 is when we got the official 
        notification. So that was our official [redacted]. We 
        already had some lead-in to it, obviously.

                              *    *    *

        Q: --was it at 0239? Does that sound familiar?

        A: Yes, sir.

                              *    *    *

        Q: What were your specific orders at that time?

        A: Prepare my platoon to deploy to Libya. We didn't 
        know where exactly we were going, but we knew through 
        open media sources of what was going on on the deck.

        At that time, we started to make contact with the 
        embassy to gain S[ituational] A[wareness] of what was 
        happening and what our potential mission would be.\461\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \461\Id. at 31-32.

    Three hours after he received official notification, at 
5:45 a.m. local time [11:45 p.m. in Washington D.C.], the FAST 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Commander's platoon was prepped and ready to deploy.

        Q: When was your platoon packed out and ready to get on 
        a plane?

        A: I believe it was around 0545. I know it was before 
        6.

        Q: Obviously your company commander is aware of that.

        A: Yes, sir.

        Q: Did they notify anybody up the food chain that at 
        0545 you're ready to go?

        A: Yes, sir.\462\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \462\FAST Commander Testimony at 40.

    Yet, another six hours would elapse before C-130s arrived 
in Spain to transport the FAST Platoon to Libya. General Philip 
Breedlove, the Commander of the United States Air Forces in 
Europe, which is the component command which owned the C-130s 
used to transport the FAST Platoon, told the Committee he began 
generating C-130s on his own initiative after learning about 
the attacks in Benghazi.\463\ Breedlove said repeatedly his C-
130s were ready to deploy before he received official 
notification of deployment.\464\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \463\Breedlove Testimony at 21.
    \464\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The C-130s arrived six hours later, and the FAST Platoon 
loaded its gear within an hour.\465\ Yet, another three hours 
would elapse before the FAST Platoon departed for Libya.\466\ 
The FAST Platoon commander explained the cause of the delay:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \465\FAST Commander Testimony at 39-41.
    \466\Id. at 41.

        A: After we were loaded, which was around [1:00 p.m. 
        local time], so about an hour after the C-130s were 
        there, we still did not lift off until [4:00 p.m. local 
        time] was when the first aircraft took off.

                              *    *    *

        Q: Why was there another delay to get off the ground?

        A: So we were told multiple times to change what we 
        were wearing, to change from cammies into civilian 
        attire, civilian attire into cammies, cammies into 
        civilian attire.

        There was also some talk of whether or not we could 
        carry our personal weapons. I was basically holding 
        hard and fast to the point where we were carrying our 
        personal weapons. Like, we've got a very violent thing 
        going on the ground where we're going, so we're going 
        to be carrying something that can protect ourselves.

        But as far as what the Marines were wearing, that 
        continually changed, and we had to make those changes 
        inside of the aircraft.\467\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \467\Id. at 40-41.

    In fact, the FAST Platoon commander testified that during 
the course of three hours, he and his Marines changed in and 
out of their uniforms four times. Ham was not aware the FAST 
Platoon had been directed to change out of their uniforms until 
after the fact.\468\ When asked whether he had any explanation 
for why it took so long for the FAST Platoon to arrive in 
Tripoli, he replied, ``I do not.''\469\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \468\Ham Testimony at 90.
    \469\Id. at 91.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Although Dempsey told the U.S. Senate that once forces 
began moving, ``nothing stopped us, nothing slowed us,'' it 
appears the U.S. Military's response that night was delayed--
because it started too late.\470\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \470\Department of Defense's Response to the Attack on U.S. 
Facilities in Benghazi, Libya, and the Findings of Its Internal Review 
Following the Attack, Hearing before the S. Comm. on Armed Services, 
113th Cong. 66 (2013).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                          Diplomatic Clearance

    On the ground in Tripoli, the Defense Attache had already 
begun working to obtain flight clearances from the Libyan 
government before the White House meeting began.\471\ 
Initially, he notified the Libyan government of a potential 
request for flight clearances as the night progressed.\472\ 
Because he had given advance notice to the Libyan government 
potential flight clearances would be needed, he fully expected 
the Libyan government to approve any formal request when it was 
made. He noted, however, that to submit a formal request, 
specific information about the tail numbers, expected arrival 
of the aircraft, the number of personnel, and types of weapons 
had to be conveyed to the Libyan government.\473\ Not only did 
a formal request have to be made, a representative of the 
Libyan government had to be available to receive the paperwork 
for the request. There was no Libyan representative on duty 
overnight.\474\ As to when formal approval was received, the 
Defense Attache testified:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \471\Defense Attache 2014 Testimony at 113-114.
    \472\Id.
    \473\Id.
    \474\Id.

        Q: Can you recall when the actual--the relevant 
        information that was needed, like tail numbers and 
        things, when was that transmitted to the Government of 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Libya?

        A: I don't. But I would also come back to the fact that 
        we had a green light from the Government of Libya to 
        bring it in. It was just a question of when we were 
        going to know the specific information that goes into a 
        standard flight clearance request. So it had to have 
        been, I would say, sometime midmorning to noon on the 
        12th. It could have been, I would say, sometime 
        midmorning to noon on the 12th. It could have been a 
        little bit after that.

        Q: And that's when you received the relevant 
        information you need to pass on, or what happened?

        A: Probably both. In the course of the morning, leading 
        up to the afternoon, we got the information we 
        required, and then we were able to subsequently 
        transmit it to the Libyans.\475\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \475\Id. at 159-160.

    An email from Winnefeld corroborates the Defense Attache's 
recollection that the final relevant information needed to 
obtain host nation approval was received sometime mid-morning 
on September 12. In Washington, at 1:40 a.m. [7:40 a.m. in 
Libya] on September 12, Winnefeld wrote, ``Understand we now 
have dip clearance for the FAST platoon in Tripoli.''\476\ At 
least six hours had transpired between the time the Secretary 
ordered the deployment of forces and the Libyan Government 
approved deployment of those forces into Libya. Prior to this 
approval, no forces had begun moving.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \476\Email from Admiral James Winnefeld, Jr., Vice Chairman of the 
J. Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Dep't of Defense, to Denis R. McDonough, 
Deputy Nat'l Sec. Advisor, White House, et al. (Sept. 12, 2012 1:19 AM) 
(on file with the Committee, C05562167).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Winnefeld did not believe the timing of host nation 
approval from the Government of Libya prevented forces from 
moving.\477\ Rather, from his perspective, what most impacted 
the ability of the forces to move was the availability of 
airlifts coming from Ramstein, Germany.\478\ Notably, Winnefeld 
stated one lesson learned that night was the need to ``synch 
up'' force deployment timelines with airlift availability 
timelines.\479\ Nevertheless, the question still remains if the 
request for host nation approval from Libya was merely pro 
forma and did not delay deployment of forces, why did the 
forces not move until approval was obtained?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \477\Winnefeld Testimony at 51.
    \478\Id. at 90.
    \479\Id. at 30.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                      PROBLEMS WITH CIF DEPLOYMENT

    Twenty-two hours after the initial attack in Benghazi 
began, the CIF landed at the intermediate staging base in 
Sigonella, Italy.\480\ On the night of the attacks, the CIF was 
located in Croatia participating in a training exercise. The 
CIF Commander provided the following information about his 
instructions that night:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \480\See U.S. Dep't of Defense Timeline (``[At 7:57 PM EET t]he 
EUCOM special operations force, and associated equipment, arrives at an 
intermediate staging base in southern Europe'').

        A: The initial guidance was--I can't recall if someone 
        said prepare to deploy or you will deploy. The 
        notification we just operate under at all times, if 
        you're notified, we are operating under the premise 
        that we are going to deploy. But no one ever 
        specifically said you would; or that, we would. And as 
        the situation progressed from initial notification 
        around 02, through the early morning hours and 
        throughout the next day, there were various updates 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        along that timeline

        Q: And as the night progressed and the morning 
        developed, at what point were you told you will deploy 
        and this is the N Hour? At what point do you recall 
        receiving an N Hour notification? Or did you receive 
        one?

        A: I can't recall the official N Hour notification that 
        was set for official purposes. From my purview, when 
        someone told me, that is when I started working off it 
        at the tactical level so that we are prepared.

        So, from my recollection, it was in the middle of the 
        night, but I can't recall when the official N Hour was 
        set.\481\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \481\CIF Commander Testimony at 58-59. Some forces that are 
required to move within a pre-determined timeframe operate with a 
notification hour or ``N-hour.'' The N-hour is the established time 
that essentially starts the clock ticking for when the forces are 
required to be airborne.

    Notably, as he and his team were preparing after receiving 
their orders, the CIF Commander was receiving updates from his 
chain of command but never received any information about what 
was happening on the ground until he received word Ambassador 
Stevens had been killed.\482\ Despite the updates he was 
receiving, he was never told State Department personnel had 
evacuated to the Annex or even that the Annex had been struck 
by mortars and two more Americans were killed.\483\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \482\Id. at 63, 65.
    \483\Id. at 65-66.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The CIF faced several obstacles that slowed its ability to 
deploy. First, before they could execute, they had to have a 
fork-lift brought in from Zadar, Croatia, which was 
approximately 180 miles away from their current location.\484\ 
Once the forklift arrived, the CIF was able to load their 
pallets of gear and ammunition, then make the two-hour journey 
to Zagreb International Airport, where they would await their 
follow-on transportation.\485\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \484\General Repass Testimony at 54.
    \485\Id. at 54-55
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Despite these logistical obstacles, the CIF was packed and 
ready to go at approximately 7:00 a.m. local time [1:00 a.m. in 
Washington D.C.]. Yet, it was nearly another three hours until 
it was airborne. The CIF Commander described the delay:

        A: So in terms of the air, my recollection, I did not--
        I was waiting on the aircraft. I wasn't involved in the 
        planning of the aircraft, is the best way to describe 
        it. So I don't recall the N Hour sequence for the air 
        movement. It was--for us, we packed up every quickly 
        and then we were waiting at the airfield.

        And my comms--I packed up my comms and everything. So 
        once we were sitting at the airfield about seven 
        o'clock in the morning on September 12th, I had limited 
        communications with what was going on. I was just 
        waiting for the aircraft to show up.\486\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \486\CIF Commander Testimony at 76.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                              *    *    *

        A: But none of us knew--we weren't aware of the 
        aircraft deploying time. On that set N Hour to move 
        aircraft, I don't recall what that was.

        Q: Do you recall any efforts to try to coordinate back 
        with SOECUER headquarters to say, ``Hey, is there an N 
        Hour Sequence in effect?

        Were you tracking an N Hour sequence of any type or was 
        it more of a deliberate deployment sequence?

        A: I was tracking--for me, as a ground assault force, 
        the second I heard what was going on, that was kind of 
        what I was tracking. And we moved as quickly as we 
        could. And once we found out that the crisis was not 
        what it was originally articulated in terms of a U.S. 
        Ambassador or any Am[erican] cit[izen] missing, and 
        that he was killed and nobody was--that crisis was no 
        longer occurring as originally discussed, then it 
        became deliberative.
        So from my perspective, at that point the crisis was no 
        longer ongoing and it was more of a deliberate process. 
        So the N Hour sequence, I hate to use the term 
        irrelevant, but I didn't know what my mission was going 
        to be if there wasn't a crisis that we were prone to 
        look at.\487\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \487\Id. at 77-78.

    In support of its training exercise, the CIF's two C-130 
aircraft were located in Croatia.\488\ Based on reports 
regarding the attack in Benghazi, and well before receiving an 
order to deploy, at approximately midnight local time [6:00 
p.m. in Washington D.C.] the commander of the aircraft placed 
his pilots and air crews in ``crew rest'' in anticipation of a 
potential mission.\489\ ``Crew rest'' is typically a 12-hour 
period in which the pilots and air crew rest prior to engaging 
in a mission. The 12-hour period can be waived to eight hours 
(or more in exigent circumstances). General Repass, the SOCEUR 
Commander, waived the crew rest to eight hours in order to 
facilitate the CIFs movement to the intermediate staging base 
at Sigonella, Italy.\490\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \488\Repass Testimony at page 29.
    \489\Id. at 49.
    \490\Id. at 62.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Once he received word of Stevens's death, the CIF Commander 
testified the mission transitioned from a crisis action 
planning event to a deliberate planning event.\491\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \491\CIF Commander Testimony at 69.

        Q: Why did it transition from a crisis action planning 
        event to a deliberate planning event? What was the 
        nature of what his death generated in terms of your 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        planning sequence?

        A: From my recollection--and I wasn't in constant 
        communications about all of that; I just remember 
        hearing that he was killed, and there were no reports 
        of any other missing American citizens or any life, 
        limb, or eyesight threats to American personnel in the 
        original crisis point. Once we heard of that, and then 
        from that point we knew we were going to an ISB, for 
        sure. So there is no longer an in extremis, as we call 
        it, crisis, and personnel are safe, for a matter of 
        speaking, it became a much more deliberate planning 
        cycle.\492\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \492\Id. at 69-70.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                              *    *    *

        I was waiting for orders, to be honest with you, from 
        that point forward, outside of deploying. I knew I was 
        going to deploy. Aside from that, the scope of that 
        deployment in terms of a mission statement, was still 
        unknown.\493\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \493\Id. at 71.

    Once the U.S. based Special Operations Force was activated, 
the CIF--the closest military asset capable of quickly 
deploying to Benghazi--transitioned to a supporting role to 
help facilitate whatever mission was to be assigned to SOF 
forces.\494\ As such, the CIF's primary responsibility was then 
to simply get to the intermediate staging base prior to the 
U.S. based Special Operations Force and assist them as 
required.\495\ The CIF was essentially relegated to being an 
enabler of the U.S. based SOF, unless they were subsequently 
tasked otherwise.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \494\Repass Testimony at page 60.
    \495\Id. at 70.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Ham disagreed that the CIF's sole role became to prepare 
for the U.S.-based Special Operations Force. He testified:

        Q: Did you anticipate as you did your planning that the 
        Commander's In-extremis Force was going to be relegated 
        to being nothing more than enablers for the National 
        Mission Force?

        A: In my view, that's an incorrect characterization of 
        the Commander's In-extremis Force.

                              *    *    *

        Q: [W]hat would be a more accurate characterization?

        A: Mr. Chairman, in my view, the Commander's In-
        extremis Force, again, these are specially trained, 
        equipped, prepared forces that can, as the name 
        implies, conduct missions in extremis. [Redacted text]

        [Redacted text] but they can, in fact, accomplish that 
        mission.

        And, Mr. Chairman, they do, in fact, have a mission to 
        receive and prepare for arrival of the National Mission 
        Force, but, in my view, their mission is much broader 
        than just that.

        Q: I think the tension that we're trying--particularly 
        those of us who have never served before--the tension 
        we're trying to reconcile is, when General Repass 
        testified--and he did a fantastic job, but one of the 
        impressions we were all left with based on his 
        testimony was, once the [U.S. SOF] was deployed, the 
        CIF's role then became to go to the ISB and await the 
        [U.S. SOF], which, in effect, took them out of the 
        realm of other assets that could deploy otherwise. That 
        is a fair characterization of his testimony.

        And I'm just wondering whether or not you agree that, 
        once both of those assets are put in place--the [U.S. 
        SOF], it's headed, it's got a longer travel time than 
        the CIF--that the CIF's job was to go to the ISB and 
        await the [U.S. SOF]?

        A: Mr. Chairman, I would say that that was one of their 
        missions, certainly, to facilitate the arrival and the 
        staging of the [U.S. SOF]. But, in my mind, that was an 
        operational force that was available to me, a highly 
        capable special operations force that was 
        available.\496\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \496\Ham Testimony at 91-92.

    Even still, Ham believed the CIF's failure to meet its 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
timeline was not justified and was inexcusable:

        Though I know now in hindsight that had the CIF made 
        its timelines, they would not have been in position to 
        affect the outcome as things eventually played out on 
        the ground, the reality is, they should have made their 
        timelines. And that's--there's no excuse for that. They 
        should have made their timelines. They should have been 
        postured for subsequent use. As it turns out, they 
        would not have been needed, but we didn't know that at 
        the time. So that, as I look back on this, the 
        disappointment of the Commander's In-extremis Force not 
        meeting its timeline is, to me, significant, and I 
        believe the steps taken by the command and by the 
        Department of Defense after that have addressed that 
        situation.\497\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \497\Id. at 108.

    The Secretary had this to say about the CIF's deployment 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
timeline:

        Q: Well that same unit then had to wait for aircraft 
        till about if you look at the timeline here, 10:21 a.m.

        So that N-hour that was set at 11 o'clock east coast 
        time on the night of the 11th, it was not until 11 
        hours later that EUCOM CIF was actually transported 
        down to Sigonella from Croatia.

        Does that timeframe seem reasonable to you, given what 
        you thought might be occurring in the region?

        A: I think it's a legitimate area to ask why did it 
        take that long.\498\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \498\Panetta Testimony at 176-177.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                    PROBLEMS WITH US SOF DEPLOYMENT

    The U.S. SOF force is required to deploy within a specific 
number of hours after the order to deploy is given. As 
reflected in the Defense Department's timeline and after-action 
reviews, it actually took a significant amount of additional 
time to launch the U.S. SOF. Even given this delay, the U.S. 
SOF Force, which deployed from the United States, arrived at 
the staging base in southern Europe only an hour and a half 
after the CIF arrived.
    By the time CIF and the U.S. SOF Force landed at Sigonella, 
the crisis in Benghazi had ended. In fact, the units arrived in 
Sigonella nearly 12 hours after all U.S. personnel had 
evacuated from Benghazi. The assets ultimately deployed by the 
Defense Department in response to the Benghazi attacks were not 
positioned to arrive prior to the final lethal attack on the 
Annex. The fact that this is true does not mitigate the 
question of why the world's most powerful military was not 
positioned to respond or why the urgency and ingenuity 
displayed by team members at the Annex and Team Tripoli was 
seemingly not shared by all decision makers in Washington.
    What was disturbing from the evidence the Committee found 
was that at the time of the final lethal attack at the Annex, 
no asset ordered deployed by the Secretary had even left the 
ground. Not a single asset had launched, save the military 
personnel from Tripoli who did so on their own accord and whose 
presence no one in Washington seemed aware of when discussing 
which assets to deploy. Nothing was on its way to Benghazi as a 
result of the Secretary's initial order to deploy.
    More than 12 hours had passed since the first attack 
happened at the Mission compound, resulting in the death of 
Sean Smith (which was known) and Ambassador Stevens (which was 
not then known), yet in that time, the greatest military on 
earth was unable to launch one single asset toward the sound of 
the guns.
    The CIF's response timeline and the U.S. SOF's timeline 
exposed flaws in a process designed to ensure that when a 
crisis erupts, the military's decision and deployment cycles 
will prove adequate to the challenge being confronted.

        The U.S. Government's Response Lacked a Sense of Urgency

    Perhaps given the timing of the 7:30 p.m. meeting with the 
White House on September 11, shortly after all surviving State 
Department personnel had evacuated from the Mission compound to 
the Annex, there may have been a sense the worst of the attack 
was over. Indeed, Winnefeld stated when he was first briefed 
around 4:30 p.m. about the events in Benghazi, he recalled 
being told there had been an attack and the attack was 
over.\499\ The job left to be done was no longer a hostage 
rescue situation but was, at best, recovering Stevens from a 
hospital and, at worst, recovering Stevens's remains.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \499\Winnefeld Testimony at 11.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    This sense, in fact, was false and should have been viewed 
as limited, if not false, at the time. As the participants of 
the White House meeting would soon learn, events were 
continuing to unfold on the ground in Benghazi. Those leaving 
the Benghazi Mission compound were attacked and ambushed en 
route to the Annex and once the Diplomatic Security Agents and 
Team Annex arrived at the Annex the attacks continued. 
Moreover, preparing for what could theoretically happen in 
Tripoli, or other cities and facilities was understandable. 
However, the lack of urgency in responding to what was actually 
happening on the ground in Benghazi is difficult to reconcile.
    Some may seek to argue a transferred focus onto Tripoli may 
explain why such topics as military attire, vehicles, and 
country clearances--topics that may seem irrelevant in a crisis 
situation--found their way into the discussions, and why other 
topics, such as deployment of the FEST, received short shrift. 
This belies the reality that--even as Bash indicated the assets 
were ``spinning up'' and the ensuing meeting took place--
Ambassador Stevens was missing in Benghazi. There is no 
evidence news of his death had reached Washington D.C. Indeed, 
news of his death could not have reached Washington D.C. 
because it was not known at the time. So, pivoting toward a 
Tripoli security analysis and the possibilities of unrest and 
violence there is hard to reconcile with the reality of what 
had happened in Benghazi, what was currently happening in 
Benghazi, and tragically what was soon to happen in Benghazi.
    With the storming of the compound in Benghazi, the killing 
of Smith, and Stevens missing, discussing the nature of the 
vehicles to be used and the clothing to be worn by those 
seeking to provide aid seemed to place a disproportionate 
emphasis on how the Libyan government might respond. After all, 
the Libyan government was supposed to play an active role in 
preventing the attack in the first instance and certainly in 
responding afterward.
    In addition, a fair review of read-outs and summaries of 
the White House meeting suggest the focus had already moved 
away from responding to Benghazi and toward responding to 
Tripoli and the broader region. Expressing concern about how 
forces might be received in Tripoli seems difficult to 
reconcile with an actively hostile security situation ongoing 
in Benghazi.

            The U.S. Government's Response Lacked Leadership

 THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT THOUGHT STATE WAS EVACUATING THE AMERICANS IN 
                                BENGHAZI

    The response to the attacks suffered from confusion and 
misinformation circulating between the agencies underscoring 
that no one effectively took charge of the U.S. Government's 
response the night and early morning of September 11-12. From 
the Defense Department's perspective, when the orders were 
issued, the plan on the ground was for the people in Benghazi, 
with the assistance from Team Tripoli, to make their way back 
to Tripoli. It would provide assets to augment the security in 
Tripoli where needed, and provide evacuation of the wounded and 
deceased. Several witnesses indicated that despite the 
Secretary's orders, the plan was not to insert any asset into 
Benghazi; their understanding was that assets needed to be sent 
to Tripoli to augment security at the Embassy, and that the 
State Department was working to move the State personnel from 
Benghazi to Tripoli.
    Tidd confirmed this understanding of the response plan 
following the 7:30 meeting with the White House:

        By the time we came out of the [White House meeting], 
        it was pretty clear that nobody was going to be left in 
        Benghazi. And so the decision--I think at the [White 
        House meeting] there was some discussion--but as I 
        recall, we weren't going to send them to Benghazi, 
        because everybody was going to be back in Tripoli by 
        the time we could actually get them there.\500\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \500\Tidd Testimony at 26.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    He further added:

        On the evening, at the time that all of this was 
        transpiring, our mindset, our sense was that everything 
        was going to Tripoli, that no one was left--or no one 
        would be left in Benghazi. So that--that's--that was 
        the mindset that we had.\501\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \501\Id. at 47.

    Even the diplomatic security timeline of events reflected 
this was the plan as understood by individuals on the ground in 
Libya. At approximately 10:15 p.m. in Washington D.C., the 
Diplomatic Security Command Center received a call from the CIA 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Annex in Tripoli relaying the following information:

        The Response Team has been on the ground for 
        approximately 60 minutes. They are waiting for to [sic] 
        escort them to the [redacted] annex.

                              *    *    *

        Once the six-member Response Team arrives they will 
        have non-essential employees and the remains of Sean P. 
        Smith depart.\502\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \502\DSCC Timeline.

    Word of the plan to evacuate the individuals from Benghazi 
seemed to spread throughout the State Department. Susan E. 
Rice, U.S. Permanent Representative to the U.N., received an 
email update on the events of the evening which read: 
``Apparently the Department is considering an ordered departure 
of some personnel from both Tripoli and Benghazi.''\503\ One 
member of Team Tripoli also testified the plan, as he 
understood it, was to evacuate all non-essential personnel to 
Tripoli.\504\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \503\Email from Senior Advisor to the U.S. Permanent Representative 
to the U.N., to Susan E. Rice, U.S. Permanent Representative to the 
U.N. (Sept. 11, 2012 10:37 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0051700).
    \504\Special Operator Testimony at 69.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Yet several other witnesses believed a very different plan 
was in place: No one was evacuating until Stevens was 
found.\505\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \505\See DSCC Timeline (``[At 11:13 PM EDT] response team has 
arrived at the [redacted] Annex. Station is telling him all DS staff 
told to evacuate. [Redacted] has 3 people willing to stay behind. 
Director Bultrowicz stated no, DS will not evacuate all members due to 
the outstanding issue of the Ambassador.'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Defense Department was working off of the premise 
everyone in Benghazi was being evacuated, others were clear 
that no one was leaving, and even State Department senior 
officials did not authorize the Diplomatic Security Agents to 
evacuate until Stevens was found. The Committee was also struck 
by the sheer number of government officials involved in the 
decision making the evening/early morning hours of September 
11-12, who did not even know there was a separate U.S. facility 
in Benghazi referred to as the ``Annex'' or where the Annex 
was.
    The first time it is clear all agencies understood the 
people in Benghazi were evacuating to Tripoli was after the 
final, lethal mortar attack at 11:15 p.m. in Washington D.C., 
[5:15 a.m. in Benghazi]--and over seven hours after the initial 
attack.\506\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \506\See Email from Cheryl D. Mills, Chief of Staff to the U.S. 
Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State, to Denis R. McDonough, Deputy 
Nat'l Sec. Advisor, White House (Sept. 12, 2012 12:12 AM) (on file with 
the Committee, SCB0051706) (``we're pulling everyone out of Benghazi 
[starting shortly]'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The lack of clarity on evacuation versus location of the 
missing Ambassador was not the only example of conflicting and 
confusing directives during the attacks and aftermath in 
Benghazi.
    The issue of military attire versus civilian clothes 
illustrated no one seemed to be taking charge and making final 
decisions. After the State Department request at the 7:30 p.m. 
White House meeting, the Defense Department began working the 
issue. Documents from the Defense Department show, and the FAST 
Platoon Commander testified it was well into the next afternoon 
on September 12th before the final decision was made. He 
testified further the Marines changed in and out of uniform and 
civilian clothes several times because the orders kept 
changing.

               THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT DID NOT ANTICIPATE 
                     ADDITIONAL ATTACKS IN BENGHAZI

    Several Defense Department witnesses testified that 
following the attack at the Benghazi Mission compound, they did 
not anticipate any additional attacks. Landolt explained:

        But you also have to remember that the first firefight 
        was around midnight. We didn't anticipate a second one 
        at 5:00 in the morning.

                              *    *    *

        Q: In terms of, though, after the first attack, was 
        there a sense that perhaps this thing had passed and 
        the dust had settled and---

        A: There was that sense.

        Q: Talk about that a little more. Was there a general 
        agreement amongst yourself and General Ham and Admiral 
        Leidig of that, well, we got through this thing with 
        minimal damage? Or what was the process? What was the 
        thought?

        A: Yeah, there was a sense that we needed more 
        information, that it looked like the initial attack had 
        ended. We had the one dead body on our hands, but we 
        still had a missing Ambassador. And then the Embassy, 
        through the DAT, was telling us that they were able to 
        get a plane and they were going to fly people over. So 
        I thought, okay, well, that will give us better 
        situational awareness. So there was that lull where, 
        Okay, let's wait and see what happens here.\507\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \507\Landolt Testimony at 33-34.

    Although the Defense Department did not anticipate an 
additional attack, the people on the ground in Benghazi most 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
assuredly did. One GRS agent on the ground testified:

        Q: Was there a sense from you that something was 
        building to something larger later in the evening?

        A: Yes. And what we were worried about was an even 
        larger force with gun-mounted weapons, which are much 
        larger, overtaking the compound.

        Q: Okay. But in terms of individuals with small arms, 
        that's something that you guys had sufficiently handled 
        and were able to continue handling based on your 
        defensive posture at the base?

        A: Right, but there was a limit to it. Like it's not 
        something that we could have done for days. I mean, we 
        were able to do it for as long as we could, but it 
        wasn't--there had to be something else.

        Q: Okay. Was there ever a sense throughout the evening 
        that the attacks were over and there was sort of a 
        calmness----

        A: Absolutely not.

        Q: --around the base?

        A: No. There were lulls, which are normal, but no, none 
        of us, and when I say ``us,'' the team, none of us 
        thought it was over, no.\508\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \508\GRS 5 Testimony at 65-66.


                THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT'S FOCUS SHIFTED 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                      FROM BENGHAZI TO THE REGION

    The Defense Department's lack of comprehension of the 
events taking place in Benghazi, coupled with the emphasis on 
resolving potentially extraneous policy matters, hampered the 
administration's subsequent plan to respond to those events and 
dictated the urgency with which forces moved that night. As the 
CIF commander testified, their movements that night 
transitioned from crisis action to deliberate planning.\509\ 
Winnefeld explained why:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \509\CIF Commander Testimony at 69.

        I think there are a number of factors in play. One, it 
        wasn't a matter of not having enough urgency, I think 
        it was more a matter of posture, coupled with the fact 
        the focus was on regional challenges, not on something 
        additional was going to happen in Benghazi later that 
        night. And so when there was not the perception of an 
        immediate threat right there . . . people are going to 
        operate safely.\510\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \510\Winnefeld Testimony at 39-40.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                              *    *    *

        And remember, the reason we were moving the CIF, we 
        were moving it to, what, Sigonella. . . . It was not 
        because they were going to Benghazi.

                              *    *    *

        We were worried about the copycat attacks elsewhere in 
        the region. And so I think they were more in a--it 
        wasn't a lack of urgency, but it was--you know, they 
        keep safety in mind. It was, okay, there could be a 
        copycat attack; we need to reposture ourselves in 
        theater. Let's do it, but let's not kill ourselves 
        doing it.

        You know, in 20/20 hindsight, if anybody had known 
        there was going to be a second attack and that 
        potentially the CIF could end up going there, maybe 
        they would have asked that question that you're asking. 
        But again, their mindset was we're moving the CIF to 
        Sigonella because something else could happen in the 
        region.\511\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \511\Id. at 30-31.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
            THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT'S RESPONSE LACKED URGENCY

    Finally, the coordination for and deployment of the assets 
identified and ordered deployed by the Secretary lacked any 
real sense of urgency.
    The Defense Department knew of the initial attack in 
Benghazi, which killed Sean P. Smith, less than an hour after 
the attack began.
    Two hours after this initial attack began, the Secretary 
had met with the President and been given all of the authority 
he believed he needed to ``use all of the resources at our 
disposal to try to make sure we did everything possible to try 
to save lives there.''\512\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \512\Panetta Testimony at 23.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Three hours after the initial attack began, Bash emailed 
senior leaders at the State Department to inform them of the 
assets that could be deployed in response to the attack.
    Five hours after the initial attack began, formal 
authorization to deploy the assets was issued.
    Instead of setting the N hour at the time the Secretary of 
Defense gave his order before Bash's email, or even setting the 
N hour at the time orders were issued to the forces at 8:39 
p.m., the Joint Staff coordinated with the U.S. SOF force to 
ask, ``What would you like to set as N hour?''\513\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \513\Email from Vice Admiral Kurt Tidd, Dir. of Operations, J. 
Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Dep't of Defense, to Deputy Dir. of Operations, 
et al. (Sept. 11, 2012 8:53PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB001376).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Given the urgency of the Secretary's intended deployment of 
these units and particularly in light of what was continuing to 
happen in Benghazi, this cannot be justified, particularly 
since it was already known the likelihood of further unrest in 
the region was significant.
    N hour was ultimately set at 11:00 p.m.--more than seven 
hours after the attacks in Benghazi began, more than four hours 
after the Secretary gave the order to deploy the forces, and 
more than two hours after that order was finally relayed to the 
forces. Though, Petraeus quipped to the Committee, ``N hour has 
nothing to do with this whatsoever, with great respect. That is 
completely irrelevant[,]'' the setting of the N hour was 
symptomatic of a larger lack of urgency in responding to the 
situation on the ground.\514\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \514\Testimony of General David A. Petraeus, Dir., Cent. Intel. 
Agency, Tr. at 16 (Mar. 19, 2016) [hereinafter Petraeus Testimony 2] 
(on file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Almost six hours after first learning of the initial attack 
on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, no asset had been deployed to 
Benghazi or Tripoli. Moreover, no asset ordered by the 
Secretary was even moving toward Benghazi or Tripoli aside from 
military personnel in Tripoli who mustered the ingenuity, 
courage, and resolve to ferry themselves toward danger. At the 
White House, McDonough knew at 11:45 p.m. the situation in 
Benghazi remained ``fluid,'' Stevens was still ``unaccounted 
for,'' and one State Department officer had been killed. He 
included this in his 11:45 p.m. email on September 11.
    Despite the fact that more than six hours had lapsed 
between the time the first attack was known and the time of 
this email, McDonough was still speaking of assets 
``deploying'' rather than assets deployed. If there is evidence 
McDonough placed calls or sent emails inquiring about the 
status of the deployment, the White House has not shared that 
evidence with the Committee. Rather, what was learned is 
McDonough made mention of calling ``YouTube'' to request the 
taking down of two videos, and he references having had the 
Secretary call ``Pastor Jones to ask him to pull down his 
video.'' Why McDonough had time to concern himself with ``You 
Tube'' videos while an Ambassador was missing and unaccounted 
for remains unclear. And why the Secretary of Defense was used 
to call ``You Tube'' and a ``pastor'' about a video--that had 
not and would not be linked to the attacks in Benghazi--rather 
than inquiring about the status of the asset deployment he 
ordered five hours earlier is also unclear.
    What is clear is the United States Government sent 
personnel into a dangerous post-revolution environment in 
Benghazi, Libya. Those sent displayed heroism and valor. They 
also displayed a sense of urgency in discharging the mission 
assigned to them. Chris Stevens had the urgency to travel to 
Benghazi because decisions needed to be made before the end of 
the fiscal year. Chris Stevens felt the urgency to assign 
himself to cover a one-week gap in the Principal Officer 
position in Benghazi.
    Those Americans assigned to work at a nearby Annex had the 
sense of urgency to fight their way onto the Benghazi Mission 
compound because a sister U.S. agency was under attack. 
Diplomatic Security Agents had the urgency to return time and 
time again into a burning building in search of Smith and 
Stevens. Diplomatic Security Agents and the team from the Annex 
no doubt felt the urgency when they fought their way from the 
compound to the Annex overcoming point-blank machine gun fire 
and grenade attacks.
    Team Tripoli sensed the urgency of what was happening in 
Benghazi and negotiated for private aircraft to race toward the 
danger in defense of fellow Americans. Tyrone S. Woods and Glen 
A. Doherty felt the urgency of defending a second U.S. facility 
against a series of coordinated attacks before ultimately being 
killed by precision mortar attacks.
    There was life and death urgency felt in Libya with split-
second decisions being made: Do I fire on this crowd or not? Do 
we fire in the direction of a residence or not? Do we return to 
a smoke and fire engulfed building yet again in search of 
fallen colleagues? Do we go to the hospital to find Stevens or 
to the Annex? How do we fly from Tripoli to Benghazi?
    If that same degree of urgency was felt among the decision 
makers in Washington it is not reflected in the time within 
which decisions were made nor in the topics being debated in 
and around the deployment.
    The ``tyranny of time and distance'' may well explain why 
no U.S. military asset--save the bravery of the men serving in 
Tripoli--made it to Benghazi. It does not explain why no asset 
was even headed toward Benghazi. The ``tyranny of time and 
distance'' does not explain why Washington D.C. leaders were 
preoccupied with ancillary issues when they were responsible 
for sending our fellow Americans into harm's way in the first 
instance.
    Half of the action items that emerged from the White House 
meeting convened in response to the killing of an American 
Foreign Service officer and an attack on an American diplomatic 
facility related to a video. Half. There is more of a record of 
phone calls from White House officials to ``YouTube'' and a 
virtually anonymous ``pastor'' than there were calls imploring 
the Defense Department to move with greater urgency. The 
preoccupation the administration felt with safeguarding the 
feelings of the Libyan government and dealing with an anti-
Muslim video (which video prompted no change in force posture 
or readiness even after protests erupted in Cairo) is a 
foreshadowing of what would become an administration wide 
effort to conflate that same video with the attacks in 
Benghazi.

                                PART II:

                     Internal and Public Government

                   Communications about the Terrorist

                          Attacks in Benghazi

``Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an Al Queda-
like
[sic] group.''

                        The Secretary of State to her daughter, 
                        September 11,
                        2012\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\Email from Hillary R. Clinton (``H''), Sec'y of State, U.S. 
Dep't of State, to Chelsea Clinton (``Diane Reynolds'') (Sept. 11, 
2012, 11:12 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05795467).

``We know that the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the
film. It was a planned attack--not a protest.''

                        Summary of a statement by the Secretary 
                        of State
                        to the Egyptian Prime Minister, 
                        September 12, 2012\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\Email from U.S. Dep't of State, to S_CallNotes, (Sept. 12, 2012, 
7:11 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05561911).

``To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet 
video,
and not a broader failure of policy.''

                        Benjamin J. Rhodes, defining one of the 
                        goals of Am-
                        bassador Susan E. Rice's appearances on 
                        the Sun-
                        day news programs following the 
                        Benghazi attacks,
                        September 14, 2012\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \3\Email from Benjamin J. Rhodes, Deputy Nat'l Sec. Advisor for 
Strategic Commc'cs, Nat'l Sec. Council, to Dagoberto Vega, Special 
Ass't to the President and Dir. of Broadcast Media, White House, et al. 
(Sept. 14, 2012, 8:09 PM) [hereinafter Rhodes Memo] (on file with the 
Committee, C05415285).

``I gave Hillary a hug and shook her hand, and she said we are
going to have the filmmaker arrested who was responsible for
the death of my son.''

                        Diary entry of Charles Woods, father of 
                        Tyrone Woods,
                        September 14, 2012\4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \4\Fox News Insider, Father of Benghazi Victim Reveals Journal 
Entry Documenting Meeting With Hillary, YouTube (Jan. 13, 2016), http:/
/www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMx0huMabos.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                        The Security Environment

    The attacks in Benghazi did not occur in a vacuum. They 
took place amidst a severely deteriorating security situation 
in eastern Libya--a permissive environment where extremist 
organizations were infiltrating the region, setting up camps, 
and carrying out attacks against Western targets.\5\ In June 
2012, State Department security officials were discussing ``an 
active terrorist cell in Benghazi'' that was ``planning and 
implementing attack operations against western interests 
including the U.S. Mission in Benghazi[.]''\6\ That same month 
another security official in Libya reported to Washington about 
the ``increase in extremist activity'' and described his ``fear 
that we have passed a threshold where we will see more 
targeting, attacks, and incidents involving western 
targets.''\7\ The official cited a series of recent attacks and 
noted that a source had warned of a ``group attack'' on an 
American facility.\8\ He specifically mentioned ``[t]argeting 
[and] attacks by extremist groups particularly in the eastern 
portion of Libya,'' where Benghazi is located.\9\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \5\This deteriorating security environment is discussed in detail 
in Section III of the report.
    \6\Memorandum from James Bacigalupo, Regional Dir. of the Near East 
Asia Bureau of Diplomatic Sec., U.S. Dep't of State, to Charlene Lamb, 
Deputy Ass't Sec'y for Diplomatic Sec., U.S. Dep't of State (June 15, 
2012) (on file with the Committee, C05578316).
    \7\Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 24, U.S. Dep't of State, to 
Diplomatic Sec. Agent 25, U.S. Dep't of State (June 14, 2012) (on file 
with the Committee, C05388987).
    \8\Id.
    \9\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In the months leading up to September 11, 2012, several 
major security incidents had taken place in Benghazi against 
Western targets, including:

     LApril 2, 2012: Attack on a United Kingdom [UK] 
armored vehicle;

     LApril 6, 2012: Improvised Explosive Device [IED] 
attack on the State Department facility in Benghazi;

     LApril 10, 2012: IED attack on the motorcade of 
the United Nations Envoy;

     LApril 27, 2012: IED attack on a courthouse in 
Benghazi;

     LMay 22, 2012: Rocket Propelled Grenade [RPG] 
attack on the International Committee for the Red Cross [ICRC] 
facility in Benghazi;

     LJune 6, 2012: IED attack on the State Department 
facility in Benghazi;

     LJune 11, 2012: RPG attack on the UK Ambassador's 
motorcade;

     LJune 12, 2012: RPG attack on the ICRC;

     LJuly 29, 2012: IED found at Tibesti Hotel; and

     LAugust 5, 2012: Attack on the ICRC facility.

    The threat environment in Benghazi was so severe that on 
September 11, 2012, on the anniversary of September 11, one 
Diplomatic Security agent in Benghazi feared an attack that 
night and was not planning on going to sleep. He testified:

        You know, I wasn't going to go to sleep that night. I 
        was probably going to stay up throughout the night just 
        because, one, it's September 11, you know, and what was 
        happening in Egypt. So if anything was to happen, it 
        would happen late at night, early morning. So I wasn't 
        going to go to bed. I believe [Agent 2] was along the 
        same mindset, but we hadn't ratified whether, yes, this 
        is what we are doing. It was just people are going to 
        stay up. I had taken my weapon and ammunition and put 
        it in my room. [Agent 2] had done the same thing. And I 
        believe they had--[Agent 5] had his weapon with him as 
        well in his room.\10\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \10\Testimony of Diplomatic Security Agent 1 [Agent 1], Diplomatic 
Sec. Agent, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 49-50 (Mar. 6, 2015) 
[hereinafter Agent 1 Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

    Sean P. Smith, the Information Management Officer at the 
Benghazi Mission compound, also feared an attack, telling a 
community of online gamers shortly before the attack: 
``[A]ssuming we don't die tonight. We saw one of our `police' 
that guard the compound taking pictures.''\11\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \11\Matt Smith, Ex-SEALs, Online Gaming Maven among Benghazi Dead, 
CNN (Sept. 13, 2012, 8:53 PM), http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/13/us/
benghazi-victims.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    It was against this backdrop that the September 11, 2012 
attacks against U.S. facilities in Benghazi took place.

                         THE PROTESTS IN CAIRO

    In Cairo, Egypt earlier that day, approximately 2,000 
protestors demonstrated outside the U.S. Embassy--a protest 
that began in the middle of the day.\12\ A handful of 
protestors scaled the embassy wall, tore down the American 
flag, and sprayed graffiti inside the compound.\13\ Some 
protestors were eventually removed by Egyptian police. No 
Americans were injured or killed in the event.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \12\See, e.g., Email to Susan E. Rice, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., 
et al., (Sept. 11, 2012, 7:55 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05390691).
    \13\See, e.g., id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In Cairo, protests had been planned for days in advance on 
social media as a result of a video posted on YouTube about the 
prophet Muhammad.\14\ On September 10, 2012, the CIA warned of 
social media chatter calling for a demonstration in front of 
the Embassy in Cairo,\15\ and Americans at the Embassy were 
sent home early due to the impending protests.\16\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \14\Sara Lynch and Oren Dorell, Deadly embassy attacks were days in 
the making, USA Today, (Sept. 12, 2012, 8:36 PM), http://
usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2012/09/12/libyan-
officials-us-ambassador-killed-in-attack/57752828/1.
    \15\See, e.g., email from Victoria J. Nuland, Spokesperson, U.S. 
Dep't of State, to Erin Pelton, Dir. of Commc'cs and Spokesperson, U.S. 
Mission to the U.N. (Sept. 15, 2012, 7:18 PM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05622933).
    \16\Egypt Protesters Scale U.S. Embassy Wall, Take Flag, CBS/AP 
(Sept. 11, 2012, 5:16 PM), http://www.cbsnews.com/news/egypt-
protesters-scale-us-embassy-wall-take-flag.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Although the attacks in Benghazi occurred later on the same 
day, they had little else in common with the Cairo protests. 
Significant differences included:

     LIn Cairo, plans for the protest appeared on 
social media well before the actual demonstration.\17\ In 
Benghazi the attacks occurred without warnings on social 
media;\18\

    \17\Sara Lynch and Oren Dorell, Deadly embassy attacks were days in 
the making, USA Today, Sept. 16, 2012.
    \18\See, e.g., Testimony of Tripoli Chief of Station, Cent. Intel. 
Ageny, Tr. at 42-45, July 16, 2015 [hereinafter Tripoli COS Testimony] 
(on file with the Committee).

     LIn Cairo, protestors did not brandish or use 
weapons.\19\ In Benghazi, attackers were armed with assault 
weapons, rocket propelled grenades, and sophisticated 
mortars;\20\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \19\See, e.g., Email to Susan E. Rice, U.S. Permanent Rep. to the 
U.N. (Sept. 11, 2012, 7:55 PM) [hereinafter 7:55 P.M. Rice Email] (on 
file with Committee, C053906910).
    \20\See, e.g., Benghazi Accountability Review Board at 4, U.S. 
Dep't of State [hereinafter Benghazi ARB].

     LIn Cairo, protestors spray painted walls and did 
other minor damage.\21\ In Benghazi, the attackers burned down 
buildings and pounded U.S. facilities with mortars and machine 
gun fire;\22\ and
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \21\7:55 P.M. Rice Email, supra note 19.
    \22\Benghazi ARB, supra note 20, at 4.

     LIn Cairo, the protest was confined to a single 
location.\23\ In Benghazi, the attacks spanned nearly eight 
hours over two different locations.\24\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \23\See, e.g., 7:55 P.M. Rice Email, supra note 19.
    \24\Benghazi ARB, supra note 20, at 4.

    Diplomatic Security personnel in Washington D.C. recognized 
differences as well. At 5:13 p.m. on September 11, 2012 James 
Bacigalupo, Regional Director for Diplomatic Security, Near 
Eastern Affairs Bureau, State Department, notified all regional 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
security officers:

        Within the last few hours we have had one demonstration 
        in which protestors infiltrated the perimeter of the 
        compound in Cairo and an armed attack on our compound 
        in Benghazi. Both are currently on-going and may be in 
        response to the release of an anti-Islamic documentary 
        and upcoming demonstration by Terry Jones this 
        evening.\25\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \25\Email from James Bacigalupo, Regional Dir. of the Near East 
Asia Bureau of Diplomatic Sec., U.S. Dep't of State, to DS-IP-NEA-RSO 
(Sept. 11, 2012, 5:13 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0048896).

    The differences also were noted by senior State Department 
officials as well. Victoria J. Nuland, Spokesperson, State 
Department, sent an email at 6:09 p.m. that included Jacob J. 
Sullivan, Deputy Chief of Staff and Director of Policy 
Planning, State Department, and Patrick F. Kennedy, Under 
Secretary for Management, State Department, among others. 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nuland wrote:

        [Please] put out as two separate statements to bullpen, 
        asap. On record, me.

        We can confirm that our office in Benghazi, Libya has 
        been attacked by a group of militants. We are working 
        with the Libyans now to try to restore security.

        In Cairo, we can confirm that Egyptian police have now 
        removed the demonstrators who had entered our Embassy 
        grounds earlier.

        For [press] guidance, if pressed whether we see a 
        connection between these two.

        We have no information regarding a connection between 
        these incidents.\26\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \26\Email from Victoria Nuland, Spokesperson, U.S. Dep't of State, 
to Elizabeth Dibble, Deputy Ass't Sec'y in the Bureau of Near Eastern 
Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, et al. (Sept. 11, 2012, 6:09 PM) (on file 
with the Committee, C05578255).

               WHAT BENGHAZI REPORTED DURING THE ATTACKS

    All five Diplomatic Security agents at the Benghazi Mission 
spoke with the Diplomatic Security Command Center while the 
attacks were ongoing. Agent 5, the Diplomatic Security agent 
who was with Smith and Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher 
Stevens during the attack, recounted his story:

        Okay, so the evening started with [Agent 4], [Agent 2] 
        and I sitting at a table near the pool at the end of 
        the night. Ambassador Stevens had come by and said, I'm 
        going to bed. Sean Smith said the same thing and went, 
        you know, went inside the villa, and we were just 
        sitting out kind of relaxing at the end of the night.

        While we were talking, I started hearing some kind of 
        chanting, I thought it was. So I told the others, you 
        know, I told the other two, hang on. Just listen for a 
        minute. And what we heard was chanting. And it was my 
        impression that it was coming closer. You know, so 
        immediately when I realized, you know, that this is a 
        potential security incident, or a potential something, 
        I said, you know, get your gear, right now. I ran into 
        Villa C where the Ambassador and Sean Smith were and 
        the other two ran in a different direction.

        I remember hearing the chants. I mean, they were fairly 
        close already. I mean, yelling distance, which is 
        pretty close especially in a city setting. So my 
        impression is that I don't have much time. So I ran 
        right to my room, you know, put my helmet on, put my 
        vest on, grabbed my weapons, my additional weapons, and 
        I turned to lock the gate, and basically, it was a jail 
        cell door with three locks on it. I locked all three 
        locks.

        And at about that time, Ambassador Stevens and Sean 
        Smith were coming out of their rooms. Sean Smith was 
        already, you know, donning his helmet and vest. I 
        guided them both into the safe haven, and I set myself 
        up in the safe haven with--I was holding my M4. I had a 
        pistol, a radio, a shotgun, and when we were, you know, 
        when we were in there, I radioed the other guy, hey, we 
        are all in the safe haven.

        I could hear outside explosions, yelling, chanting, 
        screaming, gunfire, and I reported all of this on the 
        radio just saying, this is what my senses are telling 
        me. Then people started banging on the doors of the 
        building, so I reported that. Hey, there is banging on 
        the doors. They are trying to come in, you know, we 
        need immediate assistance. And there wasn't any 
        response on the radio. Shortly after that, to my 
        recollection, the doors were blown open. And about 70 
        individuals, you know, rushed into the building, all of 
        them carrying AK-47s, grenades, RPGs, you know, a 
        mixture throughout everyone. Different--there were a 
        couple of different assault rifles.

        And with the number of individuals that came into the 
        building versus me, I chose just to stay in the shadow 
        that I was in. So I was partially in the safe haven, 
        partially outside the safe haven. This area was, you 
        know, there was a big shadow where I was sitting, and 
        my view through the jail cell door was into the common 
        area. So I could see where everybody was going, and 
        they began breaking everything. I could just hear glass 
        breaking. I could hear stuff being thrown around. I 
        could hear furniture being moved.

        If I may just back up a little bit. When we made it 
        into the safe haven, I handed my cell phone to the 
        Ambassador. I said, call everybody on my cell phone. 
        Call everybody that you know that can help us. At one 
        point, I handed Sean Smith the shotgun, but just like 
        me and everybody else that was in the safe haven, we 
        were scared. But as a security professional with my 
        military training and my agent training, I'm trained to 
        remain more calm than a non-security professional.

        So I took the weapon back from him seeing that he was 
        visibly shaken. And I just waited to see what was 
        unfolding. I was on the radio the whole time updating, 
        you know, whispering. Turned the volume way down, you 
        know, hey guys, they are in the building. Shortly after 
        that, two individuals came up to the jail cell door and 
        took out their AK-47s, and they are beating on the jail 
        cell door. They also had grenades on them. And I 
        thought they were going to take the grenades off and 
        pit them on the locks and blow the locks.

        So I tuned to the Ambassador, and said, you know, if 
        they take their grenades off the door and put them on 
        the locks, I'm going to start shooting. And when I go 
        down, pick up the gun, and keep fighting. Thankfully, 
        they didn't put the grenades on the locks. And they 
        just kind of turned away, and walked to a different, 
        you know, part of the house that I couldn't really see.

        And then slowly, people started to kind of trickle out. 
        And then the lights started to kind of dim. My initial 
        response or my initial thought was, well, they just 
        knocked out the generators. You know, we have regular 
        city power but we also have backup generators. So 
        flickering would be a likely, you know, cause of this. 
        But in reality, it was smoke. And it took me about, you 
        know, two or three seconds after that to determine that 
        it was smoke.

        As soon as I realized it was smoke, I turned to the 
        Ambassador and Sean Smith and said, we are moving to 
        the bathroom. And at that time, grabbed the Ambassador, 
        Sean Smith was right behind him and we started crawling 
        towards the bathroom. It's about a three- to four--
        meter crawl. And it only took seconds for us to reach--
        to reach the hallway that the bathroom was in. But by 
        that time--seconds later, the smoke had already filled 
        the entire room and I began basically army crawling 
        like on my belly, and breathing though my hands like 
        this, the last, you know, centimeter of air that was 
        left.

        And as soon as it became that thick, no light was 
        visible from the lights that were fully on. The sounds 
        were, you know, crackling and breaking of things from 
        heat. And so to lead them to the bathroom, I was 
        saying, Come on guys, follow me. And I was slapping my 
        hands on the floor, or you know, hitting stuff with my 
        hands if I felt anything. Like come on, you guys, 
        follow me. Come on. We are going to the bathroom.

        So I make it to the bathroom and nobody follows me in. 
        The whole time I was slapping and saying, come on, 
        follow me. My intention of going to the bathroom is 
        because if we made it to the bathroom, I know there is 
        a window that we can open. So what we would do is go 
        into the bathroom, close the door, wet towels on the 
        floor and open the window. And we could last, you know 
        probably much longer in the bathroom than anywhere else 
        in the house.

        But because nobody followed me in, I wasn't going to 
        close the door. So thinking about how I can better the 
        situation, I open the window. And I thought that that 
        could you know, provide some, you know, the lights in 
        the bathroom. I could provide some light, or I could 
        provide, you know, someplace with air and they could 
        see that. But by opening the window, I stood up to open 
        the window, and I thought my face was on fire. And I 
        opened the window anyway and it just became a chimney 
        and all the smoke started, you know, pouring out of the 
        window and being sucked in my direction.

        Because at that point that--I started to pass out. I 
        could feel myself becoming weak and just overcome with 
        smoke and heat. So I got back on the floor, took off my 
        M4, because crawling with a slung weapon is extremely 
        difficult. It was getting hung up on things, and I 
        didn't want to be stuck in that building because of my 
        M4. So I threw it in the bathroom, just left it there 
        and started crawling towards my bedroom. And when I 
        decided to do that, I was very clear to anybody else 
        who could hear me, I'm moving to my bedroom. Come on 
        guys, I'm moving to my bedroom. The whole time I'm 
        hitting the floor, slapping, yelling. Come on, guys. 
        Come on, you can do it. Let's go. Let's go. We are 
        moving to my bedroom.

        So I crawled to my bedroom. And as soon as I passed the 
        threshold to my bedroom, you know, I had seconds left 
        of life, essentially. And so I quickly went over to my 
        window and started to crank open the metal shutters, 
        but I was cranking the wrong way. So I had to turn back 
        and crank it the other way. Then I had to open up the 
        glass window, and then I had to pull a pin and push out 
        this big metal gate. And as soon as I did that, I 
        collapsed on to my little patio area.

        And around the patio area was, you know, maybe a 2\1/
        2\-foot tall cinderblock wall. And as soon as I went 
        out there, I just started taking fire immediately. I 
        remember hearing explosions, which I equate to 
        grenades. I remember feeling the cement exploding and 
        hitting me in the face. And I remember the sounds. So 
        after catching my breath, I jumped back into the 
        building and I searched for the Ambassador and Sean 
        Smith. I went as far as my threshold, and reached out 
        into the--into the area we had just come from to see if 
        I could feel anybody. But the smoke and heat were so 
        intense that, I mean, the smoke was coming in though my 
        eyes, even though they were closed. It was coming in 
        through my nose. And I stayed in there until I could--
        physically couldn't do it any more.

        When I was in the Navy, they engrain in you, 110 
        percent. And most people don't think you can do 110 
        percent, but it's part of my character. I do 110 
        percent and I stayed in there until--until I physically 
        could not and mentally could not stay in there any 
        longer.

        I went back out of the building, caught my breath on 
        the patio again, immediately taking rounds, the same 
        stuff, whizzing, you know, jumped back into the 
        building, and I had intentions--you know, I was just 
        thinking of any way that I could possibly signal them 
        or let them know where I was besides yelling and 
        slapping and hitting stuff.

        And I remembered that I had a lamp in my room, and I 
        went over to my lamp and I turned on my lamp, thinking 
        that they could see it in the smoke. But it didn't turn 
        on. And so I held it up to my eye to see if it was 
        working, and I remember seeing a very faint glow when 
        it was this close. I remember feeling the heat of the 
        lamp, and I could just barely see the actual light from 
        it.

        That's how thick the smoke was. And I went back to my 
        threshold, searched around, still yelling, still 
        saying, ``Come on guys,'' you know, to my bedroom. No 
        response. Nothing. I went back out and caught my breath 
        again, still taking rounds. And I went back in one or 
        two more times to try and find them, and I couldn't. 
        The last time I went out, you know, I decided that if I 
        went back into the building that I wasn't going to come 
        back out. The smoke and heat were way too powerful, and 
        way too strong, and it was extremely confusing feeling 
        my way in a smoke-filled building. And I didn't want to 
        get lost, and so I decided to climb up the ladder up to 
        the roof.

        I climbed up the ladder, and pulled up the ladder 
        behind me and that's the moment that I knew that 
        Ambassador Stevens and Sean Smith were probably dead. 
        Immediately, upon getting up to the roof, I started 
        radioing for my colleagues, you know, telling them the 
        situation, you know, telling them my situation, you 
        know, I am exhausted. I am completely exhausted. I gave 
        everything I had. And I'm still thinking of ways to 
        help, still thinking of ways to get the guys out.

        So I remember that we have a skylight in the top of the 
        building, and so I, you know, we had a little stash of 
        gear up on the roof. So I went over and I grabbed an M4 
        magazine and I climbed up on to this little platform 
        which is near the window. But it's protected by these 
        metal bars. And I couldn't break the window. But I 
        remember yelling and hitting it as hard as I possibly 
        could.

        The bad guys saw me up there, started shooting at me 
        again. I remember seeing tracer fire right over my 
        head. I remember hearing the whizzing of the rounds 
        going past me. And so I climbed, you know, back down 
        off the ledge and just got on the radio. ``Hey, guys, 
        I'm on a frying pan. This thing is hot. The smoke is 
        coming out of the building and going right on to the 
        roof. If I pick my head up I'm getting shot at, and I 
        can't--I can't do this forever.''

        Finally, over the radio, [Agent 4] says, ``[Agent 5], 
        we are coming to get you.'' You know, at that time a 
        couple of seconds were gone, and he was like, ``Hang 
        on. Hang on. We are coming to get you'' I don't know 
        how long I was up on the roof, but for me it was a 
        while.

        Finally, the other guys came over in a fully-armored 
        vehicle and parked right at the base of kind of my 
        location and set up a small perimeter, called me down 
        off the roof. I climbed down and they were all amazed 
        to see me still alive. Just my condition was, you know, 
        my face was black. My eyeballs were black. My nose was 
        black. Everything I had was black. But as a security 
        professional, I said, ``Give me a gun.'' [Agent 2] gave 
        me a 9-millimeter pistol which I was a little unhappy 
        about, but I took it anyway and stood--stood a position 
        on the outside.

        And [Agent 4]--[Agent 4] and [Agent 1] tried to go 
        inside the building and find them, but shortly after 
        that, their report was way too hot, way too smokey. You 
        know, we are going to get lost in there. Somebody is 
        going to die if we keep this up.\27\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \27\Testimony of Diplomatic Security Agent 5 [Agent 5], Diplomatic 
Sec. Agent, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 123 (Apr. 1, 2015) [hereinafter 
Agent 5 Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

    Agent 3, Diplomatic Security agent in charge at the 
Benghazi Mission compound, testified he was in constant contact 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
with the Diplomatic Security Command Center:

        I was in the best position to see the attacks happen, 
        unfold. I was in the TOC [Tactical Operations Center] 
        at the special mission compound. I manned the cameras. 
        You guys have seen the video. Any time you see the 
        camera moving, that's me. Subsequently, I was also in a 
        position to review the cameras and be aware of all the 
        situational awareness at the second compound, all of 
        which I have shared. Much of the attack was passed in 
        real-time through my phone to DS command center.\28\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \28\Testimony of Diplomatic Security Agent 3 [Agent 3], Diplomatic 
Sec. Agent, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 77 (Oct. 8, 2013) [hereinafter 
Agent 3 Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Agent 3 also testified about what he saw:

        It was 9:42 at night, and I was wrapping up work and 
        had some emails. My shift should have been done three 
        or four hours earlier. I'm in the TOC office in the TOC 
        building. I hear several, three to four, gunshots and 
        an explosion that seemed substantially closer than what 
        I heard earlier, which was the fireworks. The fireworks 
        I kind of expected to happen every night at about 9:30 
        give or take. Initially I thought they were just a 
        little bit late.

        So I get up. I go to the window, which is actually 
        covered by two bookcases and has sandbags on the 
        outside, so not to see anything, but actually to hear a 
        little better I go to the window. I think I heard the 
        shots or explosions first and then something more 
        subsequent than that, either an additional explosion or 
        additional gunfire, that sounded very close. I turn. I 
        glance maybe a second, probably less, at the 
        surveillance camera monitors and see a large group of 
        personnel coming on. They're already on the compound, 
        effectively in the middle of compound C. Right where 
        this small roundabout is, there's a camera on a pole 
        there. And I saw a large group. My original assessment 
        was 16 to 20 armed men, a couple of them with 
        banners[.]\29\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \29\Id. at 135-136.

    Agent 3 testified this information was being relayed back 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
to the Diplomatic Security Command Center [DSCC]:

        We are relaying what is going on via the cameras, where 
        slowly the barrack buildings [Villa C], which is one of 
        the villas on the compound on the map, is set on fire, 
        and then slowly those forces migrate over to our side, 
        where they pin us in, basically, in both of our 
        locations, in Villa B and the TOC building, where they 
        proceed to gain entry into Villa B and attempt to kick 
        the door in to the TOC building for 10 to 15 minutes. . 
        . . [t]he situation on the ground was rough out there. 
        There was heavy weapons. Some guys have grenades that 
        have already gone off. Everybody is armed with either a 
        pistol or a long gun. Somebody shows up at some point 
        with, like, a bazooka. So it is tough.\30\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \30\Id. at 145-146.

    Diplomatic Security Agent 1 called the DSCC when attackers 
were attempting to break into the room where he and another 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
agent had barricaded themselves. He testified:

        Q: You mentioned earlier that you used your BlackBerry 
        to call the DS Command Center. When did you first call 
        the DS Command Center during this sequence of events?

        A: So before they breached, when they made the first 
        attempt, the first attempt they didn't breach into the 
        room yet. But it was imminent that they were going to 
        breach and they were going to come in. So at that point 
        we bunkered in and started to proceed making calls. So 
        [Agent 2] was calling Tripoli and I called the Command 
        Center. I believe it was 18 minutes after the 
        attack.\31\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \31\Agent 1 Testimony at 62.

    Diplomatic Security Agent 2 also spoke with the DSCC during 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
the attacks. He testified:

        I stayed on the roof of that building for the majority 
        of the night. I made several phone calls back and forth 
        to the DS Command Center in D.C. relaying information. 
        I also made phone calls to one of the Ambassador's 
        contacts to try to get some atmospherics about what was 
        going on in the rest of the city, should we need to do 
        a ground evac.\32\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \32\Testimony of [Agent 2], Diplomatic Sec. Agent, U.S. Dep't of 
State, Tr. at 100 (Mar. 19, 2015) [hereinafter Agent 2 Testimony] (on 
file with the Committee).

    Agent 2 told the Committee he was providing ``general 
situational awareness'' to the DSCC so they could ``make 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
accurate decisions.'' He testified:

        A: Yeah. He wanted to know the status of the 
        accountability of the Americans who were on post, 
        specifically the Ambassador, what information we had. 
        There were also additional reports coming in that the 
        Ambassador might have been at a hospital in a burn unit 
        and we were trying to verify the validity of those 
        claims. And then just general situational awareness for 
        the Command Center in D.C.

        Q: So your sense of kind of your--what you were doing 
        there was kind of giving an ongoing as things were 
        unfolding so that they would have the information to 
        help assess how to continue responding?

        A: Yes. My intent was to provide them the information 
        that I had so they had timely information so they could 
        make accurate decisions.\33\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \33\Id. at 102.

    Diplomatic Security Agent 4 testified it was his job to 
``immediately'' contact the DSCC in the event of an attack.\34\ 
He testified about the beginning of the attack:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \34\Testimony of Diplomatic Security Agent 4 [Agent 4], Diplomatic 
Sec. Agent, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 85 (Mar. 16, 2015) [hereinafter 
Agent 4 Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

        Q: Would it be then an accurate description to describe 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        the attack as sort of a stealth attack?

        A: It was very sudden. As I had mentioned, the only 
        warning that I had that something was amiss was that--
        kind of that cry that I heard at the main gate. So it 
        was very sudden.\35\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \35\Id. at 144.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Agent 4 also testified of the attack:

        A: No, I never told them that there was a protest.

        Q: Was it your assessment that there was a protest?

        A: No.

        Q: Do you believe there was a protest?

        A: I don't.\36\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \36\Id. at 155.

    At the Diplomatic Security Command Center, Charlene R. 
Lamb, Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Programs, 
State Department, was monitoring the situation in real time and 
was aware of the reports coming in from the agents under attack 
in Benghazi. She testified she was in ``constant contact'' with 
the agents on the ground and had an ``almost full-time 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
connection'' to them:

        A: I was in my office, and I received a phone call, I 
        don't remember if it was directly from the command 
        center or if it was from the desk officer, but I 
        received a phone call that notified me that there was a 
        problem.

        Q: And that's what they said, it was a problem? Did 
        they elaborate? Did they tell you anything more?

        A: They said that they had the RSO on the phone and 
        that the compound was under attack. And I didn't ask 
        any more questions. I believe I notified Scott 
        Bultrowicz, [Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for 
        Diplomatic Security, State Department] and we both went 
        down to the command center.

                              *    *    *

        Q: And so once you learned of the attack, then what did 
        you do?

        A: I had a liaison officer that worked for me who had 
        employees that worked in the Annex there, so I 
        immediately called him on my way down to the command 
        center and asked him to join me in the command center. 
        And when we went in there, we initially tried to assess 
        the situation the best we could, and then we started 
        working on trying to identify security assets who could 
        help them with the situation that was unfolding.

        Q: And what assets would those have been?

        A: Assets that were at the Annex facility. We made 
        phone calls to Stuttgart, to AFRICOM [United States 
        Africa Command] and EUCOM [United States Europe 
        Command] to see if they had any assets in theater that 
        were nearby that could possibly be drawn on for 
        additional support.

        Q: And did you discuss those assets and deployment with 
        PDAS [Principal Desputy Assistant Secretary] Bultrowicz 
        or Under Secretary Kennedy?

        A: Yes. PDAS Scott Bultrowicz was in the room, he was 
        on the phone with Pat Kennedy and Eric Boswell, and he 
        was relaying information. As we were getting 
        information in, he would relay it to them----

                              *    *    *

        Q: And was the DS command center your only source of 
        information that night or were you in constant contact 
        with the Annex as well via your liaison?

        A: Yes. My liaison had constant contact with the Annex. 
        We had almost full-time connection to the DS agents 
        that were on the ground, and then we were--you know, 
        towards the end, we were getting information off of 
        Twitter and public media. So those were our primary 
        sources of information.\37\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \37\Testimony of Charlene Lamb, Deputy Ass't Sec'y for Diplomatic 
Sec., U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 14-16 (Jan. 7, 2016) [hereinafter 
Lamb Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

    A senior watch officer at the DSCC described the events as 
``a full on attack against our compound.''\38\ The same 
individual also said there was ``zip, nothing nada'' when asked 
if there was any rioting in Benghazi reported prior to the 
attack.\39\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \38\Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 27, U.S. Dep't of State, to 
svcSMARTCrossLow (Sept. 12 2012, 10:20 AM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05389586).
    \39\Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 27, U.S. Dep't of State (Sept. 
18, 2012, 1:16 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05390678).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    At 6:34 p.m. on September 11, 2012, the DSCC sent a 
``terrorism event information'' to the Office of the 
Secretary.\40\ The update noted that ``host nation militia 
forces have responded to the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi'' and 
``were engaged with the attackers.''\41\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \40\Email from U.S. Dep't of State to S_SpecialAssistants (Sept. 
11, 2012, 6:34 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05578699).
    \41\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Lamb testified information received by the DSCC--directly 
from all of the agents on the ground--was relayed to 
Kennedy.\42\ None of the Diplomatic Security agents on the 
ground reported anything about a protest in Benghazi. None of 
the Diplomatic Security agents on the ground reported anything 
about a video.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \42\Lamb Testimony at 15.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Kennedy testified that he passed on information from the 
DSCC directly to Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton:

        I stayed in my office, except for the SVTC [Secure 
        Video Teleconference] the chairman referred to, 
        monitoring my telephone, monitoring my emails, and 
        making telephone calls or coordinating activities as 
        were required. . . . I went up several times to brief 
        the Secretary on the latest information that I was 
        receiving from Diplomatic Security, which was receiving 
        it from the ground.\43\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \43\Testimony of Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Sec'y for Mgmt., U.S. 
Dep't of State, Tr. at 119 (Feb. 3, 2016) [hereinafter Kennedy 
Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

                       KNOWLEDGE BY SENIOR STATE 
                          DEPARTMENT OFFICIALS

    At 4:06 p.m. in Washington D.C. on September 11, 2012, 24 
minutes after the attacks began in Benghazi, the State 
Department Operations Center issued a widely disseminated email 
to Department officials, including the Office of the Secretary, 
indicating an attack was occurring. With the subject ``U.S. 
Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack,'' the email 
stated:

        The Regional Security Officer reports the diplomatic 
        mission is under attack. Embassy Tripoli reports 
        approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions 
        have been heard as well. Ambassador Stevens, who is 
        currently in Benghazi, and four COM [Chief of Mission] 
        personnel are in the compound safe haven. The 17th of 
        February militia is providing security support.\44\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \44\Email from [email protected] to S_Special Assistants, et al. 
(Sept. 11, 2012, 4:05 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05272001).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Forty eight minutes later, a 4:54 p.m. update email stated:

        Embassy Tripoli reports the firing at the U.S. 
        Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi has stopped and the 
        compound has been cleared. A response team is on site 
        attempting to locate COM personnel.\45\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \45\Email from [email protected] to S_SpecialAssistants, et al. 
(Sept. 11, 2012, 4:54 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05272001).

    A 6:07 p.m. update email with the subject ``Ansar al-Sharia 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack'' stated:

        Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed 
        responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called 
        for attack on Embassy Tripoli.\46\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \46\Email from [email protected] to S_SpecialAssistants, et al. 
(Sept. 11, 2012, 6:07 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05272001).

    Gregory N. Hicks, Deputy Chief of Mission in Tripoli, was 
the United States' highest ranking official in Tripoli at the 
time of the attacks in Benghazi. Hicks testified that he talked 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
with Ambassador Stevens moments after the attack started:

        A: I punched the number that I did not recognize and 
        called it back, to call it back, and I got Chris on the 
        line. And he said, ``Greg, we are under attack.'' And I 
        am walking outside, trying to get outside, because we 
        have notoriously bad cell phone connectivity at our 
        residence, and usually it's better outside. So I say, 
        my response is, ``Okay,'' and I am about to say 
        something else, and the line clicks.

        I try to reach him back on the--I begin walking 
        immediately to our tactical operations center, because 
        I knew that everybody would be gathering there, and I 
        could then also summon everybody that needed to be at 
        the--to begin the process of responding. And I am 
        trying to call back on those numbers to reconnect, and 
        not getting--either not getting a signal or not getting 
        a response.

        Q: And did you ever make a connection with the 
        Ambassador again?

        A: No. I never did.

        Q: That was the last you spoke to him?

        A: That was the last I spoke to him.\47\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \47\Testimony of Gregory N. Hicks, Deputy Chief of Mission at U.S. 
Embassy Tripoli, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 18-19 (Apr. 11, 2013) 
[hereinafter Hicks Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

    Hicks also testified that Stevens would have reported a 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
protest had one occurred prior to the attack:

        Absolutely, I mean, we're talking about both security 
        officers who know their trade, even though they are 
        brand new, and one of the finest political officers in 
        the history of the Foreign Service. You know, for there 
        to have been a demonstration on Chris Stevens' front 
        door and him not to have reported it is unbelievable. 
        And secondly, if he had reported it, he would have been 
        out the back door within minutes of any demonstration 
        appearing anywhere near that facility. And there was a 
        back gate to the facility, and, you know, it 
        worked.\48\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \48\Id. at 81-82.

    Throughout the course of the evening, Hicks was on the 
phone with Elizabeth Jones, Acting Assistant Secretary of 
State, Near Eastern Affairs, State Department,who was in 
Washington D.C. at the time, updating her about the events on 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
the ground in Benghazi. Jones testified:

        I sat down and called Greg Hicks and said, Tell me what 
        is going on. I have this report from my special 
        assistant, from the op[erations] center; what's going 
        on? He said, I talked to Chris 20 minutes ago. Chris 
        called me. He said, We're under attack.

        I said, What do you mean we're under attack? He said 
        there are people firing guns at us, firing weapons, 
        firing at us. And I said, Where is Chris?

        He said--he said that the RSO [Regional Security 
        Officer] told him that they had taken--that Chris had 
        said, We're going to the safe haven, and the regional 
        security officer in Tripoli have reported, yes, the 
        security officers in Benghazi had taken the ambassador 
        to the safe haven.

        I said, Okay. You talked to him 20 minutes ago. Call 
        him again. He said, I've been trying. He doesn't answer 
        the phone.

        I asked, Who else was in the--in the building, where 
        was Chris exactly, who else was in the building. He 
        explained that Sean Smith was, that's the communicator, 
        that there were three RSOs there and that they would--
        they were moving the two to the safe haven and that the 
        others were trying to protect the building.

        I immediately notified by email as many people as I 
        could think of off the top of my head on the Seventh 
        Floor [senior State Department leaders], that I had 
        spoken to Greg, that this is what the situation was, 
        that--that I would continue to stay in touch with him. 
        In the meantime, I had a secure call from my CIA 
        counterpart saying the same thing, We're hearing that 
        Benghazi is under attack. I said, Is your annex under 
        attack, which I knew to be a few minutes away.

        He said, No. And I continued to be in touch with him, 
        the--my CIA colleague and my staff. I decided to not 
        work out of my office initially but work closer to 
        where the secure phone is, which is on the other end of 
        the suite and stayed in very close touch with Greg 
        essentially all night long till the next morning.

        The--what I did in the second phone call, I believe it 
        was with Greg, I said, Okay. Who are you talking to in 
        the Libyan government?

        He said, I've talked to--I've forgotten, the chief of 
        staff of various of the senior people.

        I said, Talk to the President, talk to the Prime 
        Minister, don't just stay with the chief of staff. Talk 
        to the senior people yourself and ask them for help. 
        Tell them they've got to get their people up there, 
        not--get their people up there to go over to the 
        compound to render assistance to get the--get the 
        attackers out of there, and I kept asking, Have you 
        heard from Chris? Have you heard from Chris?

        No, we can't find him. No, he's not--no, he's not 
        answering. That was the first. And I don't remember the 
        timeline anymore. It seemed like forever, but it 
        probably w[as]n't that long.\49\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \49\Testimony of Elizabeth Jones, Acting Ass't Sec'y, U.S. Dep't of 
State, Tr. at 39-40 (July 11, 2013) [hereinafter Jones Testimony] (on 
file with the Committee).

    Jones testified that she spoke with Hicks throughout the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
evening, almost every ten minutes:

        Q: Okay. As the night wore on, was the phone just 
        essentially left almost in permanent communication with 
        Tripoli?

        A: Yes.

        Q: I mean, do you have that capability that you have an 
        open line that just essentially stays open, or is 
        this--or calling every 5 or 10 minutes? I'm just 
        curious how that works.

        A: Yeah. No, that's a good question. I didn't have an 
        open line.

        We did two things. I stayed in my office with my front 
        office team and with my staff assistants and with--
        Agent 1 was there. We, at the same time, started a task 
        force in the Operations Center, so the Libya desk 
        officers were up there helping manage some of the more 
        routine issues, getting the evacuation going, working 
        with EX [logistics] on those kinds of issues and sort 
        of doing the--helping us with the nuts and bolts on 
        implementing the things that we were deciding that we 
        needed to do.

        Because DS kept the open--Diplomatic Secretary kept an 
        open line--actually, I don't know that it was an open 
        line. They had communication directly with the RSO. I 
        basically worked primarily with Greg Hicks on his cell 
        phone because that worked better in terms of Embassy 
        communications and I could reach him wherever he was--
        wherever he was in the compound when he was moving 
        around. So I communicated by my office manager dialing 
        him directly on his cell phone.

        So it was not an open line, but it was--I don't know 
        that we talked every 10 minutes, but it seemed like it 
        was every 10 minutes. It was close to that.\50\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \50\Id. at 79-80.

    After some of Jones' discussions with Hicks, an assistant 
from the Office of the Secretary drafted emails about Jones' 
conversations with Hicks. These emails were disseminated to 
senior officials within the State Department, including 
Sullivan, Nuland, and William J. Burns, the Deputy Secretary of 
State.\51\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \51\See, e.g., Email from U.S. Dep't of State to Victoria J. 
Nuland, Spokesperson, U.S. Dep't of State, et al. (Sept. 11, 2012, 5:32 
PM) (on file with the Committee, C05391036).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    At 4:49 p.m., just over an hour after the attacks began, an 
assistant in the Office of the Secretary wrote:

        Beth Jones just spoke with DCM Tripoli Greg Hicks, who 
        advised a Libyan militia (we now know this is the 17th 
        Feb brigade, as requested by Emb[assy] office) is 
        responding to the attack on the diplomatic mission in 
        Benghazi. The QRF [Quick Reaction Force] is in the 
        compound, engaging the attackers, taking fire, and 
        working its way through the compound to get to the 
        villa, where Ambassador Stevens is in safe haven for 
        extraction. The ARSO [Assistant Regional Security 
        Officer] is also there in the compound. Greg spoke with 
        Amb Stevens by phone 20 minutes before my call (which 
        was about ten minutes ago). Greg will talk to the Prime 
        Minister's Chief of Staff, and then speak with the 
        Foreign Minister . . . Embassy is sending medical 
        assistance to Benghazi to be on stand-by. More updates 
        to follow.\52\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \52\Email from U.S. Dep't of State to William J. Burns, Deputy 
Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State, et al. (Sept. 11, 2012, 4:49 PM) 
(on file with the Committee, C05391036).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    At 5:13 p.m. a new email was sent to the group. It stated:

        Just spoke again with Greg Hicks, who confirmed the 
        party includes Ambassador Stevens plus three, not plus 
        four. Hicks has been in contact twice with the Libyan 
        President's office and twice with the Libyan PM's 
        [Prime Minister's] office; their offices assured him 
        they are fully engaged and consider themselves personal 
        friends of Ambassador Stevens. Hicks has been 
        coordinating with the [CIA] who has learned from the 
        QRF about the status of the compound--currently they 
        are clearing the compound and working to access the 
        party. I also urged Libyan Ambassador to the U.S. 
        Aujali to engage on this immediately at the highest 
        level.\53\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \53\Email from U.S. Dep't of State to Jacob J. Sullivan, Deputy 
Chief of Staff and Dir. of Policy Planning, U.S. Dep't of State, et al. 
(Sept. 11, 2012, 5:13 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05391036).

    An email at 5:32 p.m., the first in the chain sent to 
Cheryl Mills, Chief of Staff and Counselor, State Department, 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
stated:

        The fighting has stopped, DCM Greg Hicks just confirmed 
        to me. He also confirmed one fatality: Sean Smith--a 
        TDY'er from The Hague--has died. His body has been 
        recovered. The five ARSO's are accounted for, but 
        they're still trying to find the Ambassador. The 
        Principal Officer's residence is still on fire with 
        toxic smoke. I have spoken to A/S [Assistant Secretary] 
        Gordon and Liz Dibble is contacting the Charge at The 
        Hague, [redacted text], to inform them.\54\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \54\Email from U.S. Dep't of State to Cheryl D. Mills, Chief of 
Staff & Counselor to the U.S. Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State, et 
al. (Sept. 11, 2012, 5:32 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05391036).

    A 5:55 p.m. email to the same chain sent by an assistant in 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
the Office of the Secretary stated:

        I just spoke again to Greg Hicks, who himself spoke 
        again to the offices of the Libyan President and Prime 
        Minister, asking them to provide firefighting equipment 
        to the Benghazi compound. He said the PD shop at 
        Embassy Tripoli has found postings on Facebook 
        indicating that the ``Tripoli Council'' plans to carry 
        out an attack on Embassy Tripoli. He said he was 
        promised increased police protection but it had not yet 
        materialized.

        Greg said his team reports that the extremist group 
        Ansar Al Sharia has taken credit for the attack in 
        Benghazi. He heard reports that the February 17 Brigade 
        is currently engaged in a running battle with Ansar Al 
        Sharia; he asked the offices of the President and PM to 
        pursue Ansar al Sharia.

        On working to locate Ambassador Stevens, the RSO team 
        and militia are still on compound, which is 50 acres--
        Greg expressed the hope that Ambassador Stevens is in 
        hiding somewhere on the compound. The PO's residence is 
        still on fire.\55\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \55\Email from U.S. Dep't of State to Victoria J. Nuland, 
Spokesperson, U.S. Dep't of State, et al. (Sept. 11, 2012, 5:55PM) (on 
file with the Committee, C05391036).

    These emails consistently used the term ``attack.'' None of 
these emails mentioned anything about a protest. None of these 
emails mentioned anything about a video.
    Hicks also spoke directly with the Secretary while the 
attacks were still ongoing. He testified:

        A: No. I really didn't get--you know, about 2:00 a.m. 
        [8:00 p.m. in Washington D.C.], the Secretary called--
        --

        Q: Okay.

        A: --along with--her senior staff was on the----

        Q: Okay. Do you recall who was on that call?

        A: It was Wendy Sherman, Cheryl Mills, Steve Mull, Beth 
        Jones, Liz--I am not sure whether Liz Dibble was on the 
        phone or not at that time. I know Beth Jones was. Jake 
        Sullivan.

        And so I briefed her on what was going on, talked about 
        the situation. And at 2:00 a.m., of course, Chris 
        [Stevens] is in the hospital, although the Libyan 
        Government will not confirm that he's in the hospital. 
        All they will tell us is he's in a safe place, or they 
        will imply that he's with us at the [Annex] facility, 
        which, of course, we have to feed back to them and say, 
        no, we don't know where he is. It is a constant 
        conversation, and I'm still talking to the same people.

        The Vice Minister of the Interior chimes in sometime 
        before midnight. And I'm pressing him to get their 
        firefighters to the building to put the fire out, 
        assuming that if they go to put the fire out, that they 
        will send some security people with the firefighters to 
        protect the firefighters. We tried everything that we 
        could.

        So we brief her on what's going on. She asks, How can 
        we help? And I said, Well, we could use some 
        reinforcements. And we have--we know we have wounded. 
        And----

        Q: What was the answer?

        A: The answer was that the FAST team in Rota was being 
        mobilized to come to Tripoli, and there would be a 
        medevac flight coming down to pick up wounded.

        And then we discussed also whether we were going to--
        they asked me if we were going to stay in the 
        residential compound. And I said, no, we needed to 
        consolidate our facilities here, because we basically 
        sent everybody we have to protect us to Tripoli to 
        rescue them.

        Q: To?

        A: To Benghazi. Sorry. Benghazi. Apologies. And they 
        said, good.

        Q: And how long does that call last?

        A: Ten minutes.\56\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \56\Hicks Testimony at 32-34.

    None of the information coming directly from the agents on 
the ground in Benghazi during the attacks mentioned anything 
about a video or a protest. These first-hand accounts made 
their way to the Office of the Secretary through multiple 
channels quickly: through the Diplomatic Security Command 
Center; through the State Department Operations Center; through 
emails recounting Jones' phone calls with Hicks; through 
Kennedy, who briefed the Secretary directly; and through Hicks 
himself during a phone call with the Secretary.

                       THE SECRETARY'S STATEMENT

    The principal public statement from the U.S. government the 
night of the Benghazi attacks, September 11, 2012, came from 
the Secretary of State and was issued at 10:08 p.m. It stated 
in full:

                  Statement on the Attack in Benghazi

        I condemn in the strongest terms the attack on our 
        mission in Benghazi today. As we work to secure our 
        personnel and facilities, we have confirmed that one of 
        our State Department officers was killed. We are 
        heartbroken by this terrible loss. Our thoughts and 
        prayers are with his family and those who have suffered 
        in this attack.

        This evening, I called Libyan President Magariaf to 
        coordinate additional support to protect Americans in 
        Libya. President Magariaf expressed his condemnation 
        and condolences and pledged his government's full 
        cooperation.

        Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a 
        response to inflammatory material posted on the 
        Internet. The United States deplores any intentional 
        effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. 
        Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the 
        very beginning of our nation. But let me be clear: 
        There is never any justification for violent acts of 
        this kind.

        In light of the events of today, the United States 
        government is working with partner countries around the 
        world to protect our personnel, our missions, and 
        American citizens worldwide.\57\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \57\Press Release, U.S. Dep't of State, Statement on the Attack in 
Benghazi (Sept. 11, 2012), http://www.state.gov/secretary/
20092013clinton/rm/2012/09/197628.htm [hereinafter September 11 
Statement].

    The decision for the Secretary to issue the statement 
appears to have been made earlier that evening during a 7:30 
p.m. secure video teleconference [SVTC], a meeting hosted by 
the White House, that included senior officials from the State 
Department, Intelligence Community, and Defense Department to 
discuss the events unfolding in Benghazi.
    Rough notes from the White House meeting describe ten 
specific action items. One of these action items stated:

        The Secretary will issue a statement tonight condemning 
        the attacks and stating an official American was 
        killed. . . . S may issue another statement to distance 
        the United States from the Pastor Jones video.\58\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \58\Email from Watch Officer, U.S. Dep't of State, to 
P_StaffAssistants & D(N)_StaffAssistants (Sept. 11, 2012, 9:46 PM) (on 
file with the Committee, C05562037).

    The Secretary did not, however, issue two statements that 
evening. She issued one. And that single statement condemned 
the attack, stated an American was killed, and distanced the 
United States from an internet video. In doing so, the 
statement--specifically the language ``[s]ome have sought to 
justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory 
material posted on the Internet''--appeared to connect, or at 
least conflate, the attacks in Benghazi with the video.\59\ 
This connection between the attacks and the video continued for 
over a week, leading the public to believe that a video-
inspired protest led to the attacks that killed Ambassador 
Chris Stevens and Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods, and Glen Doherty.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \59\September 11 Statement, supra note 57.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The 7:30 p.m. White House meeting was convened to discuss 
the Benghazi attacks and included the Secretary of State and 
other high level officials from the State Department, Defense 
Department, and White House. The meeting, however, contained a 
great deal of discussion regarding the video. Matt Olsen, 
Director, National Counterterrorism Center, was a participant 
in the meeting. He testified:

        Q: Was there any discussion of sort of the video and 
        Benghazi being linked on the call?

        A: I don't remember specifically, you know, how we 
        talked about it. I'm sure that we did, right, because 
        we were--the fact is that it came--the discussion of 
        taking the video down was part of our conversation in 
        this call that was really focused on what was going on 
        in Benghazi.\60\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \60\Testimony of Matthew Olsen, Dir., Nat'l Counterterrorism 
Center, Tr. at 17-18 (Feb. 16, 2016) [hereinafter Olsen Testimony] (on 
file with the Committee).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Olsen also said:

        And in my own mind, at the time, I recall linking the 
        two, you know, that this--we were thinking about what 
        had happened in Cairo, we were thinking, okay, now this 
        seems to be happening in Benghazi, and we're worried 
        about other, obviously, other diplomatic posts in the 
        Middle East and North Africa.

        On that particular issue, one thing that I recall in 
        thinking, again, sort of preparing for coming here, 
        sort of trying to recollect as much as possible, one of 
        the issues that Denis [McDonough] asked me--and I think 
        Nick Rasmussen, my deputy, was there as well--was to 
        see if we could work with--if we could contact Google 
        to talk with them about enforcing their terms of 
        service, which was the way that we often thought about 
        offensive or problematic content.\61\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \61\Id. at 18.

    Five of the ten action items from the rough notes of the 
7:30 p.m. meeting reference the video--including an item 
mentioning Leon E. Panetta, Secretary of Defense, and Martin E. 
Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reaching out to 
``Pastor Jones'' directly.\62\ For nearly two years the White 
House had been issuing public statements in the wake of actions 
committed by ``Pastor Jones,''\63\ although no connection at 
the time linked ``Pastor Jones'' or the video to the Benghazi 
attacks.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \62\Email from Watch Officer, U.S. Dep't of State, to 
P_StaffAssistants and D(N)_StaffAssistants (Sept. 11, 2012) (on file 
with the Committee, C05562037).
    \63\See, e.g., Krissah Thompson and Tara Bahrampour, Obama renews 
call for religious tolerance after Koran-burning canceled, Wash. Post, 
Sept. 10, 2012 (``Obama denied that his administration's forceful 
intervention--Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates made a personal appeal 
to the Gainesville pastor, the Rev. Terry Jones--had unnecessarily 
drawn attention to the pastor's plans.''); and Obama criticizes Quran 
burning, Afghan attacks, NBC News, April 2, 2011, www.nbcnews.com/id/
42396945/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/t/obama-criticizes-quran-
burning-afghan-attacks/#.V1oSrvkjrJaR (``At least 10 people have been 
killed and 83 injured in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, 
officials said on Saturday, on a second day of violent protests over 
the actions of extremist Christian preacher Terry Jones . . . `No 
religion tolerates the slaughter and beheading of innocent people, and 
there is no justification for such a dishonorable and deplorable act,' 
Obama said.'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Avril Haines, Deputy Counsel to the President for National 
Security Affairs, held a conference call after the 7:30 p.m. 
meeting. Rough notes from the call stated:

        There is likely to be a statement from S[ecretary 
        Clinton] this evening addressing the violence and 
        distancing the USG [United States government] from the 
        videos that are believed to have instigated it (at 
        least in part); while no one is sure of the cause, 
        exactly, there is reportedly a new Terry Jones video 
        threatening to burn Korans and a second film that 
        includes a number of insulting statement about 
        Mohamed.\64\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \64\Email from Attorney, U.S. Dep't of State, to Harold Koh, Legal 
Advisor, U.S. Dep't of State, et al. (Sept. 11, 2012, 10:40 PM) (on 
file with the Committee, C05528017).

    The fact the 7:30 p.m. White House meeting, which took 
place while Ambassador Stevens was considered missing and 
before Tyrone S. Woods and Glen A. Doherty were killed, was 
about the attacks in Benghazi but much of the conversation 
focused on the video is surprising given no direct link or 
solid evidence existed connecting the attacks in Benghazi and 
the video at the time the White House meeting took place. The 
State Department senior officials at the White House meeting 
had access to eyewitness accounts to the attack in real time. 
The Diplomatic Security Command Center was in direct contact 
with the Diplomatic Security Agents on the ground in Benghazi 
and sent out multiple updates about the situation, including a 
``Terrorism Event Notification.''\65\ The State Department 
Watch Center had also notified Sullivan and Mills that it was 
setting up a direct telephone line to Benghazi.\66\ There was 
no mention of the video from the agents on the ground. Hicks--
one of the last people to talk to Stevens before he died--said 
there was virtually no discussion about the video in Libya 
leading up to the attacks.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \65\Email from DS Command Center to DSCC_C DS Seniors, DSCC_E TIA/
PII, DSCC_E TIA/ITA, and DS-IP (Sept. 12, 2012, 5:05 AM) (on file with 
the Committee, C05389586).
    \66\Email from U.S. Dep't of State to Jacob J. Sullivan, Deputy 
Chief of Staff and Dir. of Policy Planning, U.S. Dep't of State, et al. 
(Sept. 11, 2012, 4:38 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05561866).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    That did not, however, deter participants at theWhite House 
meeting--led by Denis McDonough, Deputy National Security 
Advisor to the President--from extensively discussing the 
video.
    As a result of the White House meeting, the Secretary of 
State issued a statement about the attacks later that evening. 
Rather than relaying known facts from those experiencing the 
attacks firsthand, however, the Secretary's statement created a 
narrative tying the events in Benghazi to the video, despite a 
dearth of actual evidence. This was done by mentioning the 
video and the attacks in the same sentence: ``Some have sought 
to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory 
material posted on the Internet.''\67\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \67\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Sullivan testified about the decision to include that 
sentence in the statement:

        Q: Do you recall whose idea it was to include that 
        sentence?

        A: I believe that it was my idea to include that 
        sentence. It was either mine or Toria's [State 
        Department spokesperson] or a combination of the two of 
        us, but I thought it was important to include that 
        sentence.

        Q: And why is that?

        A: Well there are two aspects to this. One was we 
        didn't know the motivation of the actual attackers of 
        Benghazi, so I didn't want to say they did it because 
        of the video, and so I chose the words very carefully 
        to say that some have sought to justify it on that 
        basis.

        But I thought it was really important for us to be able 
        to express our views on the video and to say there is 
        never any justification for violent acts of this kind, 
        as well as to say we deplore efforts to denigrate the 
        religious beliefs of others because I was deeply 
        concerned that we could potentially face attacks on our 
        embassies elsewhere. And, unfortunately, that's exactly 
        what happened.\68\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \68\Testimony of Jacob J. Sullivan, Deputy Chief of Staff and Dir. 
of Policy Planning, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 220 (Jan. 12, 2016) 
[hereinafter Sullivan Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

    Sullivan did not say why it would not have been equally or 
even more important to denounce the video when it began 
circulating in the Middle East days earlier, or after the 
protests in Cairo where the link to the video was clear. 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sullivan testified:

        I thought very hard about exactly how to formulate 
        this. I didn't want to say the attackers did this 
        because of the video. That's why I chose to use the 
        phrase ``justify,'' because I just wanted to talk more 
        generally about people who might justify the attack on 
        the basis of the video. Who would those people be? They 
        would be the kind of people that would go try to gin up 
        protests elsewhere, whether in Benghazi again or in 
        Tripoli or anywhere else around the region.

        And my first concern in getting this out was to do 
        everything we could do to try to prevent further 
        violence from happening. And I really thought it was 
        important for the Secretary to get on the record on 
        this issue. And in the days that followed, I thought it 
        was important for her to continue getting on the record 
        on this issue, especially as we dealt with these 
        assaults on our embassies across the region.

        So I thought hard about this paragraph. I thought hard 
        about making sure we formulated it in a way that was 
        accurate to say that just some had sought to justify 
        it. Obviously, we have all seen a lot of public 
        reporting linking things as well. So this, to me, was 
        an important paragraph to include in this 
        statement.\69\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \69\Id. at 221.

    Sullivan apparently did not engage in nearly as much 
thought about the video when it first appeared online, or even 
when the U.S. Embassy was breached by protestors in Cairo 
earlier on September 11, 2012. Where there was a known 
connection to the video, Sullivan was silent. Where the video 
was not connected by even a scintilla of reliable evidence at 
the time, Sullivan thought it important enough to include.
    Dan Schwerin, Speechwriter, Department of State, helped 
draft the statement that went out that evening. Schwerin told 
the Committee the statement was intended to speak to a global 
audience. He testified:

        Q: You talked about speaking to a global audience. What 
        did you mean by that?

        A: I mean any time the Secretary of State speaks, the 
        world is listening. We had--it was a period of unrest 
        across the Middle East, North Africa, and beyond; 
        specifically, in the Muslim world, which was a source 
        of concern; and how to lower that temperature and speak 
        to that situation was an important issue.

        Q: Was that focused on the video?

        A: The video was the source of that unrest across the 
        world in that period. And so, you know, lowering the 
        temperature of that situation was one of our goals.\70\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \70\Testimony of Daniel B. Schwerin, Staff Assistant and 
Speechwriter, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 21 (Oct. 9, 2015) 
[hereinafter Schwerin Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

    While protests around the Middle East flared up in the 
following days, at the time of the Benghazi attacks the protest 
in Cairo represented the only instance of unrest.
    Megan Rooney, Speechwriter, Department of State, also 
worked on the statement and told the Committee that it was a 
``commonsense conclusion'' that the video somehow sparked what 
happened in Benghazi, because it had done so in Cairo. She 
testified:

        Q: Right. As you sit here today, do you recall anything 
        generally about the conversation specific to the video 
        that night?

        A: No. Only that we thought it belonged in the 
        statement.

        Q: Do you recall why you thought it belonged in the 
        statement?

                              *    *    *

        A: . . . I believed that it played a role in sparking 
        the events of that night. And that any sort of 
        conversation about what had happened, and what has to 
        happen now would have to be taken into account in some 
        way.

        Q: Okay, just so I understand, it was your view that 
        night that the video should be referred to in the 
        statement because in your mind, the video had played 
        some role in the attack in Benghazi?

        A: Yeah, in sparking them or triggering them or 
        motivating some of the people that night. Yeah, yes.

        Q: And so you were kind of going back to your point 
        about one of the goals for this speech was to explain 
        to the American people what had happened. For that 
        reason you wanted to refer to the video. Is that fair?

        A: Yeah. I would say that's fair.

        Q: And as best you can, could you just tell us what you 
        based that conclusion on, or that opinion that the 
        video somehow sparked what occurred in Benghazi?

        A: Well, at the time it seems like the commonsense 
        conclusion. You know, there was this incident happening 
        in the same--not far from Benghazi, just a few 
        countries to the--well, shoot, one country to the east. 
        God, I'm failing on the geography--a nearby country, 
        Cairo, Egypt, on the same day there was this protest 
        that seemed--that was similarly targeting an American 
        facility that similarly had our facility breached in 
        this alarming way. And that seemed to be very clearly 
        connected to this video since, again, I believe that 
        not long before that protest broke out, the video had 
        been broadcast on Egyptian news. So, you know, I was 
        learning about what was happening in Egypt, and oh, 
        look, the same day, something is happening at an 
        American facility not far from there. . . .\71\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \71\Testimony of Megan E. Rooney, Policy Advisor and Speechwriter, 
U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 48-51 (Oct. 9, 2015) [hereinafter Rooney 
Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

    The gist is: a statement connecting the video with the 
Benghazi attacks was included by a speechwriter because the 
``thought''--half a world away--was that ``commonsense'' 
dictated it. But that same commonsense would not dictate 
listening to and following the real time information being 
provided by eyewitnesses who survived the initial attack and 
were preparing for subsequent attacks.
    Benjamin J. Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor to the 
President for Strategic Communications, spoke with Sullivan 
about the statement before it was released. Rhodes testified 
the sentence ``Some have sought to justify this vicious 
behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the 
Internet'' was not about Benghazi but served to respond ``to 
the general events taking place in the region as a whole.''\72\ 
He also said:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \72\Testimony of Benjamin J. Rhodes, Deputy Nat'l Sec. Advisor for 
Strategic Commc'cs, Nat'l Sec. Council, Tr. at 50-51 (Feb. 2, 2016) 
[hereinafter Rhodes Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

        A: Again, our concern--one of our concerns was that we 
        saw efforts to utilize the video to incite protests, 
        including the type of violent protests that we saw in 
        Cairo. And so I recall that we wanted to have messaging 
        in the statement that sought to reduce tensions 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        associated with the video.

        Q: So was this sentence not meant to convey anything 
        regarding Benghazi and Libya?

        A: No, I don't believe so.

        Q: You don't think--this sentence was not about Libya 
        in any way, shape, or form?

        A: Again, I believe that it was intended to address the 
        broader context in the region.

        Q: So that's what has me wondering. Then was there 
        vicious behavior in other places that day?

        A: Yes. Certainly in Cairo.

        Q: But no--I mean, Pat Kennedy described Cairo as spray 
        paint and rocks. Obviously, Benghazi was much 
        different. So you're saying that vicious behavior 
        applies to Cairo but doesn't apply to Benghazi?

        A: Again, I think it applies generally to the fact that 
        we had indications that there were individuals who 
        might seek to use this video to justify violence?

        Q: I'm asking about the two terms: vicious behavior. 
        You said this sentence doesn't apply to Libya in a 
        general sense or Benghazi in a specific sense, but does 
        apply to other events in the region; namely, Cairo. Is 
        that accurate?

        A: Again, this is taking place in the context where we 
        have a protest that turned violent at our Embassy in 
        Cairo, and we have the attacks in Benghazi. The 
        situation is fluid. There are indications that we are 
        getting from the State Department that there are other 
        actors who are seeking to incite people related to this 
        video. And so one of the objectives in our messaging 
        was to have a statement that, again, sought to minimize 
        our association with this video.

        Q: And I understand you conveyed that is one of your 
        objectives, but I'm specifically, again, just for the 
        record, asking that sentence you said does not apply, 
        is not meant in any way to convey anything about Libya, 
        it's about Cairo and the rest of the region.

        A: Again, it's not intended to assign responsibility 
        for what happened in Benghazi. It's meant to describe 
        the context of what happened, what's happening in the 
        region.

        Q: You mentioned context a couple of times here. When I 
        look at context, I look at this document. The heading 
        is ``Statement on the Attack in Benghazi.'' Paragraph 
        one: I condemn in the strongest way the attack on our 
        mission in Benghazi. We are securing personnel and 
        facilities. One of our officers was killed in Benghazi. 
        Next paragraph: I have talked to the Libyan President. 
        So everything in this document is about Libya and 
        Benghazi except you're saying this sentence doesn't 
        apply to Libya and Benghazi.

        A: Again, as I look at this statement, my recollection 
        is one of the objectives was to convey that we were 
        doing everything we could to secure our diplomats in 
        facilities around the world. If you look, for example, 
        at the last sentence of the statement, it's intended to 
        be about that general principle that we will work with 
        partner countries around the world to protect our 
        personnel, our missions, and our American citizens.\73\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \73\Id. at 61-64.

    Moreover, at Rhodes' direction, the Secretary's statement 
was the only statement issued on behalf of the United States 
government that night.\74\ This put additional emphasis on its 
contents. Rhodes told the Committee:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \74\See Email from Benjamin Rhodes, Deputy Nat'l Sec. Advisor for 
Strategic Commc'cs, Nat'l Sec. Council, to Steven Warren, Spokesman, 
U.S. Dep't of Defense, et al. (Sept. 11, 2012, 9:53 PM) (on file with 
the Committee, C05562046) (``[L]et the State Department' statement be 
our [USG] comment for the night.'').

        A: You know, I recall telling my staff that that would 
        be our comment for the night. So the people who work 
        for me in the NSC press office, you know, everybody was 
        being asked to respond to inquiries, and I remember 
        determining that, you know, we would just have that one 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        statement be our comment for the night.

        Q: What was the thinking behind that, have that one 
        statement coming from the State Department be the sole 
        statement from the U.S. Government?

        A: Again, my recollection is that this was an attack 
        that had targeted our Ambassador, that it was 
        appropriate for the Secretary of State to be speaking 
        for the U.S. Government given that this had happened to 
        people who worked in her department, and again, that 
        made them the appropriate agency to issue a 
        comment.\75\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \75\Rhodes Testimony at 15.

    The Secretary's private comments, however, were different 
than her public comments. In a phone call with Libyan President 
Mohammed el-Magariaf at approximately 6:00 p.m. in Washington 
D.C., the Secretary did not mention the video nor did she 
connect the video with the attacks. A summary of the phone call 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
is below:

        Secretary Clinton: Mr. President.

        Libyan General National Congress President Magarif: 
        Your Excellency.

        S: I appreciate you taking my call at this late hour.

        M: No problem. It's my duty.

        S: As you know, our diplomatic mission in Benghazi was 
        attacked earlier this evening. We need your immediate 
        help, as one of our diplomats was killed and our 
        Ambassador, who you know, is missing. We have asked for 
        the Libyan government to provide additional security to 
        the compound immediately as there is a gun battle 
        ongoing, which I understand Ansar al Sharia is claiming 
        responsibility for. We also need to provide additional 
        capacity for firefighting as there are reports that the 
        principle officers residence has been bombed or set on 
        fire. We believe that it is important for your 
        government, as well as ours, to condemn this attack in 
        the strongest possible terms and promise these 
        criminals will be brought to justice. I also need you 
        to help us secure our mission in Tripoli. We have 
        serious threats on social media sites, like Facebook, 
        and it is important that your government take all 
        possible measures, in an urgent manner, to secure our 
        facilities. We need you to have people who you are 
        confident in, who will follow your direction, and that 
        your government trusts to secure our compounds.

        M: Please accept my condolences for the death of the 
        American at the compound and our sincere apologies for 
        what has happened. We promise to find the criminals and 
        bring them to justice. We will do our utmost to protect 
        American buildings and every American citizen in Libya. 
        We were just in the midst of an emergency meeting with 
        the Prime Minister and all of his deputies to address 
        this situation.

        S: If there is anything that you need or that I can do 
        please do not hesitate to call me at any time, day or 
        night.

        M: Thank you.

        S: Thank you.

        M: Good Night.\76\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \76\Email from U.S. Dep't of State to S_CallNotes (Sept. 11, 2012, 
11:34 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05561906).

    In her call with the Libyan President, the Secretary 
mentioned a number of key facts not included in her public 
statement: that Stevens was still missing at the time;\77\ that 
the extremist organization Ansar al Sharia had taken credit for 
the attacks;\78\ that the compound may have been bombed and set 
on fire;\79\ and that the administration intended to bring the 
perpetrators to justice.\80\ Significantly, she also did not 
mention the video she referred to in her public statement.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \77\Id. (``[O]ur Ambassador, who you know, is missing.'').
    \78\Id. (``I understand Ansar al Sharia is claiming 
responsibility[.]'').
    \79\Id. (``[T]he principle officers residence has been bombed or 
set on fire.'').
    \80\Id. (``[I]t is important for your government, as well as ours, 
to condemn this attack in the strongest possible terms and promise 
these criminals will be brought to justice.'').

    The Secretary also sent a private email to her daughter 
that evening about an hour after her public statement. The 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
email said:

        Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an Al 
        Queda-like [sic] group: The Ambassador, whom I 
        handpicked and a young communications officer on 
        temporary duty w a wife and two very young children. 
        Very hard day and I fear more of the same tomorrow.\81\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \81\Email from Hillary R. Clinton (``H''), Sec'y of State, U.S. 
Dep't of State, to Chelsea Clinton (``Diane Reynolds'') (Sept. 11, 
2012, 11:12 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05795467).

    In that email, the Secretary states two individuals had 
been killed ``by an Al Queda-like [sic] group.''\82\ This key 
fact had been omitted from the Secretary's public statement. In 
sharing this fact with her daughter, the Secretary acknowledged 
the attack--with a link to al-Qaeda--was in fact terrorism. In 
omitting this fact from her public statement, however, the 
Secretary sent a very different message to the public--a 
message that suggested a protest over the video.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \82\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    It was not until ten days later the Secretary told the 
American people the events in Benghazi were terrorist 
attacks.\83\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \83\Glenn Kessler, From video to terrorist attack: a definitive 
timeline of administration statements on the Libya attack, Wash. Post 
(Sept. 27, 2012), https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/
post/from-video-to-terrorist-attack-a-definitive-timeline-of-
administration-
statements-on-the-libya-attack/2012/09/26/86105782-0826-11e2-afff-
d6c7f20a83bf_blog.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                       THE DAY AFTER THE ATTACKS

    The day after the attacks was a day of mourning for the 
families of the four Americans who lost their lives--Ambassador 
J. Christopher Stevens, Sean P. Smith, Tyrone S. Woods, and 
Glen A. Doherty. It was also a time of mourning and reflection 
for America. However, the day after the attacks also saw a 
marked difference in information shared by the administration 
with the American people compared with information shared by 
the administration privately.

         Public Statements Conflated the Video and the Attacks

    The following day brought additional press inquiries and 
additional statements. After the Secretary's statement on the 
evening of September 11, two more Americans, Tyrone Woods and 
Glen Doherty, died in Benghazi as a result of the mortar 
attacks on the Annex.\84\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \84\Scott Neuman, U.S. Ambassador To Libya, Three Other Americans 
Killed in Benghazi Attack, NPR (Sept. 12, 2012, 7:45 AM), http://
www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/09/12/160992840/u-s-ambassador-to-
libya-three-other-americans-killed-in-benghazi-attack.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The administration needed to act quickly to ensure each 
agency was on the same page about how to message the attacks. 
At 8:14 a.m. the morning after the attacks, Bernadette Meehan, 
Deputy Spokesperson, National Security Council, sent an email 
to nearly two dozen people from the White House, Defense 
Department, State Department, and intelligence community 
stating:

        Both the President and Secretary Clinton released 
        statements this morning. Both are pasted below. Please 
        refer to those for any comments for the time being. To 
        ensure we are all in sync on messaging for the rest of 
        the day, Ben Rhodes will host a conference call for USG 
        communicators on this chain at 9:15 ET today. . . .\85\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \85\Email from Bernadette M. Meehan, Deputy Spokesperson, Nat'l 
Sec. Council, to Benjamin J. Rhodes, Deputy Nat'l Sec. Advisor for 
Strategic Commc'cs, Nat'l Sec. Council, et al. (Sept. 12, 2012, 8:14 
AM) (emphasis original) (on file with the Committee, SCB000897).

    Rhodes responded, stating simply ``If possible, let's do 
this at 9 to get a little ahead of potential statements by 
S[ecretary Clinton] and POTUS [the President] later this 
morning.\86\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \86\Email from Mr. Rhodes to Ms. Meehan, et al. (Sept. 12, 2012, 
8:31 AM) (on file with the Committee, SCB000897).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The message emanating from the White House the morning 
after the attacks--similar to the message delivered by the U.S. 
government the night before through the Secretary's statement--
was that the video and the attack on U.S. facilities in 
Benghazi would be mentioned in the same breath.\87\ This 
therefore served the purpose of continuing to connect the two 
issues. As a result, this created confusion among the American 
public and the press as to whether or not these two events were 
directly related.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \87\See Press Release, The White House Office of the Press 
Secretary, Statement by the President on the Attack in Benghazi (Sept. 
12, 2012), https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/09/12/
statement-president-attack-benghazi (``While the United States rejects 
efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others, we must all 
unequivocally oppose the kind of senseless violence that took the lives 
of these public servants.'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In the President's statement announcing the deaths of four 
Americans, he referred to ``efforts to denigrate the religious 
beliefs of others''--i.e. the video--and the ``senseless 
violence that took the lives of these public servants''--i.e. 
the Benghazi attacks--in the same sentence.\88\ The statement, 
titled ``Statement by the President on the Attack in Benghazi'' 
read:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \88\Press Release, The White House Office of the Press Secretary, 
Remarks by the President on the Deaths of U.S. Embassy Staff in Libya 
(Sept. 12, 2012), https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/09/
12/remarks-president-deaths-us-embassy-staff-libya.

        I strongly condemn the outrageous attack on our 
        diplomatic facility in Benghazi, which took the lives 
        of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. 
        Right now, the American people have the families of 
        those we lost in our thoughts and prayers. They 
        exemplified America's commitment to freedom, justice, 
        and partnership with nations and people around the 
        globe, and stand in stark contrast to those who 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        callously took their lives.

        I have directed my Administration to provide all 
        necessary resources to support the security of our 
        personnel in Libya, and to increase security at our 
        diplomatic posts around the globe. While the United 
        States rejects efforts to denigrate the religious 
        beliefs of others, we must all unequivocally oppose the 
        kind of senseless violence that took the lives of these 
        public servants.\89\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \89\Id.

    Later that morning the President addressed the Nation in a 
televised address from the Rose Garden about the attacks. The 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
President said in part:

        Yesterday, four of these extraordinary Americans were 
        killed in an attack on our diplomatic post in Benghazi. 
        Among those killed was our Ambassador, Chris Stevens, 
        as well as Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith. We are 
        still notifying the families of the others who were 
        killed. And today, the American people stand united in 
        holding the families of the four Americans in our 
        thoughts and in our prayers.

        The United States condemns in the strongest terms this 
        outrageous and shocking attack. We're working with the 
        government of Libya to secure our diplomats. I've also 
        directed my administration to increase our security at 
        diplomatic posts around the world. And make no mistake, 
        we will work with the Libyan government to bring to 
        justice the killers who attacked our people.

        Since our founding, the United States has been a nation 
        that respects all faiths. We reject all efforts to 
        denigrate the religious beliefs of others. But there is 
        absolutely no justification to this type of senseless 
        violence. None. The world must stand together to 
        unequivocally reject these brutal acts.\90\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \90\Press Release, The White House Office of the Press Secretary, 
Statement by the President on the Attack in Benghazi (Sept. 12, 2012), 
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/09/12/statement-
president-attack-benghazi.

    In the speech about the attacks, drafted by Rhodes and 
similar to the President's statement about the attacks earlier 
in the morning, the President refers to ``efforts to denigrate 
the religious beliefs of others''\91\--i.e. the video. These 
comments, in a public address, gave a strong and continually 
reinforced impression to the public: the video was somehow 
linked to the attacks.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \91\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Secretary also made remarks about the attacks on the 
morning of September 12, 2012. She said in part:

        We are working to determine the precise motivations and 
        methods of those who carried out this assault. Some 
        have sought to justify this vicious behavior, along 
        with the protest that took place at our Embassy in 
        Cairo yesterday, as a response to inflammatory material 
        posted on the internet. America's commitment to 
        religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of 
        our nation. But let me be clear--there is no 
        justification for this, none. Violence like this is no 
        way to honor religion or faith. And as long as there 
        are those who would take innocent life in the name of 
        God, the world will never know a true and lasting 
        peace.\92\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \92\Secretary Clinton Delivers Remarks on the Deaths of U.S. 
Personnel in Benghazi, Libya, DIPNOTE (Sept. 12, 2012), https://
blogs.state.gov/stories/2012/09/12/secretary-clinton-delivers-
remarks-deaths-us-personnel-benghazi-libya.

    Rooney, who helped draft the speech, told the Committee it 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
was geared towards the American people:

        We knew basically a few things that we wanted to 
        accomplish. If indeed some people had died, we knew 
        that we wanted to give her some material that she could 
        say about them, so she could say gracious things about 
        them, which we knew she would have wanted to do. We 
        knew that we would want to give her some sort of a--
        something that she could say that would summarize what 
        had happened, anticipating that, you know, if Americans 
        were waking up and turning on their TV in the morning 
        and their Secretary of State was standing there, that 
        they would--one of the questions on their mind would be 
        what, what happened. We wanted to be able to give her 
        some language that would at least begin to answer 
        that.\93\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \93\Rooney Testimony at 35-36.

    The fact the speech served in part to answer a question on 
the minds of many Americans--``what happened''--is interesting 
because Rooney never talked with anybody in the Bureau of Near 
Eastern Affairs (NEA) while she was drafting the speech. The 
individuals in NEA had been on the phone all night with State 
Department personnel in Benghazi receiving real-time updates 
about what was transpiring.\94\ Rooney testified:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \94\Jones Testimony at 79-80.

        Q: Did you speak to anybody in the NEA bureau about 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        what had happened in the attacks?

        A: I don't recall speaking to anyone in the NEA bureau.

        Q: Is that something you would have done? I mean, you 
        talked earlier about the process. If you're writing a 
        speech about China, you go to----

        A: Right.

        Q: --the China experts and ask them. I mean, did that 
        happen that night with regard to Libya?

        A: No, I don't think so. I don't recall any 
        conversation with anyone from--no.\95\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \95\Rooney Testimony at 39.

    Instead, the only actual description in the statement of 
what had occurred in Benghazi was a late addition to the speech 
from Sullivan. Schwerin, who also worked on the speech, 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
explained:

        A: He said, you know, we have to keep making edits. He 
        didn't tell me the substance of the conversations he 
        had had, just that there were more edits to make.

        Q: Okay. What kind of edits?

        A: I can't, you know, all these years later, tell you 
        which sentences we changed, but the only thing that I 
        remember is, I think the formulation ``heavily-armed 
        militants'' we added that morning in his office. But I 
        could not beyond that give you chapter and verse about 
        what we changed.\96\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \96\Schwerin Testimony at 36.

    The public statements by the President and Secretary of 
State did not call the events in Benghazi a terrorist attack.
    The President also conducted an interview with Steve Kroft 
of 60 Minutes that same morning. Kroft began the interview by 
asking the President about the attack and the President's 
reluctance to call the attack a terrorist attack in his earlier 
Rose Garden remarks. Again, the President did not call what had 
transpired in Benghazi a terrorist attack:

        Q: Mr. President, this morning you went out of your way 
        to avoid the use of the word ``terrorism'' in 
        connection with the Libya attack.

        A: Right.

        Q: Do you believe that this was a terrorist attack?

        A: Well, it's too early to know exactly how this came 
        about, what group was involved, but obviously it was an 
        attack on Americans. And we are going to be working 
        with the Libyan government to make sure that we bring 
        these folks to justice, one way or the other.

        Q: This has been described as a mob action, but there 
        are reports that they were very heavily armed with 
        grenades. That doesn't sound like your normal 
        demonstration.

        A: As I said, we're still investigating exactly what 
        happened. I don't want to jump the gun on this. But 
        you're right that this is not a situation that was 
        exactly the same as what happened in Egypt, and my 
        suspicion is, is that there are folks involved in this 
        who were looking to target Americans from the 
        start.\97\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \97\See Email from Bernadette M. Meehan, Spokesperson, Nat'l Sec. 
Council, to Victoria J. Nuland, Spokesperson, Dep't of State, & Patrick 
H. Ventrell, Spokesperson, U.S. Dep't of State (Sept. 13, 2012, 9:17 
AM) (on file with the Committee, C05527907) (Attaching transcript of 
the Interview of the President by Steve Kroft, 60 Minutes).

    Later in the interview, the President raised the issue of 
the video while referring to the Benghazi attacks, implying the 
film was an ``excuse for violence against Americans'' and 
conflating the two issues.\98\ The President said:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \98\Id.

        And I do have to say that, more broadly, we believe in 
        the First Amendment. It is one of the hallmarks of our 
        Constitution that I'm sworn to uphold. And so we are 
        always going to uphold the rights for individuals to 
        speak their mind. On the other hand, this film is not 
        representative of who we are and our values, and I 
        think it's important for us to communicate that. That's 
        never an excuse for violence against Americans[.]\99\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \99\Id.

               Private Statements Tell a Different Story

    While administration officials may have been in sync with 
their public messaging regarding the Benghazi attacks on 
September 12, the messages shared privately told a completely 
different story.
    Minutes before the President delivered his speech in the 
Rose Garden, Sullivan wrote in an email to Rhodes and others:

        There was not really much violence in Egypt. And we are 
        not saying that the violence in Libya erupted ``over 
        inflammatory videos.''\100\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \100\Email from Jacob J. Sullivan, Deputy Chief of Staff and Dir. 
of Policy Planning, U.S. Dep't of State, to Senior Dir. for Commc'cs 
and Public Diplomacy, Afghanistan and Pakistan, U.S. Dep't of State, et 
al. (Sept. 12, 2012, 10:30 AM) (on file with the Committee, C05578214).

    Sullivan's private acknowledgement differs notably from the 
consistent public remarks connecting the video and the attacks 
in both the President's and the Secretary's statements that 
day.
    On September 12, 2012, the President made separate phone 
calls to Libya President Mohamad Magariaf and Egyptian 
President Mohamed Morsi. In his phone call with the Egyptian 
President, the President ``said that he rejects efforts to 
denigrate Islam, but underscored there is never any 
justification for violence against innocents and acts that 
endanger American personnel and facilities.''\101\ This is a 
reference to the video, which was the cause of the protest 
against the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \101\Press Release, The White House Office of the Press Secretary, 
Readout of the President's Call with Egyptian President Morsi (Sept. 
13, 2012), https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/09/13/
readout-president-s-call-egyptian-president-morsi.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In his phone call with the Libyan President, the President 
said the two countries ``must work together to do whatever is 
necessary to identify the perpetrators of this attack and bring 
them to justice.''\102\ Notably, however, President Obama did 
not make a reference to the video.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \102\Press Release, The White House Office of the Press Secretary, 
Readout of the President's Call with Libyan President Magariaf (Sept. 
13, 2012), https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/09/13/
readout-president-s-call-libyan-president-magariaf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Secretary also had a phone call with an Egyptian 
leader, Prime Minister Hisham Kandil, on the afternoon of 
September 12. According to the call notes, the Secretary told 
the Prime Minister the following:

        We know that the attack in Libya had nothing to do with 
        the film. It was a planned attack--not a protest. . . . 
        Your [sic] not kidding. Based on the information we saw 
        today we believe the group that claimed responsibility 
        for this was affiliated with al-Qaeda.\103\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \103\Email from U.S. Dep't of State to S_CallNotes (Sept. 12, 2012, 
7:11 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05561911).

    Not only did the Secretary tell the Prime Minister ``the 
attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film,'' she 
strengthened the statement by prefacing it with ``we 
know.''\104\ Such a definitive declaration made privately to 
another world leader stands in stark contrast to her speech 
earlier in the day to the American people where she mentioned 
the attack--``this vicious behavior''--in the same breath as 
the video--``inflammatory material posted on the 
internet.''\105\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \104\Id.
    \105\Though some may claim that ``vicious behavior'' also occurred 
in Cairo, in the Secretary's September 12 speech she specifically 
separates the ``vicious behavior'' from what transpired in Cairo by 
saying ``this vicious behavior, along with the protest that took place 
at our Embassy in Cairo yesterday . . .'' Secretary Clinton Delivers 
Remarks on the Deaths of U.S. Personnel in Benghazi, Libya, DIPNOTE 
(Sept. 12, 2012), https://blogs.state.gov/stories/2012/09/12/
secretary-clinton-delivers-remarks-deaths-us-personnel-benghazi-libya.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Kennedy was also emphatic in privately conveying that no 
protests had occurred prior to the attack. In a separate, 
private briefing to congressional staff Kennedy was 
specifically asked whether this was ``an attack under the cover 
of a protest.''\106\ Kennedy, who oversaw the Bureau of 
Diplomatic Security and had ready access to real-time 
information from the Diplomatic Security agents on the ground 
in Benghazi, replied ``[n]o this was a direct breaching 
attack.''\107\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \106\Email from Legislative Management Officer for Near Eastern 
Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to H_Egypt, et al. (Sept. 12, 2012, 7:55 
PM) (on file with the Committee, C05580110).
    \107\Email from Legislative Management Officer, U.S. Dep't of 
State, to H_Egypt, et al. (Sept 12, 2012, 7:55 PM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05562234).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Kennedy's assertions also aligned with the intelligence 
product, the Executive Update, produced by the CIA analysts 
earlier that day and shared with senior administration 
officials. That piece stated ``the presence of armed assailants 
from the outset suggests this was an intentional assault and 
not the escalation of a peaceful protest.''\108\ This piece--
which was part of the President's Daily Brief and likely 
discussed with the President's Chief of Staff on September 13, 
2012--is discussed at length in Appendix H.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \108\Middle East and North Africa Situation Report, Sept. 12, 2012, 
0700 EDT (on file with CIA, REQUEST 17-0345 to REQUEST 0346).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Whether or not a protest occurred prior to the attack was a 
significant fact at the time because the absence of a protest 
would clearly distinguish what happened in Benghazi from what 
transpired in Cairo. If it therefore became clear no protests 
occurred in Benghazi over the video, then the administration 
would therefore no longer be able to connect the two events in 
statements about Benghazi.
    Privately, Kennedy did not hesitate to explain no protests 
had occurred prior to the attack.\109\ Publicly, however, it 
took the administration more than two weeks to do so.\110\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \109\See Email to H_Egypt, et al. (Sept 12, 2012, 7:55 PM) (on file 
with the Committee, C05562234) (answering question about whether the 
attack was under the cover of a protest, Kennedy responded ``[n]o this 
was a direct breaching attack.'').
    \110\Press Release, Office of the Dir. of Nat'l Intel., Statement 
by the Director of Public Affairs for ODNI, Shawn Turner, on the 
intelligence related to the terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in 
Benghazi, Libya (Sept. 28, 2012), https://www.dni.gov/index.php/
newsroom/press-releases/96-press-
releases-2012/731-statement-by-the-odni-s-director-of-public-affairs-
on-
intelligence-related-to-the-terrorist-attack-on-the-u-s-consulate-in-
benghazi.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                  SEPTEMBER 13 INTELLIGENCE ASSESSMENT

    On September 11 and September 12, public comments by 
administration officials had relied mainly on press reports and 
eyewitness accounts. On September 13 the Central Intelligence 
Agency [CIA] published its first intelligence assessment 
exclusively regarding the Benghazi attacks. This assessment, 
known as a WIRe [World Intelligence Review] was the key 
intelligence piece produced by CIA analysts immediately 
following the Benghazi attacks. It was titled ``Libya: 
Government Poorly Positioned To Address Attacks.''\111\ As both 
Michael J Morell, Deputy Director, Central Intelligence Agency, 
and the Director of the Office of Terrorism Analysis (OTA)--an 
office of [redacted text] analysts focused on terrorism 
issues--acknowledge, this was the first time the analysts had 
coordinated a piece about the Benghazi attacks among the entire 
intelligence community.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \111\Cent. Intel. Agency, Libya: Government Poorly Positioned to 
Address Attacks, World Intelligence Review, Sept. 13, 2012 [hereinafter 
September 13 WIRe] (on file with CIA, REQUEST 17-0067 to REQUEST 17-
0070).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The OTA Director described the purposes of this piece to 
the Committee:

        This is something that by this point we would have been 
        writing on a regular basis trying to sort out. . . . 
        [T]o have done a WIRe would've been really the first 
        time where we said we're going to stand back, we're 
        going to really make sure this was fully IC 
        coordinated. We're going to work through this and say 
        this is a more formal look. So I don't believe it was 
        tasked so much as it was time for us to really take a 
        full look at where we were.\112\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \112\Testimony of Dir. of the Office of Terrorism Analysis, Cent. 
Intel. Agency, Tr. at 105 (Nov. 13, 2015) (on file with the Committee).

    Additionally, this particular piece was also included as 
part of the President's Daily Brief [PDB].
    Morell explained:

        Q: So the PDB staff would have edited this particular 
        WIRe?

        A: Yes, because it was a PDB.

        Q: This particular WIRe was a PDB?

        A: Yes.\113\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \113\Testimony of Michael Morell, Deputy Dir., Cent. Intel. Agency, 
Tr. at 39-41 (Sept. 28, 2015) [hereinafter Morell Testimony] (on file 
with the Committee).

    As a PDB, this piece received wide distribution throughout 
the intelligence community. As Morell notes in his book, this 
piece ``would be published and shown to senior policy-makers 
and to Congress on the morning of September 13.''\114\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \114\Michael Morell, The Great War of Our Time: The CIA's Fight 
Against Terrorism--From al Qa'ida to ISIS 217 (2015).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    This September 13 piece was the pivotal piece coming from 
the intelligence community for several reasons. One, it was the 
first time the analysts had taken a step back to assess what 
had actually occurred in Benghazi; two, this piece was widely 
distributed across the U.S. government;\115\ and three, Morell 
viewed this piece as the ``assessment'' of the analysts when he 
edited the talking points for the House Permanent Select 
Committee on Intelligence two days later.\116\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \115\Id.
    \116\Morell Testimony at 135.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Despite the September 13 piece being heavily vetted, going 
through the PDB process, and being widely distributed, the 
piece was rife with errors as the analysts themselves would 
later acknowledge. There were improper footnotes, poor and 
confusing phrasing, and most importantly, headlines that were 
not supported by any text. The result was a very poorly written 
piece containing inaccurate information that was relied on by 
those analyzing, discussing, and messaging the Benghazi 
attacks.
    The focus of the September 13 piece was twofold: the 
ability of the Libyan government to respond to the attacks, and 
the fact extremists had participated in the attacks. A timeline 
of the attacks and the sequence of events leading up to the 
attacks were not discussed in the piece. Whether or not a 
protest occurred prior to the attacks was not a focal point of 
the piece, nor was it an issue the analysts found to be 
particularly germane. As the manager of the analysts who wrote 
the piece testified:

        A: We weren't particularly concerned, worried about, or 
        thinking about protests when we wrote this.

        Q: That was the next question I was going to ask you. 
        Yeah.

        A: I want to make that very, very clear. Because in CTC 
        [Counterterrorism Center] when something like this 
        happens, we look at who do we think did it and are they 
        about to do it again and is there anything we can do to 
        stop it.

        So we did not think the question of protests was 
        particularly germane to answering that question. In 
        fact, it was fully probably a week. And we had several 
        conversations among ourselves and even with more senior 
        people in the DI [Directorate of Analysis] about, why 
        in the hell would everybody care about protests?

        We just--we weren't tracking on it because it wasn't 
        germane to what we were trying to do, which it doesn't 
        really excuse our sloppy work, particularly in that 
        paragraph here. I mean the ticks are the ticks. They 
        are based on reporting. But our assessment was just 
        imprecisely written. We weren't careful enough about 
        it.\117\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \117\Testimony of [redacted text] Team Chief, Ofice of Terrorism 
Analysis, Cent. Intel. Agency, Tr. at 52-53 (Feb. 10, 2016) 
[hereinafter [redacted text] Team Chief Testimony] (on file with the 
Committee).

    The fact the piece was not focused on protests--nor did the 
analysts find the issue of protests germane--is ironic given 
this piece has received so much attention by Morell and others 
as supporting evidence that the analysts did in fact believe a 
protest had occurred.\118\ That is because this is the only 
intelligence assessment written by the CIA that can support the 
analytic line that a protest had occurred prior to the 
attacks.\119\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \118\Morell Testimony at 50.
    \119\The CIA notes that a September 15 WIRe ``includes reporting 
that `members of an AAS-affiliated group stated that they took 
advantage of a planned demonstration . . .''' However, citing a report 
is different than crafting an assessment. A report is just that, a 
report--citing information from somebody else. An assessment, however, 
is the collective thoughts of analysts after synthesizing multiple 
pieces of intelligence to reach an analytic conclusion.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Further, it was put in the intelligence piece by accident--
a mistake that was not caught during what was supposed to be a 
rigorous and airtight editing process.
    In his book, Morell says ``[t]he September 13 piece--the 
first piece to go beyond a simple factual update--said four 
things. First, that the assault on the [Benghazi Mission 
compound] had been a spontaneous event that evolved from a 
protest outside the [Benghazi Mission compound].''\120\ Except 
Morell is wrong. The piece did not say this at all. In fact, 
the exact language of the piece reads: ``We assess the attacks 
on Tuesday against the US Consulate in Benghazi began 
spontaneously following the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo 
and evolved into a direct assault against the Consulate and a 
separate US facility in the city.''\121\ In his book, Morell 
alters the plain language of this piece, ``began spontaneously 
following protests at the US Embassy in Cairo,'' with the 
wording in his book, ``a spontaneous event that evolved from a 
protest outside the [Benghazi Mission compound].''\122\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \120\Morell, supra note 114, at 218.
    \121\Id. at 218.
    \122\Id. (emphasis added).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On the first page of the September 13 piece, titled 
``Libya: Government Poorly Positioned To Address Attacks,'' 
there is a single mention of ``the early stages of the 
protest'' buried in one of the bullet points.\123\ The Director 
of the Office of Terrorism Analysis acknowledged the supporting 
evidence for this statement was incorrect. She testified:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \123\Cent. Intel. Agency, Libya: Government Poorly Positioned to 
Address Attacks, World Intelligence Review, Sept. 13, 2012 [hereinafter 
September 13 WIRe] (on file with CIA, REQUEST 17-0067 to REQUEST 17-
0070).

        Q: ``I'm sorry. In the early stages of the protest''--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        so a direct reference to a protest----

        A: Yes.

        Q: ``Benghazi's top Ministry of Interior official 
        personally ordered the withdrawal of Libyan Security 
        Forces protecting the consulate saying he believed the 
        action would avoid violence, according to the press 
        reporting.''

        A: Correct.

        Q: And we talked about that earlier.

        A: Yes.

        Q: Just really quickly, flip back to footnote 16, can 
        you read the date on footnote 16? What's the date of 
        that?

        A: That is 2012/09/04, so that would obviously be 
        wrong.\124\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \124\OTA Dir. Testimony at 128.

    The article cited to support the mention of a protest in 
this instance was titled ``Libyan Parliament Speaker, Interior 
Minister Discuss Country's Security'' and was from Doha Libya 
TV in Arabic from September 4, 2012.\125\ In other words, the 
analysts used an article from September 4, 2012--a full week 
before the lethal attacks--to support the premise that a 
protest had occurred just prior to the attack on September 11. 
A simple source check by the reader--or during any of the 
multiple levels of allegedly ``rigorous'' editing--would have 
caught the blatantly obvious error of relying on a news article 
from September 4 to support an event that occurred on September 
11.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \125\September 13 WIRe, supra note 123.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Yet it was not this mention of a protest in the piece that 
caught Morell's attention. Rather, it was a headline on the 
following page titled ``Extremists Capitalized on Benghazi 
Protests.'' This page was a text box, which the OTA Director 
described as:

        So a text box is material that we believe is related to 
        the storyline, to the analytic--to the arc of the story 
        but is something that we kind of separate out, because 
        sometimes it doesn't flow from the analytic argument 
        but it's information we think is important to include. 
        So think of it as an adjunct to the piece.\126\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \126\OTA Dir. Testimony at 109.

    While the title of this text box was ``Extremists 
Capitalized on Benghazi Protests,'' nothing in the actual text 
box supports that title.\127\ The summary paragraph in the text 
box, through which the rest of the text box would flow, read:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \127\September 13 WIRe, supra note 123, at 2.

        We assess the attacks on Tuesday against the US 
        Consulate in Benghazi began spontaneously following the 
        protests at the US Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a 
        direct assault against the Consulate and a separate US 
        facility in the city. Extremists with ties to al-Qa-ida 
        were involved in the attacks, according to signals 
        intelligence.\128\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \128\Id.

    There is no mention--or even hint--of any protest in 
Benghazi in that paragraph or in any other text in the text 
box. Rather, the only mention of a protest relates to what had 
transpired in Cairo.\129\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \129\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    After a discussion of this document during their interviews 
with the Committee, both Morell and the OTA Director 
acknowledged this fact. Morell testified:

        Q: I'm trying to tie it all back to the headline----

        A: Yep.

        Q: --``Extremists Capitalized on Benghazi Protests,'' 
        I'm having a hard time understanding how that headline 
        is supported by the evidence.

        A: Right.

        Q: So far, nothing in the actual text of the WIRe 
        supports that, and so now we're looking at each 
        footnote, footnote 29--source note 29, we've looked at 
        the New York Times article, the body of the article 
        doesn't support that, just the headline, and now we're 
        looking at source note 30, ``according to [redacted 
        text].'' You know, where in here does it support that 
        but for collateral, is my question to you.

        A: And so--look, I don't know the answer to your 
        question, right, why they wrote it the way they 
        did.\130\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \130\Morell Testimony at 49.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The OTA Director testified:

        Q: Okay. Let's look at the first bullet point. . . . 
        That's a lengthy sentence.

        A: Not good trade craft. We try and make them shorter.

        Q: Is there anything in that sentence or that bullet 
        point that denotes that there was a protest in Benghazi 
        that you can see?

        A: ``After hearing how protesters breached the''--so, 
        no, not in Benghazi.

        Q: Not in Benghazi, okay.

        Let's look at the next tick. . . .

        Is there anything in that tick that mentions a protest 
        in Benghazi?

        A: No.

        Q: All right. Let's look at the third tick. . . . Is 
        there anything in that tick that mentions a protest in 
        Benghazi?

        A: No.

        Q: And then I'm just going to read the last paragraph 
        here. . . .

        Is there anything in that paragraph that mentions the 
        protest in Benghazi?

        A: No.\131\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \131\OTA Dir. Testimony at 110-12.

    The OTA Director also told the Committee the text box in 
the September 13 intelligence piece was not supposed to be 
about whether or not protests had occurred in Benghazi prior to 
the attack.\132\ Instead, it was supposed to focus on the 
involvement of extremists in the attacks. That was the point 
the analysts were trying to drive--extremists, not protests. 
This was true of the headline of the text box, too. The key 
word in that headline, according to the OTA Director, was 
``extremists,'' not ``protests.'' She testified:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \132\Id. at 112-13.

        Q: So the headline for this text box, ``Extremists 
        Capitalized on Benghazi Protests,'' do you see any 
        supporting evidence in the five paragraphs I've just 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        read that support that headline?

        A: So the headline--and I admit that in retrospect, if 
        I could go back and change this headline, I would. 
        Because the headline, it was more meant to be about 
        the, we know extremists were involved and less about 
        whether or not there were protests.

        So if you look at this idea that the first, the topic 
        sentence that talks--so, sorry, the second sentence, 
        where the bullets are then following immediately after, 
        about extremists with the ties to Al Qaeda were 
        involved. We then go on in the first bullet to talk 
        about we know that there was, you know [redacted text]. 
        That bullet was to not only talk about AQIM but to also 
        talk a little bit about motivation.

        The second bullet that talks about, you know, again, 
        extremists, as we were calling at that point, Ansar al-
        Sharia in Benghazi claimed responsibility, and also 
        talked about the timing that this was spontaneous, 
        [redacted text]. So, again, this idea of preplanning, 
        timing, and those involved.

        And the third bullet was, I think, meant to illustrate 
        that this was a series that the extremists were 
        involved at various points that was an opportunistic 
        attack sequence, as we talk about. They took advantage 
        of opportunities to attack U.S. facilities at various 
        points throughout the night.

        So are those things directly supporting in the way we 
        would like the title of this? No. Was it meant--and as 
        I said, so if I could take back that title, I would.

        Q: Sure. ``Extremists'' is the key word in the title?

        A: Yes, not the protests.\133\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \133\Id. at 112-13.

    She later called the title of the text box the 
``unfortunate title,''\134\ and, as the head of the Office of 
Terrorism Analysis, ultimately took responsibility for it.\135\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \134\Id. at 135.
    \135\Id. at 112-113.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    While there may have been no text in the text box to 
support the title, as it turns out, the title was intended to 
be something different. According to the manager of the 
analysts who wrote the piece, the title of the text box was 
supposed to be ``Extremists Capitalized on Cairo 
Protests.''\136\ That small but vital difference--from Cairo to 
Benghazi--had major implications in how people in the 
administration were able to message the attacks, and was used 
as support in the days and weeks after this piece was published 
for the claim that protests had occurred prior to the Benghazi 
attacks.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \136\[Redacted text] Team Chief Testimony at 49, 136.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Even worse, this mistake was not caught until more than a 
week later, when the analysts were updating their assessment. 
The manager of the analysts who wrote the piece testified:

        Q: The title here: ``Extremists Capitalized on Benghazi 
        Protests.'' So we talked to [the OTA Director] about 
        this. She called it an unfortunate title?

        A: It was a--we made a mistake.

        Q: Okay. So when you say ``we made a mistake,'' I mean, 
        where--how would that have been----

        A: So, God, how do I begin?

                              *    *    *

        A: . . . So ``Extremists Capitalized on Benghazi 
        Protests.'' Benghazi was supposed to be Cairo. So----

        Q: Okay.

        A: But let me explain that. So--and, frankly, it's a 
        mistake that we didn't even notice until we published 
        the WIRe on the 24th, where I was talking to a senior 
        person as he was reviewing it, and he was looking back 
        and asking, I thought: Oh, my God, we were talking 
        about Cairo.\137\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \137\Id. at 48-49.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    She also testified:

        Q: So I guess this is why I'm a little confused is you 
        say in the title Benghazi should have been Cairo?

        A: The title probably should have read something like 
        extremists motivated to attack in Benghazi because of 
        protests in Cairo.\138\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \138\Id. at 54.

    In the end, Morell conceded the obvious--this piece could 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
have been written better. He testified:

        Right. And if you want to get a bottom line from me, 
        from me, I don't think this was as well done as it 
        could have been for a lot of reasons. I have reasons 
        beyond yours as to why I don't think this is as well 
        done as it could be, and you're pointing out some 
        additional ones. So I don't think it is as well done as 
        it could have been.\139\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \139\Morell Testimony at 56.

    In addition to this piece being poorly written--
conveniently, in a way relied on by senior administration 
officials with respect to a key point--it also contained 
sourcing inaccuracies. One of these was described above. The 
lack of attention paid to sourcing has implications on future 
pieces shared with the President and other senior executive 
branch officials.\140\ From papers in high school, theses in 
college, law review articles to scientific research, assertions 
made are expected to be properly documented with sources to 
support them. Yet when it comes to CIA analysts and pieces they 
write for the President, for some reason these footnotes do not 
receive the scrutiny they deserve. Morell explains:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \140\Id.

        A: So context number two, right, is that analysts don't 
        spend a lot of time making sure that these footnotes 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        match. Okay. They just don't. They just don't.

        Q: Is that a problem?

        A: It certainly is when you have a situation like this.

        Q: I'm a lawyer. I mean, if you're writing a Law Review 
        article, those things are going to be footnoted to 
        death.

        A: Is it a problem? Yes. Is it a problem? Yes. So those 
        are the few pieces of context, right, is they believed 
        is what they believed, right? They had a set of--they 
        believed they had a set of information, a set of data 
        points that took them there. Third, I think you've got 
        to be a little bit careful going through this sentence 
        by sentence and source by source, because analysts 
        aren't as careful as they need to be.

        Q: Why aren't they as careful as they need to be? If 
        you're producing a piece for the [President], shouldn't 
        every sentence have a valid source note?

        A: Yes, absolutely. You're absolutely right. I couldn't 
        agree with you more.\141\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \141\Id. at 52-53.

    The OTA Director also acknowledged there is not enough 
emphasis on making sure the footnotes, known inside the CIA as 
source attributions, are accurate--especially for pieces that 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
become PDBs. She testified:

        A: The editing process would have differed for a PDB in 
        that it would have also gone through an additional 
        layer of review or several additional layers of review. 
        So a WIRe ceases, the review ceases pretty much after 
        the office director, as I said, except for some 
        technical edits.

        A PDB, our process is more--there are additional levels 
        that include a review within the organization we call 
        PASS. There's also then the DA [Directorate of 
        Analysis] front office would have reviewed a PDB, and 
        then it would also have gone to ODNI [Office of the 
        Director of National Intelligence].

                              *    *    *

        Q: Okay. So there are more senior analysts that would 
        review a PDB?

        A: Yes.

        Q: Does it undergo a certain extra level of rigor for 
        attributing sources and making sure everything lines up 
        properly?

        A: Attributing sources, not necessarily.\142\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \142\OTA Dir. Testimony at 106-08.

    Despite these myriad errors--the inaccurate title, the 
faulty sourcing, the lack of evidence in the text to support a 
headline--Morell and others have used this piece, and the title 
of the text box specifically, as the ``assessment'' of the 
analysts to buttress their statements that protests in Benghazi 
had occurred prior to the attacks.\143\ In fact, the title 
``Extremists Capitalized on Benghazi Protests'' alone does 
count as an ``assessment'' by the analysts. As the manager of 
the analysts testified:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \143\See e.g. Morell Testimony at 50.

        A: And our assessment--again, it's embarrassing, it's 
        poorly done--was that they had--really the title as it 
        stood was what our assessment was, but we didn't 
        explain it well--that they capitalized on these 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        protests in Benghazi.

        Q: Okay. So your title is what the assessment was, but 
        that's not supported--and this is my analysis--not 
        supported, Benghazi protests, by anything underneath--
        --

        A: That's true.

        Q: --in the ticks. Okay. So is that actually an 
        assessment, extremists capitalized on Benghazi 
        protests, or is the assessment sort of the body under 
        here, the paragraph, the three ticks, and then the 
        final paragraph?

        A: Well, it's all assessment. It's just sloppily done.

        Q: Okay. So extremists capitalized on Benghazi 
        protests, even though there's no supporting evidence 
        for that statement in this box----

        A: Yeah. Like I said, we weren't thinking about the 
        protests or we would have been, frankly, far more 
        careful about how we couched them.\144\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \144\[Redacted text] Team Chief Testimony at 55.

    In other words, the title of the text box itself was an 
assessment by the analysts. That title was inaccurate. That 
title was an accident and was supposed to be something else 
entirely, but nobody caught it. The analysts were not even 
focused on the issue of protests. Yet it was that title the 
administration could point to--and ultimately relied upon--to 
say the analysts had assessed that protests had occurred prior 
to the Benghazi attacks. That title is the only analytic piece 
fully vetted by the intelligence community prior to Morell's 
editing of the talking points and the appearance on the Sunday 
talk shows by Susan E. Rice, U.S. Permanent Representative to 
the United Nations, where she said protests had occurred in 
Benghazi.
    Nevertheless, despite the incorrect title and numerous 
other faults with the September 13 piece, there is still no 
assessment by the analysts that tied what transpired in 
Benghazi to the internet video. Even among the legion of 
mistakes made, the piece did not authoritatively connect 
Benghazi with protests or an internet video.

                        THE CONFLATION CONTINUES

    While the inaccurate and poorly written CIA analysis on 
September 13 gave an opening for administration officials to 
claim protests had occurred prior to the Benghazi attack, the 
public connection and conflation by administration officials 
between Benghazi and the video continued. This occurred despite 
any assessment by the CIA analysts of the video playing a role 
in the Benghazi attacks.
    During her remarks at the opening plenary of the U.S.-
Morocco strategic dialogue on September 13, 2012, the Secretary 
of State said there is ``no justification, none at all, for 
responding to this video with violence. We condemn the violence 
that has resulted in the strongest terms.''\145\ These comments 
were similar to prior public comments she had made regarding 
the video.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \145\Hillary R. Clinton, Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State, 
Remarks at the Opening Plenary of the U.S.-Morocco Strategic Dialogue 
(Sept.13, 2012), http://www.state.gov/secretary/20092013clinton/rm/
2012/09/197711.htm.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    A draft of the Secretary's comments, however, shows an 
attempt to draw a stronger link between Benghazi and the 
video--something unsupportable by the intelligence at the time, 
and not part of the CIA's assessment--than she stated publicly. 
A draft of the Secretary's speech states: ``But as I said 
yesterday, there is no justification--none--for responding to 
an Internet video with murder. We condemn the violence that has 
resulted in the strongest terms.''\146\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \146\Email from Jacob J. Sullivan, Deputy Chief of Staff and Dir. 
of Policy Planning, U.S. Dep't of State, to Daniel B. Schwerin, 
Speechwriter, U.S. Dep't of State, et al. (Sept. 13, 2012, 9:22 AM) (on 
file with the Committee, SCB00100122).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    This subtle change from the draft to her speech--from 
``murder'' to ``violence''--is important. While some violence 
had occurred at other United States diplomatic facilities 
across the Arab World such as Cairo, murder had only occurred 
at one: Benghazi.\147\ By changing that one word, from 
``murder'' to ``violence,'' the Secretary did not draw an 
irrebuttable, direct link between the video and Benghazi--a 
link she had told the Egyptian Prime Minister she knew did not 
exist\148\--but instead continued to indirectly connect and 
conflate the two events to the American public, thus allowing 
her to claim she did not make a direct public connection 
between the video and the Benghazi attacks.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \147\Benghazi was the only U.S. facility during this time period 
where terrorists killed an American government official.
    \148\See Email from U.S. Dep't of State to S_CallNotes (Sept. 12, 
2012, 7:11 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05561911) (attaching notes 
from phone call with Egyptian Prime Minister).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    That same day, Thomas R. Nides, Deputy Secretary of State 
for Management and Resources, had a meeting with the new 
Egyptian Ambassador to the U.S. According to a summary of that 
meeting, ``Nides said he understood the difference between the 
targeted attack in Libya and the way the protest escalated in 
Egypt.''\149\ While this message was shared privately by the 
Deputy Secretary of State to the Egyptian Ambassador two days 
after the attacks, it was not until two weeks later that the 
administration finally shared this message publicly with the 
American people.\150\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \149\Email from Operations Center, U.S. Dep't of State to Prem G. 
Kumar, Dir. for Israeli and Palestinian Affairs, White House (Sept. 13, 
2012, 12:29 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05562242).
    \150\Press Release, Office of the Dir. of National Intel., 
Statement by the Director of Public Affairs for ODNI, Shawn Turner, on 
the intelligence related to the terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate 
in Benghazi, Libya (Sept. 28, 2012), https://www.dni.gov/index.php/
newsroom/press-releases/96-press-
releases-2012/731-statement-by-the-odni-s-director-of-public-affairs-
on-
intelligence-related-to-the-terrorist-attack-on-the-u-s-consulate-in-
benghazi.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    At a press briefing later in the day on September 13, 
Nuland openly talked about the video while discussing the 
Benghazi attacks.\151\ At the briefing, she was asked whether 
any of the information she provided during the background 
briefing the day before had changed; said she did not have 
anything significantly different than what she had said 
privately on background.\152\ Yet when asked about the Benghazi 
attack, she answered the question, then pivoted to talking 
about the video:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \151\Daily Press Briefing by Spokesperson Victoria Nuland, Bureau 
of Public Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State (Sept. 13, 2012), http://
www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2012/09/197729.htm.
    \152\Id.

        Q: Toria, can you tell us whether there's been any 
        progress towards determining whether the Benghazi 
        attack was purely spontaneous or was premeditated by 
        militants, and also whether there's been any further 
        determination about the extent to which the Cairo, 
        Benghazi, and now Yemen attacks were related in some 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        way other than just theme?

        A: Well, as we said yesterday when we were on 
        background, we are very cautious about drawing any 
        conclusions with regard to who the perpetrators were, 
        what their motivations were, whether it was 
        premeditated, whether they had any external contacts, 
        whether there was any link, until we have a chance to 
        investigate along with the Libyans. So I know that's 
        going to be frustrating for you, but we really want to 
        make sure that we do this right and we don't jump to 
        conclusions.

        That said, obviously, there are plenty of people around 
        the region citing this disgusting video as something 
        that has been motivating. As the Secretary said this 
        morning, while we as Americans, of course, respect free 
        speech, respect free expression, there is never an 
        excuse for it to become violent.\153\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \153\Id.

    While the question addresses Cairo, Benghazi, and Yemen, 
Nuland does not differentiate among the three events and 
instead notes ``there are plenty of people around the region 
citing this disgusting video as something that has been 
motivating.''\154\ Nuland's failure to separate what transpired 
in Benghazi from what transpired in Cairo on the same day and 
Yemen one day later resulted in an administration official 
connecting again, publicly, Benghazi with the other two 
events--and thus Benghazi with the video.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \154\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Two days after the attacks ended, September 14, Jay Carney, 
Press Secretary, White House, held a press briefing at the 
White House. Reporters pressed on whether the administration 
believed the events in Benghazi were a reaction to the video:

        A: Jake, let's be clear, these protests were in 
        reaction to a video that had spread to the region----

        Q: At Benghazi? What happened at Benghazi----

        A: We certainly don't know. We don't know otherwise. We 
        have no information to suggest that it was a preplanned 
        attack. The unrest we've seen around the region has 
        been in reaction to a video that Muslims, many Muslims 
        find offensive. And while the violence is reprehensible 
        and unjustified, it is not a reaction to the 9/11 
        anniversary that we know of, or to U.S. policy.

        Q: But the group around the Benghazi post was well 
        armed. It was a well-coordinated attack. Do you think 
        it was a spontaneous protest against a movie?

        A: Look, this is obviously under investigation, and I 
        don't have----

        Q: But your operating assumption is that that was in 
        response to the video, in Benghazi? I just want to 
        clear that up. That's the framework? That's the 
        operating assumption?

        A: Look, it's not an assumption----

        Q: Because there are administration officials who 
        don't--who dispute that, who say that it looks like 
        this was something other than a protest.

        A: I think there has been news reports on this, Jake, 
        even in the press, which some of it has been 
        speculative. What I'm telling you is this is under 
        investigation. The unrest around the region has been in 
        response to this video. We do not, at this moment, have 
        information to suggest or to tell you that would 
        indicate that any of this unrest was preplanned.\155\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \155\Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney, Office of the 
Press Secretary, The White House (Sept. 14, 2012), https://
www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/09/14/press-briefing-press-
secretary-jay-carney-9142012.

    In his response to a question about what happened at 
Benghazi, Carney switches gears to talking about the general 
unrest in the region as a whole--which was a result of the 
video. Carney does not distinguish the events in Benghazi from 
the events around the rest of the region thus connecting and 
conflating the two issues and again giving the impression that 
what happened in Benghazi happened as a result of the video. 
Carney is also asked twice whether or not a protest had 
occurred in Benghazi. Similar to his comments about the video, 
Carney talks about unrest in the region as a whole, conflating 
protests and Benghazi, and failing to distinguish Benghazi from 
what had transpired elsewhere in the region.
    Despite these public comments by senior administration 
officials, those on the ground in Libya knew otherwise. That 
same morning a public information officer from the Embassy in 
Tripoli sent an email to colleagues in Tripoli and at the State 
Department headquarters in Washington D.C. regarding 
``messaging on the attacks in Libya.''\156\ The email said:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \156\Email from Public Affairs Officer, U.S. Embassy Tripoli, to 
Spokesperson, U.S. Dep't of State, et al. (Sept 14, 2012, 6:43 AM) (on 
file with the Committee, C05396788).

        Colleagues, I . . . want to share with all of you, our 
        view at Embassy Tripoli that we must be cautious in our 
        local messaging with regard to the inflammatory film 
        trailer, adapting it to Libyan conditions. Our 
        monitoring of the Libyan media and conversations with 
        Libyans suggests that the film is not as explosive of 
        an issue here as it appears to be in other countries in 
        the region. The overwhelming majority of the FB 
        [Facebook] comments and tweets we're [sic] received 
        from Libyans since the Ambassador's death have 
        expressed deep sympathy, sorrow, and regret. They have 
        expressed anger at the attackers, and emphasized that 
        this attack does not represent Libyans or Islam. 
        Relatively few have even mentioned the inflammatory 
        video. So if we post messaging about the video 
        specifically, we may draw unwanted attention to it. And 
        it is becoming increasingly clear that the series of 
        events in Benghazi was much more terrorist attack than 
        a protest which escalated into violence. It is our 
        opinion that in our messaging, we want to distinguish, 
        not conflate, the events in other countries with this 
        well-planned attack by militant extremists. I have 
        discussed this with Charge Hicks and shares PAS's 
        view.\157\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \157\Id.

    The purpose of this email was to discuss messaging to the 
Libyan people--similar to the part of the Secretary's September 
11 statement where her aides noted she wanted to speak to the 
region to ``lower the temperature.''\158\ What is significant 
about this email, however, is that in discussing messaging to 
the Libyans, the video is not emphasized at all--in fact the 
messaging on the ground in Libya sought to distinguish what 
happened from other countries.\159\ This again contrasts with 
the statements of senior administration officials, speaking to 
the American people, who consistently connect the video and 
Benghazi.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \158\Schwerin Testimony at 17.
    \159\Email from Public Affairs Officer, U.S. Embassy Tripoli, to 
Spokesperson, U.S. Dep't of State, et al. (Sept 14, 2012, 6:43 AM) (on 
file with the Committee, C05396788).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                           THE TALKING POINTS

    The talking points provided by the CIA to the House 
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence [HPSCI] on September 
15, 2012 were flawed. The individual who made the most 
substantial changes to those talking points was Michael 
Morell.\160\ While much has been written about these talking 
points and the flawed process undertaken to create them, this 
section focuses on what specific information Morell had at his 
disposal when he made the changes to the talking points, how 
this information affected his editing of the talking points, 
and subsequent portrayal of the talking points by others.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \160\White House e-mails on 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, 
Washington Post, http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/politics/white-
house-e-mails-on-2012-attacks-in-benghazi-libya/157.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                        Information from Tripoli

    While the September 13 WIRe represented an ``assessment'' 
that CIA analysts believed a protest had occurred prior to the 
Benghazi attack, CIA case officers and security personnel in 
Libya knew that was not the case. For the first two days after 
the attacks, the Chief of Station in Tripoli had been 
debriefing eyewitnesses to find out what happened and worked 
with his CIA counterparts--who had been in Benghazi--to contact 
their sources and collect as much information as possible about 
the attacks.\161\ The Chief of Station knew no protests or 
demonstrations occurred prior to the attack. None of the 
eyewitnesses he spoke with mentioned anything about 
protests.\162\ The Chief of Station testified he first learned 
that Washington D.C. created a narrative that protests had 
occurred around September 13 or 14:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \161\Testimony of Tripoli Chief of Station, Cent. Intel. Agency, 
Tr. at 129-31, 189 (July, 16, 2015) [hereinafter Chief of Station 
Testimony] (on file with the Committee).
    \162\Id. at 122-123.

        Q: I guess the first question would be, when did you 
        first become aware that there was a belief back in 
        Washington that the Benghazi attack was carried out 
        without a significant degree of preplanning, and that 
        the attack had somehow evolved from a demonstration at 
        the consulate, or perhaps used a demonstration as 
        cover? About three things there, but when did you first 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        become aware of those misconceptions?

        A: I want to say it was when--probably the 13th or 14th 
        we were asked to coordinate on that first intelligence 
        report that came out.

        Q: Sure.

        A: We provided our edits or our contributions to that. 
        They weren't incorporated or included.\163\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \163\Id. at 178.

    This was just the first time--in what would become a 
pattern--of analysts and others at CIA headquarters relying on 
accounts from the press and other sources over that of 
America's highest ranking intelligence officer in Libya.\164\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \164\The CIA told the Committee this part of the report ``suggests 
the intelligence community had no information on which to base our 
initial assessment that a protest preceded the attacks on the State 
compound. To the contrary, a significant body of information available 
immediately following the attacks indicated that there was a protest.'' 
This ``significant body of information,'' however, was almost 
exclusively press reporting, and with one exception, this information 
was not cited in either the September 13 or September 15 WIRe pieces.

On September 16, 2012, at the direction of Michael Morell, the CIA 
analysts finally tackled the issue of protests head-on. They wrote: 
``We have contradictory reporting about whether nonviolent 
demonstrations occurred prior to the attack on the US Consulate. The 
Station's assessment that there were no peaceful protests on the day of 
the attack is in contrast to other reports that peaceful protests 
preceded the violent assault.'' As supporting evidence for this 
paragraph the analysts used only public news articles from the 
Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and National Public Radio--all of 
which were at least three days old--in addition to articles by Al 
Jazirah and the Guardian of London. They did not cite any intelligence 
reports, instead relying on the Internet.
    The earliest evidence the Committee has seen where the 
Chief of Station told CIA headquarters a protest did not occur 
in Benghazi came early in the morning on Friday September 14, 
2012.\165\ A Worldwide Unrest Update sent to Morell's 
assistants and chief of staff said:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \165\Email from [EA to DDCIA] to DIR-EAs, (Sept. 14, 2012, 8:27 AM) 
(on file with the CIA, REQUEST 1-001673 to 1-001674).

        Tripoli: COS [Chief of Station] passed the following 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        update being formulated by NE [Near East] now.

        1. LFighters were trained, not an undisciplined 
        militia. State compound was an assult/probe [sic] vice 
        flash mob. This is based on the observations of CIA 
        officers who were in the fight assessing the fighting 
        method of the attackers.

        2. LMultiple militias and fluid political dynamics in 
        Benghazi. Central government not able to project 
        influence/power.

        3. LMortar attack was precise on base location. Per 
        JSOC [Joint Special Operations Command] operation on 
        the gorund [sic] one short, one long, two direct hits. 
        Their assessment this was a well-trained group--not 
        militia rabble. JSOC officer is training the Libyan 
        Special Forces and noted that they are not as capable 
        of precision mortar fire as was witness [sic] on 12 
        September.\166\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \166\Id.

    Morell explained the purpose of these Worldwide Unrest 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Updates:

        When the unrest began across the Muslim world as a 
        result of the video, there was unrest, there were 
        protests, the administration was deeply concerned about 
        the prospect--possibility prospect of violence against 
        U.S. facilities and U.S. persons. We were having daily 
        deputies meetings to discuss the safety of Americans 
        and the safety of U.S. facilities overseas, two a day 
        deputies meetings, one in the morning and one at night.

        One of the things the director and I did--and I don't 
        know which one of us in particular did--one of us asked 
        [redacted text] where there was unrest as a result of 
        the video to do a daily update, right? This is the 
        daily update from Tripoli for that day in response to 
        that request.\167\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \167\Morell Testimony at 111.

    In other words, the daily updates were done for Morell, 
sent to his Executive Assistants, and written for his 
consumption. Despite this, Morell assumed the analysts received 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
these updates as well. He testified:

        Q: Did this actually go to the analysts?

        A: I assume so. I assume so.

        Q: Okay. Why would you assume it went to the analyst if 
        it was created for you?

        A: Because I believe all the updates--the updates were 
        shared. I mean, that's something we can check, okay, 
        something we can check.

        Q: So you believe that this worldwide unrest update was 
        shared with you?

        A: Absolutely. And something you can ask [the OTA 
        Director].\168\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \168\Id. at 114-15.

    The Committee asked the OTA Director, if she received this 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
document. She was not aware they did. She testified:

        At the time, I was not aware. I have since become 
        aware. I believe this was part of the daily email that 
        was being done at the behest of DD/CIA.\169\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \169\OTA Dir. Testimony at 130.

    The manager of the analysts who conducted the analysis also 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
does not remember seeing this email. She testified:

        Q: Is this something that would have made it to your 
        desk or your analysts' desks?

        A: Not this email. . . .

        Q: Okay. Under Tripoli it says ``COS [Chief of Station] 
        passed the following update being formulated by NE 
        now.'' And then there are seven, I guess, individual 
        updates. Those seven updates in this format, is that 
        something that would have been passed to your team?

        A: No, I've never seen this.

        Q: Okay. I'm just trying to understand----

        A: Well, let me say, I don't remember seeing it. And I 
        don't know that my team would have passed it. I do know 
        [Chief of Station] was unhappy with our call on 
        protests because----\170\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \170\[Redacted text] Team Chief Testimony at 61-62.

    When asked about this specific Worldwide Unrest Update from 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
the Chief of Station, Morell responded:

        A: So, look, the point is--the point is--the point is 
        there is a flood of information coming in, right, and 
        it's not my job as the deputy director of CIA to assess 
        all this stuff. Right?

        Q: Right.

        A: It's the job of the analyst. So I'm looking at it 
        from the perspective of, geez, is there anything here 
        that's going to lead me to raise questions with the 
        analyst?

        Q: Okay. And was there anything in this particular 
        email, the worldwide unrest update that caused you to 
        raise questions with the analyst?

        A: So this is not the--this is not from the 14th. So, 
        no.\171\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \171\Morell Testimony at 117-18.

    As noted earlier, the email was sent at 8:27 a.m. on 
September 14, 2012. It is unclear why Morell did not 
acknowledge this fact.
    That afternoon, the Chief of Station also wrote an email 
directly to one of the analysts in the Office of Terrorism 
Analysis.\172\ That email, in response to a request to 
coordinate on talking points for a phone call for David 
Petraeus, Director, Central Intelligence Agency, on the Libya 
attack, said:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \172\Email from Tripoli Chief of Station, Cent. Intel. Agency, to 
[Office of Terrorism Analysis Analyst] (Sept. 14, 2012, 4:05 PM) (on 
file with the CIA, REQUEST 15-0005).

        We are verifying some of the events that took place in 
        fornt [sic] of the State department facility with some 
        of the embassy personnel. The RSO [Regional Security 
        Officer] noted that he was not aware of a protest in 
        front of the consulate (the DOS [Department of State] 
        facility where the Ambo and the ARSO's were staying. 
        (could it have been the AAmerican [sic] corner?) We 
        will be talking to the lead [redacted text] who was in 
        Benghazi to obtain additional background. I also do not 
        agree with the assessment that the attack was 
        opportunistic [sic] in origin. The GRS Agents and xx 
        operators on the scene noted that the fighters were 
        moving and shooting in a fashion that indicated 
        training--and set them apart for the militias fighters 
        typically found in Benghazi. Perhaps most compelling 
        point was the comment by the [redacted text] who noted 
        the percise [sic] and timing of mortar fire--one short, 
        one long two direct hits. He noted that the Libyan 
        special forces are unable to use mortars so effectively 
        and that U.S. forces mortar company would be hard 
        pressed to repeat the same performace [sic] as he 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        witnessed in Benghazi.

        I am basing my assessment mostly on the data from the 
        guys on the ground (not all source) and dealing with 
        Libyan contacts. Thanks for letting [sic] have an 
        opportunity to co[o]rd[inate].\173\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \173\Id.

    The Chief of Station noted he was relying on information 
from ``guys on the ground'' and ``Libyan contacts.''\174\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \174\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Even though this email was written to an analyst, the 
analysts sent it up the chain. The manager of the analysts 
testified:

        Q: Okay. So this email is from chief of station to her. 
        Do you recall whether or not she forwarded this to you 
        or disseminated this----

        A: Oh yeah. She forwarded it. Everything from the 
        [Chief of Station] I saw.

        Q: So when you received this email, is this something 
        you would have pushed up the chain?

        A: Oh, yeah. Chief of Station, you know, disagreeing 
        with something is no small thing. I mean, the chiefs of 
        station are not required for coordination. But we 
        absolutely, and especially NCTC [National 
        Counterterrorism Center], take into account what they 
        have to say.

        Q: All right. So you sounded confident that you pushed 
        this up the chain. I guess my question----

        A: I don't remember doing it, but, I mean, I would 
        have.

        Q: Okay. And you would have sent that to?

        A: [OTA Director].

        Q: [OTA Director]. Okay.

        A: And my boss, my----

        Q: Okay. And you don't know whether or not [the OTA 
        Director] would have sent it on further?

        A: I'm sure [the OTA Director] would have sent it on 
        further. But I don't--well, I say that. I can't be sure 
        what any other person does. But [the OTA Director] has 
        excellent judgment and a whole ton of bureaucratic 
        savvy. So----\175\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \175\[Redacted text] Team Chief Testimony at 68-69.

    The Chief of Station believes the email made its way up to 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Morell. He testified:

        Q: Do you know how high up the contents of your email 
        outlining your inform[ation] made it? Beyond the person 
        at CT that was coordinating it, do you have any idea? 
        Did it make it to Mr. Morell, for example?

        A: I believe it made it to Mr. Morell.

        Q: Okay.

        A: Because this is one of the responses. The reason why 
        I say that----

        Q: Yeah.
        A: --it went--this was a response. He was aware of our 
        view that either--so I have all--I don't have any 
        reason to doubt it didn't make it to him.

        Q: Yeah.

        A: And his questions to us were consistent that he got 
        this specific information or something like it.\176\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \176\Chief of Station Testimony at 208-09.

    Morell, however, testified he does not remember receiving 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
this email. He told the committee:

        Q: Okay. You don't believe this is something that you 
        have ever seen?

        A: Not that I remember.\177\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \177\Morell Testimony at 119.

                      Drafting the Talking Points

    Petraeus testified the House Permanent Select Committee on 
Intelligence [HPSCI] did not ask for unclassified talking 
points when he met with them on September 14, 2012, but rather 
he offered to provide them to the Committee. Petraeus 
testified:

        A: Yeah. The Ranking Member asked: What can we say 
        about this publicly? And so I said: Okay, we'll come up 
        with something for you. And, frankly, the thinking was 
        we could do something very quickly, give it to him, he 
        could have it that afternoon, and he could know what he 
        could and could not say.

        Q: So your expectations were this was something that 
        would be done internally at the CIA and knocked out 
        quickly and sent over in the afternoon?

        A: Yeah, yeah. And, obviously, that would be 
        inappropriate in the end because it would need to be 
        sent through the intelligence community, so it had to 
        be an IC. And then, of course, since it's now going to 
        be used publicly, then the respective public affairs 
        offices of various organizations get involved. And then 
        since it has overall government implications, then you 
        end up having to get State and FBI. There's security 
        concerns and a variety of other issues that start to 
        get factored in. So it became quite an involved process 
        in the end.

        Q: But what was your understanding of how the process 
        would evolve when the tasking was first issued by 
        HPSCI?

        A: I'm not sure I had a very clear--yeah, staff come up 
        with some talking points.\178\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \178\Testimony of David Petraeus, Dir., Cent. Intel. Agency, Tr. at 
50-51 (Mar. 19, 2016) (on file with the Committee).

    The OTA Director accompanied Petraeus to the HPSCI meeting, 
and upon returning to her office, drafted an initial set of 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
talking points. She testified:

        So as I said, the coffee was that morning. I 
        immediately came back. And knowing the sense of urgency 
        that the Members had, I took that as my, you know, top 
        task was to get them talking points because they had 
        all said they were going to be going out and speaking 
        to the media and to constituents and they wanted to 
        know what they could say.

        So I put together the talking points. And I wanted them 
        to be reflective of what the Members, of course, had 
        just heard. Thinking back on this now, I think part of 
        this is I definitely had in my mind that the Members 
        had heard a fuller explanation from the director, but 
        that this was my attempt to try and say of what they 
        had heard what could they say in an unclassified 
        setting.

        So I drafted these talking points immediately after 
        that. And then at 11:15, so it was pretty quickly, then 
        circulated them to make sure that everyone agreed with 
        both the content and that they were unclassified.\179\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \179\OTA Dir. Testimony at 194-95.

    The first draft of the talking points contained six bullet 
points. Nowhere in any of these six bullet points is a mention 
of demonstrations or protests in Benghazi. The OTA Director 
acknowledged that these six bullet points were factually 
accurate--both at the time they were crafted and today.\180\ 
The first bullet point was pulled almost verbatim from the 
September 13 WIRe, published the day before.\181\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \180\OTA Dir. Testimony at 197.
    \181\September 13 WIRe, supra note 123. The September 13 WIRe said 
``We assess the attacks on Tuesday against the US Consulate in Benghazi 
began spontaneously following the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo 
and evolved into a direct assault against the Consulate and a separate 
US facility in the city.'' The first bullet point stated ``We believe 
based on currently available information that the attacks in Benghazi 
were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo 
and evolved into a direct assault against the US Consulate and 
subsequently its annex.''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The bullet points were:

     LWe believe based on currently available 
information that the attacks in Benghazi were spontaneously 
inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo and evolved 
into a direct assault against the US Consulate and subsequently 
its annex. This assessment may change as additional information 
is collected and analyzed and currently available information 
continues to be evaluated.

     LThe crowd almost certainly was a mix of 
individuals from across many sectors of Libyan society. That 
being said, we do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al-
Qa'ida participated in the attack.

     LInitial press reporting linked the attack to 
Ansar al-Sharia. The group has since released a statement that 
the its [sic] leadership did not order the attacks, but did not 
deny that some of its members were involved. Ansar al-Sharia's 
facebook page aims to spread sharia in Libya and emphasizes the 
need for jihad to counter what it views as false 
interpretations of Islam, according to an open source study.

     LThe wide availability of weapons and experienced 
fighters in Libya almost certainly contributed to the lethality 
of the attacks.

     LSince April, there have been at least five other 
attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi by unidentified 
assailants, including the June attack against the British 
Ambassador's convoy. We cannot rule out that individuals had 
previously surveilled the US facilities, also contributing to 
the efficacy of the attacks.

     LWe are working with Libyan authorities and 
intelligence partners in an effort to help bring to justice 
those responsible for the deaths of US citizens.\182\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \182\Talking Points Timeline, ABC News, http://abcnews.go.com/
images/Politics/Benghazi%
20Talking%20Points%20Timeline.pdf (last visited May 17, 2016).

    The OTA Director sent these six talking points out for 
coordination with other offices within the CIA at 11:15 
a.m.\183\ A member of the National Clandestine Service--the 
operators who work on the ground, as opposed to the analysts 
who sit at headquarters--asked: ``Second tick says we know 
extremists with ties to AQ participated in the attack, which 
implies complicity in the deaths of the American officers. Do 
we know this?''\184\ The OTA Director responds and says ``Good 
point that it could be interpreted this way--perhaps better 
stated that we know they participated in the protests. We do 
not know who was responsible for the deaths.''\185\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \183\See Email from [National Clandestine Service Officer] to [Near 
East Division, et al.] (Sept. 14, 2012, 2:52 PM) (on file with the CIA, 
REQUEST17-0443 to REQUEST 17-0449) (sending talking points to multiple 
offices within the CIA).
    \184\Email from [National Clandestine Service Officer] to [Near 
East Division, et al.] (Sept. 14, 2012, 2:52 PM) (on file with the CIA, 
REQUEST 17-0443 to REQUEST 17-0449) (emphasis original).
    \185\Email from Dir., Office of Terrorism Analysis, Cent. Intel. 
Agency, to [National Clandestine Service Officer] (Sept. 14, 2012, 3:19 
PM) (on file with the CIA, REQUEST 17-0443 to REQUEST 17-0449) 
(emphasis added).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Given that no protests had occurred in Benghazi prior to 
the attack, this change had the effect of transforming the 
second bullet point from being accurate to being inaccurate. 
The OTA Director testified:

        Q: Sure. So I guess the way I read it is, you're trying 
        to appease legal, which is always a challenge, by 
        saying that--you wanted to back off the fact you know 
        they participated in the attack because you don't want 
        to interfere and potentially jeopardize the 
        investigation, showing complicity to the attacks. So 
        you altered it to we know they participated in protests 
        at the time you believe they were protests.

        A: Correct.

        Q: But you didn't know for a fact that they [Islamic 
        extremists with ties to al-Qa'ida] participated in the 
        protests. You just knew that they were there.

        A: Right.

        Q: So the change went from being accurate to being 
        inaccurate?

        A: Correct.

        Q: Okay and is that something you did solely on your 
        own?

        A: Yes.\186\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \186\OTA Dir. Testimony at 205-06.

    In a subsequent email, the word ``protests'' was changed to 
``violent demonstrations'' in that same bullet point.\187\ 
Those changes made it all the way through to the final version 
of the talking points, surviving the extensive deletions made 
near the end of this process by Morell.\188\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \187\See Email from [National Clandestine Service Officer] to [Near 
East Division, et al.] (Sept. 14, 2012, 2:52 PM) (on file with the CIA, 
REQUEST 17-0443 to REQUEST 17-0449).
    \188\See Talking Points Timeline, ABC News, http://abcnews.go.com/
images/Politics/Benghazi%
20Talking%20Points%20Timeline.pdf (last visited May 17, 2016).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Shortly after this change was made, a meeting took place to 
discuss the talking points. The CIA's ``Lessons Learned'' after 
action review described this meeting:

        At some point between 4-5 p.m., a group of officers 
        from OCA [Office of Congressional Affairs] and OPA 
        [Office of Public Affairs] met in OPA spaces to discuss 
        the talking points. Those officers included C [Chief]/
        OCA, COS [Chief of Staff]/OCA, D [Director]/OPA, the 
        Chief of OPA's Media Relations Branch and two OPA 
        spokespersons. Their efforts, over a period of 
        approximately 30 minutes, culminated in a revised 
        version of the talking points that was sent to CIA/COS 
        and the DDCIA's [Deputy Director, Central Intelligence 
        Agency] office by OPA at 4:42 p.m.

        Participants in this group editing session agree that 
        they did not have a complete picture of intelligence 
        regarding the events in Benghazi to guide them. Group 
        members were working under tremendous time pressure. 
        All agree that they were focused on several important 
        considerations, including ensuring that the talking 
        points contained no information that could compromise 
        sources and methods, and that nothing was said that 
        could compromise the then-nascent FBI investigation by 
        prematurely attributing responsibility for the attacks 
        on any one person or group.

        The group had access to an e-mail from NCS [National 
        Clandestine Service] noting that the original talking 
        points statement that ``we do know that Islamic 
        extremists participated in the attack'' implied 
        complicity in the deaths of American officers. The 
        original drafter of the talking points agreed that we 
        did not know who was responsible for the deaths and 
        suggested that the language be changed to say ``we know 
        that they participated in the protests.'' While the 
        editing group did not make this change, ``attacks'' in 
        the second bullet was changed to ``violent 
        demonstration,'' effectively accomplishing the same 
        purpose.

        In addition, the word ``attacks'' in the first bullet 
        of the talking points was changed to 
        ``demonstrations.'' The group also deleted reference in 
        the second bullet to al-Qa'ida. The reasons underlying 
        both changes are not clear, and participants in the 
        editing session have incomplete recollections regarding 
        the decision. Some have suggested that they believed 
        the sentence was somewhat awkward and illogical as 
        written, making reference to ``attacks'' ``evolving 
        into an assault,'' with ``attacks'' and ``assault'' 
        seeming to be synonyms. In addition to these changes, 
        the group added two sentences about CIA product 
        discussing threats, a statement noting that the 
        investigation was ongoing, and several non-substantive 
        word changes.\189\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \189\Letter from Michael Morell, Deputy Dir., Cent. Intel. Agency, 
to Sen. Richard M. Burr, S. Select Comm. on Intel., Lessons Learned 
From Formulation of Unclassified Talking Points re the Events in 
Benghazi, 11-12 September 2012 [hereinafter Lessons Learned] (Aug. 6, 
2013) (on file with the Committee), at 4-5.

    The meeting did not include the OTA Director, the drafter 
of the original talking points, or any substantive experts on 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benghazi. The OTA Director testified:

        Q: So how did we go from ``attacks'' in bullet point 
        one at 3:33 to ``demonstrations'' in bullet point one 
        at 4:42?

        A: At some point in this process this entered into--it 
        became opaque to me. At some point in this process, as 
        I----

        Q: I'm sorry. Were you comfortable with it occur[ing] 
        that way given the fact that you were tasked with----

        A: I didn't know it was occurring. So when I say it was 
        opaque to me, I did not know this was happening.

        At some point in this process, as I know you have seen 
        from all this, there is a group from OPA, our Office of 
        Public Affairs, our Office of Congressional Affairs, 
        and others, took the talking points and made changes to 
        them. And I was not consulted on those changes. So I 
        cannot tell you how some of these changes took place. I 
        was not involved. I was not consulted beforehand.\190\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \190\OTA Dir. Testimony at 209-10.

    That change in the first bullet point--from ``attacks'' to 
``demonstrations''--also survived Morell's extensive edits and 
was in the final version of the talking points.\191\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \191\See Talking Points Timeline, ABC News, http://abcnews.go.com/
images/Politics/Benghazi%
20Talking%20Points%20Timeline.pdf (last visited May 17, 2016).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Around this same time, Morell first learned about the 
existence of the talking points. He testified:

        So there was a weekly meeting on Syria, followed by our 
        three-times-a-week meeting on counterterrorism. In 
        between those two meetings, the director's chief of 
        staff walked up to me in the director's conference room 
        and said, here, you need to see these. You need to be 
        aware of this, you need to get involved in this. I 
        said, what's this? And he explained the origin of the 
        talking points and he explained kind of where they were 
        in the process. I skimmed the talking points, and I 
        immediately reacted to the warning language [language 
        indicating that five prior attacks had ococurred in 
        Benghazi against foreign interests]. . . .

        So I say to my EA [Executive Assistant], where is this 
        in the process? And he said, it's being coordinated. I 
        say, okay, I will deal with it in the morning.\192\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \192\Morell Testimony at 124-25.

    Morell testified he did not edit the talking points that 
evening, nor did he speak with anybody about them.\193\ 
Instead, Morell edited them by himself the next morning, 
Saturday, September 15. He testified:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \193\Id. at 128-29.

        So I come in the next morning and my--and the next 
        morning, by the way, is a deputies meeting at eight. 
        Family day at CIA--once a year you allow families to 
        come on the compound, walk around, visit offices, et 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        cetera, et cetera--is at nine.

        And first thing my EA tells me is that Denis McDonough, 
        then the deputy National Security Advisor, wants to 
        talk about--wants to talk about the talking points in 
        the deputies meeting, and I say, okay. I have a 
        conversation with General Petraeus about the talking 
        points, and [Petraeus' Chief of Staff] was there, and I 
        believe he would--if he were here, he would agree with 
        what I'm about ready to tell you, that I told Director 
        Petraeus that the talking points were stuck, that the 
        State Department was objecting to the warning language, 
        and I told him that I agreed that the warning language 
        should be taken out, and the Director didn't say a word 
        to me. He didn't tell me that he was going to put it 
        in, he didn't say, keep--keep the warning language in 
        there, I think it's really important. He didn't say 
        anything.

        We do our family day stuff, which includes literally 
        hundreds of people coming through my office and shaking 
        hands with me, and the whole time I'm thinking these 
        talking points are sitting on my desk, actually my EA's 
        desk.

        So when the family thing is done, I go and edit the 
        talking points and I literally edit them in 5, 10 
        minutes and I fly through them. And as you know, I made 
        a bunch of changes, and the most significant of which 
        is taking out the warning language. So that's kind of 
        the--that's kind of the story there.\194\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \194\Id. at 126-28.

                    New Information on September 15

    When Morell edited the talking points on the morning of 
September 15, new information was fresh in his mind regarding 
the Benghazi attacks. That morning saw additional information 
written about Benghazi. A New York Times article was published 
that morning written by Peter Baker. It read in part:

        According to a guard at the compound, the attack began 
        at about 9:30 p.m., without advance warning or any 
        peaceful protest. ``I started hearing, `God is great! 
        God is great!''' one guard said. ``I thought to myself, 
        maybe it is a passing funeral.'' (All the guards spoke 
        on the condition of anonymity for their safety)

        ``Attack, attack,'' the guard said as he heard an 
        American calling over his walkie-talkie as the chants 
        came closer. Suddenly, there came a barrage of gunfire, 
        explosions, and rocket-propelled grenades.\195\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \195\Peter Baker, et al., Diplomats' Bodies Return to U.S., and 
Libyan Guards Recount Deadly Riot, N.Y. Times (Sept. 15, 2012), http://
www.nytimes.com/2012/09/15/world/middleeast/
ambassadors-body-back-in-us-libya-guards-recount-riot.html?_r=0.

    The Chief of Station found this article compelling. He 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
testified:

        Q: They told them attack or they told them fire, so I 
        mean--I don't know if you knew that at the time, but I 
        mean, in reading this, it seems like some of the folks 
        being interviewed here only know things that someone 
        who was there would know. Did you read this----

        A: Oh yeah, I found this compelling.\196\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \196\Chief of Station Testimony at 218.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Morell, however, did not. He testified:

        Q: Are you familiar with Peter Baker at all?

        A: Yes, I believe I have met him.

                              *    *    *

        Q: Okay. All right. Your assessment of the New York 
        Times as a media organization?

        A: My assessment of The New York Times is that, like 
        any media organization, it gets a lot of things wrong. 
        And my assessment of The New York Times is that its 
        reporting and editorials are fairly biased, in my 
        view.\197\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \197\Morell Testimony at 106.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Morell then said:

        Q: So the same paragraph we were talking about on page 
        two, here is the New York Times citing one guard from 
        the consulate. I mean, how would you assess that in 
        terms of credibility from what the guard said reported 
        in The New York Times article?

        A: How would I assess it?

        Q: How would you assess it?

        A: Michael Morell?

        Q: Yes.

        A: I wouldn't give it great credibility.

        Q: Okay.

        A: Right? I mean, it's a data point. It's a data point. 
        It's one guard. You don't know who it is. You don't 
        know the conditions under which he was talking. I mean, 
        it's a data point. I wouldn't discount it totally, but 
        I wouldn't say this is absolute fact.\198\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \198\Id. at 109.

    The CIA analysts published another WIRe that morning, 
September 15, with a new assessment.\199\ This piece, co-
written with the National Counterterrorism Center, had two main 
focuses: the extremists who participated in the Benghazi 
attacks, and Libyan authorities placing a high priority on 
tracking down the perpetrators of the attack.\200\ Similar to 
the September 13 WIRe two days earlier, the notion of a protest 
and the discussion of a video were not central--or even minor--
focuses of the piece.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \199\Cent. Intel. Agency, Libya: Variety of Extremists Participated 
in Benghazi Attacks, World Intelligence Review, Sept. 15, 2012 (on file 
with CIA, REQUEST 17-0262 to REQUEST 17-0265).
    \200\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The first paragraph of the September 15 WIRe contains the 
sentence ``The level of planning and exact sequence of events 
leading to the attack remain intelligence gaps.''\201\ This 
indicates the analysts did not know definitively what had 
transpired prior to the attacks--perhaps whether or not 
protests in Benghazi had occurred, or the motivation or level 
of planning for the attacks--and signaled to the reader that 
information still needed to be gleaned about these events.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \201\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Morell also reviewed an email from the Chief of Station on 
the morning of September 15. That email stated in part:

        INTEL: Station notes the following information from the 
        past 24hrs, which strengthen Station's assessment that 
        the attacks were not/not spontaneous and not/not an 
        escalation of protests. Press reports noted that at the 
        time of the attack, circa 2130 local, guards posted at 
        the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi and Libyans residing in 
        the vicinity reported the absence of protests at the 
        consulate and specific that the attack began without 
        warning. A CIA officer on the scene noted that at 
        approximately 2200 [10:00 p.m.], there was no sign of a 
        protest at the Consulate. Libya General National 
        Congress (GNC) President Magaryaf stated in an 
        interview that the attacks were planned in advance by 
        experienced individuals, most likely al-Qa'ida (AQ) and 
        not former regime elements (FRE).\202\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \202\Email from Tripoli Chief of Station, Cent. Intel. Agency, to 
[Morell Assistant] (Sept. 15, 2012) (on file with the CIA, REQUEST 15-
0011 to REQUEST 15-0022).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Morell testified about receiving this email:

        I go through it, I read this, right, and the line in 
        there about, we don't think this was a protest, right, 
        jumps out at me. Why did it jump out at me? Because the 
        analysts believed there was a protest. So here I have 
        my analysts saying there was a protest, and I've got my 
        Chief of Station, a guy I've got a lot of confidence 
        in, right, telling me there was no protest.

        The other thing that jumped out at me were that the 
        reasons he gave . . . why he thinks there was no 
        protest, the first is that there were press reports 
        saying no protest, but what goes through my mind, 
        right, is, look, I know that there's press reports that 
        say there were protests. Okay? . . .

        And then the next reason he gives is that a CIA officer 
        on the scene noted that at approximately 2200, there 
        was no sign of a protest at the consulate. And what 
        goes through my mind then is, well, you know what, 
        that's--2200 is 20 minutes after the attack started, 
        right? Maybe everybody dispersed by then. What I react 
        to now is that they didn't get there at 2200. They got 
        to the corner, they got to the corner of the street 
        that the TMF [Benghazi Mission compound] was on at 
        about 10 minutes after 10:00. They didn't even--they 
        didn't get to the TM--to the front of the TMF itself 
        until 2240, an hour after the attack started. So not 
        compelling at all, right?\203\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \203\Morell Testimony at 146-47.

    Morell also compared the language in this email from the 
Chief of Station to the language in the email the Chief of 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Station sent the day before.

        Q: So [the September 15 email] is stronger than the 
        assessment given by the Chief of Station a day earlier?

        A: I certainly remember it that way.\204\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \204\Id. at 150.

    Morell likely reviewed another piece of intelligence the 
morning of September 15 titled ``Observations from the 11-12 
September, 2012 Attacks Against the U.S. Consulate and a 
Separate Facility in Benghazi, Libya.''\205\ Morell received 
this piece of intelligence in an email at 8:50 a.m. and 
testified that he ``almost certainly would not have not read an 
email from the chief of staff [of the CIA].''\206\ This email 
also noted there were ``no signs of a protest'' at 10:00 p.m. 
in Benghazi--less than 20 minutes after the attacks began--
according to a CIA officer at the scene.\207\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \205\Email from Chief of Staff to Dir., Cent. Intel. Agency, to 
Michael Morell, Deputy Dir., Cent. Intel. Agency (Sept. 15, 2012) 
[hereinafter Dir. COS Email] (on file with the CIA, (REQUEST 1-002167).
    \206\Morell Testimony at 144.
    \207\Dir. COS Email, supra note 205.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    It was with this information fresh in his mind--the two 
September 15 emails and the September 15 WIRe--along with the 
September 13 WIRe and the September 14 email from the Chief of 
Station, that Morell edited the talking points. At the time he 
edited the talking points, he had seen at least two reports 
from the Chief of Station--and possibly more--indicating, in 
increasingly forceful language, that no protests had taken 
place. The analysts had not seen these emails. Morell therefore 
was the only person who had both the analytic assessments about 
Benghazi in addition to multiple emails from the Chief of 
Station--somebody Morell had worked closely with during the 
Arab Spring and recognized as an ``outstanding intelligence 
officer.''\208\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \208\Morell Testimony at 14.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    It was incumbent on Morell to take all of this information 
at his disposal into account when he edited the talking points. 
Morell, a former intelligence analyst who rose through the 
ranks analyzing disparate information and formulating 
assessments, disagreed. He testified:

        A: It's not my job, it's not my job to be the analyst, 
        right? It's not my job to take all this information and 
        come to an analytic conclusion. That's the job of the 
        analysts. So when I--look, and had I done that, had I 
        played analyst, right, and started editing the talking 
        points and started changing them to reflect what the 
        COS said, the analysts would have protested, because 
        they--at that moment, they still believed that there 
        had been a protest. So for me to take it out because 
        the COS said there wasn't one would have gotten a 
        reaction from the analysts. They would have seen me as 
        politicizing analysis, all right?

        Q: How would that have politicized the analysis, the 
        fact that you're----

        A: They would have seen it that way.

        Q: But you're taking judgments from somebody that you 
        had worked with very closely, somebody that you had 
        deemed an exemplary intelligence officer.

        A: Look, managers at CIA don't do analysis. When they 
        are perceived to be doing the analysis, the analysts go 
        nuts, right? Bob Gates was accused of that, other 
        senior officials at CIA have been accused of that. 
        Analysts go nuts when they think that managers are 
        doing the analysis themselves, particularly when they 
        disagree with the analysis. So the last thing I was 
        going to do was change the analysts' analysis, 
        right?\209\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \209\Id. at 152-53.

    Morell was not, however, creating an analytic assessment. 
Morell was editing talking points that would be used for public 
consumption. The process--and the product--is an inherently 
different one from internal CIA processes for formulating 
assessments. The analysts were not involved in the talking 
points process--only managers were.\210\ The analysts did not 
have the same emails Morell did from the Chief of Station--only 
Morell had those.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \210\See, e.g., email from Dir., Office of Terrorism Analysis, 
Cent. Intel. Agency, to [NE Division] (Sept. 14, 2012) (on file with 
the CIA, REQUEST 17-0443 to 17-0444).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Talking points--something the CIA rarely produces--are 
different from analytic assessments, which the CIA produces 
every day. Petraeus acknowledged this when he testified:

        I mean, that was where finally once it--this was not--
        certainly no longer a CIA document. It wasn't even an 
        intelligence community document, although that rightly 
        should have been, and that's why it went to the IC 
        referral process, but then, of course, you know, it's 
        going to be interagency and not everyone has got a hand 
        in this.\211\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \211\Testimony of David Petraeus, Dir., Cent. Intel. Agency, Tr. at 
62 (Jan. 6, 2016) (on file with the Committee).

    The talking points were understood to be viewed as 
representative of an authoritative analytical assessment. As 
shown, however, this was not the case--no analysts worked on 
these talking points, as they were created and edited only by 
senior CIA managers and other senior officials in the 
administration. The distinction was never manifested on the 
document or otherwise made known to those relying on, or making 
representations based on, the talking points.
    No process was in place to create the talking points, and 
no analysis was required to create them. The only expectation 
was to produce accurate information to Congress for them to 
share with the American people. That being the case, Morell--
the only person with the complete universe of information at 
his disposal--could have edited the talking points to reflect 
the most up-to-date information--or at the very least to caveat 
the talking points with a reflection that different views 
existed. Morell did neither of these things.
    Panetta--whom Morell worked for when Panetta was Director 
of the CIA--understands this concept well. He told the 
Committee:

        The last lesson I would tell you is don't use talking 
        points that don't include language that makes very 
        clear that the matter is under investigation and that 
        these results are only preliminary. As former chief of 
        staff, I've seen talking points, and I can understand 
        how trouble can result as a result of that. I used to 
        review those before anybody got a hold of them to make 
        sure that they reflected what we wanted to inform the 
        American people about, because the last thing you want 
        to do is to mislead the American people.\212\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \212\Testimony of Leon Panetta, Sec'y of Defense, U.S. Dep't of 
Defense, Tr. at 107 (Jan. 8, 2016) (on file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                         THE SUNDAY TALK SHOWS

    Perhaps as much as any other subject surrounding Benghazi, 
the appearance by Ambassador Rice on five Sunday morning talk 
shows following the attacks has been the most politically 
charged. After all, it was the fallout from her appearances 
that ultimately caused her to withdraw her name as a 
candidate--perhaps the leading candidate--to be the next 
Secretary of State.\213\ Yet little is known about why she was 
selected by the administration to represent the United States 
government on the shows, what she did to prepare for those talk 
shows, what materials she reviewed, who she spoke with to learn 
information about the attacks, and most significantly why she 
said what she said.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \213\Karen DeYoung & Anne Gearan, Susan Rice withdraws as candidate 
for secretary of state, Wash. Post (Dec. 13, 2012), https://
www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/susan-rice-withdraws-as-
candidate-for-secretary-of-state/2012/12/13/17ad344e-4567-11e2-8e70-
e1993528222d_story.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    It was not until two days before the shows, on Friday, 
September 14, when Rice learned she would be appearing on 
behalf of the administration.\214\ She was the administration's 
third choice to appear on the shows--the first being the 
Secretary of State and the second being Tom Donilon, National 
Security Advisor to the President.\215\ Rhodes was the White 
House official responsible for reaching out to Rice and asking 
her to appear. He testified:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \214\Testimony of Susan E. Rice, former U.S. Ambassador to the 
U.N., Tr. at 30 (Feb. 2, 2016) [hereinafter Rice Testimony] (on file 
with the Committee).
    \215\See Rhodes Testimony at 65-66 (stating Sec'y Clinton and Tom 
Donilon were first and second choices to appear).

        A: I recall reaching out to Secretary Clinton first.

                              *    *    *

        Q: Did you get an affirmative ``no'' or did you just 
        not hear back?

        A: I don't remember hearing back.

        Q: Did you call again and redouble your ask or did you 
        move on to your second draft choice?

        A: I believe I moved on because I knew that she, again, 
        does not regularly appear on Sunday shows. So I don't 
        remember thinking that it was likely that she would 
        want to appear.

        Q: And who else would you have asked after Secretary 
        Clinton?

        A: I remember asking Tom Donilon, the National Security 
        Advisor.

        Q: And what was his response?

        A: He did not want to appear. And he too very rarely 
        appeared on the Sunday shows.

        Q: All right. Who was number three?

        A: I believe it was Susan Rice, is my 
        recollection.\216\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \216\Rhodes Testimony at 65-66.

    Although Rhodes testified the Secretary ``does not 
regularly appear on Sunday shows,'' she had in fact appeared on 
multiple shows on two separate occasions within a seven month 
period to discuss Libya. On March 27, 2011--barely a week after 
the United States supported the UN in imposing a no fly zone 
over Libya and authorizing all means necessary to protect 
civilians--the Secretary appeared on Meet the Press, Face the 
Nation, and This Week, to talk about the U.S. intervention in 
Libya, which was being promoted as a civilian protection and 
humanitarian mission.\217\ Seven months later--in the immediate 
wake of Qadhafi's death--she appeared on Meet the Press, This 
Week, State of the Union, and FoxNews Sunday to talk about 
Qadhafi's death and the path forward in Libya.\218\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \217\Meet the Press transcript for March 27, 2011, NBC News (Mar. 
27, 2011), http://www.
nbcnews.com/id/42275424/ns/meet_the_press-transcripts/t/meet-press-
transcript-march/#.VzoK0_
krJaQ; Face the Nation March 27, 2011 Transcript, CBS News (Mar. 27, 
2011), http://www.
cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/FTN_032711.pdf;`This Week' Transcript: Hillary 
Clinton, Robert Gates and Donald Rumsfeld, ABC News (Mar. 27, 2011), 
http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/week-
transcript-hillary-clinton-robert-gates-donald-rumsfeld/
story?id=13232096.
    \218\Meet the Press transcript for October 23, 2011, NBC (Oct. 23, 
2011), http://www.
nbcnews.com/id/45000791/ns/meet_the_press-transcripts/t/meet-press-
transcript-october/#.V1cU1
9UrJaQ., Clinton Warns Iran: U.S. Committed to Iraq, ABC's This Week 
(Oct. 23, 2011), http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/video/interview-
hillary-clinton-14796369; State of the Union with Candy Crowley, CNN 
(Oct. 23, 2011), http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1110/23/
sotu.01.html., and Clinton Talks Iraq, Libya; Sen. Graham Challenges 
GOP Candidates; Bachmann Focused on Iowa, FOX News Sunday (Oct. 23, 
2011), http://www.foxnews.com/on-
air/fox-news-sunday-chris-wallace/2011/10/23/clinton-talks-iraq-libya-
sen-graham-challenges-gop-candidates-bachmann-focused-iowa#p//v/
1234077958001.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Mills testified the decision not to appear on the Sunday 
shows was the Secretary's:

        Q: Since the Secretary didn't appear, who made the 
        decision that she wasn't going to appear?

        A: Well, she would always decide what she would do, if 
        she was going to go on a show or not go on a show.

        Q: Okay. Were there recommendations that she took from 
        you and others, such as Philippe Reines, Jake Sullivan, 
        others?

        A: No. Candidly, the Secretary was so focused on what 
        had happened to our team and what was happening in the 
        region that I don't know that there was a moment's 
        thought about it. She didn't often go on the shows. And 
        she was, understandably, very concerned about how we 
        support our teams and the losses that we had 
        incurred.\219\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \219\Testimony of Cheryl D. Mills, Chief of Staff to the U.S. Sec'y 
of State, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 123 (Sept. 3, 2015) [hereinafter 
Mills Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

    When Rhodes learned the Secretary would not represent the 
administration on the talk shows, he then asked Donilon to 
appear.\220\ He also declined.\221\ Rice--Rhodes' third choice 
for the task--accepted.\222\ In doing so, the administration 
selected someone to talk to the American people about the 
Benghazi attacks who was neither involved in the security of 
any U.S. facilities in Benghazi nor involved in any way with 
the operational response to the attacks. In fact, the 
administration selected an individual who did not even know 
there was a CIA presence in Benghazi, let alone the fact that 
two Americans had died there.\223\ She testified:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \220\Rhodes Testimony at 66.
    \221\Id.
    \222\Id.
    \223\Rice Testimony at 107-08.

        Q: Did you learn between September 11 and September 16 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        that were was a CIA presence in Benghazi?

        A: I think--no. I think I learned subsequently.

                              *    *    *

        Q: So nobody told you between the dates of September 11 
        and September 16 that two of the four Americans who 
        were killed who were providing security actually worked 
        for the CIA and not the State Department?

        A: Not that I recall.

        Q: All right.

        Q: And you learned that subsequently?

        A: To the best of my recollection, I learned it 
        subsequently.\224\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \224\Id.

    In selecting Rice to appear on the Sunday talk shows, 
Rhodes chose an individual with limited knowledge of, and 
presumably limited participation in, the administration's 
reponse to the Benghazi attacks. Instead, while the attacks 
were happening, Rice was receiving--apparently in response to 
an email chain about the attack on the Benghazi Mission 
compound--a detailed update from staff about the number of 
retweets her Twitter account had generated.\225\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \225\See Email to Susan E. Rice, U.S. Permanent Rep. to the U.N. 
(Sept. 11, 2012, 7:43 P.M.) (on file with the Committee, C05561948) 
(``Today, you tweeted 7 times on the anniversary of the September 11 
attacks, generating more than 600 retweets. By this measure, your 
twitter account had a big day--your second or third biggest since the 
start of the summer--and your volunteering pics got a few nice 
responses . . .'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                     How Rice Prepped for the Shows

    On Friday, September 14, 2012, the Secretary's calendar 
included a meeting with Rice.\226\ Both Rice and Mills 
testified they believed that meeting took place, even though 
neither had a specific recollection of it.\227\ That Friday 
meeting was a standing meeting between the Secretary and Rice 
that would take place when Rice was in Washington.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \226\Email from Special Ass't to the Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of 
State, to Hillary R. Clinton (``H''), Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of 
State (Sept. 14, 2012, 7:29 AM) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0045306-SCB0045307).
    \227\Rice Testimony at 28; Mills Testimony at 138.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Despite having no specific recollection of the meeting, 
Rice is confident she did not discuss the Sunday shows with the 
Secretary at the meeting.\228\ This is because Rice first 
learned of her possible appearance on the Sunday shows in the 
early afternoon of September 14, after the scheduled meeting. 
She testified:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \228\Rice Testimony at 28.

        I received a phone call as I was in my car on my way to 
        Andrews for the ceremony receiving our fallen 
        colleagues. And in that phone call from Ben [Rhodes], I 
        was asked whether it would be possible, if Secretary 
        Clinton were unable to appear on the shows, if I could 
        appear on the shows. It was a contingency question at 
        the time. And I said that, you know, I had other plans 
        for the weekend and that it would not be my preference 
        but if they needed me and there was not an alternative 
        that I would be willing to do it.\229\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \229\Rice Testimony at 26.

    Both the Secretary and Rice attended the return of remains 
ceremony at Andrews Air Force Base that afternoon, and later 
that day, Friday September 14, Rhodes called Rice back to 
inform her she needed to do the Sunday shows.\230\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \230\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Ambassador Rice did not begin preparing for the shows until 
the following day, Saturday September 15. Her staff, led by 
Erin Pelton, Communications Director and Spokesperson, prepared 
a book of briefing materials for Rice.\231\ Rice testified she 
began reviewing these briefing materials on Saturday:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \231\Testimony of Erin Pelton, Dir. of Commc'cs and Spokesperson, 
U.S. Mission to the U.N., Tr. at 44 (Feb. 11, 2016) [hereinafter Pelton 
Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

        Q: So let's go forward to--did you do anything after 
        speaking to Mr. Rhodes on Friday night to begin 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        preparing?

        A: No.

        Q: What did you do the next morning to begin preparing?

        A: I reviewed briefing materials.

        Q: What briefing materials? Would that just be the same 
        daily briefing materials that you received in the 
        ordinary course, or was this different material?

        A: It was both. I received my daily intelligence 
        briefing on Saturday morning, and I also began 
        reviewing a briefing book that had been prepared by my 
        staff for--in preparation for the Sunday shows.\232\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \232\Rice Testimony at 31.

    These briefing materials contained little to no information 
about the Benghazi attacks. Pelton testified that in gathering 
briefing materials for the Sunday shows she explicitly did not 
focus on Benghazi, anticipating materials pertaining to 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benghazi would come at a later time. She said:

        Q: In your list of areas where you were attempting to 
        collect the latest information, you left Benghazi out. 
        Was that intentional, or were you just giving me some 
        examples?

        A: I don't recall preparing information about Benghazi. 
        What I do recall is understanding that we would have 
        access to talking points that would be provided by the 
        intelligence community that were unclassified and 
        consistent with our latest understanding of what had 
        transpired in Benghazi.\233\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \233\Pelton Testimony at 45.

    Pelton also testified she believed she would be receiving 
talking points regarding Benghazi that would not require her to 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
seek out briefing materials about Benghazi on her own:

        Well, I recall that in the process of preparing 
        Ambassador Rice between Friday and Saturday, September 
        14th and 15th, that I was not focused on Benghazi 
        because I was going to receive talking points that were 
        appropriate for public use by the intelligence 
        community. I don't remember how I came to know that I 
        was going to get those materials.\234\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \234\Id.

    While Pelton did not include any information specific to 
Benghazi in the briefing book, Rice recalled other material 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
that was in the briefing book. She testified:

        Q: As best you can, do you recall what was in that 
        briefing book that your staff provided?

        A: I recall it included statements that other senior 
        administration officials had made, including the 
        President and the Secretary. I recall it including 
        background Q&A and top-line themes covering the wide 
        range of issues that we anticipated would come up on 
        the shows: the protests that occurred all around the 
        world that week; obviously, also what happened in 
        Benghazi.

        And, also, because it was one week before the opening 
        of the U.N. General Assembly in New York and Iran was 
        expected to be a prominent issue, and Prime Minister 
        Netanyahu's visit also a prominent issue, I recall 
        preparing for that discussion as well.\235\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \235\Rice Testimony at 33.

    The ``background Q&A'' and ``top line themes'' came from 
Rhodes.\236\ Pelton testified about how this information came 
about:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \236\Rhodes Memo, supra note 3.

        A: I don't recall all the specifics of our conversation 
        [with Ben Rhodes]. However, I do recall at one point 
        asking him to provide, for lack of a better term, a 
        memo regarding the objectives of the Sunday show 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        appearances.

        Q: How did he respond to you?

        A: He said he would write it.

        Q: And did he eventually deliver that to you?

        A: Yes.\237\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \237\Pelton Testimony at 42.

    Rhodes delivered this memo at 8:09 p.m. on the evening of 
September 14 in an email with the subject ``RE: PREP CALL with 
Susan: Saturday at 4:00 pm ET.''\238\ The memo contained four 
bullet points under ``Goals,'' six bullet points under ``Top-
lines,'' and contained five questions and suggested answers 
regarding the Arab Spring, protests, and Benghazi, and an 
additional four questions and suggested answers regarding 
Israel and Iran.\239\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \238\Rhodes Memo, supra note 3.
    \239\See id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The four bullet points under the ``Goals'' section of the 
memo were the following:

        To convey that the United States is doing everything 
        that we can to protect our people and facilities 
        abroad;

        To underscore that these protests are rooted in an 
        Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy;

        To show that we will be resolute in bringing people who 
        harm Americans to justice, and standing steadfast 
        through these protests;

        To reinforce the President and Administration's 
        strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult 
        challenges.\240\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \240\Id.

    The second point was one of the most explicit directions 
from a senior administration official about the intent of the 
adminstration's communications strategy. The Chairman had the 
following exchange with Rhodes about these bullet points during 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rhodes' testimony to the Committee:

        Q: How about number two? They are not numbered, but 
        let's just go second bullet, okay? ``To underscore that 
        these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not 
        a broader failure of policy.'' What policy were you 
        worried about being considered a failure?

        A: My recollection over the course of that week is that 
        we were getting questions about whether this 
        represented a failure of our policy in the Middle East 
        and in response to the Arab Spring.

        Q: And you wanted to underscore the point that it 
        wasn't any of that, it was just a video.

        A: We were anticipating getting those questions, and we 
        wanted to convey that, again, the protests were rooted 
        in this video.

        Q: Were there other options other than just those two, 
        a wholesale failure of the administration's policy or 
        an Internet video? Was there something else? Those are 
        your only two options?

        A: Again, my recollection is that this reflects the way 
        in which we were getting questions over the course of 
        the week is it's a failure of policy. And we were at 
        the same time seeking to deal with the ongoing fallout 
        from the video. So those were the factors in play.

        Q: I'm with you on wanting to explain to folks that it 
        wasn't a failure of policy. You essentially gave 
        yourself two choices: an Internet video or a broader 
        failure of policy. And my question is, were those your 
        only two options?

        A: Again, that's what I recall being the subject of 
        discussion over the course of that week in terms of the 
        questions we were being asked.

        Q: Well, with respect to Benghazi, it certainly would 
        have--it's possible that it was not just those two 
        options, right?

        A: I'm not sure I understand the question.

        Q: With respect to what happened in Benghazi, you're 
        not limiting us to just those two options, right, a 
        failure of policy or an Internet video?

        A: Again, I believe in this specific bullet I'm 
        referring to the ongoing protests that are taking place 
        across the Middle East which were very much still going 
        forward on that Friday.

        Q: Right. But you agree--you knew Benghazi was going to 
        come up when Ambassador Rice was going on the five 
        Sunday talk shows?

        A: Yes.

        Q: We haven't had an ambassador killed since when?

        A: It had been a long time. I don't remember 
        specifically.

        Q: So you knew that that was coming up?

        A: I knew that was going to be one of the topics.

        Q: Right. And your third bullet, which isn't numbered, 
        but it's number three, ``To show that we will be 
        resolute in bringing people who harm Americans to 
        justice.'' Can you think of a country where Americans 
        were harmed other than Libya that she might have been 
        asked about?

        A: That would principally, I believe, refer to Libya.

        Q: Okay. So you concede that the third item does apply 
        to Libya. Let's go back to the second one. How about 
        the second one? Are we to have drawn a contrast between 
        the second bullet and the third bullet, or are they all 
        interrelated?

        A: Again, my recollection is she is going on to talk 
        about several different issues: the attacks in 
        Benghazi, the ongoing protests that were taking place 
        across the Middle East, and issues related to Iran and 
        Israel. And so these points refer to different elements 
        of the topic.

        Q: Well, at the time, what did you think was the 
        impetus for the attack in Benghazi?

        A: I did not have a judgment of my own at the time. I 
        was going to rely on the information provided by the 
        intelligence community.

        Q: Did the intelligence community mention an Internet 
        video to you?

        A: The intelligence community at this point had 
        suggested that it was an event that was motivated in 
        part by the protests in Cairo.

        Q: That was a great answer to a question I didn't ask. 
        Did they mention the video?

        A: No, what I'm saying is, my recollection is they at 
        that point had said that insofar as there was any 
        connection it was more to the events in Cairo being a 
        motivating factor for individuals.

        Q: Right. So you are preparing the Ambassador to go on 
        five Sunday talk shows to talk about what you know is 
        going to involve Benghazi and you don't want her to be 
        stuck with the option of a failure of your policy. So 
        you give the option of the Internet video. And my 
        question is, who in the intelligence community told you 
        that the attacks in Benghazi were linked to the video?

        A: Again, I prepared these points on a Friday in which 
        there were violent protests across the Middle East 
        because of the video, a violent breach of our facility 
        in Tunis, a violent breach of our facility at Khartoum, 
        violence against an American restaurant in Lebanon, at 
        the very least. So I very much was focused on the fact 
        that there were ongoing protests, and one of the 
        subjects that she was going to be asked about were 
        those protests. So insofar as I'm referring to protests 
        in the video, I'm referring to the many protests that 
        were continuing to take place over the course of that 
        week in response to the video.

        Q: So is it your testimony that the second bullet and 
        the third bullet are totally unrelated?

        A: They're referring to different elements of what 
        she's going to have to talk about on the Sunday shows.

        Q: So bullet number two was not about Libya or Benghazi 
        at all.

        A: It was not intended to assign responsibility for 
        Benghazi.

        Q: But yet you jump in the very next bullet to those 
        who harm Americans. Can you see how someone reading 
        that memo might be vexed?

        A: Well, again, these are several statements of 
        principle up top that I think speak to, again, all--in 
        different parts of the issues that she is going to have 
        to address. And then you can see in the actual contents 
        how we intended to respond to those individual 
        questions and instances.\241\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \241\Rhodes Testimony at 75-80.

    The fact Rhodes concedes the third bullet point references 
Libya is important. The bullet point immediately prior 
references the video, allowing for easy connection and 
conflation of the video and the Benghazi attacks.\242\ This 
occurred in public statements by the administration prior to 
Rhodes' memo, and, having seen this memo, Rice appeared to 
again connect the video and Benghazi the next day when she 
appeared on the talk shows.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \242\Rhodes Memo, supra note 3.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    While this connection between the two events may have 
favored a particular narrative, even Rhodes admitted that he 
was not aware of any intelligence that existed to directly link 
the video to the attacks. He testified:

        A: And, again, my recollection of any connection to the 
        video was indirect through the fact that the protests 
        in Cairo may have been a motivating factor for the 
        events in Benghazi.

        Q: Okay. So just to be clear, so there was no direct 
        connection made between the video and the attacks in 
        Benghazi from the intelligence community that you're 
        aware of at that time?

        A: That's my recollection. I recall that there were 
        public reports of protests that were--that would have 
        been included in, you know, the information we were 
        receiving.

        Q: But you certainly weren't relying on those public 
        reports, were you?

        A: We were relying on the intelligence community's 
        assessment, and the intelligence community's assessment 
        was that these were events that were motivated in part 
        by the protests in Cairo.\243\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \243\Rhodes Testimony at 106-07.

    At 4:00 p.m. on Saturday September 15, 2012, a conference 
call was convened with Rice to discuss her appearance on the 
Sunday shows the following morning.\244\ Rice participated in 
this conference call from Columbus, Ohio, where she was 
spending the day.\245\ Rexon Ryu, Deputy to the U.S. Permanent 
Representative to the United Nations, State Department, 
testified there were no State Department people on the call:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \244\Rhodes Memo, supra note 3.
    \245\Rice Testimony at 38.

        Q: Okay. Do you recall--so you said Ben Rhodes. Were 
        there any individuals, other than the USUN individual, 
        were there any other people from the State Department 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        that participated in that call?

        A: There were no State Department people.

        Q: Do you recall if there were additional individuals 
        from the White House that participated?

        A: Yes, there were.\246\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \246\Testimony of Rexon Y. Ryu, Deputy to the U.S. Ambassador to 
the U.N., Tr. at 83 (Aug. 25, 2015) (on file with the Committee) 
[hereinafter Ryu Testimony].

    Rice testified David Plouffe, Senior Advisor to the 
President, was on the call.\247\ Plouffe had previously served 
as the campaign manager for the President's 2008 presidential 
campaign.\248\ While Rhodes testified Plouffe would 
``normally'' appear on the Sunday show prep calls,\249\ Rice 
testified she did not recall him being on prior calls and did 
not understand why he was on the call in this instance.\250\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \247\Rice Testimony at 39.
    \248\Wash. Speakers Bureau, https://www.washingtonspeakers.com/
speakers/biography.cfm?
SpeakerID=6495.
    \249\Rhodes Testimony at 111.
    \250\Rice Testimony at 40.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    No witness interviewed by the Committee was able to 
specifically identify State Department individuals on the call 
aside from Rice's staff.\251\ In addition, nobody from the 
Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI], Department of Defense, 
or Central Intelligence Agency participated in the call, which 
apparently consisted of just a small circle of Rice's advisors 
and communications staffers from the White House.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \251\See, e.g. Ryu Testimony at 73-74.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    At the time of her appearance on the talk shows, it had 
been announced the FBI would take the lead on the investigation 
into finding out what had occurred.\252\ The Department of 
Defense, along with White House operators, had been involved in 
sending troops towards Libya while the attacks were ongoing, 
and analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency had taken the 
lead on post-attack analysis of intelligence. The State 
Department had its compound in Benghazi attacked and, as such, 
it was the principal source of information from eyewitnesses to 
the attack. The fact that no individuals from either the 
Defense Department or White House operators participated in the 
Saturday prep call therefore limited the information pertaining 
to Benghazi provided to Rice. Moreover, it does not appear Rice 
sought out any information about the attacks or worked to 
ensure that she had a full understanding of the events outside 
of the talking points she was provided.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \252\U.S. launching apparent terrorist hunt in Libya, CBS News 
(Oct. 18, 2012), http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-launching-apparent-
terrorist-hunt-in-libya.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In addition, multiple witnesses testified Benghazi was 
barely mentioned on the prep call. This inattention is 
consistent with the lack of information pertaining to Benghazi 
in the briefing materials. Instead, Rhodes commented on the 
call that the CIA was preparing unclassified talking points 
pertaining to Benghazi, with the understanding that the talking 
points would be shared with Rice when they were completed.\253\ 
Rice testified:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \253\Rice Testimony at 39-40; Rhodes Testimony at 76-78.

        A: I don't recall us talking about the CIA talking 
        points. I recall being reminded that they were 
        forthcoming and that we would be relying on them 
        because they had been prepared for Members of Congress 
        and they were our best distillation of what we knew at 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        the time.

        Q: Okay. Who told you that?

        A: I'm not certain, but I believe it was Ben. And so we 
        didn't talk about Benghazi, in fact, on the phone call, 
        as I remember. We just said that those were the points.

        Q: Let's go into that a little bit more. If I 
        understood you correctly, you said during this prep 
        call for the Sunday talk shows you did not talk about 
        the attacks in Benghazi at all. Is that correct?

        A: In any depth. I don't have any recollection of 
        talking about them in any depth.\254\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \254\Rice Testimony at 42.

    Rice also testified it was her understanding these talking 
points would be vetted and cleared by the CIA--in other words, 
manifesting the subtext the talking points represented an 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
authoritative product.

        A: As I said, to the best of my recollection, it was 
        Mr. Rhodes on the phone.

        Q: And to the best of your recollection, what did he--
        how did he characterize the CIA talking points?

        A: As being carefully vetted and cleared, drafted by 
        the CIA, and provided--produced for the purpose of 
        being provided to Members of Congress and, thus, what 
        we would also utilize.

        Q: So, as far as you were concerned or as far as you 
        understood, the CIA talking points represented the best 
        information about the attacks in Benghazi at the time.

        A: Yes. That's how I--that's what I understood them to 
        be, and that's, in fact, what I knew them to be, 
        because they mirrored very precisely the intelligence 
        that I had also received.\255\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \255\Rice Testimony at 45-46.

    No CIA witness the Committee interviewed had any knowledge 
the HPSCI talking points were going to be shared with Rice to 
be used on the Sunday talk shows.
    As discussed above, Rice, the individual selected by the 
White House to represent the administration on the Sunday talk 
shows following the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens--the 
first U.S. Ambassador to be killed in the field since 1979--
Sean Smith, Glen Doherty, and Tyrone Woods, was not a central 
figure in the creation or management of the Benghazi compound, 
or in the government's response to the attacks. She was unaware 
at the time the CIA had a presence there and essentially relied 
on just three bullet points of material--that none of the 
authors of the bullet points knew would be provided to her--to 
discuss the Benghazi attacks on the Sunday talk shows.
    Rice took umbrage when she was confronted with the 
suggestion that her role was to simply parrot the talking 
points provided to her, testifying:

        A: Sir, as I said earlier, I did not have any knowledge 
        of how these talking points were edited.

                              *    *    *

        Q: I understand. So you were just the spokesman. You 
        had been given something, and they told you: Go on out 
        there and do your duty and repeat what you were 
        provided.

        A: No sir. I was also a member of the President's 
        Cabinet and the National Security Council. I was a 
        recipient of the most refined intelligence products. 
        And I satisfied myself that what I had been asked to 
        say in the unclassified points were consistent with 
        what I had received in intelligence channels. 
        Otherwise, I wouldn't have said it.\256\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \256\Rice Testimony at 157.

    While Rice is mostly correct in noting the unclassified 
talking points were consistent with what she had received 
through intelligence channels, there was one major difference, 
as discussed above. What Rice received through intelligence 
channels said ``The currently available information suggests 
that the attacks in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by 
protests at the US Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct 
assault against the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi and 
subsequently its annex.''\257\ Yet the unclassified talking 
points said ``The currently available information suggests that 
the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by 
protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct 
assault against the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi and 
subsequently its annex.''\258\ That change--from ``attacks'' to 
``demonstrations''--significantly altered the meaning of the 
entire sentence.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \257\September 13 WIRe, supra note 123 (emphasis added).
    \258\Talking Points Timeline, ABC News, http://abcnews.go.com/
images/Politics/Benghazi%20Talking%20Points%20Timeline.pdf (emphasis 
added).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In her interview before the Committee, Rice maintained the 
claim that the talking points were similar to the analysis. In 
fact she had reviewed the two documents side by side ``very 
recently.''\259\ She testified:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \259\Rice Testimony at 50.

        Q: And do you know how closely those products mirrored 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        that bullet point?

        A: Virtually identical but not verbatim.

        Q: Okay. And do you know, if it was not verbatim, what 
        the differences were between what you read----

        A: I can't tell you precisely, but if you--I do recall 
        looking at them side-by-side and being comfortable that 
        they were--well, at the time, I didn't look at them 
        side-by-side, but I knew from having seen intelligence 
        as early as that previous morning, Saturday morning, 
        that this was very consistent with our latest 
        information.

        Q: And you have since looked at them side-by-side?

        A: Yes.

        Q: And you're still comfortable that what was in the 
        intelligence is virtually identical to what's in that 
        bullet point?

        A: Yes.

        Q: And do you recall how recently you looked at them 
        side-by-side?

        A: Very recently.

                              *    *    *

        Q: Sure. My question is you said that you looked at 
        them recently side-by-side, correct?

        A: Yes.

        Q: And you were comfortable that what was in the 
        finished intelligence is reflected here in this bullet 
        point.

        A: Yes.

        Q: Okay. And did you recognize any differences between, 
        looking at them side-by-side, what you saw in the 
        intelligence versus what's in the bullet point?

        A: Okay. So let me be precise. What's in this bullet 
        point closely mirrored a similar paragraph in the 
        finished intelligence product that I received at the 
        same time. I'm not saying this is the sum total of what 
        I saw.

        Q: Sure. And you say it closely resembled or closely 
        mirrored. My question is, what are the differences 
        between what you reviewed and what's in here?

        A: I don't recall any substantive differences.

        Q: And you looked at this recently?

        A: Yes.\260\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \260\Id. at 49-51.

    Despite the precision by Rice and the fact she had compared 
the documents side by side very recently, ``attacks'' and 
``demonstrations'' are fundamentally different words with 
fundamentally different meanings. The specific language Rice 
received through intelligence channels relating to the attacks 
here was accurate, and what she read from the talking points 
based on demonstrations was not. The fact she testified she did 
not recall any substantive differences does not mean no 
substantive differences existed.

                      What Rice Said on the Shows

    Despite Rice's limited knowledge about the Benghazi attacks 
when she appeared on the Sunday talk shows, some of her 
comments were conclusory, some were based neither in evidence 
nor fact, and some went well beyond what even the flawed 
talking points indicated. Two months after she appeared on the 
talk shows, she stated publicly:

        When discussing the attacks against our facilities in 
        Benghazi, I relied solely and squarely on the 
        information provided to me by the intelligence 
        community. I made clear that the information was 
        preliminary and that our investigations would give us 
        the definitive answers. Everyone, particularly the 
        intelligence community, has worked in good faith to 
        provide the best assessment based on the information 
        available. You know the FBI and the State Department's 
        Accountability Review Board are conducting 
        investigations as we speak, and they will look into all 
        aspects of this heinous terrorist attack to provide 
        what will become the definitive accounting of what 
        occurred.\261\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \261\Krishnadev Calamur, Susan Rice Says Benghazi Claims Were Based 
On Information From Intelligence, NPR (Nov. 21, 2012), http://
www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/11/21/165686269/susan-rice-says-
benghazi-claims-were-based-on-information-from-intelligence.

    A close examination of what Rice actually did say on each 
of the Sunday morning shows, however, along with the 
Committee's interview with her, demonstrates she in fact went 
well beyond ``solely and squarely'' relying on the information 
provided to her by the intelligence community.\262\ In 
addition, several aspects of her Benghazi remarks--conflating 
the video with the attack, the status of the FBI investigation, 
the number of attackers, and the amount of security present at 
the State Department compound, to name a few--drifted even 
farther from the information provided to her by the 
intelligence community. An analysis of some of Rice's comments 
is below.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \262\Id. (``When discussing the attacks against our facilities in 
Benghazi, I relied solely and squarely on the information provided to 
me by the intelligence community.'').

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                            FACE THE NATION

    Face the Nation was unlike the other four shows in that 
Libyan President Mohamed el-Magariaf appeared on the show 
immediately prior to Rice. During his interview with Bob 
Schieffer, Face the Nation host, el-Magariaf, who hailed from 
Benghazi, attended university there, and had deep ties to the 
city, said there was ``no doubt'' the attacks were preplanned. 
El-Magariaf said of the attack:

        Q: Was this a long-planned attack, as far as you know? 
        Or what--what do you know about that?

        A: The way these perpetrators acted and moved, I think 
        we--and they're choosing the specific date for this so-
        called demonstration, I think we have no--this leaves 
        us with no doubt that this was preplanned, determined--
        predetermined.

        Q: And you believe that this was the work of al-Qaeda 
        and you believe that it was led by foreigners. Is 
        that--is that what you are telling us?

        A: It was planned--definitely, it was planned by 
        foreigners, by people who--who entered the country a 
        few months ago, and they were planning this criminal 
        act since their--since their arrival.

    Schieffer also asked President el-Magariaf about the FBI 
traveling to Benghazi to investigate the attacks:

        Q: Will it be safe for the FBI investigators from the 
        United States to come in, are you advising them to stay 
        away for a while?

        A: Maybe it is better for them to stay for a--for a 
        little while? For a little while, but until we--we--
        we--we do what we--we have to do ourselves. But, again, 
        we'll be in need for--for their presence to help in 
        further investigation. And, I mean any hasty action 
        will--I think is not welcomed.

    Rice appeared immediately after President el-Magariaf on 
the show. She testified to the Committee she heard el-Magariaf 
say the attacks were preplanned, and even though his comments 
did not align with the talking points she was given, she was 
unconcerned. She testified:

        Q: My question was, how did you react to that?

        A: I was surprised.

        Q: And what did you do? Were you concerned that he may 
        have known something that you did not know?

        A: I didn't know what he knew. I knew what we knew and 
        what the intelligence community's current best 
        assessment was. And so it was my responsibility to 
        faithfully relay that and not make something up on the 
        fly based on what he said.\263\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \263\Rice Testimony at 147.

    When asked about President el-Magariaf's comments by 
Schieffer, though, Rice actually disagreed with him. She 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
responded:

        Q: But you do not agree with him that this was 
        something that had been plotted out several months ago?

        A: We do not--we do not have information at present 
        that leads us to conclude that this was premeditated or 
        preplanned.

        Q: Do you agree or disagree with him that al-Qaeda had 
        some part in this?

        A: Well, we'll have to find that out. I mean I think 
        it's clear that there were extremist elements that 
        joined in and escalated the violence. Whether they were 
        al-Qaeda affiliates, whether they were Libyan-based 
        extremists or al-Qaeda itself I think is one of the 
        things we'll have to determine.\264\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \264\``Face the Nation'' transcripts, September 16, 2012: Libyan 
Pres. Magariaf, Amb. Rice and Sen. McCain, CBS News (Sept. 16, 2012), 
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/face-the-nation-
transcripts-september-16-2012-libyan-pres-magariaf-amb-rice-and-sen-
mccain.

    Notwithstanding intelligence Rice had seen indicating that 
al-Qaeda extremists were involved in the attacks\265\--and that 
the first draft of the HPSCI talking points also noted this 
fact\266\--the fallout of Rice's disagreement with President 
el-Magariaf was large. According to Hicks, the top American 
official in Libya at the time, Rice's comments prevented the 
FBI from going to Benghazi for a number of weeks. He testified:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \265\September 13 WIRe, supra note 123; Rice Testimony at 42.
    \266\Talking Points Timeline, ABC News, http://abcnews.go.com/
images/Politics/Benghazi%20Talking%20Points%20Timeline.pdf (last 
visited May 17, 2016).

        Q: Do you think those statements had an effect going 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        forward? What difference did those statements make?

        A: I think that they affected cooperation with the 
        Libyans. I mean, I have heard from a friend who had 
        dinner with President Magariaf in New York City that he 
        was still angry at Ambassador Rice well after the 
        incident.

        You know, the Libyan Government doesn't have a deep 
        bench. President, Prime Minister, Deputy Prime 
        Minister, Minister. After that, nah, not much there. 
        Some ministries, yeah, you can go--it goes three deep, 
        it goes down three layers. Most ministries it's just 
        the Minister. So if the President of the country isn't 
        behind something, it's going to be pretty hard to make 
        it happen.

        And I firmly believe that the reason it took us so long 
        to get the FBI to Benghazi is because of those Sunday 
        talk shows. And, you know, frankly, we never, ever had 
        official approval from the Libyan Government to send 
        the FBI to Benghazi. We stitched together a series of 
        lower-level agreements to support from relevant groups, 
        and we sat around in the meeting and we said, well, 
        guys, this is as good as it gets in Libya. And we 
        looked at the legat [legal attache] and said, call it 
        in, this is your shot. Call it in to D.C. and see if 
        they're ready--if they're willing to send a team. And 
        that's how--that's how the FBI got to Benghazi.\267\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \267\Hicks Testimony at 232.

    In her interview with Bob Schieffer, Rice also discussed 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
the FBI investigation. She said:

        Q: Madam Ambassador, he says this is something that has 
        been in the planning stages for months. I understand 
        you have been saying that you think it was spontaneous? 
        Are we not on the same page here?

        A: Bob, let me tell you what we understand to be the 
        assessment at present. First of all, very importantly, 
        as you discussed with the President, there is an 
        investigation that the United States government will 
        launch led by the FBI, that has begun and----

        Q: (overlapping) But they are not there.

        A: They are not on the ground yet, but they have 
        already begun looking at all sorts of evidence of--of 
        various sorts already available to them and to us. And 
        they will get on the ground and continue the 
        investigation. So we'll want to see the results of that 
        investigation to draw any definitive conclusions. But 
        based on the best information we have to date, what our 
        assessment is as of the present is in fact what began 
        spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had 
        transpired some hours earlier in Cairo where, of 
        course, as you know, there was a violent protest 
        outside of our embassy----

    In her comments Rice states the FBI has ``already begun 
looking at all sorts of evidence.''\268\ Yet nobody from the 
FBI or Justice Department was on the preparation call with her 
the day before the shows, and she did not know what evidence 
the FBI had already ``begun'' reviewing, despite her claim that 
the FBI was doing so. In addition, she did not rely on the 
HPSCI talking points here when discussing the FBI 
investigation, as the talking points indicated only ``the 
investigation is ongoing;''\269\ earlier she claimed she had 
solely relied on those points when talking about Benghazi.\270\ 
The Chairman had the following exchange with her about this 
topic:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \268\``Face the Nation'' transcripts, September 16, 2012: Libyan 
Pres. Magariaf, Amb. Rice and Sen. McCain, CBS News (Sept. 16, 2012), 
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/face-the-nation-
transcripts-september-16-2012-libyan-pres-magariaf-amb-rice-and-sen-
mccain.
    \269\Talking Points Timeline, ABC News, http://abcnews.go.com/
images/Politics/Benghazi%20Talking%20Points%20Timeline.pdf (last 
visited May 17, 2016).
    \270\See, e.g., Krishnadev Calamur, Susan Rice Says Benghazi Claims 
Were Based On Information From Intelligence, NPR (Nov. 21, 2012), 
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/11/21/165686269/susan-rice-
says-benghazi-claims-were-based-on-information-from-intelligence.

        Q: If you go back when the issue was first broached. 
        ``Well, Bob, let me tell you what we understand to be 
        the assessment at present. First of all, very 
        importantly, as you discussed with the president, there 
        is an investigation that the United States government 
        will launch, led by the FBI that has begun.'' Then your 
        next comment is, ``They are not on the ground yet but 
        they have already begun looking at all sorts of 
        evidence.'' What were they looking at that you knew 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        about?

        A: I didn't know specifically what evidence, but I knew 
        that the investigation had begun and that they would do 
        as they customarily do, try to gather as much evidence 
        as possible.

        Q: They do customarily try to do that; you are correct. 
        But your statement was, ``They have already begun 
        looking at all sorts of evidence.'' Who told you that?

        A: I don't recall exactly who told me that.

        Q: Do you know when you would have been told that?

        A: I don't know exactly when but sometime between 
        September 11th and September 16th.

        Q: And there was no one from law enforcement on the 4 
        p.m. call?

        A: No, not to my knowledge.

        Q: Do you recall talking to anyone with the Bureau 
        [FBI] before you went on the Sunday morning talk shows?

        A: No.

        Q: Well, this is what I'm trying to reconcile. If you 
        didn't talk to anyone with the FBI, who would have told 
        you that they had all sorts of evidence?

        A: I didn't say they had--``they have begun looking at 
        all sorts of evidence.'' I was aware, as a senior U.S. 
        policymaker, that we had announced there was an FBI 
        investigation already underway and that that 
        investigation would involve gathering and looking at 
        all sorts of evidence.

        Q: All right. But you go on to say ``already available 
        to them and to us.'' What evidence was already 
        available to you?

        A: To me personally, none.

        Q: Then why would you have said ``available to them and 
        to us''?

        A: I meant to the administration.

        Q: Do you know what was available to the 
        administration?

        A: Not precisely at this point.

        Q: Not at this point or not at the point that you----

        A: At the time.

        Q: You did not know at the time what evidence was 
        available to the administration.

        A: That's correct.

        Q: Then why would you say ``already available to them 
        and to us''?

        A: Because I knew that we had already begun the process 
        of gathering information, both from an intelligence 
        side as well as from the law enforcement side.

        Q: All right. I'm with you on the intelligence side, 
        but this--but I can't find an interview that you 
        conducted where you did not use ``the FBI.'' And what 
        I'm trying to understand is what was the source of your 
        information from the FBI.

        A: I didn't have any specific information from the FBI. 
        I was aware of and what I was trying to convey is that 
        the FBI was in the process of beginning its 
        investigation.

        Q: So if you were to say they already had begun looking 
        at all sorts of evidence of various sorts already 
        available to them and to us, in fact, you were not 
        available--you were not aware of what evidence they 
        had.

        A: I knew they were looking at intelligence among other 
        sources of evidence.\271\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \271\Rice Testimony at 96-98.

    Rice used the imprimatur of the FBI as a highly respected 
law enforcement agency and then conflated the fact they had 
begun an investigation with her statement the Bureau was 
``already looking at all sorts of evidence.'' In reality, Rice 
had no idea what the FBI was doing and where the investigation 
stood. The FBI would ultimately secure possession of the 
surveillance video from cameras on the Benghazi compound over a 
week later, but that video was not yet available to the 
Bureau--or the U.S. government--and once it became available, 
it impeached many aspects of the administration's initial 
assessment about the attacks.
    Other evidence available to the Bureau at the time of 
Rice's Sunday morning talk show appearances would have included 
eyewitness accounts from both State Department and CIA 
witnesses who survived the attacks. The administration either 
did not avail itself of these eyewitness accounts or completely 
ignored what these witnesses had to say. These accounts would 
contradict most of the administration's initial public 
statements about both the existence of a protest and a link 
between the attacks in Benghazi and an internet video.
    Rice invoked the name of a premiere law enforcement agency, 
indicated all sorts of evidence was available to them and then 
proceeded to recite talking points that would later be utterly 
impeached by the information that was gathered by the Bureau. 
Currently, the FBI's investigative position is reflected in 
both the charging instrument in U.S. v. Ahmed Abu Khattalah as 
well as various pre-trial motions. Instead of validating Rice's 
comments, the FBI's current assessment of what happened in 
Benghazi is closer to being the opposite of what Rice described 
on national television.
    When discussing the spontaneity of the attack, Rice also 
used definitive language about what had transpired. Such 
definitive language was not consistent with the HPSCI talking 
points. She had the following exchange with the Chairman about 
that comment:

        Q: ``Our best current assessment, based on the 
        information that we have at present, is that, in fact, 
        what this began as, it was a spontaneous''--what did 
        you mean by ``in fact''?

        A: What I meant was that what we understood to be the 
        case at the time was as I described. It was 
        spontaneous, not premeditated, et cetera.

        Q: But why would you use the--why would you use the 
        phrase ``in fact''? Ranking Member Schiff took great 
        pains to talk about all the qualifying language that 
        you used. ``In fact'' strikes me as being more 
        definitive than qualifying language.

        A: Given all the qualifiers that I put in here, I was 
        not trying to convey that what I was saying was the 
        last and final word on this.

        Q: Okay. What does the word ``premeditated'' mean to 
        you?

        A: It means that whoever was involved had planned in 
        advance to do what they did.

        Q: How much planning would need to have taken place for 
        it to qualify as premeditated or preplanned?

        A: I don't have a clear answer to that.

        Q: Well, you specifically said it was not preplanned 
        and not premeditated. So I'm trying to get an 
        understanding of how short a period of time something 
        would need to be planned to not be preplanned or 
        premeditated. What time period?

        A: I don't have a definitive answer to that question. 
        What I was trying to do, sir, is to convey, consistent 
        with the talking points that this was, to the best of 
        our understanding, a spontaneous reaction. And, to me, 
        the antithesis of ``spontaneous'' is ``preplanned or 
        premeditated.'' I was trying to say the same thing in a 
        slightly different way.\272\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \272\Id. at 101-102.

    It is unclear why Rice used such definitive language when 
the talking points she reviewed and relied on did not use 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
similarly strong language.

                  THIS WEEK WITH GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS

    It was during her appearance on This Week when Rice made 
the clearest link between the video and the Benghazi attacks. 
She said:

        Q: It just seems that the U.S. government is powerless 
        as this--as this maelstrom erupts.

        A: It's actually the opposite. First of all, let's be 
        clear about what transpired here. What happened this 
        week in Cairo, in Benghazi, in many other parts of the 
        region . . .

        Q: Tunisia, Khartoum . . .

        A: . . .was a result--a direct result of a heinous and 
        offensive video that was widely disseminated, that the 
        U.S. government had nothing to do with, which we have 
        made clear is reprehensible and disgusting. We have 
        also been very clear in saying that there is no excuse 
        for violence, there is--that we have condemned it in 
        the strongest possible terms.

        But let's look at what's happened. It's quite the 
        opposite of being impotent. We have worked with the 
        governments in Egypt. President Obama picked up the 
        phone and talked to President Morsi in Egypt. And as 
        soon as he did that, the security provided to our 
        personnel in our embassies dramatically increased.\273\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \273\`This Week' Transcript: U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations 
Susan Rice, ABC News (Sept. 16, 2012), http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/
week-transcript-us-ambassador-united-nations-susan-rice/
story?id=17240933.

    In her comments, Rice stated ``what happened this week in 
Cairo, in Benghazi, in many other parts of the region . . . was 
a result--a direct result--of a heinous and video that was 
widely disseminated.''\274\ Nowhere in the HPSCI talking 
points--which Rice said she relied on ``solely and squarely''--
is there a mention of a direct link to the video. In fact, 
there is no mention of a link to a video at all, and the 
Committee is not aware of any mention of a direct link to the 
video in any intelligence Rice reviewed prior to her appearance 
on This Week. In mentioning a direct link to the video, Rice 
strayed far beyond her talking points and provided incorrect 
information.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \274\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Rice told the Committee she was not trying to use the 
talking points here, and may have misspoke. She testified:

        Q: Okay. We will go through those transcripts. But to 
        the extent you were linking Benghazi and suggesting 
        that there were protests there, your statement--and 
        tell me if you disagree with this--your statement that 
        what occurred in Benghazi was a result, and then for 
        emphasis you say ``a direct result,'' of the heinous 
        and offensive video.'' I mean, do you believe that you 
        went a little bit beyond what was in the talking points 
        in making that statement?

        A: I wasn't even trying to utilize the talking points 
        here. I was talking about what had happened around the 
        world. That's what I meant to be focused on.

        Q: So when you included Benghazi, did you--was that--
        did you misspeak?

        A: Quite possibly.

        Q: Because you would agree that, at the time you made 
        this statement on Mr. Tapper's show, the information 
        you had did not--did not state that there was a direct 
        connection between the video and what occurred in 
        Benghazi.

        A: That's right. And that's why I was, I think, more 
        precise in the other transcripts.\275\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \275\Rice Testimony at 115-16.

    Rice later testified that she was ``very careful'' to link 
the video to what happened in Cairo. Despite her comments on 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This Week, Rice told the Committee:

        What I can say is that I--we have been through this, 
        but I was very careful to link the video to what 
        happened in Cairo and to other posts around the world. 
        I did not say that the attack on Benghazi was directly 
        caused by the video.\276\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \276\Id. at 166.

    Morell, a career CIA analyst who rose through the ranks to 
become Deputy Director and Acting Director, disagrees with 
Rice's analysis of her own comments. Morell said that a ``good 
bit of what she said was consistent with the CIA points, but 
she also said that the video had led to the protests in 
Benghazi. Why she said this I do not know. It is a question 
that only she can answer.''\277\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \277\Morell, supra note 114, at 228-29.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Rice also stated on This Week that there was a 
``substantial'' security presence at the United States 
``consulate'' in Benghazi. She said:

        Q: Why was there such a security breakdown? Why was 
        there not better security at the compound in Benghazi? 
        Why were there not U.S. Marines at the embassy in 
        Tripoli?

        A: Well, first of all, we had a substantial security 
        presence with our personnel . . .

        Q: Not substantial enough, though, right?

        A: . . . with our personnel and the consulate in 
        Benghazi. Tragically, two of the four Americans who 
        were killed were there providing security. That was 
        their function. And indeed, there were many other 
        colleagues who were doing the same with them.

        It obviously didn't prove sufficient to the--the nature 
        of the attack and sufficient in that--in that moment. 
        And that's why, obviously, we have reinforced our 
        remaining presence in Tripoli and why the president has 
        very--been very clear that in Libya and throughout the 
        region we are going to call on the governments, first 
        of all, to assume their responsibilities to protect our 
        facilities and our personnel, and we're reinforcing our 
        facilities and our--our embassies where possible...

    The State Department facility in Benghazi was not a 
consulate. The talking points provided to Rice about Benghazi 
did not mention anything about a consulate. In fact, the term 
``consulate'' was specifically edited out of the talking points 
for accuracy before they were provided to Rice. A consulate is 
formally notified to the host government--something the 
Benghazi diplomatic post was not--and provides certain services 
to citizens.
    As a former Assistant Secretary of State, Rice knew there 
was a difference between a consulate and diplomatic post. She 
testified to the Committee that she may have misspoke on this 
point and, with a statement of fact, acknowledged the 
difference:

        Q: So, following along, top of page 4, you say, ``With 
        our personnel and the consulate in Benghazi.'' Was 
        there a consulate in Benghazi?

        A: It was a diplomatic post.

        Q: Why did you say ``consulate'' if there was no 
        consulate in Benghazi?

        A: I may have misspoke.

        Q: Okay. Is there a difference between a consulate and 
        a diplomatic post?

        A: Yes, in fact, there is.\278\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \278\Rice Testimony at 106.

    In addition, the mention of a consulate may imply to some a 
stronger fortification than a diplomatic post, perhaps 
indicating an additional amount of security. While a 
``substantial security presence'' is the point Rice was 
attempting to convey--and as the Accountability Review Board 
made clear--the security presence at the State Department 
facility in Benghazi was nowhere near substantial.\279\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \279\Benghazi ARB, supra note 20, at 31-33.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Morell wrote in his book the ``harder statement'' for Rice 
to explain is why she ``said that there was a `substantial 
security presence' in Benghazi, as that point was not in either 
CIA or the White House talking points.''\280\ Rice explained to 
the Committee about what she meant when she said there was a 
substantial security presence:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \280\Morell, supra note 114, at 229.

        Q: What did you mean, you said, ``We had a substantial 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        security presence with our personnel''?

        A: I meant what I just said.

        Q: What does a substantial security presence mean to 
        you?

        A: It means significant, more than one, more than two, 
        more than three.

        Q: Did you have any indication of how many security 
        personnel were actually with the State Department in 
        Benghazi?

        A: Did I have any indication?

        Q: Did you have any indication at the time you made the 
        comments how many State Department personnel, security 
        personnel, were in Benghazi?

        A: I knew we had a Diplomatic Security presence.

        Q: Okay.

        A: I knew we had contractors.

        Q: Okay.

        A: I knew that two of the people who had been killed 
        were there in a security capacity.

        Q: Okay. But in terms of ``substantial security 
        presence,'' to you that means more than one individual?

        A: It means--it can--certainly means more than one. But 
        it doesn't mean--I wasn't trying to say it means 10, it 
        means 20, it means 50. It was substantial.

        Q: Is ``substantial security presence'' more than one? 
        Is that--in all situations, does a substantial security 
        presence mean more than one, or are you referring 
        specifically to Benghazi in this case?

        A: I was referring to Benghazi.

        Q: Okay.

        A: But I was also making the point, as you'll see 
        subsequently, that it obviously didn't prove sufficient 
        to the attack.

        Q: Okay. So I just want to make sure I'm clear. 
        ``Substantial security presence,'' in your mind, can 
        mean two individuals.

        A: I didn't say that.

        Q: You said more than one.

        A: I said more than one, more than two--we can keep 
        going. I didn't mean to imply.\281\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \281\Rice Testimony at 103-05.

    Rice was mistaken again in stating there were State 
Department security contractors in Benghazi. The security 
contractors who died in the Benghazi attacks worked for the 
CIA--and their job was to protect the CIA facility in Benghazi, 
not the State Department facility. Rice, whether intentionally 
or negligently, presented misleading information about the size 
of the security presence at the State Department facility in 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benghazi.

                            FOX NEWS SUNDAY

    Rice also characterized the level of security in Benghazi 
on Fox News Sunday--something that was not in her talking 
points. She said:

        Q: All right. And the last question, terror cells in 
        Benghazi had carried out five attacks since April, 
        including one at the same consulate, a bombing at the 
        same consulate in June. Should U.S. security have been 
        tighter at that consulate given the history of terror 
        activity in Benghazi?

        A: Well, we obviously did have a strong security 
        presence. And, unfortunately, two of the four Americans 
        who died in Benghazi were there to provide security. 
        But it wasn't sufficient in the circumstances to 
        prevent the overrun of the consulate. This is among the 
        things that will be looked at as the investigation 
        unfolds and it's also why----

        Q: Is there any feeling that it should have been 
        stronger beforehand?

        A: It's also why we increased our presence, our 
        security presence in Tripoli in the aftermath of this, 
        as well as in other parts of the world. I can't judge 
        that, Chris. I'm--we have to see what the assessment 
        reveals. But, obviously, there was a significant 
        security presence defending our consulate and our other 
        facility in Benghazi and that did not prove sufficient 
        to the moment.\282\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \282\Amb. Susan Rice, Rep. Mike Rogers discuss violence against 
Americans in the Middle East, Fox News Sunday (Sept. 16, 2012), http://
www.foxnews.com/on-air/fox-news-sunday-chris-
wallace/2012/09/16/amb-susan-rice-rep-mike-rogers-discuss-violence-
against-americans-middle-east#p//v/1843960658001.

    When asked about the use of the word ``strong'' versus 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
``substantial,'' as she said on This Week, Rice responded:

        Q: Okay. Just a couple more questions about your 
        interview with Mr. Wallace. Your next response: ``Well, 
        we obviously did have a strong security presence.'' 
        What did you mean when you said ``strong security 
        presence''?

        A: I think we had this exchange over another adjective 
        I used.

        Q: That was ``substantial.'' I'm asking you about 
        ``strong.''

        A: The same answer applies.

        Q: Same answer? Okay. So more than one?

        A: That wasn't my prior answer.\283\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \283\Rice Testimony at 125.

    In her appearance on Fox News Sunday¸ Rice noted 
``two of the four Americans who died in Benghazi were there to 
provide security. But it wasn't sufficient in the circumstances 
to prevent the overrun of the consulate.''\284\ This statement 
implies the two security officers who died were tasked with 
protecting the State Department facility. They were not; their 
job was solely to protect the CIA facility and CIA personnel. 
In reality the two she referenced--Glen Doherty and Tyrone 
Woods--were killed because the inadequate security at the State 
Department facility in Benghazi was not sufficient to repel the 
initial attack thus necessitating aid from CIA contractors at 
the Annex in Benghazi and from Tripoli.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \284\Amb. Susan Rice, Rep. Mike Rogers discuss violence against 
Americans in the Middle East, Fox News Sunday (Sept. 16, 2012), http://
www.foxnews.com/on-air/fox-news-sunday-chris-
wallace/2012/09/16/amb-susan-rice-rep-mike-rogers-discuss-violence-
against-americans-middle-east#p//v/1843960658001.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In the case of Glen Doherty, not only was he not in 
Benghazi to provide security for the Benghazi Mission compound, 
he was not in Benghazi at all--at least initially. He left 
Tripoli to respond to the attacks in Benghazi precisely because 
State Department security proved inadequate. And neither 
Doherty nor Tyrone Woods were killed in the ``overrun of the 
consulate.'' As noted above, there was no ``consulate'' in 
Benghazi and the Benghazi Mission compound was ``overrun'' 
hours before Doherty and Woods were killed.
    Rice's appearance on Fox News Sunday is also where she was 
imprecise--again--in discussing the FBI investigation. 
Specifically, she said:

        Q: Let's talk about the attack on the U.S. consulate in 
        Benghazi this week that killed four Americans, 
        including Ambassador Chris Stevens. The top Libyan 
        official says that the attack on Tuesday was, quote, 
        his words ''preplanned.'' Al Qaeda says the operation 
        was revenge for our killing a top Al Qaeda leader. What 
        do we know?

        A: Well, first of all, Chris, we are obviously 
        investigating this very closely. The FBI has a lead in 
        this investigation. The information, the best 
        information and the best assessment we have today is 
        that in fact this was not a preplanned, premeditated 
        attack. That what happened initially was that it was a 
        spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired in 
        Cairo as a consequence of the video. People gathered 
        outside the embassy and then it grew very violent and 
        those with extremist ties joined the fray and came with 
        heavy weapons, which unfortunately are quite common in 
        post-revolutionary Libya and that then spun out of 
        control.\285\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \285\Id.

    Significantly, Rice noted the ``FBI has a lead in this 
investigation.''\286\ This critical distinction may have 
incorrectly implied to some the FBI was making significant 
progress in the nascent investigation. The Chairman had the 
following exchange with Rice about this topic:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \286\Id.

        Q: On one of the occasions, you said--this is to Chris 
        Wallace--``The FBI has a lead in this investigation.'' 
        How would you have learned that if you had not talked 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        to the FBI?

        A: Because I was aware, as a senior policymaker, that 
        the FBI has a lead role in conducting investigations in 
        this circumstance and others like it.

        Q: But there's a tremendous difference between the FBI 
        has ``the lead'' and the FBI has ``a lead.'' ``A lead'' 
        is a law enforcement term that we have a suspect, we 
        have a lead.

        A: No, no, no. Excuse me. That was not what I was 
        trying to say. I was saying they had the lead, as in 
        the leadership role, not a lead on a suspect in the 
        investigation.

        Q: All right. So at least with respect to that 
        transcript, you intended the article ``the'' instead of 
        the article ``a'' to modify the lead. You were not 
        suggesting that they had a lead but that they were 
        taking the lead in the investigation.

        A: That's what I meant.

        Q: Okay. All right.\287\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \287\Rice Testimony at 95.

    In her interview with the Committee, Rice said that in the 
future, perhaps a ``no comment'' regarding an FBI investigation 
would be more appropriate. She had the following exchange with 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
the Chairman:

        Q: I guess this is what I am getting at, just from a 
        broader perspective. We all hear, whether it's Attorney 
        General Holder, Attorney General Lynch, really anybody 
        in the criminal justice realm just doesn't comment on 
        ongoing investigations. They don't make comments and 
        use qualifying predicates. They just say: Look, I don't 
        know. And I am not going to answer your question until 
        the investigation is complete. Why not respond that way 
        when you were asked on the Sunday morning talk shows?

        A: Sir, I wasn't trying to qualify or characterize the 
        investigation. I was trying to indicate that there was 
        an investigation, that it was going to be thorough, and 
        that it would reveal the best information as to what 
        had transpired.

        Q: I am not challenging that. I am just saying instead 
        of saying, ``Our best assessment at this time is that 
        it was not premeditated, not preplanned, that it was 
        spontaneous,'' one out of five references to the video, 
        why not just say, ``The investigation has just begun; 
        we don't know; and I am not going to guess''?

        A: Because our intelligence community, in response to a 
        request from HPSCI, had provided talking points along 
        the lines that we have discussed multiple times now. 
        And those talking points, which you and your colleagues 
        would have gone out with, were more detailed than 
        simply saying, ``I don't know.''

        Q: Right. But you and I both know in hindsight that the 
        talking points, at least to some degree, were wrong. So 
        I guess the lesson moving forward is maybe we should 
        just say, ``It's an ongoing investigation, and I am not 
        going to comment on it.''

        A: Maybe we should.\288\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \288\Id. at 146-147.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Rice also said the following on Fox News Sunday:

        But we don't see at this point signs this was a 
        coordinated plan, premeditated attack. Obviously, we 
        will wait for the results of the investigation and we 
        don't want to jump to conclusions before then. But I do 
        think it's important for the American people to know 
        our best current assessment.\289\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \289\Amb. Susan Rice, Rep. Mike Rogers discuss violence against 
Americans in the Middle East, Fox News Sunday (Sept. 16, 2012), http://
www.foxnews.com/on-air/fox-news-sunday-chris-
wallace/2012/09/16/amb-susan-rice-rep-mike-rogers-discuss-violence-
against-americans-middle-east#p//v/1843960658001.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Rice testified to the Committee about these comments:

        Q: But when you said, ``We don't see at this point 
        signs,'' did you mean to say that there were no signs, 
        or did you mean to say that there was no conclusion 
        that it was a coordinated, premeditated attack?

        A: I didn't purport to draw any final conclusions at 
        any point during these interviews. I was very careful 
        to underscore that I was providing the current best 
        information and that information could change.\290\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \290\Rice Testimony at 125.

    Rather than noting that no final conclusions had been drawn 
by the intelligence community about premeditation, however, 
Rice instead chose to state there were ``no signs'' at all of 
any premeditation.\291\ In this regard she not only went beyond 
the talking points she was provided, but she was also 
incorrect.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \291\See Amb. Susan Rice, Rep. Mike Rogers discuss violence against 
Americans in the Middle East, Fox News Sunday (Sept. 16, 2012), http://
www.foxnews.com/on-air/fox-news-sunday-chris-wallace/2012/09/16/amb-
susan-rice-rep-mike-rogers-discuss-violence-against-americans-middle-
east#p//v/1843960658001.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In fact, multiple signs existed at the time she appeared on 
Fox News Sunday that the attack may have been premeditated. 
[redacted text]\292\ Another piece of intelligence from 
September 13 indicated that an attack was imminent--mere 
minutes away--and known by multiple parties.\293\ Rice could 
have made her point by simply saying ``our current assessment 
is that the attack was neither coordinated nor premeditated.'' 
Instead, she chose to go a step further and, inaccurately, 
state ``we don't at this point see signs this was a coordinated 
plan.''\294\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \292\[Redacted text].
    \293\[Redacted text].
    \294\Amb. Susan Rice, Rep. Mike Rogers discuss violence against 
Americans in the Middle East, Fox News Sunday (Sept. 16, 2012), http://
www.foxnews.com/on-air/fox-news-sunday-chris-
wallace/2012/09/16/amb-susan-rice-rep-mike-rogers-discuss-violence-
against-americans-middle-east#p//v/1843960658001.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                             MEET THE PRESS

    Rice's comments on Meet the Press are perhaps the most 
egregious diversion from the talking points provided to her 
about Benghazi. She said:

        Well, let us--let me tell you the--the best information 
        we have at present. First of all, there's an FBI 
        investigation which is ongoing. And we look to that 
        investigation to give us the definitive word as to what 
        transpired. But putting together the best information 
        that we have available to us today, our current 
        assessment is that what happened in Benghazi was in 
        fact initially a spontaneous reaction to what had just 
        transpired hours before in Cairo, almost a copycat of--
        of the demonstrations against our facility in Cairo, 
        which were prompted, of course, by the video. What we 
        think then transpired in Benghazi is that opportunistic 
        extremist elements came to the consulate as this was 
        unfolding. They came with heavy weapons which 
        unfortunately are readily available in post-
        revolutionary Libya. And it escalated into a much more 
        violent episode. Obviously, that's--that's our best 
        judgment now. We'll await the results of the 
        investigation. And the president has been very clear--
        we'll work with the Libyan authorities to bring those 
        responsible to justice.\295\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \295\Meet the Press September 16: Benjamin Netanyahu, Susan Rice, 
Keith Ellison, Peter King, Bob Woodward, Jeffrey Goldberg, Andrea 
Mitchell, NBC News (Sept. 16, 2012), http://www.nbcnews.com/id/
49051097/ns/meet_the_press-transcripts/t/september-benjamin-netanyahu-
susan-rice-keith-ellison-peter-king-bob-woodward-jeffrey-goldberg-
andrea-mitchell/#.Vzozl_krJaQ.

    At the time of her appearance, Rice should have known what 
transpired in Benghazi was not a ``copycat'' of what had 
transpired in Cairo. On September 11, the day of the Cairo 
demonstrations and Benghazi attacks, she received frequent 
email updates about both events.\296\ Additionally, Rice 
received daily intelligence briefings from the CIA, and she 
received a briefing each day from September 12 to September 15. 
Out of scores and scores of intelligence products pertaining to 
Benghazi provided to the Committee, not a single one said what 
transpired in Benghazi was ``almost a copycat of'' what 
transpired in Cairo.\297\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \296\See, e.g., Email from U.S. Dep't of State, to Susan E. Rice, 
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., et al. (Sept. 11, 2012, 7:55 PM) (on file 
with the Committee, C05390691); Email from Senior Advisor to the U.S. 
Permanent Representative to the U.N., U.S. Mission to the U.N., to 
Susan E. Rice, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., et al. (Sept. 11, 2012, 
6:41 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05561948); and Email from Senior 
Advisor to the U.S. Permanent Representative to the U.N., U.S. Mission 
to the U.N., to Susan E. Rice, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., et al. 
(Sept. 11, 2012, 11:53 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0051721).
    \297\Meet the Press September 16: Benjamin Netanyahu, Susan Rice, 
Keith Ellison, Peter King, Bob Woodward, Jeffrey Goldberg, Andrea 
Mitchell, NBC News (Sept. 16, 2012), http://www.nbcnews.com/id/
49051097/ns/meet_the_press-transcripts/t/september-benjamin-netanyahu-
susan-rice-keith-ellison-peter-king-bob-woodward-jeffrey-goldberg-
andrea-mitchell/#.Vzozl_
krJaQ.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Rice acknowledges that nowhere in the talking points was 
information indicating the Benghazi attack was a copycat of the 
Cairo protest. She testified:

        Q: Now, you would agree with me that nowhere in the CIA 
        talking points does it describe what occurred in 
        Benghazi and what occurred in Cairo as almost a copycat 
        of each other? You would agree with me on that?

        A: I would agree with you on that.

        Q: So would you also agree with me that describing what 
        occurred in Benghazi as almost a copycat of Cairo was 
        really overstating what was known at the time and 
        certainly overstating what was in the talking points?

        A: I don't know that it was overstating or even 
        misstating. But I would agree that the word ``copycat'' 
        does not appear in the talking points.\298\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \298\Rice Testimony at 129-130.

    In a later portion of her Meet the Press appearance, Rice 
connected the video with the Benghazi attacks, as she had with 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
other appearances on the talk shows. She said:

        Q: The president and the secretary of state have talked 
        about a mob mentality. That's my words, not their 
        words, but they talked about the--the tyranny of mobs 
        operating in this part of the world. Here's the 
        reality, if you look at foreign aid--U.S. direct 
        foreign aid to the two countries involved here, in 
        Libya and Egypt, this is what you'd see: two hundred 
        million since 2011 to Libya, over a billion a year to 
        Egypt and yet Americans are seeing these kinds of 
        protests and attacks on our own diplomats. Would--what 
        do you say to members of congress who are now weighing 
        whether to suspend our aid to these countries if this 
        is the response that America gets?

        A: Well, first of all, David, let's put this in 
        perspective. As I said, this is a response to a--a very 
        offensive video. It's not the first time that American 
        facilities have come under attack in the Middle East, 
        going back to 1982 in--in Beirut, going back to the 
        Khobar Towers in--in Saudi Arabia, or even the attack 
        on our embassy in 2008 in Yemen.

        Q: Or Iran in 1979.

        A: This has--this has happened in the past, but there--
        and so I don't think that--that we should misunderstand 
        what this is. The reason we provide aid in Egypt and in 
        Libya is because it serves American interests because 
        the relationships . . .\299\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \299\Meet the Press September 16: Benjamin Netanyahu, Susan Rice, 
Keith Ellison, Peter King, Bob Woodward, Jeffrey Goldberg, Andrea 
Mitchell, NBC News (Sept. 16, 2012), http://www.nbcnews.com/id/
49051097/ns/meet_the_press-transcripts/t/september-benjamin-netanyahu-
susan-rice-keith-ellison-peter-king-bob-woodward-jeffrey-goldberg-
andrea-mitchell/#.Vzozl_krJaQ.

    In this part of the conversation, David Gregory, Meet the 
Press moderator, and Rice are discussing foreign aid to both 
Egypt and Libya. Gregory mentions both countries twice in the 
lead-in to his question. Rice responds and says to ``put this 
in perspective . . . this is a response to a--a very offensive 
video. It's not the first time American facilities have come 
under attack in the Middle East . . .''\300\ She does not 
distinguish what happened in Libya to what happened in Egypt in 
her response, and ties the video to both incidents. After a 
brief interjection by Gregory, Rice mentions providing aid to 
both Libya and Egypt.\301\ Nowhere in Rice's comments is Libya 
distinguished from Egypt, indicating she did not intend for her 
comment about the video to apply to just Egypt, but rather both 
countries.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \300\Id.
    \301\See Id.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                           STATE OF THE UNION

    On State of the Union, Rice spoke of the number of 
attackers at the Benghazi Mission compound. Nowhere in the 
talking points--on which she said she solely and squarely 
relied--is there any mention of the number of protesters. Rice 
said:

        Q: But this was sort of a reset, was it not? It was 
        supposed to be a reset of U.S.-Muslim relations?

        A: And indeed, in fact, there had been substantial 
        improvements. I have been to Libya and walked the 
        streets of Benghazi myself. And despite what we saw in 
        that horrific incident where some mob was hijacked 
        ultimately by a handful of extremists, the United 
        States is extremely popular in Libya and the outpouring 
        of sympathy and support for Ambassador Stevens and his 
        colleagues from the government, from people is evidence 
        of that . . .\302\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \302\State of the Union with Candy Crowley Interview with Susan 
Rice, CNN (Sept. 16, 2012), http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/
1209/16/sotu.01.html.

    In her interview with the Committee, Rice acknowledged this 
information was not in the talking points and was unsure where 
she got the information about the number of attackers. She 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
testified:

        Q: Now, you respond, ``And indeed, in fact, there had 
        been substantial improvements. I have been to Libya and 
        walked the streets of Benghazi myself. And despite what 
        we saw in that horrific incident where some mob was 
        hijacked ultimately by a handful of extremists, the 
        United States is extremely popular in Libya and the 
        outpouring of sympathy and support for Ambassador 
        Stevens and his colleagues from the government, from 
        people is evidence of that.''

        Where did you get the fact that there was a handful of 
        extremists that had hijacked what occurred in Benghazi? 
        I mean, our understanding, even at the time, the 
        information was that there were 20 attackers. That 
        went--that number went to 50-plus, and then it went to 
        over 100. Where did you get the number ``a handful,'' 
        which, in my mind anyway, is about five?

        A: I don't recall exactly where I got that from.

        Q: It's not in the talking points, certainly.

        A: Talking points say that ``the demonstrations in 
        Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at 
        the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct 
        assault against the diplomatic post in Benghazi and 
        subsequently its annex. There are indications that 
        extremists participated in the violent 
        demonstrations.''

        Q: That's correct. But nowhere in what you just read 
        does the CIA or the intelligence community attribute a 
        number to the number of extremists that took place in--
        took part in the attacks, correct?

        A: Not in these talking points.

        Q: Okay. Do you believe that you received that 
        information from another source?

        A: I don't recall.

        Q: But you do believe somebody told you that?

        A: I don't recall exactly how I acquired that 
        information.\303\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \303\Rice Testimony at 121-22.

    Conveying a ``handful'' of individuals hijacked a mob had 
significant implications. By claiming only a handful of 
individuals, rather than a larger amount, were involved in the 
attack, Rice may have conveyed to the audience a sense that 
only a very small number of people were angry enough to attack 
the U.S. facility. Had Rice said more than a ``handful'' of 
people attacked the compound--which video evidence shows to be 
the case--she may have conveyed more widespread problems in 
Libya, potentially raising the very policy questions Rhodes 
strove so specifically to avoid in his September 14 briefing 
memo.\304\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \304\See Rhodes Memo, supra note 3 (``[T]hese protests are rooted 
in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    While Rice was on message in the following clause of the 
sentence--``the United States is extremely popular in Libya,'' 
indicating a successful Libya policy--unfortunately, the United 
States evacuated its embassy in Tripoli in July 2014 and today 
does not have an official diplomatic presence in Libya.

                     REACTIONS TO THE SUNDAY SHOWS

    The reaction to Rice's comments on the Sunday talk shows 
was as divided as it was quick. Many felt Rice presented 
information not based in fact, while others believed she simply 
stuck assiduously to the talking points she had been given.

               ``Off The Reservation on Five Networks!''

    Even though the Secretary did not appear on the Sunday talk 
shows, she monitored what Rice said on those shows. As the 
transcript for each show became available late Sunday morning 
into early Sunday afternoon, Sullivan sent a copy of the 
transcript to the Secretary with an accompanying note. The 
first transcript he sent her was from This Week. Sullivan 
wrote:

        Here is Susan on this week. She wasn't asked about 
        whether we had any intel. But she did make clear our 
        view that this started spontaneously and then evolved. 
        The only troubling sentence relates to the 
        investigation, specifically: ``And we'll see when the 
        investigation unfolds whether what was--what transpired 
        in Benghazi might have unfolded differently in 
        different circumstances.'' But she got pushed there.

        Waiting on other transcripts.\305\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \305\Email from Jacob J. Sullivan, Deputy Chief of Staff and Dir. 
of Policy Planning, U.S. Dep't of State, to Hillary R. Clinton, Sec'y 
of State, U.S. Dep't of State (Sept. 16, 2012, 12:22 PM) (on file with 
the Committee, SCB0045373).

    This note from Sullivan is interesting for two reasons. 
First, he writes that Rice makes clear their ``view that this 
started spontaneously and then evolved.''\306\ Second, Sullivan 
expresses concern regarding Rice's comment on the 
investigation, where she said ``[a]nd we'll see when the 
investigation unfolds whether what was--what transpired in 
Benghazi might have unfolded differently in different 
circumstances.''\307\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \306\Id.
    \307\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The fact that Benghazi may have transpired differently--and 
not spontaneously as a result of Cairo, as intelligence 
indicated to be the case--contained serious policy 
implications. If Benghazi started spontaneously and then 
evolved--as Sullivan seemed to indicate he and the Secretary 
believed--that would indicate a similarity with other areas in 
the Middle East, where protests had transpired as a result of 
the offensive video. If, on the other hand, Benghazi transpired 
differently--as a premeditated terrorist attack, for instance--
such a scenario would call into question whether the United 
States was defeating terrorism, and would raise doubts about 
the government's policy towards Libya specifically, and perhaps 
the Middle East generally. The fact Rice raised this as a 
possibility appeared to be unsettling to Sullivan.
    Sullivan later passed on the transcript to State of the 
Union with an accompanying note saying ``Nothing to this 
one.''\308\ Sullivan also forwarded the transcript for Meet the 
Press, with an accompanying note simply saying ``[g]ood.''\309\ 
Just three minutes later, the Secretary responded and said 
``[p]ls remind Panetta NOT to mention Tunisia--in fact no 
specifics preferable.''\310\ This may have been in response to 
the Meet the Press transcript, where moderator Gregory 
mentioned the evacuation of all but emergency personnel from 
diplomatic missions in Tunisia and Sudan, and that the 
Secretary of Defense has deployed forces to several areas to 
protect U.S. personnel.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \308\Email from Jacob J. Sullivan, Deputy Chief of Staff and Dir. 
of Policy Planning, U.S. Dep't of State, to Hillary R. Clinton, Sec'y 
of State, U.S. Dep't of State (Sept. 16, 2012, 2:38 PM) (on file with 
the Committee, SCB0045387).
    \309\Email from Jacob J. Sullivan, Deputy Chief of Staff and Dir. 
of Policy Planning, U.S. Dep't of State, to Hillary R. Clinton, Sec'y 
of State, U.S. Dep't of State (Sept. 16, 2012, 2:36 PM) (on file with 
the Committee, SCB0045390).
    \310\Email from Sec'y Clinton to Mr. Sullivan (Sept. 16, 2012, 2:39 
PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0045390).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Almost immediately after Rice's appearance on the shows, 
Pelton highlighted conflicting statements between Rice and 
Libya President el-Magariaf. At 9:41a.m. on Sunday, September 
16, 2012 she wrote to Rhodes and others on the White House 
communications team:

        They open w Libyan President who says no doubt attack 
        preplanned/predetermined. Says planned by foreigners. 
        Says maybe better for FBI to stay away a little while 
        though they need their help w investigation. She said 
        in all other shows that no evidence this was 
        premeditated, as we discussed. Just fyi.\311\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \311\Email from Erin Pelton, Dir. of Commc'cs and Spokesperson, 
U.S. Mission to the U.N., to Dagoberto Vega, Special Ass't to the 
President and Dir. of Broadcast Media, White House, and Benjamin J. 
Rhodes, Deputy Nat'l Sec. Advisor for Strategic Commc'cs, Nat'l Sec. 
Council (Sept. 16, 2012, 9:41 AM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05622905).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Pelton testified as to why she sent this email:

        Q: Do you recall having drafted this email?

        A: Yes.

        Q: And what was the--why did you write this email?

        A: I wrote this email to alert Ben that what the Libyan 
        President had said on CBS was inconsistent with what 
        Ambassador Rice had said on the other shows that we had 
        already taped.

        Q: Did that inconsistency concern you?

        A: No.

        Q: Why not?

        A: Because what Ambassador Rice said reflected the best 
        information that we had at the time.\312\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \312\Pelton Testimony at 114-15.

    This email reflects the shortcomings of Rice's preparation 
for the Sunday shows, which was reflected in some of her 
comments. As described above, on her Saturday prep call were 
people from her office and the White House messaging team. No 
subject matter experts about Benghazi were on the call nor was 
anybody from the intelligence community. Pelton wrote ``no 
evidence this was premeditated, as we discussed''\313\--likely 
indicating a discussion of this topic on the phone call the day 
before. This is a significant difference from simply saying 
``the current assessment does not indicate that this was 
premeditated.'' In fact, as noted above, [redacted text] 
intelligence existed at that point indicating the attack may 
have in fact been premeditated.\314\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \313\Email from Ms. Pelton to Mr. Vega and Mr. Rhodes (Sept. 16, 
2012, 9:41 AM) (on file with the Committee, C05622905).
    \314\[Redacted text].
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Rice's comments on the Sunday talk shows were met with 
shock and disbelief by those closest to the facts of the 
situation. Subject matter experts with direct knowledge of the 
attacks expressed immediate concern about what Rice had said on 
the shows--and potential fallout as a result. Hicks--possibly 
the last person to talk with Stevens, and the highest ranking 
U.S. official in Libya on Sunday September 16, 2012--said he 
was not asked for any information in advance of Rice's 
appearance on the show. He testified:

        Q: You became the charge on----

        A: September 12th, 3 a.m.

        Q: And you are the senior U.S. official, senior 
        diplomat in country starting September 12th. And you've 
        testified you had constant contact with Washington. So, 
        are you--as I understand what you are saying, before 
        the Sunday show--series of appearances on the Sunday 
        shows, you were not part of the preparation and 
        planning?

        A: That's correct. I was not.

        Q: You didn't get a chance to review talking points?

        A: No, I did not.\315\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \315\Hicks Testimony at 281.

    Hicks also testified about Rice's appearance on Face the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nation:

        So Magariaf, at great personal risk to himself, goes to 
        Benghazi to initiate an investigation and lend his own 
        personal gravitas. Remember he's from the Benghazi area 
        himself. So he goes to lend his own personal gravitas 
        and reputation to an investigation of what happens. And 
        he gets on--and he is on these programs speaking from 
        Benghazi, and he says this was an attack by Islamic 
        extremists, possibly with terrorist links. He describes 
        what happens. He tells the truth of what happened. And 
        so, you know, Ambassador Rice says what she says, 
        contradicting what the President of Libya says from 
        Benghazi.

        There's a cardinal rule of diplomacy that we learn in 
        our orientation class, and that rule is never 
        inadvertently insult your interlocutor. The net impact 
        of what has transpired is the spokesperson of the most 
        powerful country in the world has basically said that 
        the President of Libya is either a liar or doesn't know 
        what he's talking about.

        The impact of that is immeasurable. Magariaf has just 
        lost face in front of not only his own people, but the 
        world. And, you know, my jaw hit the floor as I watched 
        this. I've never been--I have been a professional 
        diplomat for 22 years. I have never been as embarrassed 
        in my life, in my career as on that day. There have 
        been other times when I've been embarrassed, but that's 
        the most embarrassing moment of my career.\316\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \316\Id. at 83-84.

    Other subject matter experts within the State Department 
also recognized problems with what Rice said on the talk shows. 
State Department employees in Washington D.C. who had spoken 
with those on the ground in Libya after the attack were 
universal in their condemnation of Rice's statements. The 
Senior Libya Desk Officer, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, 
State Department, wrote: ``I think Rice was off the reservation 
on this one.''\317\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \317\Email from Senior Libya Desk Officer, Bureau of Near Eastern 
Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to Senior Advisor and Spokesperson, 
Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, Deputy Dir. for 
the Office of Press and Public Diplomacy, Bureau of Near Eastern 
Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State & Deputy Dir. for Maghreb Affairs, U.S. 
Dep't of State (Sept. 17, 2012, 2:16 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05580618).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Deputy Director, Office of Press and Public Diplomacy, 
Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, State Department, responded: 
``Off the reservation on five networks!''\318\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \318\Email from [redacted text] to [redacted text], [redacted text] 
& [redacted text] (Sept. 17, 2012, 2:18 PM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05580618).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Senior Advisor for Strategic Communications, Bureau of 
Near East Affairs, State Department, wrote: ``Yup. Luckily 
there's enough in her language to fudge exactly what she said/
meant.''\319\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \319\Email from [redacted text] to [redacted text], [redacted text] 
& [redacted text] (Sept. 17, 2012, 2:17 PM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05580618).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    He also wrote: ``WH [White House] very worried about the 
politics. This was all their doing.''\320\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \320\Email from [redacted text] to [redacted text], [redacted text] 
& [redacted text] (Sept. 17, 2012, 2:19 PM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05580618).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    While Snipe may not have known exactly what ``worried'' the 
White House, he had extensive experience at the State 
Department, and had been in contact with the Embassy in 
Tripoli. Contrary to what Rice said on the talk shows, he did 
not believe any protests or demonstrations had occurred prior 
to the attacks. He testified:

        Q: And then you made a statement that, you know, based 
        on your training and experience, essentially you had 
        never seen anyone bring an RPG to a protest.

        A: I mean----

        Q: Or that would be unusual.

        A: I think what I said was ``bringing an RPG to a 
        spontaneous protest.'' I mean, I've been to Yemen 
        before, and, I mean, knives, AK-47s, RPGs. I mean, that 
        place is armed to the teeth, and I think people bring 
        an RPG to the toilet sometimes. But when I said that, I 
        was suggesting that, if you were spontaneously 
        protesting, an RPG might necessarily not be the first 
        thing you grab next to your car keys.\321\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \321\Testimony of Deputy Dir. for the Office of Press and Public 
Diplomacy, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 
96-97 (Oct. 9, 2015) (on file with the Committee).

    The Deputy Director, Office of Maghreb Affairs, State 
Department, was surprised of the connection made to the video. 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
She testified:

        Q: Do you recall having any discussions with NEA about 
        the substance of what was said on the talk shows and 
        whether there was an agreement or disagreement with 
        what was conveyed?

        A: Yes, ma'am. I recall that I was a little bit 
        surprised. The description of what was said--and, 
        again, I didn't watch the program myself--it just 
        sounded more definitive of what potentially had 
        happened. But, again, I didn't watch the show myself, 
        and I didn't read the full transcript. I was too busy 
        that day to do that.

        Q: When you say you're a bit surprised, what were you 
        surprised regarding?

        A: I was surprised in the way that they were described 
        in the press clips, that there was an indication that 
        there was some connection to the anti-Muslim video of 
        concern that had been circulating online, that there 
        was some connection to that. In the press clips that I 
        read, I remember seeing, like--okay.

        Q: And I think, before, you just said that that was a 
        pretty definitive statement.

        A: In the way that I saw it excerpted in the press 
        clips, it seemed like the connection had been made to 
        the video more definitively.\322\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \322\Testimony of Deputy Dir. for Maghreb Affairs, U.S. Dep't of 
State, Tr. 33-34 (Dec. 17, 2015) (on file with the Committee).

    Diplomatic Security Agent 30, Diplomatic Security Command 
Center, State Department, was in the Diplomatic Security 
Command Center while the attacks transpired and aware of real-
time information coming straight from Benghazi during the 
attack was asked if there was any rioting in Benghazi reported 
prior to the attack. His response was: ``Zip, nothing 
nada.''\323\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \323\Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 30 (Sept. 18, 2012, 1:16 PM) 
(on file with the Committee, C05390678).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                          Circling the Wagons

    While many lower- and mid-level State Department employees 
in contact with the Embassy in Tripoli believed Rice went too 
far on the talk shows, senior officials at the State Department 
and White House did not appear to share that sentiment. 
Instead, these senior officials appeared concerned more about 
supporting Rice's statements and ensuring any future statements 
on the attacks were disciplined than ensuring they were 
reflective of what had actually transpired.
    The day after Rice's appearance, The Deputy Director, 
Office of Maghreb Affairs, sent an email summarizing a meeting 
with McDonough. She wrote:

        DNSA McDonough apparently told the SVTS [Secure Video 
        Teleconference] group today that everyone was required 
        to ``shut their pieholes'' about the Benghazi attack in 
        light of the FBI investigation, due to start 
        tomorrow.''\324\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \324\Email from Deputy Dir. for Maghreb Affairs, U.S. Dep't of 
State, to James N. Miller, Under Sec'y of Defense for Policy, U.S. 
Dep't of Defense (Sept. 17, 2012, 6:52 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05580200).

    McDonough's comments about the FBI investigation starting 
the following day stand in stark contrast with Rice's 
statements the day before that the FBI had already begun 
collecting ``all sorts of evidence'' in their investigation and 
had ``a lead.'' In addition, McDonough's remark about not 
commenting in light of the FBI investigation directly address 
the issue that Sullivan raised with the Secretary the day 
before--the troubling sentence by Rice that the FBI 
investigation could uncover ``Benghazi might have unfolded 
differently in different circumstances'' from other protests 
across the Middle East.\325\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \325\Email from Mr. Sullivan to Sec'y Clinton (Sept. 16, 2012, 
12:22 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0045373).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    That same day, during her daily press briefing, Nuland was 
asked by reporters to comment on the Benghazi attacks even 
though there was an FBI investigation. Nuland attempted to 
address the dichotomy between her refusal to talk about 
Benghazi and Rice's willingness to do so on the Sunday shows. 
Nuland said:

        Q: Toria, in Friday's briefing, Friday evening, you 
        essentially stated that all questions concerning any 
        aspect of the Benghazi attack--the circumstances 
        surrounding it, the outcome of it, et cetera--would 
        henceforth be directed by you to the FBI since it's 
        their investigation.

        And yet, on five Sunday shows yesterday, Ambassador 
        Rice, who works for the same agency as you, was giving 
        the latest U.S. assessment of how this event unfolded, 
        specifically by saying we don't believe it was 
        premeditated or preplanned, and by saying that those 
        with heavy arms and so forth showed up, in essence, as 
        she put it, to hijack an ongoing demonstration.

        So my first question for you is: Given that Ambassador 
        Rice is out there talking publicly about it and not 
        referring Bob Schieffer and Chris Wallace and the rest 
        to the FBI, may we consider that we can again begin 
        asking you questions at this podium about the 
        circumstances of the attack? If it's fair for the 
        Ambassador to discuss it, it should be fair in this 
        room, correct?

        A: Well, let me start by reminding you that Ambassador 
        Rice outranks me, as does my own boss, so she is often 
        at liberty to say more than I am. And I guess that's 
        going to continue to be the case.

        What I will say, though, is that Ambassador Rice, in 
        her comments on every network over the weekend, was 
        very clear, very precise, about what our initial 
        assessment of what happened is. And this was not just 
        her assessment. It was also an assessment that you've 
        heard in comments coming from the intelligence 
        community, in comments coming from the White House. I 
        don't have anything to give you beyond that.

        She also made clear, as I had on Friday, that there is 
        an ongoing FBI investigation. So frankly, I'm not sure 
        that it's useful to go beyond that. I'm not capable of 
        going beyond that, and we'll have to just see what the 
        FBI investigation brings us.

        Q: You would acknowledge, however, that the account of 
        the events, the preliminary account of the events that 
        Ambassador Rice offered, diverges starkly from the 
        account offered by the Libyan President, correct?

        A: Well, we've heard a number of different things from 
        Libya. I would simply say that what--the comments that 
        Ambassador Rice made accurately reflect our 
        government's initial assessment.\326\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \326\Daily Press Briefing by Spokesperson Victoria Nuland, Bureau 
of Public Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State (Sept. 17, 2012), http://
www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2012/09/197821.htm [hereinafter Nuland Sept. 
17 Briefing].

    Nuland also addressed a question as to whether or not 
protests had occurred outside the Benghazi compound. Her on-
the-record response, in the wake of Rice's talk show 
appearances, was markedly different from what she told 
reporters in an off-the-record briefing back on September 12. 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nuland said:

        Q: And one last question, if I might, because 
        Ambassador Rice spoke to this. She suggested that there 
        had been an ongoing demonstration outside the Consulate 
        or in the proximity of the Consulate in Benghazi that 
        was, in essence, hijacked by more militant elements who 
        came armed to the affair. I just want to nail this down 
        with you. You are--you stand by this notion that there 
        was, in fact, an ongoing demonstration?

        A: I'd simply say that I don't have any information 
        beyond what Ambassador Rice shared with you and that 
        her assessment does reflect our initial assessment as a 
        government.\327\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \327\Id.

    Nuland, similar to the President in his 60 Minutes 
interview five days prior, also refused to directly label what 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
had occurred as a terrorist act. She said:

        Q: Simply on the basis of what Ambassador Rice has 
        publicly disclosed, does the United States Government 
        regard what happened in Benghazi as an act of terror?

        A: Again, I'm not going to put labels on this until we 
        have a complete investigation, okay?

        Q: You don't--so you don't regard it as an act of 
        terrorism?

        A: I don't think we know enough. I don't think we know 
        enough. And we're going to continue to assess. She gave 
        our preliminary assessment. We're going to have a full 
        investigation now, and then we'll be in a better 
        position to put labels on things, okay?\328\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \328\Id.

    Even the CIA appeared to take part in the effort to bolster 
Rice's statements. Five days after the attack, a September 17, 
2012 email exchange between officials at the White House, State 
Department, Office of the Director of National Intelligence 
[ODNI], and the CIA took place to craft a written response to 
questions posed by Fox News reporter Catherine Herridge about 
Rice's statements the day before. The first draft of the 
response, which appears to have come from the CIA's Office of 
Public Affairs, makes a number of misstatements--chiefly one in 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
the first paragraph:

        Off the record, I reviewed the timeline of what is 
        known now, of course realizing that there will be 
        interviews of witnesses, people on the ground etc. . . 
        . to get the down to the minute details. Like you, we 
        have the attack kicking off reportedly after 9:30 PM 
        with small crowds gathering during that 9:00-10:00 PM 
        hour. It's pretty clear, as we discussed, that there 
        had been smaller protests during the day, nothing along 
        the scale of what we saw in Cairo or later on in the 
        week, but protests nonetheless.\329\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \329\Email from Media Spokesperson, Cent. Intel. Agency, to Tommy 
Vietor, Nat'l Sec. Spokesperson, Nat'l Sec. Council (Sept. 17, 2012, 
4:01 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05562137).

    It is unclear what information, if any, the CIA public 
affairs officer relied on to claim ``it's pretty clear . . . 
that there had been smaller protests during the day''\330\--no 
CIA intelligence product provided to the Committee contained 
any such information.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \330\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Seven days after the attacks, on September 18, 2012, Meehan 
sent an email to Patrick Ventrell, Director, Office of Press 
Relations, State Department and Nuland about message 
discipline. Her email said:

        Focus today on reiterating that our initial assessment 
        stands, and was based on information available. Keeping 
        hard line about now waiting for the investigation to 
        run its course; we will of course provide info as it 
        comes to light. No discrepancy between what Rice said 
        and what State and WH said early on regarding 
        preplanned attack.\331\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \331\Email from Bernadette M. Meehan, Spokesperson, Nat'l Sec. 
Council, to Victoria J. Nuland, Spokesperson, U.S. Dep't of State & 
Patrick H. Ventrell, Spokesperson, U.S. Dep't of State (Sept. 18, 2012, 
11:03 AM) (on file with the Committee, C05561843).

    Nuland appears to have followed that guidance. In her daily 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
press briefing later that day, Nuland said:

        Q: Any more information on the investigation, on the 
        timeline? There continues to be some question about 
        whether the protests had all but dissipated before the 
        attack in Benghazi began, or whether or not the protest 
        was robust and ongoing and this attack at least used it 
        for cover. And there also continue to be, frankly, some 
        apparent differences between the characterization here 
        that it was a coordinated attack and Ambassador Rice's 
        assertion that it basically kind of grew out of the 
        protest.

        A: Well, on your last point, I spoke to this 
        extensively yesterday, making clear that Ambassador 
        Rice was speaking on behalf of the government with 
        regard to our initial assessments. I don't have any 
        more details beyond those that we've already shared, 
        and I don't expect to because I think all of the 
        information is going to go to the FBI for their 
        investigation, and when they're completed, then we'll 
        have more information.

        Q: The idea that it grew--that the protest may have 
        been used as cover, can you say whether or not the 
        protest had basically dissipated when the attacks 
        began?

        A: I personally have no more information than what I've 
        given you, and I don't think that we as a government 
        will be talking about these details until the FBI has 
        completed its investigation so that we don't prejudice 
        it.\332\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \332\Daily Press Briefing by Spokesperson Victoria Nuland, Bureau 
of Public Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State (Sept. 18, 2012), http://
www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2012/09/197912.htm#LIBYA.

    Carney also held a press briefing on September 18. During 
that briefing, he was asked about the conflict between Libyan 
officials and the administration as to what transpired in 
Benghazi--a conflict on full display on Face the Nation when 
Rice contradicted the Libyan President. Carney, like Rice on 
the talk shows, also connected the protests and violence across 
the region with the Benghazi attacks, linking the video to both 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
events. He said:

        Q: I wanted to go back to the conflict between--the 
        conflicting reports I guess between the administration 
        and Libyan officials over what happened. On Friday, you 
        seemed to cite that the videos were definitely part of 
        it, but I get the sense that you're backing away from 
        that a little bit today. Is there something that you've 
        learned since?

        A: No, no. I think what I am making clear and what 
        Ambassador Rice made clear on Sunday is that reaction 
        to the video was the precipitating factor in protests 
        in violence across the region. And what I'm also saying 
        is that we have--we made that assessment based on the 
        evidence that we have, and that includes all the 
        evidence that we have at this time.
    I am not, unlike some others, going to prejudge the outcome 
of an investigation and categorically assert one way or the 
other what the motivations are or what happened exactly until 
that investigation is complete. And there are a lot of 
suppositions based on the number of weapons and other things 
about what really happened in Benghazi and I'd rather wait, and 
the President would rather wait, for that investigation to be 
completed.

        Q: So you're not ruling out that----

        A: Of course not. I'm not ruling out--if more 
        information comes to light, that will obviously be a 
        part of the investigation and we'll make it available 
        when appropriate. But at this time, as Ambassador Rice 
        said and as I said, our understanding and our belief 
        based on the information we have is it was the video 
        that caused the unrest in Cairo, and the video and the 
        unrest in Cairo that helped--that precipitated some of 
        the unrest in Benghazi and elsewhere. What other 
        factors were involved is a matter of 
        investigation.\333\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \333\Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney, The White House 
(Sept. 18, 2012), https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/09/
18/press-briefing-press-secretary-jay-carney-9182012.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Eight days after the attacks, on September 19, 2012, the 
Special Assistant to the Spokesperson, State Department, sent 
Nuland an email, possibly in response to a press inquiry, 
regarding Rice's statements regarding security personnel on the 
Sunday shows. He wrote:

        This is the only piece I can find that could possibly 
        be construed as the two security officials being there 
        w/responsibility to protect the mission compound vice 
        the annex. From the FOX News Sunday interview . . 
        .\334\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \334\Email from Special Ass't to the Spokesperson, U.S. Dep't of 
State, to Victoria J. Nuland, Spokesperson, U.S. Dep't of State (Sept. 
19, 2012, 5:20 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0052773).

    Also on September 19, 2012, Sullivan drafted an ``ALDAC''--
a worldwide cable to all U.S. embassies--approved by the 
Secretary in which guidance was given on ``outreach and 
messaging'' about the widespread violence in the Middle 
East.\335\ The cable continued to connect the attacks with the 
video:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \335\Email from Special Ass't to the Deputy Chief of Staff and Dir. 
of Policy Planning, U.S. Dep't of State, to SWO-Cables (Sept. 19, 2012, 
7:13 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0052812-SCB0052813).

        Since September 11, 2012, there have been widespread 
        protests and violence against U.S. and some other 
        diplomatic posts across the Muslim world. The proximate 
        cause of the violence was the release by individuals in 
        the United States of the video trailer for a film that 
        many Muslims find offensive. Diplomatic compounds have 
        been breached in several countries including Libya, 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen. In Benghazi, Libya four

        U.S. personnel were killed in the violence[.]\336\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \336\Id.

    Even as late as September 20, 2012, Nuland was still 
supporting the claims made by Rice on the talk shows. When 
reporter Jennifer Rubin asked Nuland to comment on a CBS news 
report that ``there was NO protest outside Libya embassy,'' 
Nuland responded, ``Off: this does not square with our 
info.''\337\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \337\Email from Victoria J. Nuland, Spokesperson, U.S. Dep't of 
State, to Jennifer Rubin (``J Rubin'') (Sept. 20, 2012, 9:59 AM) (on 
file with the Committee, C05412001).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In the week following her appearances on the Sunday talk 
shows, Rice remained publicly silent about her comments. 
Privately, however, she was ``constantly interested'' in new 
information about the attacks. She testified:

        Q: Did you have any conversations with anybody, either 
        on the night of September 16th or at any day thereafter 
        up to the point where you learned there were no 
        protests in Benghazi, on the issue of whether or not 
        President Magarief was correct or whether or not you 
        were correct in saying that the attack was spontaneous?

        A: I don't recall specific conversations, but I recall 
        being constantly interested in understanding our 
        evolving best assessment, with a mind to caring about 
        its inconsistency with what I was--with what I said on 
        the 16th.\338\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \338\Rice Testimony at 149.

    The absence of protests prior to the Benghazi attacks, 
however, remained a troubling issue for the administration. It 
was only a matter of time before this fact became widely known 
and disseminated publicly. Despite the best efforts by 
administration spokespersons to publicly support Rice's 
comments, however, the truth ultimately emerged to show much of 
what she said on the talk shows was incorrect.

                               THE SHIFT

    A week after the Benghazi attacks, administration officials 
began telling the public yet a different story. It started with 
Matthew G. Olsen, the Director of the National Counterterrorism 
Center.

                 Matt Olsen's Testimony on September 19

    On September 19, 2012, testifying before the Senate 
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Olsen 
firmly stated that what happened in Benghazi was in fact a 
terrorist attack. Olsen also testified that individuals 
affiliated with al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda's affiliates may have been 
involved in the attack. Olsen said:

        Q: So, let me begin by asking you whether you would say 
        that Ambassador Stevens and the three other Americans 
        died as a result of a terrorist attack.

        A: Certainly on that particular question, I would say 
        yes, they were killed in the course of a terrorist 
        attack on our embassy.

        Q: Right. And do we have reason to believe at this 
        point that that terrorist attack was preplanned for 
        September 11th or did the terrorists who were obviously 
        planning it because it certainly seemed to be a 
        coordinated terrorist attack just seize the moment of 
        the demonstrations or protests against the film to 
        carry out a terrorist attack?

        A: A more complicated question, and one, Mr. Chairman, 
        that we are spending a great deal of time looking at 
        even as we speak. And it's a--it's a--obviously, an 
        investigation here is ongoing and facts are being 
        developed continually. The best information we have 
        now, the facts that we have now indicate that this was 
        an opportunistic attack on our embassy. The attack 
        began and evolved and escalated over several hours at 
        our embassy--our diplomatic post in Benghazi. It 
        evolved and escalated over several hours.

        It appears that individuals who were certainly well-
        armed seized on the opportunity presented as the events 
        unfolded that evening and into the--into the morning 
        hours of September 12th. We do know that a number of 
        militants in the area, as I mentioned, are well-armed 
        and maintain those arms. What we don't have at this 
        point is specific intelligence that there was a 
        significant advanced planning or coordination for this 
        attack.

        Again, we're still developing facts and still looking 
        for any indications of substantial advanced planning; 
        we just haven't seen that at this point. So, I think 
        that's the most I would say at this point. I do want to 
        emphasize that there is a classified briefing for all 
        of Congress that will take place tomorrow.

        Q: We'll be there. Let me come back to what you said--
        that there was evidence or intelligence that, as you 
        indicated broadly a moment ago, that in eastern Libya, 
        in the Benghazi area, there were a number of militant 
        or violent extremist groups. Do we have any idea at 
        this point who was responsible among those groups for 
        the attack on the consulate?

        A: This is the most important question that we're 
        considering.

        Q: Right.

        A: We are focused on who was responsible for this 
        attack. At this point, I would say is that a number of 
        different elements appear to have been involved in the 
        attack, including individuals connected to militant 
        groups that are prevalent in eastern Libya, 
        particularly in the Benghazi area, as well. We are 
        looking at indications that individuals involved in the 
        attack may have had connections to al-Qaeda or al-
        Qaeda's affiliates; in particular, al-Qaeda in the 
        Islamic Maghreb.

        Q: Right. So that question has not been determined 
        yet--whether it was a militant--or a Libyan group or a 
        group associated with al-Qaeda influence from abroad.

        A: That's right. And I would--I would add that what--
        the picture that is emerging is one where a number of 
        different individuals were involved, so it's not 
        necessarily an either/or proposition.

        Q: OK. OK, good, well----

        A: Again, as you know, the FBI is leading the 
        investigation and that's ongoing.\339\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \339\Homeland Threats and Agency Responses: Hearing before the S. 
Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, 112th Cong. 
(2012) (statement of Matthew Olsen, Dir., Nat'l Counterterrorism 
Center).

    Olsen's testimony that what had transpired in Benghazi was 
a terrorist attack and that there may be links to al-Qaeda was 
the first time an administration official had stated either of 
those facts publicly. He said the attacks were 
``opportunistic'' and did not mention anything about a video. 
Olsen responded to Chairman Joseph I. Lieberman's questions 
directly, concisely, confidently, and factually. He did not 
couch his language, speculate, or go beyond the facts he knew. 
Additionally, what he said was accurate. Such fact-centered 
testimony stands in stark contrast to Rice's appearances on the 
talk shows.
    Olsen told the Committee he wanted to talk about the 
connection to al-Qaeda at the Senate hearing; a possible al-
Qaeda connection was a large factor in the post-attack analysis 
occurring within the intelligence community--a fact the IC had 
known for nearly a week.\340\ Olsen testified:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \340\Olsen Testimony at 55-57 (discussing how long and from what 
sources intelligence community knew of al-Qaeda connection).

        But my thought at the time was this is not overly 
        sensitive, and it is the kind of information that I was 
        concerned, if we didn't--if I didn't say this in 
        response to a question about who was responsible for 
        this attack, it would be an omission that would be 
        glaring in the--you know, as, on, Congress Members, 
        themselves, were aware of this, right? Some of them 
        serving on HPSCI or SSCI may well have seen the 
        reporting. So it seemed to me the right thing to do to 
        avoid being, you know, viewed as not being as 
        forthcoming as I could be, even if it went beyond what 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        had been publicly stated.

        So that was my thinking at the time, why I thought that 
        that was an important point to make and why I actually 
        focused on it in advance of the hearings, so that folks 
        would know that I was going to say it.\341\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \341\Id. at 57-58.

    Olsen knew at the time the administration had yet to 
publicly tie al-Qaeda to the Benghazi attacks. As such, he 
directed his head of legislative affairs to alert other 
Executive Branch agencies that he would likely make the 
connection at the hearing.\342\ Meehan emailed Nuland about 
this possibility on the morning of the hearing. In an email 
with the subject ``Change of Language per the call''--perhaps 
an indication of coordination between how the White House and 
State Department were going to respond to press inquiries that 
day about Benghazi--Meehan wrote:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \342\Id. at 53-54.

        I am rushing to Jay's prep, and will circle up with the 
        broader group after. But wanted to flag that Matt Olsen 
        from NCTC will be on the Hill this morning . . . Wanted 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        to flag that IF ASKED, Matt will use the line:

        There are indications some of the extremists involved 
        in the attack may be linked to al-Qa'ida or its 
        affiliates, but this assessment may change as 
        additional information is collected and analyzed. In 
        eastern Libya there are numerous armed groups, some of 
        whom have al-Qa'ida sympathies.

        Flagging because it is an unclass session, so if he 
        makes that statement, word will likely leak, and it is 
        the first time someone from the USG will be saying that 
        there might be a link to al-Qaeda. Ben and I discussed, 
        and agreed that we refer questions to people involved 
        in the investigation, note the investigation is still 
        underway and no definitive conclusions yet, and if 
        pressed, can point out there is no discrepancy with our 
        original assessment because we always said our original 
        assessment was based on info available at the time and 
        that the investigation would provide further detail.

        Hopefully won't come up, but wanted to flag just in 
        case.\343\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \343\Email from Bernadette M. Meehan, Spokesperson, U.S. Dep't of 
State, to Victoria J. Nuland, Spokesperson, U.S. Dep't of State, & 
Patrick H. Ventrell, Spokesperson, U.S. Dep't of State (Sept. 19, 2012, 
10:22 AM) (on file with the Committee, C05561987).

    In her email, Meehan mentions a conversation with Rhodes 
and notes that ``if pressed, can point out there is no 
discrepancy with our original assessment because we always said 
our original assessment was based on info available at the time 
and that the investigation would provide further detail.''\344\ 
What Meehan does not say is that the link to al-Qaeda was 
actually cited in the intelligence community's original 
assessment.\345\ That was not new information, as Olsen 
acknowledged.\346\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \344\Id.
    \345\September 13 WIRe, supra note 123.
    \346\Olsen Testimony at 25.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Additionally, Meehan's email--reflecting other public 
statements by administration officials up to that point--noted 
she and Rhodes ``agreed that we refer questions to people 
involved in the investigation.'' Olsen told the Committee the 
investigation did not in fact prohibit him from talking about 
what had been learned up to that point. He testified:

        Q: Was there anything about the FBI investigation that 
        prohibited you from either, A, saying it was a 
        terrorist attack, or, B, drawing a link to AQIM?

        A: No, nothing that I--no, I don't--certainly not the 
        question of whether it was a terrorist attack or the 
        way I phrased the answer to the question on who was 
        responsible--on the connections to--you know, potential 
        connections to terrorist groups.

        Q: So if nothing about the ongoing investigation 
        prohibited you from saying that, then why would others 
        refer to the ongoing investigation when asked those 
        very same questions?
    A: --You know, I, obviously, don't know exactly why others. 
I do think there's a range of reasonable, you know, approaches 
to this question. In other words, I don't think there is one 
right approach.\347\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \347\Id. at 60.

    Olsen also testified his background as a prosecutor helps 
him create a fact-centered approach to sharing information. He 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
said:

        Q: Sure. As a prosecutor, the facts are very important 
        to you. A fact is a fact, and you're going to share 
        what that fact may be--is that fair to say?--as opposed 
        to being concerned about public relations, in lack of a 
        better phrase, or the impression people might get?

        A: That's basically right, and that's sort of--that is 
        the approach of being a prosecutor in terms of reliance 
        on facts. I'm not--I shouldn't, you know, lead you to 
        believe that I'm completely oblivious to----

        Q: Of course

        A: --the public impression that you can leave and the 
        importance that that has too.\348\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \348\Id. at 61-62
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Even though Olsen wanted to state publicly that al-Qaeda 
sympathizers may have been involved in the attack, he did not 
plan on saying definitively that it was a terrorist attack. 
While Olsen knew from the outset it was a terrorist attack--
``all of those factors, you know, made it so that it was, to 
me, there was not really a question of whether it was a 
terrorist attack''\349\--he testified he had not given it a 
great deal of thought, but when asked directly by Lieberman, 
the logical response was to acknowledge that it was a terrorist 
attack.\350\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \349\Id. at 100.
    \350\Id. at 50-51.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Olsen recognized almost immediately after the hearing he 
may have made news with what he had said with respect to the 
events being a terrorist attack. He told the Committee he wrote 
an email to the White House alerting them of what he had said. 
Olsen testified:

        Q: So what were the repercussions of you saying it was 
        a terrorist attack?

        A: So one of the things I did afterwards was I wrote an 
        email to both John Brennan and Denis McDonough--you 
        know, Denis was the Deputy National Security Advisor 
        and John was--John Brennan was the counterterrorism 
        advisor--and explained to them--you know, I said 
        something like, ``I made some news today with my 
        testimony. Here is why I testified that this was a 
        terrorist attack,'' was my thought process. And they 
        wrote back to me, saying, ``You did the right thing,'' 
        essentially, in emails that day. You know, ``Understand 
        you made the right points,'' or something like that.

        But again, look, I was aware, again, in a way I hadn't 
        really been before that what I was testifying to was 
        potentially newsworthy, and, in fact, it was. So that's 
        why I thought both let my press person think about what 
        we need to do, ask him to think about what we may need 
        to do, and then also, myself, reach out to John Brennan 
        and Denis McDonough.\351\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \351\Id. at 71-72.

    Private reaction from senior officials at the State 
Department regarding Olsen's testimony, however, appeared less 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
supportive. Nuland wrote to Sullivan, Mills, and Kennedy:

        Fysa, and for Jake's drafting exercise; NCTC also 
        called it a terrorist attack today: I had demurred on 
        that as had Jay, pending investigation.\352\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \352\Email from Victoria J. Nuland, Spokesperson, U.S. Dep't of 
State, to Jacob J. Sullivan, Deputy Chief of Staff and Dir. of Policy 
Planning, U.S. Dep't of State, Cheryl D. Mills, Chief of Staff to the 
U.S. Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State, & Patrick F. Kennedy, Under 
Sec'y for Management, U.S. Dep't of State (Sept. 19, 2012, 2:45 PM) (on 
file with the Committee, C05561975).

    Sullivan called the White House to inform them he was 
unaware Olsen was going to testify it was a terrorist attack. 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Meehan testified:

        Q: Do you recall generally having any conversations 
        with [Jake Sullivan] that week? Or in the immediate 
        aftermath of the attack, that general period of 
        September 2012?

        A: I do recall having one phone conversation with him. 
        I don't know whether it's in the scope of the 4 to 5 
        days that we're discussing.

        Q: Okay. What was discussed in that conversation?

        A: He raised that he had been unaware before Matt Olsen 
        testified on the Hill, that Matt Olsen was going to 
        make a link publicly to Al Qaeda in reference to the 
        Benghazi attack.

        Q: Why did he raise that issue with you?

        A: I can't say why I was the individual that he called. 
        I don't know.\353\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \353\Testimony of Bernadette M. Meehan, Spokesperson, Nat'l Sec. 
Council, Tr. at 28-29 (Dec. 16, 2015) (on file with the Committee).

    Even the Secretary expressed surprise at Olsen's testimony. 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Olsen testified:

        Q: Yeah. Did anybody express to you that they were 
        disappointed in what you said, they were perplexed by 
        what you said, that what you said may have thrown a 
        message off kilter?

                              *    *    *

        A: . . . But, you know, to your question I did hear at 
        one point--and I don't remember exactly when--from 
        Director Clapper that he'd heard from Secretary 
        Clinton, you know, of some surprise about me saying 
        that it was a terrorist attack. And he basically said--
        you know, I remember thinking he basically said, you 
        know, ``We're saying what we see,'' something like 
        that.

        But I remember hearing from him. He told me directly--I 
        think we were either in a car or getting ready to get 
        in his car to come downtown--that he'd gotten a call or 
        had heard from Secretary Clinton about surprise that 
        one of his guys was talking about this being a 
        terrorist attack.\354\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \354\Olsen Testimony at 82-83.

    The day after Olsen's testimony, September 20, 2012, the 
President participated in a town hall with Univision at the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
University of Miami. The President had the following exchange:

        Q: We have reports that the White House said today that 
        the attacks in Libya were a terrorist attack. Do you 
        have information indicating that it was Iran, or al-
        Qaeda was behind organizing the protests?

        A: Well, we're still doing an investigation, and there 
        are going to be different circumstances in different 
        countries. And so I don't want to speak to something 
        until we have all the information. What we do know is 
        that the natural protests that arose because of the 
        outrage over the video were used as an excuse by 
        extremists to see if they can also directly harm U.S. 
        interests----

        Q: Al-Qaeda?

        A: Well, we don't know yet. And so we're going to 
        continue to investigate this. We've insisted on, and 
        have received so far full cooperation from countries 
        like Egypt and Libya and Tunisia in not only protecting 
        our diplomatic posts, but also to make sure that we 
        discover who, in fact, is trying to take advantage of 
        this. . . .\355\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \355\Remarks by the President at Univision Town Hall with Jorge 
Ramos and Maria Elena Salinas, Miami, FL, Sept. 20, 2012.

    The President said the government wanted to ``discover who, 
in fact, is trying to take advantage of this.'' It is unclear 
if ``this'' is a reference to the video, protests, or something 
else. However, no assessment from the CIA ever stated anybody 
was ``trying to take advantage'' of the video, or even that 
there was a direct link between the video and the Benghazi 
attacks.
    The President also stated, in response to a question that 
mentioned only Libya, the ``natural protests that arose because 
of the outrage over the video were used as an excuse by 
extremists to see if they can also directly harm U.S. 
interests--.'' This statement was made two days after the U.S. 
government obtained access to the video footage from the 
Benghazi Mission compound, which did not show a protest outside 
the Benghazi Mission compound prior to the beginning of the 
attacks.
    When asked if al-Qaeda was involved, the President 
responded ``we don't know yet.'' The day before, however, Olsen 
testified under oath before Congress the government was 
``looking at indiciations that individuals involved in the 
attack may have had connections to al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda's 
affiliates; in particular, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.''
    Two days after Olsen's testimony, on September 21, 2012, 
the Secretary said for the first time publicly that what 
happened in Benghazi was a ``terrorist attack.''\356\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \356\Hillary R. Clinton, Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State, 
Remarks with Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar before Their 
Meeting (Sept.25, 2012), http://www.state.gov/
secretary/20092013clinton/rm/2012/09/198060.htm.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Four days later, on September 25, 2012, the President said, 
during remarks to the United Nations General Assembly: ``There 
are no words that excuse the killing of innocents. There's no 
video that justifies an attack on an embassy.''\357\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \357\Press Release, The White House Office of the Press Secretary, 
Remarks by the President to the UN General Assembly (Sept. 13, 2012), 
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/09/25/remarks-
president-un-general-assembly.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    It was not until the following day--a full week after Olsen 
made his comments and fifteen days after the attacks began--
Carney finally acknowledged the President's position was that a 
terrorist attack occurred. Carney said:

        Q: Can I ask one more--are criticizing the President 
        for not classifying what happened in Benghazi as a 
        terrorist attack, going as far as you did or the NCTC 
        director. Can you respond to that and explain why that 
        is?

        A: The President spoke eloquently I believe about the 
        attack that took the lives of four Americans at the 
        United Nations General Assembly, and I think made very 
        clear that it is wholly unacceptable to respond to a 
        video, no matter how offensive, with violence, and it 
        is wholly unacceptable, regardless of the reason, to 
        attack embassies or diplomatic facilities and to kill 
        diplomatic personnel.

        The President--our position is, as reflected by the 
        NCTC director, that it was a terrorist attack. It is, I 
        think by definition, a terrorist attack when there is a 
        prolonged assault on an embassy with weapons.

        The broader questions here about who participated, what 
        led to the attack on the facility in Benghazi--all 
        those questions are under investigation at two levels, 
        by the FBI and by the Accountability Review Board 
        established by Secretary Clinton to look at issues of 
        security in Benghazi and security at other diplomatic 
        facilities.

        So, let's be clear, it was a terrorist attack and it 
        was an inexcusable attack.\358\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \358\Press Gaggle by Press Secretary Jay Carney Aboard Air Force 
One en route Ohio, Office of the Press Secretary, The White House 
(Sept. 26, 2012), https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/09/
26/press-gaggle-press-secretary-jay-carney-aboard-air-force-one-en-
route-oh.

                  September 24 Intelligence Assessment

    Two days before Carney finally acknowledged publicly that 
Benghazi was a terrorist attack, on September 24, 2012, the CIA 
published its new ``assessment'' about the Benghazi attacks, 
formally changing their old assessment which had been in place 
since September 13. In the September 24 piece, which was 
produced jointly with the National Counterterrorism Center, the 
analysts wrote ``We now assess, based on new reporting, that 
the assault was deliberate and organized. Our most credible 
information indicates that there was not a protest ongoing at 
the time of the attack as first reported.''\359\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \359\Cent. Intel. Agency, Libya: Updated Assessment of Benghazi 
Attacks, World Intelligence Review, Sept. 24, 2012 (on file with CIA, 
IntBook29-076 to IntBook29-079).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The supporting intelligence used in this piece to support 
the new assessment was threefold. The first piece of 
intelligence was from September 19, 2012 and noted that 
attackers used fixed firing positions, capture or kill teams, 
and blockades to impede the escape of US personnel,'' [redacted 
text]\360\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \360\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The second piece of intelligence [redacted text] suggesting 
``the attack was put together at least several hours ahead of 
time.''\361\ Although this piece of intelligence was available 
as early as September 15--one day before Rice went on the 
Sunday talk shows and nine days before the analysts published 
their updated assessment--an internal CIA after action review 
noted that this piece of intelligence was ``not viewed as 
credible enough'' at the time to outweigh other reporting, such 
as news reports.\362\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \361\Id.
    \362\Intelligence Note, Memorandum for Acting Dir., Cent. Intel. 
Agency, Jan. 4, 2013 [hereinafter Analytic Line Review] (on file with 
CIA, REQUEST 17-0049 to REQUEST 17-0063).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The third piece of intelligence [redacted text] noted 
simply that the attackers ``also employed effective mortar fire 
against the Embassy annex later in the night after US return 
fire repulsed their initial ground assault.''\363\ This piece 
of intelligence was formally available to analysts as early as 
September 14, and informally available to them as early as 
September 12.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \363\[Redacted text].
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Additionally, perhaps the most credible--and definitive--
piece of intelligence indicating no protest had occurred prior 
to the Benghazi attacks was the video footage from the closed 
circuit televisions at the Special Mission Compound in 
Benghazi. The CIA had access to analysis of this footage by the 
Libyan Intelligence Service as early as September 18, 2012, and 
those in the CIA who saw the video on that date concluded 
immediately no protest occurred prior to the attacks. This 
intelligence was not cited in the update assessment.
    The manager of the analysts testified the analysts began 
working on the piece before September 18. Given that fact--and 
that the information cited in the updated assessment as 
rationale for changing the assessment was available on 
September 14, September 15, and September 19--why did it take 
the CIA until September 24 to publish the piece?
    The answer appears to be the piece was held up in 
interagency coordination. The analysts did not want an 
interagency partner to file a formal dissent. The manager of 
the analysts testified:

        And, frankly, the WIRe that ran on the 24th actually 
        got held up for 2 days in Coordination, trying to 
        convince people in the IC [Intelligence Community], who 
        hadn't seen this video yet because it wasn't back in 
        country, that there were no protests.\364\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \364\[Redacted text] Team Chief Testimony at 75-77, 92-95.

    Other interagency partners--specifically the State 
Department--did not trust the Libyan government's assessment of 
the video, even though CIA officials in Tripoli had seen the 
actual video footage and concurred with the assessment.\365\ 
This distrust held up interagency coordination of the piece for 
several days. It was not until September 24 when the actual 
video footage arrived at CIA headquarters, allowing for 
dissemination to other interagency partners.\366\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \365\Id. at 75-77.
    \366\[Redacted text].

                      September 28 ODNI Statement

    On September 28, 2012, Shawn Turner, Director of Public 
Affairs, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 
released a statement on the intelligence related to the 
Benghazi terrorist attacks. That statement read in full:

        In the aftermath of the terrorist attack on U.S. 
        personnel and facilities in Benghazi, Libya, the 
        Intelligence Community launched a comprehensive effort 
        to determine the circumstances surrounding the assault 
        and to identify the perpetrators. We also reviewed all 
        available intelligence to determine if there might be 
        follow-on attacks against our people or facilities in 
        Libya or elsewhere in the world.

        As the Intelligence Community collects and analyzes 
        more information related to the attack, our 
        understanding of the event continues to evolve. In the 
        immediate aftermath, there was information that led us 
        to assess that the attack began spontaneously following 
        protests earlier that day at our embassy in Cairo. We 
        provided that initial assessment to Executive Branch 
        officials and members of Congress, who used that 
        information to discuss the attack publicly and provide 
        updates as they became available. Throughout our 
        investigation we continued to emphasize that 
        information gathered was preliminary and evolving.

        As we learned more about the attack, we revised our 
        initial assessment to reflect new information 
        indicating that it was a deliberate and organized 
        terrorist attack carried out by extremists. It remains 
        unclear if any group or person exercised overall 
        command and control of the attack, and if extremist 
        group leaders directed their members to participate. 
        However, we do assess that some of those involved were 
        linked to groups affiliated with, or sympathetic to al-
        Qa'ida. We continue to make progress, but there remain 
        many unanswered questions. As more information becomes 
        available our analysis will continue to evolve and we 
        will obtain a more complete understanding of the 
        circumstances surrounding the terrorist attack.

        We continue to support the ongoing FBI investigation 
        and the State Department review of the Benghazi 
        terrorist attack, providing the full capabilities and 
        resources of the Intelligence Community to those 
        efforts. We also will continue to meet our 
        responsibility to keep Congress fully and currently 
        informed. For its part, the Intelligence Community will 
        continue to follow the information about the tragic 
        events in Benghazi wherever it leads. The President 
        demands and expects that we will do this, as do 
        Congress and the American people. As the Intelligence 
        Community, we owe nothing less than our best efforts in 
        this regard, especially to the families of the four 
        courageous Americans who lost their lives at Benghazi 
        in service of their country.\367\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \367\Press Release, Office of the Dir. of National Intel., 
Statement by the Director of Public Affairs for ODNI, Shawn Turner, on 
the intelligence related to the terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate 
in Benghazi, Libya (Sept. 28, 2012), https://www.dni.gov/index.php/
newsroom/press-
releases/96-press-releases-2012/731-statement-by-the-odni-s-director-
of-public-affairs-on-
intelligence-related-to-the-terrorist-attack-on-the-u-s-consulate-in-
benghazi.

    Even though the issue of protests was heavily debated in 
the public at the time, the statement does not specifically 
address whether or not a protest occurred prior to the 
attacks--doing so would have undercut Rice's statements on the 
talk shows twelve days before. In addition, the issue of 
protests was not an ``analytical focal point''\368\ for the 
intelligence community and was more of a ``subsidiary issue'' 
to them.\369\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \368\Olsen Testimony at 119.
    \369\Olsen Testimony at 67.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Rather, the statement only mentions it was a ``deliberate 
and organized terrorist attack''\370\--still leaving open the 
possibility protests may have occurred. The statement did not 
mention anything about the internet video, let alone any 
connection between the video and Benghazi attacks. The 
statement, issued by the intelligence community and not the 
White House or State Department, did not connect the two 
events.\371\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \370\Press Release, Office of the Dir. of National Intel., 
Statement by the Director of Public Affairs for ODNI, Shawn Turner, on 
the intelligence related to the terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate 
in Benghazi, Libya (Sept. 28, 2012), https://www.dni.gov/index.php/
newsroom/press-
releases/96-press-releases-2012/731-statement-by-the-odni-s-director-
of-public-affairs-on-
intelligence-related-to-the-terrorist-attack-on-the-u-s-consulate-in-
benghazi.
    \371\See id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    As public statements tend to be, this statement was 
carefully worded. It notes only the initial intelligence 
community assessment that it ``began spontaneously following 
protests earlier that day at our embassy in Cairo.''\372\ This 
wording can be directly tied to language in the September 13 
WIRe.\373\ The statement does not say, however, the 
intelligence community ever assessed that protests or 
demonstrations had occurred prior to the Benghazi attacks--
something repeatedly mentioned by Rice on the talk shows. That 
is because, aside from the errant title in the September 13 
WIRe, the intelligence community never formally coordinated 
such an assessment in writing.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \372\Id.
    \373\September 13 WIRe, supra note 123.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The statement also says ``[a]s we learned more about the 
attack, we revised our initial assessment to reflect new 
information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized 
terrorist attack carried out by extremists. . . . we do assess 
that some of those involved were linked to groups affiliated 
with, or sympathetic to al-Qa'ida.''\374\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \374\Press Release, Office of the Dir. of National Intel., 
Statement by the Director of Public Affairs for ODNI, Shawn Turner, on 
the intelligence related to the terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate 
in Benghazi, Libya (Sept. 28, 2012), https://www.dni.gov/index.php/
newsroom/press-releases/96-press-
releases-2012/731-statement-by-the-odni-s-director-of-public-affairs-
on-
intelligence-related-to-the-terrorist-attack-on-the-u-s-consulate-in-
benghazi.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Given that the intelligence leading to the new assessment 
was more than a week old, and in some cases even older, why, 
then, did ODNI wait until September 28, 2012 to issue this 
statement? The answer lies in emails between senior 
administration officials.
    The genesis for ODNI's statement occurred the day before as 
a result of a press report. The article, published on September 
27, 2012 said the following:

        URGENT: U.S. intelligence officials knew from Day One 
        that the assault on the U.S. Consulate in Libya was a 
        terrorist attack and suspect Al Qaeda-tied elements 
        were involved, sources told Fox News--though it took 
        the administration a week to acknowledge it.

        The account conflicts with claims on the Sunday after 
        the attack by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations 
        Susan Rice that the administration believed the strike 
        was a ``spontaneous'' event triggered by protests in 
        Egypt over an anti-Islam film.

        Sources said the administration internally labeled the 
        attack terrorism from the first day to enable a certain 
        type of policy response and that officials were looking 
        for one specific suspect.

        In addition, sources confirm that FBI agents have not 
        yet arrived in Benghazi in the aftermath of the 
        attack.\375\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \375\Email from Peter Velz, Media Monitor, White House, to DL-WHO-
Press, et al. (Sept. 27, 2012, 10:15 AM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05415305).

    Upon seeing the article that morning, McDonough forwarded 
it to Robert Cardillo, Deputy Director, Office of the Director 
of National Intelligence, Morell, and John Brennan, 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Counterterrorism Advisor to the President. McDonough wrote:

        Hey, guys,

        This is the third report making this assertion. Is this 
        correct?

        Thanks,

        Denis\376\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \376\Email from Mr.McDonough, to Mr. Cardillo and Mr. Morell (Sept. 
27, 2012, 10:57 AM) (on file with the Committee, C05415305).

    Cardillo responded, including Olsen and Nick Rasmussen, 
Deputy Director, National Counterterrorism Center. Cardillo 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
wrote:

        I am fairly sure the answer is `no.' And I've asked 
        Matt and Nick to lay out on a timeline the evolution of 
        our IC assessments from 12 September on. They're on cc 
        so I'll ask when that can be ready. Robert.\377\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \377\Email from Mr. Cardillo to Mr. McDonough, et al. (Sept. 27, 
2012, 11:23 AM) (on file with the Committee, C05415305).

    It is unclear which assertion McDonough and Cardillo were 
referring to, although Olsen told the Committee he believed 
from the beginning the assault on the U.S. facilities in 
Benghazi was a terrorist attack,\378\ and Morell testified that 
``[i]n the minds of the [CIA] analysts from the get-go, this 
was a terrorist attack, and I think that is reflected in what 
they wrote.''\379\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \378\Olsen Testimony at 100.
    \379\Morell Testimony at 74.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Olsen responded to the email, writing:

        All-

        As Robert suggests, I think the best way to approach 
        this is to review and memorialize exactly what we were 
        saying from the onset of the attack going forward. 
        We've got a chronological catalog of all finished 
        intelligence on the attack. And we'll put together 
        today a time line summary that sets forth all key 
        points and analytic judgments as they developed from 9/
        11 through the present. Nick and I will get started on 
        the time line right away.

        --Matt\380\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \380\Email from Mr. Olsen to Mr. Cardillo, et al. (Sept. 27, 2012, 
12:12 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05415305).

    That evening, Cardillo responded. He sent his response to 
the group, but also included Turner and Rexon Ryu. Cardillo 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
wrote:

        NCTC has already made great progress in documenting the 
        chronology of what we knew and what we published. My 
        reading of that draft is that we can easily debunk Fox 
        and refute the hits on Susan's statements on Sunday, 16 
        Sep. As I read the laydown, her comments were 
        consistent with our intel assessment at that time. . . 
        .\381\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \381\Email from Mr. Cardillo to Mr. Olsen, Mr. McDonough, & Mr. 
Morell (Sept. 27, 2012, 7:47 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05415305).

    McDonough responded to the email, and included Rhodes in 
the email chain. In his response, McDonough included another 
article from ABC News. The title of the ABC News article was 
``Some Administration Officials Were Concerned About Initial 
White House Push Blaming Benghazi Attack on Mob, Video'' and 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
read, in part:

        Even before Defense Secretary Leon Panetta contradicted 
        the initial story about the attack on the U.S. 
        consulate in Benghazi, Libya, today, Obama 
        administration officials told ABC News they were 
        concerned after the White House began pushing the line 
        that the attack was spontaneous and not the work of 
        terrorists. . . . Panetta today said that the attack 
        that killed four Americans on the anniversary of 9/11 
        was not only carried out by terrorists--it was pre-
        meditated. . . .

        The White House first suggested the attack was 
        spontaneous--the result of an anti-Muslim video that 
        incited mobs throughout the region. . . .

        But sources told ABC News that intelligence officials 
        on the ground immediately suspected the attack was not 
        tied to the movie at all. . . .

        As of Thursday afternoon, officials from the Obama 
        administration were not even 100 percent certain that 
        the protest of the anti-Muslim film in Benghazi 
        occurred outside the U.S. diplomatic post.\382\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \382\Email from Mr. McDonough to Mr. Cardillo, Mr. Olsen, Mr. 
Rhodes, and Mr. Morell (Sept. 27, 2012, 7:49 PM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05415305).

    McDonough wrote of this article, ``The piece immediately 
below led ABC World News Tonight today. It is really 
galling.''\383\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \383\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Rhodes responded three minutes later. He wrote:

        I believe that we need something tomorrow. There is a 
        narrative that is being aggressively pushed that the 
        White House and Susan Rice deliberately misrepresented 
        facts, which is being confirmed by anonymous 
        intelligence sources and administration officials. In 
        the absence of an affirmative statement that this has 
        been an evolving set of facts guided by our increasing 
        understanding of what took place, that narrative will 
        only harden further. Already, it is a bell that is 
        going to be very difficult to unring.\384\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \384\Email from Mr. Rhodes to Mr. McDonough, Mr. Olsen, Mr. 
Cardillo, and Mr. Morell (Sept. 27, 2012, 7:52 PM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05415305).

    In essence, Rhodes wanted to put out a statement not for 
the reason of informing the public about the updated 
intelligence assessment relating to the attacks, but to refute 
allegations Rice and the White House ``deliberately 
misrepresented facts.''\385\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \385\Email from Mr. Rhodes to Mr. McDonough, Mr. Cardillo, Mr. 
Olsen, and Mr. Morell (Sept. 27, 2012, 7:56 PM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05415305).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Rhodes emailed the group again less than twenty minutes 
later, stating:

        Again, I believe we have a very credible case that all 
        we have done is follow the facts and inform people of 
        those facts, while prioritizing the need for 
        investigations to run their course. However, that case 
        is being lost amidst the leaks of information (correct 
        and incorrect) and uninformed assertions coming from a 
        variety of places.\386\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \386\Email from Mr. Rhodes to Mr. Cardillo, Mr. McDonough, Mr. 
Olsen, and Mr. Morell (Sept. 27, 2012, 8:15 PM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05415305).

    Two things about Rhodes' response are noteworthy. One, he 
acknowledges some of the leaks are ``correct,'' although he 
does not identify which ones; and two, he writes ``I believe we 
have a very credible case that all we have done is follow the 
facts.''\387\ ``Credible case'' is hardly a definitive, full-
throated defense of the administration's handling of the public 
explanation for the attacks in Benghazi.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \387\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The following morning Olsen emailed the group that he had 
provided a draft statement to Turner for eventual release. 
Rhodes responded, writing:

        Thank you for working this, as the most important thing 
        is having a public baseline--informed by the facts--
        that we can all point to. We are well synched up with 
        Shawn Turner as well.\388\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \388\Email from Mr. Rhodes to Mr. Cardillo, Mr. Olsen, Mr. 
McDonough, Mr. Morell (Sept. 28, 2012, 10:43 AM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05415305).

    Rhodes testified to the Committee about his recollection of 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
this statement:

        Well, my recollection is that there was an interest in 
        providing a statement that clarified our understanding 
        and the evolution of our understanding of the events in 
        Benghazi that that statement was to be prepared by the 
        intelligence community. I work with them in my 
        coordinating role as they were preparing that 
        statement.\389\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \389\Rhodes Testimony at 137.

    Rhodes' email that they are ``synched up'' with 
Turner,\390\ and his testimony that he was in his 
``coordinating role'' as the statement was prepared,\391\ 
serves as a reminder the White House played a central role in 
the drafting of this statement--a statement that, by Rhodes' 
own admission, served not to inform the public but rather to 
push back against a narrative that the White House and Rice 
deliberately misrepresented facts. The statement itself, 
however, according to Olsen, was ``speaking on behalf of the 
intelligence community at that point and not really beyond 
that.''\392\ The White House's involvement in the creation of 
the statement--through McDonough, Brennan, and Rhodes--
continues to raise questions as to who ultimately controlled 
the message regarding Benghazi coming out of not just the 
intelligence community but the executive branch as a whole.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \390\Email from Mr. Rhodes to Mr. Cardillo, Mr. Olsen, Mr. 
McDonough, Mr. Morell (Sept. 28, 2012, 10:43 AM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05415305).
    \391\Rhodes Testimony at 137.
    \392\Olsen Testimony at 117.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                             THE LANDSCAPE

    The political import of the attacks on the presidential 
campaign of 2012 is not a subject of the committee's 
investigation. Nevertheless, the House of Representatives did 
direct the Committee to investigate and study ``internal and 
public executive branch communications about the 
attacks.''\393\ It would be naive to assume this or any 
administration's public statements about a significant foreign 
policy event would be made without full awareness of the 
political effect of those statements. It is necessary to place 
the attacks and the administration's statements about them in 
context.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \393\H. Res. 567 113th Congress Section 3(a)(3).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Benghazi terrorist attacks occurred not only on the 
anniversary of the Sept 11, 2001 terrorist attacks but also in 
the middle of the 2012 presidential campaign. The first 
presidential debate was 22 days away and the election was 56 
days away. The killing of a U.S. Ambassador in the line of 
duty--which had not occurred in 33 years--and three other 
Americans would inevitably become an issue in the campaign and 
even be discussed at the presidential debate on October 16, 
2012.\394\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \394\October 16, 2012 Debate Transcript, Comm'n on Presidential 
Debates (Oct. 16, 2012), http://www.debates.org/index.php?page=october-
16-2012-the-second-obama-romney-presidential-debate.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Prior to the attacks, the President and the Secretary of 
State took credit for the Administration's record in the war on 
terror, the perceived success of the intervention in Libya, and 
the toppling of its dictator, Muammar Qadhafi.\395\ Nearly four 
years had passed without a significant incident at home or 
abroad, and killing Osama bin Laden represented an historic 
victory.\396\ The President pointed to these successes in his 
campaign, including in a speech five days prior to the attacks:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \395\See, e.g., Tom Cohen, Obama makes war policy an election 
strength, CNN (Oct. 24, 2011), http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/24/politics/
obama-foreign-policy.
    \396\Id.

        In a world of new threats and new challenges, you can 
        choose leadership that has been tested and proven. Four 
        years ago, I promised to end the war in Iraq: We did. I 
        promised to refocus on the terrorists who actually 
        attacked us on 9/11. We have. We've blunted the 
        Taliban's momentum in Afghanistan, and in 2014, our 
        longest war will be over. A new tower rises above the 
        New York skyline, al-Qaeda is on the path to defeat, 
        and Osama bin Laden is dead.\397\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \397\President Barack Obama, Speech at 2012 Democratic National 
Convention (Sept. 6, 2012).

    The Benghazi attacks could certainly affect public 
perception of the administration's record in the war on terror 
and the narrative of success in Libya. Almost immediately, the 
press began asking questions about whether Benghazi represented 
a failure of the President's policies. In a press conference 
the day after the attacks, a reporter asked Carney directly: 
``Jay, is the U.S. doing something wrong policy-wise in Libya 
that brings this [the attack] on? Or is the policy fine, it's 
just this particular event?''\398\ One publication summed up 
the situation by saying, ``with the American Presidential 
election only two months away, the murder of four Americans 
serving their government overseas could be a game changer so 
far as Mr. Obama's re-election prospects are concerned.''\399\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \398\Press Gaggle by Press Secretary Jay Carney en route Las Vegas, 
NV, Office of the Press Secretary, The White House (Sept. 12, 2012), 
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/09/12/press-gaggle-
press-secretary-jay-carney-en-route-las-vegas-nv-9122012.
    \399\Con Coughlin, The Murder of the US Ambassador to Libya is a 
Wake-up Call for Obama, The Daily Telegraph (Sept. 12, 2012), http://
blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/concoughlin/100180611/murder-of-us-
ambassador-is-a-wake-up-call-for-obama.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The attacks remained an issue throughout the campaign 
including at the second presidential debate where former 
Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney used the attacks to question 
the administration's Middle East policy generally:

        And this [the Benghazi attacks] calls into question the 
        president's whole policy in the Middle East. Look 
        what's happening in Syria, in Egypt, now in Libya. 
        Consider the distance between ourselves and--and 
        Israel, the president said that--that he was going to 
        put daylight between us and Israel.

        We have Iran four years closer to a nuclear bomb. 
        Syria--Syria's not just a tragedy of 30,000 civilians 
        being killed by a military, but also a strategic--
        strategically significant player for America.

        The president's policies throughout the Middle East 
        began with an apology tour and--and--and pursue a 
        strategy of leading from behind, and this strategy is 
        unraveling before our very eyes.\400\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \400\October 16, 2012 Debate Transcript, Commission on Presidential 
Debates (Oct. 16, 2012), http://www.debates.org/index.php?page=october-
16-2012-the-second-obama-romney-presidential-debate

    Shortly after this statement, the candidates and the 
moderator debated whether the President called the Benghazi 
attacks a terrorist attack from day one.\401\ The President's 
Rose Garden remarks were not his only public comments about the 
attacks on September 12. The President also taped a 60 Minutes 
interview the same day, which aired on September 23.\402\ 
During the interview the President said it was ``too early to 
tell'' when asked about his Rose Garden remarks and whether the 
attacks were terrorism.\403\ The question and the President's 
answer were not included in the broadcast version because the 
interview was edited.\404\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \401\October 16, 2012 Debate Transcript, Comm'n on Presidential 
Debates (Oct. 16, 2012), http://www.debates.org/index.php?page=october-
16-2012-the-second-obama-romney-presidential-debate; Press Release, The 
White House Office of the Press Secretary, Remarks by the President on 
the Deaths of U.S. Embassy Staff in Libya (Sept. 12, 2012), https://
www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/09/12/remarks-president-
deaths-us-embassy-staff-libya.
    \402\Dylan Byers & MacKenzie Weinger, CBS under fire for withhold 
Obama's Benghazi remarks, Politico (Nov. 5, 2012), http://
www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/11/cbs-under-fire-for-withholding-
obamas-benghazi-remarks-148513.
    \403\Id.
    \404\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Three days after the second debate, CBS posted additional 
portions of the 60 Minutes transcript from the interview with 
the President on September 12, 2012.\405\ The portion of the 
President refusing to call it a terrorist attack was still 
absent. It was not until November 6, 2012, two days before the 
election, when CBS finally posted publicly for the first time 
the entire transcript of the President's interview on September 
12, 2012.\406\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \405\Id.
    \406\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The President of CBS News at the time, David Rhodes, is the 
brother of Ben Rhodes, who helped prepare the President for the 
second debate.\407\ While Ben Rhodes denied to the Committee he 
talked with anybody at CBS prior to the September 23, 2012, 
airing of the President's interview, he did not know whether 
others in the White House did. Rhodes also did not testify as 
to whether or not he spoke with anybody at CBS after September 
23, 2012, regarding the posting of the transcript to CBS' 
website. He testified:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \407\Helene Cooper, Obama's Prep Session Goal: Don't Repeat 
Mistakes of Last Debate, N.Y. Times (Oct. 14, 2012), http://
www.nytimes.com/2012/10/15/us/politics/a-serious-debate-prep-
session-for-obama.html?_r=0.

        Q: And you may recall there was some bit of controversy 
        over the interview that was actually aired by CBS 
        because it did not include a portion of the President's 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        remarks. Do you remember that?

        A: I have a recollection that there was some 
        controversy about that, yes.

        Q: Did you or anybody else on your staff have any 
        conversations with CBS about that 60 Minutes interview?

        A: I did not excuse me, what's the in what time period 
        are you talking about?

        Q: Prior to it airing?

        A: I did not have any conversations with CBS after the 
        interview taped prior to it aired.

        Q: Did anybody on your staff?

        A: Generally, when we have interviews like that with 
        the President, the contacts with the network are 
        handled by the White House press in the communications 
        office, not the NSC.

        Q: Do you know if any of those communications actually 
        occurred?

        A: I don't know.\408\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \408\Rhodes Testimony at 118-19.

    On October 1, 2012, the Secretary of State forwarded a 
Salon article titled ``GOP's October Surprise?'' which alleged 
Romney planned to attack the President as weak on 
terrorism.\409\ Sidney Blumenthal emailed the article to the 
Secretary and took credit for it getting it ``done and 
published.''\410\ The Secretary forwarded the email to Sullivan 
with the instruction, ``Be sure Ben knows they need to be ready 
for this line of attack.'' Sullivan responded: ``Will 
do.''\411\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \409\Craig Unger, GOP's October surprise?, Salon (Oct. 1, 2012), 
http://www.salon.com/2012/10/01/gops_october_surprise.
    \410\See Email from Sidney Blumenthal to Hillary R. Clinton 
(``H''), Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State (Oct. 1, 2012, 9:30 AM) 
(on file with the Committee, SCB0045545) (``Got done and published.'').
    \411\Email from Jacob J. Sullivan, Deputy Chief of Staff and Dir. 
of Policy Planning, U.S. Dep't of State, to Hillary R. Clinton (``H''), 
Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State (Oct. 1, 2012, 3:37 PM) (on file 
with the Committee, SCB0045545).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The White House told the Committee they would not allow the 
Committee to ask about this email during the Committee's 
interview with Rhodes, citing executive privilege and noting 
that preparing for a debate was a ``core executive 
function.''\412\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \412\Phone Call between Office of White House Counsel and Committee 
Staff (Jan. 30, 2016).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                   MIXING INTELLIGENCE WITH POLITICS

    In the months after the Benghazi attacks, politics 
continued to play a role in assigning blame for what had 
occurred and who said what. In addition to the usual politics 
of Republicans and Democrats lobbing accusations at one 
another, however, a different, quieter, type of politics was 
taking place regarding Benghazi: internal politics. At the 
center of it all was Morell.

                               The Setup

    On November 27, 2012, amid speculation the President would 
nominate her to become the next Secretary of State, Rice 
traveled to Capitol Hill to meet with three Senators to discuss 
her September 16 appearances on the Sunday talk shows.\413\ 
Accompanying Rice to that meeting was Morell, who was at the 
time Acting Director of the CIA. Morell described why he 
attended the meeting:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \413\Ed O'Keefe, Susan Rice, CIA director meet with GOP critics on 
Libya, Wash. Post (Nov. 27, 2012), https://www.washingtonpost.com/
blogs/2chambers/wp/2012/11/27/susan-rice-cia-
director-meet-with-gop-critics-on-libya.

        Q: Can you just generally describe what the purpose of 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        that meeting was?

        A: Yes. So I got a phone call from Denis McDonough, who 
        was then the deputy national security advisor. He told 
        me that--of course I knew from the media that Susan was 
        under attack for what she had said on the Sunday shows. 
        He told me that Susan wanted to go to the Hill and have 
        conversations with her critics. He told me that the 
        President wanted me to go along with her. He made very 
        clear to me that my job in going along with her was to 
        talk about the classified analysis, to talk about the 
        talking points, and importantly, to show, to actually 
        show the Senators the consistency between the talking 
        points and the classified analysis. That's what he told 
        me my job was. And I said yes and I went.\414\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \414\Morell Testimony at 202-203.

    Morell agreed to the President's request and attended the 
meeting with Rice. In his book, however, Morell wrote: ``In 
retrospect, attending the meeting was a mistake. The meeting 
was inherently political, and by attending, I inserted myself 
into a political issue . . . That is not where an intelligence 
officer should be.''\415\ Morell told the Committee:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \415\Morell, supra note 114, at 235.

        Q: Did you think your presence there was requested to 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        insulate or protect Susan Rice in any way?

        A: I think my--I think my presence there was to show 
        that what she said, right, about Benghazi was 
        consistent, right, at least the protest, spontaneity 
        part, right, was consistent with what the analysts 
        really believed.

        Q: I guess what I'm trying to get at it, do you think 
        in any way--I mean you're a career analyst, you're 
        known or so I've heard you're known around the 
        community as a very straight shooting, as a straight 
        shooter, you call it like you see it. So the fact that 
        you were accompanying her--did you know if the 
        Secretary of State at that point had announced that she 
        was going to step down? Do you know if Susan Rice at 
        that point----

        A: Yes, I believe so, right? I believe that was the 
        whole point--in fact, that is what Denis said, right, 
        her possible nomination to be Secretary of State was at 
        risk, absolutely.

        Q: --So it was a very inherently political meeting----

        A: Yes, it was.

        Q: --that you were inserting yourself or that you had 
        been asked to--it was a very inherently political 
        meeting that you had been asked to attend.

        A: Yes. But, again, I didn't realize it at the time. I 
        really didn't. I didn't know I was walking myself into 
        this political setting.\416\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \416\Morell Testimony at 205-206.

    In addition to explaining to the Senators how Rice's 
comments on the Sunday shows aligned with the intelligence at 
the time, Morell's attendance at the meeting served another 
purpose--it kept him at the forefront of the controversy 
surrounding the Benghazi talking points. While Rice was the 
administration's representative on the Sunday talk shows, 
Morell was the individual who edited the CIA talking points 
Rice says she relied on.\417\ Having public criticism targeted 
towards Morell, a career intelligence official, instead of 
Rice, a political appointee in a politically charged 
environment, could be beneficial for a potential Secretary of 
State nominee.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \417\See, e.g., HPSCI White Paper Talking Points for Use with the 
Media at 63 (Sept. 14, 2012), https://assets.documentcloud.org/
documents/701145/white-house-e-mails-on-benghazi-talking-points.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                             The Execution

    In late 2012, Morell directed two internal CIA reviews take 
place regarding the talking points. One review, called the 
Analytic Line Review, went through each piece of CIA analysis 
after the Benghazi attacks to determine how strong the 
supporting evidence was for each of the analytic 
assessments.\418\ The second review was about ``Lessons 
Learned'' from the internal process of creating the talking 
points for HPSCI.\419\Morell wanted to send these two internal 
reviews to Congress.\420\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \418\Analytic Line Review, supra note 362.
    \419\Lessons Learned, supra note 189.
    \420\Morell Testimony at 208.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Morell sent only the Analytic Line Review to Congress, 
which was completed in January 2013. The White House would not 
allow him to send the other document--containing drafts of the 
talking points and the process through which they were 
drafted--to Congress, ``citing executive privilege.''\421\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \421\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On March 19, 2013, Robert S. Litt, General Counsel, Office 
of the Director of National Intelligence, testified before 
HPSCI.\422\ At the hearing, Litt provided the HPSCI Members two 
packages of documents: one was a small package that contained 
each draft version of the talking points, showing which changes 
had been made from draft to draft; the other was a large 
package of roughly 100 pages that contained interagency emails 
regarding the drafting of the talking points. These documents 
were shared with the HPSCI Members, yet Litt claimed they were 
so sensitive that he took them back at the end of the 
briefing;\423\ Members therefore would be unable to keep the 
documents or make any copies.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \422\Briefing--The Hon. Robert S. Litt (Benghazi Documents), 
Hearing Before the H. Permanent Select Comm. on Intelligence, 113th 
Cong. (2013).
    \423\Id. at 4.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Two months later, on May 15, 2013, however, everything 
changed. The White House decided to release 100 pages of emails 
related to the talking points.\424\ These were the same emails 
Litt had provided to HPSCI two months prior yet took back at 
the end of the hearing. In conjunction with the release, the 
White House asked Morell to brief the press on the evolution of 
the talking points. Just as he had when he accompanied Rice to 
the November 2012 meeting, Morell complied.\425\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \424\Jake Tapper, et al., White House releases Benghazi e-mails, 
CNN (May 16, 2013), http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/15/politics/benghazi-
emails.
    \425\Morell, supra note 114, at 207.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Morell talked to the Committee about the White House's 
decision to release these emails:

        Q: And so the fact that you were forbidden from sharing 
        an assessment with Congress over the possibility of 
        executive privilege and then all of a sudden the 
        documents were released publicly, did that seem to you 
        to be a pretty large turnaround?

        A: So, you know, I don't remember, I simply don't 
        remember why, you know, why the shift, right, why all 
        of a sudden the administration decided to release these 
        publicly. I don't remember being part of those 
        discussions. I don't recall being part of those 
        discussions. So I don't know why they decided all of a 
        sudden to do it.

        Q: Do you think it might have been politically 
        beneficial for them to all of a sudden release those 
        documents?

        A: I think--I think--I'm speculating, now, okay, so 
        speculating--I think that the criticism kept going up 
        and up. The different theories about what was going on 
        kept on expanding right, and the White House wanted to 
        put that to rest by putting it all out there. That's my 
        guess.

        Q: Did they put it all out there when they released 
        those talking points?

        A: Not in my view.

        Q: Can you elaborate on that?

        A: Sure. So 2014, mid-2014, I open the newspaper and I 
        see Ben Rhodes' talking points from the 15th of 
        September, right, designed to prep Susan Rice for her 
        Sunday shows. And I say to myself, I have not seen 
        these things before. When I saw them in the media in 
        mid-2014 it was the first time I ever saw them.\426\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \426\Id. at 208-09.

    The decision by the White House to release the talking 
points pertaining to HPSCI and not the talking points drafted 
by Rhodes had one major effect: it kept the spotlight on 
Morell--who became front and center of this release by briefing 
the press at the request of the White House--the CIA, and their 
role in shaping the talking points. It also kept the spotlight 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
away from others. Morell acknowledged this in his testimony:

        Q: And you said you feel that they should have been 
        released with the package of the CIA talking points. 
        What are the implications that they were not released 
        with the talking points, the package, and they're 
        coming out a year later? What does that mean?

        A: I don't know, right, I don't know, the 
        counterfactual is hard to think through. I believe--I'm 
        speculating now, okay--I believe there would have been 
        less attention on CIA and more attention on the White 
        House.\427\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \427\Id. at 217.

    Around the same time, Morell lobbied the White House to 
release video footage of the attack from the State Department 
compound in Benghazi. Morell, aware of the public debate over 
whether or not protests had occurred prior to attack, wanted 
the footage released to provide transparency to the American 
people so they could judge for themselves what had transpired 
and quell the political firestorm. After all, it was after a 
description of this video footage was shared with the CIA that 
CIA personnel began to definitively conclude no protest had 
occurred.\428\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \428\Email from [Tripoli [redacted text]] to [Near East Division] 
(Sept. 18, 2012, 1:14 PM) (``I know that we all agree as time has 
passed the pieces are starting to unravel particularly where there was 
protests earlier that day--I think we can officially say now that there 
were none.'') (on file with CIA, REQUEST 1-002940 to REQUEST 1-002943).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In addition to Morell, James Clapper, Director, Office of 
the Director of National Intelligence, also wanted the 
surveillance tapes to be made public. The White House refused, 
however, and to this day, the tapes remain classified. Morell 
told the Committee:

        Q: So you had seen the videos of the TMF, you had seen 
        NCTC analysis of the videos. Did you want those videos 
        to be released as well?

        A: I did, I did.

        Q: And was there anybody who agreed with you that those 
        videos should be declassified and released?

        A: Yes, the DNI agreed with me.

        Q: The DNI. When you say DNI, you're talking about DNI 
        Clapper?

        A: Yes.

        Q: Were those videos released?

        A: No.

        Q: Why did you want those videos released?

        A: Because look, my view, not only strongly today 
        because of all of this, but even at the time, my view 
        is when there's--when there are questions about--when 
        there are questions about what was done on a particular 
        issue, particularly when there's questions of 
        impropriety, the best thing to do is to get everything 
        out, the best thing to do is to get all the information 
        you can out. Let the American people see it all and let 
        the American people decide.

        You know, I thought the video--the NCTC analysis told 
        the story of what actually happened that night and I 
        thought the American people deserved to see it.

        Q: And who prevented the video from being publicly 
        released?

        A: The White House--the White House never responded to 
        the DNI and my repeated suggestions that it be 
        released.

        Q: So you were acting director of the CIA at the time?

        A: Uh-huh.

        Q: And Mr. Clapper was the director for national 
        intelligence. And you two repeatedly pushed the White 
        House to release this video?

        A: Yes.

        Q: And they did not.

        A: Correct.

        Q: And instead they released the package, so to speak, 
        they released the package----

        A: I don't remember the timing of our suggestion, 
        right? But, yes, you're absolutely right.

        Q: So they released the package and at the time they 
        released the package they did not release [the Ben 
        Rhodes talking points], which is----

        A: The video.

        Q: They did not release the video.

        A: And they did not release [the Ben Rhodes talking 
        points].\429\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \429\Morell Testimony at 210-11.

                              The Fallout

    On April 17, 2014, the Rhodes talking points--which, in 
addition to the talking points provided to HPSCI and edited by 
Morell, were used by Rice to prepare for the Sunday talk 
shows--were released to Congress.\430\ Later that month, the 
talking points became publicized for the first time.\431\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \430\Letter from Thomas B. Gibbons, Acting Ass't Sec'y of 
Legislative Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to Rep. Darrell Issa, 
Chairman, House Committee on Oversight and Gov. Reform, U.S. House of 
Representatives (May 20, 2013) (on file with the Committee).
    \431\Press Release, Judicial Watch, Benghazi Documents Point to 
White House on Misleading Talking Points (Apr. 29, 2014), http://
www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-
benghazi-documents-point-white-house-misleading-talking-points.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Around the time of the November 27, 2012 meeting between 
Rice and the three Senators, Lieberman said of Ambassador Rice:

        I asked if she was briefed by the White House, the 
        campaign, or the political operation, and she said she 
        had seen no message points from the White House.''\432\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \432\Ed O'Keefe, Susan Rice, CIA director meet with GOP critics on 
Libya, Wash. Post (Nov. 27, 2012), https://www.washingtonpost.com/
blogs/2chambers/wp/2012/11/27/susan-rice-cia-
director-meet-with-gop-critics-on-libya.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    As discussed above, Rice testified she only relied on the 
talking points provided to HPSCI when discussing Benghazi on 
the talk shows.\433\ Rhodes, however, conceded the third bullet 
point in his talking points--``to show the U.S. would be 
resolute in bringing to justice people who harm Americans, and 
standing steadfast through these protests''--applied only to 
Libya.\434\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \433\Krishnadev Calamur, Susan Rice Says Benghazi Claims Were Based 
On Information From Intelligence, NPR (Nov. 21, 2012), http://
www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/11/21/165686269/susan-rice-says-
benghazi-claims-were-based-on-information-from-intelligence.
    \434\Rhodes Testimony at 78.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Morell said he first learned about Rhodes' talking points 
when he opened the newspaper. Morell, an intelligence officer 
for over three decades, also believed the talking points 
related to Benghazi. He told the Committee:

        Q: Okay. So let me take that first statement. You 
        thought that these were related to Benghazi. I'm just 
        reading through it here on the first page, I don't see 
        Benghazi listed. Why do you think that they were 
        related to Benghazi?

        A: Two reasons. One is Benghazi was what was on 
        everyone's mind at the time. Benghazi had just 
        happened, right, the previous Tuesday. This was the 
        following Sunday, right, it was the kind of top-of-the-
        list issue. And two, the--there is a tick in here--let 
        me find it--so the third tick under ``goals,'' third 
        tick under ``goals'' says: ``To show that we will be 
        resolute in bringing people to harm Americans to 
        justice.'' That only happened in one place.

        Q: And that was in Benghazi?

        A: Yes.\435\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \435\Morell Testimony at 216-217.

    After learning of the existence of these talking points, 
Morell became bothered that Rhodes, a member of the National 
Security Council staff, had drafted what Morell viewed as a 
political document. Morell believes there should be a bright 
line between national security and politics, and he views the 
talking points drafted by Rhodes crossed that line. Morell 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
testified:

        Q: Aside from the release of these talking points and 
        the release of the package, is there anything in, at 
        least under the goals and the top-lines, is there 
        anything about this document that makes you 
        uncomfortable as a CIA officer and career analyst?

        A: Yeah. So, as you know, I'm on the record on this, so 
        the second goal, the second goal bothers me in two 
        ways. The first way it bothers me is that it has a 
        feeling of being political. It has a feeling of being 
        political, right? Blame it on this, not on that, right? 
        Just that concept of blame it on this and blame it on 
        that, not don't blame it on that, has a feeling of 
        being political to me.

        Q: Ben Rhodes worked at the White House?

        A: Yes.

        Q: So what's the problem if he writes something that--
        --

        A: Because Ben is on the National Security Council 
        staff, right, and I believe, right, and there might be 
        different views out there, but I believe, as a 33-year 
        national security professional, that there should be a 
        very, very sharp line between national security and 
        politics. And I know that's not always the case, but 
        that's what I believe, right? And I believe that that 
        line was crossed here. That is a personal opinion, 
        right?

        The second thing, right, the second thing I don't like 
        about that is the line, ``not a broader failure of 
        policy.'' The President himself is on the record as 
        saying that he has deep regrets about Libya. We all 
        have deep regrets about Libya. And I talked earlier 
        about the regrets that I have about what the 
        intelligence community should have written prior to the 
        intervention. There are policymakers have regrets about 
        what we did and didn't do in Libya, right, and the loss 
        of stability there.

        And so, you know, I don't think ``and not a broader 
        failure of policy'' is correct as it relates to 
        Benghazi, as it relates to Libya. You can have a debate 
        about the rest of the region, but as it relates to 
        Libya and Benghazi I don't think that's right.\436\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \436\Id. at 218-19.

    When asked about his central role in all of these events--
the meeting with Rice at the White House's request, briefing 
the press at the White House's request after the release of the 
drafts of the HPSCI talking points, and being in the dark for 
nearly two years about the Rhodes talking points--Morell 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
testified:

        Q: So we talked earlier about the meeting you had with 
        Senators McCain, Graham, Ayotte. We talked about how 
        the--at Denis McDonough's request, perhaps the 
        President's request, we talked about how you briefed 
        media members when the package was released. You have 
        been beaten up for a year and you briefed media members 
        at the request of the White House, is what I believe 
        you said. Did you feel in any way used by the White 
        House when you discovered that these talking points 
        also existed and you were completely kept in the dark 
        until the public found out about them?

        A: Look, I wish I would have known about them, okay, I 
        wish I would have known about them.\437\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \437\Id. at 222-23.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                         THE FBI INVESTIGATION

    Throughout the days and weeks after the attacks in 
Benghazi, administration officials used the pending FBI 
investigation as both a sword and a shield. When convenient, 
officials such as Rice and Carney made reference to the 
FBI.\438\ When inconvenient, administration officials cited the 
ongoing FBI investigation as the reason they could not discuss 
certain matters.\439\ On at least one occasion, an 
administration official cited the FBI investigation as evidence 
of a fact even though the FBI investigation had hardly begun.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \438\See, e.g., ``Face the Nation'' transcripts, September 16, 
2012: Libyan Pres. Magariaf, Amb. Rice and Sen. McCain, CBS News (Sept. 
16, 2012), http://www.cbsnews.com/news/face-the-nation-transcripts-
september-16-2012-libyan-pres-magariaf-amb-rice-and-sen-mccain (``. . . 
there is an investigation that the United States government will launch 
led by the FBI, that has begun and . . . they have already begun 
looking at all sorts of evidence of--of various sorts already available 
to them and to us.''), and Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay 
Carney, Office of the Press Secretary, The White House (Sept. 18, 
2012), https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/09/18/press-
briefing-secretary-jay-carney-9182012 (``There is an ongoing 
investigation. The FBI is investigating. And that investigation will 
follow the facts wherever they lead.'').
    \439\See, e.g., Nuland Sept. 17 Briefing, supra note 326.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    It is worth nothing Ahmed Abu Khatallah was arrested in 
June 2014.\440\ To date, he has still not been brought to 
trial. It was 23 months after his arrest that the Justice 
Department announced the Department would not seek the death 
penalty for Khatallah.\441\ The Justice Department has, 
however, made certain legal filings wherein the government's 
theory of the case--hence its understanding of provable facts--
is on public display.\442\ The FBI investigation that 
administration officials claimed would definitively answer 
questions that emerged in the days and weeks after the attacks 
is still ``ongoing''--two years after a single suspect was 
arrested and nearly four years after Ambassador Chris Stevens, 
Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods, and Glen Doherty were killed.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \440\Karen DeYoung, et al., U.S. captured Benghazi suspect in 
secret raid, Wash. Post (June 17, 2014).
    \441\Spencer Hsu, U.S. will not seek death penalty for accused 
ringleader in Benghazi attacks, Wash. Post (May 10, 2016).
    \442\Gov't's Motion for Pretrial Detention at 5-9, U.S. v. 
Khatallah (E.D. Va July 1, 2014).

                               PART III:

                 Events Leading to the Benghazi Attacks

``Probably failing to plan for the day after what I think was 
the
right thing to do in intervening in Libya.''\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\President Obama: Libya aftermath `worst mistake' of presidency, 
BBC NEWS (Apr. 11, 2016), http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-
36013703.

                        The President, on what constituted the 
                        biggest mis-
                        take of his Presidency, April 10, 2016

``When Qaddafi is himself removed, you should of course make a
public statement before the cameras wherever you are . . . You
must establish yourself in the historical record . . . The most
important phrase is `successful strategy.'''\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\Email from Sidney Blumenthal (``Sid'') to Hillary R. Clinton 
(``H'') (Aug. 22, 2011, 11:25 AM) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0051597).

                        Sidney Blumenthal to the Secretary of 
                        State, August
                        22, 2011

``We came, we saw, he died.''\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \3\Corbett Daly, Clinton on Qaddafi: ``We came, we saw, he died,'' 
CBS NEWS (Oct. 20, 2011), http://www.cbsnews.com/news/clinton-on-
qaddafi-we-came-we-saw-he-died.

                        The Secretary of State after the death 
                        of Muammar
                        Qadhafi, October 20, 2011

``The American people and the U.S. Congress will be understand-
ably irritated if a revolution that the United States supported 
ends
up spewing hatred or advocating violence against the United
States.''\4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \4\See Email from Policy Planning staff, U.S. Dep't of State, to 
Jake Sullivan, Dir. of Policy Planning, U.S. Dep't of State (Aug. 29 
2011, 5:01 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0060926-30) (attaching 
Note for the Secretary re: U.S. Interests in post-Qadhafi Libya).

                        Jake Sullivan, August 29, 2011 Note for 
                        the Secretary,
                        U.S. Interests in post-Qadhafi Libya

                              Introduction

    John Christopher Stevens arrived in Benghazi, Libya on 
April 5, 2011, in the midst of a civil war. Stevens traveled to 
Benghazi from Malta by Greek cargo ship with $60,000 in 
currency and an eight-member Diplomatic Security protective 
detail. Also in the group was a junior reporting officer tasked 
with conducting political reporting, and two members of the 
Disaster Assistance Response Team from the United States Agency 
for International Development. Stevens' only instruction was to 
begin establishing contact with Libyan opposition forces 
seeking to overthrow the government of the Colonel Muammar 
Qadhafi. There was no military support for Stevens' arrival 
because of President Barack H. Obama's ``no boots on the 
ground'' policy, no protocol and no precedent to guide his 
activities, and no physical facility to house him and his team. 
Stevens' operation had an undefined diplomatic status and 
duration, and no authorized set of contacts to work with. He 
was asked to do a difficult job in a dangerous environment, and 
he courageously accepted the call.
    Although the civil war ended in August 2011 with the fall 
of Tripoli, Libya was not officially liberated until October 
23, 2011, after the death of Qadhafi.\5\ Even then the security 
environment remained hazardous. In December 2011, the State 
Department's own threat rating system considered Libya a grave 
risk to American diplomats.\6\ The situation deteriorated from 
there. In Benghazi alone, more than 60 major security incidents 
took place between January 1, 2012 and September 10, 2012. More 
than half of those security incidents occurred after April 6, 
2012, the date of the first IED attack on the Benghazi Mission 
compound.\7\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \5\Press Statement, Hillary R. Clinton, Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't 
of State, Liberation of Libya (Oct. 23, 2011), http://www.state.gov/
secretary/20092013clinton/rm/2011/10/175999.htm.
    \6\See Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 24 to Diplomatic Sec. Agent 
10 (Dec. 15, 2011, 9:03 AM) (on file with the Committee, C05388931) 
(discussing ``US Mission Benghazi threat levels''); see also U.S. Gov't 
Accountability Off., GAO-14-655, Diplomatic Security: Overseas 
Facilities May Face Greater Risks Due to Gaps in Security-Related 
Activities, Standards, and Policies (2014), available at http://
www.gao.gov/products.
    \7\See Security Incidents in Benghazi, Libya from June 1, 2011 to 
Aug. 20, 2012 (on file with the Committee); see also Benghazi Spot 
Report, EAC and Significant Event Timeline (DS/IP/RD) (on file with the 
Committee, C05394332).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    As conditions worsened, the Benghazi Mission labored under 
an unusual, if not unprecedented, set of circumstances and 
conditions:

     LFrom the beginning, senior Obama Administration 
officials were divided about what degree of commitment to make 
in Libya. A principal objective was to limit military 
engagement: the administration's ``no boots on the ground'' 
policy prevailed throughout the Benghazi Mission's existence in 
Libya. Apart from ``no boots on the ground,'' U.S. policy 
remained indefinite and undefined throughout Stevens' tenure in 
Benghazi.

     LAfter the Qadhafi regime fell, the administration 
sought to maintain a ``light footprint'' in the country, 
determined to avoid an extended state-building engagement.

     LBecause the Benghazi Mission existed in a state 
of diplomatic uncertainty--never having a clearly defined 
status--it was not required to meet security standards 
applicable to permanent U.S. embassies.

     LBenghazi had no clear lines of authority to 
either Tripoli or Washington D.C. This delayed responses to 
Mission requests for physical security measures and personnel.

     LSenior officials in Washington D.C. did not heed 
intelligence detailing the rise of extremists groups in 
Benghazi and eastern Libya prior to September 11, 2012.

    In an April 10, 2016 interview, the President called 
``failing to prepare for the aftermath of the ousting of . . . 
Muammar Gaddafi . . . the worst mistake of his presidency.''\8\ 
Expressing regret over ``failing to plan for the day after,'' 
the President called Libya a ``mess.''\9\ This section 
describes the events, decisions, and non-decisions that led to 
the terrorist attacks which killed Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, 
Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \8\President Obama: Libya aftermath `worst mistake' of presidency, 
BBC News (Apr. 11, 2016), http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-
36013703.
    \9\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                STEPS TOWARD U.S. INTERVENTION IN LIBYA

            February-March 2011: Early Debates and Decisions

    The United States' intervention in Libya took root during 
the Arab Spring, a series of anti-government protests and 
revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa occurring in 
late 2010 and early 2011.\10\ The protests, inspired by 
Tunisians, followed in Egypt and reached Yemen in late January 
of 2011.\11\ Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was 
removed on January 14, 2011, following a month of protests.\12\ 
In February 2011, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak 
resigned.\13\ Four days later, on February 15, 2011, Libyans 
staged their first demonstration in Benghazi.\14\ It evolved 
into an armed conflict two days later, as loyalists of Qadhafi 
attempted to quell the protests.\15\ A civil war then erupted. 
As Joan A. Polaschik, then Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. 
Embassy in Tripoli, described: ``On Friday, in Tripoli, things 
started to get a little tense, sporadic gunfire. Then Saturday 
night, sustained gunfire, so we started having emergency action 
committee meetings that Sunday at the Embassy to talk about 
what our response should be.''\16\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \10\Testimony of Benjamin I. Fishman, Director for North Africa and 
Jordan, National Sec. Staff, Tr. at 15-16 (Jan. 12, 2016) [hereinafter 
Fishman Testimony] (on file with the Committee).
    \11\Id. at 14; see generally, The Arab Spring: A Year of 
Revolution, NPR (Dec. 18, 2011, 9:24 AM), http://www.npr.org/2011/12/
17/143897126/the-arab-spring-a-year-of-revolution.
    \12\Id.
    \13\Id.
    \14\Id.
    \15\See Testimony of Joan A. Polaschik, U.S. Deputy Chief of 
Mission in Libya, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 18 (Aug. 12, 2015) 
[hereinafter Polaschik Testimony] (on file with the Committee) (``Well, 
the uprising really started on February 17 in Benghazi. I believe it 
was a Thursday.'').
    \16\Id. at 18.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The President publicly addressed the conditions in Libya on 
February 23, 2011, stating: ``Secretary Clinton and I just 
concluded a meeting that focused on the ongoing situation in 
Libya. Over the last few days, my national security team has 
been working around the clock to monitor the situation there 
and to coordinate with our international partners about a way 
forward.''\17\ He called the violence ``outrageous'' and 
``unacceptable,'' asserted the protection of American citizens 
was his highest priority, and added: ``I have also asked my 
administration to prepare the full range of options that we 
have to respond to this crisis.''\18\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \17\Jesse Lee, President Obama Speaks on the Turmoil in Libya: 
``This Violence Must Stop,'' white house blog (Feb. 23, 2011), https://
www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/02/23/president-obama-speaks-turmoil-
libya-violence-must-stop (providing full transcript of the President's 
remarks).
    \18\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The U.S. suspended operations at the Embassy in Tripoli, 
Libya on February 25, 2011.\19\ The suspension of operations 
and evacuation were important for reasons beyond the safety of 
the embassy personnel. Polaschik testified:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \19\Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Sec'y of State for Mgmt., U.S. Dep't 
of State & Janet A. Sanderson, Deputy Ass't Sec'y of State, Bureau of 
Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, The Suspension of United 
States Embassy Operations in Libya, U.S. Dep't of State (Feb. 25, 
2011),
    http://www.state.gov/m/rls/remarks/2011/157173.htm. Jake Sullivan 
indicated in an August 21, 2011 email to Cheryl Mills and Victoria 
Nuland ``February 26--HRC directs efforts to evacuate all U.S. embassy 
personnel from Tripoli and orders the closing of the embassy,'' but 
this date appears to be contradicted by the Department's public 
statement the previous day. See Email from Jacob J. Sullivan, Dir. of 
Policy Planning, U.S. Dep't of State, to Cheryl D. Mills, Chief of 
Staff and Counselor to the U.S. Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State, 
and Victoria J. Nuland, Spokesperson, U.S. Dep't of State (Aug. 21, 
2011, 07:39 PM) [hereinafter Tick Tock on Libya Email] (on file with 
the Committee, SCB0045101).

        I was very clear with the people on those policy 
        planning discussions that I felt very strongly that the 
        administration could not change its policy toward 
        Qadhafi until we got all of the U.S. employees out 
        safely because we did not have appropriate security at 
        our Embassy in Tripoli. It met none of our State 
        Department security standards.\20\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \20\Polaschik Testimony at 19. The U.S. Government did not sever 
diplomatic ties with Libya. Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Sec'y of State 
for Mgmt., U.S. Dep't of State & Janet A. Sanderson, Deputy Ass't Sec'y 
of State, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, The Suspension of United 
States Embassy Operations in Libya, Dep't of State (Feb. 25, 2011), 
http://www.state.gov/m/rls/
remarks/2011/157173.htm. Rather, Ambassador Cretz and his staff worked 
from Washington, D.C. on Libyan matters. Polaschik Testimony at 20-21.

    The same day, the President issued an Executive Order 
freezing the property in the United States of Qadhafi, his 
family members, and senior officials of the Libyan 
Government.\21\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \21\Exec. Order No. 13566, 76 Fed. Reg. 11315 (Feb. 25, 2011).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On February 26, 2011, the international community responded 
with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1970, deploring 
``gross and systematic violations of human rights'' and 
demanding an end to the violence.\22\ The resolution also 
imposed an arms embargo and travel restrictions, froze the 
assets of Qadhafi and his inner circle, and referred the matter 
to the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court.\23\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \22\S.C. Res. 1970, para. 1 (Feb. 26, 2011),
    http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/RES/1970 
(2011).
    \23\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton made calls to foreign 
leaders to garner support for the resolution.\24\ She took an 
active role in mobilizing forces against the Qadhafi regime. 
Her staff described the efforts as ``instrumental in securing 
the authorization, building the coalition, and tightening the 
noose around Qadhafi and his regime.''\25\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \24\Tick Tock on Libya Email, supra note 19.
    \25\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                    Unofficial Commentary and Advice

    During this period, the Secretary received extensive and 
regular communications from Sidney S. Blumenthal. Blumenthal 
frequently offered commentary about developments in Libya (as 
well as more general commentary about other matters)--passing 
on self-styled ``intelligence reports'' prepared by Tyler S. 
Drumheller, a former official at the Central Intelligence 
Agency\26\--and recommending various courses of U.S. action. 
Although Blumenthal had been rejected by the White House for 
employment at the Department of State, and admittedly had no 
knowledge about Libya,\27\ Secretary Clinton responded to his 
emails and in some cases forwarded them to her top policy aides 
and career foreign service officers in the Department for their 
reaction and comment. The Secretary described Blumenthal's 
emails as ``unsolicited.''\28\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \26\Testimony of Sidney S. Blumenthal, Tr. at 67-68 (June 16, 2015) 
[hereinafter Blumenthal Testimony] (on file with the Committee).
    \27\Id. at 99.
    \28\Daniel Drezner, ``The Unbearable Lightness of Hillary Clinton's 
Management Style,'' the Washington Post (May 20, 2015), 
www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/05/20/the-unbearable-
lightness -of-hillary-clintons-management-style.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On February 21, 2011, two days prior to the President's 
first public remarks on the matter,\29\ Blumenthal suggested 
the U.S. ``might consider advancing [a no-fly zone] 
tomorrow.''\30\ The Secretary forwarded the email to her Deputy 
Chief of Staff and Director of Policy Planning, Jacob J. 
Sullivan, and asked: ``What do you think of this idea?''\31\ 
Sullivan replied: ``[H]onestly, we actually don't know what is 
happening from the air right now. As we gain more facts, we can 
consider.''\32\ In response, the Secretary reflected on what 
Admiral Michael G. Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of 
Staff, noted publicly more than a week later, asking Sullivan: 
``I've heard contradictory reports as to whether or not there 
are planes flying and firing on crowds. What is the evidence 
that they are?''\33\ The Secretary responded to Blumenthal: 
``We are looking at that for Security Council, which remains 
reluctant to `interfere' in the internal affairs of a country. 
Stay tuned!''\34\ When the U.N. resolution was ultimately 
introduced two weeks later, the U.S. strongly advocated for 
passage of the no-fly zone.\35\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \29\Jesse Lee, President Obama Speaks on the Turmoil in Libya: 
``This Violence Must Stop,'' white house blog (Feb. 23, 2011), https://
www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/02/23/president-obama-speaks-turmoil-
libya-violence-must-stop (providing full transcript of the President's 
remarks).
    \30\Email from Sidney S. Blumenthal (``sbwhoeop'') to Hillary R. 
Clinton (``H''), Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State (Feb. 21, 2011, 
10:32 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0078044).
    \31\Email from Hillary R. Clinton (``H''), Sec'y of State, U.S. 
Dep't of State, to Jacob J. Sullivan, Dir. of Policy Planning, U.S. 
Dep't of State (Feb. 21, 2011, 10:42 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0078044).
    \32\Email from Jacob J. Sullivan, Dir. of Policy Planning, U.S. 
Dep't of State, to Hillary R. Clinton (``H''), Sec'y, U.S. Dep't of 
State (Feb. 22, 2011, 4:59 AM) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0078044).
    \33\Email from Hillary R. Clinton (``H''), Sec'y of State, U.S. 
Dep't of State, to Jacob J. Sullivan, Dir. of Policy Planning, U.S. 
Dep't of State (Feb. 22, 2011, 6:34 AM) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0078044).
    \34\Email from Hillary R. Clinton (``H''), Sec'y of State, U.S. 
Dep't of State, to Sidney Blumenthal (Feb. 22, 2011, 6:09 AM) (on file 
with the Committee, SCB0078042).
    \35\See Email from Jacob J. Sullivan, Dir. of Policy Planning, U.S. 
Dep't of State, to ``jake.sullivan[REDACTED]'' (Mar. 16, 2011, 9:29AM) 
(on file with the Committee, SCB0075861) (``We are going to be actively 
engaged in New York today in discussions about the best course of 
action for the international community to take, including through the 
UN Security Council.'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On February 25, 2011, Blumenthal suggested other means of 
pressuring the Libyan leadership:

        Depending on the state of play within the U.N. Security 
        Council, it might be useful to think about generating a 
        statement from the UNSC that any officer or government 
        official in the chain of command in Libya who is 
        involved in deploying or using WMD would be subject to 
        war crimes and crimes against humanity prosecution.\36\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \36\Email from Sidney S. Blumenthal (``sbwhoeop'') to Hillary R. 
Clinton (``H''), Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State (Feb. 25, 2011, 
7:16 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0078066).

    The Secretary forwarded the suggestion to Sullivan, asking: 
``What about including this in UNSCR?''\37\ The following day, 
Blumenthal sent the Secretary another unofficial 
``intelligence'' report that began with a note: ``This report 
is in part a response to your questions. There will be further 
information coming in the next day.''\38\ The Secretary 
forwarded the information to Sullivan with the request not to 
``share until we can talk.''\39\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \37\Email from Hillary R. Clinton (``H''), Sec'y of State, U.S. 
Dep't of State, to Jacob J. Sullivan, Dir. of Policy Planning, U.S. 
Dep't of State (Feb. 26, 2011, 11:34 AM) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0078066).
    \38\Email from Sidney S. Blumenthal (``sbwhoeop'') to Hillary R. 
Clinton (``H''), Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State (Feb. 26, 2011, 
10:58) (on file with the Committee, SCB0078104).
    \39\Email from Hillary R. Clinton (``H''), Sec'y of State, U.S. 
Dep't of State, to Jacob J. Sullivan, Dir. of Policy Planning (Mar. 2, 
2011, 7:18 AM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0078121).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In a later email, Blumenthal suggested: ``Someone should 
contact Mahmod Jipreel [Mahmoud Jibril]. He is balanced, level-
headed and understands the situation well.''\40\ The Secretary 
forwarded the note to Sullivan, indicating she thought ``we'' 
were reaching out to the individuals Blumenthal had 
suggested.\41\ Even though Jibril was on the list Blumenthal 
sent earlier, Sullivan responded: ``I don't know about this 
Jipreel fellow.''\42\ It was the ``hastily scheduled'' and 
``behind closed doors'' meeting between the Secretary and 
Jibril in Paris just one week later\43\ that helped prompt the 
Secretary to become a leading advocate for Libyan 
intervention.\44\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \40\Email from Sidney S. Blumenthal (``sbwhoeop'') to Hillary R. 
Clinton (``H''), Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State (Mar. 7, 2011, 
10:29 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0078150-0078153).
    \41\Email from Hillary R. Clinton (``H''), Sec'y of State, U.S. 
Dep't of State, to Jacob J. Sullivan, Dir. of Policy Planning, U.S. 
Dep't of State (Mar. 7, 2011, 7:17 AM) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0087150-0078153).
    \42\Email from Jacob J. Sullivan, Dir. of Policy Planning, U.S. 
Dep't of State, to Hillary R. Clinton (``H''), Sec'y, U.S. Dep't of 
State (Mar. 7, 2011, 7:22 AM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0077210).
    \43\Steven Lee Myers, Clinton Meets in Paris With Libyan Rebel 
Leader, N.Y. Times (Mar. 14, 2011), http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/
world/africa/15clinton.html.
    \44\Joby Warrick, Hillary's war: How conviction replaced skepticism 
in Libya intervention, Wash. Post (Oct. 30, 2011), https://
www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/hillarys-war-how-
conviction-replaced-skepticism-in-libya-intervention/2011/10/28/
gIQAhGS7WM_story.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                           ``Libya Options''

    On March 8, 2011, Sullivan sent an email titled ``Libya 
Options'' to senior State Department officials.\45\ In the 
email, he described the Department's ``preferred end-state in 
Libya, at the most basic level.''\46\ The email spelled out 
five ``successively more intrusive'' strategic frameworks 
outlining various options against Qadhafi:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \45\Email from Jacob J. Sullivan, Dir. of Policy Planning, U.S. 
Dep't of State, to James B. Steinberg, Deputy Sec'y of State, U.S. 
Dep't of State, et al. (Mar. 8, 2011, 8:13 PM) [hereinafter Libya 
Options Email](on file with the Committee, C05886430).
    \46\Id.

        1. LProvide material support to the Libyan opposition 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        but take no direct offensive action;

        2. LProvide material support to the Libyan opposition 
        and take only that direct action which is nonlethal and 
        designed to shape the theater rather than take the 
        fight to Qadhafi;

        3. LAll options consistent with broad regional support 
        and a clear legal basis;

        4. LOffensive aerial options but no ground troops; and

        5. LWhatever necessary to remove Qadhafi.\47\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \47\Id. A sixth option presented ``focusing not on actions against 
Qadhafi but on a negotiated solution'' was to ``Leverage a stalemate 
into some kind of negotiated solution, or at least a process.'' Id.

    In addition, Sullivan identified a number of immediate 
goals to be accomplished through intervention, something he 
noted was sent over to the National Security Staff. The 
immediate goal listed first was ``to avoid a failed state, 
particularly one in which al-Qaeda and other extremists might 
take safe haven.''\48\ Another immediate goal was ``[w]e seek 
the prevention of an exodus of Libyans.''\49\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \48\Id.
    \49\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The State Department and other top officials expressed 
concern about the options, especially establishing a no-fly 
zone without military intervention.\50\ For example, the 
Secretary of Defense, Robert M. Gates, the National Security 
Advisor, Thomas E. Donilon, and others ``opposed military 
action, contending the United States had no clear national 
interests at stake and that operations could last far longer 
and cost more lives than anyone anticipated.''\51\ A senior 
State Department official warned he did not ``think that we've 
ever established a NFZ [no fly zone] anywhere where we didn't 
ultimately have to go in militarily and stay for a long time 
(Iraq, Bosnia, implicitly Afghanistan, Kosovo).''\52\ The 
official suggested a better option would be to stand by, ``not 
get pulled into more Middle East wars,'' and gain a ``better 
sense of what post use-of-force end state looks like.''\53\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \50\See id. (sent from Philip H. Gordon on Mar. 9, 2011, 9:37 AM) 
(Philip Gordon stating ``would also point out I don't think we've ever 
established a NFZ anywhere where we didn't go have to go in militarily 
and stay for a long time (Iraq, Bosnia, implicitly Afghanistan, 
Kosovo).'').
    \51\Kevin Sullivan, A Tough Call on Libya That Still Haunts, Wash. 
Post (Feb. 3, 2016), http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2016/02/
03/a-tough-call-on-libya-that-still-haunts.
    \52\Libya Options Emails, supra note 45 (Sent from Philip H. Gordon 
on Mar. 9, 2011, 9:37 AM) (Philip Gordon stating ``would also point out 
I don't think we've ever established a NFZ anywhere where we didn't go 
have to go in militarily and stay for a long time (Iraq, Bosnia, 
implicitly Afghanistan, Kosovo).'').
    \53\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The President convened a meeting with his National Security 
Council to discuss the situation. Ultimately, he sided with the 
Secretary of State, who favored some level of intervention.\54\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \54\See Email from Jacob J. Sullivan, Dir. of Policy Planning, U.S. 
Dep't of State, to ``jake.sullivan[REDACTED]'' (Mar. 16, 2011, 9:29AM) 
(on file with the Committee, SCB0075861) (``Last night, the President 
led a meeting with his national security team on the situation in Libya 
and the way forward.''); see also Kevin Sullivan, A Tough Call on Libya 
That Still Haunts, Wash. Post (Feb. 3, 2016), http://
www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2016/02/03/a-tough-call-on-libya-
that-still-haunts.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Senior officials still cited complications. State 
Department policymakers did not see the question as simply one 
of how to ``pressure and isolate Qadhafi.''\55\ Philip H. 
Gordon, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian 
Affairs, framed the situation as follows:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \55\Email from Special Ass't to Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of 
State, to Jacob J. Sullivan, Dir. of Policy Planning, U.S. Dep't of 
State (Mar. 28, 2011, 8:13 PM) [hereinafter Libya Q & A for S London 
Trip 32811] (on file with the Committee, SCB0075863-0075871).

        As I noted, it seems to me fundamental [sic] initial 
        decision for us is which is greater strategic priority: 
        a) avoiding getting pulled into Libyan conflict and 
        owning it; or b) bringing about quick end of Qaddafy 
        regime. So far we have rightly sought to achieve both 
        of these objectives at the same time but with each 
        passing day, as regime gets upper hand, it is forcing 
        us to choose between them. As Jim [Deputy Secretary of 
        State James B. Steinberg] pointed out it is always 
        possible that developments on the ground force you 
        later on to abandon such a first principle (as in 
        Kosovo when two months of ineffective air strikes led 
        us to reconsider the determination not to use ground 
        forces) but knowing the objective in advance would help 
        guide the operational decisions in the meantime. If 
        it's a) we need to be ultra-cautious about steps 
        designed to make it look like we are doing something 
        but will not prove decisive (NFZ); and if it's b) we 
        need to understand the risks and costs of establishing 
        that as a redline.\56\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \56\Libya Options Emails, supra note 45 (Sent from Philip H. Gordon 
on Mar. 9, 2011, 9:37 AM).

    Sullivan concurred, saying: ``[W]e have not already 
embraced objective (b)'' and further responded: ``I agree with 
you about the fundamental initial decision, although I don't 
think it's as simple as (a) or (b). It will inevitably be a 
calibration between the two. I agree with Jim that we can get 
drawn in some but not all the way, as long as we have a strong 
theory of the case to rest on.''\57\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \57\Id. (Sent from Jacob J. Sullivan on Mar. 9, 2011, 10:33 AM) 
(emphasis in original).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                        Implementing U.S. Policy

    A week later, on March 17, 2011, the United Nations 
Security Council adopted Security Council Resolution 1973, 
demanding an immediate ceasefire and authorizing member states 
to ``take all necessary measures . . . to protect civilians and 
civilian populated areas under threat of attack,'' specifically 
including a no fly zone.\58\ On March 18, 2011, the President 
announced: ``If Qaddafi does not comply with the resolution, 
the international community will impose consequences, and the 
resolution will be enforced through military action.''\59\ He 
emphasized: ``I also want to be clear about what we will not be 
doing. The United States is not going to deploy ground troops 
into Libya. And we are not going to use force to go beyond a 
well-defined goal--specifically, the protection of civilians in 
Libya.''\60\ The President added: ``Our focus has been clear: 
protecting innocent civilians within Libya, and holding the 
Qadhafi regime accountable.''\61\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \58\S.C. Res. 1973, para. 4 (Mar. 17, 2011), http://www.un.org/
press/en/2011/sc10200.doc.htm#
Resolution.
    \59\Press Release, The White House Office of the Press Secretary, 
The White House, Remarks by the President on the Situation in Libya 
(Mar. 18, 2011), https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/03/
18/remarks-president-situation-libya.
    \60\Id.
    \61\Id. President Obama further detailed what specific steps he 
believed Qadhafi needed to meet to comply with the resolution:

      The resolution that passed lays out very clear conditions 
      that must be met. The United States, the United Kingdom, 
      France, and Arab states agree that a cease-fire must be 
      implemented immediately. That means all attacks against 
      civilians must stop. Qaddafi must stop his troops from 
      advancing on Benghazi, pull them back from Ajdabiya, 
      Misrata, and Zawiya, and establish water, electricity and 
      gas supplies to all areas. Humanitarian assistance must be 
      allowed to reach the people of Libya. Let me be clear, 
      these terms are not negotiable.
    To implement this policy, the President announced he had 
``directed Secretary Gates and our military to coordinate their 
planning, and tomorrow Secretary Clinton will travel to Paris 
for a meeting with our European allies and Arab partners about 
the enforcement of Resolution 1973.''\62\ The next day, March 
19, 2011, ``U.S. military forces commenced operations to assist 
an international effort authorized by the United Nations (U.N.) 
Security Council . . . to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe 
and address the threat posed to international peace and 
security by the crisis in Libya.''\63\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \62\Id. Secretary Clinton's staff later noted that, surrounding 
these events, Secretary Clinton ``participates in a series of high-
level video and teleconferences. . . . She is a leading voice for 
strong UNSC action and a NATO civilian protection mission.'' Tick Tock 
on Libya Email, supra note 19.
    \63\Letter from the President to the Speaker of the House of 
Representatives and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate Regarding 
the Commencement of Operations in Libya (Mar. 
21, 2011), https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/03/21/
letter-president-regarding-
commencement-operations-libya.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Two days later, on March 21, 2011, the President formally 
notified the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the 
President Pro Tempore of the Senate of these operations.\64\ In 
his letter, the President stated the nature and purpose of 
these operations as follows:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \64\Id.

        As part of the multilateral response authorized under 
        U.N. Security Council resolution 1973, U.S. military 
        forces, under the command of Commander, U.S. Africa 
        Command, began a series of strikes against air defense 
        systems and military airfields for the purposes of 
        preparing a no-fly zone. These strikes will be limited 
        in their nature, duration and scope. Their purpose is 
        to support an international coalition as it takes all 
        necessary measures to enforce the terms of U.N. 
        Security Council Resolution 1973. These limited U.S. 
        actions will set the stage for further action by other 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        coalition partners.

        United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 
        authorized Member States, under Chapter VII of the U.N. 
        Charter, to take all necessary measures to protect 
        civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of 
        attack in Libya, including the establishment and 
        enforcement of a ``no-fly zone'' in the airspace of 
        Libya. United States military efforts are discrete and 
        focused on employing unique U.S. military capabilities 
        to set the conditions for our European allies and Arab 
        partners to carry out the measures authorized by the 
        U.N. Security Council Resolution. . . .

        The United States has not deployed ground forces into 
        Libya. United States forces are conducting a limited 
        and well-defined mission in support of international 
        efforts to protect civilians and prevent a humanitarian 
        disaster. Accordingly, U.S. forces have targeted the 
        Qadhafi regime's air defense systems, command and 
        control structures, and other capabilities of Qadhafi's 
        armed forces used to attack civilians and civilian 
        populated areas. We will seek a rapid, but responsible, 
        transition of operations to coalition, regional, or 
        international organizations that are postured to 
        continue activities as may be necessary to realize the 
        objectives of U.N. Security Council Resolutions 1970 
        and 1973.\65\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \65\Id.

    While the President described the goal of the intervention 
in Libya as ``well-defined'' in his March 18, 2011 public 
remarks, the formal notification of the ensuing military 
operation to Congress left uncertainty and ambiguity in the 
eyes of some U.S. decision-makers. Speaker John A. Boehner 
responded to the President by letter two days later on March 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
23, 2011, writing:

        It is my hope that you will provide the American people 
        and Congress a clear and robust assessment of the 
        scope, objective, and purpose of our mission in Libya 
        and how it will be achieved. Here are some of the 
        questions I believe must be answered:

        A United Nations Security Council resolution does not 
        substitute for a U.S. political and military strategy. 
        You have stated that Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi must 
        go, consistent with U.S. policy goals. But the U.N. 
        resolution the U.S. helped develop and signed onto 
        makes clear that regime change is not part of this 
        mission. In light of this contradiction, is it an 
        acceptable outcome for Qadhafi to remain in power after 
        the military effort concludes in Libya? If not, how 
        will he be removed from power? Why would the U.S. 
        commit American resources to enforcing a U.N. 
        resolution that is inconsistent with our stated policy 
        goals and national interests? . . .

        You have said that the support of the international 
        community was critical to your decision to strike 
        Libya. But, like many Americans, it appears many of our 
        coalition partners are themselves unclear on the policy 
        goals of this mission. If the coalition dissolves or 
        partners continue to disengage, will the American 
        military take on an increased role? Will we disengage?

        Since the stated U.S. policy goal is removing Qadhafi 
        from power, do you have an engagement strategy for the 
        opposition forces? If the strife in Libya becomes a 
        protracted conflict, what are your Administration's 
        objectives for engaging with opposition forces, and 
        what standards must a new regime meet to be recognized 
        by our government? . . .

        Because of the conflicting messages from the 
        Administration and our coalition partners, there is a 
        lack of clarity over the objectives of this mission, 
        what our national security interests are, and how it 
        fits into our overarching policy for the Middle East. 
        The American people deserve answers to these questions. 
        And all of these concerns point to a fundamental 
        question: what is your benchmark for success in 
        Libya?\66\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \66\Letter from John A. Boehner, Speaker of the House of 
Representatives, to Barack H. Obama, U.S. President (Mar. 23, 2011),
    http://www.speaker.gov/UploadedFiles/POTUSLetter_032311.pdf. (also 
asking three specific questions relating to the military operation and 
its cost).

                        Selecting Chris Stevens

    Notwithstanding the State Department's decision to suspend 
operations at its Embassy in Tripoli and its efforts underway 
through the United Nations to impose a no fly zone,\67\ 
discussions were immediately under way between the White House 
and the Secretary and her advisors to return to Libya--
specifically to Benghazi.\68\ These discussions included 
sending a ``diplomatic representative'' to serve as a liaison 
with the Transitional National Council [TNC], an opposition 
group headquartered in Benghazi hoping to emerge as the new 
Libyan government.\69\ Jeffrey D. Feltman, Assistant Secretary 
for Near Eastern Affairs, State Department, told the Committee 
``the TNC had asked in the meetings with Hillary Clinton for 
representation to be able to work directly on a continuing 
basis with the U.S. Government, which is why a decision was 
made to send a representative to Benghazi.''\70\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \67\Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Sec'y of State for Mgmt., U.S. Dep't 
of State & Janet A. Sanderson, Deputy Ass't Sec'y of State, Bureau of 
Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, The Suspension of United 
States Embassy Operations in Libya, DEP'T OF STATE (Feb. 25, 2011), 
http://www.state.gov/m/rls/remarks/2011/157173.htm. Jake Sullivan 
indicated in an August 21, 2011 email to Cheryl Mills and Victoria 
Nuland ``February 26--HRC directs efforts to evacuate all U.S. embassy 
personnel from Tripoli and orders the closing of the embassy.'' This 
date appears to be contradicted by the Department's public statement 
the previous day. See Email from Jake Sullivan, Dir. Policy Planning, 
U.S. Dep't of State to Cheryl D. Mills, Chief of Staff to U.S. Sec'y of 
State, U.S. Dep't of State and Victoria Nuland, Spokesperson, U.S. 
State Dep't (Aug. 21, 2011, 07:39 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0051146). See Email from Phillip H. Gordon to James B. Steinberg, et 
al. (Mar. 23, 2011, 6:55 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0045016) 
(``We are putting together S conference call with Juppe, Davutoglu and 
Hague tomorrow. Here is the outcome I think the call should seek to 
meet everybody's redlines.

      [Redacted text.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \68\See Email from Donald Steinberg, U.S. Agency on Int'l 
Development, to Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Sec'y of State for Mgmt., 
U.S. Dep't of State (Mar. 30, 2011, 10:12 AM) (on file with the 
Committee, SCB0095926) (``As you know, we're under instructions from 
NSS and State to get our DART staff into Benghazi so we can begin our 
humanitarian assessments of needs and infrastructure.'').
    \69\See Email from Jacob J. Sullivan, Dir. of Policy Planning, U.S. 
Dep't of State, to Hillary R. Clinton (``H''), Sec'y of State, U.S. 
Dep't of State (Mar. 13, 2011, 10:55 AM) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0045011) (``They urged us to find some kind of language that would 
suggest moving in that direction, and I noted our decisions to suspend 
the operations of the Libyan Embassy, have S meet with Mahmoud Jabril 
of the Council and send a diplomatic representative to Benghazi.'').
    \70\Testimony of Jeffrey D. Feltman, Ass't Sec'y of State, Bureau 
of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 24-25 (Dec. 8, 
2015) [hereinafter Feltman Testimony] (on file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Secretary selected J. Christopher Stevens, a widely and 
highly respected career Foreign Service officer, to serve as 
the representative to the TNC.\71\ Stevens previously served as 
Deputy Chief of Mission, the Embassy's number two post, in 
Tripoli from 2007 through 2009.\72\ The Secretary told the 
Committee: ``[w]hen the revolution broke out in Libya, we named 
Chris as our envoy to the opposition.''\73\ ``I was the one who 
asked Chris to go to Libya as our envoy.''\74\ The Secretary 
told the Committee that Stevens ``was one of our Nation's most 
accomplished diplomats.''\75\ Stevens had been a member of the 
U.S. Foreign Service since 1991. He had previously served 
overseas as Deputy Principal Officer and Section Chief in 
Jerusalem; Political Officer in Damascus; Consular/Political 
Officer in Cairo; and Consular/Economic Officer in Riyadh. In 
Washington he had served as Director of the Office of 
Multilateral Nuclear and Security Affairs; a Pearson Fellow 
with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Senator Richard 
G. Lugar; Special Assistant to the Under Secretary for 
Political Affairs at the State Department; and Iran desk 
officer and staff assistant in the Bureau of Near Eastern 
Affairs.\76\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \71\See Benghazi: The Attacks and the Lessons Learned Before the S. 
Comm. on the Foreign Relations, 113th Cong. 9 (2013) (statement of the 
Hon. Hillary R. Clinton, Sec'y of State); Terrorist Attack in Benghazi: 
The Secretary of State's View Before the H. Comm. on the Foreign 
Affairs, 113th Cong. 7-8 (2013) (statement of the Hon. Hillary R. 
Clinton, Sec'y of State).
    \72\J. Christopher Stevens Bio, Econ. Policy J. (Sept. 12, 2012), 
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2012/09/j-christopher-stephens-
bio.html (last visited June 7, 2016).
    \73\Testimony of Hillary R. Clinton, Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of 
State, Tr. at 20 (Oct. 22, 2015) [hereinafter Clinton Testimony] (on 
file with the Committee).
    \74\Id. 21.
    \75\Id. 20.
    \76\J. Christopher Stevens Bio, Econ. Policy J. (Sept. 12, 2012), 
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2012/09/j-christopher-stephens-
bio.html (last visited June 7, 2016).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    While attending the March 14, 2011 G8 foreign ministers 
meeting in Paris to discuss the Libyan crisis, \77\ the 
Secretary arranged to have a separate meeting with Jibril, the 
leader of the Transitional National Council.\78\ She asked that 
Stevens be rerouted to join her and Ambassador Gene A. Cretz, 
the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, for the meeting with Jibril.\79\ 
As a result of the meeting with Jibril, the Secretary was 
convinced the United States should support the TNC in its 
efforts to become the new Libyan government.\80\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \77\The G8 is comprised of eight of the world's major 
industrialized countries.
    \78\See Email from Jeffrey D. Feltman, Ass't Sec'y of State, Bureau 
of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to J. Christopher 
Stevens, U.S. Rep. to Transitional National Council (Mar. 11, 2011, 
9:20 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0076601) (discussing Sec'y 
Clinton's meeting with Mr. Jibril in Paris).
    \79\Id.; see also Email from Jeffrey D. Feltman, Ass't Sec'y of 
State, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to Huma 
Abedin, Deputy Chief of Staff to U.S. Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of 
State (Mar. 13, 2011, 10:02) (on file with the Committee, SCB0076612) 
(communicating that Feltman had been asked to redirect Ambassador 
Stevens to Paris).
    \80\See Email from Jacob Sullivan, Dir. of Policy Planning, U.S. 
Dep't of State, to himself on a personal email account (Mar. 16, 2011, 
9:29 AM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0075861).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The decision to send a representative to the TNC was seen 
as both practical and symbolic. Ambassador Cretz explained the 
rationale for having a presence in Benghazi, telling the 
Committee ``the center of the revolution was in Benghazi. It 
was the place that the opposition . . . had centered around as 
its, in effect `capital.'''\81\ He testified several other 
coalition partners established envoys in Benghazi and ``so it 
was only natural'' the U.S. have a presence there as well since 
the United States had a stake in the outcome of the Libyan 
revolution.\82\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \81\Testimony of Gene A. Cretz, U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Tr. at 32 
(Jul. 31, 2015) [hereinafter Cretz Testimony] (on file with the 
Committee).
    \82\Id. at 32-33.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                                 Delay

    The administration then made plans to send Stevens to 
Benghazi. Following the Secretary's March 14, 2011 meeting in 
Paris with Jibril, Stevens did not return to the United States 
but remained in Europe to plan his entry into Libya.\83\ He 
traveled to Stuttgart, Germany to meet with General Carter F. 
Ham, commander of the United States Africa Command [AFRICOM], 
to discuss the trip into Libya, including any potential rescue 
operations.\84\ Stevens discussed travelling to Benghazi on a 
``helicopter to a coalition naval vessel that can go close to 
shore,'' and then ``zodiac transport from ship to shore'' for 
``day trips only, returning to the naval vessel to RON [rest 
overnight].''\85\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \83\Email from Jeffrey D. Feltman, Ass't Sec'y of State, Bureau of 
Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to J. Christopher StevensJ. 
Christopher Stevens, U.S. Rep. to Transitional National Council (Mar. 
11, 2011, 9:20 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0076601) (``I know 
you have your travel accommodations set for Rome. But S staff would 
like you to join the Secretary and Gene Cretz for a mtg in Paris with 
Mahmoud Jabril.''). Testimony of Diplomatic Sec. Agent, Diplomatic Sec. 
Serv., U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 13 (February 10, 2015)[hereinafter 
Diplomatic Sec. Agent 6 Testimony] (on file with the Committee) 
(``[W]hen I left Washington, I went to Rome. And in Rome, I was met by 
the Envoy, Chris Stevens.'').
    \84\Email from Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Sec'y of State for Mgmt., 
U.S. Dep't of State to Joan A. Polaschik, Deputy Chief of Mission in 
Libya, U.S. Dep't of State, et al. (Mar. 24, 2011, 9:55 AM) (on file 
with the Committee, SCB0095893-98) (discussing Stevens' plan).
    \85\Email from Joan A. Polaschik, Deputy Chief of Mission in Libya, 
U.S. Dep't of State, to Lee Lohman, Ex. Dir., Bureau of Near Eastern 
Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, and Post Mgmt. Officer, Bureau of Near 
Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State (Mar. 23, 2011, 5:14 PM) (on file 
with the Committee, SCB0091885).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In addition to Stevens' activities, the Secretary and her 
advisors were coordinating with United States Agency for 
International Development's [USAID] Disaster Assistance 
Response Team to travel into Benghazi to assess firsthand the 
extent of the humanitarian crisis.\86\ On March 15, 2011, 
however, USAID ``pulled the plug'' because of security 
concerns.\87\ That same day, Stevens' mission to Benghazi 
expanded:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \86\See Email from Jacob J. Sullivan, Dir. of Policy Planning, U.S. 
Dep't of State, to William J. Burns, Deputy Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't 
of State (Mar. 6, 2011, 3:48 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0095837-0095838) (discussing coordination with USAID and the 
situation in region).
    \87\See Email from Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Sec'y of State for 
Mgmt., U.S. Dep't of State, to Eric J. Boswell, Ass't Sec'y of State, 
Bureau of Diplomatic Sec., U.S. Dep't of State, et al. (Mar. 15, 2011, 
1:59 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0095877-0095879).

        The latest . . . is now that 12-13 people are going 
        into Libya near Benghazi. It's John C. Stevens (lead), 
        a JO (no name) who is fluent in Arabic, 10 DS agents 
        (protective detail) and they are working on getting a 
        Management Officer to go to do the admin/accounting 
        work. There are at least 2 DOD military elements going 
        along (SOC Forward types i.e. Special Forces). . . . 
        Given how this has grown from our earlier discussions, 
        I think $60,000 is needed rather than the $25,000 we 
        initially thought. They are talking about this trip 
        being up to 30 days.\88\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \88\See Email from Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Sec'y of State for 
Mgmt., U.S. Dep't of State (Mar. 15, 2011, 8:02 PM) (on file with the 
Committee, SCB0098178-0098179).

    While Stevens was still in Europe coordinating his entry, 
the National Security Council ordered him to deploy ``as soon 
as possible.''\89\ For the next week, the State Department and 
AFRICOM engaged in extensive planning to enter Benghazi using 
the military to augment the State Department Diplomatic 
Security Agents.\90\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \89\See Email from Joan A. Polaschik, Deputy Chief of Mission in 
Libya, U.S. Dep't of State, to Lee Lohman, Ex. Dir. Bureau of Near 
Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, and Post Mgmt. Officer, Bureau of 
Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State (Mar. 23, 2011, 5:14 PM) (on 
file with the Committee, SCB0091885). See also Email from Special 
Ass't, Office of Deputy Sec'y, U.S Dep't of State, to Thomas R. Nides, 
Deputy Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State (Mar. 24, 2011, 1:47 PM) (on 
file with the Committee, SCB0075262).
    \90\See Email from Joan A. Polaschik, Deputy Chief of Mission in 
Libya, U.S. Dep't of State, to Ronald L. Schlicher, et al. (Mar. 24, 
2011, 9:40 AM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0095893-94) (``Per 
Chris' emails, he would travel into Benghazi via zodiac or helicopter. 
All mil assets would be US, including comms and medic. Seals would 
participate in civilian dress--an initiative that could prove 
problematic with the TNC. Travel would be day trips. RON on the US 
naval vessel.'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Within a matter of days, Stevens' team expanded again.\91\ 
Senior State Department officials made the decision to add two 
USAID workers, consistent with Secretary Clinton's goal that 
the U.S. be seen as ``visibly engaged on the humanitarian 
side.''\92\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \91\Email from Janet A. Sanderson, Deputy Ass't Sec'y of State, 
Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, to Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Sec'y of 
State for Mgmt., U.S. Dep't of State (Mar. 26, 2011, 12:02 PM) (on file 
with the Committee, SCB0094603) (``Pat, AID Administrator talked to 
Bill Burns last night and requested Stevens Mission include one or two 
DART team reps.'').
    \92\Email from Jacob J. Sullivan, Dir. of Policy Planning, U.S. 
Dep't of State, to William J. Burns, Deputy Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't 
of State (Mar. 6, 2011, 3:48 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0095837-0095838).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    After weeks of planning, the Administration's no boots on 
the ground policy kept military assistance from accompanying 
Stevens to Benghazi.\93\ On March 30, 2011, Kennedy informed 
other senior State Department leaders: ``After over a week of 
joint planning . . . Mullen has decided that the `no boots on 
the ground in Libya' policy precludes DOD assisting us in 
getting Stevens into Libya.''\94\ Specifically, Admiral Mullen 
deemed the use of military assets--even in civilian dress--to 
be in violation of the President's directive, and therefore 
forbade their use to get Stevens into Benghazi and assist in 
his protection there.\95\ With no military assets to assist, 
Stevens ``found a way to get himself there on a Greek cargo 
ship, just like a 19th-century American envoy.''\96\ 
Accompanying Stevens on the ferry to Benghazi was a junior 
reporting officer, two members of USAID's Disaster Assistance 
Response Team, and eight Diplomatic Security Agents.\97\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \93\Email from Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Sec'y of State for Mgmt., 
U.S. Dep't of State, to Jacob J. Sullivan, Dir. of Policy Planning, 
U.S. Dep't of State, and Joseph E. Macmanus, Exec. Ass't, Office of the 
Sec'y (Mar. 30, 2011, 12:50 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0071180).
    \94\Id.
    \95\Id.
    \96\Clinton Testimony at 20-21.
    \97\See Email to Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Sec'y of State for 
Mgmt., U.S. Dep't of State (Mar. 30, 2011, 7:38 PM) (on file with the 
Committee, SCB0095929) (attaching Benghazi Party OPLAN at SCB0095929-
35).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                   SETTING UP OPERATIONS IN BENGHAZI

    When Stevens arrived in Benghazi, he was authorized to stay 
for up to 30 days, security permitting.\98\ His job was to 
``begin gathering information and meeting those Libyans who 
were rising up against the murderous dictator Qadhafi.''\99\ 
This was all the instruction he was given. ``There was no 
protocol for how to move forward,'' the Secretary said. ``No 
past precedent to follow. No list of important figures to look 
out for. Chris had to work from scratch to identify the key 
players on the ground and carve out his own set of rules for 
working with the opposition.''\100\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \98\Id.
    \99\Clinton Testimony at 20; see also Email from Special Ass't, 
Office of Deputy Sec'y, U.S. Dep't of State, to Thomas R. Nides, Deputy 
Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State (Apr. 5, 2011, 5:38 PM) (on file 
with the Committee, SCB0061086) (``Chris explained his mission, making 
it clear that he would like to meet all members of the TNC and as many 
local council members as possible to understand the extent of the TNC's 
support.'').
    \100\Remarks, Hillary R. Clinton, Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of 
State, Prepared Remarks: Secretary Clinton Remarks at Swearing-In 
Ceremony for Chris Stevens, Ambassador to Libya (May 14, 2012), http://
www.state.gov/secretary/20092013clinton/rm/2012/05/197696.htm.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Stevens' early days and months in Benghazi were consumed by 
ongoing, concurrent concerns: contending with severe civil 
unrest; establishing a Mission compound; and meeting with 
officials from the Libyan insurgency and other nations. Stevens 
was expected to accomplish all of this with an uncertain 
diplomatic status.

                           The Tibesti Hotel

    The lead Diplomatic Security Agent who traveled with 
Stevens into Benghazi testified: ``[W]e tried to put a plan 
together as best we could. We didn't even know where we were 
going to set up once we arrived. Once we arrived, we looked at 
a couple locations. But prior to going there, it was somewhat 
fluid because it was just the unknown.''\101\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \101\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 6 Testimony at 30-31.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    After spending the first night on board the Greek cargo 
ship, the Aegean Pearl, and evaluating different locations, 
Stevens decided to stay at the Tibesti Hotel.\102\ While State 
Department security rules do not apply to hotels,\103\ the 
Diplomatic Security Agents on the ground sought out locations 
with security advantages. The Tibesti Hotel had limited 
setback\104\ and ``rudimentary barriers to control 
access.''\105\ ``[T]here was [also] an attempt to provide 
perimeter security, but it wasn't very robust.''\106\ The lead 
Diplomatic Security Agent described the decision-making 
process:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \102\Id. at 31, 49.
    \103\See Testimony of Gentry O. Smith, Deputy Ass't Sec'y, Bureau 
of Diplomatic Sec., Countermeasures, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 14-15 
(Feb. 25, 2016) [hereinafter Smith Testimony] (on file with the 
Committee) (``There would not be any security standards for a hotel, 
but security recommendations that are made during times that we're in a 
hotel, a solid core door, just basic things that you would expect from 
even being in the States, solid core door, viewfinder, very good 
locking equipment on the door; in situations such as being overseas, to 
look for hotels where there would be a security presence from either 
the host country or that the hotel provide its own security and what 
are the security procedures that are followed at that hotel for its 
guests.'').
    \104\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 6 Testimony at 32.
    \105\Testimony of Diplomatic Sec. Agent, Diplomatic Sec. Serv., 
U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 36 (Feb. 26, 2015) [hereinafter Diplomatic 
Sec. Agent 7 Testimony] (on file with the Committee).
    \106\Id.

        We went to see where the British were at, and they were 
        kind of at a guest conference type center. It wasn't 
        really big, but it was moderate sized, maybe two or 
        three stories, had a compound. It was down along the 
        water, so we ruled that place out.\107\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \107\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 6 Testimony at 31.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    He also testified:

        [W]e went to one other hotel where there were some 
        other journalists were staying. I don't recall the name 
        of it, but it was a little bit smaller. It was right up 
        against the highway. So we decided and it was a little 
        bit closer to where the U.K. facility was, but we 
        decided that wasn't really a good place for us. And 
        then we went to the Tibesti and looked at that. At the 
        time, there were some advantages for us to be 
        there.\108\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \108\Id. at 32.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                              *    *    *

        There were a lot of journalists there that would make 
        it easier for--[sic] and others staying there that 
        would make it easier for Mr. Stevens to communicate 
        with these people without us having to make unnecessary 
        movements all the time. And there was a little bit of 
        security at that hotel, very minimal. There was a 
        presence.\109\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \109\Id. at 32-33.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    He also testified:

        There wasn't a formalized police--I mean, there was 
        probably somebody that called himself a police chief. 
        And then you had the military--somewhat of a military 
        presence, you know--that really wasn't focused on 
        anything to do with our security. They had, you know, 
        they were trying to fight the war. Then you had 
        February 17, a militia that assisted us a little 
        bit.\110\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \110\Id. at 33.

    Notwithstanding the minimal security advantages over other 
hotels, Stevens and the Diplomatic Security Agents remained 
concerned about the security vulnerabilities of the Tibesti 
Hotel.

                          CIVIL WAR AND UNREST

    Five days after Stevens arrived in Benghazi, he and his 
group were nearly forced to leave. Qadhafi's forces had 
regrouped around the city of Ajdabiya, approximately 100 miles 
south of Benghazi.\111\ Stevens and the lead Diplomatic 
Security Agent, were concerned about the security in Benghazi 
if Qadhafi took Ajdabiya.\112\ When asked why they did not 
depart Benghazi, the Diplomatic Security Agent in charge of the 
Mission told the Committee: ``[W]e reexamined the issues, and 
at that time, we weren't worried about what was happening in 
Benghazi. We were worried about the forces coming forward. So 
they must have stopped.''\113\ Concerns about Stevens and his 
team's security reached the Secretary.\114\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \111\See Email from Gene A. Cretz, U.S. Ambassador to Libya, to 
Jeffery D. Feltman, Ass't Sec'y of State, Bureau of Near Eastern 
Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, et al. (Apr. 10, 2011, 6:06 AM) (on file 
with the Committee, SCB0095985) (``It appears that qadhafi forces are 
at the eastern and western gate of adjdabiyah and that there is a real 
possibility of the city falling.''); see also Rob Crilly, Libya: rebels 
flee stronghold of Ajdabiya as Gaddafi closes net, Telegraph (Mar. 15, 
2011), http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/
libya/8383872/Libya-rebels-flee-stronghold-of-Ajdabiya-as-Gaddafi-
closes-net.html.
    \112\See Email from Patrick Kennedy, Under Sec'y of State for 
Mgmt., U.S. Dep't of State, to James Steinberg, Deputy Sec'y of State, 
U.S. Dep't of State, et al. (Apr. 10, 2011) (on file with the 
Committee, SCB0095985).
    \113\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 6 Testimony at 99; see also Email from 
Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Sec'y of State for Mgmt., U.S. Dep't of 
State, to Joan A. Polaschik, Deputy Chief of Mission in Libya, U.S. 
Dep't of State (Apr. 10, 2011, 2:06 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0095970) (showing email exchange at the time).
    \114\Email from Huma Abedin, Deputy Chief of Staff to U.S. Sec'y of 
State, U.S. Dep't of State, to Hillary R. Clinton (``H''), Sec'y of 
State, U.S. Dep't of State (April 10, 2011, 10:14 AM) (on file with the 
Committee, SCB0045049)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Nevertheless, the security situation in Benghazi remained 
precarious. On April 15, 2011, the Mission held an emergency 
action committee [EAC] meeting ``to address several security 
issues that occurred or reported during the past 12 hours. The 
meeting was called by Stevens and was attended by all members 
of the Benghazi Mission.''\115\ An emergency action committee 
meeting is called ``when there is an emergency or security 
incident, the committee will convene and discuss the incident 
as well as steps forward either to mitigate the incident or 
resolve the incident.''\116\ Charlene Lamb, Deputy Assistant 
Secretary, Diplomatic Security, International Programs, 
described EACs to the Committee: ``They're usually chaired by 
the deputy chief of Mission. Sometimes they're chaired and/or 
attended by the Ambassador. And then the core members, at a 
minimum, the core members of your post security envelope and 
intelligence if they are present.''\117\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \115\Email from Diplomatic Sec. Command Ctr. (Apr. 15, 2011, 5:54 
PM) (on file with the Committee, C05396062).
    \116\Testimony of Diplomatic Sec. Agent, Diplomatic Sec. Serv., 
U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 50 (Apr. 15, 2015) [hereinafter Diplomatic 
Sec. Agent 8 Testimony] (on file with the Committee).
    \117\Testimony of Charlene Lamb, Deputy Ass't Sec'y, Bureau of 
Diplomatic Sec., Int'l Programs, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 174 (Jan. 
7, 2016) [hereinafter Lamb Testimony] (on file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The April 15, 2011 EAC highlighted three discreet incidents 
including: (1) military grade explosives were found with the 
Tibesti Hotel as the identified target; (2) two explosives were 
detonated outside the El Fadeel Hotel--the hotel used by the 
U.N. and UK; and (3) a large fire and pillar of smoke was seen 
emanating near the Hotel Uzo--the hotel occupied by many 
international journalists.\118\ The EAC determined it would 
work with the Transitional National Council to focus on 
security.\119\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \118\See Email to DSCC_C DS Seniors (Apr. 15, 2011, 5:54 PM) (on 
file with the Committee, C05396062).
    \119\See Email to DSCC_C DS Seniors (Apr. 15, 2011, 5:54 PM) (on 
file with the Committee, C05396062).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Less than 10 days later, on April 24, 2011, Stevens again 
considered whether it was safe enough to stay at the hotel. He 
informed State Department senior officials the Tibesti Hotel 
might not be safe enough in the long run and alternative 
facilities might be needed for a longer term stay.\120\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \120\See Email from Huma Abedin, Deputy Chief of Staff to U.S. 
Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State, to Hillary R. Clinton (``H''), 
Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State (Apr. 24, 2011, 10:25 AM) (on file 
with the Committee, SCB0045054) (forwarding email communicating 
Benghazi security update, hotels being targeted, cell arrested, 
increased security being sought, and may need to move out of hotel to 
villa).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Diplomatic Security Agents on the ground protecting 
Stevens and his team members described a high-risk security 
environment. The Agents spoke of explosions occurring near and 
around the Tibesti Hotel.\121\ They described constant gunfire, 
including ``a small-caliber round [that] came through the 
dining room where [Stevens] and the Swedish Consul were having 
dinner'' and ``a round that went through the window of our 
command post room in the hotel.''\122\ One Diplomatic Security 
Agent testified the car bomb explosions ``reminded me of what I 
experienced in Kabul or Iraq. . . .''\123\ Unlike Kabul or 
Iraq, however, there was no U.S. military presence in Libya.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \121\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 6 Testimony at 39-42.
    \122\Testimony of Diplomatic Sec. Agent, Diplomatic Sec. Serv., 
U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 42. (Feb. 12, 2012) [hereinafter Diplomatic 
Sec. Agent 9 Testimony] (on file with the Committee).
    \123\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 7 Testimony at 49.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Security would remain tenuous through the summer. On June 
10, 2011, a credible threat to the Tibesti Hotel forced Stevens 
and his team out of the hotel and to a more secure 
location.\124\ In late July 2011, a leading opposition figure, 
General Abdul Fatah Younis--a former Qadhafi loyalist who 
defected earlier in 2011 to join the opposition--was 
assassinated in Benghazi.\125\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \124\See Email from Special Ass't, Office of Deputy Sec'y, U.S. 
Dep't of State, to Thomas R. Nides, Deputy Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't 
of State (June 10, 2011, 6:58 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0074991) (discussing relocation from Tibesti Hotel); see also Email 
from Jacob J. Sullivan, Dir. of Policy Planning, U.S. Dep't of State, 
to Hillary R. Clinton (``H''), Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State 
(June 10, 2011, 4:01 PM)(on file with the Committee, SCB0045085).
    \125\See Email to Benghazi Update (July 31, 2011, 10:35 AM) (on 
file with the Committee, C05394875) (communicating reports of General 
Yunus' death).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                     BENGHAZI MISSION: SUMMER 2011

    Despite the unrest and security concerns in April 2011, 
senior leaders at the State Department were discussing 
continuing Stevens' diplomatic operation beyond the initial 30 
days and into the summer of 2011. On April 14, 2011, a report 
was filed with Thomas Nides, the Deputy Secretary of State for 
Management and Resources:

        NEA will be drafting a paper for Steinberg, which 
        essentially will ask for an expanded scope of work for 
        Stevens--which will allow him to stay in Libya for 
        longer than (90 days or more). Once NEA has some policy 
        guidance about what Stevens should be seeking to 
        accomplish in Libya, it will devise a plan for a new 
        footprint on the ground--this will require needed 
        resources and could shift the mission from an envoy 
        situation to a more permanent presence. We will need to 
        watch this closely and I've flagged for P and D(S) 
        staff that you and Pat should be included in these 
        discussions.\126\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \126\Email from Special Ass't, Office of Deputy Sec'y, U.S. Dep't 
of State, to Thomas R. Nides, Deputy Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of 
State (Apr. 14, 2011, 6:48 AM) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0075032). P is the designation for the Bureau of Political Affairs. 
D(S) is the designation for the Deputy Secretary of State Steinberg.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Feltman explained to the Committee:

        It was more fluid . . . but it was certainly the idea 
        was to be there more than a day or a week. The idea was 
        to be there for long enough that we would have the type 
        of insights into TNC thinking that you can't get from a 
        single meeting, that we would have the type of access 
        to other decisionmakers in the TNC that you can't have 
        when you only are meeting with one or two persons. We 
        needed somebody who could better understand what was 
        happening, what was motivating the leadership of the 
        TNC, what were they thinking. So the idea was not that 
        this would necessarily be years and years and years but 
        certainly more than a few weeks.\127\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \127\Feltman Testimony at 42:

      Q: Okay. And then when you either prior to your trip or 
      during your trip in May of 2011, were there discussions 
      about continuing the presence in Benghazi for an indefinite 
      period of time, maybe not years but at least the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
      foreseeable future?

      A: Yes, there were. And the discussions were, what's the 
      appropriate when I was there, part of our discussions were, 
      what's the appropriate platform for maintaining a presence 
      for that period in Benghazi?

      Q: And by ``platform,'' do you mean number of personnel?

      A: Number of personnel, communications, location. You know, 
      at the time we were in a hotel

      Q: The Tibesti Hotel?

      A: The Tibesti Hotel. And so the discussion had already 
      started about what were the alternatives to being in a 
      place like that.

      Q: Okay. And had there been some review of compounds and 
      villas at that time?

      A: Yes, it had started, and it was very difficult because 
      there were not that many places available or appropriate. 
      Id. at 43.

See also Email from Special Ass't, Office of Deputy Sec'y, U.S. Dep't 
of State, to Thomas R. Nides, Deputy Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of 
State (May 5, 2011, 7:00 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0061070) 
(``NEA sees Benghazi turning into an eventual EBO--and all that entails 
on resources, DS, OBO, and Interagency discussion.'' (emphasis in 
original)).

    By the end of April 2011, the diplomatic team had increased 
to 17 Americans consisting of ``Stevens, one reporting/public 
diplomacy officer, one Information Management Officer who is 
also doing Management work, four USAID officers, and ten 
Diplomatic Security special Agents who comprise the protective 
detail for the mission.''\128\ By the end of June 2011, 
security threats had forced Stevens and his team to relocate. 
The space constraints in the new locations forced the number of 
personnel in Benghazi to drop to nine, including five 
Diplomatic Security Agents.\129\ Staffing remained unchanged 
throughout the summer.\130\ William V. Roebuck, the Director of 
the Office of Maghreb Affairs, told Stevens:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \128\Memorandum from Jeffrey D. Feltman, Assistant Sec'y of State, 
Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to Patrick F. 
Kennedy, Under Sec'y of State for Mgmt., U.S. Dep't of State (June 10, 
2011) [hereinafter June 10, 2011 Action Memo for Under Secretary 
Kennedy] (on file with the Committee, C05578649).
    \129\See Email from Special Ass't, Office of Deputy Sec'y, U.S 
Dep't of State, to Thomas R. Nides, Deputy Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't 
of State (June 21, 2011, 8:12 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0061058) (discussing staffing concerns and issues).
    \130\See id. (discussing staffing concerns and issues).

        Other principals like Deputy Secretary Nides are 
        operating under (and accept) the assumption that the 
        mission will bulk back up to 17 as housing stabilizes 
        and the security conditions permit. . . . I have the 
        strong sense in any case that there would be little 
        appetite for capping the mission at 9 people, given the 
        equities the interagency has in the previously higher 
        staffing figure.\131\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \131\Email from William V. Roebuck, Dir. Office of Maghreb Affairs, 
Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to J. Christopher 
Stevens, U.S. Rep. to Transitional Nat'l Council (June 21, 2011, 12:08 
PM) (on file with the Committee, C05409676).

    Notwithstanding the security threats and decreased staff, 
Stevens and his team faced increasing demands. According to 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Polaschik, who served in Benghazi in May 2011:

        Certainly, when I was there, I was working from, you 
        know, 8 in the morning till midnight. And there were 
        two reporting officers there.

        Just in terms of sustainability and getting the work 
        done, 8 in the morning until midnight is never a good 
        recipe, and, also, when you're trying to make sure that 
        people are at a heightened state of alert that's 
        appropriate for a very fluid security environment.

        So it wasn't a decision to say, oh, we need a long term 
        presence. It was a decision that we don't have the 
        resources in place to get the work done that needs to 
        get done.\132\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \132\Polaschik Testimony at 130.

                        Move to Mission Compound

    With Washington's interest in extending Stevens' stay, he 
and his team searched for a new location--a challenging process 
in the middle of a civil war. The Post Management Officer for 
Libya, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, State Department, 
testified: ``Finding a place that met our security needs, where 
the rent was not completely outrageous due to the fact that we 
were in a war zone, that had required ingress and egress that 
met what security wanted . . . were all significant issues that 
had to be overcome.''\133\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \133\Testimony of Post Mgmt. Officer for Libya, Bureau of Near 
Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 79 (July 23, 2015) 
[hereinafter Post Mgmt. Officer for Libya Testimony] (on file with the 
Committee).

        [T]he traditional . . . real estate agent just didn't 
        exist . . . there were other channels of information 
        that we would leverage to help us identify what we were 
        looking for. Because that was really the issue, was not 
        a property per se, but a property that we had special 
        considerations for.''\134\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \134\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 7 Testimony at 95.

    These difficulties were further complicated by Stevens' 
team's inability to find a ``landlord that would be willing to 
cooperate with us and our specific needs. . . .''\135\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \135\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    As Stevens and his team searched for new property, they 
temporarily collocated with other U.S. personnel on the ground 
in Benghazi. Space constraints precluded maintaining this 
arrangement for the long term.\136\ On June 21, 2011, Stevens 
and his team moved to another interim site, while they narrowed 
their search for a suitable longer term location.\137\ They 
found a facility that had previously served as a ``man camp'' 
for personnel working for the oil industry but had been 
abandoned at the start of the civil war.\138\ The lead 
Diplomatic Security Agent at the time described the advantages 
of the camp:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \136\See Email from Thomas R. Nides, Deputy Sec'y of State, U.S. 
Dep't of State, to Special Ass't, Office of Deputy Sec'y, U.S. Dep't of 
State (June 13, 2011, 1:13 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0061059-
0061060).
    \137\Email from Post Mgmt. Officer for Libya, Bureau of Near 
Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State (June 20, 2011, 9:04 AM) (on file 
with the Committee, C05393024) (``We are treating the interim villa as 
hotel space--only 30-60 days while we wait for the upgrades to the 
Villa Compound to come online.''); see also Email from Diplomatic Sec. 
Agent 7 (June 17, 2011, 6:19 AM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05408710) (``We hope to have the `interim' villa by next tuesday 
[sic].'').
    \138\Testimony of Physical Sec. Specialist, Bureau of Diplomatic 
Sec., U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 9 (Apr. 6, 2016) [hereinafter 
Physical Sec. Specialist Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

        [I]t had an established perimeter. That perimeter also 
        gave us setback from the road, setback being one of the 
        critical elements that we were looking for given that 
        issues that we had at the Tibesti Hotel with the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        explosion.

        It also was a hardened building. In other words, the 
        mason area was significant enough that it would likely 
        withstand rounds dropping down from the sky or, 
        depending on the trajectory of a particular round, it 
        provided it afforded us additional protection because 
        of the construction of that particular villa.

        It allowed us to control our access onto the compound. 
        That was one of the big problems with the hotel, was we 
        didn't know who was coming and going. It was an active, 
        operating hotel. And so they were there to make money, 
        not to control the access necessarily for the 
        Americans.\139\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \139\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 7 Testimony at 93-94.

    Notwithstanding the search for a secure location, 
traditional security standards did not apply in Benghazi at the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
time. The physical security specialist in Benghazi testified:

        Q: You were advised that OSPB standards did not apply 
        to Benghazi. Is that correct?

        A: Yes.

        Q: And when they didn't apply to Benghazi, did that 
        mean the city at large or did that mean a specific 
        facility?

        A: That meant for our facility.

        Q: Okay. But the facility at that point in time was 
        what?

        A: The facility that we were going to occupy as the 
        platform was going to be the man camp.\140\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \140\Physical Sec. Specialist Testimony at 87-88.

    Federal regulation and State Department rules set out the 
security standards United States facilities located abroad are 
required to meet to keep Americans safe.\141\ Senior State 
Department officials, nevertheless, made the decision to 
exclude ``temporary facilities,'' such as Benghazi, from these 
security rules.\142\ Kennedy attempted to justify this 
exclusion:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \141\See Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act of 
1999, 22 U.S.C. Sec. 4865 (2012); and see also, U.S. Dep't of State, 12 
FAH-6 H-511.1-511.6, Overseas Security Policy Board Approved Policies 
and Standards for All Posts; U.S. Gov't Accountability Office, GAO-14-
655, Diplomatic Facility Security: Overseas Facilities May Face Greater 
Risks Due to Gap in Security-Related Activities, Standards, and 
Policies (2014).
    \142\See Testimony of Eric Boswell, Ass't Sec'y of State, Bureau of 
Diplomatic Sec., U.S. Dep't of State, before the H. Comm. On Oversight 
and Gov't Reform,, Tr. at 65-66 (July 9, 2013) [hereinafter Boswell 
Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

        When we go into one of these temporary facilities, we 
        take the Overseas Security Policy Board (OSPB) 
        standards--OSPB is how we refer to them--we take the 
        OSPB standards as our goals . . . We treat the 
        temporary facilities as if we were heading towards 
        interim by using the OSPB standards as our goal.\143\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \143\Testimony of Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Sec'y of State for 
Mgmt., U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 193 (Feb. 5, 2016) [hereinafter 
Kennedy Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

        In addition to the OSPB security standards, the Secure 
        Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act (SECCA), 
        the applicable federal security law, provides among 
        other things a diplomatic facility ensure: (1) all US 
        Government personnel are located together in the new 
        diplomatic facility; and (2) the diplomatic facility is 
        located ``not less than 100 feet from the perimeter of 
        the property on which the facility is situated.''\144\ 
        With regard to Benghazi, however, the State Department 
        Office of the Legal Adviser determined: [T]his facility 
        would not fit within the definition of a `diplomatic 
        facility' under SECCA, which defines the term as an 
        office that (1) is officially notified to the host 
        government as diplomatic/consular premises or (2) 
        houses USG personnel with an official status recognized 
        by the host government. If the facility will not be 
        notified to the host government then it will not be 
        considered inviolable, and our personnel will not have 
        any official status, then the facility would not meet 
        the definition of a diplomatic facility under the 
        statute.\145\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \144\See Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act of 
1999, 22 U.S.C. Sec. 4865 (2012).
    \145\Email (June 20, 2011, 11:30 AM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05396431).

    Without official security standards in place, Stevens and 
the Diplomatic Security Agents on the ground worked with the 
landlord of the ``man camp'' to identify field expedient 
measures to improve the physical security of the camp. The 
needed security measures were contracted out to an individual 
situated in Benghazi.\146\ The physical security specialist on 
site wrote:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \146\Email from Physical Sec. Specialist, Physical Sec. Programs, 
Bureau of Diplomatic Sec., U.S. Dep't of State (Aug. 1, 2011, 11:08 AM) 
(on file with the Committee, C05393020).

        The DS/PSP [physical security programs] funded PSD 
        upgrade contract that was signed . . . was for $75,000 
        with a specific scope of work to be performed, 
        fabricate two . . . vehicle gates, fabricate concrete 
        jersey type barriers, string barbed wire and fabricate 
        two vehicle drop arm barriers.\147\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \147\Id.

    Concerns about the owner's title and relationship to the 
Qadhafi regime forced Stevens and his team to abruptly drop the 
``man camp'' from consideration as a housing facility. With no 
alternative, Stevens and his team remained at the interim 
facility, also known as Villa A.\148\ Within days of the 
decision to remain in Villa A, a neighboring property, Villa B, 
was acquired.\149\ The physical security specialist in Benghazi 
at the time described the sequence of events: ``That facility 
fell through on a Thursday, and on the Friday, Stevens sat down 
with the Villa A landlord, who brought along the owner of Villa 
B. Stevens especially liked Villa B and said he wanted A and B 
together.''\150\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \148\See Email from Physical Sec. Specialist, Physical Sec. 
Programs, Bureau of Diplomatic Sec., U.S. Dep't of State, to Diplomatic 
Sec. Agent 25 & James Bacigalupo, Regional Director, Bureau of 
Diplomatic Sec., U.S. Dep't of State (Feb. 13, 2012) (on file with the 
Committee, C05411579) (``[T]he decision was made to stay put when Villa 
B became an option and we stopped looking at the other properties.''); 
see also Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent (July 04, 2011, 3:59 AM) (on 
file with the Committee, C05394858) (``We are currently referring to 
our current residence as Villa A and the neighboring property as Villa 
B.'').
    \149\See Email from Physical Sec. Specialist, Physical Sec. 
Programs, Bureau of Diplomatic Sec., U.S. Dep't, to Diplomatic Sec. 
Agent 24, et al. (Feb. 13, 2012, 7:52 AM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05411579).
    \150\Summary of group interview with Physical Security Specialist 
and others (on file with the Committee, SCB0046921-0046923).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The decision made by Washington to exempt the proposed 
``man camp'' site from the official security standards also 
applied to the Mission compound.\151\ The same physical 
security specialist in Benghazi explained:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \151\See Physical Sec. Specialist Testimony at 134.

        Q: . . . you were told that OSPB standards and SECCA 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        did not apply to the man camp; am I correct?

        A: Did not apply.

        Q: Did not apply.

        So was that analysis then sort of used as it relates to 
        the villa compound?

        A: It carried over.

        Q: Carried over. So basically and correct me if I'm 
        misstating this but the thought would be that 
        exceptions and waivers to OSPB and SECCA do not apply 
        in Benghazi, generally?

        A: When I was there, that's the

        Q: Is that a fair characterization?

        A: That's the guidance that I was given at that 
        time.\152\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \152\Id.

    This decision to exclude the Mission compound in Benghazi 
from official security standards and rules was never formally 
communicated to the Diplomatic Security Agents who volunteered 
to serve in Benghazi. One Diplomatic Security Agent told the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Committee:

        I was starting to understand then and what I learned 
        later, that if you are a diplomatic facility within the 
        State Department, you have physical security 
        requirements that are in the FAM, the Foreign Affairs 
        Manual. And it is a very detailed, large set of rules 
        that you have to follow to operate a diplomatic 
        facility. It requires you to have physical security 
        standards that are typically going to be expensive and 
        will take time to do.

        If you are in a non-diplomatic facility, there are no 
        security standards.

        They don't exist.\153\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \153\Testimony Diplomatic Sec. Agent, Diplomatic Sec. Serv., U.S. 
Dep't of State, Tr. at 28 (Apr. 2, 2015) [hereinafter Diplomatic Sec. 
Agent 10 Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

    The Committee also learned ``Villas A and B owners were 
adamant about their residential properties not be[ing] altered 
by our then short term presence without their explicit 
approvals being obtained in advance.'' To assuage the landlords 
concerns, security improvements to Villas A and B were 
minimal.\154\ According to the physical security specialist:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \154\Email from Physical Sec. Specialist, Physical Sec. Programs, 
Bureau of Diplomatic Sec., U.S. Dep't, to Diplomatic Sec. Agent 25 and 
James Bacigalupo, Regional Director, Bureau of Diplomatic Sec., U.S. 
Dep't of State (Feb. 13, 2012, 7:52 AM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05411579).

        [M]inor security improvements were discussed and 
        authorized for B only, open a hole in the perimeter 
        wall between Villa's [sic] A & B wide enough for a 
        roadway, install several window grills on the small 
        Villa B office annex and reposition several large 
        manufacturing machines on the Villa B property to block 
        the vehicle gates because all Mission vehicle activity 
        was to be conducted from Villa A. The owners [sic] 
        representative walked the property with us several 
        times and he agreed to implement these minor security 
        improvements as part of his fiduciary management 
        responsibilities and dismissed other recommendations 
        such as installing razor ribbon on existing perimeter 
        walls were [sic] needed, installing shatter resistant 
        window film and installing vehicle drop arm barriers. 
        Post used available FAV SUV's with maintenance issues 
        (no working A/C) to block the Villa A vehicle gates. 
        There was no PSD/PCB trip report prepared upon return 
        because conditions on the ground were changing on a 
        near daily basis and were discussed on conference calls 
        and/or in email correspondence with concerned offices 
        within WDC as to what Post was proposing and what was 
        being considered an approved for the leased 
        properties.\155\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \155\Id.

    Villa C, another residence, was acquired shortly after the 
residences located in Villas A and B. Although no security 
assessment was conducted on Villa C at the time, one of the 
Diplomatic Security Agents assessed ``[n]o upgrades are needed 
for Villas A & C.''\156\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \156\Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent to Physical Sec. Specialist, 
Physical Sec. Programs, Bureau of Diplomatic Sec., U.S. Dep't of State, 
and Post Mgmt. Officer for Libya, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. 
Dep't of State (Aug. 1, 2011, 6:32 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05393020).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    As Stevens and his team finalized the acquisition of all 
three Villas in late July 2011, a Diplomatic Security Agent on 
the ground outlined to Washington D.C. a number of ``security-
related items,'' needed to better protect the new 
compound:\157\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \157\Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent to DS-IP-NEA (July 21, 2011, 
3:22 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05396529).

        More agents required: Between the three compounds, 
        we're looking at roughly 15 acres of property to 
        secure. This will require additional SAs [special 
        agents] (up to five more) by early to mid-August. For 
        REACT purposes, teams of agents will reside on all 
        three compounds. Once resources permit, RSO [regional 
        security officer] TOC [technical operations center] 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        will be staffed 24/7.

        LGF [local guard force]: per the contract already in 
        place with AQM, we'll have 11 unarmed guard positions 
        (all 24/7). This includes a Shift Supervisor and 10 
        guard posts. Tripoli LGF commander will oversee day-to-
        day operations. LGF will be in place prior to 
        occupancy. Guard Orders in draft--pending.

        Access control policy (drafted and approved by Envoy): 
        Except for select VIPs, visitors will park outside the 
        compound and enter on foot. Visitor/vehicles will be 
        screened by LGF. Visitors/deliveries will be channeled 
        to one access control point; remaining vehicle gates 
        will be blocked using armored vehicles or similar.

        Compound Security/Internal Defense Plan: will 
        incorporate DS [diplomatic security] agents, LGF, and 
        TNC [Transitional National Council] armed guards.

        Designation of safe havens within each residential and 
        office structure.

        Installation of TSS equipment/arrival of TDY install 
        team--TBD.

        Relocation of RSO TOC from Villa A (current location) 
        to Villa B office building.

        Request for additional TNC armed guards.\158\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \158\Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent to DS-IP-NEA (July 21, 2011, 
3:22 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05396529).

    The email introduces several specific elements related to 
security that later become significant. Already occupying Villa 
A, Stevens and his team took occupancy of Villas B and C on 
August 1, 2011.\159\ On August 3, 2011, leases for all three 
villas were executed, forming what would become known as the 
Benghazi Mission compound.\160\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \159\See Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent to DS-IP-NEA (July 21, 
2011, 3:22 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05396529) (mentioning that 
``[b]arring any issues, occupancy of villa B&C could be as early as 
Aug. 1.''); see also Lease Agreement between [REDACTED] and the United 
States of America, STS-800-11-L-009 (Aug, 3, 2011) (on file with the 
Committee, C05394161) (showing term of lease beginning Aug. 1).
    \160\Id.; see also Letter (July 28, 2011) (on file with the 
Committee, SCB0047437-42) (authorizing three leases in Benghazi).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Diplomatic Security Agents on the ground described their 
impressions of the compound:

        When I arrived on the compound, it was 13 acres I 
        remember this pretty vividly 13 acres. We occupied 
        three dormitories, I will say. We named them Villa A, 
        B, and C. There was a building that we considered as, 
        you know it was referred to by, you know, us and the 
        other folks there as the tactical operations center, 
        also as the office.

        And then we had another outlying building on the 13 
        acre compound, which really was three separate, you 
        know, residences, which housed the quick reaction 
        forces I've described before, the 17th February guys, 
        who also lived on compound with us.\161\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \161\Testimony of Diplomatic Sec. Agent, Diplomatic Sec. Serv., 
U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 18 (Apr. 9, 2015) [hereinafter Diplomatic 
Sec. Agent 12 Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

        [I]t was not like the other compounds that I had seen. 
        It appeared to be more of a low profile building, lower 
        footprint than your typical embassy or consulate. It 
        didn't have the signs up saying ``U.S. Embassy'' or 
        ``Consulate.'' It didn't have some of the physical 
        security features you would typically see at an embassy 
        or consulate, such as Delta barriers or chicane. There 
        wasn't the host nation police presence, the military 
        presence that you would find at your typical embassy or 
        consulate. So my impression was, it was a lower or a 
        lower profile mission.\162\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \162\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 8 Testimony at 41.

    Less than three weeks after leases were signed for the new 
Mission compound, Tripoli fell to opposition forces.\163\ Soon 
after the fall of Tripoli, elements of the TNC moved from 
Benghazi to Tripoli.\164\ Less than eight weeks after the 
Mission moved into its new compound, Embassy Tripoli 
reopened.\165\ At that time, Stevens requested his role as 
representative to the TNC conclude on or about October 6, 
2011.\166\ He was asked to remain in Benghazi until the TNC's 
relocation was complete later that fall.\167\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \163\See Email from U.S. Embassy Tripoli to Gene A. Cretz, U.S. 
Ambassador to Libya (Sept. 7, 2011, 12:53 PM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05390164) (``. . . the TNC effectively took control of 
Tripoli in mid-August and has begun to establish its presence and 
authority in the city.'').
    \164\See id. (``Approximately half of the TNC's executive cabinet . 
. . is currently in Tripoli, joined by 15 of the TNC's 42 council 
members.'').
    \165\Id.
    \166\Email from William V. Roebuck, Dir. Office of Maghreb Affairs, 
Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to Raymond D. 
Maxwell, Deputy Ass't Sec'y, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't 
of State, and Elizabeth L. Dibble, Principal Deputy Ass't Sec'y of 
State, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State (Sept. 20, 
2011, 8:20 AM) (on file with the Committee, C05389443) (``I am 
forwarding this to socialize Chris' thoughts on the future of the 
Benghazi Mission, in light of our Embassy in Tripoli. He would like to 
conclude his service o/a October 6 and return to Washington.'').
    \167\Email from Elizabeth L. Dibble, Principal Deputy Ass't Sec'y 
of State, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of Sate, to 
Raymond D. Maxwell, Deputy Ass't Sec'y, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, 
U.S. Dep't of State, William Roebuck, Dir. Office of Maghreb Affairs, 
Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, and Lee Lohman, 
Ex. Dir., Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dept. of State, et al. 
(Sept. 20, 2011, 6:38 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05389443) (``I 
raised with Jeff [Feltman]. He thinks Chris needs to stay in Benghazi 
until Jalil has relocated more or less permanently to Tripoli. He also 
thinks we should not rush to shut down the operation there.'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                      Uncertain Diplomatic Status

    Stevens' Mission in Benghazi fell outside the normal realm, 
even extending to questions about its diplomatic status.\168\ 
Typically, a Mission and its staff are notified to the host 
nation under which they receive the full privileges and 
immunities afforded under international conventions.\169\ At 
the time Stevens and his team went into Benghazi to coordinate 
with the emerging Transitional National Council,\170\ however, 
the U.S. had not severed formal diplomatic relations with the 
Qadhafi regime.\171\ Gene A. Cretz remained the Ambassador to 
Libya, and he and a select number of his team were serving ``in 
exile'' in Washington D.C.\172\ Feltman explained:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \168\See Email from Senior Desk Officer for Libya, Office of 
Maghreb Affairs, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, 
to J. Christopher Stevens, U.S. Rep. to Transitional Nat'l Council 
(``stevens chris'') (July 27, 2011, 9:22 AM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05561961) (attaching draft staffing paper discussion of the 
role of the Mission); see also Email from Senior Desk Office for Libya, 
Office of Maghreb Affairs, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't 
of State, to U.S. Embassy Tripoli, (Sept. 7, 2011, 1:02 PM) (on file 
with the Committee, C05390164).
    \169\See Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, Apr. 18, 1961, 
23 U.S.T. 3227, 500 U.N.T.S. 95; Vienna Convention on Consular 
Relations, Apr. 24, 1963, 21 U.S.T. 77, 596 U.N.T.S. 261.
    \170\Email from Special Ass't, Office of Deputy Sec'y, U.S. Dep't 
of State, to Thomas R. Nides, Deputy Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of 
State (Apr. 5, 2011, 5:38 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0061086) 
(``Chris explained his mission, making it clear that he would like to 
meet all members of the TNC and as many local council members as 
possible to understand the extent of the TNC's support.'').
    \171\See Feltman Testimony at 27.
    \172\See Cretz Testimony at 36.

        Again, the overall goal was to try to limit the need 
        for a military solution, to focus on a political 
        solution, and convince Qadhafi that his time was over. 
        So you close down the Embassy in Tripoli of course, we 
        closed it down earlier for security reasons but you 
        have no representation in Tripoli, but suddenly you 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        have somebody in Benghazi.

        You know, psychologically, did this have an impact on 
        Qadhafi's thinking to realize that the U.K., the U.S., 
        France, Italy, whole lists of countries no longer had 
        representation in Tripoli, but they had representation 
        in Benghazi.

        Now, the TNC, as I said, wasn't a government at the 
        time. You know, there's certain attributes that a 
        government has that we didn't think they had achieved 
        those attributes yet. They very much wanted to be 
        recognized as the legitimate government of Libya, and 
        I'm not sure that any country actually recognized them 
        within that period as legitimate government. I don't 
        think they did. But it was important to show who which 
        Libyans did the U.S. think were appropriate 
        interlocutors at the time.\173\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \173\Feltman Testimony at 27-28.

                      Keeping Washington Informed

    While contending with the civil unrest and seeking a 
location to house his diplomatic mission, Stevens set out to 
meet with leaders of the fledgling TNC.\174\ He also met with 
other nations on the ground and leading rebel forces.\175\ 
Throughout his time in Benghazi in 2011 Stevens kept Washington 
informed of the ongoing developments. For example, on April 10, 
2011, he reported to Washington:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \174\See Email from Special Ass't, Office of Deputy Sec'y, U.S 
Dep't of State, to Thomas Nides, Deputy Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of 
State (Apr. 5, 2011, 5:38 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0061086) 
(``Chris explained his mission, making it clear that he would like to 
meet all members of the TNC and as many local council members as 
possible to understand the extent of the TNC's support.'').
    \175\See Email to SES-O_SWO; Tripoli Cooperation, SES-O (Apr. 10, 
2011, 6:10 AM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0075057).

        The situation in Ajadbiyah has worsened to the point 
        where Stevens is considering departing Benghazi. The 
        envoy's delegation is currently doing a phased checkout 
        (paying the hotel bills, moving some items to the boat 
        etc.). He will monitor the situation to see if it 
        deteriorates further, but no decision has been made on 
        departure. He will wait 2-3 more hours and then revisit 
        the decision on departure.

                              *    *    *

        The Brits report Qadhafi's forces are moving from Sirte 
        to Brega, which they interpret as preparation for 
        another assault on Ajadbiyah today.

        He plans to discuss the situation further with the 
        Brits, Turks, and the TNC to see if this is an 
        irreversible situation. Departure would send a 
        significant political signal, and would be interpreted 
        as the U.S. losing confidence in the TNC.

        Initial message to the TNC would frame the departure as 
        due to security grounds and as a temporary measure 
        only.

        Polaschik said she would discuss these developments 
        with Ambassador Cretz.

        If the group departs, the contract for the boat 
        stipulates they return to Greece. One scenario could be 
        the group stages elsewhere for a few days.\176\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \176\Id.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On April 25, 2011, Stevens reported the following:

        Political/economic developments:

        The TNC [Transitional National Council]: This week the 
        Council will focus on strengthening its executive arm, 
        the ``Crisis Management Committee,'' by appointing 
        coordinators (i.e. ministers) for defense, interior, 
        and justice. They will also encourage the head of the 
        Committee Dr. Mahmoud Jabril to remain in Benghazi and 
        focus on managing the affairs of eastern Libya. He has 
        been criticized for spending too much time abroad.

        Libyan Broadcasting: A number of Libyan contacts told 
        us that Libyan State Television was disrupted in the 
        early morning hours, possibly due to NATO airstrikes. 
        Later in the day, however broadcasting resumed.

        Air bridge?[sic] The United Nations Humanitarian Air 
        Service (UNHAS) is expected to begin regular passenger 
        service in/out of Benghazi in the next week or so. 
        Details, including its route, are being worked out. The 
        flights would be available on a sign up basis to 
        humanitarian and donor staff (UN, NGOs, and donor 
        Missions).

        New passport and visa procedures: the TNC issued a 
        press release from Colonel Saad Najm, the head of the 
        immigration office, describing how the historically 
        burdensome passport process will be eased. Colonel Najm 
        said that his office would suspend issuing entry visas 
        until the TNC could better secure the land and sea 
        ports, and said that journalists crossing into Libya 
        over land from Egypt will need to apply for visas at 
        the border town of Msaed and have letters of 
        endorsement from TNC media committee.\177\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \177\Email from Staff Ass't, Office of the U.S. Sec'y of State, 
U.S. Dep't of State, to Jacob J. Sullivan, Dir. Policy Planning, U.S. 
Dep't of State, et al. (Apr. 25, 2011, 4:33 PM) (on file with the 
Committee, SCB0083338).

    In addition, Stevens reported back to the State Department 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
on the security environment in Benghazi.

        Security situation:

        Benghazi: TNC member confirmed reports we received 
        yesterday that TNC security forces had uncovered a cell 
        of Libyans sent from Egypt to disrupt life in Benghazi 
        by attacking hotels and even schools (schools have been 
        closed since the mid-March attacks by loyalist forces). 
        [The TNC Member] said that Qadhafi relative Ahmed 
        Qadhafadam who moved to Cairo after the revolution 
        began was behind the effort. [The TNC Member] said he 
        gave interviews to Egyptian TV channels last night 
        complaining about this problem and calling on Egyptian 
        authorities to stop it. According to press reports, TNC 
        Chairman Abd al-Jalal asked Egyptian authorities to 
        halt Qadhafadam's efforts to raise funds to use against 
        the rebels.\178\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \178\Id.

    On August 22, 2011, Stevens filed a report on the fall of 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tripoli:

        TNC caretaker cabinet/members were up until 4am 
        following events in Tripoli and discussing plans for 
        the coming days. Tarhouni said the TNC has been in 
        constant communication with its people in Tripoli, 
        including both fighters and those entrusted with 
        implementing the stabilization plans. Rebels in 
        Tripoli, in coordination with the TNC, have begun to 
        set up checkpoints inside the city and guard public 
        buildings.

        TNC chairman Abd al Jalil and PM Jabril made statements 
        to the media last night, urging people to refrain from 
        revenge attacks and destruction of public buildings.

        There has so far been `no bloodbath' or serious 
        looting.

        The capture of Saif al-Islam al-Qadhafi and Mohamed at-
        Qadhafi is significant. The TNC, including Abd al-Jalil 
        himself, intervened with rebels surrounding Mohamed's 
        house to ensure that they didn't harm him. They 
        understood that it would be harmful to the revolution 
        and the TNC if he were killed. These events were 
        captured live by Al Jazeera in interviews with Mohamed. 
        Both brothers are in rebel custody (at this time, it is 
        unclear to us exactly who is holding them, however).

        Per Tarhouni, the next steps are: 1) find Muammar 
        Qadhafi; 2) issue a statement announcing the end of the 
        Qadhafi regime and the start of the interim period 
        under the TNC (TNC staff have begun drafting this 
        statement already); 3) insure the delivery of essential 
        services and commodities (esp. addressing the acute 
        shortages of fuel, children's milk, and medication for 
        blood pressure and diabetes); and 4) move the TNC to 
        Tripoli.

        Regarding the move to Tripoli, Tarhouni said security 
        arrangements would need to be made before they could 
        send the TNC leadership to the capital. We have heard 
        from another contact that some TNC members are already 
        making plans to fly to Misurata and the Western 
        Mountains, possibly as early as today, and from there 
        drive to Tripoli.\179\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \179\Email to Jacob J. Sullivan, Dir. of Policy Planning, U.S. 
Dep't of State, et al. (Aug. 22, 2011, 6:54 AM) (on file with the 
Committee, SCB0045093).

    As Stevens filed his reports, State Department personnel 
continued to monitor.\180\ The Post Management Officer, who 
handled logistics for Stevens' mission, told the Committee:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \180\See Post Mgmt. Officer for Libya Testimony at 115.

        In the initial insertion period, we were speaking to 
        the team on the ground on a regular basis, and we would 
        say we will touch base with you again in X number of 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        hours and have another phone call.

        I don't know when we shifted to a regular schedule 
        versus when we were just saying, okay, we've heard from 
        you now. Okay. Let's talk again in 6 hours once things 
        have gone on. We'll give you 8 hours and let you sleep, 
        and then we'll talk to you again, kind of thing.\181\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \181\Id. at 108.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Polaschik reported:

        I saw my role as his [Stevens] backstop, because having 
        been in a situation where the security environment was 
        very fluid, and having limited resources, knowing that 
        their communications setup was less than ideal as they 
        were getting started, I thought it was very important 
        for him to have a single point of contact that he could 
        reach out to that could then communicate information, 
        requests, et cetera; and also I personally felt very 
        invested in what was happening, and I wanted to be 
        there for him.\182\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \182\Polaschik Testimony at 28.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Later in her testimony, Polaschik said:

        Quite early on, it looked as if Chris and team had just 
        arrived. There was a moment when it looked like a city 
        called Ajdabiya was about to fall to Qadhafi forces. I 
        remember it was a Saturday, and I was on a conference 
        call, and I remember talking to Chris and saying, are 
        you sure you should stay? Because my perspective is 
        very much with the events in Tripoli when we were 
        evacuating fresh in my mind, things can change on a 
        moment's notice; I would feel much better if he would 
        get out now.

        And Chris had, I think, a different tolerance for risk 
        than I did. And he felt that the conditions on the 
        ground were such that it was okay to stay. And, again, 
        these were conference calls that involved a variety of 
        actors in the State Department. I believe Op Center was 
        on it and was probably documenting the call as well. So 
        that was one instance.

        But in terms of the overall what is our future, I don't 
        remember the specifics, but I do remember an overall 
        very strong impression from Chris that he felt it was 
        important to stay, and the conditions were such that 
        they should.\183\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \183\Id. at 30.

                         Recognition of the TNC

    The discussion in the summer among senior officials in 
Washington also turned toward supporting the TNC to an even 
greater degree.\184\ The first step in supporting the emerging 
council was determining when and how to recognize them. Stevens 
reported to Washington earlier in June ``substantial pockets of 
people in Benghazi and Eastern Libya . . . are questioning the 
TNC's legitimacy.''\185\ At the behest of the Secretary, the 
United States took the unprecedented step of formally 
recognizing the Transitional National Government on July 15, 
2011,\186\ terming it the ``legitimate representative of the 
Libya People,''\187\ but not the legitimate government of 
Libya.\188\ Fishman explained the difference:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \184\See Fishman Testimony at 22 (``[D]uring the intervention, we 
were trying, as mandated by the Security Council, to protect the 
civilian population of the Libyan people, and once their regime was 
collapsed, we were trying to, as we saw it, help the Libyans stabilize 
their country and support the interim authorities to do that.'').
    \185\See Email from Special Ass't, Office of Deputy Sec'y, U.S. 
Dep't of State, to Thomas R. Nides, Deputy Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't 
of State (June 7, 2011, 7:38 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0074994) (discussing the TNC's legitimacy).
    \186\Hillary R. Clinton, Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State, 
Remarks on Libya and Syria (July 15, 2011), http://www.state.gov/
secretary/20092013clinton/rm/2011/07/168656.htm.
    \187\Fishman Testimony at 32.
    \188\Id. at 33-34.

        A: That was how we could recognize the Libyan 
        authorities as the legitimate representative of the 
        Libyan people, which would in essence, derecognize the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Qadhafi regime as the Government of Libya.

        Q: But did you draw a distinction between recognizing 
        them as the representative of the Libyan people and 
        recognizing them as the legitimate Libyan Government?

        A: I believe so, because they didn't have a government 
        at the time.\189\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \189\Id. at 60.

    Notwithstanding the United States' decision to recognize 
the TNC as the legitimate representative of the Libyan People, 
the State Department made clear ``it did not intend to 
establish a formal diplomatic Mission in Benghazi.''\190\ State 
Department officials were worried:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \190\See Email from Senior Desk Officer to Libya, Office of Maghreb 
Affairs, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to J. 
Christopher Stevens, U.S. Rep. to Transitional Nat'l Council (``stevens 
chris'') (July 27, 2011, 9:22 AM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05390164) (attaching draft staffing paper).

        [E]stablishment of a formal diplomatic mission in 
        Benghazi would undermine this commitment [to a unified, 
        free Libya with Tripoli as its capital] and send the 
        wrong political message. Establishment of a formal 
        diplomatic mission in Benghazi also would set off a 
        chain of complex legal and administrative requirements 
        that do not make sense for what is intended to be a 
        short-term presence.\191\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \191\Email from William V. Roebuck, Dir. Office of Maghreb Affairs, 
Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to Joan A. 
Polaschik State, Deputy Chief of Mission in Libya, U.S. Dep't of State 
(July 18, 2011, 8:17 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05579345).

    While formally recognizing the Benghazi diplomatic mission 
may have created issues for Washington, especially if the 
mission were considered ``short term,'' there was a benefit to 
the TNC: the release of previously frozen funds to them. 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fishman told the Committee:

        Well, it led to this complicated process that allowed 
        us to unfreeze some assets because the Central Bank and 
        other financial institutions . . . still had their 
        assets frozen\192\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \192\Fishman Testimony at 60.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                              *    *    *

        [B]y recognizing the NTC [sic], as subsequently other 
        countries did or previously and subsequently other 
        countries did, we [the United States] were able to 
        engage in the process where we were ultimately able to 
        create a temporary funding mechanism where we could 
        release some assets . . . to help defray their cost of 
        running Benghazi.\193\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \193\Id. at 33.

    Private business also stood to gain from the unfreezing of 
Libyan assets. One such business was Osprey Global Solutions in 
which Sidney Blumenthal had a financial interest.\194\ 
According to Osprey's Chief Operating Officer, the plan was for 
the United States to unfreeze the frozen Libyan assets.\195\ 
These assets could then be used by the new Libyan government to 
fund humanitarian assistance,\196\ an idea proposed by the 
Secretary herself.\197\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \194\Blumenthal Testimony at 44.
    \195\Id. at 113.
    \196\See Osprey Global Solutions, Capabilities Brief: Libya 
Citizens & LSM Initiatives, Osprey Global Solutions, at 71 [hereinafter 
Osprey Brief] (on file with Committee) (``Citizens Initiative: Phase 
2--Frozen Libyan--USA Funds'').
    \197\Scott Shane & Jo Becker, A New Libya, With `Very Little Time 
Left,' N.Y. Times, (Feb. 27, 2016),
    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/us/politics/libya-isis-hillary-
clinton.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    According to internal company documents, Osprey identified 
a 300-foot hospital vessel--including a crematorium.\198\ 
Osprey provided to the Libyans details about this hospital 
ship, even down to the number of physicians on board (16), 
nurses (40), custodial and kitchen staff (18). Osprey also 
provided hard figures on how much it would cost to procure the 
ship, maintain the ship, and acquire medical equipment.\199\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \198\Osprey Brief, supra note 196, at 31-35 (presenting the 
``Citizens Initiative: Phase 1--Multi-Purpose Hospital Ship'').
    \199\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On July 14, 2011--the day before the United States 
officially recognized the TNC as the legitimate representative 
of the Libyan people--Blumenthal emailed the Secretary 
twice.\200\ One email contained the subject ``H: IMPORTANT FOR 
YOUR MEETING. Sid.''\201\ The other email contained the subject 
``Re: H: Pls call before you leave for Turkey. Important re 
your trip. Sid.''\202\ That email contained the note ``read the 
memo I sent you. Here it is again.''\203\ The contents of both 
emails are identical:--Blumenthal described Osprey and the 
funding issues associated with his venture. The emails read:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \200\Email from Sidney Blumenthal (``sbwhoeop'') to Hillary R. 
Clinton (``H''), Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State (July 14, 2011, 
10:38 AM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0078451); Email from Sidney 
Blumenthal (``sbwhoeop'') to Hillary R. Clinton (``H''), Sec'y of 
State, U.S. Dep't of State (July 14, 2011, 7:03 PM) (on file with the 
Committee, SCB0078453).
    \201\Email from Sidney Blumenthal (``sbwhoeop'') to Hillary R. 
Clinton (``H''), Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State (July 14, 2011, 
10:38 AM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0078451).
    \202\Email from Sidney Blumenthal (``sbwhoeop'') to Hillary R. 
Clinton (``H''), Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State (July 14, 2011, 
7:03 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0078453).
    \203\Id.

        You should be aware that there is a good chance at the 
        contact meeting in Turkey the TNC ambassador to the 
        UAE, a man you have not yet met, whose name is Dr. 
        Neydah, may tell you the TNC has reached an agreement 
        with a US company. The company is a new one, Osprey, 
        headed by former General David Grange, former head of 
        Delta Force. Osprey will provide field medical help, 
        military training, organize supplies, and logistics to 
        the TNC. They are trainers and organizers, not 
        fighters. Grange can train their forces and he has 
        drawn up a plan for taking Tripoli similar to the plan 
        he helped develop that was used by the first wave of 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Special Forces in the capture of Baghdad.

        This is a private contract. It does not involve NATO. 
        It puts Americans in a central role without being 
        direct battle combatants. The TNC wants to demonstrate 
        that they are pro-US. They see this as a significant 
        way to do that. They are enthusiastic about this 
        arrangement. They have held meetings with Grange in 
        Geneva and Dubai this week, Tuesday and Wednesday, that 
        concluded late last night (Wednesday). They have 
        developed a good relationship. This is the group the 
        TNC wants to work with. As I understand it, they are 
        still working out funding, which is related to the 
        overall TNC funding problems.

        Grange is very low key, wishes to avoid publicity and 
        work quietly, unlike other publicity hungry firms. 
        Grange is under the radar.

        Tyler, Cody and I acted as honest brokers, putting this 
        arrangement together through a series of connections, 
        linking the Libyans to Osprey and keeping it moving. 
        The strategic imperative: Expecting Gaddafi to fall on 
        his own or through a deus ex machina devolves the 
        entire equation to wishful thinking. The TNC has been 
        unable to train and organize its forces. The NATO air 
        campaign cannot take ground. The TNC, whose leaders 
        have been given to flights of fancy that Qaddafi will 
        fall tomorrow or the day after, have come to the 
        conclusion that they must organize their forces and 
        that they must score a military victory of their own 
        over Qaddafi that is not dependent solely on NATO in 
        order to give them legitimacy.\204\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \204\Id.

    Upon receiving these emails, the Secretary forwarded one to 
Sullivan and said ``Pls read and discuss w me at hotel. 
Thx.''\205\ She also responded to Blumenthal. First she wrote: 
``I just landed and will call shortly.''\206\ She followed 
with: ``Got it. Will followup tomorrow. Anything else to 
convey?''\207\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \205\Email from Hillary R. Clinton (``H''), Sec'y of State, U.S. 
Dep't of State, to Jacob J. Sullivan, Dir. of Policy Planning, U.S. 
Dep't of State (July 14, 2011, 6:47 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0078451).
    \206\Email from Hillary R. Clinton (``H''), Sec'y of State, U.S. 
Dep't of State, to Sidney Blumenthal (``sbwhoeop'') (July 14, 2011, 
6:31 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0078454).
    \207\Email from Hillary R. Clinton (``H''), Sec'y of State, U.S. 
Dep't of State, to Sidney Blumenthal (``sbwhoeop'') (July 14, 2011, 
7:37 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0078453).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The following day, the United States formally recognized 
the TNC as the legitimate representative of the Libyan people, 
allowing the TNC to access $30 billion in Libyan assets held in 
the United States.\208\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \208\Sebnem Arsu & Steven Erlanger, Libyan Rebels Get Formal 
Backing, and $30 Billion, N.Y. Times (July 15, 2011), http://
www.nytimes.com/2011/07/16/world/africa/16libya.html?_r=0.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On August 24, 2011, Osprey and the TNC entered into a 
Memorandum of Understanding that read, in part:

        Per meetings held 13 July and 20 Aug 2011 in Dubai with 
        Dr. Aref Aly Nayed and in Amman on 23 and 24 August 
        with Mohammad Kikhia, this agreement is entered into 
        this 24th day of August 2011 between the National 
        Transitional Council of Libya (hereinafter referred to 
        as ``NTC''), now recognized by the United States 
        Government of America as the legitimate and sole 
        government of the Republic of Libya (ROL), and Osprey 
        Global Solutions, LLC . . . The specific tasks--Scope 
        of Work (SOW) the NTC desires to retain Osprey to 
        perform include but are not limited to . . . Provide 
        ship-to-shore (maritime) logistical support, advanced 
        field hospital services and mobile command and control 
        . . .\209\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \209\Osprey Global Solutions, Memorandum of Understanding (Aug. 24, 
2011) (on file with Committee).

    The total cost in the Memorandum for the first year of 
Osprey's services--to include the ``multi-purpose 302' ship''--
was $114 million.\210\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \210\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The head of Osprey, General David L. Grange, also wrote 
Andrew J. Shapiro, Assistant Secretary for Political-Military 
Affairs, regarding the hospital ship.\211\ In the letter Mr. 
Grange wrote Osprey was prepared to provide the following 
services:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \211\Letter from David L. Grange to Andrew J. Shapiro, Asst. Sec'y 
for Political-Military Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State (Jan. 4, 2012) (on 
file with Committee).

        Provide ship-to-shore (maritime) medical and logistical 
        support, advanced field hospital services and mobile 
        command and control; this would include the immediate 
        deployment of a hospital ship equipped with rotary wing 
        assets . . .\212\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \212\Id.

    Ultimately the National Security Council rejected the 
hospital ship proposal.\213\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \213\Scott Shane & Jo Becker, A New Libya, With `Very Little Time 
Left,' N.Y. Times, (Feb. 27, 2016), http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/
us/politics/libya-isis-hillary-clinton.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                    Senior Official Travel to Libya

    Despite the tenuous security environment in the summer of 
2011, senior officials from Washington D.C., including Feltman, 
William Roebuck, Director, Office of Maghreb Affairs, Bureau of 
Near Eastern Affairs, State Department, and Fishman, traveled 
to Benghazi.\214\ Feltman wrote to the Secretary during his 
August 2011 trip to Benghazi:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \214\Email from Huma Abedin, Deputy Chief of Staff to U.S. Sec'y of 
State, U.S. Dep't of State, to Hillary R. Clinton (``H''), Sec'y of 
State, U.S. Dep't of State (Aug. 21, 2011, 9:26 AM) (on file with the 
Committee, SCB0045090-92) (Ms. Abedin forwarding Mr. Feltman's message 
to Sec'y Clinton).

        I have joined our representative, Chris Stevens, in 
        meetings with a large number of representatives from 
        the TNC, civil society, UN organizations and NGOs, and 
        diplomatic corps. While we had no idea our trip would 
        correspond with the significant military advances in 
        the east and start the coordinated Tripoli uprising 
        dubbed ``Operation Mermaid Dawn,'' the timing gave us 
        the opportunity to note the contrast between the 
        relative bureaucratic quiet here compared to the hyped-
        up activity in western Libya.\215\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \215\Id.

    He also described the impact the assassination of General 
Younis, commander of the rebel forces, had on the security 
environment in Benghazi.\216\ He spoke of the ``two realities 
of Libyan life that TNC officials had previously tried to 
downplay: tribes and militia . . . On reigning [sic] in the 
militia we heard no good answers.''\217\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \216\General Younis, a former Libyan interior minister under 
Qadhafi, defected to the rebel side when the revolution began and 
became the commander-in-chief of the rebel forces in Libya.
    \217\Email from Huma Abedin, Deputy Chief of Staff to U.S. Sec'y of 
State, U.S. Dep't of State, to Hillary R. Clinton (``H''), Sec'y of 
State, U.S. Dep't of State (Aug. 21, 2011, 9:26 AM) (on file with the 
Committee, SCB0045090-92).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    It was also during this trip to Benghazi Feltman discussed 
with Stevens the future of the Benghazi Mission:

        During the August trip, Chris and I talked about, 
        frankly, our shared view that we needed to maintain a 
        longer presence in Benghazi than the fall of Tripoli 
        might otherwise suggest. I was in Benghazi when the 
        battle for Tripoli began, and it was clear that this 
        time, it was inevitable that Qadhafi was leaving 
        Tripoli even though he wasn't, of course, found and 
        killed until later.

        And so Chris and I did talk in that August trip about 
        the fact that both of us believed that we needed to 
        maintain some kind of presence in Benghazi for the 
        foreseeable future. We didn't talk about how long, but 
        given the history of Libya, given the history of the 
        revolution, given the need for Benghazi to remain 
        supportive of whatever government took form in Tripoli, 
        we thought it was politically extremely important that 
        we maintain some kind of presence in Benghazi beyond 
        the fall of Tripoli.\218\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \218\See Feltman Testimony at 44-45.

                          THE FALL OF QADHAFI

    With NATO airstrikes providing cover, by August 2011, the 
Libyan opposition was finally able to push back against 
Qadhafi's forces.\219\ On August 21, 2011, rebels advanced into 
Tripoli.\220\ The next morning, Stevens provided an update to 
the senior leaders at the State Department on the events in 
Tripoli and the TNC's urgent request for ``essential . . . 
commodities.''\221\ Stevens described the events unfolding and 
made the following request:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \219\See John F. Burns, NATO Bombs Tripoli in Heaviest Strikes Yet, 
N.Y. Times (May 23, 2011), http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/world/
africa/24libya.html.
    \220\Kareem Fahim & David D. Kirkpatrick, Jubilant Rebels Control 
Much of Tripoli, N.Y. Times (Aug. 21, 2011), http://www.nytimes.com/
2011/08/22/world/africa/22libya.html.
    \221\Email from Huma Abedin, Deputy Chief of Staff to U.S. Sec'y of 
State, U.S. Dep't of State, to Hillary R. Clinton (``H''), Sec'y of 
State, U.S. Dep't of State (Aug. 22, 2011, 7:07 AM) (on file with the 
Committee, SCB0045093) (forwarding update from Stevens in Benghazi).

        Request for assistance: Tarhouni who also holds US 
        citizenship said items listed above (gas, diesel, baby 
        milk, and medicine) are urgently needed in Tripoli and 
        recommend that USG ship items directly to Zawiya's Port 
        and publicize such assistance as soon as feasible (in 
        coordination with the TNC). He said this would bring 
        the US even more goodwill than it has already earned 
        here.\222\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \222\Id.

    The Secretary responded to her staff five minutes later 
asking: ``Can we arrange shipments of what's requested?''\223\ 
Sullivan replied seven minutes later saying the NSS and 
Department of Defense were already pursuing the effort.\224\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \223\Email from Hillary R. Clinton (``H''), Sec'y of State, U.S. 
Dep't of State, to Huma Abedin, Deputy Chief of Staff to U.S. Sec'y of 
State, U.S. Dep't of State (Aug. 22, 2011, 7:11 AM) (on file with the 
Committee, SCB0045095).
    \224\Email from Jacob J. Sullivan, Dir. of Policy Planning, U.S. 
Dep't of State, to Huma Abedin, Deputy Chief of Staff to U.S. Sec'y of 
State, U.S. Dep't of State & Hillary R. Clinton (``H''), Sec'y of 
State, U.S. Dep't of State (Aug. 22, 2011, 7:17 AM) (on file with the 
Committee, SCB0045097).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Secretary also told her inner circle she wanted to do a 
press event as it would be ``[g]ood to remind ourselves and the 
rest of the world that this couldn't have happened [without] 
us''\225\ and ``would be a great [opportunity] to describe all 
we've been doing . . .''\226\ She and her staff discussed her 
traveling to Martha's Vineyard to be seen with the President 
celebrating their Libyan success.\227\ Her top policy director 
commented: ``It will show potus [President of the United 
States] not on vacation. He's huddling with you. This must be a 
political boost, right?'' \228\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \225\Email from Hillary R. Clinton (``H''), Sec'y of State, U.S. 
Dep't of State, to Jacob J. Sullivan, Dir. of Policy Planning, U.S. 
Dep't of State, Cheryl D. Mills, Chief of Staff and Counselor to U.S. 
Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State & Huma Abedin, Deputy Chief of 
Staff to U.S. Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State (Aug. 22, 2011, 7:32 
AM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0078489)
    \226\Email from Hillary R. Clinton (``H''), Sec'y of State, U.S. 
Dep't of State, to Jacob J. Sullivan, Cheryl D. Mills & Huma Abedin 
(Aug. 22, 2011, 7:16 AM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0078489).
    \227\Email from Hillary R. Clinton (``H''), Sec'y of State, U.S. 
Dep't of State, to Jacob J. Sullivan & Huma Abedin (Aug. 22, 2011, 7:09 
AM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0078489).
    \228\Email from Jacob J. Sullivan to Hillary R. Clinton (``H''), 
Cheryl D. Mills & Huma Abedin (Aug. 22, 2011, 7:27 AM) (on file with 
the Committee, SCB0078489).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    At about the same time, Blumenthal wrote:

        First, brava! This is a historic moment and you will be 
        credited for realizing it.

        When Qaddafi himself is finally removed, you should of 
        course make a public statement before the cameras 
        wherever you are, even in the driveway of your vacation 
        house. You must go on camera. You must establish 
        yourself in the historical record at this moment.

        The most important phrase is `successful 
        strategy.'\229\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \229\Email from Sidney Blumenthal (``Sid'') to Hillary R. Clinton 
(``H'') (Aug. 22, 2011, 11:25 AM) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0051597).

        Later in the message, Blumenthal wrote: ``Be aware that 
        some may attempt to justify the flamingly stupid 
        `leading from behind' phrase, junior types on the NSC 
        imagining their cleverness.''\230\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \230\Id. The phrase ``leading from behind'' came from a remark by 
an Obama advisor quoted in a May 2, 2011 article by Ryan Lizza in The 
New Yorker. Ryan Lizza, Leading from Behind, NYT (Apr. 26, 2011), 
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/leading-from-behind.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Secretary forwarded this message to Sullivan:

        Pls read below. Sid makes a good case for what I should 
        say but it's premised on being said after Q dies which 
        will make it more dramatic. That's my hesitancy since 
        I'm not sure how many chances I'll get.\231\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \231\Email from Hillary R. Clinton (``H''), Sec'y of State, U.S. 
Dep't of State, to Jacob J. Sullivan, Dir. of Policy Planning, U.S. 
Dep't of State (Aug. 22, 2011, 3:46 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0051597).

    Sullivan had already developed a detailed timeline of 
events and actions to demonstrate the Secretary's ``leadership/
ownership/stewardship of this country's Libya policy from start 
to finish.''\232\ He wrote:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \232\Tick Tock on Libya Email, supra note 19 (from Jacob J. 
Sullivan to Cheryl D. Mills & Victoria Nuland, forwarded to Sec'y 
Clinton, Aug. 22, 2011, 12:37 PM).

        HRC has been a critical voice on Libya in 
        administration deliberations, at NATO, and in contact 
        group meetings--as well as the public face of the U.S. 
        effort in Libya. She was instrumental in securing the 
        authorization, building the coalition, and tightening 
        the noose around Qadhafi and his regime.\233\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \233\Id.

                     Limiting the Future U.S. Role

    With the rebels capturing Tripoli in August 2011 and 
Qadhafi nowhere to be found, the TNC started to shift its 
leaders and headquarters to Tripoli.\234\ As the situation in 
Libya appeared to stabilize, there was corresponding interest 
throughout the State Department and the administration to shift 
the focus back to Tripoli and reopen the U.S. Embassy in 
Tripoli as soon as possible.\235\ Sullivan asked: ``[W]hat's it 
gonna take to get a team on the ground in Tripoli?''\236\ His 
colleague wrote back: ``Exception to the BOG [boots on the 
ground] for Explosive Ordnance Detection and Marine FAST [Fleet 
Anti-terrorism security team.] An Ambassador to Libya who 
actually wants to go. Locking Pat Kennedy in a closet for long 
enough to actually take some real risks.''\237\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \234\See Email from J. Christopher Stevens, U.S. Rep. to 
Transitional Nat'l Council, to Jeffrey D. Feltman, Ass't Sec'y of 
State, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, et al. 
(Aug. 23, 2011, 11:29 AM) (on file with the Committee, SCB00100119) 
(discussing TNC plans to relocate to Tripoli); see also Exec. 
Secretariat, Operations Ctr., Situation Report No. 14, Libya Task Force 
TFLY03 (Sept. 4, 2011, 4:00 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0074167) (``The TNC's Ministry of Foreign Affairs will move from 
Benghazi to Tripoli September 4 and will be housed in the Qadhafi-era 
MFA building.'').
    \235\See Email from Lee Lohman, Ex. Dir., Bureau of Near Eastern 
Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to Patrick Kennedy, Under Sec'y of State 
for Mgmt., U.S. Dep't of State (Sept. 2, 2011) (on file with the 
Committee, SCB0096224) (``Jeff send [sic] an email from Paris yesterday 
expressing frustration that we don't have a presence in Tripoli.'').
    \236\Email from Jacob J. Sullivan, Dir. of Policy Planning, U.S. 
Dep't of State (Aug. 30, 2011, 4:47 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0060918).
    \237\Email to Jacob J. Sullivan, Dir. of Policy Planning, U.S. 
Dep't of State, (Aug. 30, 2011, 4:50 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0060918).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    As events unfolded in Tripoli, senior policy makers within 
the State Department discussed their goals for Libya, 
including: 1) bring the Lockerbie bomber to justice; and 2) 
recover the costs incurred in providing military and 
humanitarian aid to Libya; 3) recover and improve the position 
of U.S. Energy firms in Libya.\238\ The fourth and final goal 
was to counter Islamist extremists, noting that there was a 
need to ``avoid allowing the most extreme and certainly violent 
Islamist groups to use the new Libyan government and civil 
society as a platform. The American people and the U.S. 
Congress will be understandably irritated if a revolution that 
the United States supported ends up spewing hatred or 
advocating violence against the United States.''\239\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \238\See Email to Jacob J. Sullivan, Dir. of Policy Planning, U.S. 
Dep't of State (Aug. 29 2011, 5:01 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0060926-30) (attaching Note for the Secretary re: U.S. Interests in 
post-Qadhafi Libya).
    \239\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    These policy goals did not address how the U.S. government 
would assist Libya in transitioning to a functioning government 
post-Qadhafi.\240\ Nor did they discuss any role the Mission in 
Benghazi might play in these efforts.\241\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \240\Id. The lack of post-Qadhafi planning is consistent with the 
President's recent statement that his biggest foreign policy failure 
was not properly planning for post-Qadhafi Libya. The lack of planning 
is also in stark contrasts with statements by the Secretary that they 
did plan for post-Qadhafi Libya but it was ``obstruction'' by the 
Libyan people to the United States' efforts that led to the failed 
state of Libya today. Barack Obama Says Libya Was `Worst Mistake of His 
Presidency, Guardian (Apr. 11, 2016), http://www.theguardian.com/us-
news/2016/apr/12/
barack-obama-says-libya-was-worst-mistake-of-his-presidency.
    \241\See Email to Jacob Sullivan, Dir. of Policy Planning, U.S. 
Dep't of State (Aug. 29 2011, 5:01 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0060926-30) (attaching Note for the Secretary re: U.S. Interests in 
post-Qadhafi Libya).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Stevens wanted to maintain a presence in Benghazi for the 
short term, writing on September 6, 2011: ``As the Dept stands 
up a Mission in Tripoli, the question arises as to how long to 
keep Mission Benghazi operating. I believe it would be prudent 
to maintain a small State-run presence here for at least 6 
months.''\242\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \242\Email from J. Christopher Stevens, U.S. Rep. to Transitional 
Nat'l Council, to Deputy Dir. Office of Maghreb Affairs, Bureau of Near 
Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State et al. (Sept. 6, 2011, 9:01 AM) 
(on file with the Committee, C05389443).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Polaschik also saw the benefits of maintaining a short-term 
presence in Benghazi. She testified:

        Qadhafi had just fled Tripoli. He was still on the 
        loose, on the lam. We were not yet back in Tripoli. It 
        wasn't clear if or when the leadership of the 
        transitional office or Council would transition from 
        Benghazi to Tripoli, if they all would, what would be 
        there. And given the critical role that Benghazi had 
        played in the start of the revolution and the 
        execution, so to speak, of the revolution and the 
        leadership, of course it made sense to have a presence 
        there for another 6 months.''\243\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \243\Polaschik Testimony at 160.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    She elaborated:

        [S]ome officials from the Transitional National Council 
        were beginning to shift to Tripoli. Others were still 
        there, so it was clear that there was going to be a 
        period in which the political leadership of a free 
        Libya, . . . the post-Qadhafi government was going to 
        be in a variety of places; so we needed to make sure 
        that we had the ability to touch them in both places, 
        and from my perspective, it made a lot of sense to keep 
        Chris there.\244\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \244\Id. at 39-40.

    The Post Management Officer for Libya testified closing the 
Mission was also an option: ``In official conversations, as we 
met to discuss options related to the Benghazi footprint that 
was always one of the items that was out there as a potential 
decision point. As we were looking at security and others 
things, closure was always an option.''\245\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \245\Post Mgmt. Officer for Libya Testimony at 174.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Later in September 2011, Sullivan, Feltman, and William B. 
Taylor, the newly appointed head of the Middle East Transitions 
office, prepared a note for the Deputy Secretaries advocating 
U.S. involvement in Libya be significantly scaled back.\246\ 
Outlining the level of priority Libya now had within the State 
Department, they wrote:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \246\Note from Jacob J. Sullivan, Dir., of Policy Planning, U.S. 
Dep't of State, et al. to William J. Burns, Deputy Sec'y of State, U.S. 
Dep't of State, and Thomas R. Nides, Deputy Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't 
of State (Sept. 28, 2011) (on file with the Committee, SCB0090954-59), 
(discussing parameters for U.S. engagement in post-Qadhafi Libya).

        [P]ost-conflict stabilization in Libya, while clearly a 
        worthy undertaking at the right level of investment, 
        cannot be counted as one of our highest priorities. 
        Strategically for us, Libya does not loom as large as 
        Egypt and Syria.\247\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \247\Id.

    They cautioned: ``We should not allow the momentum of our 
involvement to date in the Libyan revolution to determine our 
strategy for longer-term assistance.'' \248\ They emphasized 
``[t]his means that, for the United States, Libya must not 
become a state-building exercise.''\249\ They defined the 
circumstances under which the U.S. should, or should not, 
intercede, and argued the U.S. should only assist when 1) the 
U.S. had a ``unique'' ability to provide a particular service; 
2) the U.S. has a proven track record of success and Congress 
will provide funds; and 3) Libyans expressly request the U.S. 
to do so, ``[e]ven if we feel the Libyan government or its 
people are making a mistake in not seeking our help. . . 
.''\250\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \248\Id.
    \249\Id.
    \250\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    According to these State Department officials, the highest 
priorities in Libya were to ``secure weapons''; ensure an 
``effective democratic transition''; prevent ``violent 
extremists'' from ``seizing control''; and ``ensuring a level-
playing field for U.S. businesses.''\251\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \251\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Medium priority goals were reconciling former regime 
elements into Libyan society and ``create a judicial 
system.''\252\ The lowest priority, according to these policy 
makers was to support a ``broad program of economic 
reconstruction and diversification'' and ensure the Libyans 
have the ``ability to maintain delivery of basic 
services.''\253\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \252\Id.
    \253\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The sentiment of the memorandum was clear: Once the civil 
war was over and Qadhafi was removed from power, the United 
States would move on.\254\ The broad policies outlined by the 
senior State Department officials stood in direct contrast with 
what the State Department's own experts on the ground in Libya 
knew was needed to support the country moving forward.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \254\See id. (``The Administration has a primary interest in 
ensuring that others--the Libyans, the UN, the EU, and NGOs--take 
overall responsibility for post-conflict stabilization.'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In his interview with the Committee, Cretz described what 
he saw, knew, and believed needed to be done to stabilize 
Libya:

        Q: . . . what was your sense of what challenges? [sic]

        A: Well, number one, you know, Qadhafi ruled for 40 
        years and didn't allow the emergence of any institution 
        that could rival his power and the influence of he and 
        his small clique over the people and government of 
        Libya, so consequently, after the fall, there really 
        was nothing there. There was no institutions, you know, 
        ministries. They never operated as a real government 
        because Qadhafi ruled the roost.

        So my concerns were, number one that we needed to find 
        a way to help them build their infrastructure in terms 
        of developing independent and capable institutions. My 
        second concern was that there had to be a way to end 
        the strife among the militias and that involved getting 
        a strong and capable central government.

        We had to deal with, you know, making sure that the oil 
        resource, which was really the only resource that they 
        depended on, was developed in a reasonable way and that 
        the proceeds made their way back to the to the people 
        of Libya. We had to ensure that there was a capable 
        military, a capable counterintelligence, a 
        counterterrorism capability as well.

        So these were all kind of concerns that I had 
        mentioned. The borders were porous. There had to be 
        some kind of way to establish a border regime. There 
        was a continuing threat of weapons, which had been 
        collected by the Qadhafi regime and then loose, you 
        know, basically spread throughout the country and began 
        to be making their way through the region in Africa, et 
        cetera, so that had to be a way to get control of that, 
        so there were a lot of problems in the post Qadhafi 
        era.

                              *    *    *

        Q: And with regard to the U.S., United States' 
        engagement, involvement, and to the extent you can 
        recall, would you have recommended that the U.S. become 
        more engaged, less engaged? I know that you've already 
        said that you did not recommend that we leave 
        altogether, but do you have a sense of whether you felt 
        it was important for us to increase our engagement as 
        opposed to decrease our engagement?

        A: Well, I think it was critical that the United States 
        continue to play a vital role. I mean, given our past 
        history, given what we did on the intervention, and 
        given the fact that there was a real affection for the 
        United States in the country in the aftermath of what 
        we had done along with the French and British and 
        others to overthrow Qadhafi, and I would have liked to 
        have seen a more robust program.

        But the truth of the matter was that when you don't 
        have a functioning government, how do you provide 
        resources to that government when there's no absorptive 
        capacity? So this is the main problem that we ran into 
        in the post war situation. You know, I can't say that 
        there was a huge appetite in Washington to put hundreds 
        of millions of dollars into Libya, but I can say there 
        was an interest in ensuring, you know, our role there, 
        ensuring that this evolving nation developed in a 
        democratic tradition. But the truth is that there was 
        no absorptive capacity to receive assistance and to 
        help develop the nation along that way.\255\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \255\Cretz Testimony at 145-47.

          Embassy Tripoli Reopens: Impact on Benghazi Mission

    As senior State Department officials were discussing their 
goals for Libya, nearly seven months after its personnel were 
evacuated and one month after the fall of Tripoli, the U.S. 
Embassy in Tripoli raised the American flag and restarted 
operations.\256\ Cretz returned to Tripoli as Ambassador.\257\ 
The precarious security environment in Libya precipitated the 
need for 16 Security Support Team [SST] members from the 
Defense Department, eighteen members of the State Department's 
own highly trained mobile security team, in addition to a 
temporary duty Diplomatic Security team, to protect the 
Ambassador and embassy personnel.\258\ The Administration's 
policy of no boots on the ground once again shaped the type of 
military assistance that would be provided, with the Defense 
Department and the State Department going to great lengths to 
ensure the administration's policy was not violated. The 
Executive Secretariats for both the Defense Department and 
State Department exchanged communications outlining the 
diplomatic capacity in which the Defense Department SST 
security team members would serve, which included wearing 
civilian clothes so as not to offend the Libyans.\259\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \256\Polaschik Testimony at 12-15:

      [When ``] the Embassy evacuated to Washington, . . . we 
      worked sort of in Embassy in exile . . . In August 2011, 
      our official status as Embassy Tripoli expired because the 
      State Department had run the course of the 180 days of 
      evacuation status for Embassy Tripoli, so we created a new 
      entity that we called the Libya cell. And the purpose of 
      the Libya cell was to either staff the Mission in Benghazi 
      if the situation continued and we needed to have our only 
      representation in country in Benghazi because Qadhafi was 
      still in Tripoli, or the Libya cell would serve as the 
      nucleus of the group that would go back into Tripoli to 
      reopen the Embassy.'' Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \257\U.S. ambassador Gene Cretz returns to Libya, USA Today (Sept. 
21, 2011), http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2011-09-21/
us-reopens-libya-embassy/50491638/1.
    \258\Cretz Testimony at 89-91.
    \259\See Email from Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Sec'y of State for 
Mgmt., U.S. Dep't of State, to Charlene R. Lamb, Deputy Ass't Sec'y, 
Bureau of Diplomatic Sec., Int'l Programs, U.S. Dep't of State, (Sept. 
6, 2011) (on file with the Committee, SCB0096343); see also Email from 
Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Sec'y of State for Mgmt., U.S. Dep't of State 
to Denis R. McDonough, Deputy Dir., Nat'l Sec. Council (Sept. 6, 2011, 
12:32 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0096350) (``I have confirmed 
. . . [Special Air Services] folks in Tripoli supporting the restart of 
their Embassy, in civilian clothes. Have also reconfirmed with NEA that 
civilian clothes [and thus SOF] is the way we have to go.'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The increased security was important as fighting in Libya 
continued. Cretz described to the Committee:

        [I]n general, Tripoli was still in the throes--in 
        September of 2011 was still in the throes of civil war. 
        Tripoli had fell--had fallen. But there were still 
        active pockets of resistance throughout the country 
        from Qadhafi loyalists.

        The country had also begun to break down in 
        anticipation of a victory over Qadhafi into the 
        militias that, in fact, were fighting Qadhafi. The war 
        against Qadhafi was not by a unified opposition army.

        It was made up of a militia. The jihadists had a 
        militia. The people from Zintan had a militia. The 
        people from Misrata had a militia. So in anticipation 
        of the final victory, they were, in effect, fighting it 
        out.

        In a sense, a lot of what we see today in Libya, they 
        were fighting it out for a foothold to make sure that 
        they got a piece of the pie--a piece of the power pie 
        once things settled down.

        So the situation in Tripoli was very unsettled.\260\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \260\Cretz Testimony at 83.

    With Embassy Tripoli officially reopened, and Benghazi's 
future less than certain, Stevens asked the State Department to 
conclude his Mission on October 6, 2011, but he was asked to 
remain until Jibril, the interim Prime Minister, completed his 
relocation from Benghazi to Tripoli.\261\ Feltman described his 
ongoing conversations with Stevens about Benghazi's future:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \261\See Email from Elizabeth L. Dibble, Principal Deputy Ass't 
Sec'y of State, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to 
Raymond D. Maxwell, Deputy Ass't Sec'y, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, 
William V. Roebuck, Dir. Office of Maghreb Affairs, Bureau of Near 
Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, Lee Lohman, Ex. Dir., Bureau of 
Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State et al. (Sept. 20, 2011, 6:38 
PM) (on file with the Committee, C05389443) (discussing reasons for 
Special Rep. Stevens to remain in Benghazi).

        The normal response would be once the government's in 
        Tripoli . . . , then you close down Benghazi. That 
        would be sort of a normal response given the budget 
        climate, given all the other complications. And so 
        Chris and I would talk about did we really think this 
        was essential. Why did we think it was essential. And 
        it had to do with, again, the fact that Libya had been 
        essentially a divided country before, where Benghazi 
        had been neglected, oppressed even by Qadhafi, but yet 
        Benghazi was where this uprising had begun. It was 
        where the Libyan revolution had begun, so it was 
        important that Benghazi feel part of this process. We 
        felt that having a small diplomatic presence in 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Benghazi it would not be the Embassy.

        Clearly the Embassy would be accredited to the 
        government in Tripoli but that that would keep our 
        presence as well as the presence of others, because we 
        were not the only ones looking at this, as well as the 
        presence of others, would keep Benghazi as part of the 
        political equation. Because if you didn't have Benghazi 
        feeling invested in what was happening in Tripoli, you 
        had the risks of the country splitting again, is what 
        we clearly thought.\262\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \262\Feltman Testimony at 58.

    Feltman further testified why the State Department did not 
make the Benghazi Mission official, especially when operations 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
resumed in Tripoli:

        So what we were trying to what Chris and I were trying 
        to figure out was, how could we make a compelling 
        enough argument that in the zero sum game that we have 
        in terms of our budget and our resources, that we could 
        find enough resources to keep Benghazi operating 
        through the critical transition period? . . .

        [T]he type of budget support out of Congress we would 
        need. This is a time when the U.S. reduces diplomatic 
        presences, doesn't expand them.\263\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \263\Id. at 46-47.

    Discussions also ensued over how to bring the personnel in 
Benghazi under the diplomatic umbrella of the Embassy in 
Tripoli without triggering formal recognition of the Benghazi 
office.\264\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \264\See Post Mgmt. Officer for Libya Testimony at 131:

      At some point in the fall of 2011, we exchanged diplomatic 
      notes with the new Government of Libya in whatever form 
      that happened to be, and with the return of Ambassador 
      Cretz, a Special Representative was not needed at that 
      point, because we had our accredited Ambassador in Tripoli. 
      So at that point, I believe, it when the term `Special 
      Representative' ceased to be used, but again, I don't have 
      specific recollection of the timeline.
    Polaschik was aware of this issue and wanted to ensure that 
all personnel in Benghazi had the protections of the privileges 
and immunities accorded by the Vienna Convention.\265\ Listing 
personnel in Benghazi as a separate office was rejected, 
however, as ``[t]he reference to the establishment of an office 
in Benghazi may raise congressional notification issues. . . 
.''\266\ Earlier in the year, Kennedy, determined congressional 
notification was not needed because ``the Hill knows we are 
there.''\267\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \265\See Email from Joan A. Polaschik, Deputy Chief of Mission in 
Libya, U.S. Dep't of State, to Post Mgmt. Officer for Libya, Bureau of 
Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, and Senior Desk Officer for 
Libya, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State (Oct. 17, 
2011, 10:09 AM) (on file with the Committee, C05528533) (discussing 
listing Benghazi team on diplomatic list).
    \266\Email to Post Mgmt. Officer for Libya, Bureau of Near Eastern 
Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State (Nov. 9, 2011, 5:23 AM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05528533).
    \267\Email (May 18, 2011, 1:13 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05391797).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Ultimately, it was decided to submit ``one dip[lomatic] 
list for Tripoli, but noting on it that certain staff members 
will be performing their duties on a TDY basis in Benghazi.'' 
\268\ Thus, without formally notifying the new Libyan 
government of the Benghazi Mission, the personnel in Benghazi 
received diplomatic immunity only because the State Department 
told the Libyan government the personnel in Benghazi were 
actually assigned to Tripoli.\269\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \268\Email from Deputy Ex. Dir., Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, 
U.S. Dep't of State, to Post Mgmt. Officer for Libya, Bureau of Near 
Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, and Joan A. Polaschik, Deputy 
Chief of Mission in Libya, U.S. Dep't of State (Nov. 9, 2011, 7:08 PM) 
(on file with the Committee, C05528533).
    \269\Id. (``[C]ertain staff members will be performing their duties 
on a TDY basis in Benghazi.'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                           Benghazi's Future

    Senior officials in Washington discussed several options 
for Benghazi's future operations. Stevens proposed two options 
to State Department officials in early September 2011 to 
continue the Mission:

        Slimmed down compound: Principal Office (FS-02 level) 
        MGT/IRM and possibly one USAID/OTI officer (if they get 
        requested funding). 4 DS. 1 admin LES [locally employed 
        staff] plus guardforce.

        Consolidated to Villa A (combine lodging/offices; beds 
        for 7 plus 2 TDY [temporary duty] in living room; also 
        possible to rent a small 1 bedroom house attached to 
        Villa A belonging to same owner)

        Duration: through September 30, 2012 (3 months beyond 
        projected TNC elections)

        Purpose: provide platform for POL/ECON [political/
        economic] reporting; PD and OTI programming;

        PM/Conventional Weapons collection effort in east; 
        commercial outreach.

        Other Benghazi Missions: UNSMIL [United Nations Special 
        Mission in Libya], EU and UK intend to maintain small 
        branch offices for the next 6 months-one year. Italians 
        and Turks have consulates.

        Virtual presence: End all 3 compound leases. Zero full-
        time State Department staff. Use hotels (as Spanish, 
        Greek and foreign NGOs have been doing). Possibly leave 
        FAV in Benghazi [redacted text] to support TDY travel 
        in eastern Libya.\270\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \270\Email from J. Christopher Stevens, U.S. Rep. to Transitional 
Nat'l Council, to William V. Roebuck, Dir. Office of Maghreb Affairs, 
Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, Gene A. Cretz, 
U.S. Ambassador to Libya, and Joan A. Polaschik, Deputy Chief of 
Mission in Libya, U.S. Dep't of State (Oct. 31, 2011, 3:08 PM) (on file 
with the Committee, C05394929).

    Feltman described the discussions to the Committee ``[t]hey 
[sic] were ongoing discussions . . . because we needed to 
muster our arguments. We needed to muster our rationale. We 
needed to feel confident ourselves that this was the right 
thing to do before we would propose something that was going to 
be, you know, financially difficult.''\271\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \271\Feltman Testimony at 59.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Post Management Officer for Libya further explained to 
the Committee closing the mission was an option. ``In official 
conversations, as we met to discuss options related to the 
Benghazi footprint that was always one of the items that was 
out there as a potential decision point. As we were looking at 
security and other things, closure was always an option.''\272\ 
In September 2011, Cheryl Mills, Chief of Staff and Counselor, 
State Department, was likely briefed on a plan that would have 
closed Benghazi in January 2012.\273\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \272\Post Mgmt. Officer for Libya Testimony at 174.
    \273\See Memorandum to Cheryl D. Mills on Update on Tripoli 
Operations (Sept. 14, 2011) (on file with the Committee, C05578323) 
(discussing plans for activities in Benghazi through January 2012).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    From a security standpoint, Eric Boswell, Assistant 
Secretary, Diplomatic Security, State Department, explained:

        Benghazi was originally envisaged at [sic] a short term 
        thing. Our expectation in DS was that we were going to 
        support Chris Stevens' effort for 60 days, 90 days, and 
        that once an embassy was reestablished in Tripoli, if 
        that was the outcome of the civil war, once the--well, 
        if the right side one [sic] in Tripoli, once an embassy 
        was to be reestablished, we anticipated that Benghazi 
        would go out of business.

        The Embassy was reestablished in September, but the NEA 
        Bureau asked us to keep a little presence in Benghazi, 
        so a little longer a little longer. [sic] It was really 
        quite incremental. A little longer, a little 
        longer.\274\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \274\Testimony of Eric J. Boswell, Ass't Sec'y of State, Bureau of 
Diplomatic Sec., U.S. Dep't of State, before H. Comm. on Oversight & 
Gov't Reform, Tr. at 17 (July 9, 2013) [hereinafter Boswell Testimony] 
(on file with the Select Committee on Benghazi).

    Benghazi's uncertain future impacted Stevens and his team. 
The Diplomatic Security Agent in charge in the fall of 2011 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
testified:

        [W]e were still in this situation where we didn't know 
        how long Benghazi was going to be. Tripoli was kicking 
        off. And so there was a lot of interest in supporting 
        that. So we were trying to figure out--or headquarters 
        was trying to figure out where to prioritize our 
        deficiencies, if you want to call it that. So no one 
        knows.

        I mean, we were planning for the worst, phasing people 
        out and trying to figure out how best to support the 
        mission there. If I remember correctly, with the 
        Embassy being opened--it opened towards the latter part 
        of my tenure there. So the Envoy lost his, quote-
        unquote, status because there was now an Ambassador in 
        country. . . . I think they were going to bring in a 
        political officer, probably my rank. I'm pretty sure he 
        was my rank. He was going to be the foothold there in 
        Benghazi for the short term, but no one knew how 
        long.\275\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \275\Testimony of Diplomatic Sec. Agent, Diplomatic Sec. Serv., 
U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 33-34 (May 21, 2015) [hereinafter 
Diplomatic Sec. Agent 13 Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

    While Stevens and his team waited to learn their status, 
security resources to the Mission decreased.\276\ Stevens 
called an EAC meeting in October 2011 to evaluate the Mission's 
security posture after the fall of Sirte, Qadhafi's 
birthplace.\277\ Stevens and the Diplomatic Security Agents 
were concerned about the ``recent reduction in DS manpower (the 
departure of several Agents in past week who ha[d] not . . . 
been backfilled).''\278\ Another EAC was held three days later 
to discuss ``the current situation in Benghazi and to address 
possible developments . . . that may arise in the next 24 
hours.''\279\ A little more than a week later, a member of the 
February 17 Martyrs Brigade [February 17] who worked on the 
Mission compound came under attack on his way home.\280\ That 
incident occurred approximately 500 meters from the 
compound.\281\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \276\Id. at 33.
    \277\Email to Diplomatic Sec. Command Ctr. (Oct. 17, 2011, 12:18 
PM) (on file with the Committee, C05389778).
    \278\Id.
    \279\Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 13 to NEA-MAG-DL et al. (Oct. 
20, 2011, 1:52 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05395038).
    \280\Email from [REDACTED] (Benghazi) to `Spot Reports,' et al. 
(Nov. 1, 2011, 4:49 AM) (on file with the Committee, C05272056).
    \281\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                            Qadhafi's Death

    With the future of a U.S. diplomatic presence in Benghazi 
being debated and discussed, the Secretary traveled to Tripoli, 
Libya on October 18, 2011.\282\ During her day trip there, she 
met with members of the TNC, went to Tripoli University to meet 
with students, visited the medical center and the U.S. Embassy, 
and gave several speeches.\283\ She did not visit Benghazi even 
though Stevens was still there. She did ``not recall'' speaking 
with Stevens during her trip to Libya.\284\ Asked whether she 
discussed the future of the Mission there, Feltman, who 
traveled with the Secretary, told the Committee:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \282\Steven Lee Myers, In Tripoli, Clinton Pledges U.S. to a `Free 
Libya,' N.Y. Times (Oct. 18, 2011), http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/19/
world/africa/clinton-in-libya-to-meet-leaders-and-offer-aid-
package.html.
    \283\Id.
    \284\Clinton Testimony at 155-56.

        If there were, it was quite light and in passage. She 
        had a very, very busy schedule going to see a variety 
        of Libyan officials, meeting with representatives of 
        Libyan civil society, delivering a speech. It was a 
        jam-packed day and it wasn't the type of quiet time to 
        have sort of policy discussions like that.\285\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \285\Feltman Testimony at 85.

    Two days later, on October 20, 2011, Qadhafi was captured 
and killed attempting to escape from his hometown of Sirte. The 
TNC ``declared the liberation of Libya'' and the revolutionary 
war officially ended on October 23, 2011.\286\ The NATO-led 
military action, Operation Unified Protector, formally ended a 
week later.\287\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \286\See NTC declares 'Liberation of Libya,' Al Jazeera (Oct. 24, 
2011), http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2011/10/
201110235316778897.html; see also Press Release, The White House Office 
of the Press Secretary, Statement by the President on the Declaration 
of Liberation in Libya (Oct. 23, 2011), https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-
press-office/2011/10/23/statement-president-declaration-liberation-
libya (``On behalf of the American people, I congratulate the people of 
Libya on today's historic declaration of liberation. After four decades 
of brutal dictatorship and eight months of deadly conflict, the Libyan 
people can now celebrate their freedom and the beginning of a new era 
of promise.'').
    \287\NATO ends Libya mission, CNN (Nov. 3, 2011), http://
www.cnn.com/2011/10/31/world/
Africa/libya-nato-mission.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    When informed of Qadhafi's death, the Secretary said: ``We 
came, we saw, he died.''\288\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \288\Corbett Daly, Clinton on Qaddafi: ``We came, we saw, he 
died,'' CBS News (Oct. 20, 2011), http://www.cbsnews.com/news/clinton-
on-qaddafi-we-came-we-saw-he-died.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Approximately a month after Qadhafi's death, Susan Rice, 
United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations, 
also traveled to Libya, including Benghazi.\289\ Despite 
``walk[ing] the streets of Benghazi,'' Rice would not comment 
to the Committee on whether she visited the Mission compound in 
Benghazi.\290\ Less than a month later, in December 2011, Leon 
Panetta, the Secretary of Defense, traveled to Libya.\291\ 
Because of security concerns, Panetta's time in Libya was brief 
and did not include a trip to Benghazi.\292\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \289\Press Release, U.S. Mission to the U.N., Remarks by Ambassador 
Susan E. Rice, U.S. Permanent Rep. to the U.N., Following Sec. Council 
Consultations on Libya (Nov. 28, 2011), http://
iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/texttrans/2011/11/
20111129113633su0.6971203.html?distid=ucs#axzz48qWq65Vj.
    \290\Testimony of Susan E. Rice, U.S. Permanent Rep. to the U.N., 
Tr. at 134 (Feb. 2, 2016) (on file with the Committee).
    \291\Defense chief Panetta visits Libya, USA Today (Dec. 17, 2011), 
http://usatoday30.usa
today.com/news/world/story/2011-12-17/panetta-libya/52019842/1.
    \292\See id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                     FURTHER EXTENDING THE MISSION

    With Embassy Tripoli officially up and running, and the 
return of Cretz to Libya, Stevens departed Benghazi in late 
November 2011.\293\ Before he left, however, he was asked to 
return as Ambassador. Cretz was informed of this change as 
well.\294\ According to Polaschik: ``[I]t's very inappropriate 
for someone sitting in country to be working in country. I 
mean, it's an unusual situation. In order to be nominated and 
get through the congressional confirmation process, I think it 
was better for him [Stevens] to be here [in Washington].''\295\ 
Stevens would remain outside of Libya from November 2011 until 
May 26, 2012.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \293\See Email from J. Christopher Stevens, U.S. Rep. to 
Transitional Nat'l Council, to Post Mgmt. Officer for Libya, Bureau of 
Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State (Nov. 10, 2011, 10:39 AM) (on 
file with the Committee, SCB0079464) (``I'll check in with you all 
myself when I'm back in [Washington D.C.] the week of Nov 21.'').
    \294\See Email from Gene A. Cretz, U.S. Ambassador to Libya, to 
Cheryl D. Mills, Chief of Staff and Counselor to the U.S. Sec'y of 
State, U.S. Dep't of State (Oct. 21, 2011, 4:50 AM) (on file with the 
Committee, SCB0045106).
    \295\Polaschik Testimony at 40.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                       Security Remains Unstable

    Security continued to be unstable in December 2011. The 
Security Environment Threat List [SETL] rating for Libya was 
critical for political violence and high for terrorism and 
crime.\296\ SETL ratings are essential State Department tools 
in determining the countermeasures a facility must put in place 
to mitigate a threat.\297\ A critical rating is the most 
serious rating--indicating there is a grave impact to 
diplomats.\298\ A high rating indicates there is a serious 
impact on American diplomats.\299\ In late December 2011, right 
before holidays, there was open source reporting about a threat 
to western embassies located in Benghazi during Christmas and 
New Year's Eve in 2011.\300\ The Mission held an EAC led by the 
new Principal Officer to discuss its security posture in light 
of the threat and the overall security environment and to 
discuss the need for additional security resources.\301\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \296\Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 24 to Diplomatic Sec. Agent 
10 (Dec. 15, 2011, 9:03 AM) (on file with the Committee, C05388931).
    \297\See Alex Tiersky & Susan B. Epstein, Cong. Research Serv., 
RL42834, Securing U.S. Diplomatic Facilities and Personnel Abroad: 
Background and Policy Issues 6 (2014).
    \298\Id.
    \299\Id.
    \300\See Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 10 to Diplomatic Sec. 
Agent 25 (Dec. 21, 2011, 8:50 EST) (on file with the Committee, 
C05396082) (discussing reporting of threat to U.S. compound in 
Benghazi).
    \301\See Principal Officer 1, U.S. Dep't of State, to Joan A. 
Polaschik, Deputy Chief of Mission in Libya, U.S. Dep't of State, et 
al. (Dec. 23, 2011, 7:34 AM) (on file with the Committee, C05392213) 
(Distributing notes from EAC).).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The incoming Diplomatic Security Agent in charge described 
the Mission compound when he arrived to the facility in late 
November 2011.\302\ He told the Committee: ``While I was in 
Benghazi . . . the compound was woefully inadequate in terms of 
physical security. There were a whole number of things that we 
didn't have, and a lot of things that we did have were 
completely insufficient.''\303\He observed:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \302\See Diplomatic Sec. Agent 10 Testimony at 19.
    \303\Id.

        [O]ur perimeter security is nonexistent, we have walls 
        with lattices that somebody can shoot through; we have 
        walls with footholds people can climb over; we have a 4 
        foot wall back here; we have no lighting. So all these 
        physical security standards, especially around the 
        perimeter of the building were completely insufficient, 
        and we needed large amounts of money and this was going 
        to take time, it was going to be expensive, but we 
        needed this desperately to make this place safe.\304\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \304\Id. at 25-26.

    With normal security standards not applicable in Benghazi 
and a decreasing number of Diplomatic Security Agents on the 
ground, the incoming Diplomatic Security Agents were forced to 
request the most rudimentary measures to improve security on 
the compound.\305\ The Diplomatic Security Agent on the ground 
told the Committee: ``[O]nce I became RSO, I started a flurry 
of requests asking for physical security upgrades.''\306\ He 
further stated: ``I put together a list of, call it a dozen 
requests in terms of guard platforms, sandbags, sent that out 
initially in kind of an informal email, because we didn't have 
any ability to send cables.''\307\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \305\See Testimony of Diplomatic Sec. Agent, U.S. Dep't of State, 
Tr. at 26 (Apr. 9, 2015) [hereinafter Diplomatic Sec. Agent 12 
Testimony] (on file with the Committee) (``[W]e identified some--you 
know, identified a contractor to come in and cut those window grilles 
off and then replace them with a system that was very, very, you know, 
rudimentary, but it worked.'').
    \306\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 10 Testimony at 19.
    \307\Id. at 20.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    For example, on December 21, 2011, the Mission requested 
funding from Washington for 17 jersey barriers to serve as 
anti-ram barriers.\308\ The barriers were on sale from the 
British who were closing their compound in Benghazi and moving 
their operations back to their Embassy in Tripoli.\309\ A day 
later, the agent made another request for ``some escape hatches 
in the iron window bars on the villas.''\310\ That same day, 
the Diplomatic Security Agent's request was expanded to 
include:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \308\Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 10 to Physical Sec. 
Specialist, Physical Sec. Programs, Bureau of Diplomatic Sec., U.S. 
Dep't (Dec. 21, 2011, 12:27 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05396085).
    \309\Id.
    \310\Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 10 to Physical Sec. 
Specialist, Physical Sec. Programs, Bureau of Diplomatic Sec., U.S. 
Dep't (Dec. 22, 2011, 6:09 AM) (on file with the Committee, C05388920).

        [A]dditional security measures that are desperately 
        needed (lighting for areas of the compound that are 
        completely dark, sandbags, platforms that we can place 
        against the perimeter walls so we can see over them--we 
        have significant blind spots in our video camera 
        coverage, a guard shack for outside of the main 
        entrance, etc).\311\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \311\Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 10 to Physical Sec. 
Specialist, Physical Sec. Programs, Bureau of Diplomatic Sec., U.S. 
Dep't (Dec. 22, 2011, 7:19 AM) (on file with the Committee, C05388920).

    As Benghazi was requesting additional security measures, 
the Mission was experiencing significant shortages in 
Diplomatic Security Agents. A Diplomatic Security Agent on the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ground at the time described his concern to the Committee:

        It was down to two agents, myself and one other agent. 
        And as I was getting ready to depart, we were going to 
        go to one agent. And if the staffing pattern remained 
        the way it was, with our expected incoming agents, we 
        were going to go down to zero agents. And that would 
        have been around January 4th or 5th or so, we would go 
        down to zero agents.\312\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \312\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 10 Testimony at 45-46.

    These requests for security resources and personnel 
continued into the winter, spring, and summer of 2012.

                        The Extension Memorandum

    When Stevens left Benghazi for the U.S. in November 2011, 
Washington still had not made a decision on the Mission's 
future. A few weeks after he left Libya to return to the United 
States, Stevens asked the Principal Officer who replaced him in 
Benghazi about the status of the Mission, writing: ``Also, just 
curious what you guys decided to do re: future of the 
compound.''\313\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \313\Email from J. Christopher Stevens to Principal Officer 1, U.S. 
Dep't of State (Dec. 15, 2011, 1:14 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0079324).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Discussions about Benghazi's diplomatic future culminated 
in the Near Eastern Bureau's decision to request an extension 
of the Mission for one year.\314\ This required the approval of 
Kennedy, and the Near Eastern Bureau prepared an extension 
memorandum for his approval.\315\ The Post Management Officer 
for Libya, of the logistics arm of the Near Eastern Affairs 
Bureau, explained the purpose of the memo:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \314\See Memorandum from Jeffrey D. Feltman, Ass't Sec'y of State, 
Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State to Patrick F. 
Kennedy, Under Sec'y of State for Mgmt., U.S. Dep't of State (Dec. 27, 
2011) [hereinafter Dec. 27, 2011 Action Memo for Under Secretary 
Kennedy] (on file with the Committee, C05261557) (recommending approval 
of continued U.S. presence in Benghazi through the end of calendar year 
2012).
    \315\Id.

        [I]ts purpose is to establish the policy priority, that 
        this is what we are going to be doing, and this is what 
        we--we need to make it happen. So this memo says that 
        the presence is approved, and that some of these issues 
        were dealt with to deal with the change in the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        presence.

        Without specific budgets dedicated to these facilities 
        and to this process, there needed to be some sort of 
        mandate to declare this is what we are doing, so that 
        then, the relevant functional bureaus and regional 
        bureau could then say, hey, we have this approval I am 
        waving my document we have this approval, we need to 
        find money to make this happen.\316\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \316\Post Mgmt. Officer for Libya Testimony at 65-66.

    On December 27, 2011, Feltman forwarded the final Action 
Memorandum to Kennedy requesting approval to extend the 
Benghazi Mission until the end of 2012.\317\ Feltman described 
the memorandum as reflecting ``discussions with my bosses at 
the State Department about why Chris Stevens and I both thought 
that we needed to maintain a presence in Benghazi. . . . I was 
confident that we had done our best to build the consensus that 
would lead to a yes.''\318\ When asked whether the Secretary 
was aware of the discussion about Benghazi's future, Feltman 
testified he ``had ready access to the secretary. I don't think 
that anything that I would have put in any of these memos would 
have surprised her just because of the sort of ongoing 
discussion we had about the Arab Spring.''\319\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \317\See Feltman Testimony at 98.
    \318\Id. at 100-01.
    \319\Id. at 101.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Secretary told the Committee:

        There were certainly meetings in which I was advised 
        about the process being undertaken as to determine 
        whether Benghazi should be extended. So, yes, I was 
        aware of the process that was ongoing, and I was kept 
        up to date about it.\320\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \320\Clinton Testimony at 160.

    In his Action Memorandum, Feltman laid out the policy 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
reasons to remain in Libya:

        A continued presence in Benghazi will emphasize U.S. 
        interest in the eastern part of Libya. Many Libyans 
        have said the U.S. presence in Benghazi has a salutary, 
        calming effect on easterners who are fearful that the 
        new focus on Tripoli could once again lead to their 
        neglect and exclusion from reconstruction and wealth 
        distribution and strongly favor a permanent U.S. 
        presence in the form of a full consulate. They feel the 
        United States will help ensure they are dealt with 
        fairly. TNC officials have said some government 
        agencies may shift their headquarters to Benghazi (such 
        as the National Oil Company). Other government agencies 
        and corporations already have their headquarters in 
        Benghazi and will likely remain there for the 
        foreseeable future. The team will be able to monitor 
        political trends (Islamists, tribes, political parties, 
        militias) and public sentiment regarding the ``new 
        Libya,'' as well as report on the critical period 
        leading up to and through Libya's first post-Qadhafi 
        elections. Programmatic benefits to a continued U.S. 
        presence in Benghazi include building on USAID/OTI's 
        programs to strengthen civil society groups, media 
        training, and capacity building in municipal councils. 
        We should continue to engage with the populace, 
        particularly with the large population of Libyan youth, 
        an important and receptive audience with high 
        expectations for the post-revolution period.\321\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \321\Dec. 27, 2011 Action Memo for Under Secretary Kennedy, supra 
note 311.

    On January 5, 2012, Kennedy approved the memorandum.\322\ 
He explained to the Committee:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \322\See Id. (signature date stamped); see also Post Mgmt. Officer 
for Libya Transcript at 178 (``[`January 5th, 2012'] would indicate 
that that's the day that action was taken on the memo.'').

        This document is essentially in a prime part and a 
        secondary part. The prime part is that I am authorizing 
        us committing to extend the lease on this facility 
        through the end of calendar year 2012. And I am doing 
        that because they have made representations to me that 
        the facility is needed. My conversations with others of 
        my peers indicated that no decision had yet been made 
        about whether to make this operation permanent, 
        continue at interim or close it. . . . And, then 
        secondly, it also sets a ceiling on the number of 
        personnel that will be assigned.''\323\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \323\Kennedy Testimony at 333-334.

    Excluded from the discussions to extend the Benghazi 
mission for another year were senior officials from the Bureau 
of Diplomatic Security.
    Boswell explained he was not involved, nor consulted, in 
the extension memorandum:

        When the memo came up regarding the--a memo from 
        Assistant Secretary Feltman to Under Secretary Kennedy 
        asking for the extension of the Benghazi mission for 
        another year and asking the Under Secretary to make a 
        couple of decisions about that, one, the overall 
        decision to approve or disapprove, but also a second 
        decision about what kind of property to maintain, I did 
        not see that memo. That memo never got to me. It went 
        up, I gather, on the 23rd of December. It was signed 
        off on by various parts of Diplomatic Security, 
        including--the right parts of Diplomatic Security, 
        including the Countermeasures Directorate. It was 
        cleared by--as I found out in retrospect, it was--after 
        the fact, it was cleared by my Deputy Assistant 
        Secretary for Countermeasures who was acting for Scott 
        Bultrowicz.\324\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \324\Boswell Testimony at 17.

    Gentry O. Smith, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Diplomatic 
Security, Countermeasures, confirmed to the Committee he 
cleared the extension memorandum on behalf of Diplomatic 
Security. He also confirmed he cleared the memorandum with the 
comment, ``this operation continues to be an unfunded mandate 
and a drain on personnel resources.''\325\ When asked to 
explain his comment, Smith testified ``it didn't come from 
Countermeasures, it would not have been solely for physical 
security. So I would say that it was broader for the operations 
in Benghazi.''\326\ He further stated; ``The other seniors 
would have seen the memo as well and had an opportunity to 
comment based on its accuracy and maybe providing information 
for the document itself.''\327\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \325\Email to Post Mgmt. Officer for Libya, Bureau of Near Eastern 
Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State (Dec. 23, 2011, 3:27 PM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05578953).
    \326\Smith Testimony at 75.
    \327\Id. at 73.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Charlene Lamb told the Committee ``I did not see it [the 
memorandum] until after the event in Benghazi.''\328\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \328\Lamb Testimony at 221.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

            Purpose of Mission in 2012: Symbolic Nature of 
                       U.S. Presence in Benghazi

    With Embassy Tripoli reopened and Stevens back in 
Washington D.C. awaiting confirmation to become Ambassador to 
Libya, the Benghazi Mission continued its work through a series 
of ``Principal Officers.''\329\ The Principal Officers met with 
leaders of the local council, militia heads, foreign diplomats 
located in Benghazi, heads of businesses and non-governmental 
organizations, and regular Libyans.\330\ The Principal Officers 
reported to Washington D.C. their impressions of Benghazi and 
the state of eastern Libya.\331\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \329\See Dec. 27, 2011 Action Memo for Under Secretary Kennedy, 
supra note 311 (discussing staffing of Benghazi Mission).
    \330\See id. (discussing programmatic benefits of continued 
Benghazi Mission).
    \331\See id. (discussing the effect of ongoing Benghazi Mission).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    While the Mission continued to operate, it operated much 
differently than in 2011. As explained by Polaschik:

        A: Traditionally [Special Envoys] have been based in 
        Washington, but I know in recent years there has been a 
        special envoy presence in Jerusalem that reports to the 
        Secretary of State. So it's not unprecedented to have 
        special envoy missions.

        That said, it is unusual to have a totally separate 
        office in a country in which there is no other 
        consulate or presence. So it was a bit of an odd duck. 
        Let's say it doesn't fit the unusual [sic] State 
        Department pattern, and it's something that as DCM, I 
        struggled with a bit, not in the early days, because it 
        was just a different operation, I think, while Chris 
        was there. Because of his stature, because of his 
        experience, because of his reach back into the State 
        Department, I think he had the ability to get resources 
        and attention in a way that the people who followed him 
        did not.

        I was able as DCM to have a good working relationship 
        with Chris and all of his successors just because we 
        made it work. But I did not--you know, in another 
        country, if there's a consulate per se, the principal 
        officer or the consul general reports to the DCM, and 
        the DCM has oversight for operations and hiring and 
        resources and all of those issues. As DCM in Tripoli, I 
        did not have that.

        Q: Once Chris Stevens left in November of 2011 and was 
        replaced by a series of principal officers, did that 
        change then?

        A: The formal relationship?

        Q: In that principal officers then became more routine 
        and report to you, and then you reported out to 
        Washington?

        A: No. There was never a decision or a procedure put in 
        place to have the Mission in Benghazi report to the 
        Embassy in Tripoli. It was still something that was 
        reporting directly to Washington, staffed by 
        Washington. I had no say in the staffing decisions, 
        resourced by Washington, et cetera.

        I played a supporting role. To the extent that I could, 
        I made sure that I coordinated very regularly with the 
        principal officers; and whenever they needed help on 
        anything, I jumped in.\332\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \332\Polaschik Testimony at 44-45.

                       Security Problems Continue

    The security environment also became a factor in the 
Principal Officer's ability to meet reporting responsibilities. 
As early as December 2011 and throughout 2012, the Mission was 
forced to go on lockdown because of the lack of security 
personnel. This impacted the ability of the Principal Officers 
to do their jobs. For example, on December 15, 2011, the 
Principal Officer at the time recommended halting future non-
security temporary duty assignments because of the lack of DS 
Agents on the ground.\333\ In January 2012, the Principal 
Officer reiterated his concerns ``the mission will be hard-
pressed to support TDY'ers (much less higher-level visitors and 
out-of-town travel) unless we have better staffing. On that 
basis, we won't be fulfilling what I understand our mission to 
be.''\334\ Later, in February 2012, the incoming Principal 
Officer expressed similar concerns: ``we will be all but 
restricted to compound for the vital February 12-18 timeframe. 
This will effectively leave us unable to do any outreach to 
Libyan nationals during the week and we will be extremely 
limited in the ability to obtain any useful information for 
reporting.''\335\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \333\Email from Principal Officer 1, U.S. Dep't of State, to Post 
Mgmt. Officer for Libya, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of 
State (Dec. 15, 2011, 1:11 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0079324-
25).
    \334\Email from Principal Officer 1, U. S. Dep't of State, to 
Diplomatic Sec. Agent 25 (Jan. 13, 2012, 2:44 PM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05393569).
    \335\Email from Principal Officer 5, U.S. Dep't of State, to U.S. 
Embassy Tripoli, et al. (Feb 11, 2012, 5:29 PM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05409829).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On February 11, 2012, the lead Diplomatic Security Agent at 
Embassy Tripoli, informed Benghazi ``substantive reporting'' 
was not the Mission's purpose.\336\ In an email to the 
diplomatic security agent in Benghazi, the Diplomatic Security 
Agent wrote: ``[U]nfortunately, nobody has advised the PO that 
Benghazi is there to support [redacted text] operations, not 
conduct substantive reporting.''\337\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \336\Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 24 to Diplomatic Sec. Agent 
12 (Feb. 11, 2012, 10:41 AM) (on file with the Committee, C05411292).
    \337\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    These concerns were expressed throughout 2012. Cretz told 
the Committee:

        The various officers that were there felt that they 
        from time to time didn't that the Mission was not 
        necessarily well staffed enough for them to be able to 
        go out and do their reporting on a regular and 
        aggressive basis.

                              *    *    *

        I recall discussions with one or two of them at various 
        times that said that, because of the requirement to 
        protect the facility that it was difficult for them to 
        go out because it required a certain level of 
        accompaniment around the city.\338\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \338\Cretz Testimony at 88-89.

    During this time, the Mission evaluated and communicated to 
Washington D.C. the severity of the security environment. The 
Mission held more than a dozen EAC meetings to evaluate the 
security environment; review tripwires and determine if any had 
been crossed; and to identify any necessary to steps to 
mitigate the threats.\339\ The Mission communicated the 
outcomes of the EACs to Washington D.C. but senior officials 
did not respond. The Secretary told the Committee: ``There are 
millions of them, as you point out. They are sorted through and 
directed to the appropriate personnel. Very few of them ever 
come to my attention. None of them with respect to security 
regarding Benghazi did.''\340\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \339\See Benghazi Spot Report, EAC and Significant Event Timeline 
(DS/IP/RD) (on file with the Committee, C05394332).
    \340\Clinton Testimony at 41.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Other State Department officers offered similar 
explanations. Kennedy told the Committee:

        The State Department gets thousands of cables a day. 
        and some of them are brought to my attention, depending 
        upon the nature. An example would be brought up 
        potentially by one of my subordinate units, it might be 
        brought up by a regional functional bureau that has an 
        interest in the subject matter.\341\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \341\Kennedy Testimony at 43.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Boswell testified:

        I think we followed the Libya situation very closely. 
        Keep in mind, however, that it's a big world out there, 
        and we have 180 posts and some extremely high threat 
        ones, so we spend a lot of time concentrating on the 
        high threat ones. I would say Libya was one of them, 
        but not the only one. There is Iraq, there's 
        Afghanistan, there's Lebanon, there's Yemen, there's 
        Pakistan, and all of those at one time or another were 
        flashing pretty bright.\342\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \342\Boswell Testimony at 18-19.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Lamb told the Committee:

        The RSO [Regional Security Officer] and the Ambassador 
        are ultimately responsible for security at post. It is 
        very unfortunate and sad at this point that Ambassador 
        Stevens was a victim, but that is where ultimate 
        responsibility lies. And it's up to headquarters to 
        provide resources when post asks for them, and it's 
        also up to Washington to make sure that we don't have, 
        you know, waste, fraud, and abuse of our resources, 
        because we're covering the entire world as well. So 
        it's you know, when you say who should be accountable, 
        accountable for what?\343\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \343\Lamb Testimony at 254.

    The U.S.' uncertain and shifting commitment in Libya 
affected the administration's responses to security threats 
there. For instance, as detailed in Appendix F, an extensive 
set of security rules for permanent U.S. diplomatic facilities 
around the world did not apply to the temporary Benghazi 
Mission. The lack of security standards made Benghazi an 
anomaly among U.S. facilities located in Arab Spring countries, 
such as Tunisia, Yemen, and Egypt. As one Diplomatic Security 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Agent put it:

        [I]f you are a diplomatic facility within the State 
        Department, you have physical security requirements 
        that are in the FAM, the Foreign Affairs Manual. And it 
        is a very detailed, large set of rules that you have to 
        follow to operate a diplomatic facility. It requires 
        you to have physical security standards that are 
        typically going to be expensive and will take time to 
        do.

        If you are in a non-diplomatic facility, there are no 
        security standards. They don't exist.

        So it's all or nothing.\344\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \344\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 10 Testimony at 28.

               Requests for Additional Security Measures

    Without security standards in place to guide them, 
Diplomatic Security Agents were forced to make ad hoc requests 
for basic security measures. On January 2, 2012, the Benghazi 
Mission sent an Action Memorandum to Washington D.C. outlining 
field expedient security measures needed to secure the 
compound.\345\ The request included 17 jersey barriers, 500 
sandbags, seven observation platforms, four guard posts, 
additional lighting, and egress locks on window bars.\346\ In 
addition, the Action Memorandum notified Washington D.C. that 
additional requests would be forthcoming as well as a request 
for a physical security specialist to help scope the security 
needs of the modified compound.\347\ The security request was 
made again on January 5, 2012 and this time included a request 
for two drop arm barriers and measures to reinforce the 
perimeter wall, including concrete and barbed wire.\348\ 
Funding for sandbags, lighting, door upgrades and drop arm 
barriers was approved on January 26, 2012.\349\ On the other 
hand, the request for observation platforms, guard booths, and 
escape hatches went unaddressed--as did the request for the 
help of a physical security specialist.\350\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \345\Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 14 to Diplomatic Sec. Agent 
25 (Jan. 2, 2012, 5:41 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05579142) 
(attaching ``an Action Memo'').
    \346\Id.
    \347\See id. (``Once a decision has been made on the size and 
location of Mission Benghazi's compound--perhaps as soon as the coming 
week--RSO Benghazi will request additional security upgrade requests in 
support of that shift, and may request a TDY by a facility security 
expert to help scope them.'').
    \348\Email from Mgmt. Officer/Information Mgmt. Officer, U.S. Dep't 
of State, to Post Mgmt. Officer for Libya, Bureau of Near Eastern 
Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, Principal Officer 1, U.S. Dep't of State, 
Libya Mgmt. Issues (Jan. 5, 2012, 1:43 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0049988).
    \349\See Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 25 to Diplomatic Sec. 
Agent 15 (Jan. 26, 2012, 3:59 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05412127) (notifying that funding for some security measures had been 
obtained).
    \350\See id. (noting that Action Memorandum items 3, 6, 8, and 9 
had been funded, but not addressing the funding for other items).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On February 13, 2012, the Benghazi Mission asked Washington 
D.C. to reconsider those measures previously requested but not 
funded.\351\ In addition, the Mission made new requests to 
better secure the compound, including concertina wire, screens 
to obscure the compound, improvements to the perimeter wall, 
and . . . film for the compound windows.\352\ The Mission also 
reiterated its request for the help of a temporary duty 
physical security specialist in Washington D.C. to help scope 
needed upgrades.\353\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \351\See Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 12 to Diplomatic Sec. 
Agent 25 & James Bacigalupo, Regional Director, Bureau of Diplomatic 
Sec., U.S. Dep't of State (Feb. 13, 2012) (on file with the Committee, 
C05394247).
    \352\Id.
    \353\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Funding for guard booths was approved on February 23, 
2012.\354\ A critical request that went unaddressed until early 
March was a proposal to strengthen the compound's perimeter 
wall.\355\ Modifications to the wall were not completed until 
May 21, 2012, almost six weeks after the first Improvised 
Explosive Device [IED] attack on the Benghazi Mission.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \354\See Email to Physical Sec. Specialist, Physical Sec. Programs, 
Bureau of Diplomatic Sec., U.S. Dep't (Feb. 23, 2012, 8:22 AM) (on file 
with the Committee, C05394287) (``I just found a clause in our funding 
matrix that gives us the ability to support his request. There was 
early on talk about guard towers which we cannot support, however small 
booths to keep them out of the weather can be supported by our 
office.'').
    \355\See Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 12 to Physical Sec. 
Specialist, Physical Sec. Programs, Bureau of Diplomatic Sec., U.S. 
Dep't, and Diplomatic Sec. Agent 25 (Mar. 1, 2012, 4:59 AM) (on file 
with the Committee, SCB0049970) (``The current perimeter wall, which 
was inherited in the leasing agreement, is in poor condition . . .''); 
Email from Physical Sec. Specialist (Mar. 1, 2012, 9:12 AM) (on file 
with the Committee, SCB0049971) (recommending funding for a temporary 
fence).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

         Requests for Additional Diplomatic Security Personnel

    In addition to the requests for physical security measures, 
the Benghazi Mission made constant requests for Diplomatic 
Security Agents. Concerns about Diplomatic Security Agent 
staffing shortages in late 2011 and early 2012 precipitated the 
preparation of an Action Memorandum for Lamb's approval.\356\ 
On January 10, 2012, an Action Memorandum described the Bureau 
of Diplomatic Security's responsibilities under the December 
27, 2011 extension memorandum to provide five Diplomatic 
Security Agents for Benghazi and recognized the Diplomatic 
Security's inability to ``identify, seek necessary approvals 
and obtain the required visa approvals for this many Agents on 
a continuing basis.''\357\ The January 10, 2012 Action 
Memorandum requested Lamb approve efforts to ``request 
assistance from Domestic Operations, so that personnel can be 
selected and directed from the Field Offices by the DS Command 
Center as well as authorize funding for five, 45 day ARSO TDYs 
in Benghazi from Feb.1 through September 30 at a total 
estimated cost of $283,050.''\358\ The January 10, 2012 Action 
Memorandum was never approved by Lamb.\359\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \356\Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 25 to Principal Officer 1, 
U.S. Dep't of State (Jan. 13, 2012, 10:05 PM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05411094) (``We have submitted an Action Memorandum that if 
approved should significantly improve our ability to identify and 
obtain approvals for staffing Benghazi.'').
    \357\Memorandum from Jim Bacigalupo, Regional Director, Bureau of 
Diplomatic Sec., U.S. Dep't of State, to DAS Charlene Lamb, Bureau of 
Diplomatic Sec., U.S. Dep't of State (Jan. 10, 2012) [hereinafter Jan. 
10, 2012 Action Memo] (on file with the Committee, C05578986); see also 
Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 25 to Principal Officer 1, U.S. Dep't 
of State (Jan. 13, 2012, 10:05 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05411094) (``We have submitted an Action Memorandum that if approved 
should significantly improve our ability to identify and obtain 
approvals for staffing Benghazi.''); Email from J. Christopher Stevens, 
U.S. Ambassador to Libya, to Diplomatic Sec. Agent 7 (June 5, 2012, 
10:55 AM) (on file with the Committee, C05409979) (``We'd feel much 
safer if we could keep two MSD teams with us through this period to 
provide QRF for our staff and PD for me and the DCM and any VIP 
visitors.'').
    \358\Jan. 10, 2012 Action Memo, supra note 357; see Email from J. 
Christopher Stevens, U.S. Ambassador to Libya, to Diplomatic Sec. Agent 
7 (June 5, 2012, 10:55 AM) (on file with the Committee, C05409979) 
(Requesting increased security).
    \359\See Testimony of James Bacigalupo, Special Agent in Charge/
Regional Sec. Officer, Regional Sec. Office before the H. Comm. On 
Oversight and Gov't Reform, Tr. at 17-18 (Sept. 4, 2012) (on file with 
the Committee) (Discussing the Jan. 10 Action Memo).

      A: I believe it was January, maybe December/January 
      timeframe we had talked about it in the office, and I think 
      I was out on leave because my deputy I had seen a document 
      that my deputy had sent up to Director Lamb, to DAS Lamb 
      requesting we use the system that they use domestically to 
      direct a certain number of agents from the field offices 
      for assignments. We use that on protection. And we sent the 
      memo up suggesting maybe we could use this mechanism for 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
      overseas.

      Q: Specifically for Libya or

      A: It was specifically for Libya.

      Q: And do you know what happened to that memo?

      A: It was never signed off on.
    On March 28, 2012, the Embassy in Tripoli made a request on 
behalf of Benghazi for ``five TDY DS agents for 45-60 day 
rotations in Benghazi.''\360\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \360\See U.S. Dep't of State, Cable, Request for DS TDY and FTE 
Support (Mar. 28, 2012) (on file with the Committee, SCB004625). But 
see U.S. Dep't of State Cable, Tripoli--Request for DS TDY and FTE 
Support (Apr. 19, 2012) (on file with the Committee, SCB0046263) 
(denying request).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                  Further Erosion of Security in 2012

    As the requests for measures and personnel continued, the 
security environment in Benghazi continued to deteriorate in 
2012, with the incidents and attacks increasing in volume and 
in intensity particularly against westerners.
    One event occurred in March 2012:

        Mission personnel were detained at a vehicle checkpoint 
        in the town of Rajma, approximately 15 km southeast of 
        Benghazi International Airport. U.S. Mission Benghazi 
        RSO personnel were there to conduct a site survey near 
        the town of Rajma. Benghazi personnel were detained by 
        17th February Martyrs Brigade militia members, had 
        their identification temporarily confiscated, and were 
        escorted back to Benghazi to a militia base.\361\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \361\Email from Spot Reports to DS Command, et al. (Mar. 15, 2012, 
9:24 AM) (on file with the Committee, C05393455).

    The situation was eventually resolved and the personnel 
released.\362\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \362\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On April 2, 2012, four days before the first IED attack on 
the Mission compound, the Mission reported:

        British Diplomatic Mission FAV [fully armored vehicle] 
        was attacked by a mob of demonstrators. The vehicle was 
        damaged but the occupants escaped injury. The 
        demonstrators who numbered between one hundred (100) 
        and two hundred (200) were members of the Traffic 
        Police Force known as ``Murur.''\363\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \363\Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 16 to DS-IP-NEA, Principal 
Officer 2, U.S. Dep't of State, and Diplomatic Sec. Agent 17 (Apr. 2, 
2012, 4:17 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0048091).

    On April 6, 2012, the Mission suffered its first IED attack 
when an IED was thrown over the perimeter wall.\364\ According 
to the spot report: ``at approximately 2250 hours (GMT+2), the 
U.S. Diplomatic Mission Benghazi, Libya Compound came under 
attack. An IED was thrown over the perimeter walls and exploded 
within the compound grounds. No one was injured and damage was 
not visible.''\365\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \364\Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 16 to DS-IP-NEA (Apr. 6, 
2012, 7:11 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0048088).
    \365\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    One Diplomatic Security Agent was on the ground at the time 
of the IED attack.
    Four days later, on April 10, 2012, the Mission reported 
``an IED was thrown at a four (4) vehicle convoy carrying the 
United Nations Special Representative to Libya, Ian Martin. No 
one was hurt in the explosion and no one has taken 
responsibility for the attack.''\366\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \366\Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 16 to DS-IP-NEA (Apr. 10, 
2012, 1:12 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0048085).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The March 28, 2012 request for five Diplomatic Security 
Agents was rejected less than two weeks after the first IED 
attack on the Mission.\367\ In denying the request on April 19, 
2012, Washington D.C. responded:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \367\See U.S. Dep't of State, Cable, Tripoli--Request for DS TDY 
and FTE Support (Apr. 19, 2012) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0046263).

        DS will continue to provide DS agent support in 
        Benghazi. DS/IP recommends that post continues [sic] 
        its efforts to hire LES drivers for Benghazi to enable 
        the DS TDYers to solely perform their protective 
        security function. DS/IP also recommends a joint 
        assessment of the number of DS agents requested for 
        Benghazi to include input from RSO Tripoli, TDY RSO 
        Benghazi, and DS/IP in an effort to develop a way 
        forward.\368\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \368\Id.

    On May 22, 2012 ``a rocket propelled grenade hit the 
offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross.''\369\ 
The International Committee of the Red Cross offices were 
approximately one kilometer from the Mission compound in 
Benghazi.\370\ Less than a week after the attack on the 
International Committee for the Red Cross, a Facebook post 
appeared threatening ``to send a message to the 
Americans.''\371\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \369\Email from OpsNewsTicker to NEWS-Libya (May 22, 2012, 9:06 AM) 
(on file with the Committee, C05392368).
    \370\Email from Diplomatic Sec. Command Ctr. to DSCC E TIA/PII, 
DSCC E TIA/ITA & DS-IP-NEA (May 28, 2012, 5:08 AM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05391864).
    \371\Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 18 to Diplomatic Sec. Agent 
17 et al. (May 28, 2012, 5:36 AM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05392202).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                    Chris Stevens Becomes Ambassador

    The U.S. Senate received the President's nomination of J. 
Christopher Stevens to be Ambassador of Libya on January 24, 
2012. The Senate confirmed his nomination by voice vote on 
March 29, 2012.\372\ Stevens was sworn in by the Secretary of 
State on May 14, 2012.\373\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \372\John Christopher Stephens Nomination, PN1233, 112th Congress 
(Mar. 29, 2012) https://www.congress.gov/nomination/112th-congress/1233 
(confirmed on voice vote).
    \373\See Hillary R. Clinton, Sec'y of State, U.S Dep't of State, 
Prepared Remarks at Swearing In Ceremony for Chris Stevens, Ambassador 
to Libya (May 14, 2012), http://www.state.gov/
secretary/20092013clinton/rm/2012/05/197696.htm.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    While in Washington D.C., Stevens met with various 
individuals including former State Department employee and 
author Ethan Chorin. Mr. Chorin told the Committee he discussed 
Benghazi with Stevens in March 2012:

        he [Stevens] said . . . essentially, Benghazi was not 
        only the epicenter of the revolution, but a long-
        neglected part of the Libyan polity, and that the, 
        essentially--what I got from him was that he was 
        concerned that all of the attention was moving where--
        all of those factors that you mentioned, militarily, 
        security-wise, medical, to the epicenter activities 
        moving to Tripoli. And I believe what his point was, 
        that he was afraid that the situation in Benghazi could 
        degenerate as a result of that relative shift of the 
        tension.

        And we both agreed that Benghazi was particularly 
        important for one, the threat of potential future 
        spread of extremist activity, as well as the fact that, 
        you know, many of Libya's thinkers, intellectuals, you 
        know, people with high levels of education, also came 
        from Benghazi, and that there was a sort of an, 
        essentially, again, without putting words into his 
        mouth, that Benghazi would be critical to future, to 
        Libya's future health as a unified state.

                              *    *    *

        I mean, it was widely known, or believed at the time 
        that either Ansar al-Sharia, or one of its affiliates 
        was responsible for, or had some connection to the 
        death of the assassination of Abdul Fatah Younis. I 
        should actually correct that by saying that it wasn't--
        it was an Islamist faction that that event was 
        attributed to. But that's the background to our 
        conversation. So there was no explicit mentioning in 
        the Washington conversation about specific names of 
        individuals or groups, but it was clear that that was 
        part of what he was concerned about.

                              *    *    *

        He did say that he was very concerned that we were at a 
        turning point, and that things could go badly 
        quickly.\374\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \374\Testimony of Ethan D. Chorin, Tr. at 15-18 (Mar. 11, 2016) 
[hereinafter Chorin Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

    Cretz, whose service concluded on May 15, 2012, 
communicated his concerns about the negative trends occurring 
in Benghazi prior to his departure and the need to maintain 
Department of Defense assets in Libya.\375\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \375\Cretz Testimony at 89-90.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In a classified cable sent on his last day, Cretz warned:

        Nothing threatens the success of the Libyan revolution 
        more than the growing AQIM [al Qaeda in the Islamic 
        Maghreb] links in Libya and the renewed activism of 
        indigenous groups formerly repressed by Qadhafi. AQIM's 
        ability to move senior leaders in and out of Libya and 
        to base them there for months at a time points to the 
        real possibility that parts of Libya-particularly the 
        eastern areas around Derna, which have historically 
        been the source of Libya's homegrown extremist--could 
        turn into a safehaven for terrorists. While we have 
        done some lifting with PM ElKeib to educate the new 
        government of the risks, the Libyans are not fully on 
        board with our concerns. We need to push more 
        vigorously to convince them of the need to actively 
        work with us to build the appropriate intelligence 
        bodies.\376\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \376\Email from Joan A. Polaschik, Deputy Chief of Mission to 
Libya, U.S. Dep't of State, to SES-O; SWO-Cables; Dibble, Elizabeth; 
Maxwell, Raymond; NEA-MAG-DL; Burns, William; Sherman, Wendy; Nides, 
Thomas; Sullivan, Jacob; Feltman, Jeffrey (May 15, 2012, 10:26 AM) (on 
file with the Committee, C05395496).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Cretz further told the Committee:

        [T]hose events in Benghazi in the spring of 2012 . . . 
        it was a disturbing trend because, in Tripoli, we did 
        not I did not see a piece of intelligence. I did not 
        see any indication that the violence that was taking 
        place was other than the product of the rival militias 
        or whatever fighting it out for their piece of the pie.

        We never had any intelligence report, as I recollect, 
        that specifically targeted U.S. or Western interests in 
        Tripoli. Benghazi began to look like there was 
        something going on there that was disturbing.

                              *    *    *

        Well, my view was and I expressed this to General Ham 
        and others, who was the head of AFRICOM at the time was 
        that my belief was that we needed them, especially in 
        Tripoli, because of the ongoing strife and, also, 
        because the elections were going to be held in June.

        And I think our general sense was that this was going 
        to be a time a real problematic time period because it 
        was the first election and for some of the reasons I 
        went over before: first election, a lot at stake.

        So I felt that, in order again, for us to be able to do 
        the job that we needed to do to get out and to reassure 
        people that we were there to in case we were going to 
        bring in observers or something with the elections, 
        that an SST component would be very, very important for 
        us to maintain up until that time.

                              *    *    *

        [T]here was a medical component. We had a Navy doctor 
        for a period of time. They brought special skills. For 
        example, we had a bomb that was a 10,000 pound bomb 
        that was in the middle of the Benghazi compound where 
        Qadhafi used to live and kids were playing on it every 
        day.

        And I worked with our one of our SST people, and they 
        had a bomb defusing expert. So we were able to work out 
        a plan whereby we defused that bomb. So that kind of 
        skill, the normal kind of skill I think that most DS 
        agents wouldn't possess, counter maybe counterterrorism 
        skills.

        I can't describe the level above which our--because our 
        DS agents were very, very capable. But these guys just 
        brought kind of a special force kind of set of skills 
        to the game.\377\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \377\Cretz Testimony at 86, 90-91.

    Stevens returned to Tripoli, Libya as Ambassador on May 26, 
2012, presenting his credentials to Libyan Foreign Minister 
Ashour Bin Khyal on May 27, 2012.\378\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \378\Email from J. Christopher Stevens, U.S. Ambassador to Libya, 
to Diplomatic Sec. Agent 7 (June 5, 2012, 10:55 AM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05409979); see Email to Post Mgmt. Officer for Libya, et 
al. (May 30, 2012, 11:20 AM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0080338) 
(regarding the arrival of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens); Email to 
SES-O, SWO Cables, NEA-MAG-DL (May 28, 2012, 2:18 PM) (on file with the 
Committee, SCB0079242) (regarding Tripoli Situation Report).

                               June 2012

    Less than ten days after Stevens' return to Libya and a 
week after the Facebook threat, the Benghazi Mission compound 
came under attack for the second time in less than two 
months.\379\ On June 6, 2012, the Mission reported back to 
Washington D.C.:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \379\Id.; Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 18 to Diplomatic Sec. 
Agent 17, et al. (May 28, 2012, 5:36 AM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05392202).

        Approximately, one hour ago (3:30am) an IED exploded 
        next to the front gate. Video camera footage shows a 4-
        door white pick-up truck in front of the gate, and 
        local guards report seeing a man in `Islamic' dress 
        placing the IED at what appears to be the base of 
        perimeter wall. The local guards sounded the duck and 
        cover drill after seeing the man and smelling smoke. 
        Approximately 5-6 minutes later the device exploded, 
        creating a large hole in the perimeter wall. No one was 
        injured and all personnel are accounted for.\380\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \380\Email from Principal Officer 2, U.S. Dep't of State, to J. 
Christopher Stevens, U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Joan A. Polaschik, 
Deputy Chief of Mission in Libya, William V. Roebuck, Dir. Office of 
Maghreb Affairs, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State 
(June 6, 2012, 4:49 AM) (on file with the Committee, C05393187).

    A day before the second IED attack on the Mission, Stevens 
requested the State Department's own highly trained mobile 
security deployment (MSD) team remain in Tripoli through the 
end of the summer.\381\ More resources in Tripoli meant 
possibly more available resources to augment security in 
Benghazi. On the same day Benghazi was attacked for a second 
time, the Diplomatic Security Agent, who was the head of the 
MSD division, denied Stevens' request to keep the State 
Department's highly trained security personnel stating: 
``Unfortunately, MSD cannot support the request . . . we have 
two emerging requirements similar to Tripoli that requires the 
whole of our office essentially.''\382\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \381\Email from J. Christopher Stevens, U.S. Ambassador to Libya, 
to Diplomatic Sec. Agent 7 (June 5, 2012, 10:55 AM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05409979).
    \382\Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 7 to J. Christopher Stevens, 
U.S. Ambassador to Libya (June 6, 2012, 3:00 PM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05409979).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Five days later, an RPG attack was launched on the United 
Kingdom Ambassador's motorcade injuring two individuals.\383\ 
According to the Mission, ``the UK Ambassador's motorcade was 
attacked with an RPG and small arms fire in Benghazi, 
approximately three kilometers away from the US Mission.''\384\ 
Concern was expressed the RPG attack was actually directed 
toward the U.S. Mission. Deputy Assistant Secretary for 
International Programs suggested to her colleagues and 
supervisors ``it raises the question were they targeting the 
Brits or us and/or did we just lucky [sic] on this one?''\385\ 
Polaschik told the Committee:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \383\See Testimony of Gregory N. Hicks, Deputy Chief of Mission at 
U.S. Embassy Tripoli, U.S. Dep't of State, before H. Comm. on Gov't 
Oversight & Reform, Tr. 50 (Apr. 11, 2013) [hereinafter Hicks 
Testimony] (on file with the Committee) (discussing the attack).
    \384\Email from Charlene R. Lamb, Deputy Ass't Sec'y, Bureau of 
Diplomatic Sec., Int'l Programs, U.S. Dep't of State, to Eric J. 
Boswell, Ass't Sec'y of State, Bureau of Diplomatic Sec., U.S. Dep't of 
State, et al. (June 11, 2012, 11:09 AM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05394418).
    \385\Id.

        I personally was very concerned that it might not have 
        been targeted at the British Ambassador, but could have 
        been targeted at us, given the location where it had 
        occurred and given that we had been storing the British 
        embassy's vehicles on our compound. But it was unclear. 
        It was very murky, difficult to determine exactly who 
        was targeted.\386\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \386\Polaschik Testimony at 82-83.

    The pattern of violence--particularly against westerners 
raised some concern in Washington. On June 11, 2012, the Near 
Eastern Affairs regional bureau expressed concern about the 
security situation in Benghazi to Stevens--suggesting even a 
pause in staffing.\387\ Stevens agreed, indicating it would 
allow ``our RSO team time in Benghazi (perhaps reduced in 
number) to continue to assess the threat environment and 
consider ways to mitigate.''\388\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \387\See Email from William V. Roebuck, Dir. Office of Maghreb 
Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to J. Christopher Stevens, U.S. 
Ambassador to Libya (June 11, 2012, 5:11 PM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05391335) (``I'm getting quite concerned about the security 
situation for our folks in Benghazi . . . We are at a(possible) [sic] 
natural break . . .'').
    \388\Email from J. Christopher Stevens, U.S. Ambassador to Libya, 
to William v. Roebuck, Dir. Office of Maghreb Affairs, Bureau of Near 
Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State (June 12, 2012, 10:52 AM) (on file 
with the Committee, C05409960).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On June 12, 2012, Scott Bultrowicz, the Principal Deputy 
Assistant Secretary, Diplomatic Security, opined after the 
attack on the UK ambassador's motorcade ``this along with last 
week's incident is troubling.''\389\ Lamb acknowledged:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \389\Email from Scott P. Bultrowicz, Principal Deputy Ass't Sec'y 
of State, Bureau of Diplomatic Sec., to Charlene R. Lamb, Deputy Ass't 
Sec'y, Bureau of Diplomatic Sec., Int'l Programs, U.S. Dep't of State 
(June 11, 2012, 1:05 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05388866).

        We are not staffed or resourced adequately to protect 
        our people in that type of environment. We are a soft 
        target against resources available to the bad guys 
        there. Not to mention there is no continuity because we 
        do everything there with TDY personnel. The cost to 
        continue to do business there may become more 
        challenging.\390\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \390\Email from Ms. Lamb to Mr. Bultrowicz (June 11, 2012, 4:16 PM) 
(on file with the Committee. C05388866).

    On June 14, 2012, the Benghazi Mission held an Emergency 
Action Committee meeting to discuss the series of attacks and 
request additional DS staff.\391\ The Diplomatic Security Agent 
in Benghazi wrote to Washington D.C. expressing concern about 
the intensity and frequency of attacks: ``Recent attacks have 
intensified in frequency with the active targeting of 
diplomatic personnel (e.g. the IED attack on the U.S. compound, 
the complex attack on the U.K. motorcade, and a recent rally by 
heavily armed Islamist militia members).''\392\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \391\See Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 19 to Diplomatic Sec. 
Agent 25, James P. Bacigalupo, Regional Director, Bureau of Diplomatic 
Sec., U.S. Dep't of State, and Diplomatic Sec. Agent (June 14, 2012, 
11:40 AM) (on file with the Committee, C05388987) (summarizing staffing 
needs in light of prevailing security environment).
    \392\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    That very day the Diplomatic Security Agent in charge in 
Tripoli underscored the concern raised by Benghazi stating ``I 
fear that we have passed a threshold where we will see more 
targeting, attacks, and incidents involving western 
targets.''\393\ He went on to list five major security 
incidents in and around Benghazi, including:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \393\Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 24 to Diplomatic Sec. Agent 
25 (June 14, 2012, 1:56 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05388987).

        06/12/2012--0350 hrs--RPG attack on the International 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) compound in Misrata;

        06/11/2012--Attack on UK Ambassador's convoy--Benghazi;

        06/08/2012 2345 hrs--Sabha--Two hand grenades targeted 
        at marked UK vehicles outside of Sabha hotel. One 
        detonated, damaged three tires and an oil pump. The 
        second grenade failed to detonate;

        06/06/2012--U.S. Mission Benghazi was targeted by an 
        IED which detonated causing damage to the exterior wall 
        of the compound. The Imprisoned Sheikh Omar Abdul 
        Rahman Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack;

        05/22/2012--International Committee of the Red Cross 
        building attacked by RPG--in Benghazi. The Imprisoned 
        Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman Brigades claimed 
        responsibility on 27 May. The brigade accused the ICRC 
        of attempting to convert internally displaced members 
        of the Tawergha ethnic minority to Christianity. It 
        called for the NGO to close its offices; and declared 
        Libya to be an Islamic state. It warned that the 
        Americans would be targeted next.\394\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \394\Id.

    No additional resources were provided by Washington D.C. to 
fortify the compound after the first two attacks. No additional 
personnel were sent to secure the facility despite repeated 
requests of the security experts on the ground. In fact, the 
only inquiry from senior State Department officials about the 
trending violence against westerners was from Victoria Nuland, 
State Department Spokesperson, asking Stevens how to publicly 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
message the incidents. Nuland wrote:

        I know you have your hands full but we'd like your 
        advice about our public messaging on the spate of 
        violence in Libya over the past ten days.

        Should we now move to something a bit sharper than 
        calling on all sides to work it out? What cd/wd we say 
        about whether the incidents are linked, why they are 
        going after NGO and Western targets now, impact on 
        electoral environment etc. . . .\395\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \395\Email from Victoria Nuland, Spokesperson, U.S. Dep't of State, 
to J. Christopher Stevens, U.S. Ambassador to Libya (June 13, 2012, 
3:42 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0079249).

    This exchange is noteworthy. Stevens' expertise was being 
sought on the messaging of violence in Libya as opposed to his 
expertise being sought on how best to protect against that 
violence. Moreover, while the Secretary and others were quick 
to praise Stevens and his dedication to Libya, they were also 
quick to note ``[h]e [Stevens] definitely understood the risks. 
Yes.''\396\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \396\Clinton Testimony at 151.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Saying Stevens ``understood'' the risks without also 
acknowledging he repeatedly tried to guard against and defend 
against those risks is unfortunate. Yes, it is clear Stevens 
knew the risks associated with his service in Libya from the 
moment he landed in Benghazi in 2011 on a chartered Greek boat 
until his final phone call to Gregory Hicks saying ``we're 
under attack.'' Washington D.C. dismissed Stevens' multiple 
requests for additional security personnel, while also asking 
for help in messaging the very violence he was seeking security 
from.

                            Libyan Elections

    On July 7, 2012, the first post-revolution democratic 
elections in Libya occurred, largely without incident.\397\ 
Being in Benghazi during the first national elections was a 
priority for State Department officials. Feltman told the 
Committee:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \397\See Jomana Karadsheh, Liberal coalition makes strides in 
historic Libyan election, CNN (July 18, 2012), http://www.cnn.com/2012/
07/17/world/africa/libya-election.

        Libya is a big country. If we only had a diplomatic 
        presence in Tripoli during those elections, I think we 
        would have gotten a very distorted view of [sic] I was 
        already gone from the State Department at this point, 
        but I think it would have been a very distorted view if 
        you are only reporting what's happening in Tripoli 
        during something as critical as the first elections 
        after Qadhafi's fall.\398\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \398\Feltman Testimony at 64-65.

    The Principal Officer in Benghazi at the time described the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
environment in Benghazi leading up to the elections:

        A: Broadly, the elections were the principal focus of 
        attention. There was an international presence there, 
        not just in Benghazi but across the country as these 
        were nationwide elections. It was the object of great 
        public focus. In the immediate run up to the election, 
        there were a number of incidents. On election day 
        itself, I was one of the international observers at 
        polling stations in and around Benghazi.

        Q: When you said there were a number of incidents 
        leading up to the election day, can you elaborate 
        further on those?

        A: There were reports of attempts to ensure that 
        polling stations did not open, for example. There were 
        reports of attempts to interfere with ballots or ballot 
        boxes, for example.

        Q: Were these interferences by one particular 
        organization, or were there multiple organizations 
        involved in these events?

        A: There were various allegations as to responsibility 
        for the events. The prevailing theory at that time was 
        that these were the efforts of separatist elements. I 
        did not personally witness any of these events. I want 
        to emphasize that these were largely based on reports 
        in the media or elsewhere, and that in my contacts on 
        election day, I did not see any effort to impede voters 
        or to otherwise interfere in the process.

        Q: Okay. And following the election, what was the 
        environment like, within the in the timeframe of a week 
        after the election, what was the environment in 
        Benghazi, Libya, like?

        A: There was euphoria, frankly, among most of the 
        Libyans with whom I spoke. They felt that the elections 
        had been successful in terms of their conduct. They 
        thought that this demonstrated Libya's ability to clear 
        a very important hurdle. They felt that the election 
        results themselves represented a consensus for moderate 
        government. And the majority of my Libyan contacts then 
        identified the formulation of a constitution as the 
        next hurdle.\399\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \399\Testimony of Principal Officer 3, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 
14-15 (Mar. 26, 2015) [hereinafter Principal Officer 3 Testimony] (on 
file with the Committee).

                  Making Benghazi a Permanent Presence

    As he was awaiting ambassadorial confirmation and re-
deployment to Libya, Stevens had lunch with Gregory N. Hicks, 
who had been selected to replace Polaschik as the Deputy Chief 
of Mission for Embassy Tripoli.\400\ They met in Washington 
D.C. to discuss their upcoming work together in Libya.\401\ 
Part of their discussion centered on the future of operations 
in Benghazi. Hicks described their conversation as follows:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \400\Hicks Testimony at 7-8.
    \401\Id. at 7.

        I met with Chris, Ambassador Stevens--I may refer to 
        him as Chris, and if I say Chris, that's who I am 
        referring to after his confirmation. And he was, of 
        course, very excited. And we talked about our plans for 
        moving forward, you know, particularly our hope that we 
        could normalize the Mission and bring families back to, 
        you know, to Tripoli in the summer of actually, this 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        coming summer, 2013.

        One of the things he said to me was that, in his exit 
        interview with Secretary Clinton, she expressed the 
        hope that we could make the special Mission in Benghazi 
        a permanent constituent post. And Chris said that one 
        of the first things he intended to do after his arrival 
        was develop a proposal to move forward on that 
        project.\402\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \402\Id.

    Hicks testified that shortly after he arrived in Libya on 
July 31, 2012, he asked Stevens about the progress of making 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benghazi permanent. He put it as follows:

        Timing was important in this, because we knew that in 
        that particular fiscal year, which was I think 2012, 
        fiscal year 2012, ending September 30th of 2012, we 
        would probably be able to have the resources to do it. 
        We could obligate the money to do that.

        When I arrived on July 31st, I was surprised that the 
        cable had not gone to Washington at that time. And I 
        asked Chris about it, and he said just that things had 
        been much busier than he expected.

        And I basically said, well, we will you know, a friend 
        of mine, a longtime friend of mine, at the time was 
        principal officer in Benghazi. . . . [O]ne of the 
        finest professional officers I know in the Foreign 
        Service. And I told Chris that I would work with [him] 
        to get the project started.\403\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \403\Id. at 7-8.

    Hicks also described discussions about the Secretary 
traveling back to Libya, perhaps in October 2012.\404\ Emails 
indicate senior State Department officials, including Mills, 
Sullivan, and Huma Abedin, Deputy Chief of Staff, were 
preparing for a trip by the Secretary to Libya in October 
2012.\405\ Hicks testified he and Stevens wanted to have a 
``deliverable'' for the Secretary for her trip to Libya, and 
that ``deliverable'' would be making the Mission in Benghazi a 
permanent Consulate.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \404\Id. at 15.
    \405\Email from Huma Abedin, Deputy Chief of Staff to the U.S. 
Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State, to Philippe I. Reines, Deputy 
Ass't Sec'y, Communications, U.S. Dep't of State, Cheryl D. Mills, 
Chief of Staff and Counselor to the U.S. Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of 
State, Jacob J. Sullivan, Dir. of Policy Planning, U.S. Dep't of State 
(Sept. 12, 2012, 9:15 AM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0051754) 
(``Tomorrow is also our first trip meeting for the libya oct trip which 
we need to discuss.''); Email from Huma Abedin, Deputy Chief of Staff 
to the U.S. Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State, to William Burns, 
Deputy Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State (Sept. 17, 2012, 1:21 PM) 
(on file with the Committee, SCB0070473) (``Before our Libya tragedy, 
we were also considering stops in Libya and Jordan. Given the recent 
developments, what's your sense about the wisdom of her going to the 
middle east?'').

        And I believe I transmitted the policy justification to 
        Washington on August 31st. You know, we are only a 
        month from the end of the fiscal year, so we have to 
        get a [sic] or, we have to help Washington, the 
        executive director's office of the Near Eastern Affairs 
        Bureau to put together a package to get it to Pat 
        Kennedy for a decision by September 30th. Otherwise, we 
        lose the money.\406\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \406\Hicks Testimony at 16-17.

                              August 2012

    In August 2012--roughly a month before the Benghazi 
attacks--security on the ground worsened significantly. After a 
temporary lull around the election, violence escalated. As the 
security environment deteriorated, security personnel declined. 
On July 9, 2012, Embassy Tripoli submitted another staffing 
request on behalf of the Embassy and Benghazi to Washington. 
Benghazi requested at least one permanently assigned Diplomatic 
Security Agent from Tripoli be assigned to Benghazi, as well as 
for Washington to send a minimum of three temporary duty 
Diplomatic Security agents. The Diplomatic Security Agent in 
charge in Benghazi at the time explained his reasoning for the 
Benghazi staffing request:\407\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \407\Testimony of Diplomatic Sec. Agent 21, Diplomatic Sec. Serv., 
U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 78-79 (May 19, 2015) [hereinafter 
Diplomatic Sec. Agent 21 Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

        With all the security situation on the ground going on 
        and putting everything in place, and all the transition 
        taking place in regards to American personnel leaving 
        and coming in, and after discussion with the RSO and 
        chief of Mission, this was a cable suggesting at that 
        time this is what we need to maintain operations in the 
        best safe manner as soon as possible. We wrote this 
        cable on July 9, prior to the Ambassador leaving for 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Benghazi.

        At that time, MSD personnel were, [sic] when we started 
        off with two teams; now there was less teams on the 
        ground. Actually, I don't believe there was any MSD 
        team on the ground. There was just TDYers and two 
        permanent ARSOs on the ground. This is in July. I'm 
        sorry. I'm confused on the dates. Not September. This 
        is July 9. So, at this time, we had another ARSO on the 
        ground that was permanent and myself and the RSO. . . .

                              *    *    *

        So we wrote this in July because all these elements 
        were leaving. MSD was leaving. The SST team was 
        leaving, or they were going to change their Mission 
        from being in the Embassy to being outside of the 
        Embassy so they could train the Libyan government 
        military. So we came up with this as a suggestion, for 
        example, in line 4, or paragraph 4, under the current 
        arrangement, and this was the main one, 34 U.S. 
        security personnel, the 16 SSTs, the 11 MSD, the 2 RSOs 
        and 3 TDY RSOs, that was the number that we had there, 
        and it was going to drawn [sic] down to 27. And we 
        said: Wait, we're basically losing people. We need 
        people, specifically because security is not in the 
        best position now.

        We requested weapons permits and weapons for the local 
        ambassador bodyguard detail, and funding for security. 
        Yes, and this was the cable that we sent out in 
        concurrence with the Ambassador? [sic]\408\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \408\Id.

    No response was received. Lamb attempted to explain the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
lack of response to the Committee.

        So when I read this cable in this format, . . . wrote 
        it as a reporting cable in paragraph format, and it's 
        very hard to line everything up by the needs. So I 
        asked the desk officer to have his [sic] . . . at the 
        time was the person working with . . . [sic] for them 
        to get on a conference call and to go through this 
        cable, paragraph by paragraph, line by line, and to 
        switch this into the format that shows how many people 
        do you need for which activities, to support VIP 
        visits, movement security, static security, a quick 
        reaction force. Just tell me exactly what you need and 
        then the numbers will pop out the other side showing 
        what you need.

        And they sat down and they did this. And all of that 
        was compiled into the response that unfortunately never 
        went out. But my guidance to them was before that cable 
        went up to Scott Bultrowicz and Eric Boswell, I wanted 
        it to be pre approved at post, because I didn't want to 
        dictate to post their staffing needs, I wanted to 
        support them. But in this format, it was not clear 
        exact because they were coming up on the 1 year 
        transition when everybody was going to leave post and 
        the new team was going to come in, so I wanted it to be 
        laid out, very clear, the current operating support 
        that was being provided for security.\409\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \409\Lamb Testimony at 245-46.

    Kennedy explained his involvement in the July 9, 2012 
staffing cable and the decision to terminate the Department of 
Defense's Security Support Team (SST) protective 
responsibilities in Tripoli. He told the Committee: ``I 
consulted, as I said earlier, with the subject matter experts 
in this field, and after consulting with them, I responded no, 
we would not be asking for another extension.''\410\ This is a 
much different description of Kennedy's involvement than what 
Cheryl Mills described to the Committee. She described the 
Under Secretary as the person ``who managed security related 
issues.''\411\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \410\Kennedy Testimony at 46.
    \411\Testimony of Cheryl D. Mills. Chief of Staff & Counselor to 
the U.S. Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 72 (Sept. 2, 2015) 
(on file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Beginning in August, the number of security personnel in 
Embassy Tripoli was 34. Throughout August, security personnel 
left Embassy Tripoli. By the end of August, the number of 
security personnel at Embassy Tripoli dropped to six, excluding 
four members of the Defense Department's SST who were no longer 
able to serve in an official protective capacity but were on 
site.\412\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \412\See U.S. Embassy--Tripoli, Libya, Cable (July 9, 2012) (on 
file with the Committee, SCB0049439-41) (discussing emerging threats in 
Benghazi) (requesting staffing changes).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Stevens initially planned to travel to Benghazi in early 
August. He cancelled the trip ``primarily for Ramadan/security 
reasons.''\413\ On August 5, 2012, the International Committee 
for the Red Cross [ICRC] suffered its fifth attack in less than 
3 months.\414\ As a result, the ICRC suspended its operations 
in Benghazi and Misrata.\415\ On August 8, 2012, the Benghazi 
Mission reported the changing security environment and the 
anti-western sentiment back to Washington D.C.\416\ In 
particular, the report described:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \413\Email from J. Christopher Stevens, U.S. Ambassador to Libya, 
to Principal Officer 3, U.S. Dep't of State (Aug. 2, 2012, 2:45 PM) (on 
file with the Committee, C05390855).
    \414\See Email from OpsNewTicker to NEWS-Mahogany State Department 
(Aug. 5, 2012, 3:27 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05397147).
    \415\See id. (``ICRC suspends work in Misrata, Benghazi after 
attack (Reuters)'').
    \416\See U.S. Embassy--Tripoli, Libya, Cable (Aug. 8, 2012) (on 
file with the Committee, C05262779) (discussing emerging threats in 
Benghazi).

        Since the eve of the elections, Benghazi has moved from 
        trepidation to euphoria and back as a series of violent 
        incidents has dominated the political landscape during 
        the Ramadan holiday. These incidents have varied widely 
        in motivation and severity. There have been abductions 
        and assassinations, but there have also been false 
        alarms and outright fabrications.\417\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \417\Id.

    With the violence continuing to escalate, the Benghazi 
Mission held an Emergency Action Committee meeting a week later 
to review the Mission's tripwires, the lack of host nation 
support, and the overall security environment.\418\ 
Participating in the EAC were the Principal Officer, the 
Diplomatic Security Agent, and other U.S. government personnel 
on the ground in Benghazi.\419\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \418\See Diplomatic Sec. Agent 8 Testimony at 50.
    \419\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Diplomatic Security Agent in charge explained to the 
Committee his concerns with the security environment:

        I had tried to get a contact within the Libyan security 
        apparatus that I could liaise with, which is typical 
        for RSOs wherever they're posted around the world, and 
        I had been unable to do that. I had requested police 
        presence through a diplomatic note, but that had gone 
        unanswered. I was resorting to, you know, flagging 
        police cars down and talking to them to try and get 
        them to stay, and that didn't seem to work.

        There wasn't any sort of information sharing, which is 
        typical, or at least in my experience has been typical, 
        at other embassies or consulates. Where, you know, we 
        provide law enforcement security information to the 
        host nation, they would then, in return, supply us 
        information.

        And then just the incident the fact [sic] that the 
        prior incident we had with the gelatina or alleged 
        gelatina bomb at the Mission had not been resolved, and 
        it did not appear that local law enforcement was 
        actively pursuing investigation of that, as well as 
        their inability to pursue the possible hostile 
        surveillance incident that was outside our south gate.

        All those things I just mentioned led me to believe 
        that they didn't have the ability/desire to prevent/
        mitigate threats.\420\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \420\Id. at 59-60.

    He explained the steps the Benghazi Mission took after the 
EAC ``as far as physical security . . . for instance, erect[ed] 
a, sort of, makeshift chicane outside the north gates or at 
least the main gate. [redacted text].''\421\ One additional 
outcome of the EAC, the Diplomatic Security Agent described to 
the Committee, was a response tactic called suspended 
operations.\422\ Under suspended operations, all movements 
would be curtailed and post would conduct business from inside 
the compound only.\423\ The new status was created because 
personnel at the Benghazi Mission were already reduced to such 
levels that authorized and ordered departures were not 
applicable.\424\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \421\Id. at 60-61.
    \422\Id. at 89.
    \423\Id. at 90:

      ``It wasn't new and novel in that I think it was . . . 
      explained to me they had done something similar to this, I 
      believe when they had the previous gelatina bomb incident 
      at the front gate and they had labeled it as suspended 
      operations, but, no, in my training and experience, I had 
      not seen a suspended operations category before. . . . I 
      had been to places where we had done lockdown, so to speak, 
      for a set period of time, and this seems like a logical 
      outflow of that idea.''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \424\Cable, U.S. Embassy--Tripoli, Libya (Aug, 16, 2012) (on file 
with the Committee, C05261905).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Benghazi Mission followed the EAC meeting with a cable 
back to Washington D.C. a day later.\425\ The cable described 
1) the deteriorating security situation; 2) the departure of 
organizations such as International Committee on the Red Cross 
and a U.S. contractor; 3) the increase in hostile militias; 4) 
the lack of host nation support; and 5) the revisions made to 
the Mission's tripwires.\426\ The cable also put Washington on 
notice a request for additional security measures would be sent 
through Embassy Tripoli. The request was made to Embassy 
Tripoli on August 23, 2012.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \425\Id.
    \426\See id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    A day after the EAC cable was sent to Washington D.C., the 
Secretary received an update on the security situation in 
Libya.\427\ The Secretary's Information Memorandum described 
``an upward trend in violence--primarily but not exclusively in 
the east--since May,'' and included a list of incidents such as 
the June 6 attack on the Mission, and the August 6 carjacking 
of American personnel.'' \428\ It noted ``foreign residents of 
Benghazi have expressed concern about the risks living and 
working there.''\429\ Finally, the memorandum noted ``there is 
no coordinated organization behind the incidents.''\430\ Absent 
from the Secretary's Information Memorandum was any discussion 
about the U.S. facilities in Libya and their security posture, 
or of potential resources and personnel needed in light of the 
deteriorating security environment.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \427\See Information Memorandum from Beth Jones, Acting Ass't Sec'y 
of State, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State to 
Hillary R. Clinton, Sec'y of State, U.S. State Dep't (Aug. 17, 2012) 
(on file with the Committee, C05390124) (briefing Sec'y Clinton on the 
security situation in Libya).
    \428\Id.
    \429\Id.
    \430\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The same day the Information Memorandum describing the 
security situation in Libya was sent to the Secretary, an 
Action Memorandum was also sent seeking her approval to 
designate Libya as an eligible country to receive funding from 
the Global Security Contingency Fund.\431\ The Secretary 
approved this designation and the release of $20 million to 
support Libya's security sector on August 23, 2012.\432\ The 
Global Security Contingency Fund is a joint fund between the 
State Department and DOD authorized by Congress to help 
fledgling countries ``overcome emergent challenges through 
security and justice sector assistance to partner countries. 
State must fund 20 percent of each project. . . . The 
assistance proposed here [for Libya] is for the security 
sector. Congressional notification will be required before 
funds are transferred to GSCF and before initiating any 
activity.''\433\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \431\See Memorandum from Thomas R. Nides, Deputy Sec'y of State, 
U.S. Dep't of State, to Hillary R. Clinton, Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't 
of State (Aug. 17, 2012) [hereinafter Aug 17, 2012 Action Memo for the 
Secretary] (on file with the Committee, SCB0086134-36).
    \432\Id.
    \433\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Less than 2 weeks after the Mission's EAC--on August 27, 
2012--the U.S. issued a travel alert for Americans traveling to 
from and in Libya.\434\ Two days later, the Libyan government 
issued a ```state of maximum alert as from today and until 
further notice' in the eastern city of Benghazi.''\435\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \434\Travel Warning--Libya, U.S. State Dep't (Aug. 27, 2012) (on 
file with the Committee, C05261911).
    \435\Email to Gregory N. Hicks, et al. (Aug. 30, 2011, 1:59 AM) (on 
file with the Committee, C05397292).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In his handover notes to his successor, the outgoing 
Principal Officer stated ``we are treading water here. . . . We 
are, for example, on the fourth visit from an Embassy 
electrician of my brief tenure because we continue to repair 
rather than replace equipment.''\436\ Similarly, in handoff 
notes to the incoming Diplomatic Security Agent, the departing 
Agent wrote about the dangerous environment in Benghazi, 
stating:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \436\Email from Principal Officer 3, U.S. Dep't of State, to 
Principal Officer 4, U.S. Dep't of State (Aug. 29, 2012, 6:01 AM) (on 
file with the Committee, C05390852).

        there is nothing traditional about this post. Operating 
        in a high threat environment where kidnappings, 
        assassinations and bombings are weekly, if not daily 
        occurrences, post enjoys neither the resources nor the 
        host nation security support one would find at a 
        similarly rated post. DS agents, for all intent 
        purposes, are on their own.\437\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \437\Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 8 to Diplomatic Sec. Agent 3 
(August 27, 2012, 11:49 AM) (on file with the Committee, C05396772-73).

    The only inquiry produced to the Committee from the Office 
of the Secretary to Stevens in August was an August 5, 2012 
email from Sullivan asking: ``What is the story here?''\438\ 
regarding another RPG attack on the International Committee of 
the Red Cross.\439\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \438\See Email from Jacob J. Sullivan, Dir. of Policy Planning, 
U.S. Dep't of State, to J. Christopher Stevens, U.S. Ambassador to 
Libya (Aug. 5, 2012) (on file with the Committee, C05397147).
    \439\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                         HOST NATION SECURITY: 
                   FEBRUARY 17 AND LOCAL GUARD FORCE

    At the time Stevens entered Libya in April 2011, there was 
no recognized government to provide security as required by 
international conventions.\440\ The Diplomatic Security Agent 
in charge of the initial entry into Benghazi described the lack 
of security resources.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \440\Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, 1961, arts. 22, 29, 
Apr. 18, 1961, 23 U.S.T. 3227.

        There wasn't a formalized police I mean, there was 
        probably somebody that called himself a police chief. 
        And then you had the military somewhat of a military 
        presence, you know, that really wasn't focused on 
        anything to do with our security. They had, you know, 
        they were trying to fight the war. Then you had 
        February 17, a militia that assisted us a little 
        bit.\441\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \441\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 6 Testimony at 33.

                      February 17 Martyrs Brigade

    The February 17 Martyrs Brigade [February 17] was one of 
the largest militias operating in Benghazi and Eastern 
Libya.\442\ February 17 was instrumental in the success of the 
opposition forces, which eventually overthrew Qadhafi.\443\ The 
emerging TNC recognized February 17 as a quasi- host nation 
security force--endorsing their efforts to perform basic 
security functions typically performed by law enforcement.\444\ 
For example, the TNC used February 17 to provide security at 
the Tibesti Hotel where westerners, non-government 
organizations, and journalists stayed.\445\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \442\See Max Fisher, Libyan Militia's Failed Security at Benghazi, 
Wash. Post (Nov. 12, 2012), https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/
worldviews/wp/2012/11/02/libyan-militias-failed-security-at-benghazi/
(``[T]he February 17 Brigade `eastern Libya's most potent armed force,' 
noting that it `nominally' reports to the Libyan defense ministry. The 
command link between Tripoli's senior leaders and on-the-ground 
militias has proven weak, but the central government still relies 
heavily on them.'' (quoting a New York Times report)).
    \443\See id. (``[T]he central government still relies heavily on 
them.'').
    \444\See id.
    \445\See Diplomatic Sec. Agent 7 Testimony at 37 (``The security 
posture there was they had 17th February Brigade militia personnel that 
were assigned to the hotel.'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The TNC recommended to Stevens and his team in April 2011 
the Mission deal with February 17.\446\ Despite being the 
alleged lead armed presence in Benghazi,\447\ Diplomatic 
Security Agents found February 17 to be undisciplined and 
unskilled.\448\ The Diplomatic Security Agent in charge told 
the Committee:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \446\See Diplomatic Sec. Agent 6 Testimony at 34.
    \447\See Diplomatic Sec. Agent 7 Testimony at 38-39.
    \448\See Diplomatic Sec. Agent 6 Testimony at 35.

        [T]hey were very undisciplined. You know, people over 
        there, a lot of them were not familiar with weapons, 
        you know, because they weren't allowed to have weapons 
        during Qadhafi's rule. So we never could really count 
        on them for much because they just didn't have 
        training. They were undisciplined. We just tried to see 
        if we could get them to post at a couple of locations 
        around the hotel at the entrance and in the parking 
        lot, and to be around at night also in the parking 
        lot.\449\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \449\Id.

    According to one of the Diplomatic Security Agents in 
charge, Stevens and his team relied on February 17 at the 
Tibesti Hotel ``only in a case where we specifically needed 
their help.''\450\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \450\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 7 Testimony at 42.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    When the Mission moved out of the Hotel, February 17 was 
retained to provide an additional armed security presence to 
Mission's protective detail.\451\ According to the Libya Desk 
Officer in Washington D.C., February 17 ``would assist . . . 
with our movements as well. So they would be in the vehicles, 
help . . . get through checkpoints, allow us to get VIP access 
to certain locations through their very status as 17th of 
February Martyrs Brigade, which held in high regard in 
Benghazi, after the fighting.''\452\ The February 17 members 
who lived on the Mission compound received an initial stipend 
of $27/day for their services in addition to housing on the 
compound.\453\ The stipend was increased to $35 in June 
2012.\454\ In addition to the February 17 members on the 
Mission compound, a larger contingent of February 17 members 
lived in ``close proximity to the compound'' and provided a 
potential additional response force.\455\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \451\See Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent to DS-IP-NEA (July 21, 
2011, 3:22 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05396529) (``[W]e 
currently have three guards on duty. Ideally, we get two per compound. 
. . .'').
    \452\Testimony of Diplomatic Sec. Agent 25, Diplomatic Sec. Serv., 
U.S. Dep't of State, before the H. Comm. On Oversight and Gov't Reform, 
Tr. at 88 (Aug. 8, 2013) [hereinafter Diplomatic Sec. Agent 25 
Testimony] (on file with the Committee).
    \453\Email to Diplomatic Sec. Agent 19 (June 28, 2012, 1:38 PM) (on 
file with the Committee, C05389864); see also Email (Aug. 9, 2011, 
12:41 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05396529) (discussing 
compensation for guards on the compound).
    \454\See Email (June 28, 2012, 1:38 PM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05389864) (``FPD approves the increase in stipend payments 
[from $27 to $35 per day].'').
    \455\Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 25 to Charlene Lamb, Deputy 
Ass't Sec'y, Bureau of Diplomatic Sec., Int'l Programs, U.S. Dep't of 
State (June 11, 2012, 1:25 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0050094-
95).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    As the number of Diplomatic Security Agents dropped, the 
need for the February 17 members increased. The Diplomatic 
Security Agent in charge testified: ``we only had three 
[February 17] at the time. So I was trying to befriend them, 
trying to get more activity, more interest, additional bodies, 
because three bodies on 24/7 is [sic] long days, long 
weeks.''\456\ Eventually, another guard was added.\457\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \456\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 13 Testimony at 44.
    \457\See Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 25 to Charlene Lamb, 
Deputy Ass't Sec'y, Bureau of Diplomatic Sec., Int'l Programs, U.S. 
Dep't of State (June 11, 2012, 1:25 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0050094-95) (``Currently we have three High Threat Trained TDY DS 
Agents on the ground and one TDY SST person.'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    February 17 maintained between three and four guards on the 
compound throughout 2012. They performed drills with the 
Diplomatic Security Agents and the local guard force and ``all 
plans to defend the compound rely on heavily on both the 
immediate QRF [quick reaction force] support and the support of 
their militia colleagues.''\458\ February 17 members played 
critical roles during the first two attacks on the compound. At 
the time of the first IED attack on April 6, 2012, February 17 
members supported the sole Diplomatic Security Agent on the 
ground. The Diplomatic Security Agent described February 17's 
role to the Committee:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \458\Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 19 (June 17, 2012, 8:12 AM) 
(on file with the Committee, C05389864).

        I also called our QRF, basically reacted them. We had a 
        plan: On a situation like that, they would take up 
        positions throughout the compound. One of the positions 
        would be outside of our building. As I stepped outside, 
        one of the QRF members was already out there waiting 
        for me. This is possibly, I don't know, 3 minutes after 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        the bombing.

        At some point, the guard finally activated the alarm. 
        Our guard force had a push button alarm; in case of any 
        attack, they would activate it. As I step outside, the 
        QRF member is there. We cleared our way to the TOC. 
        Went inside the TOC. I turn off the alarm, and I use 
        our camera system to view or to try to determine if 
        there was any other people, any other attackers in the 
        compound. That took approximately 3, 4 minutes.

        I did not see anybody in our camera system. There are 
        some blind spots, but we did have a pretty good system 
        throughout the compound. I thought that with that, I 
        would be able to determine something, something 
        blatant, something that would really stand out.

        Afterwards, I stepped outside of the TOC. I had two QRF 
        members with me, and we commenced on clearing the 
        compound.

        While we were doing that, I heard two shots. It sounded 
        to me like rifle fire, something bigger than an M4, 
        which is what I had. So I thought initially that it was 
        shooting in the compound. One of the QRF members 
        received, if I am not mistaken, a call that told him 
        that a third QRF member was outside and had detained 
        someone.\459\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \459\Testimony of Diplomatic Sec. Agent, Diplomatic Sec. Serv., 
U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 34-35 (Apr. 13, 2015) (on file with the 
Committee).

    At the time of the second IED attack on June 6, 2012, 
February 17 provided support to the three Diplomatic Security 
Agents on the ground. One of the Diplomatic Security Agents on 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
the ground during that attack testified:

        [t]he February 17th Martyrs Brigade showed up in a 
        matter of minutes. Then from there we set up a 
        perimeter outside on the street. As we had this large 
        hole in our wall, we wanted to push our security 
        perimeter back even further. We set up the large hole I 
        mean set up the perimeter, sorry; and then from there, 
        once that perimeter was set up, I went with one of our 
        QRF guys [redacted text]. And we went there and secured 
        the rest of the compound.

        As there was a security incident at the front of our 
        compound, we had lost attention and lost visibility on 
        other aspects of our compound. So, before we decided to 
        let the principal officer out of the safe haven and 
        call the all clear, we went through, me with my M4, him 
        with his AK 47, and we just moved through the compound 
        making sure nobody else had entered and there were no 
        other devices. After that was done, we called the all 
        clear.\460\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \460\Testimony Diplomatic Sec. Agent, Diplomatic Sec. Serv., U.S. 
Dep't of State, Tr. at 50-61 (Mar. 24, 2015) (on file with the 
Committee).

    Following the June attack, the Diplomatic Security Agents 
on the ground wanted to increase the number of quick reaction 
force on the compound. However, February 17 declined expressing 
``concern with showing active open support for the American's 
[sic] in Benghazi.''\461\ Beginning in August, the Diplomatic 
Security Agent in charge expressed concerns about the 
trustworthiness of those February 17 on the compound. He told 
the Committee ``I think we, or at least I assumed that he was 
sharing information with Brigade about what he was doing on the 
compound and what we were doing.''\462\ Days later, the 
Principal Officer at the time expressed concerns about February 
17 to Stevens and suggested moving more to a ``government-
government relationship.''\463\ Stevens responded ``we should 
be in line with the GOL policy/law on this. What do the local 
police and SSC leadership recommend.''\464\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \461\Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 19 (June 17, 2012, 8:12 AM) 
(on file with the Committee, C05389864).
    \462\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 8 Testimony at 26.
    \463\Email from Principal Officer 3, U.S. Dep't of State, to J. 
Christopher Stevens, U.S. Ambassador to Libya, & Gregory Hicks, Deputy 
Chief of Mission to Libya (Aug. 12, 2012, 5:56 AM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05411463) (asking if ``it is the right signal to send to 
have a contract with a militia rather than a more usual arrangement 
with local authorities (the SSC? The Army?) to provide our security? 
Should we try to readjust to a government-government relationship given 
the political transition.'').
    \464\Email from J. Christopher Stevens, U.S. Ambassador to Libya, 
to Principal Officer 3, U.S. Dep't of State, & Gregory N. Hicks, Deputy 
Chief of Mission in Libya, U.S. Dep't of State (Aug. 12, 2012, 1:05 PM) 
(on file with the Committee, C05390836).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Two days before the Stevens' trip to Benghazi in September 
2012 the Diplomatic Security Agents on the ground were informed 
February 17 members on the compound would no longer support the 
Benghazi Mission's off-compound movements--unless the Mission 
was willing to increase their stipend.\465\ In discussing the 
situation with Embassy Tripoli, one of the Diplomatic Security 
Agents described the move as ``part of a power struggle between 
the government and brigades over security functions in 
Benghazi.''\466\ Nevertheless, the Diplomatic Security Agent 
expressed concern about the Benghazi Mission's ability to move 
throughout the city and easily gain access to the VIP areas of 
the airport.\467\ The issue remained unresolved at the time 
Stevens traveled to Benghazi, with the Diplomatic Security 
Agents using other U.S. government personnel on the ground in 
Benghazi to support Stevens' off compound movements.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \465\See Email from Diplomatic Security Agent 5 to Regional Sec. 
Officer (Sept. 9, 2012, 11:31 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05396013).
    \466\Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 5 (Sept. 8, 2012, 9:29 PM) 
(on file with the Committee, C05396013).
    \467\See id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                           Local Guard Force

    In addition to the armed presence provided by February 17, 
Benghazi relied on an unarmed local guard force [LGF] to 
protect the compound. The local guards were stationed 24/7 
around the perimeter of the compound as an ``outer ring . . . 
to give a perception of security.''\468\ ``Local guards 
provide[d] access control essentially for visitors as well as 
us moving on and off the compound, and they also serve as the 
first line of defense in the event of an attack or some other 
sort of security incident would happened on the premise.''\469\ 
In particular,
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \468\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 13 Testimony at 51.
    \469\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 8 Testimony at 15.

        they are checking badges, they are checking license 
        plates, that sort of thing. They'll often itemize--the 
        vehicles to make sure there aren't explosives in the 
        vehicles. If something were to happen, for instance, a 
        mob or bomb or some sort of scenario like that, they 
        have the IDNS pendants, which sound our alarm, and then 
        they also have radios so they are instructed to call 
        out a certain thing, DS agents, to alert us what type 
        of attack it is and where they are.\470\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \470\Id. at 15-16.

    The LGF consisted of 20-25 local guards who rotated in 
shifts of five to staff unarmed guard posts around the 
compound.\471\ A Guard Force commander oversaw the performance 
of the guard members who participated in drills and other 
security operations led by the Diplomatic Security Agents and 
those February 17 on compound. After the second attack on the 
compound in June 2012, the Benghazi Mission temporarily 
increased the number of local guards stationed around the 
compound at night to eight.\472\ On September 11, 2012, there 
were five local guard force members on duty.\473\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \471\See Email from Diplomatic Security Agent 19 to Agent 21 (June 
7, 2012, 8:08 AM) (on file with the Committee, C05393670).
    \472\See Email from Diplomatic Sec. Agent 25 to Charlene Lamb, 
Deputy Ass't Sec'y, Bureau of Diplomatic Sec., Int'l Programs, U.S. 
Dep't of State (June 11, 2012) (on file with the Committee, SCB0050094-
95).
    \473\See FN 83, Part I.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                       AN `INTELLIGENCE FAILURE'

                  Intelligence Community Reporting on 
                       Deteriorating Environment

    As security in Benghazi and Libya deteriorated throughout 
2012, the intelligence community's reporting on the burgeoning 
terrorist environment and the inability of Libyan leaders to 
curtail the terrorists activities increased in volume and 
became more alarming and specific in content. As the Office of 
the Director of National Intelligence told Congress, ``[T]he IC 
[intelligence community] monitored extremist activities . . . 
and published more than 300 disseminated intelligence reports 
and finished analytic assessments--for a range of policy 
makers, the military, and operators--related to Western 
interests in the region between 1 February and 10 September 
[2012].''\474\ Recipients of these intelligence reports 
included senior government officials such as the Secretary of 
State, who was briefed daily on the intelligence being 
collected and reported regarding Benghazi and Libya. The 
Secretary testified:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \474\Benghazi Intelligence Review: Office of the Director of Nat'l 
Intel., Oct. 22, 2012.

        Every morning when I arrived at the State Department, 
        usually between 8:00 and 8:30, I had a personal one on 
        one briefing from the representative of the Central 
        Intelligence Agency, who shared with me the highest 
        level of classified information that I was to be aware 
        of on a daily basis. I then had a meeting with the top 
        officials of the State Department every day that I was 
        in town. That's where a lot of information, including 
        threats and attacks on our facilities, was shared. I 
        also had a weekly meeting every Monday with all of the 
        officials, the Assistant Secretaries and others, so 
        that I could be brought up to date on any issue that 
        they were concerned about. During the day, I received 
        hundreds of pages of memos, many of them classified, 
        some of them so top secret that they were brought to my 
        office in a locked briefcase that I had to read and 
        immediately return to the courier. And I was constantly 
        at the White House in the Situation Room meeting with 
        the National Security Advisor and others.\475\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \475\Clinton Testimony at 49.

    Kennedy, who was responsible for the security of diplomatic 
facilities overseas, testified he also received daily 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
intelligence briefings.

        A: I received a notebook every morning.

        Q: And that is a compilation of what?

        A: Compilation of intelligence material from throughout 
        the intelligence community, as well as from the State 
        Department's own Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

        Q: As you sit here today, do you recall receiving 
        anything that week that related to the attacks in 
        Benghazi?

        A: I don't recall anything specific, but I also am sure 
        that there was something in one of the reports from one 
        of the agencies about Libya.\476\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \476\Kennedy Testimony at 121.

    The reports and assessments issued by the intelligence 
community painted Libya as a country descending into chaos as 
2012 wore on. As early as February 2012, ``[T]he Community was 
noting disturbing trends regarding the ability of Islamic 
extremists to exploit the security situation in Libya.''\477\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \477\Benghazi Intelligence Review: Office of the Dir. of Nat'l 
Intel., Oct. 22, 2012.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On February 23, 2012, the Defense Intelligence Agency 
reported:

        [Redacted text].\478\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \478\Libya: AQIM's Persistent Efforts, J. Chiefs of Staff, J. 
Intel., Feb. 23, 2012.

    The same day, the Central Intelligence Agency issued a 
report titled [redacted text]\479\ [redacted text]\480\ 
[redacted text].\481\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \479\[Redacted text].
    \480\[Redacted text].
    \481\[Redacted text].
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    A week later, on February 29, 2012, the Central 
Intelligence Agency published an assessment titled ``Extremist 
Progress Toward a Safe Haven in Libya.'' The assessment noted 
``[t]he progress of two decentralized, al-Qa'ida--aligned 
groups in Libya and their ability to operate with relative ease 
throughout many areas of the country suggest Libya is emerging 
as a terrorist safe haven.''\482\ The Central Intelligence 
Agency assessed:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \482\Extremist Progress Toward a Safe Haven in Libya, Cent. Intel. 
Agency, Feb. 29, 2012.

        [T]he decimation of national-level security agencies--
        which during the Qadhafi regime made Libya a hostile 
        environment for extremists--have allowed al-Qa'ida--
        associated extremists, including previously Pakistan-
        based al-Qa'ida members and al-Qa'ida members and al 
        Qa'ida in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), to 
        procure weapons and develop networks in line with the 
        goals al Qa'ida senior leaders to establish a permanent 
        presence in Libya.\483\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \483\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                              *    *    *

        AQIM's ability to procure a stable supply of newer, 
        more reliable Libyan arms will almost certainly enhance 
        AQIM's ability to counter regional security services 
        and conduct high-profile attacks against local or 
        Western interests.\484\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \484\Id. at 2.

    By mid-March 2012, the Central Intelligence Agency reported 
[redacted text]\485\ [redacted text].\486\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \485\[Redacted text].
    \486\[Redacted text].
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On March 21, 2012 the Defense Intelligence Agency published 
a report titled [redacted text]. It stated:

        [Redacted text] that these trends and current security 
        situation, if unchecked, will allow al-Qaida and 
        affiliated groups to establish a safehaven within a 
        year.\487\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \487\Terrorists Using Local Camps and Militias for Future 
Operations, Defense Intel. Agency, Mar. 21, 2012.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Defense Intelligence Agency further stated:

        [Redacted text] that militia groups with al-Qaida 
        connections will increasingly adopt an anti-western 
        ideology in the next few months [redacted text] that 
        while theses terrorist-aligned militias remain 
        decentralized and possess disparate goals, al-Qaida and 
        AQIM will be unable to unite them and harness their 
        potential in the next few months.\488\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \488\Id.

    Less than three weeks after the Defense Intelligence 
Agency's report on the potential for attacks against Western 
targets, the State Department compound in Benghazi was attacked 
by an Improvised Explosive Device (IED). An IED was thrown over 
the compound's perimeter wall. At the time, only one State 
Department Diplomatic Security Agent was at the Mission 
compound.
    Less than a week after the first attack on the State 
Department compound, the Central Intelligence Agency published 
an intelligence piece titled ``Libya as an emerging destination 
for foreign fighter training.''\489\ The same day, the Defense 
Intelligence Agency issued an intelligence piece reporting 
``al-Qaeda and al-Qaida in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb 
(AQIM) are expanding their contacts with political figures, 
terrorists, and militia groups in Libya.''\490\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \489\Libya: Emerging Destination for Foreign Fighter Training, 
Cent. Intel. Agency, Apr. 12, 2012.
    \490\Terrorism, Libya: Terrorists Seeking Expanded Influence, 
Activity, Defense Intel. Agency, Apr. 12, 2012.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    AFRICOM issued its own assessment a week later, reporting 
[redacted text]\491\ That same day AFRICOM issued its 
assessment the U.S. was a target in Libya, the State Department 
denied Benghazi's request to have five Diplomatic Security 
Agents deployed in order to better secure the Mission's 
compound.\492\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \491\J2 Intelligence and Knowledge Development, Libya: Al-Qaeda 
Intent to Target U.S. Aircraft in Libya, U.S. Africa Command, Apr. 19, 
2012.
    \492\U.S. Dep't of State, Cable, Tripoli-Request for DS TDY and FTE 
(Apr. 19, 2012).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The U.S. Army's National Ground Intelligence Center issued 
an intelligence piece on the 17 February Brigade.\493\ At the 
time, members of February 17 were housed on the State 
Department's compound in order to augment the State 
Department's security personnel at the Mission compound, and a 
larger contingent of February 17 members resided near the State 
Department compound. In its assessment, the National Ground 
Intelligence Center reported:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \493\Libya: 17 February Brigade, U.S. Army Nat'l Ground Intel. 
Ctr., Apr. 25, 2012.

        [Redacted text].\494\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \494\Id.

    Two days later, the CIA assessed ``[K]ey militia blocs will 
most likely remain reluctant to give up their organizational 
autonomy because of fear of local rivals, distrust of the 
Transitional National Council, and competition for leadership 
of newly formed government institutions.''\495\ The report 
further noted: ``[T]he continued existence of dozens of 
autonomous militias could undermine Libya's transition by 
engaging in violence, seizing national infrastructure, 
subverting election procedures or using coercion to influence 
the political process.''\496\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \495\Libya: Continued Militia Autonomy Jeopardizing Transition, 
Cent. Intel. Agency, Apr. 27, 2012.
    \496\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    As the deteriorating security environment accelerated in 
late spring 2012, AFRICOM reported on the security vacuum 
created by the Transitional National Council's inability to 
reign in the competing militias. AFRICOM assessed ``Al-Qaida 
and its affiliates will attempt to capitalize on the turmoil in 
Libya to garner recruits, mobilize popular Western support, and 
establish an operational presence in Libya to threaten U.S. and 
Western interests in the Region.''\497\ AFRICOM further 
reported [redacted text].''\498\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \497\J2 Network Analysis of Extremists Operating in Libya, U.S. 
Africa Command, May 16, 2012.
    \498\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On May 22, 2012, the CIA reported ``the eastern city of 
Darnha, a religiously conservative and historically 
marginalized areas that was a disproportionate source of Libyan 
freedom fighters during the Iraq war, is the center of 
extremist activity in Libya, in part [redacted text].''\499\ 
Darnah was located approximately 180 miles from Benghazi. Also 
on May 22, 2012 the International Committee for the Red Cross 
(ICRC) was attacked in Benghazi by a rocket propelled grenade 
(RPG), the first of five attacks that would occur against the 
ICRC in and around Benghazi during the summer 2012.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \499\Libya: Weak Security Allowing Al-Qa'ida Associates To Become 
Entrenched, Office of Terrorism Analysis, Cent. Intel. Agency, May 22, 
2012.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On May 30, 2012, in an assessment titled ``Terrorism: AQ 
Bolstering Presence and Influence in Libya,'' the Defense 
Intelligence Agency stated [redacted text]\500\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \500\Terrorism: AQ Bolstering Presence and Influence in Libya, 
Defense Intel. Agency, May 30, 2012.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On June 6, 2012, less than a week after the Defense 
Intelligence Agency's reported on al-Qaeda-associated groups 
planning to launch near term attacks, the State Department 
compound in Benghazi was attacked again by an IED for the 
second time in less than two months. According to the Defense 
Intelligence Agency, [redacted text]\501\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \501\Brief Notes, Terrorism, Defense Intel. Agency, June 6, 2012.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On June 11, 2012, the Central Intelligence Agency assessed 
the ``rocket propelled grenade (RPG) and small-arms attack in 
Benghazi . . . on the British Ambassador's convoy--the third 
attack on a Western diplomatic target that week--highlights the 
vulnerability of Western interests posed by the permissive 
security environment in Libya.''\502\ Some within the State 
Department felt the Benghazi Mission compound was the intended 
target.\503\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \502\Libya: Attack on British Diplomatic Convoy Underscores Risks 
to Western Interests, Office of Terrorism Analysis, Cent. Intel. 
Agency, June 11, 2012.
    \503\Polaschik Testimony at 84-85.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The increased number of attacks against Western targets in 
May and June 2012 led the Defense Intelligence Agency to 
``assess with high confidence growing ties between al-Qaida 
regional nodes and Libya-based terrorists will increase the 
terrorists' capabilities. We expect if the current security 
vacuum persists, attacks against U.S. and Western interests in 
Libya (including operations in Tripoli) will increase in number 
and lethality.''\504\ On June 12, 2012 a Defense Intelligence 
Agency assessment titled ``Terrorism, Libya: Terrorists Now 
Targeting U.S. and Western Interests'' stated:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \504\Terrorism, Libya: Terrorists Now Targeting U.S. and Western 
Interests, Defense Intel. Report, June 12, 2012.

        [Redacted text].\505\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \505\Id.

    A June 18, 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency report titled 
``Terrorism: Conditions Ripe for More Attacks, Terrorist Safe 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Haven in Libya'' assessed:

        [Redacted text].\506\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \506\Terrorism: Conditions Ripe for More Attacks, Terrorist Safe 
Haven in Libya, Defense Intel. Agency, June 18, 2012.

    A June 18, 2012 CIA report issued the same day gave a 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
broader assessment of the variables that would:

        most likely . . . affect the first stage of Libya's 
        transition and the runup to the planned July 2012 
        National Assembly election. . . . [T]hese variables can 
        be summed into two drivers: the level of effectiveness 
        of the interim government and militias' cooperation 
        with the interim government. Wildcards, including 
        possible attacks by former Libyan leader Muammar al-
        Qadhafi loyalists or al-Qa'ida-affiliated extremists 
        could also impact events.\507\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \507\First Stage of Libya's Transition: Key Drivers and Potential 
Outcomes, Directorate of Intel., Cent. Intel. Agency, June 18, 2012.

    The CIA assessment further provided ``an attack on interim 
government officials or infrastructure by loyalists of former 
Libyan leader Muammar al-Qadhafi and his family or al-Qa'ida-
associated extremists could undercut the transition's progress 
depending on the scope. [Redacted text] on the near-term 
intentions and capabilities of these groups.''\508\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \508\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On June 26, 2012 the Central Intelligence Agency reported:

        repeated clashes in the past few months underscores the 
        interim government's weak nationwide presence and 
        crisis management capabilities, almost certainly 
        tarnishing public perceptions of its authority and 
        highlighting the many security challenges that will 
        face Libya's post-election government. . . . The 
        government's attempts to stop recurring internal 
        violence often rely on the intervention of local actors 
        whose efforts help stabilize the situation but leave 
        the underlying causes unresolved. The Transitional 
        National Council (TNC) has made little progress toward 
        implementing national reconciliation measures aimed at 
        addressing fissures stemming from last year's conflict 
        and Libyan leader Muammar al-Qadhafi's 42 years in 
        power.\509\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \509\Libya: Recurring Internal Violence Highlights Security 
Challenges Facing Successor Government, Office of Middle East and North 
Africa Analysis, Cent. Intel. Agency, June 26, 2012.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Central Intelligence Agency's assessment further noted:

        [G]overnment still possesses few cohesive and 
        professional Army and police units because many 
        militias are reluctant to disarm, and its nascent 
        security bodies lack the leadership and organizational 
        capacity to rapidly integrate thousands of poorly 
        disciplined fighters. Many militias that have received 
        official sanction to act as security units almost 
        certainly remain at best loosely controlled by national 
        leaders.\510\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \510\Id.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Defense Intelligence Agency reported the same day:

        if the current security vacuum persists, attacks 
        against US and Western interests in Libya will increase 
        in number and lethality. While specific targets of 
        future terrorist attacks are unknown, the DoD presence 
        at US diplomatic facilities and DoD Intelligence, 
        Surveillance, and Reconnaissance assets operating in 
        Libyan airspace may be considered as potential targets. 
        According to AFRICOM's JPERSTAT, as of 21 June 12, . . 
        . [t]he Terrorism Threat Level in Libya is 
        SIGNIFICANT.\511\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \511\Id.

    In addition to both the Central Intelligence Agency's and 
the Defense Intelligence Agency's assessment, AFRICOM issued 
its own assessment of the security environment in Libya, 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
reporting:

        [Redacted text].\512\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \512\J-2 Intelligence and Knowledge Development, Theater Analysis 
Report, U.S. Africa Command, June 26, 2012.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    AFRICOM further assessed:

        [Redacted text].

                              *    *    *

        [Redacted text].\513\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \513\Id.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    By July 3, 2012, AFRICOM had assessed:

        [Redacted text].\514\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \514\J-2 Intelligence and Knowledge Development Theater Analysis 
Report, North Africa: Growing Threat from Al-Qaeda Affiliated 
Extremists to Western Interests, U.S. Africa Command, July 3, 2012.

    AFRICOM further pointed to Libya as a [redacted text]\515\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \515\Id.

        In addition to the threats associated with the formal 
        al-Qaida affiliates, there is a growing threat to 
        Libya-based Western interests from individuals inspired 
        by al-Qaida's ideology with limited or no direction 
        from the organization itself. These individuals or 
        cells are the most likely to conduct attacks, however 
        they are more likely to be unsophisticated or disrupted 
        by local authorities.\516\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \516\Id.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    AFRICOM emphasized:

        [N]o single group likely conducted the series of anti-
        Western attacks in Libya since 22 May 2012. On 12 June 
        2012, individuals attacked the International Committee 
        of the Red Cross (ICRC) office in Misrata, wounding the 
        landowner's son and seriously damaging the building. On 
        11 June 2012, rocket propelled grenades (RPG) fired 
        from an elevated position attack a three-vehicle convoy 
        carrying the British Ambassador to Libya. Two 
        passengers in the lead vehicle were injured. On 6 June, 
        a crude improvised explosive device (IED) detonated 
        adjacent to the main gate of the U.S. Mission Benghazi 
        compound, causing no casualties and minor damage to the 
        compound's wall. The `Brigades of Captive Umar Abd-al-
        Rahman' claimed responsibility for a 22 May rocket-
        propelled grenade attack on the Benghazi office of the 
        ICRC and the 6 June attack on the U.S. Mission 
        Benghazi.\517\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \517\Id.

    On July 6, 2012, the Central Intelligence Agency issued its 
own assessment that al-Qaeda was establishing a sanctuary in 
Libya. In particular, the report assessed ``Eastern Libya, 
particularly the city of Darnah, provides extremists with the 
space to plot and train operatives.''\518\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \518\Libya: Al-Qa'ida Establishing Sanctuary, Cent. Intel. Agency, 
July 6, 2012.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The report further pointed out [redacted text]\519\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \519\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Defense Intelligence Agency was reporting:

        [Redacted text] conflict zones or instability provide 
        venues for reengagement [redacted text].\520\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \520\[Redacted text] Defense Intel. Agency, July 19, 2012.

        In fact, Abu Sufian bin Qumu, a former Guantanamo Bay 
        detainee who was released back to Libya in 2007, became 
        the ``leader of the Ansar Al-Sharia in the city of 
        Darnah.''\521\ According to the same report, ``Qumu 
        trained in 1993 at one of Osama bin Laden's terrorist 
        camps in Afghanistan and later worked for a bin Laden 
        company in Sudan, where the al-Qaeda leader lived for 
        three years.''\522\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \521\Adam Goldman, Former Guantanamo detainee implicated in 
Benghazi attack, Wash. Post, Jan. 7, 2014.
    \522\Id.

        It was widely reported ``[M]ilitiamen under the command 
        of Abu Sufian bin Qumu . . . participated in the attack 
        that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and 
        three other Americans.''\523\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \523\Id.

    On July 25, 2012, AFRICOM reported on the spate of attacks 
on Westerners in eastern Libya. AFRICOM assessed [redacted 
text].''\524\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \524\J2--Intelligence and Knowledge Development, Theater In-Brief, 
U.S. Africa Command, July 25, 2012.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On August 1, 2012, AFRICOM assessed, ``Benghazi's level of 
violence has escalated following the 7 July 2012 elections; 
extremists with unknown affiliations are likely targeting 
foreign and government interests following Islamist groups' 
poor showing in the elections. Degraded security, which follows 
recent efforts to establish a regular police force in Benghazi, 
is also likely a factor.''\525\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \525\J2--Intelligence and Knowledge Development, Theater In-Brief, 
U.S. Africa Command, Aug. 1, 2012.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The same day, the Central Intelligence Agency issued its 
assessment of an attack on the Libyan military intelligence 
agency headquartered in Benghazi. The Central Intelligence 
Agency reported:

        [T]he attack yesterday against the Libyan military 
        intelligence headquarters in Benghazi underscores how 
        unidentified assailants are exploiting the permissive 
        security environment to conduct surveillance and 
        attacks. . . . We do not know who was responsible for 
        the strike, and most of the recent attacks do not 
        appear to be linked.\526\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \526\Libya: Recent Attacks Highlight Persistent Threats in Eastern 
Libya, Office of Terrorism Analysis, Cent. Intel. Agency, Aug. 1, 2012.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The assessment restated:

        [Redacted text].\527\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \527\Id.

    On August 15, 2012, AFRICOM reported the ``threat from 
extremist groups in Libya remains significant to Western 
interests.''\528\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \528\J2-Intelligence and Knowledge Development, Theater In-Brief, 
U.S. Africa Command, Aug. 15, 2012.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On August 19, 2012 the Defense Intelligence Agency reported 
[redacted text].''\529\ The Defense Intelligence Agency 
assessed:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \529\Libya: Terrorists to Increase Strength During Next Six Months, 
Defense Intel. Agency, Aug.19, 2012.

        [Redacted text].\530\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \530\Id.

    On August 23, 2012, the Central Intelligence Agency 
published an assessment finding ``Al-Qa'ida-affiliated groups 
and Libyan militias with extremist ties increasingly are 
exploiting the permissive security environment in Libya--
particularly in the east--to establish training camps, 
providing these groups with controlled areas in which to 
improve their operational capabilities.''\531\ The Central 
Intelligence Agency's assessment noted again ``the 
proliferation of training camps in eastern Libya is likely to 
continue unabated absent significant improvements in the 
technical capabilities, source networks, and infrastructure 
[redacted text].''\532\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \531\Libya: Proliferation of Training Camps Aiding Extremist 
Networks, Office of Terrorism Analysis, Cent. Intel. Agency, Aug. 23, 
2012.
    \532\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On August 27, 2012 the Central Intelligence Agency was 
reporting:

        Al-Qa'ida in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is 
        weaving itself into a variety of Libyan extremist 
        circles almost certainly to encourage neighboring 
        extremists to work in concert toward shared goals and 
        increase its influence there. We assess [redacted 
        text], that AQIM seeks a durable presence in Libya 
        because it views itself as the natural jihadist leader 
        for North Africa [redacted text].\533\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \533\Terrorism: AQIM Growing Diverse Network in Libya, Office of 
Terrorism Analysis, Cent. Intel. Agency, Aug. 27, 2012.

    On August 29, 2012, the Central Intelligence Agency painted 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Libya as a country in chaos, reporting:

        [A]ttacks by disparate individuals and groups since 
        April against foreign and government targets in Libya 
        underscore Tripoli's inability to prevent and respond 
        to assassinations, bombings, and kidnappings. This 
        violence highlights the magnitude of reform challenges 
        facing the new government. [redacted text].\534\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \534\Libya: Struggling to Create Effective Domestic Security 
Systems, Office of Middle East and North Africa Analysis, Cent. Intel. 
Agency, Aug. 29, 2012.

    On September 5, 2012, AFRICOM reported ``Libya-based 
extremists continue to fuel regional terror groups' operations 
outside the country through training, recruitment, and 
facilitation. Libya-based extremists, most notably al-Qa'ida 
and its adherents, will continue efforts to establish 
themselves in Libya, taking advantage of the chaotic security 
environment. Unimpeded these groups may become capable of 
planning and launching terrorist attacks abroad.''\535\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \535\J2-Intelligence and Knowledge Development, Libya: Extremism in 
Libya, Past, Present, and Future, U.S. Africa Command, Sept. 5, 2012.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    AFRICOM further highlighted a [redacted text]\536\ ``The 
report stated the best case scenario in Libya was a 'Divided 
al-Qaida Organization.'"\537\ ``AFRICOM assessed 'this scenario 
is likely only if the Western-backed Libyan government is able 
to effectively disarm extremist militias and exercise control 
over the majority of Libyan territory.'"\538\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \536\Id.
    \537\Id.
    \538\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The intelligence community's assessment depicted Libya, 
eastern Libya, and Benghazi as emerging terrorists' strongholds 
posing a threat to Western interests. Even with two IED attacks 
on the State Department's compound, senior government officials 
believed more intelligence was needed before any step could be 
taken to strengthen security at the United States facilities in 
Benghazi.
    The Secretary told the Committee although she was fully 
briefed and aware of the dangers in Libya ``there was no 
actionable intelligence on September 11 or even before that 
date about any kind of planned attack on our compound in 
Benghazi.''\539\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \539\Clinton Testimony at 41-42.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Kennedy told the Committee ``with additional information, 
we would have known--we would have known more, we would have 
executed a different security program, because the risks would 
have been pegged at a higher level.''\540\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \540\Kennedy Testimony at 169-170.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    It is not clear what additional intelligence would have 
satisfied either Kennedy or the Secretary in understanding the 
Benghazi Mission compound was at risk--short of an attack. The 
intelligence on which Kennedy and the Secretary were briefed 
daily was clear and pointed--Al Qa'ida, al Qa'ida like groups, 
and other regional extremists took refuge in the security 
vacuum created by the Libya government and its inability to 
take command of the security situation.
    It is these same groups that were responsible for the spate 
of attacks against Western interests throughout the spring and 
summer of 2012. Yet, the risks to the State Department compound 
in Benghazi were never mitigated. They were only exacerbated by 
the fact senior officials within the State Department failed to 
prepare for a worst case scenario in Benghazi. The Benghazi 
Mission compound not only lacked the resources to ensure the 
facility physically was secure but failed to ensure enough 
security personnel were on the ground to carry out the security 
program.
    The volume of intelligence regarding extremist activities 
in eastern Libya in the spring and summer of 2012, in addition 
to the spate of attacks by these groups against Western 
interests in Benghazi, was substantial. This intelligence was 
provided regularly--if not daily--to Kennedy, the Secretary, 
and others who made decisions with respect to Libya policy and 
the security of the Benghazi Mission compound and should have 
manifested substantial risk that could readily have been 
inferred.
    Although this intelligence was available, the analysis was 
not directed to potential direct threats to U.S. personnel in 
Libya or Benghazi or the potential consequences of having that 
many extremists in Libya with respect to U.S. interests.

                           PRE-ATTACK WARNING

    In his interview with the Committee, Panetta bluntly stated 
his view ``an intelligence failure'' occurred with respect to 
Benghazi.\541\ Former CIA Deputy Director Michael J. Morell 
also acknowledged multiple times an intelligence failure did in 
fact occur in this respect prior to the Benghazi attacks.\542\ 
This was not necessarily the result of one or two specific 
instances of inaction, but instead reflected a general lack of 
planning for a post-Qaddafi environment that began with the 
U.S. intervention in Libya.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \541\Testimony of Leon E. Panetta, Sec'y of Def., U.S. Dep't of 
Def., Tr. at 111 (Jan. 8, 2016) [hereinafter Panetta Testimony] (on 
file with the Committee).
    \542\Morell Testimony at 82-83; Morell Testimony at 211-212; Morell 
Testimony at 277.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    After the fall of Qadhafi, both the NATO Secretary General 
and the President explained that democracy-building efforts 
would be up to the Libyans\543\--justified by language in 
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973, prohibiting 
the presence of an ``occupying force'' in Libya.\544\ NATO 
declared it was concluding the operation ``in a considered and 
controlled manner,'' yet acknowledged ``they [Libyans] still 
have a lot of work to do--to build a new Libya, based on 
reconciliation, human rights, and the rule of law.''\545\ NATO 
demonstrated a hands-off approach to post-conflict 
stabilization, leaving Libyans to sort out post-conflict 
stabilization.\546\ At the same time, the President praised the 
alliance on its successes in Libya, but stated the TNC, the 
nominally sovereign governing authority of the new Libya, would 
manage Libya's post-conflict governance and democracy-building 
effort.\547\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \543\Although Tom Donilon set up a post-Qadhafi task force to 
handle issues relating to post-conflict strategy, the group became 
entrenched with managing the intervention and unable to devote time to 
extensive stabilization planning. It did produce plans in conjunction 
with a Libyan reconstruction team, but it was unclear to what extent 
the plans were used. See Christopher S.Chivvis, Toppling Qaddafi at: 
Libya and the Limits of Liberal Intervention 143-44. (2014) 
[hereinafter Chivvis, Toppling Qaddafi].
    \544\Id. at 60; see also Aaron David Miller, Obama's 21st Century 
War, Foreign Policy (Apr. 5, 2011), http://www.foreignpolicy.com/
articles/2011/04/05/obamas_21st_century_war.
    \545\Press Release, NATO, NATO Sec'y Gen. Statement on the End of 
Libya Mission (Oct. 28, 2011), http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/
news_80052.htm.
    \546\Chivvis, Toppling Qaddafi, supra note 522, at 164-68.
    \547\Lucy Madison, Obama Congratulates Libya on Liberation, CBS 
News (Oct. 23, 2011), http://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-congratulates-
libya-on-liberation. Despite the fact that the Administration justified 
the intervention under the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect, 
advocates for this approach such as Samantha Power, Secretary Clinton, 
and Susan Rice failed to act on rhetoric from those who helped write 
the U.N.'s 2001 Responsibility to Protect Report. Authors of the report 
emphasized that the doctrine embraced the ``responsibility to 
rebuild.'' See Jayshree Bajoria & Robert McMahon, The Dilemma of 
Humanitarian Intervention, Backgrounder, Council on Foreign Relations 
(June 12, 2013), http://www.cfr.org/humanitarian-intervention/dilemma-
humanitarian-intervention/p16524.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The TNC proved unable to exercise meaningful control over 
the country.\548\ After the conflict, Libya faced a growing 
number of kata'ibas--armed rebel groups not connected with 
rebels in Benghazi.\549\ The rise of these groups distorted 
efforts to govern from Benghazi, and led to factions within the 
nation's leadership as a whole.\550\ With tens of thousands of 
Libyans dead and hundreds of thousands displaced,\551\ the 
country needed new a constitution, civil, social, and political 
institutions, economic management, and management of its oil 
wealth.\552\ As NATO and its partners left Libya, some 
questioned whether the destruction in Libya would translate 
into compromising regional security.\553\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \548\See, e.g., Chivvis, Toppling Qaddafi, supra note 522, at 183; 
William Maclean, If Libyan Rebels Win, Can They Rule?, Reuters, (Aug. 
21, 2011, available at), http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/08/21/
idINIndia-58891320110821 (last visited Feb. 18, 2016); Jason Pack & 
Haley Cook, Beyond Tripoli's Grasp, Majalla, (Oct. 3, 2013, available 
at), http://www.majalla.com/eng/2013/10/article55245761 (last visited 
Feb. 18, 2016).
    \549\Chivvis, Toppling Qaddafi, supra note 522, at 94-95, 183. 
After the conflict, the State Department was more concerned with 
Security Council politics in the debate on how to respond to the war 
than transferring frozen Qaddafi regime funds to the TNC for post-
conflict stabilization. See id. at 164.
    \550\Id.; e.g., Armed Groups in Libya: Typology & Roles, Small Arms 
Survey, Research Notes (June 2012), available at
    http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/H-Research_Notes/
SAS-Research-Note-18.pdf (last visited Feb. 18, 2016).
    \551\Biggest Success? NATO Proud of Libya Op Which Killed 
Thousands, RT (Oct. 28, 2011), http://rt.com/news/nato-libya-operation-
success-999/(last visited Feb. 18, 2016) [hereinafter NATO Proud of 
Libya Op]; Max Boot, Libya's problems are far from over, L.A. Times 
(Aug. 24, 2011), http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/24/opinion/la-oe-
boot-libya-20110824.
    \552\Jayshree Bajoria, The Perils of Libyan Nation Building, World 
Post, (Apr. 7, 2011), http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jayshree-bajoria/
the-perils-of-libyan-nati_b_846080.html.
    \553\NATO Proud of Libya Op, supra note 529.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Obama Administration opted to forego the use of 
military forces to stabilize a post-civil war Libya--an 
approach described by former Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan 
as exercising ``bad judgment.''\554\ The State Department 
exercised its own version of a light footprint, ``expeditionary 
diplomacy,'' in an attempt to quickly normalize its presence in 
a country with institutions devastated by more than 40 years of 
dictatorship, regional strife, and war.\555\ The administration 
also chose to forego post-war planning.\556\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \554\Mike Krever, West Should Have Put Boots on the Ground in 
Libya, Says Former Prime Minister, CNN (Mar. 25, 2014), http://
amanpour.blogs.cnn.com/2014/03/25/west-should-have-put-boots-on-the-
ground-in-libya-says-former-prime-minister. See also Raphael Cohen & 
Gabriel Scheinmann, Lessons from Libya: America Can't Lead From Behind, 
Time (Feb. 15, 2014), http://ideas.time.com/2014/02/15/lessons-from-
libya-america-cant-lead-from-behind/; Stanley Kurtz, Assessing Libya, 
Nat'l Review Online (Aug. 22, 2011), http://www.nationalreview.com/
corner/275181/assessing-libya-stanley-kurtz.
    \555\Fred Burton & Samuel Katz, 40 Minutes in Benghazi, Vanity 
Fair, (Aug. 2013), http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2013/08/Benghazi-
book-fred-burton-samuel-m-katz.
    \556\Chivvis, Toppling Qaddafi, supra note 522, at 143-46.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In the aftermath of a multilateral intervention, Libya has 
erupted into chaos, with both al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of 
Iraq and the Levant using Libya as a safehaven.\557\ While the 
Secretary of State testified, without specifics, there were a 
``number of documents'' prepared regarding planning for a post-
Qadhafi Libya,\558\ Morell said otherwise:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \557\Pamela Engel, How one major failure allowed ISIS to exploit 
the chaos in its newest hotspot, Business Insider (Jan. 27, 2016), 
http://www.businessinsider.com/isis-libya-rise-2016-1.
    \558\The U.S. House Select Committee on Benghazi, Hearing 4--Part 
1: Testimony from Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton--10/22/2015 
(EventID=104082), YouTube (Oct. 22, 2015), https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=ABFWjZxCAAg; The U.S. House Select Committee on Benghazi, 
Hearing 4--Part 2: Testimony from Former Secretary of State Hillary 
Clinton--
10/22/2015 (EventID=104082), YouTube (Oct. 22, 2015), http://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hvl1LpZp3Q [collectively hereinafter Benghazi 
Hearing 4].

        One of the problems was not going into it with a very 
        detailed plan for how you were going to maintain 
        stability . . . We never really had a conversation 
        around the table about `what's going to happen, how's 
        it going to look?' The intelligence community never 
        wrote that paper . . . That conversation was not as 
        rich and rigorous as it should have been.\559\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \559\Michael Hirsh, `Here's What I Really Worry About,' Politico 
(May 11, 2015), http://www.pollitico.com/magazine/story/2015/05/
Michael-Morell-interview-cia-impending-terror-attack-
117821#ixzz4BHB4izvu.

    That view is supported by Anne Marie Slaughter, former 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Director of Policy Planning, State Department, when she wrote:

        It is so much easier to pound our chests and declare 
        that the United States bestrides the world like a 
        colossus and should be able to dictate any outcome it 
        wants. That is no longer true, if it ever were. We 
        found that out the hard way by . . . toppling a 
        government in Libya without any idea of what might come 
        next.\560\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \560\Anne Marie Slaughter, War with Iran is the only alternative to 
a deal, USA Today (Aug. 20, 2015), http://www.usatoday.com/story/
opinion/2015/08/20/bombing-iran-only-alternative-deal-column/31940869/
(emphasis added).

    Morell told the Committee Libya was unique among countries 
involved in the Arab Spring because it was the only place where 
the United States made a choice to push the Arab Spring 
forward.\561\ As a result, according to Morell, the 
intelligence community should have furnished the President a 
plan projecting likely conditions in Libya after the fall of 
Qadhafi.\562\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \561\Morell Testimony at 82.
    \562\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Morell attributes the failure to provide predictive 
intelligence to multiple parties across the spectrum: the 
intelligence analysts, the leadership of the intelligence 
community, and even the decisionmakers--including the President 
and the Secretary of State--for not asking those questions and 
fostering a conversation about what would need to be done to 
maintain stability in a post-Qadhafi Libya.\563\ The Secretary 
pushed back on this point when she testified: ``[W]e can do all 
the planning we want in Washington, but it's very important to 
ask the Libyans both what they want and what they expect from 
us, and so we had an ongoing dialogue that lasted over many 
months.''\564\ Her testimony, however, referred to the events 
after Qadhafi fell, (for example, Nides visited Libya in 
January 2012, nearly a year after the initial U.S. 
intervention) and not prior to the U.S. intervention.\565\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \563\Id. at 83.
    \564\Clinton Testimony at 177.
    \565\See Request for SST Extension from U.S. Embassy Tripoli, 
Libya, to Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State (Feb. 12, 2012, 11:58 PM) 
(on file with the Committee, SCB0049743-48).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In describing this intelligence failure, Morell described 
to the Committee an additional ``intelligence analytic 
issue.''\566\ He noted that in authoritarian societies, such as 
Qadhafi-era Libya, the personality of the leader is 
``everything,'' personal relationships with individuals in the 
rest of the government are ``everything,'' and institutions in 
that government are all personality-based.\567\ The 
institutions themselves are empty without the leadership, and 
when the leader goes away, the institutions simply break 
down.\568\ Morell contended the Intelligence Community did not 
fully appreciate these factors in the case of Libya.\569\ 
Instead, as he noted, the U.S. instead viewed itself as a 
``beacon of democracy'' without understanding what was next:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \566\Morell Testimony at 277.
    \567\Id.
    \568\Id.
    \569\Id.

        It's ingrained in us, this desire to spread democracy 
        to the rest of the world. I think people's weaknesses 
        flow from their strengths, in organizations and 
        countries. One of our strengths is seeing ourselves as 
        a beacon for democracy. It becomes a weakness when we 
        try to impose it on societies that aren't ready for it. 
        I think of Iraq, Gaza, Afghanistan and Libya. I think 
        it's probably both a failure of intelligence and a 
        failure of policy, in two different 
        administrations.\570\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \570\Here's What I really Worry About, supra note [559] (emphasis 
added).

    While the CIA took this dangerous security environment 
seriously--they sent out a physical security specialist to 
review its compound in Benghazi and apply immediate upgrades--
this analysis all occurred too late to enact meaningful change 
inside Libya and prevent this threat from emerging and 
eventually establishing a stranglehold on the country. No 
predictive analysis occurred within the intelligence community 
on the front end of the U.S. intervention regarding what might 
occur if Qadhafi were to lose power. No assessment was made 
that a power void may be exploited by al Qa'ida and other 
extremist organizations, and it was this front-end intelligence 
failure that contributed to the Benghazi attacks.
    An additional critical question is why the United States 
did not have a specific, tactical warning about the attack. 
Morell addressed this issue when he spoke of what he calls 
``battlefield intelligence'':

        . . . so that you're picking up everything, from a 
        signals perspective and from a humint [human 
        intelligence] perspective. I think the only way to have 
        avoided Benghazi is to have that kind of intelligence 
        footprint over the top of them . . . the real lesson 
        about Benghazi is how do we protect American diplomats, 
        how do we protect American intelligence officers, how 
        do we protect American servicemen and women overseas 
        moving forward, in what is a very, very dangerous 
        world.\571\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \571\Counterterrorism Efforts, C-Span (May 18, 2015), http://www.c-
span.org/video/?326104-1/former-cia-deputy-director-michael-morell-
counterterrorism-efforts&start=1060.

    Secretary Leon Panetta, himself a former Director of the 
CIA, also testified about the failure in Benghazi to have the 
kind of intelligence that would have tipped off U.S. personnel 
about a specific attack.\572\ Panetta labeled this the ``most 
important missing element'' regarding Benghazi,\573\ and said 
it should be the first lesson learned about the attacks--
improving the intelligence to make sure our personnel are aware 
there is going to be an imminent attack.\574\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \572\See Panetta Testimony at 119-20.
    \573\Id. at 71-72.
    \574\Id. at 119-20.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    This issue is discussed further in the classified annex to 
the report, as well as addressing the question of why U.S. 
government officials did not have what proved to be sufficient, 
specific, tactical warning about the Benghazi attacks.
    The day before the Benghazi attacks, the President convened 
a phone call with senior administration officials concerning 
America's preparedness and security posture on the anniversary 
of the September 11, 2001 attacks.\575\ A readout of the 
meeting notes the ``[p]rincipals discussed specific measures we 
are taking in the Homeland to prevent 9/11 related attacks as 
well as steps taken to protect U.S. persons and facilities 
abroad, as well as force protection.''\576\ Panetta testified 
there was concern on the call about the anti-Muslim video that 
was coming out, and there was a specific discussion regarding 
Tripoli, among other cities in the region.\577\ Given the lack 
of any pre-attack force movement toward North Africa and the 
Middle East in the wake of the call--especially given the 
concerns about the video and the forewarning regarding protests 
in Cairo\578\--there appeared to be no indications an attack in 
Benghazi, or anywhere else in the region, was anticipated.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \575\Press Release, The White House Office of the Press Secretary, 
The White House, Readout of the President's Meeting with Senior 
Administration Officials on Our Preparedness and 
Security Posture on the Eleventh Anniversary of September 11th (Sept. 
10, 2012), https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/09/10/
readout-president-s-meeting-senior-
administration-officials-our-prepared.
    \576\Id.
    \577\Panetta Testimony at 10.
    \578\Id. at 10-11.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Nevertheless, on the morning of September 11, one of the 
local guards at the TMF witnessed a man, believed to be a 
police officer, in the second story of a building across the 
street looking into the State Department facility and taking 
photographs.\579\ Stevens was briefed about the incident,\580\ 
and Sean Smith referenced the incident just hours before the 
attacks began on an online gaming site.\581\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \579\Diplomatic Sec. Agent 5 Testimony at 93.
    \580\Email from Assistant Regional Sec. Officer (Sept. 11, 2012, 
5:00 pm) (on file with the Committee, C05271656).
    \581\The posting by Sean Smith read, ``Assuming we don't die 
tonight. We saw one of our `police' that guard the compound taking 
pictures.'' See, e.g., Lindsay Wise, Libya attack victim: `assuming we 
don't die tonight . . . ,' Seattle Times, Sept. 13, 2012.

                                PART IV:

              Compliance with Congressional Investigations

``But now that I am the secretary and I am responsible to you 
and the Congress, I can promise you that if you're not getting 
something that you have evidence of or you think you ought to 
be getting, we'll work with you. And I will appoint somebody to 
work directly with you starting tomorrow . . . To have a review 
of anything you don't think you [have] gotten that you're 
supposed to get. Let's get this done with, folks.''

                        Secretary of State John F. Kerry (April 
                        2013--one
                        year before the creation of the Select 
                        Committee on
                        complying with congressional questions 
                        about the
                        Benghazi attacks.)

``This is the most transparent administration in history.''

                        President Barack Obama (February 2013)

``Four Americans lost their lives in Benghazi, and this White 
House has gone to extraordinary lengths to mislead, obstruct, 
and obscure what actually took place.''

                        Speaker John A. Boehner (May 2014--
                        after the White
                        House failed to produce Benjamin J. 
                        Rhodes' memo
                        to Congress.)

``I want the public to see my email.''

                        Secretary Hillary R. Clinton (March 
                        2015--after
                        published reports her emails and other 
                        public records
                        were returned to the State Department 
                        18 months
                        after she left office.)

                COMPLIANCE WITH CONGRESSIONAL OVERSIGHT

                              Introduction

    Congress's authority to oversee and investigate the 
Executive Branch is a necessary component of legislative powers 
and to maintain the constitutional balance of powers between 
the branches. As the Supreme Court held in 1927: ``[T]he power 
of inquiry--with process to enforce it--is an essential and 
appropriate auxiliary to the legislative function.''\1\ 
Similarly, the Supreme Court held: ``The power of the Congress 
to conduct investigations is inherent in the legislative 
process. That power is broad. It encompasses inquiries 
concerning the administration of existing laws as well as 
proposed or possibly needed statutes.''\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\McGrain v. Daugherty, 273 U.S. 135, 174 (1927).
    \2\Watkins v. United States, 354 U.S. 178, 187 (1957).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    When needed information cannot easily be obtained--or if 
government agencies resist--Congress has legitimate cause to 
compel responses:

        A legislative body cannot legislate wisely or 
        effectively in the absence of information respecting 
        the conditions which the legislation is intended to 
        affect or change, and where the legislative body does 
        not itself possess the requisite information--which not 
        infrequently is true--recourse must be had to others 
        who do possess it. Experience has taught that mere 
        requests for such information often are unavailing, and 
        also that information which is volunteered is not 
        always accurate or complete, so some means of 
        compulsion are essential to obtain what is needed.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \3\McGrain, 273 U.S. at 175.

    These principles of congressional oversight have been 
severely tested during the Committee's investigation. The 
administration's frequently stated pledge to comply with ``all 
legitimate oversight requests'' is often a hollow prelude 
followed by delay or refusal to respond to legitimate 
inquiries. Other congressional committees have reported similar 
delay and obstruction.\4\ The administration's resistance to 
this Committee has been especially troubling. The families of 
the four Americans murdered in Benghazi and the American public 
deserve to hear the whole truth in a timely fashion. The same 
government that asked J. Christopher Stevens, Sean P. Smith, 
Glen A. Doherty and Tyrone S. Woods to serve selflessly and 
sacrificially delayed and obstructed an investigation into what 
happened in Benghazi before, during, and after their deaths.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \4\http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/02/09/obama-
administration-least-transparent-epa-state-doj-clinton-benghazi-column/
80050428.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The discussion below details the Select Committee's two-
year battle to obtain documents and access to witnesses 
necessary to understand what happened in Benghazi. The 
administration's intentional failure to cooperate with this and 
other congressional investigations warrants changes in 
congressional rules and amendments to law in order to ensure 
the Executive Branch cooperates with congressional 
investigations and the American people know what their 
government does on their behalf and with their money.
    The House of Representatives established the Committee in 
large part because of this administration's delay and 
obstruction of prior congressional investigations.\5\ The House 
specifically directed the Committee to examine ``executive 
branch activities and efforts to comply with Congressional 
inquiries'' into the Benghazi terrorist attacks and to 
recommend ways to improve Executive Branch compliance with 
congressional oversight.\6\ The detailed nature of this section 
is intended to reflect the breadth of the Committee's 
investigation and the lengths to which the administration went 
to delay and obstruct the investigation. It also provides a 
factual record so readers can judge for themselves the 
responsiveness of Executive Branch agencies and how this lack 
of responsiveness not only thwarted efforts to find facts but 
also contributed to the time it took to acquire those facts 
ultimately uncovered.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \5\Eli Lake, Clinton Can Thank Obama for Her Benghazi Headache, 
Bloomberg (Oct. 6, 2015), http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-
10-06/clinton-can-thank-obama-for-her-benghazi-headache.
    \6\See H. Res. 567, 113th Cong., Sec. 3(a)(6) and (7) (2014).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                    Building the Committee's Record

    The discovery and production of all relevant, material 
documents--and other tangible evidentiary items--is an 
essential foundation for substantive hearings, public and 
private, as well as constructive witness interviews. Examining 
witnesses without knowledge of and access to all relevant 
information is unproductive, time consuming, and inefficient. 
The logical chronology of serious investigations is to gather 
physical evidence and documents prior to questioning witnesses. 
Not only do the documents serve as a source and foundation for 
the subsequent interview, they also provide witnesses with the 
information needed to refresh recollections or put testimony in 
perspective. Serious investigators understand the logical 
chronology of access and interview. Regrettably, so too do 
those seeking to undermine investigations.

                      REVIEW OF EXISTING DOCUMENTS

    When established in May 2014, the Committee--consistent 
with the directive in H. Res. 567--sought to obtain all 
relevant documents from the five House committees previously 
investigating the terrorist attacks on U.S. facilities in 
Benghazi.\7\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \7\See id. Sec. 5(a) (``Any committee of the House of 
Representatives having custody of records in any form relating to the 
matters described in section 3 shall transfer such records to the 
Select Committee within 14 days of the adoption of this resolution. 
Such records shall become the records of the Select Committee.'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    While previous committees of Congress did investigate 
certain aspects of Benghazi, no committee investigated all 
aspects of Benghazi. The House Armed Services Committee focused 
on Defense Department matters and relied almost exclusively on 
briefings and public hearings. The Armed Services Committee did 
not investigate State Department issues, intelligence community 
issues or White House involvement in the drafting and editing 
of the public responses after the attacks. The House Permanent 
Intelligence Committee focused on intelligence issues and did 
not investigate Defense or State Department issues. 
Additionally, the Intelligence Committee interviewed some 
witnesses in groups, which is generally disfavored as an 
investigatory tool.
    The Accountability Review Board [ARB] was a State 
Department investigative entity which did not have jurisdiction 
over the Defense Department, the Central Intelligence Agency 
[CIA], or the White House. In addition, there is no transcript 
from any interview conducted by the ARB, making it impossible 
to know which questions were asked, of whom, and what the 
precise responses were. The absence of transcripts requires the 
reader to simply take the word of those drafting the report.
    The failure to honor congressional requests for information 
and the silo effect of committees being confined to certain 
jurisdictional lanes is what prompted John A. Boehner, Speaker 
of the House, and ultimately the House of Representatives, to 
form a select committee with broad investigatory authority 
across all jurisdictions and across all facets of what happened 
in Benghazi before, during and after the deadly attacks.
    The Select Committee's broader jurisdiction is reflected in 
the fact this Committee interviewed 107 witnesses, 81 of whom 
had not been questioned previously by any committee of 
Congress. These witnesses came from all parts of government, 
including the White House, the CIA and Defense and State 
Departments. It is reflected in the more than 75,000 pages of 
new documents to which no other committee of Congress had 
access. In addition, the Committee's investigation discovered 
emails not previously uncovered from senior government 
officials including the emails of Stevens and of Hillary R. 
Clinton, the Secretary of State, and her senior staff.
    When the Committee came into existence in May 2014, it 
accessed approximately 50,000 pages of reports, interview 
transcripts, depositions, hearing transcripts, memoranda, 
classified and unclassified documents, and other information 
not cited or used by the standing committees in their 
investigations.\8\ The Committee reviewed and evaluated the 
documents page by page.\9\ This review took place from July 
2014 to October 2014.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \8\Chairman Trey Gowdy, Interim Progress Update, H. Select Comm. on 
Benghazi 3 (May 8, 2015), http://benghazi.house.gov/sites/
republicans.benghazi.house.gov/files/Interim%20Progress
%20Update%2005-08-15.pdf. [hereinafter Interim Progress Update].
    \9\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Among these materials--many of which were duplicates--were 
25,000 pages so heavily redacted as to be useless to 
investigators.\10\ This prompted the Committee to ask the State 
Department to reproduce the material in less-redacted form.\11\ 
The resulting document productions were delivered in two 
installments--November 24, 2014, and December 9, 2014.\12\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \10\Id.
    \11\See Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on 
Benghazi, to Julia E. Frifield, Assistant Sec'y of State for Legis. 
Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, (Sept. 30, 2014) (on file with the 
Committee).
    \12\Letter from Julia E. Frifield, Assistant Sec'y of State for 
Legis. Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select 
Comm. on Benghazi (Nov. 24, 2014) (on file with the Committee); Letter 
from Julia E. Frifield, Assistant Sec'y of State for Legis. Affairs, 
U.S. Dep't of State, to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on 
Benghazi (Dec. 9, 2014) (on file with the Committee).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
         INITIAL DOCUMENT REQUESTS TO EXECUTIVE BRANCH AGENCIES

    The Committee also sought information through the pending 
document requests of previous committees. The State Department 
had yet to comply with two outstanding congressional subpoenas 
issued in 2013--one subpoena dealt specifically with ARB 
documents.\13\ The other subpoena dealt with documents 
previously reviewed by congressional investigators but 
possession of the documents remained with the State Department 
limiting full and useful access to the information.\14\ These 
subpoenas were and remained legally binding on the State 
Department and did not need to be reissued at that time.\15\ 
Since those existing subpoenas remained valid, the Committee 
gave them priority.\16\ The State Department produced 15,000 
pages of new documents to the Committee on August 11, 2014.\17\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \13\Subpoena issued by H. Comm. on Oversight & Gov't Reform to John 
F. Kerry, Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State (Aug. 1, 2013) 
[hereinafter OGR Document subpoena] (seeking approximately 25,000 pages 
of documents referenced in Assistant Sec'y Thomas Gibbons' March 29, 
2013 letter).
    \14\Subpoena issued by H. Comm. on Oversight & Gov't Reform to John 
F. Kerry, Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State (Aug. 1, 2013) 
[hereinafter OGR ARB Subpoena] (seeking documents related to State 
Dep't's ARB findings regarding the facts and circumstances surrounding 
the attacks in Benghazi).
    \15\Interim Progress Update, supra note 8, at 4.
    \16\Id.
    \17\Letter from Julia E. Frifield, Assistant Sec'y of State for 
Legis. Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select 
Comm. on Benghazi (Aug. 11, 2014) (on file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    A review of these 15,000 pages of emails and documents, 
coupled with the 25,000 pages of less-redacted text, revealed 
significant gaps in the information needed to determine what 
happened in Libya before, during and after the attacks that led 
to the murder of four Americans. For instance, this production 
contained few emails between and among the State Department's 
senior staff. The email traffic did not reflect roles played in 
the decision-making process as it related to the U.S.'s 
intervention into Libya in 2011, the Special Mission to 
Benghazi in April 2011, the extension of the Benghazi Mission 
into 2012, the night and early morning hours of September 11-
12, 2012, and the post-attack period. Moreover, there were 
significant gaps in information that could be filled only by 
interviewing eyewitnesses and other individuals on the ground 
in Benghazi as well as witnesses who were in Washington DC in 
the days and months leading up to the attacks on September 11-
12, 2012.
    On November 18, 2014, the Committee sought specific 
documents and communications relating to Benghazi and Libya for 
11 top State Department officials, including the Secretary and 
her senior staff.\18\ The Committee also requested to interview 
more than 20 State Department witnesses, all of whom spent time 
on the ground in Benghazi, including four diplomatic security 
agents who survived the September 11-12 attacks.\19\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \18\Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, 
to John F. Kerry, Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State, (Nov. 18, 2014) 
(on file with Committee).
    \19\See Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on 
Benghazi, to John F. Kerry, Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State (Dec. 
4, 2014) (on file with the Committee) (The first of two similarly cited 
letters requesting interviews of four agents serving in Benghazi the 
night of the attacks); see also Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. 
Select Comm. on Benghazi, to John F. Kerry, Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't 
of State (Dec. 4, 2014) (on file with the Committee) (The second of two 
similarly cited letters requesting interviews of eighteen agents and 
principal officers who served in Benghazi).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Committee sent information requests in the fall of 2014 
to the CIA, the National Security Agency, the Defense 
Intelligence Agency, and the Office of the Director of National 
Intelligence.\20\ In December 2014, the Committee sent 
information requests to the Federal Bureau of Investigation 
[FBI] and the White House.\21\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \20\See Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on 
Benghazi, to John O. Brennan, Dir., Cent. Intel. Agency (Nov. 19, 2014) 
(on file with the Committee); Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. 
Select Comm. on Benghazi, to Michael S. Rogers, Dir., Nat'l Sec. Agency 
(Nov. 19, 2014) (on file with the Committee); Letter from Trey Gowdy, 
Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, to David R. Shedd, acting Dir., 
Def. Intel. Agency (Nov. 19, 2014) (on file with the Committee); Letter 
from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, to James R. 
Clapper, Dir., Nat'l Intel. (Nov. 19, 2014) (on file with the 
Committee).
    \21\See Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on 
Benghazi, to James B. Comey, Jr., Dir., Fed. Bureau of Investigation 
(Dec. 4, 2014) (on file with the Committee); Letter from Trey Gowdy, 
Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, to Denis R. McDonough, White 
House Chief of Staff (Dec. 29, 2014) (on file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Committee issued three additional subpoenas to the 
State Department (detailed below) and made nine individual 
document requests.\22\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \22\See Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on 
Benghazi, to John F. Kerry, Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State (July 
31, 2015) (on file with Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Committee document requests resulted in approximately 
75,420 pages of new material:

     LThe State Department produced approximately 
71,640 pages of documents not previously provided to Congress.

     LThe CIA produced 300 pages of new intelligence 
analyses.

     LThe White House produced 1,450 pages of emails.

     LSidney S. Blumenthal produced 179 pages of 
emails.

     LThe FBI produced 200 pages of documents.

     LThe Defense Department produced 900 pages of 
documents.

     LThe National Security Agency produced 750 pages 
of documents.

    It is important to rebut a frequent talking point. The 
number of documents produced is in isolation meaningless 
without knowing the relevance of the documents actually 
produced and the number of relevant documents not produced. An 
agency that compliments itself on the number of pages provided 
to investigators when it alone knows the number of relevant 
pages withheld is engaged in propaganda, not transparency.

                MEETINGS, BRIEFINGS, AND PUBLIC HEARINGS

    The Committee's first priority was to hear from the 
families of the four murdered Americans in the Benghazi 
attacks.\23\ These meetings offered the families an opportunity 
to be heard, to pose questions and concerns to the Committee, 
and to provide their insights. The Chairman also requested 
briefings from agencies to discuss survivorship benefits to 
ensure the families received the benefits to which they were 
entitled.\24\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \23\Interim Progress Update, supra note 8, at 3.
    \24\Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, 
and Elijah E. Cummings, Ranking Member, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi to 
John F. Kerry, Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State and John O. Brennan, 
Dir., Cent. Intel. Agency (October 8, 2014) (on file with the 
Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Committee held more than two dozen classified and 
unclassified briefings with Executive Branch agencies.\25\ For 
example, the Committee met with the State Department to 
evaluate the events prior to and during the September 11-12, 
2012, attacks, including viewing video footage of the 
attacks.\26\ The Committee also met with the Justice Department 
and the FBI on the capture of Ahmed Abu Khatalla and to view 
additional footage of the attacks.\27\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \25\Id.
    \26\Id.
    \27\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Committee held only four public hearings.\28\ The first 
and second public hearings--on September 17, 2014, and December 
1, 2014--examined the State Department's efforts to protect 
U.S. facilities and personnel currently serving abroad.\29\ 
Immediately following a significant event resulting in serious 
injury or loss of life, the State Department is required by law 
to convene an ARB to investigate and make findings and 
recommendations to protect against similar occurrences in the 
future.\30\ Consequently, the Committee's first hearing focused 
on the State Department's implementation of the ARB's 
recommendations as well as those recommendations issued by the 
Independent Panel on Best Practices. The Independent Panel 
consisted of independent experts who were asked to evaluate the 
State Department's security platforms in high-risk, high-threat 
posts.\31\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \28\H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, https://benghazi.house.gov/
hearings (last visited May 10, 2016).
    \29\Hearing 1 Before the H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, 113th 
Congress (2014), Hearing 2 Before the H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, 
113th Congress (2014).
    \30\See 22 U.S.C. Sec. 4831 (2005).
    \31\Independent Panel on Best Practices, Dep't of State, 1 (Aug. 
29, 2013).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Committee's second public hearing also allowed the 
Committee to examine the shortcomings identified by the State 
Department's Office of the Inspector General [OIG] and the 
Department's efforts to remedy these deficiencies.\32\ The 
OIG's first report, issued in September 2013, contained 20 
formal and eight informal recommendations.\33\ The OIG 
conducted a compliance follow-up review from January 15 through 
March 18, 2015,\34\ and in August 2015 reissued one 
recommendation to the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and the 
Overseas Buildings Operations.\35\ The OIG called on the State 
Department to ``develop minimum security standards that must be 
met prior to occupying facilities located in designated high 
risk, high threat locations and include these minimum standards 
for occupancy in the Foreign Affairs Handbook.''\36\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \32\Id.
    \33\See Office of Inspector Gen., U.S. Dep't of State, Special 
Review of the Accountability Review Board Process: Report No. ISP-I-13-
44A, 39-42 (Sept. 2013), https://oig.state.gov/system/files/214907.pdf.
    \34\See Office of Inspector Gen., U.S. Dep't of State, Compliance 
Followup Review of the Special Review of the Accountability Review 
Board Process: Report No. ISP-C-15-33, 39-42 (Aug. 2015), https://
oig.state.gov/system/files/isp-c-15-33.pdf.
    \35\Id.
    \36\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The third public hearing on January 27, 2015, was necessary 
because of continuing compliance problems with Executive Branch 
entities.\37\ The Committee's authorizing resolution directed 
it to:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \37\See Hearing 3 Before the H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, 114th 
Congress,(2015).

        ``[c]onduct a full and complete investigation and study 
        and issue a final report of its findings to the House 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        regarding:

           Lexecutive branch activities and efforts to 
        comply with Congressional inquiries into the attacks . 
        . .\38\ [and]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \38\H. Res. 567, 113th Cong., Sec. 3(a)(6) (2014).

           Lrecommendations for improving executive 
        branch cooperation and compliance with congressional 
        oversight and investigations . . .''\39\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \39\Id. Sec. 3(a)(7).

    The administration attempted to the narrow the Committee's 
investigation and repeatedly asked it to prioritize discovery 
requests.\40\ While the Committee refused to narrow its 
investigation--the scope of which was mandated by the House of 
Representatives--the Committee did accommodate the 
administration's requests to prioritize. This accommodation 
resulted in the administration disregarding discovery requests 
that were not prioritized and accusing the Committee of being 
preoccupied with the witnesses and documents that were 
prioritized.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \40\Meeting between H. Select Comm. on Benghazi staff and U.S. 
Dep't of State representatives (February 27, 2015). See also, email 
from Philip G. Kiko, Staff Director and Gen. Counsel, H. Select Comm. 
on Benghazi, to Julia Frifield, Ass't Sec'y of State, Legislative 
Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State (March 23, 2015, 6:50 PM) (on file with 
the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Committee's fourth public hearing was held on October 
22, 2015, to receive testimony of the Secretary, a necessary 
fact witness who oversaw the State Department before, during, 
and after the Benghazi terrorist attacks.\41\ The Secretary had 
yet to be examined by any investigative panel or congressional 
committee with access to her emails and other relevant 
information.\42\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \41\Hearing 4 Before the H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, 114th 
Congress (2015).
    \42\Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, 
to David E. Kendall, Of Counsel, Williams & Connolly LLP (Mar. 19, 
2015) (on file with the Committee). It is important to note that the 
Committee offered to take Secretary Clinton's testimony in an interview 
setting. The former Secretary elected to provide her testimony to the 
Committee in a public setting. See Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. 
Select Comm. on Benghazi to David E. Kendall, Of Counsel, Williams & 
Connolly LLP (Mar. 31, 2015) (on file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Committee's preference for private interviews over 
public hearings has been questioned. Interviews are a more 
efficient and effective means of discovery. Interviews allow 
witnesses to be questioned in depth by a highly prepared member 
or staff person. In a hearing, every member of a committee is 
recognized--usually for five minutes--a procedure which 
precludes in-depth focused questioning. Interviews also allow 
the Committee to safeguard the privacy of witnesses who may 
fear retaliation for cooperating or whose work requires 
anonymity, such as intelligence community operatives.
    Both witnesses and members of Congress conduct themselves 
differently in interviews than when in the public glare of a 
hearing. Neither have an incentive to play to the cameras. 
Witnesses have no incentive to run out the clock as long-winded 
evasive answers merely extend the length of the interview. 
Likewise, Members have no need to interrupt witnesses to try to 
ask all their questions in five minutes. Perhaps more 
importantly, political posturing, self-serving speeches, and 
theatrics serve no purpose in a closed interview and, as a 
result, the questioning in interviews tends to be far more 
effective at discovering information than at public hearings. 
For these reasons, nearly all Executive Branch investigations 
are conducted in private and without arbitrary time 
constraints. This is no less true in a Legislative Branch 
investigation, yet the manner in which the media portrays these 
investigations is starkly different.
    No witness interviewed by the Committee complained of poor 
treatment or a lack of professionalism during these interviews. 
In fact, witnesses who had no incentive to compliment the 
Committee did just that, such as Cheryl D. Mills, Chief of 
Staff and Counselor, State Department, and Huma M. Abedin, 
Deputy Chief of Staff, State Department.\43\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \43\Michael S. Schmidt, Cheryl Mills, Advisor to Hillary Clinton, 
Testifies on Benghazi and Email Practices, NY Times (September 3, 
2015), http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/04/us/hillary-clinton-email-
benghazi.html?_r=0.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                        The Department of State

    Notwithstanding the productions eventually made, the State 
Department's compliance posture toward the Committee was poor. 
The Department failed to comply in full with the nine document 
requests and three subpoenas.\44\ Instead, Department officials 
deflected and delayed their responses, engaged in a pattern of 
obstruction, and furnished productions and witness interviews 
slowly--significantly impeding the Committee's investigation 
and development of a complete record.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \44\Letter to John F. Kerry, Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State, 
to Trey Gowdy, Chmn., H. Select Comm. On Benghazi (July 31, 2015) (on 
file with the Committee).

          RESPONSE TO SUBPOENAS FOR DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                      ACCOUNTABILITY REVIEW BOARD

    As described earlier, two subpoenas issued by Congress to 
the State Department in 2013 had yet to be satisfied when the 
Select Committee was formed.\45\ One of these subpoenas dealt 
specifically with documents pertaining to the ARB.\46\ Though 
Congress had been asking for the documents for almost two 
years, the State Department failed to produce a single 
document. The Committee emphasized the importance of these 
documents by reissuing a new subpoena for the 114th Congress. 
Immediately following the January 27, 2015 compliance hearing, 
the Committee issued a new subpoena for documents reviewed by 
the ARB.\47\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \45\Interim Progress Update, supra note 8, at 4.
    \46\OGR ARB Subpoena, supra note 14.
    \47\Subpoena issued by H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, to John F. 
Kerry, Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State (Jan. 29, 2015).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The State Department's first production to the Committee 
consisted of a four-page interview summary for a witness who 
was scheduled to appear before the Committee the following 
day.\48\ The State Department maintained this posture over the 
next several weeks with one or two ARB summaries, totaling 38 
pages, provided less than a week before the Committee's 
interviews.\49\ It was not until April 15, 2015, the State 
Department produced approximately 1,700 pages of documents.\50\ 
On April 24, 2015, the Department produced another 
approximately 2,600 pages of documents.\51\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \48\See Letter from Julia E. Frifield, Assistant Sec'y of State for 
Legis. Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select 
Comm. on Benghazi (Feb. 13, 2015) (on file with the Committee).
    \49\See Comm. Internal Memorandum on State Dep't Records 
Production.
    \50\See Letter from Julia E. Frifield, Assistant Sec'y of State for 
Legis. Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select 
Comm. on Benghazi (Apr. 15, 2015) (on file with the Committee).
    \51\See Letter from Julia E. Frifield, Assistant Sec'y of State for 
Legis. Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select 
Comm. on Benghazi (Apr. 24, 2015) (on file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    It remains unclear whether production for the January 28, 
2015 subpoena is complete. Notwithstanding the more than 4,300 
pages produced to the Committee, previous statements made by 
the State Department to Congress revealed the ARB reviewed 
``approximately 7,000 State Department documents, numbering 
thousands of pages.''\52\ Moreover, the State Department 
withheld a number of documents from the Committee based on 
``executive branch confidentiality interests,'' an 
administration-constructed privilege not recognized by the 
Constitution.\53\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \52\See Letter from the Thomas B, Gibbons, acting Assistant Sec'y 
of Legis. Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to Darrell E. Issa, Chairman, 
H. Comm. on Oversight & Gov't Reform (Aug. 23, 2013) (on file with H. 
Select Comm. on Benghazi).
    \53\See Letter from Julia E. Frifield, Assistant Sec'y of State for 
Legis. Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select 
Comm. on Benghazi (Apr. 24, 2015).

    REQUESTS FOR DOCUMENTS OF THE SECRETARY AND OTHER SENIOR STATE 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                          DEPARTMENT OFFICIALS

    While the State Department produced 15,000 pages of new 
documents to the Committee on August 11, 2014, there were 
significant and material omissions. This production contained 
few emails sent to or received by the State Department's senior 
staff. In fact, the production included only eight emails sent 
or received by the Secretary from two email addresses: 
``[email protected]'' and ``H.'' This was the first time 
the State Department produced emails from the Secretary. It was 
also the first time the Committee became aware the Secretary 
used a private email account to conduct State Department 
business during her tenure. The Committee was not informed at 
the time, or at any time until immediately before media 
reporting, of the extent to which the Secretary relied on 
private email and a private server to conduct State Department 
business, or the ongoing discussion between the State 
Department and the Secretary and her representatives regarding 
the return of records.
    For example, at the time the State Department produced 
these 15,000 pages of documents, which included these eight 
emails and pledged a ``new relationship with the Committee,'' 
it was known within the State Department that the Secretary's 
email records were not on site.\54\ The Chief Records Officer 
testified:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \54\Testimony of William Fischer, Chief Records Officer, U.S. Dep't 
of State, Tr. at 66 (June 30, 2015) [hereinafter Fischer Testimony] (on 
file with the Committee).

        Q: One of the things that we wanted to talk with you 
        about was when you first became knowledgeable or aware 
        that all or part of Secretary Clinton's records were 
        not on premises with the State Department. And can you 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        tell us when that was?

        A: The end of July 2014.

        Q: And how did you become aware that some of her 
        records were not on premises?

        A: I was getting ready to enter my new position and one 
        of my colleagues mentioned that in FOIA [Freedom of 
        Information Act] litigation the issue had come up, but 
        I had no idea about the full circumstances.\55\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \55\Id.

    Unknown to the Committee and the public, the State 
Department and the Secretary were taking remedial action to 
recover her emails from her private server because of the 
Committee's investigation.\56\ According to the State 
Department's own Inspector General:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \56\July 2, 2014 meeting between Comm. Staff Director Philip G. 
Kiko and State Dep't Chief of Staff David E. Wade.

        [i]n May 2014, the Department undertook efforts to 
        recover potential Federal records from Secretary 
        Clinton. Thereafter, in July 2014, senior officials met 
        with former members of Secretary Clinton's immediate 
        staff, who were then acting as Secretary Clinton's 
        representatives. At the meeting, her representative 
        indicated that her practice of using a personal account 
        was based on Secretary Powell's similar use, but 
        Department staff instructed Clinton's representatives 
        to provide the Department with any Federal records 
        transmitted through her personal system. On August 22, 
        2014, Secretary Clinton's former Chief of Staff and 
        then-representative advised Department leadership that 
        hard copies of Secretary Clinton emails containing 
        responsive information would be provided but that, 
        given the volume of emails, it would take some time to 
        produce.\57\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \57\Office of the Inspector General, ``Office of the Sec'y: 
Evaluation of Email Records Management and Cybersecurity 
Requirements,'' at 17-18, footnote 75, (May 26, 2016) (on file with the 
Committee).

    In July 2014, Mills contacted Platte River Networks, the 
company contracted to maintain the Secretary's server, to 
request the Secretary's emails be pulled and sent to her 
overnight.\58\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \58\Carol D. Leonning and Rosalind S. Helderman, State Department's 
Account of email requirements differs from Clinton's, Washington Post 
(September 22, 2015), https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/state-
departments-account-of-e-mail-request-differs-from-
clintons/2015/09/22/54cd66bc-5ed9-11e5-8e9e-dce8a2a2a679_story.html 
(``He [Senator Johnson] cited a July 23, 2014, email in which employees 
at Platte River Networks, the private company that was then maintaining 
her server, discussed sending copies of Clinton's emails overnight to 
Cheryl Mills, a long-time Clinton advisor.'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Committee did not publicize the existence of the eight 
emails identified from the Secretary's private email account, 
for myriad reasons. The Committee believed these eight emails 
might represent the beginning of a full production. There also 
existed the possibility of an explanation other than what was 
eventually learned. These eight emails could have reflected the 
Secretary's episodic use of personal email, as other 
administration officials had done,\59\ and a more complete 
production of state.gov emails could be forthcoming. Of course, 
while the Committee did not have access to all salient facts in 
the summer of 2014, the State Department did. The State 
Department knew then it did not have possession of her public 
records as these records were not turned over at the end of the 
Secretary's tenure. The State Department knew then it was in no 
position to comply with congressional inquiries or FOIA 
requests related to the Secretary's emails because it did not 
have custody or access to the full public record. According to 
a recent report by the State Department's own Inspector 
General:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \59\See, e.g., Letter from Darrell E. Issa, Chairman, H. Comm. on 
Oversight & Gov't Reform, to Hillary R. Clinton, Sec'y of State, U.S. 
Dep't of State (Dec. 13, 2012) (on file with the Committee).

        In early June 2013, Department staff participating in 
        the review of potential material for production to 
        congressional committees examining the September 2012 
        Benghazi attack discovered emails sent by the former 
        Policy Planning Director via his Department email 
        account to a personal email address associated with 
        Secretary Clinton. In ensuing weeks, partly as a result 
        of the staff's discovery, Department senior officials 
        discussed the Department's obligations under the 
        Federal Records Act in the context of personal email 
        accounts. As discussed earlier in this report, laws and 
        regulations did not prohibit employees from using their 
        personal email accounts for the conduct of official 
        Department business. However, email messages regarding 
        official business sent to or from a personal email 
        account fell within the scope of the Federal Records 
        Act if their contents met the Act's definition of a 
        record. OIG found that the Department took no action to 
        notify NARA [National Archives and Records 
        Administration] of a potential loss of records at any 
        point in time.\60\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \60\``Office of the Sec'y: Evaluation of Email Records Management 
and Cybersecurity Requirements,'' supra note 69 at 17-18.

    At the time the Committee was formed in May 2014, the State 
Department was already actively seeking the return of the 
former Secretary's emails.\61\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \61\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Committee moved forward by issuing its November 18, 
2014 document request to the State Department to obtain a 
clearer understanding of the role the Secretary and her senior 
staff played prior to, during, and after the terrorist 
attacks.\62\ The Committee made clear the Secretary and her 
senior staff's documents and emails were necessary to 
facilitate her testimony before the Committee.\63\ The decision 
to focus on obtaining these documents was the direct result of 
the Committee Minority's repeated request to move up the 
Secretary's appearance.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \62\See Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on 
Benghazi, to John F. Kerry, Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State (Nov. 
18, 2014) (on file with the Committee). It is also important to note 
that this letter was accompanied by instructions typically found in 
subpoenas describing in greater detail the documents and communications 
sought and the definitions to be applied to the instructions. See id.
    \63\See id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Very senior officials are traditionally interviewed last 
rather than first so the questions can be informed by as much 
information as possible. This is standard operating procedure 
in Executive Branch investigations. The Committee Minority 
expressly asked that the Secretary's appearance be moved up in 
the order of witness interviews and pledged in the process to 
help secure all relevant emails and documents in order to make 
that a reality. If there is any evidence Minority Committee 
members attempted to secure access to relevant documents or 
facilitate the production of documents, the Committee is not 
aware of it. Instead, the Committee Minority enjoyed the best 
of all worlds: complain about the Secretary not being 
interviewed while relying on the State Department to delay, 
obstruct, and withhold production of the very documents needed 
to facilitate the interview.
    The State Department did not disclose the fact that it did 
not have possession of the Secretary's emails, nor that it had 
been working with the Secretary for the previous seven months 
to secure their return. The Committee also asked the Secretary 
for documents and emails. On December 2, 2014, the Committee 
wrote David E. Kendall, the Secretary's attorney, requesting 
all of the Secretary's emails related to Benghazi and Libya 
from her private email account.\64\ Knowing the actions already 
taken by his law firm and Mills to identify and return the 
former Secretary's emails to the State Department, Kendall did 
not respond until December 29, at which time he referred the 
Committee back to the State Department.\65\ Kendall stated 
``[the State Department] is in a position to produce any 
responsive emails.''\66\ This ``who's on first'' routine 
orchestrated between the Secretary's private counsel and the 
State Department, which is ostensibly an apolitical 
governmental diplomatic entity, is shameful. It was not merely 
Congress and the people it represents who were misled and 
manipulated, the State Department and the Secretary's email 
arrangement undoubtedly delayed access to information on what 
happened to four brave Americans in Benghazi and the 
government's response before, during and after the attacks. The 
manner in which the Secretary communicated during her tenure, 
the manner in which those records were housed during and after 
her tenure and the manner in which the public record was self-
scrutinized and self-selected makes it impossible to ever 
represent to the families of those killed in Benghazi that the 
record is whole.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \64\Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, 
to David E. Kendall, Of Counsel, Williams & Connolly LLP (Dec. 2, 2014) 
(on file with the Committee).
    \65\Letter from David E. Kendall, Of Counsel, Williams & Connolly 
LLP to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi (Dec. 29, 
2014) (on file with the Committee).
    \66\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Notwithstanding the Committee's December 2, 2014 request to 
Kendall, Mills informed the State Department within a matter of 
days that she was producing 55,000 pages of the Secretary's 
emails from her personal account.\67\ On December 5, 2014, 
Mills wrote the State Department that the emails were being 
produced to help the Department ``meet its requirements under 
the Federal Records Act.''\68\ Mills' letter did not disclose 
that all of the Secretary's work was conducted on a private 
email account and server. The letter did not disclose the form 
in which the 55,000 pages of emails were being produced. It did 
not disclose how the emails were being delivered to the State 
Department. The Committee would later learn that, on the same 
day Mills sent her letter to the State Department, a State 
Department records official was directed by his supervisor to 
pick up and transport hard copies of the Secretary's emails 
from Kendall's law firm, Williams and Connolly in Washington 
DC, back to the State Department.\69\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \67\See Letter from Cheryl D. Mills, Chief of Staff to the Sec'y of 
State, U.S. Dep't of State, to Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Sec'y of State 
for Mgmt., U.S. Dep't of State (Dec. 5, 2014) (on file with the 
Committee).
    \68\See Id.
    \69\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Despite receiving the Secretary's emails on December 5, 
2014, the State Department failed to produce any document to 
the Committee until February 13, 2015.\70\ The Department also 
resisted scheduling witness interviews in December 2014 and 
January 2015. The Department's compliance posture resulted in 
the Committee's third public hearing, held on January 27, 2015. 
The State Department did not, however, produce a witness of 
sufficient seniority to make commitments on behalf of the 
Department.\71\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \70\Id. See also, Letter from Julia Frifield, Ass't Secretary of 
State, Legislative Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to Trey Gowdy, 
Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, (February 13, 2015) (on file 
with the Committee).
    \71\See Hearing 3 Before the H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, 114th 
Congress (2015).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In fact, the State Department did not respond to the 
Committee's November 18, 2014 document request until February 
13, 2015. At the time, the State Department produced 
approximately 847 pages of the Secretary's emails in paper 
copies. The State Department still refused to disclose 
important, relevant facts such as: the Secretary's emails were 
not on the State Department's network; the Secretary did not 
provide electronic copies of her emails; and the Secretary's 
attorneys--not the State Department--determined which emails 
would be returned to the Department.
    It was not until February 27, 2015, the State Department 
disclosed to the Committee these facts, days before The New 
York Times would disclose the circumstances.\72\ Even then, the 
State Department failed to disclose the fact that the Secretary 
used a private server. The Committee learned this fact through 
subsequent press reports.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \72\Michael S. Schmidt, Hillary Clinton Used Personal Email Account 
at State Dept., Possibly Breaking Rules, N.Y. Times (Mar. 2, 2015), 
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/us/politics/hillary-clintons-use-of-
private-email-at-state-department-raises-flags.html?_r=0.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Once the Committee learned the State Department had been 
complicit in the non-production of the Secretary's emails, it 
issued two preservation letters; one was issued to the 
Secretary\73\ and the other to Web.com,\74\ the registrar of 
the domain name [email protected]. This was necessary to 
ensure relevant information in the parties' possession was 
preserved. The letters requested the Secretary and Web.com:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \73\See Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on 
Benghazi, to David E. Kendall, Of Counsel, Williams & Connolly LLP 
(Mar. 3, 2015) (on file with the Committee).
    \74\See Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on 
Benghazi, to Dan Brown, Chairman and Chief Exec. Officer, Web.com (Mar. 
3, 2015) (on file with the Committee).

        1. LPreserve all email, electronic documents and date 
        (``electronic records'') created since January 1, 2009, 
        that can be reasonably anticipated to be the subject to 
        a request for production by the Committee. For the 
        purpose of this request, ``preserve'' means taking 
        reasonable steps to prevent the partial or full 
        destruction, alteration, testing, deletion, shredding, 
        incineration, wiping, relocation, migration, theft or 
        mutation of electronic records, as well as negligent or 
        intentional handling that would make such records 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        incomplete or inaccessible;

        2. LExercise reasonable efforts to identify and notify 
        former employees and contractors who may have access to 
        such electronic records that they are to be preserved; 
        and

        3. LIf it is the routine practice of any employee or 
        contractor to destroy or otherwise alter such 
        electronic records, either: halt such practices or 
        arrange for the preservation of complete and accurate 
        duplicates or copies of such records, suitable for 
        production if requested.\75\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \75\See Chairman Gowdy's letters, supra notes 73 and 74.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                      THE SECRETARY IS SUBPOENAED

    On March 4, 2015, a day after the Committee issued two 
preservation letters, the Committee issued two additional 
subpoenas. The first compelled production from the Secretary of 
any documents and communications responsive to the November 18, 
2014 letter still in her possession.\76\ The Secretary, through 
her attorney, Kendall, responded to the Committee's subpoena on 
March 27, 2015. In his letter, Kendall informed the Committee:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \76\Subpoena issued by H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, to Hillary R. 
Clinton, former Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State (Mar. 4, 2015).

        With respect to any emails from Secretary Clinton's 
        `[email protected]' account, I respond by 
        stating that, for the reasons set forth below, the 
        Department of State--which has already produced 
        approximately 300 documents in response to an earlier 
        request seeking documents on essentially the same 
        subject matters--is uniquely positioned to make 
        available any documents responsive to your requests. 
        \77\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \77\Letter from David E. Kendall, Of Counsel, Williams & Connolly 
LLP to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi (Mar. 27, 
2015) (on file with the Committee).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Kendall further told the Committee:

        Secretary Clinton is not in a position to produce any 
        of those emails to the Committee in response to the 
        subpoena without approval from the State Department, 
        which could come only following a review process. On 
        March 23, 2015, I received a letter from Under 
        Secretary of State for Management (attached hereto) 
        confirming direction from the National Archives and 
        Records Administration that while Secretary Clinton and 
        her counsel are permitted to retain a copy of her work-
        related emails, those emails should not be released to 
        any third parties without authorization by the State 
        Department. . . . Thus, while the Secretary has 
        maintained and preserved copies of the emails provided 
        to the State Department, she is not in a position to 
        make any production that may be called for by the 
        subpoena.\78\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \78\Id.

    The State Department was unmoved by the location of public 
records during the Secretary's tenure or for nearly two years 
thereafter until the Committee insisted on their production. 
The State Department then orchestrated a sophomoric scheme of 
letters to have these records returned to the State Department. 
Once this was accomplished, the State Department, previously 
uninterested in the location, security or fullness of this 
public record, jealously guarded--indeed prevented--the 
production of the Secretary's records to Congress.
    The State Department made two productions subsequent to 
February 13, 2015. The Committee received 105 email exchanges 
from the State Department on June 25, 2015. This production is 
significant because it was made only after a non-government 
witness provided 179 additional pages of email exchanges with 
the Secretary on June 12, 2015. 59 of the emails produced by 
the non-government witness had never been provided by the State 
Department to the Committee despite the fact these emails were 
clearly responsive to previous requests and fully within the 
jurisdiction of the Committee. Moreover, the State Department 
did not have in its possession, in full or in part, 15 email 
exchanges produced by the non-government witness--calling into 
question the completeness of their records from the 
Secretary.\79\ This means that not only was the State 
Department refusing to produce emails from the Secretary that 
were unquestionably relevant to this Committee's investigation, 
it also laid bare the Secretary's assurance that all public 
records had been returned to the State Department. Neither of 
those assertions was true.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \79\Letter from Julia Frifield, Ass't Sec'y of State, Legislative 
Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. 
on Benghazi (June 25, 2015) (``In a limited number of circumstances, we 
did not locate in the tens of thousands of pages of email provided by 
Secretary Clinton the content of a handful of communications that Mr. 
Blumenthal produced.'')
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The State Department made its third production to the 
Committee--1,899 pages of the Secretary's emails--on September 
25, 2015. In its letter accompanying the emails, the State 
Department noted ``it had re-reviewed Secretary Clinton's 2011-
2012 emails and today is providing materials in advance of the 
Secretary's appearance before the Committee on October 22, 
2015.''\80\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \80\See Letter from Julia Frifield, Assistant Sec'y of State for 
Legis. Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select 
Comm. on Benghazi (Sept. 25, 2015) (on record with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Committee's interest in the Secretary's emails is 
limited to their relevance in the investigation of the Benghazi 
attacks. Her exclusive use of non-official email and a private 
server for all official communications may raise concerns 
beyond the scope of this Committee's purview related to Federal 
records and transparency laws and national security concerns, 
but jurisdiction for those matters lies either with the 
Inspector General, the courts, other committees of Congress, or 
the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department.
    Simply put, the Committee has an obligation to seek and 
acquire all relevant information consistent with its 
jurisdiction. Part of securing that relevant information 
involved accessing public records, regardless of where and by 
whom those records were held.
    On January 8, 2016, the Department notified the Committee 
of yet more responsive documents located in the Office of the 
Secretary.\81\ These documents had been ``overlooked'' by the 
State Department.\82\ On February 26, 2016--20 months after the 
Committee was formed--the State Department produced 
approximately 1,650 additional responsive documents.\83\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \81\Email from Eric Schneider, U.S. Dep't of State, to Dana 
Chipman, Chief Counsel, Sel. Comm. On Benghazi (January 8, 2016,) (on 
file with the Committee).
    \82\Id.
    \83\See Letter from Julia Frifield, Assistant Sec'y of State for 
Legis. Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select 
Comm. on Benghazi (Feb. 26, 2016).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The odyssey that became the Secretary's email arrangement 
was fully the result of decisions she made in concert with 
others at the State Department. Had she used state.gov or 
employed a method of preserving public records other than 
simply hiring private legal counsel to store, vet, and disclose 
these public records, this would never have become an issue for 
the Committee. The Committee knew in the summer 2014 the 
Secretary used private email to conduct at least some official 
business and never disclosed this fact publicly. The 
Committee's interest was in accessing the relevant and 
responsive material needed to accomplish the job it was 
assigned to do. Moreover, of the more than 100 witnesses the 
Committee interviewed only one was exclusively connected with 
her method of producing and preserving emails--Bryan Pagliano, 
a Special Advisor to the State Department. Pagliano's interview 
was short when he invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against 
self-incrimination. Pagilano was an important witness who could 
have spoken to the fullness of the Committee's record. The 
Secretary's server was reportedly down during two key time 
periods identified during the Committee's investigation--August 
2011 and October 2012.
    On April 8, 2016, the Committee received another production 
of approximately 1,150 pages of emails from Sean Smith's email 
account as well as emails sent to and from senior leaders 
stored in the Office of the Secretary. On May 5, 2016, the 
Committee received yet again another production from the State 
Department of approximately 405 pages of documents from the 
Office of the Secretary.

           Subpoena for 7th Floor Principals' Documents and 
                             Communications

    The second subpoena issued in the aftermath of the 
disclosure of the Secretary's email arrangement was issued on 
March 4, 2015, and sought documents and communications from the 
remaining ten senior staff officials identified in the 
Committee's November 18, 2014 letter. More than three months 
after the Committee first issued its request for these 
documents, the State Department had yet to produce a single 
document.\84\ A day after issuing this subpoena, the Committee 
learned the State Department did not start archiving emails of 
its senior officials until February 2015.\85\ The Committee 
later learned Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Secretary for 
Management, State Department, wrote to several senior officials 
identified in the Committee's March 4, 2015 subpoena seeking 
the return of all work related emails conducted on private 
accounts.\86\ The State Department also kept this second 
Kennedy letter a secret.\87\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \84\Subpoena issued by H. Select Comm. on Benghazi to John F. 
Kerry, Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State (Mar. 4, 2015).
    \85\See Lauren French, Gowdy: Not backing off subpoena of Clinton 
emails, Politico (Mar. 5, 2015), http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/
house-committee-benghazi-clinton-email-subpoena-115795.
    \86\See Letters from Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Sec'y of State for 
Mgmt., U.S. Dep't of State, to Huma Abedin, William J. Burns, Jeffrey 
D. Feltman, Cheryl Mills, Thomas Nides, Philippe Reines, Susan E. Rice, 
Jacob J. Sullivan (March 11, 2015).
    \87\Subpoena issued by H. Select Comm. on Benghazi to John F. 
Kerry, Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State (Aug. 5, 2015).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Notwithstanding the specificity and clarity of the 
documents and communications sought by the March 4, 2015 
subpoena, the State Department protested the breadth of the 
Committee's request.\88\ To help set priorities, the Committee 
offered guidance to State Department officials, at their 
request. For example, on March 23, 2015, the Committee 
identified four individuals and four discrete timeframes to 
which the Department could focus its initial efforts.\89\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \88\Email from Philip Kiko, Staff Director, H. Select Comm. on 
Benghazi, to Julia Frifield, Ass't Sec'y of State for Legislative 
Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State (March 23, 2015, 6:50 PM) (``let me 
reiterate that the subpoena is clear as to what communications and 
documents the Committee is seeking'').
    \89\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On April 22, 2015, the Committee again provided guidance 
outlining a production plan complete with specific individuals 
and discrete timeframes for the State Department.\90\ No 
documents were produced.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \90\Email from Philip Kiko, Staff Director, to Julia Frifield, 
Ass't Sec'y of State for Legislative Affairs (April 22, 2015, 1:03 PM).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    It is worth reiterating that what may appear, at first 
blush, to be a lack of competence on behalf of the State 
Department now appears fully intentional and coordinated. 
Delaying the production of documents sought by letter, informal 
request, or subpoena has decided political advantages for those 
opposing the investigation and those in control of the 
necessary documents and witness access. Asking the Committee 
for ``priorities'' or date and time restrictions is calculated 
to reduce the scope of the investigation--the very thing 
Committee Minority members asked for in the fall of 2014--and 
causes the investigation to be drawn out needlessly.
    This is an overtly political calculation and has become the 
typical playbook for an administration that once praised itself 
for its ``transparency.''
    In an effort to speed the production of documents, the 
Committee worked to advance the State Department's $2.4 million 
reprograming request made to the Committees on Appropriations 
of both the House and the Senate to create a `document review 
unit' to help facilitate the production of documents relevant 
to the Committee's investigation.\91\ The Committee was 
informed 12 full-time employees would be assigned to the 
`document review unit,' as well as new technology, to respond 
to congressional requests. The Committee was told its requests 
would be the `document review unit's' highest priority.\92\ To 
the contrary, after the House and Senate Committees on 
Appropriations approved the Department's reprogramming request, 
State Department staff did nothing to expedite Committee 
requests for documents.\93\ State Department officials would 
not disclose how the reprograming request was being 
implemented, how many employees were assigned to the unit, or 
whether these individuals were also assigned to respond to FOIA 
requests. Nor would the officials describe how document 
requests would be produced with the new technology.\94\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \91\James Rosen, Documents show State Dep't missed target date for 
special Benghazi unit, Fox News, May 6, 2016, http://www.foxnews.com/
politics/2016/05/06/documents-show-state-department-missed-target-date-
for-special-benghazi-unit.html.
    \92\Phone call between Philip Kiko, Staff Director, H. Select Comm. 
on Benghazi, and Julia Frifield, Ass't Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of 
State (May 2015).
    \93\Memorandum from Philip G. Kiko, Staff Dir. and Gen. Counsel, H. 
Select Comm. on Benghazi, to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on 
Benghazi (June 2, 2014) [hereinafter June 2 Staff Memo] (on file with 
the Committee) (summarizing the members meeting with State Dep't Chief 
of Staff Jon Finer).
    \94\Id.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                   IMPASSE WITH THE STATE DEPARTMENT

    On May 22, 2015, more than two months after the March 4, 
2015 subpoena, the State Department finally produced 
approximately 1,200 pages of emails to and from Mills. The 
documents in this production, however, covered less than a 
quarter of the timeframes sought and contained less than one-
tenth of the contents sought in the subpoena. Furthermore, the 
State Department withheld documents, telling the Committee ``a 
small number of documents implicate important Executive Branch 
institutional interests and are therefore not included in this 
production.''\95\ The State Department's continued refusal to 
produce relevant documents delayed the Committee's interview 
schedule.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \95\Letter from Julia Frifield, Assistant Sec'y of State for Leg. 
Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. 
on Benghazi (May 22, 2015) (on file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Like other investigations, the Committee planned to 
interview senior level officials within the State Department 
before interviewing the Secretary. Consequently, delaying 
document productions for these senior officials in turn delayed 
the interviews of the same senior officials, which in turn 
delayed the interview of the Secretary. It is readily apparent 
this was by design and presented the Committee with a `Catch-
22': either interview senior State Department officials, 
including the Secretary, without the benefit of the documents 
needed for a constructive conversation, or postpone those 
interviews pending document production and be criticized for 
taking too long.
    Recognizing neither public reproach nor the Committee's 
support for the State Department's reprogramming request would 
compel the Department to action, the Committee had few 
alternatives--other than contempt of Congress (dependent on 
Executive Branch enforcement) or time-consuming litigation. On 
June 2, 2015, the Committee met with Jonathan Finer, Chief of 
Staff and Director of Policy Planning, State Department, to 
discuss the impasse.\96\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \96\See June 2 Staff Memo, supra note 93.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    With Finer, the Committee made it clear it was necessary to 
review documents prior to moving forward with interviews.\97\ 
The Committee members personally emphasized to Finer the emails 
from a number of former senior State Department officials were 
necessary to have constructive conversations with 
witnesses.\98\ The delays in producing documents thus delayed 
interviews.\99\ While Finer would not agree to a production 
schedule, he did agree the State Department would make a 
substantial production within 30 days.\100\ The meeting and 
agreement were memorialized in a subsequent communication sent 
to Finer.\101\ In its letter, the Committee defined 
``substantial'' as ``producing,'' within 30 days, ``all 
documents and emails . . . described in phase one in our April 
22, 2015 communication.''\102\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \97\Id.
    \98\Id.
    \99\Id.
    \100\See id.
    \101\Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, 
to Jonathan Finer, Chief of Staff & Dir. of Policy Planning, U.S. Dep't 
of State (June 4, 2015) (on file with the Committee).
    \102\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The ``substantial production'' of documents never 
materialized, further delaying the interview schedule. Instead, 
on June 30, 2015, the State Department produced 3,600 pages of 
emails, more than 2,000 pages of which were press clippings 
available chiefly on the internet.\103\ The production also 
focused almost exclusively on two individuals for one month 
after the terrorist attacks, with a scattering of documents 
from other timeframes.\104\ Moreover, the State Department 
continued its pattern of withholding documents based on what it 
described as ``Executive Branch institutional interests.''\105\ 
No other productions arrived for almost another month. On July 
29, 2015, the State Department produced approximately 8,000 
pages of documents, many of which were press clippings or 
duplicate emails.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \103\Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, 
to John F. Kerry, Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State (July 10, 2015) 
(on file with the Committee) (``While the meeting may have motivated 
the Dep't to produce roughly 3,600 pages of documents on June 30, 2015, 
more than 2,000 of those pages--representing nearly 57 percent were 
nothing more than basic press clippings. . . .'').
    \104\Id.
    \105\Letter from Julia Frifield, Ass't Sec'y for Leg. Affairs, to 
Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi (June 30, 2015) (on 
file with the Committee) (``In addition, a small number of documents 
implicate important Executive Branch institutional interests and 
therefore are not included in this production.'').

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
          OTHER DOCUMENT REQUESTS MADE TO THE STATE DEPARTMENT

    In addition to seeking enforcement of the March 4, 2015 
subpoena, the Committee issued a number of additional requests 
for information from the State Department. On June 12, 2015, 
the Committee sought the remaining ARB documents.\106\ The 
Committee requested a list of all documents being withheld and 
the justification for withholding.\107\ The Committee also 
sought 11 discrete items referenced in the ARB documents.\108\ 
The Committee requested a response by July 8, 2015. Roughly 
seven months later, on February 25, 2016, the Committee 
received a four-page document responsive to the June 12, 2015 
request.\109\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \106\Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, 
to John F. Kerry, Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State (June 12, 2015) 
(on file with the Committee).
    \107\Id.
    \108\Id.
    \109\Interview with [Agent 17], Accountability Review Bd. (Oct. 30, 
2012) (on file with the committee State-SCB0098607).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On July 6, 2015, the Committee wrote the State Department 
seeking an update on compliance with the March 4, 2015 
subpoena. No response was received.
    On July 10, 2015, the Committee wrote the Department again 
expressing concern with the anemic productions made and the 
Department's lack of candor with regard to the private email 
use of former senior officials.\110\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \110\Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, 
to John F. Kerry, Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State (July 10, 2015) 
(on file with the Committee) (one of two similarly cited letters).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Committee followed this letter with an email 
highlighting the State Department's inaction in five areas:

        1. Lscheduling of interviews;

        2. Lproducing private emails relating to the 
        Committee's jurisdiction sent or received by former 
        senior officials;

        3. Lan accounting of the missing documents, including 
        those withheld for executive branch confidentiality 
        interests;

        4. Lproducing the remaining aspects of phase one of the 
        March 4, 2015 subpoena; and

        5. Lfailing to acknowledge the receipt of the previous 
        letters.\111\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \111\See Email from Philip G. Kiko, Staff Dir. and Gen. Counsel, H. 
Select Comm. on Benghazi, to Julia Frifield, Catherine Duval, and 
Austin Evers, (July 14, 2015) (on file with the Committee) (Regarding 
compliance and requests).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                      JULY 31, 2015 DEMAND LETTER

    The State Department's untenable posture, coupled with an 
abject lack of meaningful response to the Committee's 
outstanding subpoenas and requests, led to a demand letter on 
July 31, 2015.\112\ The letter was a precursor to contempt of 
Congress action, and reflected the Committee's serious belief 
the State Department was intentionally impeding the 
investigation's progress.\113\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \112\Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, 
to John F. Kerry, Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State (July 31, 2015) 
(on file with Committee).
    \113\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Committee outlined the pattern of concealment and delay 
employed by the State Department.\114\ The Committee noted the 
State Department's actions with regard to the Committee's 
questions about production of the Secretary's emails.\115\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \114\Id.
    \115\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Committee eventually received, in several tranches, 
document productions subsequent to the July 31, 2015 demand 
letter. Documents responsive to the March 4 subpoena were 
produced on August 21 and August 28, 2015; September 18, 2015; 
October 5, 9, and 15, 2015; November 6 and 24, 2015; December 
31, 2015; January 21, 2016; February 26, 2016; April 8, 2016; 
and May 5, 2016. In addition, the Committee received throughout 
the fall of 2015 and the early winter of 2016 approximately 
9,000 pages of emails from Stevens' email never before 
produced.\116\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \116\See infra Appendix J for a complete listing of requests and 
subpoenas for documents as well as productions received pursuant to 
request or subpoena.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Committee never received full productions of emails 
from the accounts of Under Secretary Wendy R. Sherman, Deputy 
Secretary William J. Burns, or Assistant Secretary Jeffrey D. 
Feltman--all of whom were listed in the November 18, 2014 
document request and the March 4, 2015 subpoena. The State 
Department never produced all relevant documents reviewed by 
the Accountability Review Board.\117\ Finally, the State 
Department still has not fully complied with the August 5, 2015 
subpoena.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \117\Letter from the Thomas B. Gibbons, acting Assistant Sec'y of 
Legis. Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to Darrell E. Issa, Chairman, H. 
Comm. on Oversight & Gov't Reform (Aug. 23, 2013) (on file with the 
Committee) (stating the ARB reviewed approximately 7,000 documents 
totaling thousands of pages).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The State Department also withheld documents citing 
``important Executive Branch institutional interests'' or 
``important Executive Branch confidentiality interests'' on 
four separate occasions.\118\ The Committee repeatedly sought 
additional information on the withheld documents, including the 
nature and number of documents withheld and the basis in law 
for withholding them. On June 12, 2015, July 8, 2015, and July 
31, 2015, the Committee wrote the State Department seeking 
additional information. The Committee also met with State 
Department representatives to discuss the status of the June 
12, 2015, July 8, 2015, and July 31, 2015 requests multiple 
times, including as late as June 2016. To date, the State 
Department has yet to account for the withheld documents. The 
State Department's refusal to provide the Committee with 
information by which to make reasonable judgements regarding 
the Department's decisions to withhold documents from Congress 
and, ultimately, from the American people is yet another 
example of the Department's pattern of concealment.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \118\See letters from Julia Frifield, Ass't Sec'y of State for 
Legislative Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. 
Select Comm. on Benghazi (February 13, 2015, April 24, 2015, May 22, 
2015, and June 30, 2015) (on file with the Committee).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                               WITNESSES

    The Committee interviewed 57 witnesses from the State 
Department, 50 who had never been interviewed by Congress, 
including four senior leaders, three Ambassadors, 19 Diplomatic 
Security agents, four principal officers, and 20 State 
Department personnel.
    On December 4, 2014, the Committee requested the State 
Department make available for transcribed interviews the 
eyewitnesses to the attack: the Diplomatic Security agents 
deployed to Benghazi and the Principal Officers responsible for 
political reporting. The State Department resisted scheduling 
interviews for nearly two months. It was not until January 27, 
2015 and the threat of subpoenas the State Department began to 
contact the individuals sought by the Committee.
    The Committee sought the testimony of senior State 
Department officials including those who were not interviewed 
by the ARB. This included Mills, Jacob J. Sullivan, Deputy 
Chief of Staff and Director of Policy Planning, and Huma 
Abedin, Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations. While the 
Committee sought to schedule these interviews in May 2015, the 
State Department's failure to produce relevant documents 
delayed these interviews until early September 2015. The delay 
in scheduling these interviews in turn necessarily delayed the 
Secretary's testimony.
    The Committee interviewed senior leaders within the Bureau 
of Diplomatic Security and the regional Bureau of Near Eastern 
Affairs--the two bureaus with oversight responsibility for 
security, personnel and policy in Benghazi. The Committee 
interviewed Kennedy who oversees the Bureau of Diplomatic 
Security, in addition to the Deputy Assistant Secretaries for 
Countermeasures and International Programs, Gentry O. Smith and 
Charlene R. Lamb. The Committee interviewed Jeffrey D. Feltman, 
Assistant Secretary for Near East Affairs, State Department; 
Gene A. Cretz, Ambassador to Libya; and Gregory N. Hicks, 
Deputy Chief of Mission, U.S. Embassy in Tripoli.
    Finally, the Committee interviewed those individuals who 
served as Libya desk officers and were responsible for 
addressing the day-to-day needs of the Benghazi Mission, 
including physical security, policy decisions, and logistics 
relating to Benghazi, Libya.

                       The Department of Defense

    The Defense Department was initially cooperative but this 
cooperation dissipated during the course of the Committee's 
investigation culminating in a factually deficient letter from 
a political appointee deliberately mischaracterizing efforts to 
obtain access to witnesses.
    The witnesses produced by the Defense Department, both 
active duty and retired, were cooperative and provided 
significant new material to the Committee. Identifying those 
witnesses, locating those witnesses, scheduling their 
appearances before the Committee and responding to subsequent 
Committee requests generated by these documents and witness 
interviews became mired in coordinated partisan responses from 
a Defense Department political appointee.\119\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \119\Letter from Stephen C. Hedger, Assistant Sec'y of Def. for 
Legis. Affairs, U.S. Dep't of Def., to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select 
Comm. on Benghazi (April 28, 2016) (on file with the Committee).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                               DOCUMENTS

    As required by the resolution creating the Select 
Committee, the House Armed Services Committee provided records 
in July 2014. Following a review of the information provided by 
the Armed Services Committee, the Select Committee submitted 
requests to the Defense Department on April 8, 2015 seeking 
documents and records not previously provided to the Armed 
Services Committee.\120\ The Select Committee's document 
request consisted of 12 categories, including a copy of the 
video of the attack in Benghazi, un-redacted copies of 
documents provided pursuant to a court order in litigation 
under FOIA, and copies of the force laydown for U.S. Africa, 
Europe, and Central combatant commands on September 10, 11, and 
12, 2012.\121\ The Select Committee also requested assistance 
in answering 27 questions regarding actions taken by the 
Defense Department immediately prior to, during, and 
immediately after the attacks.\122\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \120\Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, 
to Ashton B. Carter, Sec'y of Def., U.S. Dep't of Def. (Apr. 8, 2015) 
(on file with the Committee) (first of three similarly cited letters); 
Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, to 
Ashton B. Carter, Sec'y of Def., U.S. Dep't of Def. (Apr. 8, 2015) (on 
file with the Committee) (second of three similarly cited letters); 
Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, to 
Ashton B. Carter, Sec'y of Def., U.S. Dep't of Def. (Apr. 8, 2015) (on 
file with the Committee) (third of three similarly cited letters).
    \121\Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, 
to Ashton B. Carter, Sec'y of Def., U.S. Dep't of Def. (Apr. 8, 2015) 
(on file with the Committee) (one of three similarly cited letters).
    \122\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On April 27, 2015, the Defense Department responded to the 
Committee's request providing copies of the force laydown from 
the respective combatant commands and indicating it would 
provide ``responsive documents not previously provided on a 
rolling basis'' to the Committee.\123\ On May 21, 2015, the 
Defense Department provided 175 pages of classified documents, 
as well as 551 pages of un-redacted documents provided pursuant 
to a court order under FOIA litigation.\124\ The Defense 
Department declined to provide 36 pages that ``contain[ed] 
intelligence community or potential target information.''\125\ 
It also declined to provide one page ``due to confidentiality 
concerns associated with executive branch deliberations.''\126\ 
At the time of the Defense Department's letter, Committee staff 
had received briefings on and reviewed the drone footage on two 
occasions.\127\ The Defense Department did not indicate whether 
it would provide a copy of that footage to the Committee. As to 
five of the Committee's requests, it indicated its review was 
ongoing.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \123\Letter from Michael J. Stella, acting Assistant Sec'y of Def., 
U.S. Dep't of Def., to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on 
Benghazi (Apr. 24, 2015) (on file with the Committee).
    \124\Letter from Stephen C. Hedger, Assistant Sec'y of Def. for 
Legis. Affairs, U.S. Dep't of Def., to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select 
Comm. on Benghazi (May 21, 2015) (on file with the Committee).
    \125\Id.
    \126\Id.
    \127\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On July 28, 2015, the Committee received the Defense 
Department's classified response to the Committee's 27 
questions.\128\ Over the following months, the Defense 
Department provided briefings to the Committee and made 
witnesses available. It did not, however, furnish any 
additional documents.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \128\See Letter from Ashton B. Carter, Sec'y of Def., U.S. Dep't of 
Def., to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi (July 28, 
2015) (on file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On February 5, 2016, Committee staff met with Defense 
Department staff regarding the outstanding document 
requests.\129\ During this meeting the Committee requested an 
updated list of all air assets situated in the Africa and 
Europe combatant commands' areas of responsibility, and whether 
any assets had not been disclosed due to special access 
programs. The Committee also requested documents referring or 
relating to communications the Defense Department may have had 
with any foreign militaries concerning coordination or 
assistance in response to the attacks and any photographs taken 
by Defense Department personnel during a trip to Benghazi in 
October 2012.\130\ The Committee also renewed its request for a 
copy of the video feed from the night of the attack.\131\ The 
Defense Department failed to respond to the Committee's 
request.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \129\See Email from Philip G. Kiko, Staff Dir. and Gen. Counsel, H. 
Select Comm. on Benghazi, to William Hudson, Dir. of Cong. 
Investigations, Dep't of Def. (Feb. 5, 2016, 17:19 EST) (on file with 
the Committee).
    \130\See id.
    \131\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In total, the Defense Department provided nearly 900 pages 
of additional documents not previously provided to Congress.

                               WITNESSES

    The Committee interviewed 24 witnesses from the Defense 
Department. Of these witnesses, 17 had never been interviewed 
by Congress regarding the attacks in Benghazi.
    Initially, the Defense Department identified and scheduled 
witnesses at the Committee's request. For example on July 22, 
2015, the Committee requested the Defense Department make 
available the Commander of the Commander's In-Extremis Force 
[CIF] on September 11, 2012.\132\ The Committee had been unable 
to identify this individual and four other individuals by name, 
but provided details of their position during the relevant 
time-frame.\133\ The Defense Department identified the five 
individuals and scheduled their interviews.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \132\Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, 
to Ashton B. Carter, Sec'y of Def., U.S. Dep't of Def. (July 22, 2015) 
(on file with the Committee).
    \133\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    After the initial five witnesses were interviewed and the 
Committee reviewed the documents provided by Defense 
Department, the Committee requested an additional eight 
witnesses on February 5, 2016. The Committee also requested an 
interview with the individual who served as the pilot for the 
aircraft that transported the CIF.\134\ On February 26, 2016, 
the Committee requested the Defense Department make the 
individuals who piloted the drone on September 11-12, 2012 that 
flew over Benghazi and Tripoli available for interviews.\135\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \134\Email from Mac Tolar, Senior Counsel, H. Select Comm. on 
Benghazi, to William Hudson, Dir. of Cong. Investigations, U.S. Dep't 
of Def. (Feb. 9, 2016, 1:32 PM) (on file with the Committee).
    \135\Email from Mac Tolar, Senior Counsel, H. Select Comm. on 
Benghazi, to William Hudson, Dir. of Cong. Investigations, U.S. Dep't 
of Def. (Feb. 26, 2016, 17:00 EST) (on file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Committee reiterated both of these requests on March 9, 
2016 and March 24, 2016.\136\ The Defense Department indicated 
it was experiencing difficulty in tracking down records which 
could identify the individuals who piloted the aircraft and had 
not made progress in meeting the Committee's requests. 
Consequently, on March 31, 2016, the Committee met with 
Elizabeth L. George, Deputy General Counsel, Legislation, 
Defense Legal Services Agency, Defense Department, regarding 
the outstanding requests. The Defense Department was informed 
the Committee would issue subpoenas should the Defense 
Department not provide the names of the pilots 
immediately.\137\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \136\See Email from Mac. Tolar, Senior Counsel, H. Select Comm. on 
Benghazi, to William Hudson, Dir. of Cong. Investigations, U.S. Dep't 
of Def. (Mar. 9, 2016, 12:23 EST) (on file with the Committee) 
(reiterating interview request); See also Email from Mac Tolar, Senior 
Counsel to Mr. Hudson (Mar. 24, 2016, 16:56) (on file with the 
Committee) (reiterating interview request).
    \137\Email from Philip G. Kiko, Staff Dir. and Gen. Counsel, H. 
Select Comm. on Benghazi, to Stephen Hedger, Assistant Sec'y of Def. 
for Legis. Affairs (Mar. 25, 2016, 11:37 AM) (on file with the 
Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    For the next several weeks, Committee staff sought 
continued cooperation from the Defense Department. However, on 
April 28, 2016, Stephen Hedger, the Assistant Secretary of 
Defense for Legislative Affairs sent an inaccurate and 
misleading letter to the Chairman regarding the Committee's 
requests.\138\ Not surprisingly, that letter was leaked to the 
press the following day and was on the Committee Minority's 
website. Among many of the inaccuracies, the letter stated the 
Defense Department had expended ``significant resources'' to 
locate an individual the Committee had requested to interview 
who was identified as ``John from Iowa'' and who had called in 
to The Sean Hannity Show radio program in May 2013. During the 
call, the individual identified himself as one of the sensor 
operators of a drone that flew over Benghazi during the 
attacks. The Committee requested to interview this person 
during the meeting on March 31. As of the date of Hedger's 
letter, the Defense Department had failed to provide the names 
of all the pilots and sensor operators, including ``John from 
Iowa'' that had operated the drone on the September 11 and 
September 12, 2012. Finally, almost a month after Hedger's 
letter, the Defense Department provided all names of both the 
pilots and the sensor operators.\139\ The Committee benefited 
from hearing the testimony of the witnesses. These individuals 
were able to provide the Committee first-hand accounts of their 
mission that night, the capabilities of the drone, what 
information was being relayed up the chain of command, and the 
information they were focused on gathering. The video feed from 
those drones provided one point of reference for the Committee 
during its investigation. The witnesses provided another.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \138\Letter from Stephen C. Hedger, Assistant Sec'y of Def. for 
Legis. Affairs, U.S. Dep't of Def., to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select 
Comm. on Benghazi (April 28, 2016) (on file with the Committee).
    \139\See Email from Mac Tolar, Senior Counsel, H. Select Comm. on 
Benghazi, to Philip G. Kiko, Staff Dir. and Gen. Counsel, H. Select 
Comm. on Benghazi (May 20, 2016, 11:47 EST) (on file with the 
Committee) (indicating receipt of all relevant names).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Despite Hedger's complaint that the Department had expended 
``significant resources'' to identify ``John from Iowa'' to 
``no avail,'' the Department had actually identified ``John 
from Iowa'' within hours of his call in 2013, and had 
reprimanded him for his actions.\140\ Because of Hedger's 
representation that ``significant resources'' had been used to 
find this witness, the Committee issued a subpoena to Hedger to 
explain what resources had actually been used, and why the 
Defense Department was unable to respond to a Congressional 
request in a timely manner.\141\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \140\Testimony of Sensor Operator 1, Tr. at 16-17, June 9, 2016 
[hereinafter Sensor Operator 1 Transcript] (on file with the 
Committee). See also, Letter from Stephen C. Hedger, Assistant Sec'y of 
Def. for Legis. Affairs, U.S. Dep't of Def., to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, 
H. Select Comm. on Benghazi (April 28, 2016) (on file with the 
Committee).
    \141\Subpoena to Stephen C. Hedger, Assistant Sec'y of Def. for 
Legis. Affairs, U.S. Dep't of Def., H. Select Comm. on Benghazi (June 
15, 2016) (on file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                    The Central Intelligence Agency

    The Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] ultimately provided a 
significant volume of material and witnesses to the Committee, 
including SameTime messages not previously or generally made 
available to Congress. Nevertheless, the Committee's work was 
unnecessarily delayed with respect to documents, witnesses, and 
other basic requests.

                       READ-AND-RETURN DOCUMENTS

    When the House of Representatives passed the resolution 
creating the Committee, it required that ``[a]ny committee of 
the House of Representatives having custody of records in any 
form relating to [the Benghazi attacks] shall transfer such 
records to the Select Committee within 14 days of the adoption 
of this resolution. Such records shall become the records of 
the Select Committee.''\142\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \142\H. Res. 567, 113th Cong., Sec. 5(a) (2014).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    As a result of the resolution, the Chairman of the 
Intelligence Committee wrote to John O. Brennan, Director, CIA, 
noting the Intelligence Committee had possession but not 
custody of records provided by the CIA on a read-and-return 
basis. Therefore, the Chairman of the Intel. Comm. believed he 
did not have the authority to transfer these records to the 
Committee as otherwise required by the resolution. The 
Chairman, nonetheless, asked the CIA to make these records 
available to the Select Committee.\143\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \143\Letter from Mike Rogers, Chairman, H. Perm. Select Comm. on 
Intel., to John O. Brennan, Dir., Cent. Intel. Agency (May 8, 2014) (on 
file with the Committee).

        This transmittal is intended to facilitate the CIA's 
        ability to respond to any future requests for these 
        materials from the new Select Committee. I expect you 
        will maintain these materials at CIA Headquarters in a 
        manner such that they could be easily and promptly 
        provided to the Select Committee.\144\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \144\Id.

    In July of 2014, the Intelligence Committee provided its 
records to this Committee, including more than 400 pieces of 
intelligence relating to Benghazi and Libya from 2012, and 
other reports and correspondence. After acquiring the requisite 
security clearances and reviewing these documents, on November 
19, 2014 the Committee asked that it be able to review the 
read-and-return records the Intelligence Committee had given 
back to the CIA.\145\ The CIA responded, noting it was 
``working to try to set up a time next week when we could make 
the materials available.''\146\ The CIA did not make the 
materials available the following week.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \145\See Email from Mary K. E. Maples, Office of Cong. Affairs, 
Cent. Intel. Agency, to Christopher Donesa, Deputy Staff Dir., H. 
Select Comm. on Benghazi (Nov. 19, 2014, 14:23 EST) (on file with the 
Committee).
    \146\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On December 8, 2014, the Committee reiterated its 
request.\147\ The CIA responded: ``we are in the process of 
organizing and page numbering the documents so that they are 
ready for your team to review. I'll check in with the folks who 
are working on that to see if we can make it all available next 
week.''\148\ This hardly squared with what the Intelligence 
Committee Chairman requested of the CIA.\149\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \147\Email from Christopher Donesa, Deputy Staff Dir., H. Select 
Comm. on Benghazi, to Mary K. E. Maples, Office of Cong. Affairs, Cent. 
Intel. Agency (Dec. 8, 2014, 13:57 EST) (on file with the Committee).
    \148\Email from Mary K. E. Maples, Office of Cong. Affairs, Cent. 
Intel. Agency, to Christopher Donesa, Deputy Staff Dir., H. Select 
Comm. on Benghazi (Dec. 8, 2014, 15:10 EST) (on file with the 
Committee).
    \149\Letter from Mike Rogers, Chairman, H. Perm. Select Comm. on 
Intel., to John O. Brennan, Dir., Cent. Intel. Agency (May 8, 2014) (on 
file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Committee made a third request, on December 11, 2014, 
to review these documents.\150\ The CIA's Office of 
Congressional Affairs responded on December 15, 2014, noting 
they would ``reach out'' to the Committee staff that would be 
reviewing the documents.\151\ The CIA never contacted the 
Committee.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \150\Email from Christopher Donesa, Deputy Staff Dir., H. Select 
Comm. on Benghazi to Mary K. E. Maples, Office of Cong. Affairs, Cent. 
Intel. Agency (Dec. 11, 2014, 10:47 EST) (on file with the Committee).
    \151\Email from Mary K. E. Maples, Office of Cong. Affairs, Cent. 
Intel. Agency to Christopher Donesa, Deputy Staff Dir., H. Select Comm. 
on Benghazi (Dec. 15, 2014, 10:33 EST) (on file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Committee made a fourth request on January 8, 
2015.\152\ On January 12, 2015, the CIA responded noting they 
``have this request as a priority action. We are currently 
processing the documents. . . . We hope to have them ready for 
you in a couple of weeks.''\153\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \152\Email from Christopher Donesa, Deputy Staff Dir., H. Select 
Comm. on Benghazi, to Mary K. E. Maples, Office of Cong. Affairs, Cent. 
Intel. Agency (Jan. 8, 2015, 11:19 EST) (on file with the Committee).
    \153\Email from Mary K. E. Maples, Office of Cong. Affairs, Cent. 
Intel. Agency, to Christopher Donesa, Deputy Staff Dir., H. Select 
Comm. on Benghazi (Jan. 12, 2015, 15:55 EST) (on file with the 
Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    It was not until the Committee's January 27, 2015 public 
compliance hearing with Neil L. Higgins, Director of 
Congressional Affairs, CIA, that the CIA finally granted the 
Committee access to these documents.\154\ This was nearly three 
months after the Committee first requested access to these 
documents--documents the CIA had already produced to the 
Intelligence Committee and had been set aside specifically for 
this Committee's access.\155\ Having to schedule and conduct 
public hearings on matters of compliance with requests for 
clearly relevant documents is a waste of time and resources.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \154\Interim Progress Update, supra note 8, at 5.
    \155\Id. at 9.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In finally gaining access to these documents, the Committee 
discovered the records consisted of more than 4,000 pages of 
emails.\156\ The CIA had never indicated they were withholding 
such a large volume of material from the Committee. Reviewing 
this material necessitated the redirection of Committee time. 
The CIA, however, would only allow four Committee staff to 
review these records during normal business hours at CIA 
Headquarters in McLean, Virginia. These restrictions 
unnecessarily limited the Committee's access to the materials 
and significantly and unnecessarily increased the time needed 
to review the documents.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \156\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In addition, the CIA would not allow Committee staff to 
retain notes made while reviewing these documents, or even take 
notes back to Committee offices to discuss with Committee 
members.\157\ The CIA required Committee staff to keep their 
notes locked in a safe at CIA headquarters.\158\ The CIA 
eventually offered to allow Committee staff to take their notes 
back to Committee offices--but only if CIA staff first reviewed 
those notes and applied various redactions to them.\159\ This 
demand raised serious separation of powers concerns and would 
have compromised the investigation to allow the subject of an 
investigation to review and redact the notes of its 
investigator.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \157\Email from Mary K. E. Maples, Office of Cong. Affairs, Cent. 
Intel. Agency, to Dana K. Chipman, Chief Counsel, H. Select Comm. on 
Benghazi et al. (Apr. 17, 2015, 9:16 EST) (on file with the Committee).
    \158\Id.
    \159\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The CIA placed none of these onerous and punitive 
restrictions on the Intelligence Committee's access to these 
same materials, which the CIA provided to it to keep in its own 
offices at the Capitol.

                         NEW DOCUMENT REQUESTS

    After a review of the more than 4,000 pages of `read and 
return' documents at the CIA, the Committee issued a new 
document request to the CIA on April 28, 2015.\160\ This 
request was for 26 specific categories of information to help 
the Committee better understand the CIA's activities in 
Benghazi, its response to the attacks, and the analytic 
processes undertaken in the wake of the attacks.\161\ This 
document request included SameTime messages, emails, 
operational cables, and intelligence reports.\162\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \160\Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, 
to John O. Brennan, Dir., Cent. Intel. Agency (Apr. 28, 2015) (on file 
with the Committee).
    \161\Id.
    \162\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The CIA resisted this request. In a May 15, 2015 telephone 
call with the Committee Chairman, David S. Cohen, the Deputy 
Director of the CIA, expressed concern ``with both the breadth 
and some of the types of documents requested,'' and claimed 
``fulfilling the request could take many months of work.''\163\ 
Additional meetings between the Committee and the CIA took 
place to discuss the request, and it was not until July 8, 
2015, two-and-a-half months after the Committee's document 
request, that the CIA produced additional documents pursuant to 
this request.\164\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \163\See Email from Neal L. Higgins, Dir. of Cong. Affairs, Cent. 
Intel. Agency, to Dana K. Chipman, Chief Counsel, H. Select Comm. on 
Benghazi (May 15, 2015, 10:23 EST) (on file with the Committee).
    \164\Memorandum from Dir., Office of Cong. Affairs, Cent. Intel. 
Agency, to Chief Counsel and Deputy Staff Dir., H. Select Comm. on 
Benghazi, July 8, 2016 (on file with Cent. Intel. Agency, REQUEST 15-
001 to REQUEST 15-0004).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The results of the document production were underwhelming. 
The CIA delivered only a smattering of material from four 
general categories. One of the documents was a critical email 
the CIA had previously withheld from the Committee even though 
it had been shared with the Intelligence Committee.\165\ This 
document changed the Committee's understanding of what 
information was shared with Washington from Tripoli in the wake 
of the attacks--crucial for understanding how the CIA created 
its post attack analysis. The document production also 
consisted of cables shared with the Intelligence Committee but 
not given to this Committee.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \165\Email from employee, Cent. Intel. Agency, to Cent. Intel. 
Agency (Sept. 14, 2012 4:05 PM) (on file with the Committee, REQUEST 
15-0005).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Because of this insufficient document production and the 
withholding of clearly relevant information, on August 7, 2015, 
the Committee issued a subpoena to the CIA.\166\ This subpoena 
was straightforward and asked for six specific sets of 
documents. These documents included specific intelligence 
assessments written by CIA analysts in the wake of the 
attacks.\167\ The subpoena demanded the production of 
``supporting material'' for these assessments.\168\ Up to that 
point the CIA had refused to produce that material, in addition 
to refusing to produce the assessments with accompanying 
footnotes. It therefore was impossible for the Committee to 
understand what material the analysts used to form the basis 
for their subsequent assessments.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \166\Subpoena issued by H. Select Comm. on Benghazi to John O. 
Brennan, Dir., Cent. Intel. Agency, (Aug. 7, 2015).
    \167\Id.
    \168\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The subpoena also demanded production of additional 
documents relating to the unclassified talking points requested 
by the Intelligence Committee on September 14, 2012.\169\ 
Previously, the CIA had refused to produce any additional 
documents relating to the talking points not already in the 
public domain, claiming it was the responsibility of the Office 
of Director for National Intelligence to produce documents, 
even though the documents in question were all internal to the 
CIA.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \169\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The subpoena also demanded production of SameTime messages 
from individuals within certain offices in the CIA.\170\ Prior 
witness testimony revealed CIA employees relied heavily on 
SameTime messages the night of the attacks and in the immediate 
aftermath, as these were more efficient than typing 
emails.\171\ Simply reviewing the emails previously produced by 
the CIA, therefore, would not tell the full story of what 
happened the night and early morning hours of the attacks.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \170\Id.
    \171\See, e.g., Testimony of employee, Cent. Intel. Agency, Tr. 97-
100 (July, 16, 2015) (on file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On August 28, 2015, the CIA responded to the subpoena.\172\ 
The CIA produced in full the specific intelligence assessments 
with supporting material.\173\ The CIA also produced additional 
material relating to the Intelligence Committee talking points, 
but objected to producing SameTime messages, arguing that the 
CIA ``does not produce SameTime messages to Congress because 
doing so would have serious negative consequences on CIA's 
work.''\174\ This is a striking assertion. To suggest the 
entity that both created and funds the CIA and must provide 
oversight for myriad reasons cannot have access at some level 
to the work done by the CIA is staggeringly arrogant. In 
reality these SameTime messages were both highly relevant and 
highly probative and fundamentally changed the Committee's 
understanding of information previously provided to the 
Committee. This is precisely why Congress must be able to 
access this information and precisely why the CIA was so 
resistant to providing it.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \172\Letter from Rachel Carlson Lieber, Deputy Gen. Counsel, Cent. 
Intel. Agency, to Dana K. Chipman, Chief Counsel, H. Select Comm. on 
Benghazi (Aug. 28, 2015) (on file with the Committee).
    \173\Id.
    \174\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    A review of the documents ultimately produced by the CIA 
and subsequent witness interviews necessitated additional 
document requests to the CIA. The Committee first attempted to 
request these documents informally. The CIA did not produce 
them. As a result, on January 13, 2016, the Committee sent a 
letter to the CIA formally requesting additional 
documents.\175\ This request included two specific operational 
cables referenced repeatedly during witness interviews, an 
additional piece of intelligence analysis from after the 
attacks, and information regarding intelligence given to senior 
policymakers\176\--the subject of a previous formal request 
from the Committee to the CIA.\177\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \175\Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, 
to John O. Brennan, Dir., Cent. Intel. Agency (Jan. 13, 2016) (on file 
with Committee).
    \176\Id.
    \177\Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, 
to John O. Brennan, Dir., Cent. Intel. Agency (Nov. 4, 2015) (on file 
with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The CIA ignored this request. As a result, the Committee 
issued a second subpoena on January 20, 2016.\178\ This 
subpoena demanded the production of the two specific 
operational cables in addition to information regarding 
intelligence given to senior policymakers.\179\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \178\Subpoena issued by H. Select Comm. on Benghazi to John O. 
Brennan, Dir., Cent. Intel. Agency, (Aug. 7, 2015).
    \179\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On February 9, 2016--after months of the Committee applying 
pressure to produce documents and the possibility John O. 
Brennan, Director, CIA could be held in contempt of Congress 
for withholding documents--the CIA finally relented.\180\ The 
CIA agreed to produce SameTime messages to the Committee and 
came to an agreement on access to the two specific operational 
cables.\181\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \180\Letter from John O. Brennan, Dir., Cent. Intel. Agency, to 
Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi (Feb. 9, 2016) (on 
file with the Committee).
    \181\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    While the CIA claimed the SameTime messages would not 
change the Committee's understanding of the facts of Benghazi, 
some of the contents of these messages were quite valuable. As 
a result of the delays--the Agency took more than nine months 
to fulfill the Committee's request--the Committee lost an 
opportunity to question some witnesses specifically about these 
messages. In addition, some of the messages implicated agencies 
outside the CIA and did in fact change the Committee's 
understanding of certain facts--something the CIA, with its 
stove-piped view of the Benghazi landscape, likely would not 
have known.

                               WITNESSES

    The Committee interviewed 19 CIA witnesses during the 
course of its investigation. The Committee understood these 
witnesses needed flexibility and, in some cases, anonymity. The 
Committee delayed important interviews to ensure personnel 
would not take time away from mission-critical duties overseas. 
On one occasion, the Committee participated in a secure video 
teleconference with a witness overseas, and on another occasion 
the Committee waited until a witness was between tours of duty 
so the interview would not interfere with intelligence 
activities. The Committee also provided copies of interview 
transcripts to the CIA so they could have them in their offices 
rather than reviewing them in the Committee offices.
    Although the Committee never issued subpoenas to any CIA 
witnesses, and all appeared voluntarily, the CIA initially 
refused to produce some witnesses--including the manager of the 
analysts. Instead, the CIA produced the former head of the 
Office of Terrorism Analysis, who was unable to answer granular 
questions about how the analytic assessments were drafted and 
what specific intelligence the analysts relied on.\182\ 
Outstanding questions remained after that interview, and it was 
apparent the Committee needed to speak to the first-line 
manager of the analysts. The CIA refused to produce this 
witness, dubbing the individual a ``junior analyst'' despite a 
decade of experience at the CIA.\183\ Only after the Committee 
proposed issuing a subpoena for the witness's deposition did 
the CIA agree to produce the person voluntarily for an 
interview.\184\ This witness proved highly probative, which 
regrettably, may be why the CIA was reluctant to allow the 
interview in the first instance.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \182\See Testimony of employee, Cent. Intel. Agency, Tr. 43, 46 
(Nov. 13, 2015)] (on file with the Committee).
    \183\Email from Rachel Carlson Lieber, Deputy Gen. Counsel, Cent. 
Intel. Agency, to H. Select Comm. on Benghazi (Jan. 7, 2016, 10:23 EST) 
(on file with the Committee).
    \184\See Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on 
Benghazi, to John O. Brennan, Dir., Cent. Intel. Agency (Jan. 13, 2016) 
(on file with Committee) (on file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    A similar situation occurred involving a senior employee in 
Benghazi. The CIA initially refused to produce this individual, 
who, given his portfolio in Benghazi, was the only person who 
could speak to a number of different topics and allegations. 
After the CIA agreed to produce him for an interview, the CIA 
kept pushing the date of the interview further into the future. 
Not until the Chairman issued a subpoena and was preparing to 
serve it did the CIA set a date for this individual's 
interview. This witness also provided highly probative 
testimony calling into question previous conclusions drawn by 
other committees of Congress and fundamentally reshaping the 
Committee's understanding of critical factors.
    The Committee is also aware of concerns regarding the 
accuracy of certain specific witness testimony before the House 
Intelligence Committee. The Committee carefully reviewed 
relevant testimony and information and questioned witnesses 
about this testimony, but was unable to definitively resolve 
the issue.

                          DISPARATE TREATMENT

    While the Committee spent months trying to acquire new 
documents from the CIA, the Committee Minority members had no 
such difficulty. One day before the Committee's first interview 
with a CIA witness, the CIA emailed the Committee alerting it 
that ``[i]n response to a request for specific cables from the 
minority, we have added three documents'' to the documents at 
the CIA available for review.\185\ Neither Committee Minority 
members nor the CIA informed the Committee such a request had 
been made until the CIA obligingly fulfilled it. In contrast, 
the CIA refused to produce two specific cables requested by the 
Committee until a subpoena was issued.\186\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \185\Email from Mary K. E. Maple, Office of Cong. Affairs, Cent. 
Intel. Agency, to Heather Sawyer, Minority Chief Counsel, H. Select 
Comm. on Benghazi et al (April 22, 2015, 9:19 EST) (on file with the 
Committee).
    \186\See Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on 
Benghazi, to John O. Brennan, Dir., Cent. Intel. Agency (Jan. 13, 
2016); Email from Rachel Carlson Lieber, Deputy General Counsel, Cent. 
Intel. Agency, to H. Select Comm. on Benghazi (Jan. 18, 2016), and 
Subpoena to John O. Brennan, Dir., Cent. Intel. Agency, H. Select Comm. 
on Benghazi, (Jan. 20, 2016) (on file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Again on October 17, 2015--just five days before the 
Committee's hearing with the Secretary--an email was sent on 
behalf of Committee Minority members to Higgins seeking 
information regarding a classification issue.\187\ The CIA 
responded 42 minutes later--on a Saturday night.\188\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \187\Email from Susanne Sachsman Grooms, Minority Staff Dir., H. 
Select Comm. on Benghazi, to Neal L. Higgins, Dir. of Cong. Affairs, 
Cent. Intel. Agency (Oct. 17, 2015, 19:02 EST) (on file with the 
Committee).
    \188\Email from Neal L. Higgins, Dir. of Cong. Affairs, Cent. 
Intel. Agency, to Susanne Sachsman Grooms, Minority Staff Dir., H. 
Select Comm. on Benghazi (Oct. 17, 2015, 19:44 EST) (on file with the 
Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Two days later Committee Minority members asked the CIA to 
review seven transcript excerpts from two witness interviews 
for classification review.\189\ The CIA completed these reviews 
and returned the transcripts in just 40 hours.\190\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \189\Email from Heather Sawyer, Minority Chief Counsel, H. Select 
Comm. on Benghazi, to Neal L. Higgins, Dir. of Cong. Affairs, Cent. 
Intel. Agency (Oct. 19, 2015, 20:47 EST) (on file with the Committee).
    \190\Email from Neal L. Higgins, Dir. of Cong. Affairs, Cent. 
Intel. Agency, to Susanne Sachsman Grooms, Minority Staff Dir., H. 
Select Comm. on Benghazi (Oct. 17, 2015, 19:44 EST) (on file with the 
Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    When the Committee asked the CIA to conduct a 
classification review of witness transcripts, however, the CIA 
refused. As the Chairman noted in a letter to Brennan on 
January 13, 2016:

        The Agency has indicated it will not conduct a 
        classification review of transcripts of previous 
        Committee interviews but has provided no reason why it 
        is unable to perform this review, which must be 
        performed by the Executive Branch. The refusal to 
        conduct this review threatens to significantly impact 
        both the timelines and constitutional independence of 
        the Committee's final report, as well as the ability of 
        the American people to review transcripts of 
        unclassified interviews. This matter must be resolved 
        promptly to enable the Committee to undertake the 
        process of preparing its final report \191\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \191\Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, 
to John O. Brennan, Dir., Cent. Intel. Agency (Jan. 13, 2016) (on file 
with Committee).

    The CIA responded to this letter on March 22, 2016--more 
than two months later--following a meeting on the topic between 
the Committee and the CIA. In its response, the CIA said a 
classification review of the transcripts would be ``lengthy and 
laborious.''\192\ The CIA also reiterated its view the 
Committee should share its report in advance with the CIA, 
something the CIA noted was ``critically important.''\193\ This 
delayed the Committee's final report because the Committee 
cannot release information without having it cleared for 
classification purposes and the Executive Branch solely 
conducts this review.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \192\Email from Neal L. Higgins, Dir. of Cong. Affairs, Cent. 
Intel. Agency, to Philip G. Kiko, Staff Dir. and Gen. Counsel, H. 
Select Comm. on Benghazi (Mar. 22, 2016) (on file with the Committee).
    \193\Id. The CIA acknowledged in a March 4, 2016 meeting that it 
had simply ``assumed'' the Committee would do this, without ever once 
asking with the Committee. This mistaken assumption perhaps contributed 
to the CIA's hardened posture in refusing to review witness transcripts 
for classification and sensitivity purposes.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                            The White House

                               DOCUMENTS

    The Committee sent a document request to the White House on 
December 29, 2014.\194\ While this was not the first time 
Congress had asked the White House for information regarding 
Benghazi,\195\ it did mark the first time Congress asked the 
White House for documents. The request consisted of 12 
categories, including documents regarding the U.S.'s continued 
presence in Libya, the response to the attacks, the YouTube 
video, the Intelligence Committee talking points, and the 
administration's explanation of the attacks.\196\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \194\Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, 
to Denis R. McDonough, White House Chief of Staff (Dec. 29, 2014) (on 
file with the Committee).
    \195\See, e.g., Letter from Buck McKeon, Chairman, H. Armed Servs. 
Comm., et al., to the President (Oct. 19, 2012) (on file with the 
Committee); and Letter from Darrell Issa, Chairman, H. Comm. on 
Oversight & Gov't Reform, and Jason Chaffetz, Chairman, H. Subcomm. on 
Nat'l Sec., to the President (Oct. 19, 2012) (on file with the 
Committee).
    \196\Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, 
to Denis R. McDonough, White House Chief of Staff (Dec. 29, 2014) (on 
file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On January 23, 2015, the White House objected to some 
Committee requests, but did commit to ``be in a position to 
begin sharing documents by the end of February.'' \197\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \197\Letter from W. Neil Eggleston, White House Counsel, to Trey 
Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi (Jan. 23, 2015) (on file 
with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On February 27, 2015, White House staff met with Committee 
staff to discuss the requests. At the meeting the White House 
produced 266 pages of emails to and from White House staff 
related to Benghazi--the first emails and documents produced to 
Congress by the White House about Benghazi.\198\ These emails, 
however, were heavily redacted. As a result, the White House 
and Committee reached an agreement regarding redactions, and on 
March 16, 2015, the White House produced these documents with 
the redactions removed.\199\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \198\Letter from Jennifer O'Connor, Deputy White House Counsel, to 
Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi (Feb. 27, 2015) (on 
file with the Committee).
    \199\Letter from Jennifer O'Connor, Deputy White House Counsel, to 
Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi (Mar. 16, 2015) (on 
file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On April 23, 2015, the Committee Chairman wrote to the 
White House again,\200\ giving priority to specific categories 
of documents from the Committee's December 29, 2014 
request.\201\ As a result, the White House made additional 
document productions on May 11, 2015;\202\ June 19, 2015;\203\ 
and July 17, 2015.\204\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \200\Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, 
to W. Neil Eggleston, White House Counsel (Apr. 23, 2015) (on file with 
the Committee).
    \201\Id.
    \202\See Letter from Jennifer O'Connor, Deputy White House Counsel, 
to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi (May 11, 2015) (on 
file with the Committee).
    \203\See Letter from Jennifer O'Connor, Deputy White House Counsel, 
to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi (June 19, 2015) 
(on file with the Committee).
    \204\See Letter from Jennifer O'Connor, Deputy White House Counsel, 
to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi (July 17, 2015) 
(on file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On August 7, 2015, the Chairman wrote a third time to the 
White House\205\ addressing documents responsive to the 
Committee's December 29, 2014 request which were being withheld 
by the White House.\206\ Subsequently, the White House produced 
additional documents on August 28, 2015.\207\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \205\Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, 
to W. Neil Eggleston, White House Counsel (Aug. 7, 2015) (on file with 
the Committee).
    \206\Id.
    \207\See Letter from Jennifer O'Connor, Deputy White House Counsel, 
to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi (Aug. 28, 2015) 
(on file with the Committee)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On September 9, 2015, White House staff met with Committee 
staff and made progress on satisfying the Committee's requests 
for information.\208\ The White House briefed the Committee on 
a specific request, and a path forward was set to identify 
remaining documents addressing specific categories of 
information important to the Committee. Additional meetings 
were held in a classified setting, on October 5, 2015;\209\ 
October 27, 2015;\210\ and November 12, 2015.\211\ Each meeting 
was accompanied by a document production from the White House.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \208\See Email from Jennifer O'Connor, Deputy Counsel, White House 
Office of the Chief Counsel, to Dana K. Chipman, Chief Counsel, H. 
Select Comm. on Benghazi et al (Sept. 10, 2015, 14:53 EST) (on file 
with the Committee).
    \209\Letter from from Jennifer O'Connor, Deputy White House 
Counsel, to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi (Oct. 5, 
2015) (on file with the Committee).
    \210\Letter from Jennifer O'Connor, Deputy White House Counsel, to 
Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi (Oct. 27, 2015) (on 
file with the Committee).
    \211\Letter from Jennifer O'Connor, Deputy White House Counsel, to 
Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi (Nov. 12, 2015) (on 
file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In total, the White House made nine productions of 
documents to the Committee. To be clear the White House did not 
provide all of the information the Committee requested but the 
Committee was granted access to information no other 
congressional committee accessed.

                               WITNESSES

    The Committee interviewed four witnesses from the White 
House. On January 21, 2016, three senior White House officials, 
W. Neil Eggleston, Counsel to the President; Nicholas L. 
McQuaid, Deputy Counsel to the President; and Donald C. Sisson, 
Special Assistant to the President; flew to Charlotte, North 
Carolina, to meet with the Chairman and discuss details 
regarding these witness interviews.\212\ The White House and 
the Committee honored the confidentiality of the meeting and 
the discussions.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \212\Press Briefing by Press Sec'y Josh Earnest, Office of the 
Press Sec'y, The White House (Mar. 18, 2016), https://
www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/03/21/press-briefing-press-
secretary-josh-earnest-3182016.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Susan E. Rice, National Security Advisor, and Benjamin J. 
Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic 
Communications, then testified before the Committee.\213\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \213\See Testimony of Susan E. Rice, former U.S. Ambassador to the 
U.N., Tr. (Feb. 2, 2016) (on file with the Committee); Testimony of 
Benjamin J. Rhodes, Deputy Nat'l Security Advisor for Strategic 
Communications, Nat'l Security Council, Tr. at 50-51 (Feb. 2, 2016) (on 
file with the Committee).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                    ACCESS TO COMPARTMENTED PROGRAMS

    Over the course of nearly a dozen interviews with the State 
Department, the Defense Department, and CIA personnel, 
witnesses consistently refused to answer questions related to 
certain allegations with respect to U.S. activities in Libya 
even though the House specifically gave the Committee access to 
materials relating to intelligence sources and methods.\214\ 
Most of these questions related in some way to allegations 
regarding weapons.\215\ These refusals meant significant 
questions raised in public relating to Benghazi could not be 
answered.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \214\H. Res. 567, 113th Cong., Sec. 4(a) (2014).
    \215\Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, 
to W. Neil Eggleston, White House Counsel (Mar. 16, 2016) (on file with 
the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    At the meeting between the Chairman and the White House in 
Charlotte, N.C., in January 2016, the Chairman told Eggleston 
the Committee would need to review any and all relevant special 
access programs that might relate to U.S. government activities 
in Libya. On March 16, 2016, the Committee formalized its 
request for this access in a letter to Eggleston:

        With this letter, I am also including a classified 
        attachment detailing specific testimony received by the 
        Committee establishing the need to further clarify what 
        specific activities the U.S. government may have 
        conducted, and/or authorized, in Libya in 2011 and 
        2012. . . . You are in a unique position to help us 
        make sure the record is complete. In order to 
        accomplish this, however, the Committee requires your 
        assistance. I therefore write to formally request 
        access to all special access programs regarding U.S. 
        activities in Libya in 2011-2012.\216\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \216\Id.

    The letter contained a classified attachment detailing 
specific testimony from senior and line personnel from the 
State Department, CIA, and the Defense Department, all of whom 
did not respond fully to questions from the Committee during 
their interviews due to access issues. Some of the testimony 
provided raised substantial further questions in light of the 
record available to the Committee. The administration 
ultimately did not provide the requested access.\217\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \217\Letter from Neal L. Higgins, Dir. of Cong. Affairs, Cent. 
Intel. Agency, to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi 
(April 28, 2016) (on file with the Committee).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                       QUESTIONS TO THE PRESIDENT

    In the summer of 2014, the Chairman first discussed sending 
questions to the President with Eggleston. In the January 2016 
meeting, the Chairman again raised with Eggleston the 
possibility of sending questions to the President. The Chairman 
offered Eggleston the opportunity to review and comment on the 
questions in advance as well as to provide the documentary 
basis behind each question.
    Despite this offer by the Chairman, in the three months 
following that meeting, the White House repeatedly rebuffed 
offers from the Committee to meet and discuss the questions. On 
June 7, 2016, the Chairman sent to Eggleston a list of 15 
questions for the President regarding the Benghazi 
attacks.\218\ None of these questions had ever been directly 
addressed by the White House publicly, and for most of the 
questions the President is the only person able to answer the 
question. The full text of the letter with the questions is 
reproduced in Appendix C of this report.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \218\Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, 
to W. Neil Eggleston, White House Counsel (June 7, 2016) (Reproduced in 
Appendix C).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On June 25, 2016, Eggleston responded that he had advised 
the President not to answer the Chairman's questions. 
Specifically, Eggleston noted ``implications'' for the 
constitutional separation of powers and wrote ``if the 
President were to answer your questions, his response would 
suggest that Congress has the unilateral power to demand 
answers from the President about his official acts.''\219\ 
Eggleston did not explain how voluntary responses would suggest 
that Congress could compel answers nor did he mention prior 
interviews--such as on 60 Minutes on September 12, 2012, and on 
Univision on September 20, 2012--where the President discussed 
the Benghazi attacks.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \219\Letter from W. Neil Eggleston, White House Counsel to Trey 
Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi (June 25, 2016) (on file 
with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

          COMPLIANCE WITH RECORD-KEEPING LAWS AND REGULATIONS

                        The Federal Records Act

    The Federal Records Act [FRA] ``governs the collection, 
retention, preservation, and possible destruction of federal 
agency records'' by Federal agencies. \220\ Federal records 
include:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \220\Wendy Ginsberg, Cong. Research Serv., R43072, Common Questions 
About Federal Records and Related Agency Requirements 2 (2015), https:/
/www.fas.org/sgp/crs/secrecy/R43072.pdf (citing 44 U.S.C., Chapters 21, 
29, 31, and 33).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    [A]ll books, papers, maps, photographs, machine readable 
materials, or other documentary materials, regardless of 
physical form or characteristics, made or received by a federal 
agency under federal law or in connection with the transaction 
of public business and preserved or appropriate for 
preservation by that agency or its legitimate successor as 
evidence of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, 
proceedings, operations or other activities of the government 
or because of informational value of the date within them.\221\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \221\44 U.S.C. Sec. 3301 (2012). Conversely, non-record materials 
are broken down into three categories: (1) library and museum material 
(2) extra copies of documents; and (3) stocks of publications and 
processed documents--such as catalogs, trade journals, and other 
publications that are received from other government agencies, 
commercial firms, or private institutions. 36 C.F.R. Sec. 1222.14 
(2009). The FRA was most recently amended in 2014 to address:

      ``[T]he rapid migration over the last several decades 
      toward electronic communication and recordkeeping, federal 
      recordkeeping laws are still focused on the media in which 
      a record is preserved, not the information that constitutes 
      the record itself. To correct this flaw, this legislation 
      will shift the onus of recordkeeping onto the record and 
      not the media it is contained in as a way to better enable 
      NARA, and other agencies, to handle growing amounts of 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
      electronic communication.''

H. Rep. No. 113-127, at 5 (2013). That amendment was introduced by 
Ranking Member Cummings (D-MD). H.R. 1233, 113th Cong. (2013).
    The FRA requires each agency head to ``make and preserve 
records.''\222\ Each agency head must ``establish and maintain 
an active, continuing program for the economical and efficient 
management of the records of the agency'' including ``effective 
controls over the creation and over the maintenance and use of 
records in the conduct of current business.''\223\ 
Additionally, each agency head ``shall establish safeguards 
against the removal or loss of records.''\224\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \222\44 U.S.C. Sec. 3101 (2012).
    \223\44 U.S.C. Sec. 3102 (2012).
    \224\44 U.S.C. Sec. 3105 (2012).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The details of implementing an agency's record management 
program are set out in Federal regulations. Agencies must 
maintain ``adequate documentation of agency business'' that 
``[m]ake possible a proper scrutiny by Congress.''\225\ The 
regulations require ``[a]gencies that allow employees to send 
and receive official electronic mail messages using a system 
not operated by the agency must ensure that federal records 
sent or received on such systems are preserved in the 
appropriate agency recordkeeping system.''\226\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \225\36 C.F.R. Sec. 1222.22 (c) (2015).
    \226\36 C.F.R. Sec. 1236.22 (b) (2015).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The State Department's own records management policies 
reinforce the statutory and regulatory requirements. According 
to the Foreign Affairs Manual: ``[T]he Secretary is required to 
establish a Records and Information Life Cycle Management 
Program in accordance with the Federal Records Act.''\227\ 
Objectives of the program include fulfilling official requests 
from Congress,\228\ as well as ensuring ``[t]he recording of 
activities of officials of the Department should be complete to 
the extent necessary to . . . [m]ake possible a proper scrutiny 
by Congress and duly authorized agencies of the Government of 
the manner in which the functions of the Department have been 
discharged.''\229\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \227\5 FAM 414.1 (2015).
    \228\5 FAM 414.3-1(8) (2015).
    \229\5 FAM 422.2(3) (2015) (emphasis added); see also 5 FAM 443.1 
(establishing principles governing email communications) and 5 FAM 
754(h) (requiring users to review 5 FAM 443 for responsibilities for 
handling email correspondence).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                 The State Department's Record Keeping

    The Committee first became aware of the Secretary's use of 
a non-official email account for at least some official 
business on August 11, 2014, when the State Department produced 
to the Committee eight emails to or from the Secretary.\230\ 
These emails indicated the Secretary used a private email 
account to communicate about official government business.\231\ 
Well before the State Department made this production of eight 
emails, it was abundantly clear the State Department knew the 
complete universe of responsive documents and emails was not 
housed or situated on State Department servers.\232\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \230\See August 11, 2014 document production from the State Dep't 
which included eight emails sent to or received by the Secretary.
    \231\See id. Some of the emails were identified by the address with 
domain name ``@clintonemail.com.'' Other emails were designated simply 
as ``H.''
    \232\See Fischer Testimony at 66, in relevant part:

      Q: Okay. One of the things that we wanted to talk with you 
      about was when you first became knowledgeable or aware that 
      all or part of Secretary Clinton's records were not on 
      premises with the State Dep't. And can you tell us when 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
      that was?

      A: The end of July 2014.
    The State Department was aware--as early as June 2013--of 
the Secretary's use of personal email for official business and 
the detrimental effect on responses to Congress and obligations 
under the Federal Records Act, yet the Department said 
nothing.\233\ The State Department was actively retrieving the 
Secretary's official emails in May 2014--the same time the 
Committee was formed--still the Department said nothing.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \233\``Office of the Sec'y: Evaluation of Email Records Management 
and Cybersecurity Requirements,'' supra note 69 at 17-18.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Seventeen days after producing eight of the Secretary's 
emails, the State Department, through Kennedy, issued a 
memorandum to State Department principals reiterating the 
obligation that departing senior staff have to ensure the 
timely return of records, including email.\234\ Specifically, 
Kennedy's memorandum referenced a ``policy in place since 2009 
. . . to capture electronically email accounts of the senior 
officials listed in Tab 1 as they depart their 
positions.''\235\ The memorandum attached the relevant Foreign 
Affairs Manual provisions including those related to email 
records.\236\ During questioning by the Chairman, Kennedy 
testified about the memorandum:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \234\See Memorandum from ``M--Patrick F. Kennedy'' to 7th Floor 
Principals 1 (Aug. 28, 2014) (on file with the Committee).
    \235\See id. at 3.
    \236\See id.

        Q: On August the 28th, you issued a memo to a whole 
        host of people, subject: ``Senior Officials' Records 
        Management Responsibilities.'' I want to make sure he 
        gets a copy of that so he's looking at the same thing 
        I'm looking at. And we can mark it as committee exhibit 
        13 here. Does that look familiar? I'm not going to go 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        through the whole thing with you. I just want to. . . .

        A: Yes, sir, this is familiar. This is something that 
        we did in response to a NARA program that we call 
        journaling but NARA's official name is Capstone.

        Q: And what prompted you to promulgate this memo?

        A: NARA's program.

        Q: I thought you and I had established that NARA rule 
        had taken place the fall of 2013.

        A: The journaling effort, Mr. Chairman, I cannot 
        remember the exact date and how my people had worked 
        this through. But the request to journal these records 
        is something that I'm just reading this now to see if 
        anything else reminds me. Chairman, if I am slow, I am 
        slow. But I have

        Q: Having spent the day with you, you will never 
        convince me that you are slow. You will never convince 
        me of that. If you would look at page 3 for me, kind of 
        in the middle, it's a bullet that starts, ``As a 
        general matter.''

        A: Yes.

        Q: ``As a general matter.'' I'll let you read the rest 
        of that. You can read it for the record whenever you 
        feel comfortable.

        A: Yes, sir, I am ready.

        Q: Will you read that for us, for the court reporter?

        A: ``As a general matter, to ensure a complete record 
        of their activities, senior officials should not use 
        their private email accounts for (e.g., Gmail) for 
        official businesses. If a senior official uses his or 
        her private email account for the conduct of official 
        business, she or he must ensure that records pertaining 
        to official business that are sent from or received on 
        such email account are captured and maintained. The 
        best way to ensure this is to forward incoming e mails 
        received on a private account to the senior official's 
        State account and copy ongoing messages to their State 
        account.''\237\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \237\Testimony of Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Sec'y of State for 
Mgmt., U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 259-61 (Feb. 3, 2016) [hereinafter 
Kennedy Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

    Less than six weeks later, Kennedy sent another State 
Department announcement restating the obligations of employees 
to preserve records.\238\ Less than 10 days later, on October 
28, 2014, Kennedy sent a letter to four former Secretaries of 
State. That letter sought the return of Federal records, ``such 
as an email sent or received on a personal email account while 
serving as Secretary.''\239\ The letter emphasized that 
``diverse Department records are subject to various disposition 
schedules with most Secretary of State records retained 
permanently,'' a fact that was confirmed in the Committee's 
interview with William Fischer, Chief Records Officer, State 
Department.\240\ Because of a typographical error, the State 
Department did not send the letter to Mills until November 12, 
2014.\241\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \238\See Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Sec'y of State for Mgmt., Dep't 
Notice 2014_10_115: A Message from Under Sec'y for Management Patrick 
F. Kennedy regarding State Dep't Records Responsibilities and Policy, 
U.S. Dep't of State (Oct. 17, 2014), https://www.archives.gov/press/
press-releases/2015/pdf/attachment2-department-notice.pdf; Patrick F. 
Kennedy, Under Sec'y of State for Mgmt., Cable to Field: State Dep't 
Records Responsibilities and Policy, U.S. Dep't of State (Oct. 30, 
2014), https://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2015/pdf/
attachment3-cable-to-the-field.pdf.
    \239\See Letter from Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Sec'y of State for 
Mgmt., U.S. Dep't of State, to former Sec'ys Madeline Albright, Colin 
Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and Hillary Clinton. (Oct. 28, 2014) (on file 
with the Committee). It's important to note that because of a drafting 
error, Cheryl D. Mills letter was sent on November 12, 2014. See Letter 
from Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Sec'y of State for Mgmt., U.S. Dep't of 
State, to Cheryl D. Mills. (Nov. 12, 2014) (on file with the 
Committee).
    \240\See Fischer Testimony, supra note 54, at 32-33.
    \241\See Letter from Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Sec'y of State for 
Mgmt., U.S Dep't of State to Cheryl D. Mills. (Nov. 12, 2014) (on file 
with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In response to a Committee member, Kennedy told the 
Committee:

        A: Yes, sir. This was in response to a National 
        Archives and Records Administration new policy that 
        they had put out.

        Q: Uh-huh. And the letter came from you?

        A: The letter came from me, yes, sir.

        Q: And

        A: It went to the representatives of I believe it was 
        four previous Secretaries of State.

        Q: Why did it go to the representatives?

        A: That was just a decision that we would write the 
        representatives because it would more likely get the 
        kind of attention, immediate attention, if we sent it 
        to the representatives. And I personally knew all the 
        representatives of Secretary Powell on forward. And so 
        I would write them because I would make sure that they 
        would take it would not get lost, potentially, in the 
        junk mail category.

        Q: Okay. And just give me in your words, so I don't 
        have to reread and go through this letter in your 
        words, what were you trying to accomplish exactly with 
        this letter? What were you concerned about?

        A: We wanted to make sure that we had in our possession 
        any Federal record that had been created during their 
        tenure that we might not have in our possession.

        Q: Uh-huh.

        Q: And what prompted you to write the letter when you 
        wrote it?

        A: It was basically the NARA, the NARA.

        Q: Rule?

        A: The NARA rule.

        Q: And when was the NARA rule promulgated, do you 
        recall?

        A: I believe that it was in late 2013.

        Q: If it was late 2013, why did you wait until late 
        2014 to write the letter?

        A: Because this is when I received it, sir.

        Q: When you received what?

        A: When my staff called this to my attention.

        Q: Can you see how the timeline might appear to have 
        been influenced by other factors? Are you at least open 
        to the optics of a congressional committee continuing 
        to ask for her emails, and none are forthcoming, and 
        the State Department says not one word about not having 
        her record?

        And I will say again for the record, for the court 
        reporter, because this may be a new court reporter. The 
        person that's currently assigned to aid Congress in 
        collection of records, Mr. Snyder, could not be more 
        professional and easy to work with and fair. And if 
        it's no, it's no, and if it's yes, it's yes, but at 
        least we have an answer. Previous to Mr. Snyder, it was 
        not that way.

        So we ask, and we hear crickets. And then we see these 
        letters from you to all the way back to John Jay and 
        Alexander Hamilton saying, can you please produce 
        records. And the rule was promulgated a year before you 
        sent the letter, Ambassador.

        A: Mr. Chairman, I absolutely understand your concerns 
        and absolutely agree that your request for records rang 
        some bells in the State Department. Absolutely.

        Q: That's what I'm getting at.

        A: But, you know, if we wanted to hide something, I 
        would have never sent this letter.

        Q: Well, there are two ways to look at that. You sent 
        the letter to more than just the Secretary, which was a 
        very good way to deflect attention onto other 
        Secretaries of State, even though the ones that you 
        [sic] some of the ones you dealt with in the past never 
        sent you an email. Now, the letter does say records and 
        not just emails, I will grant you that.

        A: That is correct, sir.

        Q: But it is curious why you would wait years and years 
        and years to make sure the public record is complete. 
        Meanwhile, you're getting FOIA requests and 
        congressional inquiries and a host of other things. And 
        yet you wait until our committee is in the throes of 
        asking for her emails for this letter to be sent.

        Can you see how that would look suspicious?

        A: I can see how it looks suspicious, but, Mr. 
        Chairman, I acted after discussion with my colleagues. 
        You know, you called something to our attention, and we 
        thought, ``We could have a problem here.'' We are now 
        in the email era at the State Department. And the email 
        era of the State Department, access to the Internet, et 
        cetera, et cetera, essentially goes back only to let's 
        see goes back to about late 19----

        Q: Whenever Al Gore invented it. All right. I'm going 
        to turn it back over to Jim.

        A: So that we went back to the period of time before 
        Secretaries of State who were, in the opinion of myself 
        and others in the State Department, in the Internet 
        email era. And so we went to those four Secretaries of 
        State----

        Q: I'm with you.

        A: --to make sure that we had your concerns. We also 
        had the NARA concerns. And it seemed to be a rational 
        decision to reach out across the board, because it was 
        only going back

        Q: But you would concede you had been getting FOIA 
        requests and you had gotten other congressional 
        inquiries, none of which prompted you to write this 
        letter.

        A: This is the first time it had been brought to my 
        attention.

        Q: And you've said `brought to your attention.' Who 
        specifically brought this to your attention?

        A: I don't remember. I think it was some combination of 
        our records officers and the Bureau of Legislative 
        Affairs.

        Q: All right. You wrote Ms. Mills, among others.

        A: Yes.

        Q: Did you have any conversations, correspondence, 
        emails, face to face meetings with Ms. Mills prior to 
        sending this letter?

        A: Not on this subject.

        Q: So, out of the cold blue air, you sent Ms. Mills a 
        letter saying, essentially, `Send Secretary Clinton's 
        emails back to the State Department,' no warning?

        A: I also sent Peggy Sefarino, who was going I wrote 
        who I regarded to be the senior staff officers for four

        Q: And you're saying Ms. Mills had no notice that this 
        letter was coming.

        A: I did not call her and tell her it was coming, sir. 
        And I am unaware of anyone else who may have called 
        her.

        Q: Did you meet with her and tell her it was coming?

        A: No, sir, I did not.

        Q: The other three designees for the three previous 
        Secretaries of State, did you communicate with them in 
        any fashion prior to them receiving the letter on 
        behalf of the Secretary of State?

        A: No, sir, I did not.

        Q: And just to be clear, with your question from 
        Chairman Gowdy, you said you did have conversations 
        with Cheryl Mills prior to this letter being sent?

        A: Not about this topic, sir. Every once in a while, I 
        would see Cheryl Mills at a social function. I think I 
        even had lunch with her once, discussing old business 
        not related to Secretary I had worked with Cheryl Mills 
        for 4 years.\242\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \242\Kennedy Testimony at 252-57.

    Less than five weeks after receipt of Kennedy's letter, 
Mills wrote back to the State Department indicating she was 
making 55,000 pages of emails sent or received on the 
Secretary's private email account available to the State 
Department.\243\ The emails were not enclosed with the letter. 
The Committee would learn later State Department officials were 
sent to pick up the emails at the law firm of the Secretary's 
attorney, Williams and Connolly.\244\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \243\Letter from Cheryl D. Mills to Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Sec'y 
of State for Mgmt., U.S. Dep't of State (Dec. 5, 2014) (on file with 
the Committee).
    \244\See Fischer Testimony, supra note 54, at 85.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In her December 5, 2014 letter to Kennedy, Mills stated:

        Like Secretaries of State before her, Secretary Clinton 
        at times used her own electronic mail account when 
        engaging with other officials. On matters pertaining to 
        the conduct of government business, it was her practice 
        to use the officials' government electronic mail 
        accounts. Accordingly, to the extent the Department 
        retains records of government electronic mail accounts, 
        it already has records of her electronic mail during 
        her tenure preserved within the Department's record 
        keeping systems.\245\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \245\Letter from Cheryl D. Mills to Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Sec'y 
of State for Mgmt., U.S. Dep't of State (Dec. 5, 2014) (on file with 
the Committee).

    Notably, this was the first time the phrase ``it was her 
practice to use the officials' government electronic emails 
accounts'' was used.\246\ Mills further explained in her letter 
``to the extent the Department retains records of government 
electronic mail accounts, it already has records of her 
electronic mail during her tenure preserved within the 
Department's record keeping systems.''\247\ Mills letter did 
not address how emails sent both to and from a personal email 
account would be captured for federal records purposes.\248\ In 
fact it would be difficult to provide to such an explanation 
since the Committee's investigation uncovered work-related 
emails that were sent to and from personal email accounts that 
were never produced to the State Department.\249\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \246\Id.
    \247\Id.
    \248\Id.
    \249\Letter from Julia Frifield, Ass't Sec'y of State for Leg. 
Affairs, State Dep't, to Trey Gowdy, Chmn., H. Select Comm. on Benghazi 
(June 25, 2015) (on file with the Committee) (``In a limited number of 
circumstances, we did not locate in the tens of thousands of pages of 
emails provided by Secretary Clinton the content of a handful of 
communications that Mr. Blumenthal provided. Those communications . . . 
are documents Bates-numbered in Blumenthal products. . . .'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Collectively, the statements above served as an attempt to 
shift the burden of the Secretary's recordkeeping 
responsibilities to other government officials and the State 
Department.\250\ This was apparent in further statements 
consistently made by the Secretary speculating that ``the State 
Department had between 90-95 percent of all the ones that were 
work related. They were already on the system.''\251\ Not only 
could the State Department not confirm the percentage provided 
by the Secretary it did not know where the percentage she used 
originated.\252\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \250\See id.
    \251\Testimony of Hillary R. Clinton, Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of 
State, Tr. at 280 (Oct. 22, 2015) (on file with the Committee).
    \252\See id. at 323 where Chairman Gowdy states ``when I asked the 
State Department about ten days ago, what is the source of that figure, 
they shrugged their shoulders.''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On March 9, 2015, the Secretary revealed her attorneys 
deleted emails they deemed ``personal'' before turning over her 
``work-
related'' emails.\253\ Neither the State Department nor the 
Committee could verify no work-related emails were deleted by 
the Secretary's attorneys or that all of her emails related to 
Benghazi and Libya were actually produced to the Committee. 
Concerned about the completeness of the record, the Chairman 
requested, on March 19, 2015 and again on March 31, 2015, that 
the Secretary make the email server available to a neutral 
third party for inspection and review.\254\ The requests were 
rejected.\255\ The Committee's concern was confirmed on June 
12, 2015 when a non-government witness produced approximately 
150 emails and memos sent to or received by the Secretary. 
\256\ Approximately 89 of these emails had never been produced 
to the Committee. The State Department could not locate 15 of 
them either in full or part.\257\ This is significant for at 
least two reasons. First, it confirms suspicions the State 
Department failed to produce relevant, probative information to 
the Committee until confronted with the reality the Committee 
had accessed the information through separate channels. In 
other words, the State Department denied until they were 
caught. Secondly, this undermines the argument of the Secretary 
that all of her work-related emails were produced to the State 
Department. Clearly, these 15 emails are work related and 
equally clearly they were not produced to the State Department. 
What remains unknown is whether these emails were lost while 
housed on the Secretary's private server or whether the 
Secretary's attorneys screened these emails out when they self-
selected which records would be deemed official and which would 
be deemed personal. Regardless, relevant and probative 
information the public was entitled to review as public records 
was withheld.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \253\Zeke J. Miller, Transcript: Everything Hillary Clinton Said on 
the Email Controversy, Time (Mar. 10, 2015), http://time.com/3739541/
transcript-hillary-clinton-email-press-conference/.
    \254\See Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on 
Benghazi, to David E. Kendall, Of Counsel, Williams & Connolly (Mar. 
19, 2015) (on file with the Committee) (``[F]ormally requesting 
Secretary Clinton make her server available to a neutral, detached and 
independent third party for immediate inspection and review.''); see 
also Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, to 
David E. Kendall, Of Counsel, Williams & Connolly (Mar. 31, 2015) 
(``[W]e . . . urge the Secretary to reconsider her position and allow a 
neutral, detached, and independent arbiter ensure the public record is 
complete and all materials relevant to the Committee's work have been 
provided to the Committee.'').
    \255\See Letter from David E. Kendall, Of Counsel, Williams & 
Connolly, to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi (Mar. 
27, 2015) (on file with the Committee).
    \256\See Letter from James M. Cole, Partner, Sidley Austin, to Trey 
Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi (June 12, 2015) (enclosing 
production of documents related to Mr. Cole's client, Sidney S. 
Blumenthal).
    \257\See Letter from Julia E. Frifield, Assistant Sec'y of State 
for Legis. Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. 
Select Comm. on Benghazi (June 25, 2015) (on file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The fact the Secretary used and maintained a private email 
account and server for all of her work-related emails prevented 
the State Department from executing its responsibilities under 
the FRA and the implementing regulations and policies.
    The use of private email for official business was not 
confined to the Secretary. As noted previously, the Committee 
also discovered that Mills, Abedin, and Sullivan all made use 
of private email for official business. Compounding the problem 
of recovering these records, the State Department did not 
archive emails sent to or from senior staff in the Secretary's 
office during the Secretary's tenure.\258\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \258\See Lauren French, Gowdy: Not backing off subpoena of Clinton 
emails, Politico (Mar. 5, 2015), http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/
house-committee-benghazi-clinton-
email-subpoena-115795.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Beginning in early March 2015, the Committee sought 
additional information on the Department's records management 
activities. The Committee requested briefings on the State 
Department's record keeping activities as it related to both 
the Secretary and her senior staff. On March 17, 2015, the 
Committee met with representatives from the National Archives 
and Records Administration to better understand their role in 
the State Department's record keeping practices. On April 10, 
2015, the Committee met with Katie Stana, Deputy Director of 
the Executive Secretariat, State Department, to understand the 
recordkeeping apparatus in place for the Office of the 
Secretary.\259\ In addition, the Committee interviewed John 
Bentel, Director of the Office of Information Resource 
Management for the Executive Secretariat, to understand the 
technology and systems the Secretary and other senior officials 
used. When asked about the Secretary's exclusive use of private 
email and server, the Director testified he became aware when 
it came out in the papers.\260\ He further testified he did not 
know whether the State Department's general counsel was 
consulted.\261\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \259\April 10, 2015 meeting between State Dep't officials and Comm. 
staff.
    \260\Testimony of John Bentel, Director, Executive Secretariat, 
U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 37 (June 30, 2015)(on file with the Comm.).
    \261\Bentel Testimony at 51.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Committee sought to better understand the State 
Department's record keeping practices, including additional 
information on compliance with existing Federal regulations and 
State Department policy on April 18, 2015.\262\ In particular, 
the Committee requested the State Department respond to 27 
questions raised regarding the Secretary's email usage. The 
Committee emphasized the importance in getting answers to the 
questions by including them as part of the July 31, 2015 demand 
letter to Kerry.\263\ When asked about the status of a State 
Department response, the State Department indicated the OIG 
would respond to the questions.\264\ In a January 14, 2016 
meeting, the OIG revealed it had not seen the questions until 
the week of January 5, 2016, contrary to the assertions made by 
State Department officials. In fact, the OIG suggested at the 
meeting the Committee would be best served by asking the State 
Department to respond to the questions.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \262\Email from Philip G. Kiko, Staff Dir. and Gen. Counsel, H. 
Select Comm. on Benghazi, to Julia Frifield, Assistant Sec'y for Legis. 
Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State (Apr. 18, 2015, 3:39 PM).
    \263\Letter from Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, 
to John F. Kerry, Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State (July 31, 2015) 
(on file with Comm.).
    \264\See conversations between State Dep't personnel and Comm. 
staff.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The questions were subsequently posed to Kennedy on 
February 3, 2016, who was surprised by the questions. Kennedy 
testified, when asked about the volume of emails produced to 
the State Department: ``[a]gain, I don't remember when I 
learned for [sic] it, and that is not, as I said, this is not a 
subject I prepared for, for this interview.''\265\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \265\Kennedy Testimony at 211.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Committee's experiences with the State Department's 
records management and retention practices are consistent with 
findings by the OIG. It should be noted the position of 
Inspector General [IG] was vacant during the Secretary's entire 
tenure forcing the OIG to operate without a permanent IG and 
often without an acting IG.\266\ A permanent IG may have had 
the independence and standing to intervene on these records 
issues sooner. In September 2012, the OIG found that State 
Department's Office of Information Program Services, the office 
responsible for records management practices: ``do[es] not meet 
statutory and regulatory requirements.\267\ Although the office 
develops policy and issues guidance, it does not ensure proper 
implementation, monitor performance or enforce 
compliance.''\268\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \266\Byron Tau & Peter Nicholas, State Dep't Lacked Top Watchdog 
During Hillary Clinton Tenure, Wall St. J. (Mar. 24, 2015), http://
www.wsj.com/articles/state-department-lacked-top-watchdog-during-
hillary-clinton-tenure-1427239813.
    \267\Office of Inspector Gen., U.S. Dep't of State,Inspection of 
Bureau of Administration, Global Information Services, Office of 
Information Programs and Services: Report No. ISP-I-12-54, 1 (Sept. 
2012), https://oig.state.gov/system/files/199774.pdf.
    \268\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Despite an upgrade in 2009 to spur the preservation of 
emails as official records, the OIG found in March 2015:

        State Department employees have not received adequate 
        training or guidance on their responsibilities for 
        using the system to preserve `record emails.' In 2011, 
        employees created 61,156 record emails out of more than 
        a billion emails sent. Employees created 41,749 in 
        2013. . . . Some employees do not create record emails 
        because they do not want to make the email available in 
        searches. . . .\269\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \269\See Office of Inspector Gen., U.S. Dep't of State, Review of 
State Messaging and Archive Retrieval Toolset and Record Email: Report 
No. ISP-I-15-15, 1 (Mar. 2015), https://oig.state.gov/system/files/isp-
i-15-15.pdf.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In its May 2016 report, the OIG found:

        The Federal Records Act requires appropriate management 
        and preservation of Federal Government records, 
        regardless of physical form or characteristics, that 
        document the organization, functions, policies, 
        decisions, procedures, and essential transactions of an 
        agency. For the last two decades, both Department of 
        State (Department) policy and Federal regulations have 
        explicitly stated that emails may qualify as Federal 
        records.

        As is the case throughout the Federal Government, 
        management weaknesses at the Department have 
        contributed to the loss or removal of email records, 
        particularly records created by the Office of the 
        Secretary. These weaknesses include a limited ability 
        to retrieve email records, inaccessibility of 
        electronic files, failure to comply with requirements 
        for departing employees, and a general lack of 
        oversight.

        OIG's ability to evaluate the Office of the Secretary's 
        compliance with policies regarding records preservation 
        and use of non-Departmental communications systems was, 
        at times, hampered by these weaknesses. However, based 
        on its review of records, questionnaires, and 
        interviews, OIG determined that email usage and 
        preservation practices varied across the tenures of the 
        five most recent Secretaries and that, accordingly, 
        compliance with statutory, regulatory, and internal 
        requirements varied as well.

        OIG also examined Department cybersecurity regulations 
        and policies that apply to the use of non-Departmental 
        systems to conduct official business. Although there 
        were few such requirements 20 years ago, over time the 
        Department has implemented numerous policies directing 
        the use of authorized systems for day-to-day 
        operations. In assessing these policies, OIG examined 
        the facts and circumstances surrounding three cases 
        where individuals exclusively used non-Departmental 
        systems to conduct official business.\270\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \270\``Office of the Sec'y: Evaluation of Email Records Management 
and Cybersecurity Requirements,'' supra note 69 at Introduction.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                      ANALYSIS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

    The necessity and importance of Congress's oversight 
authority is obvious. Given the administration's lack of 
responsiveness in most regards and slow and uneven 
responsiveness in all regards, the Committee makes the 
recommendations below.

               Restoring the Congressional Contempt Power

                            RECOMMENDATIONS

 LHouse and Senate rules should be amended to provide 
for mandatory reductions in appropriations to the salaries of 
federal officials held in contempt of Congress.

 LThe criminal contempt statute should be amended to 
require the appointment of a special counsel to handle criminal 
contempt proceedings upon the certification of a contempt 
citation against an Executive Branch official by the House or 
Senate.

 LExpedited procedures for the civil enforcement of 
congressional subpoenas should be enacted to provide timely 
judicial resolution of disputes.

                                ANALYSIS

    As the Chairman noted in the May 8, 2015 Interim Progress 
Update:

        Compelling compliance with subpoenas requires either 
        the cooperation of the Executive Branch--particularly 
        the United States Attorney--the very entity from which 
        we seek the information and an unlikely ally, or 
        pursuing document production from the Executive Branch 
        via civil contempt, a laborious, slow process and 
        counterproductive to the goal of an expeditious 
        investigation.\271\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \271\Interim Progress Update, supra note 8, at iii.

    This remark concisely describes the dilemma all 
congressional committees face when demanding information from 
the Executive Branch. This state of affairs also results, in 
part, from Congress's failure to adapt the law and its own 
internal rules to changed circumstances. The recommendations 
above would restore to Congress an effective and useful ability 
to compel compliance from the Executive Branch.
    Contempt of Congress has long been recognized as a 
necessary and inherent component of the legislative power.\272\ 
Without the power to find individuals in contempt, Congress 
would have no means by which to command compliance with its 
subpoenas and punish obstruction.\273\ For much of our history, 
Congress wielded the power to enforce a finding of contempt by 
imprisoning noncompliant individuals--often referred to as the 
``inherent'' contempt power.\274\ Congress last used this power 
in 1935.\275\ It has been called ``unseemly'' and few would 
advocate a return to the practice in the current hyper-partisan 
political environment where even the issuing of subpoenas draws 
howls of protest.\276\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \272\E.g., Anderson v. Dunn, 19 U.S. 204, 228-29 (1821) (holding 
that the House has the inherent power to punish a private citizen for 
contempt).
    \273\Id.
    \274\See id.
    \275\See Jurney v. MacCracken, 294 U.S. 125 (1935).
    \276\See Comm. on the Judiciary v. Miers, 558 F. Supp. 2d 53, 78 
(D.D.C. 2008).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Congress first enacted criminal contempt procedures in 1857 
as an alternative to its inherent power to imprison.\277\ Under 
the criminal contempt statute, the House or Senate may cite an 
individual for contempt of Congress and certify the citation to 
the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia whose ``duty'' 
it is to present the contempt citation to a grand jury.\278\ 
Criminal contempt is punishable by a fine of up to $100,000 and 
up to one year in prison.\279\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \277\2 U.S.C. Sec. Sec. 192, 194.
    \278\2 U.S.C. Sec. 194.
    \279\2 U.S.C. Sec. 192, see 18 U.S.C. Sec. 3571 (regarding the 
maximum fine).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The criminal contempt statute was, in practice, the sole 
enforcement mechanism for Congress after 1935 and was used or 
threatened with some frequency against senior Executive Branch 
officials beginning in 1975.\280\ Invoking the criminal 
contempt statute generally resulted in full or substantial 
compliance with subpoenas.\281\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \280\Morton Rosenberg, When Congress Comes Calling: A Primer on the 
Principles, Practices, and Pragmatics of Legislative Inquiry, The 
Const. Project 16 (2009), http://www.constitutionproject.org/wp-
content/uploads/2009/07/WhenCongressComesCalling.pdf.
    \281\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    During recent administrations, the threat of criminal 
contempt has been insufficient to compel Executive Branch 
compliance. A recent opinion by the Office of Legal Counsel 
within the Justice Department likely ended any remaining 
usefulness the criminal contempt statute had in compelling 
compliance by Executive Branch officials. In June 2014, the 
Office of Legal Counsel advised the U.S. Attorney for D.C. that 
the U.S. Attorney retains prosecutorial discretion not to 
present a criminal contempt citation to a grand jury despite a 
statutory ``duty'' to present.\282\ In other words, U.S. 
Attorneys must substitute their judgment for the judgment of 
the House or Senate of the United States.\283\ While the merits 
of the Office of Legal Counsel opinion are open to debate, as a 
practical political matter it is unlikely future 
administrations would reverse an opinion so obviously favorable 
to their interests. As a result, an Executive Branch official 
appointed by the President has discretion whether to hold 
another Executive Branch official--likely appointed by the same 
President--accountable for failing to comply with a 
congressional subpoena.\284\ The conflict is obvious and 
impossible to avoid. Regardless of the merits of a U.S. 
Attorney's decision not to present a congressional contempt 
citation to a grand jury, the decision will be colored by that 
conflict of interest.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \282\Letter from Karl R. Thompson, Acting Ass't Attorney Gen., 
Office of Legal Counsel, Dep't of Justice, to Ronald C. Machen, Jr., 
U.S. Attorney for D.C. (June 16, 2014).
    \283\See id.
    \284\See id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Because of the deficiencies of the inherent power and 
criminal enforcement of contempt, Congress has turned to civil 
enforcement of its subpoenas with mixed success. While civil 
enforcement has led to the testimony of officials\285\ and the 
production of a privilege log and substantial numbers of 
previously withheld documents,\286\ Congress must accept very 
lengthy delays in order to pursue this enforcement option. In 
its investigation of `Operation Fast and Furious,' the House 
Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman filed a 
civil action against the Justice Department in August 2012 to 
compel the production of documents.\287\ Three and a half years 
later, in January 2016, a Federal district court judge ordered 
the Justice Department to produce withheld documents,\288\ and 
in April 2016, the Justice Department finally produced the 
documents to Congress.\289\ An enforcement tool requiring three 
and a half years simply to get a district court order is 
unacceptable.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \285\See Comm. on the Judiciary v. Miers, 558 F. Supp. 2d 53, 108 
(D.D.C. 2008) (ordering Miers to testify before and produce requested 
materials to Congress).
    \286\See Comm. on Oversight and Gov't Reform v. Lynch, No. 12-1332 
(ABJ), 2016 WL 225675, at *16 (D.D.C. Jan. 19, 2016) (granting the 
Comm.'s motion to compel the Justice Dep't to produce documents).
    \287\Press Release, H. Comm. on Oversight & Gov't Reform, House 
Asks Federal Court to Rule Against Attorney General's Stonewalling in 
Fast and Furious (Aug. 13, 2012), https://oversight.house.gov/release/
house-asks-federal-court-to-rule-against-attorney-generals-
stonewalling-in-fast-and-furious.
    \288\Lynch, 2016 WL 225675, at 16.
    \289\Press Release, H Comm. on Oversight & Gov't Reform, Chaffetz 
Statement on Fast and Furious (Apr. 8, 2016), https://
oversight.house.gov/release/chaffetz-statement-fast-furious-
documents.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    While Congress retains its constitutional authority to hold 
recalcitrant witnesses in contempt of Congress, this authority 
no longer compels prompt, if any, compliance. All three 
enforcement mechanisms--inherent powers, criminal charges and 
civil enforcement--have questionable usefulness today and are 
largely dependent upon other branches of government agreeing 
with or pursuing the cause and remedy. The administration's 
obstruction of congressional oversight is the inevitable and 
predictable result. The three recommendations above would 
restore Congress's ability to enforce its subpoenas through its 
inherent constitutional authority, through criminal law and 
through civil enforcement.
    Restoring Congress's inherent powers to enforce its 
subpoena must be the first priority. It is the only mechanism 
solely within Congress's discretion. The inherent power can be 
restored through simple rules changes in the House. The House 
should change its rules to allow a point of order against any 
appropriations measure, including conference reports, and 
continuing resolutions, that would fund the salary of a Federal 
official held in contempt of Congress.\290\ The House should 
establish a high bar for waiving the point of order.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \290\For example, House Rules prohibit the inclusion of provisions 
changing existing law in a general appropriations bill and such 
provisions may be objected to and ruled out of order. See Rules of the 
H. of Representatives, Rule XXI, cl. 2(b) (114th Cong.). A similar rule 
could be applied to any provision appropriating funds that would go to 
the salary of a Federal official held in contempt.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Congress could provide for nearly automatic sanctions 
against officials held in contempt of Congress, if it included 
triggering language in an appropriations statute. Under section 
713 of the Financial Services and General Government 
Appropriations Act of 2012, no appropriation in any bill is 
available to pay the salary of a Federal official who prevents 
another Federal official from communicating directly with 
Congress.\291\ This rider, which is continued every year, was 
the subject of a recent ruling by the Government Accountability 
Office holding that two officials of the Housing and Urban 
Development Department violated section 713 and that these 
officials should be required to pay back wages earned while 
they were in violation.\292\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \291\Pub. L. No. 112-74, Sec. 713, 125 Stat. 928, 931 (2012).
    \292\Dep't of Housing and Urban Dev.--Application of Section 713 of 
the Fin. Servs. and Gen. Gov't Appropriations Act, 2012 
(Reconsideration), B-325124.2, 2016 WL 1319698 (Comp. Gen. Apr. 5, 
2016).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    A rider similar to section 713 could be included in annual 
appropriations disallowing the use of any appropriation to pay 
the salary of a Federal official held in contempt of Congress. 
Such an approach would trigger immediate and automatic 
sanctions when an official was held in contempt by Congress.
    Because the inherent power can be exercised at Congress's 
sole discretion, the House should establish procedures to 
ensure the legitimacy of actions pursuant to the power. These 
procedures should provide for the transparent consideration of 
timely objections to congressional subpoenas, should require 
the production of a privilege log, and should require the 
appearance of the responsible Federal official at a hearing 
held to consider objections to the subpoena.
    As noted above, criminal contempt proceedings against 
Executive Branch officials are subject to the discretion of the 
U.S. Attorney for D.C., and raise significant conflict of 
interest concerns. The Justice Department already has 
regulations in place for appointing a special counsel in 
situations presenting a conflict of interest.\293\ The criminal 
contempt statute should be amended to require the appointment 
of special counsel pursuant to the Justice Department's own 
regulations whenever the House or Senate presents a criminal 
contempt citation against an Executive Branch official. This 
amendment would provide Congress some assurance prosecutorial 
discretion in contempt matters would be exercised without the 
appearance of a conflict of interest and should put 
recalcitrant Federal officials on notice they cannot assume a 
political ally will ignore a criminal contempt citation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \293\See 28 C.F.R. Sec. 600 (2015) (establishing grounds for 
appointing a special counsel).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Finally, the House has increasingly resorted to civil 
enforcement of its subpoenas. While this mechanism has resulted 
in substantial compliance, it has also resulted in lengthy 
delays. This delay is often an unacceptable tradeoff. To 
increase the usefulness of civil enforcement, the House should 
consider a bill to require a three-judge panel in civil 
enforcement actions related to congressional subpoenas with 
direct appeal to the Supreme Court from the three-judge panel. 
This would ensure more timely resolution of these actions. An 
investigation delayed by years of legal deliberations does not 
allow Congress to make timely legislative decisions.
    These three recommendations each have limitations and 
drawbacks, but together they would provide Congress with a far 
more robust ability to compel cooperation than it has today. It 
is not acceptable for Congress to simply acquiesce to Executive 
Branch obstruction. It is Congress' constitutional 
responsibility to create, fund, and oversee Executive Branch 
agencies. Congress cannot effectively uphold its 
responsibilities under the Constitution without the power to 
ensure compliance with requests for information and witnesses.

                     Classification Determinations

                             RECOMMENDATION

 LAgencies should make express classification 
determinations with respect to documents and materials provided 
to congressional oversight committees in accordance with 
relevant laws and Executive Orders.

                                ANALYSIS

    The Committee encountered significant practical delays and 
obstacles to its work arising from the need to quickly develop 
institutional capabilities to properly handle, work with, and 
protect classified information. While these difficulties to 
some degree are inherent in the rapid establishment of a new 
Committee with jurisdiction for national security matters, the 
Executive Branch exacerbated these challenges with its repeated 
efforts to declare certain material should be ``treated as 
classified'' even though it had not actually made any 
administrative determination the material in question met the 
standards necessary to designate it as classified or followed 
the process set out and required by Executive Order and 
relevant regulation to actually designate the material as 
classified.\294\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \294\See Exec. Order No. 13,526, 75 Fed. Reg. 707 (Dec. 29, 2009).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Legislative Branch recognizes the role of the Executive 
Branch, in accordance with authorities provided under the 
Constitution and by Congress itself, to determine whether and 
how national security information should be classified and 
follows such determinations. Absent an express determination by 
the Executive Branch or other indication or awareness material 
is derived from properly classified information, Congress must 
treat information as unclassified to further the goal of 
congressional oversight and the responsibilities of the House 
to the public.\295\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \295\See, e.g., Letter from Julia Frifield, Assistant Sec'y of 
State for Legis. Affairs, Dep't of State, to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. 
Select Comm. on Benghazi (Sept. 25, 2015) [hereinafter Frifield 
Transmittal Letter] (on file with the Comm.). Use of the ``Sensitive 
but Unclassified'' designation differs from the broader phenomenon 
described here--which is not even founded in administrative practice--
but strongly illustrates the nature of the problem.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    During the course of this investigation, Executive Branch 
agencies regularly acted in a manner inconsistent with both 
principles by providing information (both documents and 
interviews) to the Committee with the request the Committee 
treat it as classified,\296\ even though it had not made any 
actual determination with respect to the classification of any 
of the material under the relevant authorities and 
procedures.\297\ Although such requests may be considered in 
the context of efforts to facilitate Committee access to the 
material, there is no legal, administrative, or procedural 
foundation for such a request. National security information 
should either be properly classified in accordance with clearly 
stated procedures or treated as unclassified. There is no 
cognizable middle ground.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \296\As one example, in a September 25, 2015 letter to the Comm. 
transmitting emails from the Sec'y, the Dep't stated ``these documents 
should be handled differently from prior productions'' even though they 
had not actually been determined to be classified and review was 
ongoing. It requested informally for other documents--which had not 
been properly classified--to be treated as classified. Id. Similarly, 
the Department asked for certain interviews to be conducted in a 
classified environment even though the anticipated subject matter had 
previously been unclassified.
    \297\Exec. Order No. 13526, for example, expressly provides: 
``Information may be originally classified under the terms of this 
order only if all of the following conditions are met.'' The stated 
conditions include specific procedures for identifying and marking 
classified information ``in a manner that is immediately apparent.''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Sensitive information can be protected without resort to 
such arbitrary treatment, as it has been under the Committee's 
voluntary agreement with the State Department to protect 
certain types of personal and operational information. The 
unfounded efforts of the Executive Branch to create new 
categories of information control posed significant obstacles 
to the Committee's work--both in handling and using the 
material and in presenting it to the American people. It is 
important to note the question here is not alleged ``over-
classification,'' but rather failure of the Executive Branch to 
properly classify the information in question at all. The 
former is a subjective assessment of whether material should be 
classified and how. The latter represents attempts by the 
Executive Branch to control information without following the 
relevant law or procedure to classify it or, even worse, to 
control information that doesn't fit within its lawful 
classification authorities at all. Further, Executive Order 
13526 clearly provides material cannot be classified to 
``conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative 
error'' or ``prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, 
or agency.''\298\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \298\Exec. Order No. 13526, 75 Fed. Reg. 707, Sec. Sec. 1.7(1), 
(2).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

        Improving Oversight and Investigations within the House

                            RECOMMENDATIONS

 LThe House should amend its rules to authorize all 
committees to take depositions.

 LThe House should amend its rules to require 
committees to establish oversight subcommittees.

                                ANALYSIS

    Congressional depositions allow Members and staff, as 
authorized by a committee, to interview witnesses under oath 
and, if necessary compel interview testimony by subpoena.\299\ 
The ability to interview witnesses in private allows committees 
to gather information confidentially and in more depth than is 
possible under the five-minute rule governing committee 
hearings.\300\ This ability is often critical to conducting an 
effective and thorough investigation.\301\ Committees rely on 
voluntary interviews to gather information and conduct 
investigations. If a witness refuses to be interviewed or if 
the witness's employer--often the Executive Branch--refuses to 
allow the interview, however, most House committees have no 
recourse.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \299\Morton Rosenberg, When Congress Comes Calling: A Primer on the 
Principles, Practices, and Pragmatics of Legislative Inquiry, THE 
CONST. PROJECT 11 (2009), http://www.constitutionproject.org/wp-
content/uploads/2009/07/WhenCongressComesCalling.pdf.
    \300\Id.
    \301\E.g. This committee conducted 107 interviews in the course of 
its investigation. Interviews frequently lasted over three hours. This 
number of witnesses and depth of questioning would be nearly impossible 
in a hearing setting.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    At the beginning of the 110th Congress, the Majority, the 
House, controlled by a Democratic majority, amended its rules 
to authorize the taking of depositions by members and staff of 
the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.\302\ Prior to 
the 110th Congress, depositions had been authorized by the 
House only for specific investigations.\303\ This standing 
deposition authority applied only to the Committee on Oversight 
and Government Reform. In the current Congress, the House 
authorized the taking of depositions by four additional 
committees.\304\ The authority was initially limited to 2015 
but was extended to 2016 after its successful implementation in 
2015.\305\ Lamar S. Smith, Chairman, Committee on Science, 
Space and Technology, noted:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \302\H. Res. 6, 110th Congress Sec. 502 (2007).
    \303\Rosenberg, supra note 299, at 11, 82. See, e.g., H. Res. 507, 
105th Congress (1998) (Providing deposition authority to the Comm. on 
Education and Workforce for an investigation relating to the 
International Brotherhood of the Teamsters).
    \304\H. Res. 5, 114th Congress Sec. 3 (b) (2015) (The Comms. on 
Energy and Commerce, Financial Services, Science, Space and Technology, 
and Ways and Means).
    \305\H. Res. 579, 114th Congress (2016).

        During this session there are numerous instances of the 
        Committee obtaining documents and voluntary interviews 
        because of its deposition authority. In fact, as the 
        following examples show, many key interviews and 
        documents would likely not have been obtained without 
        the Committee's ability to compel on-the-record 
        interviews in a private setting.\306\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \306\162 Cong. Rec. H41 (daily ed. Jan. 6, 2016) (letter submitted 
for the record Rep. Smith).

    Jeb Hensarling, Chairman, Committee on Financial Services, 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
similarly noted:

        Deposition authority continues to be critical to the 
        Committee's oversight of an Administration that has 
        been markedly indifferent to the Committee's subpoenas 
        and voluntary information requests.\307\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \307\162 Cong. Rec. H39 (daily ed. Jan. 6, 2016) (letter submitted 
for the record Rep. Hensarling).

    Given the successful implementation of deposition authority 
in the 114th Congress to four additional committees, the House 
should amend its rules to extend the authority to all of its 
committees.
    The small size of committee staffs in comparison to the 
Federal agencies they oversee necessarily limits the ability of 
committees to oversee the agencies within their jurisdictions. 
In addition, committees are already busy wrestling with major 
reauthorizations and reform plans. As a result, committees 
sometimes struggle to devote sufficient resources to oversight.
    House Rule X, clause 2(b)(2) requires standing authorizing 
committees with more than 20 members to either establish an 
oversight subcommittee or to require its subcommittees to 
conduct oversight.\308\ As all House subcommittees have an 
obligation to conduct oversight within their assigned 
jurisdictions, this rule is little more than an exhortation to 
establish an oversight subcommittee. Of the 15 committees to 
which the rule applies, six did not establish oversight 
subcommittees in the 114th Congress.\309\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \308\Rules of the H. of Representatives, Rule X, cl. 2(b)(2) (114th 
Cong.).
    \309\H. Comm. on Agric., H. Comm. on Educ. & Workforce, H. Comm. on 
Foreign Affairs, H. Comm. on Judiciary, H. Comm. on Small Bus., and H. 
Comm. on Transp. & Infrastructure.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    While some committees, such as the Committee on Energy and 
Commerce, have a decades-long record of active oversight,\310\ 
not every committee in the House has acted accordingly. An 
oversight subcommittee ensures that at least one subcommittee 
chair and the staff of that subcommittee will be singularly 
focused on oversight of the agencies and programs within the 
full committee's jurisdiction.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \310\See, e.g., Joel A. Mintz, Agencies, Congress and Regulatory 
Enforcement: A Review of EPA's Hazardous Waste Enforcement, 18 Envtl. 
L. 683, 706 n. 57 (1988).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                     Reforming Record-Keeping Laws

                             RECOMMENDATION

 LCongress should consider strengthening enforcement 
authorities and penalties under the Federal Records Act related 
to the use of non-official email accounts and non-official 
file-hosting services for official purposes.

                                ANALYSIS

    The State Department's failure to adhere to Federal law and 
its own policies governing record management significantly 
impeded the committee's investigation.\311\ Even more 
important, these failures delayed the flow of information to 
the families and loved ones of those killed and injured in 
Libya and delayed that information being made available to the 
public.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \311\See supra discussions regarding State Department's record-
keeping at 54-66.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    These failures are not indigenous to this Committee and 
will be familiar to congressional investigators of the Centers 
for Medicare and Medicaid Services,\312\ the Environmental 
Protection Agency,\313\ the Internal Revenue Service\314\ and 
the Energy Department.\315\ The destruction of records, use of 
private email and email aliases, and failure to retain records 
has impeded multiple congressional investigations over the 
years. These concerns reach back to prior administrations as 
well. This is not a political issue; it is a legal, 
constitutional, and branch equity issue. In 2007, the 
Secretary--then Senator--denounced ``secret White House email 
accounts'' after senior White House officials were found to 
have conducted some official business over political email 
accounts.\316\ In this Committee's investigation, the 
Secretary's unusual email arrangement, her senior staff's use 
of non-official email accounts, and the State Department's own 
lack of fidelity to the record maintenance rules, all delayed 
and in some instances prevented the Committee from accessing 
official records necessary to conduct a thorough investigation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \312\Majority Staff of H. Comm. on Oversight & Gov't Reform, Behind 
the Curtain of the Healthcare.gov Rollout, 113th Cong. 1, 17 (Sept. 17, 
2014), https://oversight.house.gov/wp-
content/uploads/2014/09/Healthcare-gov-Report-Final-9-17-14.pdf.
    \313\Letter from the members of H. Comm. on Science, Space, and 
Tech. to Lisa Jackson, Adm'r, Envtl. Prot. Agency (Jan. 23, 2013), 
https://science.house.gov/news/letters/committee-letter-epa-
administrator-jackson-re-alias-emails-january-23-2013.
    \314\See Letter from members of H. Comm. on Oversight & Gov't 
Reform to President Barack Obama (July 27, 2015), https://
oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-07-27-
UPDATED-JC-to-Obama-WH-Koskinen-Resignation.compressed.pdf.
    \315\Press Release, H. Comm. on Oversight & Gov't Reform, Oversight 
Comm. Presses Energy Sec'y on False Denials, Improper Use of Non-
official Email Accounts in Solyndra Loan Program (Aug. 15, 2012), 
https://oversight.house.gov/release/oversight-committee-presses-energy-
secretary-on-false-denials-improper-use-of-non-official-email-accounts-
in-solyndra-loan-program.
    \316\Blake Neff, VIDEO: In 2007, Hillary Said Secret Emails 
`Shredded' the Constitution, Daily Caller (Mar. 4, 2015), http://
dailycaller.com/2015/03/04/video-in-2007-hillary-said-secret-emails-
shredded-the-constitution.

                                PART V:

                            Recommendations

            Terrorist Attacks on U.S. Facilities in Benghazi

    Recommendation: The Executive Branch should provide for a 
central planning and coordination mechanism (likely within an 
existing entity) for interagency threat assessment and tracking 
for ``force protection'' of U.S. facilities abroad as well as 
planning, operations, and response to potential attacks.
    The coordinating organization should provide for:

     LA clear designation of ``who is in charge'' of 
managing and following up on response in emergent situations as 
well as the roles and responsibilities of involved departments 
and agencies.

     LClear and prompt timeline milestones for 
resolution of policy issues potentially impacting response to 
emergent situations.

     LClear and real-time identification of all 
potential U.S. Government assets potentially positioned to 
respond to emergent threats.

     LA mechanism for prompt consideration of potential 
waivers to existing policy or other constraints potentially 
limiting immediate response to an emergent situation.

     LJoint training exercises with all agencies 
present in high threat foreign locations as well as with the 
host nation's external quick reaction force for emergency and 
exfiltration plans.

     LInteroperability and improved communication 
during contingencies. As one example, on the ground security 
personnel need to be able to communicate directly with 
operational military personnel in a crisis to coordinate 
surveillance and response.

     LRelevant agencies (including the State 
Department, combatant commands, and the Central Intelligence 
Agency) need to be involved in each agency's emergency action 
plans to ensure situational awareness as well as that each 
agency's facilities, capabilities and response role is known. 
Where capability on the ground is insufficient and the Defense 
Department cannot respond immediately, the State Department and 
other agencies can adjust their respective plans to allow 
backup local or regional resources to be identified ahead of 
time.

     LAgencies on the ground need to plan for standby 
military support before a crisis in high threat environments, 
including where feasible support from U.S. allies. In addition, 
the coordinating body should provide for a specific mechanism 
to know and understand assets and capabilities actually 
available at any given time.

    As an example, a Commander's in Extremis Force has now been 
stood up in Africa, but additional assets available for 
contingency in high threat environments as well as response 
times and capabilities should be known to relevant agencies as 
part of emergency planning. If U.S. resources are not available 
because of distance, the lack of assets for immediate response 
should be incorporated in emergency planning with an 
anticipated timeline for response.
    Recommendation: Diplomatic Security personnel and or 
Security Protection Specialists should maintain a state of 
readiness to counter potential attacks at all times in high 
threat environments.

     LAgents should be armed or have ready access to 
defensive weapons at all times.

     LAdditionally, Diplomatic Security Agents and 
Security Protection Specialists should maintain a 24-hour armed 
quick reaction force [QRF] capability in all high threat 
environments manned using internal resources when available.

     LWhen sufficient internal resources are not 
available, staffing for a QRF should be clearly coordinated in 
advance with potential responders. Planning should also provide 
for support and a definitive timeframe for response from other 
U.S. government resources such as Mobile Security Detachments, 
Site Security Teams or Fleet Antiterrorism Support Teams 
[FAST]. When U.S. government assets are not available, planning 
should consider whether contractors might provide enhanced 
capability.

    Recommendation: Operational planners should carefully 
review whether a heightened posture is warranted on 
anniversaries of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks or 
other politically significant dates such as Inauguration Day in 
light of available analysis and threat intelligence.
    Recommendation: Military planners should review current and 
future operational planning to prevent recurrence of specific 
operational issues identified in the response to the Benghazi 
attacks. These include:

     LEnsure that aircraft aligned with response forces 
maintain the ability to meet specified timelines contained in 
the relevant concept plans or operations plans.

     LEnsure adequate--and actionable--planning and 
resources for lift and mobility capabilities necessary for 
response.

     LEnhance the capability of Marine FAST to conduct 
full-scope combat operations.

     LMaintain a minimum anticipated timeline to 
respond to any terrorist attack in the Middle East, North 
Africa, or Central Asia.

    Recommendation: The Committee supports funding the State 
Department's Foreign Affairs Security Training Center as the 
Department needs a dedicated training facility. The Department 
also should ensure its personnel satisfactorily complete 
requisite courses. A security professional should never go to a 
warzone or high threat environment feeling unprepared to defend 
themselves and their principal officer.

   Internal and Public Government Communications About the Terrorist 
                          Attacks in Benghazi

    Recommendation: The drafting and editing of talking points 
and other political communications for policymakers is not an 
intelligence function. Intelligence agencies and officials 
should not be drawn into the creating or editing of talking 
points and other political or policy communications.

     LFurther, intelligence analysts should generally 
not produce products other than analytical products adhering to 
proper analytical tradecraft. Other officials--such as 
legislative or public affairs, non-analyst management, and 
White House Staff--should not be involved in the production of 
any product to be used or represented as the product of 
analytical tradecraft. Each stream of material must be kept 
separate and independent.

     LFurther, when communicating with the public, 
senior executive branch officials and spokespersons should 
carefully distinguish analysis of intelligence and other 
agencies from policy judgments, ``spin,'' opinion and 
interpretations extrapolated from intelligence analysis by 
White House staff, political appointees, or senior officials 
outside the Intelligence Community. Such materials may be 
derived from properly produced analytical material when 
distinguished in this manner.

    Recommendation: An additional step of quality control 
should be instituted in the review process for analytic 
products to ensure analytical products accurately reflect the 
views of analysts consistent with proper analytical tradecraft 
or are otherwise properly caveated.

     LFurther, where senior analysts responsible for 
briefing the President substitute their judgment for the 
consensus views of line analysts in the President's Daily 
Brief, the material should be appropriately caveated and 
accompanied by the consensus view of line analysts.

     LFurther, a formal mechanism should be put into 
place to memorialize irregularities arising from significant 
analytical disagreements or tradecraft deviations, including 
notification to the Congressional intelligence committees.

    Recommendation: Claims in analytic products should be 
supported by substantial evidence, and analysts should clearly 
understand and place sourcing into context. Open source 
material should continue to play an appropriate role. However, 
where analytic products and addressing emergent situations are 
predominantly based on open source materials, they should be 
clearly noted as such. As a corollary, while crisis reporting 
may require flexibility in sourcing and analysis, emergent 
reporting known to be uncertain or developing should be 
properly disclosed and caveated.
    Recommendation: Law governing Accountability Review Boards 
[ARBs] should be amended to limit the influence of the 
Secretary of State and offices with potential conflicts of 
interest in the selection of members and to provide for broader 
distribution and reporting to Congress with respect to ARB 
reports or significant findings therein. More specifically:

     LMembers of ARBs should be appointed in a manner 
that ensures an independent and objective review of incidents 
implicating potential accountability.

     LThe scope of review for ARBs should include all 
relevant, non-policy conduct of all personnel potentially 
involved in incidents, including senior officials.

     LARBs should be independent of outside influence 
up to the point of making recommendations.

     LARB proceedings should be conducted in a manner 
to ensure appropriate recordkeeping of evidence and support for 
findings and recommendations.

     LIf deciding officials disagree with 
recommendations of ARBs, require them to memorialize reasons in 
writing.

     LAll ARB reports or in exceptionally sensitive 
circumstances significant findings of ARB reports should be 
provided to Congress.

     LARB reports should presumptively be produced in 
an unclassified format, and wherever possible a version 
outlining core findings and issues unrelated to personnel 
actions should be made public.

     LA clear mechanism should be developed to separate 
personnel accountability from ``lessons learned'' and general 
corrective actions following attacks.

     LWithin the State Department, coordination, 
oversight and support to an ARB should be provided by a 
secretariat or other office independent from the secretariats 
most likely to be reviewed during an ARB proceeding.

    Recommendation: For an ARB review, the State Department 
must affirmatively search for all relevant records, including 
archived records and records of senior leaders.
    Recommendation: The ARB implementing statute should be 
amended to allow an assessment of personnel failures not rising 
to the level of a ``breach of duty.''
    Recommendation: Relevant Executive Branch agencies should 
consider and develop an appropriate long-term framework to 
provide for appropriate survivor benefits to the families of 
Americans killed in the line of duty in response to issues 
identified in the aftermath of the Benghazi attack.
    Recommendation: Family members of Americans killed in the 
line of duty should have a central liaison in Departments and 
agencies where one does not already exist. Such liaisons should 
be expressly chartered and empowered to act as advocates for 
family members in--resolving or explaining benefits issues, and 
providing as much information as possible (including specific 
information on request) sought by family members. Where 
classification issues exist, Departments and agencies should 
consider providing limited security clearances regarding 
relevant information pertaining to the fate of family members.

          Events Leading to the Terrorist Attacks in Benghazi

    Recommendation: The Executive Branch should provide 
Congress with a clear statement of intentions, rationale, plan 
and strategy (including objectives, contemplated method of 
execution, and contemplated completion strategy) when entering 
into major new overseas engagements. Such a statement should 
also state contemplated results and potential consequences of 
major initiatives.
    Recommendation: No facility shall remain in an unofficial 
status for more than 180 days without the express and direct 
approval of the Secretary of State.
    Recommendation: The State Department should comply with the 
requirements of the Overseas Security Protection Board and the 
standards provided for in the Secure Embassy Construction and 
Counterterrorism Act for all premises/facilities occupied for 
more than 30 days, whether official or unofficial.
    Recommendation: The State Department should identify a 
specific funding source for immediate security upgrades for 
posts in high threat areas.
    Recommendation: The Intelligence Community and the State 
Department should specifically recognize and improve collection 
of intelligence related to civilian ``force protection'' issues 
at facilities abroad, particularly with respect to high threat 
posts.

     LThis process should include more express 
recognition and prioritization of collection requirements with 
respect to threat warning and response within the National 
Intelligence Priorities Framework.

     LThis process should include more express 
coordination and integration with strategic and tactical force 
protection collection and analysis already conducted by Defense 
Intelligence Agency and other military intelligence agencies.

              Compliance with Congressional Investigations

    Recommendation: House and Senate rules should be amended to 
provide for mandatory reductions in appropriations to the 
salaries of federal officials held in contempt of Congress.
    Recommendation: The criminal contempt statute should be 
amended to require the appointment of a special counsel to 
handle criminal contempt proceedings upon the certification of 
a contempt citation against an Executive Branch official by the 
House or Senate.
    Recommendation: Expedited procedures for the civil 
enforcement of congressional subpoenas should be enacted to 
provide timely judicial resolution of disputes.
    Recommendation: Agencies seeking to control public 
dissemination of information provided to Congress should make 
express classification determinations with respect to documents 
and materials provided to congressional oversight committees in 
accordance with relevant laws and Executive Orders.
    Recommendation: The House should amend its rules to 
authorize all committees to take depositions.
    Recommendation: The House should amend its rules to require 
committees to establish oversight subcommittees.
    Recommendation: Congress should consider strengthening 
enforcement authorities and penalties under the Federal Records 
Act related to the use of non-official email accounts and non-
official file-hosting services for official purposes.

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                         SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS

  I. The First Victim of War is Truth: The administration misled the 
                  public about the events in Benghazi

    Officials at the State Department, including Secretary 
Clinton, learned almost in real time that the attack in 
Benghazi was a terrorist attack. With the presidential election 
just 56 days away, rather than tell the American people the 
truth and increase the risk of losing an election, the 
administration told one story privately and a different story 
publicly. They publicly blamed the deaths on a video-inspired 
protest they knew had never occurred.

II. Last Clear Chance: Security in Benghazi was woefully inadequate and 
                    Secretary Clinton failed to lead

    The State Department has many posts but Libya and Benghazi 
were different. After Qhaddafi, the U.S. knew that we could not 
count on host nation security in a country where militias held 
significant power. The American people expect that when the 
government sends our representatives into such dangerous places 
they receive adequate protection. Secretary Clinton paid 
special attention to Libya. She sent Ambassador Stevens there. 
Yet, in August 2012, she missed the last, clear chance to 
protect her people.

 III. Failure of Will: America did not move heaven and earth to rescue 
                               our people

    The American people expect their government to make every 
effort to help those we put in harm's way when they find 
themselves in trouble. The U.S. military never sent assets to 
help rescue those fighting in Benghazi and never made it into 
Libya with personnel during the attack. And, contrary to the 
administration's claim that it could not have landed in 
Benghazi in time to help, the administration never directed men 
or machines into Benghazi.

 IV. Justice Denied: The administration broke its promise to bring the 
                         terrorists to justice

    After the attacks, President Obama promised ``justice will 
be done.'' There is no doubt our nation can make good on that 
commitment. Yet, almost four years later, only one of the 
terrorists has been captured and brought to the United States 
to face criminal charges. Even that terrorist will not receive 
the full measure of justice after the administration chose not 
to seek the death penalty. The American people are owed an 
explanation.

V. Unanswered Questions: The administration did not cooperate with the 
                             investigation

    Despite its claims, we saw no evidence that the 
administration held a sincere interest in helping the Committee 
find the truth about Benghazi. There is a time for politics and 
a time to set politics aside. A national tragedy is one of 
those times when as a nation we should join together to find 
the truth. That did not happen here. So while the investigation 
uncovered new information, we nonetheless end the Committee's 
investigation without many of the facts, especially those 
involving the President and the White House, we were chartered 
to obtain.

                              INTRODUCTION

                Yet tonight, we take comfort in knowing 
                   that the tide of war is receding.

                                                     Barack Obama  
                                President of the United States\1\  
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\President Barack Obama, Remarks by the President on the Way 
Forward in Afghanistan (June 22, 2011), https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-
press-office/2011/06/22/remarks-president-way-forward-afghanistan.

    The writer F. Scott Fitzgerald once observed, ``Show me a 
hero and I will write you a tragedy.'' The September 11, 2012 
Benghazi attack showed America not one but many heroes--among 
them Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Tyrone Woods, Sean Smith, 
and Glen Doherty. The story of Benghazi is their tragic story--
which ultimately is the story of four deaths that never should 
have happened. America owes its people--especially those that 
work to advance our interests and the interests of freedom 
around the world--its utmost protection. We failed those 
Americans in Benghazi.
    This is not only the tragic story of two men who died 
trying to bring freedom to the people of a foreign nation and 
two others who died trying to save them. It is also the story 
of a State Department seemingly more concerned with politics 
and Secretary Clinton's legacy than with protecting its people 
in Benghazi. It is the story of how the best military in the 
world never reached Benghazi with men or machines, leaving 
fellow Americans to fight, and die, alone. And it is the story 
of an administration so focused on the next election that it 
lost sight of its duty to tell the American people the truth 
about what had happened that night.
    For the men on the ground in Benghazi, the terrorist attack 
began at 9:42 p.m. and the threat continued for hours until the 
planes carrying them and the bodies of the four murdered 
Americans left Benghazi. For the terrorists the attack was also 
continuous. It was a plan executed in multiple phases that 
began at the State facility. It continued when the terrorists 
ambushed the Americans en route to the Annex. The attack 
continued with multiple assaults on the Annex culminating with 
deadly mortar fire. According to the Department of Justice, the 
mission was willful, deliberate, malicious, and premeditated--a 
coordinated assault aimed at killing or kidnapping America's 
ambassador.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\See United States v. Ahmed Salim Faraj Abu Khatallah, No. 14-CR-
00141 (D.D.C filed Oct. 14, 2014), Indictment at 6, (hereafter 
``Khatallah Indictment'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Those in Washington decided that once the initial attack at 
the State compound had ended and our men moved to the Annex, 
the enemy had retreated as well. For those fighting for their 
lives in Benghazi that night, however, it was one long battle 
for survival. But the terrorists did not retreat. This view 
from Washington that the fight had ended is a lapse in judgment 
that may well haunt our nation for years to come. At the same 
time Secretary Clinton appears to have concluded that the 
attack was over, the men on the ground knew better.\3\ In the 
end, two men died from smoke inhalation at the State 
Department's compound during an initial attack involving dozens 
of extremists. Two more died from mortar fire at the end of a 
continuous, hours-long siege by approximately a hundred heavily 
armed and highly trained fighters at the CIA Annex.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \3\During her testimony before the Committee Secretary Clinton 
testified, ``We knew that the attack was over. We knew that our 
diplomatic security team had to evacuate from the compound to the CIA 
annex, and we were in a frantic search to find Ambassador Stevens.'' 
Hearing 4 Before the Select Committee on the Events Surrounding the 
2012 Terrorist Attack in Benghazi, 114th Cong. (2015) (testimony of 
Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sec'y of State) (emphasis added). Secretary 
Clinton's certainty about the attack contrasts with the view of those 
on the ground, where one of our men described the situation after 
arriving at the Annex, ``everybody takes a position to support what we 
have in store, which we don't know what it is at this point. We are not 
sure. We don't know if the fight is over or if it is going to be 
longer.'' Transcript of Deposition of DS Agent #3 before Comm. on 
Oversight and Government Reform, 113th Cong. 164 (emphasis added) (on 
file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Yet, beyond those basic facts other important questions 
required answers:

     LWhy were diplomats stationed in Benghazi in the 
first place and, more importantly, why did they stay as it 
became more and more dangerous?

     LWhy did the State Department ignore multiple 
requests for help from the team in Benghazi, leaving them to 
fend for themselves in a facility that was no match for a well-
organized assault?

     LWhy did the U.S. military do almost nothing to 
help and why did it take them so long to arrive in Libya and 
never prepare assets to arrive in Benghazi?

     LWhy did the administration mislead the American 
people about the nature and cause of the attack?

     LWhy, now almost four years later, has only one of 
the dozens of terrorists who murdered four of our countrymen 
faced American justice?

    Our Democrat committee colleagues suggest all questions 
about Benghazi have already been asked and answered by earlier 
congressional investigations and the State Department's 
Accountability Review Board. While we recognize the 
contributions some of those other investigations made to our 
understanding of Benghazi, the questions above and other 
questions remained, both in our minds and in the minds of many 
Americans.
    We had a duty to seek the entire truth. If we learned 
nothing new, we would be the first to admit it--and the time 
and resources devoted would have amounted to a small price to 
pay to close this chapter once and for all. Yet, our confidence 
grew that there was more to be learned even as the 
administration stonewalled at virtually every turn. Our 
confidence grew even more with each new revelation including 
the revelation of Secretary Clinton's unprecedented and 
exclusive use of a private e-mail account and server.
    Unfortunately, the administration's efforts to impede the 
investigation succeeded, at least in part. The White House in 
particular left large holes in the investigation by denying the 
Committee access to documents and witnesses--often hiding 
behind vague notions of ``important and longstanding 
institutional interests of the Executive Branch.''\4\ And so 
the Committee ended its work without having spoken to anyone in 
the White House Situation Room that night. Nor did we receive 
all email communication between White House staffers concerning 
the attack--all off limits to Congress according to White House 
lawyers. Compounding the problem, the White House refused to 
identify any of the documents it had withheld. If the 
administration had a sincere interest in cooperating with the 
Committee's investigation, as it stated repeatedly, we saw no 
real evidence of it.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \4\Letter from W. Neil Eggleston, White House Counsel, to Rep. Trey 
Gowdy, Chairman, Select Committee on the Events Surrounding the 2012 
Terrorist Attack in Benghazi (``the Committee'') (Jan. 23, 2015) (on 
file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    And so we leave the Committee much the same way we joined 
it--knowing that Congress and the American people did not get 
every relevant fact from this administration. Nevertheless, we 
did learn more. Much more.
    Most significantly, the administration consistently blamed 
flawed information from the U.S. Intelligence Community, 
primarily the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), for its public 
misstatements about Benghazi--with the President, Secretary 
Clinton, Ambassador Rice, and others blaming a video-inspired 
protest that had never taken place in Benghazi.\5\ But flawed 
intelligence is no excuse for officials who knew better, and we 
now know that key leaders did. Secretary Clinton in particular 
learned quickly that Benghazi amounted to an organized 
terrorist attack, not a spontaneous demonstration turned 
violent. Yet, Secretary Clinton and the administration told one 
story privately--that Benghazi was a terrorist attack--and told 
another story publicly--blaming a video-inspired protest. The 
misleading public statements led concerned State Department 
staffers to describe Ambassador Rice as ``off the reservation'' 
and another to add the ``[White House was] very worried about 
the politics.''\6\ A national tragedy, however, is not a time 
for politics; it is a time to set politics aside and do one's 
duty.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \5\For example, the report issued by the House Permanent Select 
Committee on Intelligence concluded that ``Ambassador Rice's September 
16 public statements about the existence of a protest, as well as some 
of the underlying intelligence reports, proved to be inaccurate.'' See 
Investigative Report on the Terrorist Attacks on U.S. Facilities in 
Benghazi, Libya, September 11-12, 2012 (report by Chm. Rogers and 
Ranking Member Ruppersberger, Members, H. Perm. Select Comm. on Intel.) 
(Comm. Print 2014).
    \6\E-mail from Senior Advisor for Strategic Communications, State 
Dep't, Near Eastern Affairs Bureau to various (Sept. 17, 2012) (on file 
with the Committee, C05580618).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    We also learned that by September 11, 2012 the security 
situation in Benghazi had deteriorated significantly. Months 
before the attack one State Department diplomatic security 
agent viewed the situation as a ``suicide mission'' where 
``there was a very good chance that everyone was going to 
die.''\7\ Yet, the facility remained open--even as other 
countries and organizations departed. And yet no one could give 
a satisfactory explanation for why the State Department 
remained. While we may never know for certain exactly why the 
State Department left Benghazi open in the face of such 
dangerous conditions, the most plausible answer is troubling. 
Secretary Clinton pushed for the U.S. to intervene in Libya, 
which at the time represented one of her signature 
achievements. To leave Benghazi would have been viewed as her 
failure and prompted unwelcome scrutiny of her choices. But 
when faced with a dire situation in Libya, Secretary Clinton 
had an obligation to act. And she had a clear chance to do so 
in August 2012 when presented with the facts in a memo from 
Assistant Secretary Beth Jones that painted a bleak picture of 
conditions in Libya. Yet, she failed to lead.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \7\Transcript of Interview of DS Agent #10 at 22 (on file with the 
Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Finally, we learned troubling new details about the 
government's military response to the attack. Until now the 
administration has led us to believe the military did not have 
assets--men or machines--close enough or ready enough to arrive 
in Benghazi in time to save lives. As one earlier committee put 
it, ``given their location and readiness status it was not 
possible to dispatch armed aircraft before survivors left 
Benghazi.''\8\ The first asset to arrive in Libya--a Marine 
``FAST'' platoon--did not arrive until nearly 24 hours after 
the attack began. What is troubling is that the administration 
never set in motion a plan to go to Benghazi in the first 
place. It is one thing to try and fail; it is yet another not 
to try at all. In the end, the administration did not move 
heaven and earth to help our people in Benghazi, as Americans 
would expect. The contrast between the heroic actions taken in 
Benghazi and the inaction in Washington--highlights the 
failure.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \8\Staff of H. Armed Services Comm., 113th Cong., Majority Interim 
Report: Benghazi Investigation Update (Comm. Print 2014) at 19.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In 2011, the President boasted that ``[w]ithout putting a 
single U.S. service member on the ground, we achieved our 
objectives [in Libya.]''\9\ With parts of Libya now terrorist 
safe havens, it is difficult not to look back on that claim and 
the claim ``the tide of war was receding'' as little more than 
wishful thinking. The same wishful thinking may have also 
influenced decisions the administration made in Libya and set 
the background against which four Americans died. Yet, wishes 
are no match for facts--nor the basis for a sound foreign 
policy. The facts remain and the tide of war goes in and out. 
And it was still rising in Libya in September 2012 as Secretary 
Clinton and the President stood idle.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \9\See Press Release, Barack Obama, President of the United States, 
Remarks by the President on the Death of Muammar Qaddafi (Oct. 20, 
2011), https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/10/20/remarks-
president-death-muammar-qaddafi.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    What follows are the views of two members of this 
Committee. We choose to add these additional views not to 
question the Committee's full report. Rather, we write 
separately to highlight those facts and conclusions uncovered 
by our investigation that we consider most important to a full 
understanding of the tragedy that is Benghazi.

 I. The First Casualty of War Is Truth: How the administration misled 
                  the public about the Benghazi attack

        Was it because of a protest? Or was it because of guys 
        out for a walk one night and decided they would go kill 
        some Americans? What difference at this point does it 
        make?

                                           Hillary Rodham Clinton  
                                           Secretary of State\10\  
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \10\Benghazi: The Attacks and the Lessons Learned Before the S. 
Comm. on Foreign Affairs, 113th Cong. at 28 (2013) (testimony of 
Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sec'y of State), http://www.cnn.com/
TRANSCRIPTS/1301/23/se.01.html). Oddly, even well after the fact 
Secretary Clinton continues the false narrative by leaving out of her 
answer any reference to it having been a planned terrorist attack.
    The statement that begins this section--the first casualty of war 
is truth--is typically attributed to the late California Senator Hiram 
Johnson (1866-1945), albeit in a slightly different form.

    It began the night of September 11, 2012 and continued for 
nearly two weeks after. The administration made statements 
about Benghazi that led the public to believe the attack began 
spontaneously as a protest over an anti-Islamic video 
circulating on the Internet. It was, they said, the same video 
that had sparked demonstrations in Cairo earlier that day. The 
first statement came from Secretary Clinton. More would follow, 
from the President, from Ambassador Rice, and from others. Each 
seemed to blame the murders on a video and a protest.
    Yet, in truth, no protest had occurred in Benghazi that 
night. And even today no clear link between the video and the 
attack exists. In fact, in the criminal indictment against 
Ahmed Salim Faraj Abu Khatallah (hereafter ``Abu Khatallah'')--
the only person prosecuted thus far for taking part in the 
attack--the government does not mention the video or a protest. 
Rather, it blames the attack on revenge for U.S. intelligence 
collection efforts in the area--a far different explanation 
than America received in the immediate aftermath of the 
attack.\11\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \11\See Khatallah Indictment at 6.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Did the administration mislead the public because it 
worried a terrorist attack might affect the upcoming election? 
Or did it simply rely on flawed and changing information from 
the U.S. Intelligence Community as the administration has 
maintained? Some critics may say the question alone is evidence 
of the Committee's alleged partisan agenda. Others may defend 
the misstatements as little more than election-year ``spin''--
something for which the public might fault both parties.
    For her part, Secretary Clinton simply dismissed the 
issue--``at this point, what difference does it make?''--in her 
now famous exchange with Senator Johnson. Yet, the truth is 
always important. It is especially so during times when we as a 
nation must face a crisis--and mourn one--together and to learn 
from it. Instead of sharing that truth, the administration 
concealed it. And in doing so it misled the American people for 
political gain. When that happens, whether by Republicans or 
Democrats, it does, should, and always will make a difference.

                               A. 56 DAYS

    The terrorist attack in Benghazi came during a critical 
time for the President. He faced an increasingly difficult re-
election bid as polls showed his lead over Republican 
presidential nominee Mitt Romney narrowing. The President had 
few clear successes to highlight from his first term and the 
economy had yet to recover fully. The political landscape left 
little room for error--or bad news.
    If one bright spot existed in the President's record, 
nearly four years in office had passed without a significant 
terrorist incident at home or abroad and killing Osama bin 
Laden represented an important accomplishment--one the 
President and his team trumpeted often.\12\ As Vice President 
Biden put it just days before the attack, ``Osama bin Laden is 
dead, and General Motors is alive.'' It was a powerful 
political argument, but the tide of war continued to roll in.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \12\For example, just 5 days before the attack, the President in 
his nationally-televised speech said the following about the war on 
terror:

      In a world of new threats and new challenges, you can 
      choose leadership that has been tested and proven. Four 
      years ago I promised to end the war in Iraq. We did. I 
      promised to refocus on the terrorists who actually attacked 
      us on 9/11, and we have. We've blunted the Taliban's 
      momentum in Afghanistan, and in 2014, our longest war will 
      be over. A new tower rises above the New York skyline, al-
      Qaeda is on the path to defeat, and Osama bin Laden is 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
      dead.

President Barack Obama, Speech to Democratic National Convention (Sept. 
6, 2012) (emphasis added), http://www.npr.org/2012/09/06/160713941/
transcript-president-obamas-convention-
speech).
    September 11, 2012 threatened to take the President's 
national security argument away. The Romney campaign and others 
seized on the attack as evidence of a failed policy and 
criticized the administration's seeming refusal to call the 
attackers terrorists. To many, Benghazi represented a potential 
October surprise that could impact the President's re-election 
bid.\13\ As one publication put it, ``with the American 
Presidential election only two months away, the murder of four 
American diplomats could be a game changer so far as Mr. 
Obama's re-election prospects are concerned.''\14\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \13\See, e.g., Craig Unger, GOP's October Surprise? Source reveals 
``Jimmy Carter Strategy'' to make Obama Seem weak on defense in 
campaign's final month, Salon (Oct. 1, 2012), http://www.salon.com/
2012/10/01/gops_october _surprise/.
    \14\Con Coughlin, The murder of the US ambassador to Libya is a 
wake-up call for Obama, The Telegraph, (Sept. 12, 2012).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The President had a political problem. And his advisors saw 
it immediately. In fact, the election entered the discussion 
before the attack even ended. Sometime before 10:35 p.m. on the 
night of September 11, 2012, Victoria Nuland, the State 
Department's spokesperson, sent an email to two other high 
level Clinton aides, Jacob Sullivan and Phillipe Reines:

        This is what Ben [Rhodes] was talking about.

        ``I'm outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic 
        missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an 
        American consulate worker in Benghazi. It's disgraceful 
        that the Obama Administration's first response was not 
        to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to 
        sympathize with those who waged the attacks.--Mitt 
        Romney''\15\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \15\E-mail from Victoria Nuland, State Dep't Spokesperson, to Jacob 
Sullivan, State Dep't Deputy Chief of Staff and Phillipe Reines, State 
Dep't Deputy Assistant Secretary for Communications (Sept. 11, 2012) 
(emphasis added) (on file with the Committee, C05412104).

    The ``Ben'' in Nuland's email was Benjamin Rhodes, the 
White House National Security Council's Deputy National 
Security Adviser for Strategic Communications and one of the 
President's top aides. The ``this'' was the accompanying 
``Tweet'' issued from the Romney campaign attacking the 
administration's handling of the situation. In short, the 
national security crisis turned into a political problem almost 
immediately.
    And so on this highly charged political stage--just 56 days 
before the presidential election--events forced the 
administration to make a choice about what to tell the American 
people: Tell the truth that heavily armed terrorists had killed 
one American and possibly kidnapped a second--and increase the 
risk of losing the election. Say we do not know what happened. 
Or blame a video-inspired protest by tying Benghazi to what had 
occurred earlier in the day in Cairo. The administration chose 
the third, a statement with the least factual support but that 
would help the most politically.\16\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \16\When asked on the night of the attack whether he knew ``of any 
connection between what had occurred in Cairo and what had occurred in 
Benghazi,'' Rhodes testified, ``I did not, other than the fact that 
both events took place in proximity to one another.'' See Transcript of 
Interview of Benjamin Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor for 
Strategic Communications, White House National Security Council at 13 
(Feb. 2, 2016) (on file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    While the attack loomed largest, and most immediately, for 
the President and his reelection bid, he was not alone in 
having a choice to make--or with something to lose. Secretary 
Clinton would have seen her reputation and legacy--and possibly 
2016 election prospects--tied to what had just occurred in 
Benghazi as well.
    Secretary Clinton was the administration's chief proponent 
of U.S. Libya policy and pushed for the President to join the 
NATO coalition to topple Qhaddafi. According to then-Secretary 
of Defense Robert Gates, who opposed intervention, others who 
pushed to intervene--including Ambassador Rice and Ben Rhodes--
are the same people who later worked to mislead the public 
about the attack.\17\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \17\Robert F. Gates, Duty 518 (2014).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    While that effort succeeded and Qhaddafi is gone, most now 
agree that the Libya intervention failed, in large part because 
of inadequate planning for a post-Qhaddafi Libya. As former 
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said later, the 
administration was ``playing it by ear'' after Qhaddafi's 
fall.\18\ So instead of a burgeoning democracy growing from the 
Arab Spring, we now have a terrorist safe haven growing in its 
place.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \18\Nancy A. Youssef, Hillary's Libya Post-War Plan was ``Play It 
by Ear,'' Gates Says, (Oct. 20, 2015, 8:00 p.m.), http://
www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/20/hillary-s-libya-post-war-
plan-was-play-it-by-ear-gates-says.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Secretary Clinton rarely mentions Libya now. Yet, early on 
her advisors pointed to Qhaddafi's ouster and her role as a 
historic foreign policy success. In August 2011, Secretary 
Clinton's Deputy Chief of Staff and Director of Policy Jacob 
Sullivan described her role as no less than the ``leadership/
ownership/stewardship of this country's Libya policy from start 
to finish'' and that she was ``instrumental in securing the 
authorization, building the coalition, and tightening the noose 
around Qadhafi and his regime.''\19\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \19\E-mail from Jacob Sullivan to Cheryl Mills, State Dep't Chief 
of Staff (Aug. 21, 2011) (on file with the Committee, SCB0075905).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Secretary Clinton's longtime friend and advisor Sidney 
Blumenthal described the success in even loftier terms:

        First, brava! This is a historic moment and you will be 
        credited for realizing it.

        When Qaddafi himself is finally removed, you should of 
        course make a public statement before the cameras 
        wherever you are, even in the driveway of your vacation 
        house. You must go on camera. You must establish 
        yourself in the historical record at this moment.

        The most important phrase is: ``successful strategy.''

                              *    *    *

        Then you can say whatever on future policy--but only 
        after asserting the historic success and explaining the 
        reasons why.

        This is a very big moment historically and for you. 
        History will tell your part in it. You are vindicated. 
        But don't wait, help Clio now.\20\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \20\E-mail from Sidney Blumenthal to Hillary Rodham Clinton (Aug. 
22, 2011) (emphasis added) (as we now know and as Secretary Gates has 
pointed, out the day after Qhaddafi fell called for far more planning 
than ``whatever'') (on file with the Committee, BLU-094).

    It is too soon to know how Clio--the goddess of history--
will ultimately treat Secretary Clinton's push to intervene in 
Libya. What we do know is that when given a chance to tell the 
truth to the American people, she did the opposite. It began at 
10:08 p.m. in Washington on the night of the murders--before 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
the attack had even ended.

            B. OUT OF THE FOG: TELLING ONE STORY PRIVATELY 
                       AND ANOTHER STORY PUBLICLY

    Some blame the ``fog of war'' for the administration's 
misstatements about Benghazi. While it is true officials in 
Washington did not have all the facts, the President, Secretary 
Clinton, and other senior leaders had enough information to 
conclude almost immediately that Benghazi and Cairo were very 
different. Benghazi was a terrorist attack and Cairo a large 
protest that had been publicized in advance on social media and 
that the State Department prepared for and expected.\21\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \21\See Transcript of Press Conference, Statement of Victoria 
Nuland, State Dep't Spokesperson (Sept. 17, 2012) (on file with the 
Committee, C05394583).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The information the President, Secretary Clinton, and other 
senior leaders had included detailed information about the 
sophisticated nature of the attack, the weapons used, the 
complexity of the attack, and the hours-long duration of the 
siege that spanned two locations. For example, one State 
Department official was told that night by a witness in 
Benghazi that the attackers who fired the mortar launcher had 
significant training and were ``not just persons off the street 
lobbing in mortars.''\22\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \22\Transcript of Interview of Charlene Lamb, Assistant Sec'y of 
State for Diplomatic Security for International Programs at 46-47 (Jan. 
7, 2016).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Significantly, the information known in Washington included 
reports from a number of eye witnesses on the ground in 
Benghazi--often in near real time--who remained in almost 
constant contact with officials in Washington during the 
attack. None of those eye witnesses mentioned a protest or the 
video.
    One of those witnesses saw the attack begin in real time 
while watching the Benghazi compound's security monitors inside 
the facility's tactical operations center. Up to that point, no 
protests had occurred and all was calm. When asked later about 
whether a protest had occurred, he said, ``No. There was 
nothing out there up until, well, up until there was. I had 
been out of the gate at 8:30 that night. We had had personnel 
leaving the compound, and they drove away from our compound and 
didn't report anything, and I spoke with them subsequently, 
there was nothing out there.''\23\ That same witness updated 
officials in Washington every 15 to 30 minutes throughout the 
night--giving the State Department virtually a front row seat 
to the attack.\24\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \23\Transcript of Deposition of DS Agent #3 before House Comm. on 
Oversight and Government Reform at 231 (Oct. 8, 2013) (on file with the 
Committee).
    \24\Id. at 165. At approximately 4:38 p.m. the State Dep't 
Operations Center appears to have set up a direct line to Benghazi. See 
E-mail to Jacob Sullivan, Cheryl Mills, and Secretary Clinton's 
Executive Assistant (Sept. 11, 2012) (on file with the Committee, 
C05561866).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Deputy Chief of Mission in Libya, Gregory Hicks, who 
was in Tripoli at the time of the attack, spoke to Ambassador 
Stevens last. As terrorists swarmed the Benghazi compound, 
Ambassador Stevens managed to call Hicks and said, simply, 
``Greg, we are under attack.''\25\ No mention of a protest. No 
mention of the video. Hicks relayed this same information to 
Acting Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs (``NEA'') 
Beth Jones\26\ and also spoke to Secretary Clinton and other 
top State Department officials that night.\27\ When asked later 
whether he would have expected Ambassador Stevens and the 
security officers in Benghazi to report a protest if it had 
occurred, Hicks said:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \25\Transcript of Interview of Gregory Hicks, Deputy in Charge of 
Mission in Libya before H. Comm. on Oversight and Government Reform at 
18 (Apr. 11, 2013).
    \26\Transcript of Interview of Beth Jones, Acting Assistant 
Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs before House Comm. on Oversight and 
Government Reform at 38-39 (July 11, 2013) (``He said . . . Greg Hicks 
has called. Ambassador Stevens is in Benghazi. He called and said, 
`We're under attack.''').
    \27\See Dep't of State, Watch Log, Operations Center (Sept. 11, 
2012) (showing call at 7:05 p.m. between Hicks and Secretary Clinton, 
Deputy Secretary Thomas Nides, Under Secretary Patrick Kennedy, Under 
Secretary Wendy Sherman, Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, Deputy Chief of 
Staff and Director Jacob Sullivan, Spokesperson Victoria Nuland, and 
Acting Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs Beth Jones (on file 
with the Committee, C05872462).

        Absolutely, I mean, we're talking about both security 
        officers who know their trade, even though they are 
        brand new, and one of the finest political officers in 
        the history of the Foreign Service. You know, for there 
        to have been a demonstration on Chris Stevens' front 
        door and him not to have reported it is unbelievable. 
        And secondly, if he had reported it, he would have been 
        out the back door within minutes of any demonstration 
        appearing anywhere near that facility. And there was a 
        back gate to the facility, and, you know, it 
        worked.\28\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \28\Transcript of Interview of Gregory Hicks before H. Comm. on 
Oversight and Government Reform at 81-82 (emphasis added) (on file with 
the Committee).

    Days later, one member of the State Department's Diplomatic 
Security Command Center on duty the night of the attack was 
asked by a colleague whether a protest had been reported prior 
to the attack. His response left little doubt: ``Zip, nothing 
nada.''\29\ That same person in a ``Terrorism Event 
Notification'' emailed out the morning of September 12, 2012 
described the event just as clearly: ``It was a full on attack 
against our compound in Benghazi.''\30\ Again, no mention of a 
protest. No mention of the video.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \29\E-mail from DS Agent #30 to DS Agent (Sept. 18, 2012) (on file 
with the Committee, C05390678).
    \30\E-mail from DS Agent #30 to various (Sept. 12, 2012) (on file 
with the Committee, C05389586)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    All of the information coming into the State Department 
that night and in the days that followed from the witnesses 
pointed to a terrorist attack. There is no evidence that any of 
the accounts blamed a video-inspired protest or, in fact, any 
protest at all. Moreover, this attack did not occur in a 
vacuum. Rather, it came toward the end--not the beginning--of a 
long list of terrorist and other violence aimed at the U.S. and 
other interests in Libya and Benghazi--a history of violence 
well known to senior State Department officials.
    Officials also recognized very quickly the differences 
between what had occurred in Cairo in response to the video and 
what occurred in Benghazi. As one official put it the night of 
the attack, ``We can confirm that our office in Benghazi, Libya 
has been attacked by a group of militants [and] [i]n Cairo, we 
can confirm that Egyptian police have now removed the 
demonstrators. . . .''\31\ That line between Benghazi and 
Cairo, however, would soon be blurred and then erased 
completely.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \31\E-mail from Victoria Nuland, State Dep't Spokesperson to Jacob 
Sullivan, Patrick Kennedy, Patrick Ventrell, Bernadette Meehan, 
National Security Council, Assistant Press Secretary (Sept. 11, 2012) 
(on file with the Committee, SCB000471).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Notwithstanding clear evidence of a terrorist attack in 
Benghazi, Secretary Clinton began to connect Cairo and Benghazi 
in the public's mind almost immediately even as she and others 
admitted privately the two were unrelated. It began at 10:08 
p.m. on the night of the attack--before the attack had even 
ended--with Secretary Clinton's statement condemning the 
attack. Other statements would follow as well that week. As 
shown in the following timeline of administration statements, 
the administration told two different stories, one publicly 
that connected the attack to the video and protests in Cairo 
and another privately that recognized it was a terrorist 
attack.

                     C. PUBLIC VS. PRIVATE TIMELINE

9/11--Public Statements

Secretary Clinton's 10:08 p.m. Statement on the Attack in 
Benghazi:

``I condemn in the strongest terms the attack on our mission in 
Benghazi today. * * * Some have sought to justify this vicious 
behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the 
Internet.''\32\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \32\Press Statement, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sec'y of State, 
Statement on the Attack in Benghazi (Sept. 11, 2012), http://
www.state.gov/secretary/20092013clinton/rm/2012/09/197628.htm).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        9/11--Private Statements

        Secretary Clinton's Call Sheet for call with President 
        of Libya Mohammed al Magariaf at 6:49 p.m.:

        Under heading Purpose of Call'' notes that ``Secretary 
        should urge Mr. Magariaf to respond urgently to the 
        attack against the U.S. Mission Benghazi, and security 
        threats against U.S. Embassy Tripoli.'' No mention of a 
        protest or video.\33\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \33\See The Secretary's Call Sheet for Libyan General National 
Congress President Mohammed al Magariaf (Sept. 11, 2012) (on file with 
the Committee, C05580497).

        Summary of Call between Secretary Clinton and President 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Magariaf:

        ``[O]ur diplomatic mission was attacked[.] . . . 
        [T]here is a gun battle ongoing, which I understand 
        Ansar as-Sharia [sic] is claiming responsibility 
        for.''\34\ No mention of protest or video.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \34\Notes of Secretary Clinton's Call with Mohammed al Magariaf 
(Sept. 11, 2012) (on file with the Committee, C05561906).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Secretary Clinton's E-mail to daughter at 11:23 p.m.:

        ``Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an Al 
        Queda- like [sic] group[.]''\35\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \35\E-mail from Hillary Rodham Clinton to ``Diane Reynolds'' (Sept. 
11, 2012) (on file with the Committee, C05794191).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
9/12--Public Statements

Secretary Clinton's Remarks on the Deaths of American Personnel 
in Benghazi, Libya morning of September 12, 2012:

``We are working to determine the precise motivations and 
methods of those who carried out this assault. Some have sought 
to justify this vicious behavior, along with the protest that 
took place at our Embassy in Cairo yesterday, as a response to 
inflammatory material posted on the internet.''\36\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \36\Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sec'y of State, Remarks on the Deaths 
of American Personnel in Benghazi, Libya (Sept. 12, 2012), http://
www.state.gov/secretary/20092013clinton/rm/2012/09/197654.htm).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        9/12--Private Statements

        Summary of Discussion between Acting Assistant 
        Secretary Beth Jones and Libyan Ambassador Aujali at 
        9:45 a.m.:

        ``I told him that the group that conducted the 
        attacks--Ansar Al Sharia--is affiliated with Islamic 
        extremists.''\37\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \37\See E-mail to Victoria Nuland, Deputy Secretary William Burns, 
Wendy Sherman, Jacob Sullivan, Patrick Kennedy, Cheryl Mills, and 
others (Sept. 12, 2012) (on file with the Committee, C05391027).

        Jacob Sullivan in e-mail to embassy in Kabul, 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Afghanistan:

        ``There was not really violence in Egypt [and] ``we are 
        not saying that the violence in Libya erupted `over 
        inflammatory videos.'''\38\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \38\E-mail from Jacob Sullivan to Benjamin Rhodes and others 
(Sept.12, 2012) (emphasis added) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0066195).

        Secretary Clinton's Statements to Egyptian Prime 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Minister Kandil at 3:04 p.m.:

        ``We know that the attack in Libya had nothing to do 
        with the film. It was a planned attack--not a protest. 
        . . . Based on the information we saw today we believe 
        the group that claimed responsibility for this was 
        affiliated with al-Qaeda.''\39\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \39\Notes of Secretary Clinton's Call with Egyptian Prime Minister 
Hesham Kandil (Sept. 11, 2012) (emphasis added) (on file with the 
Committee, C05561911).

        Under Secretary Patrick Kennedy to congressional staff 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        briefing:

        When asked whether ``this [was] an attack under the 
        cover of a protest'' Kennedy said, ``No the attack was 
        a direct breaching attack.'' More to the point, he was 
        then asked whether ``we believe [this was] coordinated 
        with [the] Cairo [protests] to which Kennedy responded, 
        ``Attack in Cairo was a demonstration. There were no 
        weapons shown or used. A few cans of spray paint.''\40\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \40\E-mail from Joy E. Drucker to various (Sept. 13, 2012) 
(forwarding notes from call between Patrick Kennedy and congressional 
staff that began at 6:30 p.m. September 12, 2012) (on file with the 
Committee, C05580110).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
9/13--Public Statements

Secretary Clinton's Morocco Remarks:

``I also want to take a moment to address the video circulating 
on the Internet that has led to these protests in a number of 
countries. * * *

To us, to me personally, this video is disgusting and 
reprehensible. It appears to have a deeply cynical purpose: to 
denigrate a great religion and to provoke rage. But as I said 
yesterday, there is no justification, none at all, for 
responding to this video with violence.

                              *    *    *

Violence, we believe, has no place in religion and is no way to 
honor religion. Islam, like other religions, respects the 
fundamental dignity of human beings, and it is a violation of 
that fundamental dignity to wage attacks on innocents. As long 
as there are those who are willing to shed blood and take 
innocent life in the name of God, the world will never know a 
true and lasting peace. It is especially wrong for violence to 
be directed against diplomatic missions. . . .

                              *    *    *

I wanted to begin with this statement, because, as our Moroccan 
friends and all of you know, this has been a difficult week at 
the State Department. I very much appreciate, Minister, the 
condolences your government expressed to our Embassy in Rabat. 
And even though that tragedy happened far away in Benghazi, we 
found a reminder of the deep bounds that connect Morocco to the 
United States.''\41\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \41\Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sec'y of State, Remarks at Opening 
Plenary of the United States-Morocco Strategic Dialogue Washington, 
D.C. Wednesday, September 13, 2012, http://www.state.gov/secretary/
20092013clinton/rm/2012/09/197711.htm.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        9/13--Private Statements

        Summary of call between State Department Deputy 
        Secretary Thomas Nides and Egyptian ambassador to U.S.:

        ``Nides said he understood the difference between the 
        targeted attack in Libya and the way the protest 
        escalated in Egypt.''\42\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \42\E-mail from State Dep't Operations Officer to State Dep't 
Official (Sept. 13, 2012) (on file with the Committee, C05562242).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
9/14--Public Statements

White House Spokesman Jay Carney during press conference 
answering question about Benghazi:

``We have no information to suggest that it was a preplanned 
attack. The unrest we've seen around the region has been in 
reaction to a video that Muslims, many Muslims find offensive. 
And while the violence is reprehensible and unjustified, it is 
not a reaction to the 9/11 anniversary that we know of, or to 
U.S. policy.''\43\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \43\Transcript of White House Press Conference, Jay Carney, White 
House Spokesperson (Sept. 14, 2012), https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-
press-office/2012/09/14/press-briefing-press-secretary-jay-carney-
9142012).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
E-mail from White House Advisor Benjamin Rhodes:

Under heading ``Goals'' he wrote ``To underscore that these 
protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader 
failure of policy[.]''\44\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \44\E-mail, Benjamin Rhodes to David Plouffe, White House Political 
Advisor, Jay Carney, White House Spokesperson, Erin Pelton, aide to 
Amb. Susan Rice, and others (Sept. 14, 2012 at 8:09 p.m.) (on file with 
the Committee, C05415285).

Return of remains ceremony statement to father of Tyrone Woods 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
recorded in diary:

``I gave Hillary a hug and shook her hand, and she said we are 
going to have the filmmaker arrested who was responsible for 
the death of my son.''\45\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \45\See Fox News Insider, Father of Benghazi Victim Reveals Journal 
Entry Documenting Meeting With Hillary, YouTube (Jan. 13, 2016), http:/
/www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMx0huMabos.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Return of remains ceremony statement to mother of Sean Smith:

``We were nose-to-nose at the coffin ceremony. She told me it 
was the fault of the video. I said `are you sure?' She says 
`yes, that's what it was . . . it was the video.'''\46\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \46\See Fox Business, Benghazi Victim's Mom: Hillary Needs to Tell 
Me the Truth! (Mar. 10, 2016) (available here http://
www.foxbusiness.com/features/2016/03/10/benghazi-victims-mom-
hillary-needs-to-tell-me-truth.html).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        9/14--Private Statements

        E-mail from State Department press officer in embassy 
        in Tripoli, Libya:

        ``Colleagues, I mentioned to Andy this morning, and 
        want to share with all of you, our view at Embassy 
        Tripoli that we must be cautious in our local messaging 
        with regard to the inflammatory film trailer, adapting 
        it to Libyan conditions. . . . Relatively few [Facebook 
        comments and tweets] have even mentioned the 
        inflammatory video. So if we post messaging about the 
        video specifically, we may draw unwanted attention to 
        it. And it is becoming increasingly clear that the 
        series of events in Benghazi was much more terrorist 
        attack than a protest which escalated into violence. It 
        is our opinion that in our messaging, we want to 
        distinguish, not conflate, the events in other 
        countries with this well-planned attack by militant 
        extremists. I have discussed this with Charge Hicks and 
        he shares PAS's view.''\47\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \47\E-mail from Public Affairs Officer, U.S. Embassy Libya to 
Senior Advisor for Strategic Communications, Near Eastern Affairs 
Bureau, NEA-Libya Desk, Gregory Hicks, Deputy in Charge of Libya 
Mission, and others (Sept. 14, 2012 at 6:43 p.m.) (on file with the 
Committee, C05396788).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
9/15--Public Statements

President's Weekly Address titled ``Carrying on the Work of Our 
Fallen Heroes'' muddles Benghazi and protests in other 
countries:

``This tragic attack takes place at a time of turmoil and 
protest in many different countries. I have made it clear that 
the United States has a profound respect for people of all 
faiths. We stand for religious freedom. And we reject the 
denigration of any religion--including Islam.''\48\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \48\Barack Obama, President of the United States, Weekly Address: 
Carrying on the Work of Our Fallen Heroes (Sept. 15, 2012), https://
www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/09/15/weekly-address-carrying-
work-our-fallen-heroes.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        9/15--Private Statements

        Secretary Clinton's call with Prime Minister-Elect of 
        Libya:

        Makes no mention of either a protest or the video.\49\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \49\E-mail from State Dep't officer to S_CallNotes (Sept. 15, 2012) 
(notes of call between Secretary Clinton and Libyan Prime Minister-
elect Abu Shagur) (on file with the Committee, C05561908).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
9/16--Public Statements

Ambassador Rice on Fox News With Chris Wallace

``But we don't see at this point signs this was a coordinated 
plan, premeditated attack.''\50\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \50\Transcript of Interview of Amb. Susan Rice on Fox News Sunday 
with Chris Wallace (Sept. 16, 2012).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        9/16--Private Statements

        Excerpt from Embassy Tripoli Media Report September 16, 
        2012

        ``[T]here is evidence that suggests that the second 
        confrontation at the UM mission's safe house could not 
        have happened without insider knowledge or some degree 
        of organization. This goes against statements that the 
        attacks were not carried out by a single group but by 
        an angry multitude protesting[.]''\51\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \51\E-mail from Public Affairs Officer, U.S. Embassy Libya to 
Senior Advisor for Strategic Communications, Near Eastern Affairs 
Bureau, Senior Libyan Desk Officer, Near Eastern Affairs Bureau, and 
others (Sept. 16, 2012) (attacking Tripoli Media Report for Sept. 16, 
2012) (on file with the Committee, C05396830).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
9/17--Public Statements

Excerpt from State Department Daily Press Briefing:

``Ambassador Rice, in her comments on every network over the 
weekend, was very clear, very precise, about what our initial 
assessment of what happened is. . . . I don't have anything to 
give you beyond that.''\52\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \52\State Dep't of State, Daily Press Briefing--September 17, 2012, 
Victoria Nuland, State Dep't Spokesperson, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/
prs/dpb/2012/09/197821.htm.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        9/17--Private Statements

        Excerpt from e-mail discussion between members of NEA 
        press office about what to say about attack:

        NEA Press Officer Suggested the following language:

        ``The currently available information suggests the 
        demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired 
        by the protests of the US Embassy in Cairo and evolved 
        into a direct assault[.]''

        Senior Libya Desk Officer, Near Eastern Affairs Bureau 
        responding to suggested language:

        ``I really hope this was revised. I don't think we 
        should go on the record on this.''\53\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \53\See E-mail from Senior Advisor for Strategic Communications, 
NEA to Spokesperson, NEA, Senior Libyan Desk Offier, NEA, Deputy 
Director, Office of Maghreb Affairs, NEA (Sept 17, 2012) (emphasis 
added) (on file with the Committee, C05580618).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
9/18--Public Statements

Excerpt from White House Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay 
Carney:

. . . I would point you to what Ambassador Rice said and others 
have said about what we know thus far about the video and its 
influence on the protests that occurred in Cairo, in Benghazi 
and elsewhere.''

        9/18--Private Statements

        Deputy Director of CIA Michael Morell in written 
        statement to House Permanent Select Committee on 
        Intelligence:

        ``The critically important point is that the analysts 
        considered this a terrorist attack from the very 
        beginning.''\54\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \54\Michael Morell, Former Acting Director and Deputy Director of 
the CIA, Written Statement for the Record before the H. Perm. Select 
Comm. on Intel. (April 2, 2014).

        E-mail exchange between State Department security 
        officers commenting on news article titled ``White 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        House sees no sign Libya attack premeditated'':

        DS Agent #30: ``Can you believe this?''

        DS Agent: ``Was there any rioting in Benghazi reported 
        prior to the attack?''

        DS Agent #30: ``Zip, nothing nada''\55\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \55\E-mail from DS Agent #30 to DS Agent (Sept. 18, 2012) (on file 
with the Committee, C05389586).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
9/19--Public Statements

From ``ALDAC''_a worldwide cable_from Secretary Clinton to all 
U.S. Embassies drafted by Deputy Chief of Staff Jacob Sullivan:

``Since September 11, 2012, there have been widespread protests 
and violence against U.S. and some other diplomatic posts 
across the Muslim world. The proximate cause of the violence 
was the release by individuals in the United States of the 
video trailer for a film that many Muslims find offensive. 
Diplomatic compounds have been breached in several countries 
including Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen. In Benghazi, Libya 
four U.S. personnel were killed in the violence[.]''\56\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \56\E-mail from Sullivan Assistant to various (attaching 
``Immediate ALDAC for transmission'' drafted by J Sullivan 9/19/2012 
noting approval by ``S: The Secretary'') (Sept. 2012) (on file with the 
Committee, SCB0052811) (emphasis added).

The administration, including Secretary Clinton, knew that 
Benghazi was a terrorist attack--from witness accounts, from 
their understanding of the history of violence in Benghazi, and 
from the nature of the well-planned, complex attack. Yet, they 
led the public to believe the video and a protest were to blame 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
in Benghazi.

9/20--Public Statements

Excerpt from interview of the President on Univision Town Hall:

In response to the question, ``We have reports that the White 
House said today that the attacks in Libya were a terrorist 
attack. Do you have information indicating that it was Iran, or 
al-Qaeda was behind organizing the protests?'' the President 
answered, ``[W]e're still doing an investigation[.] . . . What 
we do know is that the natural protests that arose because of 
the outrage over the video were used as an excuse by extremists 
to see if they can also directly harm U.S. interests[.]''\57\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \57\Press Release, Remarks by the President at Univision Town Hall 
with Jorge Ramos and Maria Elena Salinas (Sept. 20, 2012), https://
www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/09/20/
remarks-president-univision-town-hall-jorge-ramos-and-maria-elena-
salina (emphasis added).

    Secretary Clinton has since blamed her statements on 
changing information received from U.S. intelligence reports. 
She and others have claimed that the 10:08 p.m. statement was 
not meant to ascribe a motive to the attack. Yet, Sullivan knew 
the morning of September 12th--based on the press release from 
the embassy in Kabul--that people had heard it exactly that 
way. Moreover, whether or not the intelligence information 
changed, Secretary Clinton's public and private statements 
remained consistent--publicly tying Benghazi and Cairo together 
and privately recognizing the violence in Benghazi was a 
terrorist attack with nothing to do with a protest or video.
    Moreover, to the extent any intelligence analysis 
incorrectly reported on a protest or a video in connection with 
Benghazi, Secretary Clinton and other State officials, who knew 
better, simply ignored them. As just one example, in her 
conversation September 15, 2012 with the president of Libya, 
Secretary Clinton made no mention of anything in the CIA 
talking points that administration officials later claimed were 
the best assessment available at the time, and those talking 
points made no mention of a video in connection with Benghazi. 
In short, Secretary Clinton and the administration knew better 
than to rely on flawed intelligence reports. Intelligence 
assessments may have changed. News reports may have changed. 
But the eye witness accounts remained the same--and not one 
said a protest had occurred. Yet, once Secretary Clinton and 
Ben Rhodes set the message, the truth became an afterthought.

                  D. AMBASSADOR RICE FACES THE NATION

    On September 16, 2012, Ambassador Susan Rice appeared on 
five Sunday talk shows and blamed Benghazi on the video. She 
took the brunt of the criticism for doing so when it finally 
became public that no protest had occurred. It is now clear, 
however, that connecting the video to Benghazi started far 
sooner. It began with Secretary Clinton's 10:08 p.m. statement 
the night of the attack. Rice, however, compounded the 
deception. And while Secretary Clinton and others blurred the 
line between Cairo and Benghazi, Ambassador Rice erased it 
completely.
    Ambassador Rice now claims that she did not blame the video 
for what occurred in Benghazi. The plain wording of what she 
said, however, refutes her testimony to the Committee. She also 
claims that she simply relied on the flawed CIA talking points. 
But even a casual reading of those talking points shows that 
she went far beyond what the CIA prepared--in a way that helped 
the President politically.
    The original draft of the CIA talking points included key 
information that would have at a minimum pointed to the 
possibility of a planned terrorist attack. For example, the 
initial draft referred to knowing that ``Islamic extremists 
with ties to al-Qa'ida'' had taken part in the attack, that 
``there had been at least five other attacks'' previously, and 
that they could not rule out that ``individuals had previously 
surveilled the U.S. facilities.''\58\ By the final draft, 
however, officials had stripped out all of that and other 
information. It then read simply:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \58\See Talking Points Timeline, ABC News, http://abcnews.go.com/
images/Politics/Benghazi%20Talking%20Points%20Timeline.pdf.

        The currently available information suggests that the 
        demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired 
        by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and 
        evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. 
        diplomatic post and subsequently its annex. There are 
        indications that extremists participated in the violent 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        demonstrations.

        This assessment may change as additional information is 
        collected and analyzed and currently available 
        information continues to be evaluated.

        The investigation is ongoing, and the U.S. Government 
        is working w/Libyan authorities to help bring to 
        justice those responsible for the deaths of U.S. 
        citizens.\59\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \59\Id.

    The talking points in their final form make no mention of 
the video. Nevertheless, and with no discernable basis for 
doing so, Ambassador Rice drew that inaccurate connection. On 
Meet the Press she said ``putting together the best information 
we have available to us today our current assessment is that 
what happened in Benghazi was in fact initially a spontaneous 
reaction to what had just transpired hours before in Cairo, 
almost a copycat of--of the demonstrations against our facility 
in Cairo, which were prompted, of course, by the video.''\60\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \60\Transcript of Interview, Amb. Susan Rice on Meet the Press 
(Sept. 16, 2012).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The statement Rice made was false. The ``best information'' 
available at the time--from the witnesses on the ground--
pointed directly to a pre-planned, complex terrorist attack. 
Many within the State Department came to that conclusion 
quickly as well. For example, a Senior Advisor for Strategic 
Communications, Near Eastern Affairs Bureau, ``My opinion, that 
night, was simply that this was a terrorist attack.''\61\ 
Likewise, Assistant Secretary of State Beth Jones testified 
that ``there was discussion about was it a demonstration, was 
it an attack? And I knew very well that the Embassy [in 
Tripoli] believed it to be an attack. I believed it to be an 
attack.''\62\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \61\Transcript of Interview of Senior Advisor for Strategic 
Communications, Near Eastern Affairs Bureau at 89 (July 29, 2015) (on 
file with the Committee).
    \62\Transcript of Interview of Acting Assistant Sec'y of State NEA 
Beth Jones before H. Comm. on Oversight and Government Reform at 138-
139 (July 11, 2013) (on file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    No one--and certainly not the CIA or the broader U.S. 
Intelligence Community--had described Benghazi as a copycat of 
Cairo. In fact, knowing what they knew at the time it is hard 
to imagine how the two events could have been more different. 
On the very night of the attack, Ambassador Rice herself 
received an e-mail that described the Cairo protests as ``2000 
protestors in total. 20 got to the top of the wall, 10 got 
inside the perimeter--they tore down the flag and sprayed 
graffiti inside the compound. They went after employee cars as 
well.''\63\ No one used or showed a weapon in Cairo and no 
American was hurt. In short, Benghazi was not ``almost a 
copycat'' of what occurred in Cairo and Ambassador Rice knew 
it.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \63\E-mail from a State Dep't Senior Policy Advisor to Amb. Susan 
Rice and others (Sept. 11, 2012) (on file with the Committee, 
C05390691).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Ambassador Rice's ``copycat'' claim was particularly 
troubling in light of the fact that the President said 
virtually the opposite just days earlier. In an interview with 
Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes on September 12, 2012 he was asked, 
``This has been described as a mob action, but there are 
reports that they were very heavily armed with grenades. That 
doesn't sound like your normal demonstration.''\64\ To which 
the President responded, ``As I said, we're still investigating 
exactly what happened. I don't want to jump the gun on this. 
But you're right that this is not a situation that was exactly 
the same as what happened in Egypt, and my suspicion is, is 
that there are folks involved in this who were looking to 
target Americans from the start.''\65\ It is troubling that 
this portion of the President's answer was deleted from the 
show that aired on September 23, 2012 and was not made public 
until just days before the election.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \64\Internal Transcript, Interview of the President by Steve Kroft, 
60 Minutes at 2 (Sept. 12, 2012) (on file with the Committee, 
C05527907).
    \65\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Similarly, on CNN's State of the Union Ambassador Rice, 
almost indignant, insisted ``[f]irst of all, let's be clear 
about what transpired here. What happened this week in Cairo, 
in Benghazi, in many parts of the region . . . was a result--a 
direct result of a heinous and offensive video that was widely 
disseminated.''\66\ Again, nowhere in the talking points did 
the U.S. Intelligence Community blame the video for what 
occurred in Benghazi let alone describe it as a ``direct 
result'' of the video. When confronted with this, Ambassador 
Rice seemed to deny the meaning of the very words she used, 
claiming that she did not ``intend[] to include[] Benghazi in 
that statement[.]''\67\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \66\Transcript of Interview, Amb. Susan Rice on CNN State of the 
Union (Sept. 16, 2012).
    \67\Transcript of Interview of Amb. Susan Rice at 102 (February 2, 
2016), (on file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Nor did Ambassador Rice--or anyone else from the 
administration--tell the full story. In fact, they only told 
the half that helped politically. For example, the 
administration claimed publicly there was no ``actionable 
intelligence'' prior to the attack--suggesting the attack was 
spontaneous.\68\ However, it failed to disclose that at the 
time significant gaps existed in U.S. intelligence collection 
in Libya that made it virtually impossible to have picked up 
such warnings in the first place. It also failed to highlight 
the casing incident that had occurred the morning of the attack 
just outside the Benghazi compound.\69\ The administration also 
failed to disclose the long history of terrorist violence in 
Benghazi--information that would have placed the Benghazi 
attack into its proper context.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \68\See US `had no actionable intelligence' over Benghazi attack, 
The Telegraph (Oct. 10, 2012), http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/
worldnews/africa andindianocean/libya/9597738/US-had-no-actionable-
intelligence-over-Benghazi-attack.html.
    \69\See E-mail from Assistant Regional Security Officer (Sept. 11, 
2012) (``We received word from our local guards that this morning they 
observed a member of the police force assigned to the [Benghazi] 
Mission at a construction site across the street from our main gate 
taking pictures of our compound. I briefed the [Ambassador.]) (on file 
with the Committee, C05271656).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Nor did Ambassador Rice show any sincere interest in 
finding all of the facts--or as she put it--the best 
information available before going on the Sunday talk shows. In 
fact, her preparation session the day before, which included 
Benjamin Rhodes and White House political adviser David 
Plouffe--appeared to spend very little time on Benghazi at 
all.\70\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \70\See Transcript of Interview of Amb. Susan Rice at 39 (February 
2, 2016) (Rice testified ``I don't recall us talking about the CIA 
talking points'' and ``we didn't talk about Benghazi, in fact, on the 
phone call, as I remember'') (on file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On Monday, September 17, 2012, some State Department 
officials reacted with shock to Ambassador Rice's claims. 
Specifically, the Department's NEA Bureau press department--the 
experts on Libya--reacted with disbelief. The discussion began 
with NEA's Senior Libyan Desk Officer reacting to draft press 
guidance that quoted the CIA talking points by saying, ``I 
really hope this was revised. I don't think we should go on the 
record on this.''\71\ This led to the Deputy Director, Office 
of Maghreb Affairs, NEA saying, ``Not sure we want to be so 
definitive[,]''\72\ which led to the following e-mail exchange:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \71\E-mail from Senior Libyan Desk Offier, NEA to NEA Press Officer 
(Sept 17, 2012) (on file with the Committee: Doc# C05580617).
    \72\Id.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        NEA Spokesperson:

        The horse has left the barn on this, don't you think? 
        Rice was on FIVE Sunday Morning shows yesterday saying 
        this. Tough to walk back.

        Senior Advisor for Strategic Communications, NEA:

        [Nuland] planned on walking it back just a bit, though.

        Senior Libyan Desk Officer, NEA:

        I think Rice was off the reservation on this one.

        Senior Advisor for Strategic Communications, NEA:

        Yup. Luckily there's enough in her language to fudge 
        exactly what she said/meant.

        NEA Spokesperson:

        Off the reservation on five networks!

        Senior Advisor for Strategic Communications, NEA:

        [White House] very worried about the politics. This was 
        all their doing.\73\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \73\E-mail from Senior Advisor for Strategic Communications, NEA to 
Spokesperson, NEA, Senior Libyan Desk Offier, NEA, Deputy Director, 
Office of Maghreb Affairs, NEA (Sept 17, 2012) (emphasis added) (on 
file with the Committee, C05580618).

    Although these individuals may not have seen the CIA 
talking points prior to Rice's appearances, they did know what 
had occurred in Benghazi based on their vantage point that 
night.\74\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \74\See, e.g., Transcript of Interview of Senior Advisor for 
Strategic Communications, NEA at 89 (``Q: So let me make sure I'm 
clear. So your opinion on the night of the attack, when you were at the 
State Department, your opinion was that it was a terrorist attack? A: 
Correct.'') (on file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The exchange also highlights another important issue. 
Toward the end of the exchange the NEA Senior Advisor for 
Strategic Communications describes it as ``luck'' that 
Ambassador Rice had said enough to ``fudge'' what she meant. A 
national crisis is no time to fudge the truth; it is a time to 
find it and to tell it. But what we found here is just the 
opposite. And for those who appear to have known the truth--
such as Secretary Clinton--the American people waited in vain 
for them to correct Ambassador Rice's misleading public 
statements.
    Possibly most troubling is the evidence suggesting the 
State Department may have changed its public statements to 
match Rice's claims. Specifically, on September 17, 2012, a 
State Department Press Officer in the NEA Bureau circulated a 
document entitled ``NEA Press Guidance Libya: Update on 
Investigation on Attack in Benghazi,''\75\ a document intended 
as guidance for public comments about the attack. In the 
original draft it said that ``we have not seen any signs that 
the attack . . . in Benghazi was other than premeditated or 
coordinated.'' In a later draft, however, ``other than 
premeditated or coordinated'' morphed into ``other than 
spontaneous.'' The document produced by the State Department to 
the Committee still contained the insertion (in bold) and 
deletions (in bold strikethrough) under the heading ``Key 
Points'':
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \75\See E-mail from NEA press officer to Bernadette Meehan and 
others (Sept. 17, 2012) (on file with the Committee, C05578291).

        We will continue to wait for the findings of the 
        ongoing FBI investigation before reaching a final 
        conclusion, but at this preliminary stage, time, we 
        have not yet seen any signs that the attack on our 
        consulate in Benghazi was other than spontaneous. 
        premeditated. coordinated.\76\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \76\Id.

    No one asked about it could explain the change. The 
change--from the truth to a known false statement--is 
troubling.
    Secretary Clinton and others in the State Department 
clearly knew the truth about Benghazi almost immediately. Yet 
they only shared that information with others privately, 
including with Secretary Clinton's daughter. Publicly they told 
a very different story--one in line with Ben Rhodes's 
instruction to blame the video and not a failure of the 
President's policy. In doing so, the President and Secretary 
Clinton put politics ahead of the truth. The four victims 
deserved better. And the American people deserved better.

                         II. Last Clear Chance

    In August 2012 it did not take an expert to see that the 
State Department facility in Benghazi should have been closed 
if additional security was not to be provided. The location and 
the risk demanded Secretary Clinton's attention. The Benghazi 
facility was wholly unique and there is no evidence that 
Secretary Clinton asked her experts--let alone Ambassador 
Stevens who she personally chose for the position--the hard 
questions. The robust host-nation security forces that the 
United States takes for granted in other countries did not 
exist in Libya. Rather, competing militias--some friendly, some 
not--filled the vacuum left by 40-plus years of Qhaddafi's 
rule. And escalating violence against the U.S. compound and 
others in Libya--230 incidents since June 2011 alone--made a 
terrorist attack all but inevitable. These were the facts known 
in August 2012. And in August 2012 Secretary Clinton had the 
last, clear chance to provide adequate protection or, failing 
that, to close the facility and pull our people out. She did 
neither.

              A. THE ``WILD EAST'': POST-QHADDAFI BENGHAZI

        I told him that this was a suicide mission; that there 
        was a very good chance that everybody here was going to 
        die; that there was absolutely no ability here to 
        prevent an attack whatever. * *  [H]hesaid, ``everybody 
        back here in D.C. knows that people are going to die in 
        Benghazi, and nobody cares and nobody is going to care 
        until somebody does die.''

                          State Diplomatic Security Agent #10\77\  
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \77\Transcript of Interview of DS Agent #10 at 22-23 (April 2, 
2015) (recounting conversation with DS Agent #25 who was the desk 
officer for diplomatic security in the Near Eastern Affairs Bureau).

    According to the Diplomatic security agent quoted above, he 
had this exchange with the State Department's desk officer for 
diplomatic security in the region that covered Libya, shortly 
after he arrived in Benghazi on temporary assignment as the 
regional security officer. The conversation did not occur days 
before the attack. It did not occur a month before the attack. 
Rather, he gave the warning nearly nine months before September 
11, 2012 shortly after he arrived in Benghazi. Nor was his the 
only warning.
    In June 2012, a second Benghazi security official reported 
on the ``increase in extremist activity'' in Benghazi and 
described his ``fear that we have passed a threshold where we 
will see more targeting, attacks, and incidents involving 
western [sic] targets.''\78\ The official also listed a series 
of very recent attacks and noted that a source had warned of a 
``group attack'' on an American facility.\79\ He specifically 
mentioned ``[t]argeting [and] attacks by extremist groups 
particularly in the eastern portion of Libya[.]''\80\ These 
warnings contained troubling information about possible 
terrorists trying to learn information about U.S. 
facilities.\81\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \78\E-mail from DS Agent #24 to DS Agent #25 (June 14, 2012) (on 
file with the Committee, C05388987).
    \79\Id.
    \80\Id.
    \81\Id. (``LES bodyguard assigned to the Ambassador's Protection 
Detail informed the RSO that he was asked about specific security 
questions concerning the embassy by an individual that he believed was 
an extremist.'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The list of incidents in Benghazi that were reported back 
to Washington was long. And it told a compelling story of a 
city on the brink. To anyone aware of the conditions, it was 
not a matter of ``if'' but rather ``when'' a terrorist attack 
on the U.S. compound would occur. The list ran the gamut from 
minor to major incidents, including a rocket attack on the 
British ambassador's convoy that prompted withdrawal of British 
personnel from the city. The incidents included:

     LApril 10, 2012 explosive device hits U.N. convoy 
in Benghazi\82\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \82\E-mail from Diplomatic Security Agent 16 to DS-IP-NEA (Apr. 10, 
2012) (on file with the Committee, SCB0048085).

     LMay 22, 2012 rocket propelled grenade attack on 
the International Red Cross facility, which included a warning 
that ``Americans would be targeted next''\83\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \83\E-mail from OpsNewsTicker to NEWS-Libya (May 22, 2012, 9:06 AM) 
(on file with the Committee, C05392368).

     LJune 6, 2012 attack on U.S. mission in 
Benghazi\84\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \84\E-mail from Principal Officer 2, U.S. Dep't of State, to John 
C. Stevens, U.S. Ambas-sador to Libya, Joan A. Polaschik, Deputy Chief 
of Mission in Libya, William V. Roe-buck, Dir. Office of Maghreb 
Affairs, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State (June 6, 
2012, 4:49 AM) (on file with the Committee, C05393187).

     LJune 18, 2012 armed attackers storm Tunisian 
Consulate\85\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \85\See Mohamed al-Tommy and Hadeel al-Shalchi, Gunmen Attack 
Tunisian Consulate in Benghazi, Reuters (Jun. 18, 2012, 19:03), http://
www.reuters.com/article/us-libya-gunmen-tunisia-idUSBRE85H1V620120618

     LJune 11, 2012 rocket attack on the British 
ambassador\86\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \86\Memo from Regional Director, Near Eastern Affairs Bureau, 
Diplomatic Security at 44 (June 15, 2012) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0048161).

     LJuly 27, 2012 attempted bomb attack on Tibesti 
Hotel in Benghazi, the hotel used by the State Department 
during Revolution\87\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \87\See Blast and Jailbreak Rock Libya's Benghazi, AlJazeera (Aug. 
1, 2012) (available at http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2012/08/
201281818 48269 995.html).

     LJuly 31, 2012 seven Iranian-citizen International 
Committee of the Red Crescent workers abducted\88\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \88\Iran Red Crescent Team 'Kidnapped' in Libya, AlJazeera (Jul. 
31, 2012), http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2012/07/
201273120552473238.html.

     LAugust 20, 2012 small bomb thrown at Egyptian 
diplomat's vehicle parked outside of the Egyptian consulate\89\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \89\See Steven Sotloff, The Bomb Attacks in Libya: Are Gaddafi 
Loyalists Behind Them?, Time (Aug. 24, 2012), http://world.time.com/
2012/08/24/the-bomb-attacks-in-libya-are-gaddafi-loyalists-behind-
them/.

    Without this background one could, in theory, jump to the 
mistaken conclusion that the terrorist attack in Benghazi and 
the protests in Cairo were connected in time and in cause. But 
the State Department and the NEA Bureau in particular knew this 
history all too well. For those people, it was against this 
backdrop that they quickly saw Benghazi for what it was: a 
terrorist attack, not a protest.
    Nor did this escalation in violence escape the notice of 
American policy makers or the U.S. Intelligence Community. 
Intelligence analysts produced numerous reports on the growing 
terrorist threat centered in Benghazi--yet the State Department 
did nothing. Again, why? And so even though the security 
problems in Benghazi appear to have been well known to State 
Department officials at the time, no one acted in any 
meaningful way to protect the Benghazi facility let alone to 
get the people out. The question remained: Why?
    Although the agent's warning quoted at the section heading 
could not have been clearer, it was ignored even as the 
situation in Benghazi went from bad to worse. The situation 
became so grave that it prompted one State Department official 
to dub Benghazi the ``wild east.'' Sadly, the humor 
foreshadowed the horror to come as he made this statement in an 
e-mail sent to Ambassador Stevens just hours before his 
death.\90\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \90\E-mail from Public Affairs Officer, U.S. Embassy Libya to Amb. 
Christopher Stevens (Sept. 11, 2012) (on file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Some blame the deplorable security conditions in Benghazi 
on the facility's ``made up'' State Department designation. To 
them, the fact the Department labeled the facility 
``temporary'' excused shortcomings in the compound's physical 
security. A ``temporary'' designation enabled the facility to 
skirt a host of written internal security requirements that 
applied to more permanent locations. We also learned it was an 
improvised designation not used at any of the State 
Department's other 275 facilities around the world.\91\ The 
requirements this designation avoided cover everything from 
setbacks to perimeter wall heights to razor wire placement. 
Standards that, had the State Department complied with them, 
would have given the Benghazi staff a fighting chance that 
night.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \91\This is the number of facilities identified by Assistant 
Secretary for Diplomatic Security Gregory Starr in his testimony before 
the Committee in 2014. Transcript of Hearing 1 H. Sel. Comm. on 
Benghazi Testimony of Gregory Starr at 97 (Sept. 17, 2014).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In trying to excuse the security conditions in Benghazi, 
some have argued that it would have been impossible to comply 
with the State Department's internal requirements in Benghazi. 
That may be true, but it is also irrelevant. The suggestion 
that a facility's label should dictate whether men and women 
have adequate security of course makes no sense.
    It makes no sense because it ignores a critical requirement 
applicable to all facilities regardless of whether it will 
stand for a day, a year, or a decade. The facility's label did 
not trump commonsense. Nor did it blind officials to the deadly 
attack that to trained professionals appears to have been all 
but inevitable, as the security agent quoted above observed 
months before. In other words, the State Department cannot hide 
behind its regulations. It had an obligation to act yet did far 
too little to secure the facility. The question, again, was 
why?
    The same question came from the former Ambassador to Yemen, 
who the day after the attack observed:

        People are bound to ask how we can send unarmed 
        civilian diplomats to conduct [U.S. government] 
        business into a region with no local security forces to 
        rely on, only a handful of lightly armed [diplomatic 
        security] agents serving as close protection team, and 
        a couple dozen local militiamen of questionable 
        pedigree with AK-47's providing perimeter security.\92\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \92\E-mail from former ambassador to Yemen to Beth Jones, Acting 
Assistant Secretary for NEA (Sept. 12, 2012) (on file with the 
Committee, C05391021).

    It was a question that the ambassador himself could not 
even answer: ``I would suggest that we begin to think now of 
how we explain/justify our presence in these non-permissive 
environments.\93\ To most Americans, the time to think about 
justifying a presence in Benghazi and other dangerous places 
should have come before, not after, Americans have died.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \93\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    So the question remained, what was so important in Benghazi 
that it meant risking the lives of Americans in what many 
appeared to view as a suicide mission? It is true that American 
diplomats cannot hide inside bunkers. That we can never 
eliminate all risk in diplomacy. That Benghazi was the seat of 
the revolution and home to important anti-regime leaders. And 
that the United States was not alone in seeing a good reason to 
be there, as other Western countries had done the same. Yet, 
other Western countries left and the U.S. stayed. So while all 
this may be true, it still begs the essential question: Why 
Benghazi? The answer that best fits is politics.

  B. PUTTING POLITICS AHEAD OF PEOPLE: FAILING TO CLOSE THE BENGHAZI 
                                COMPOUND

    It remains unclear why a State Department presence in 
Benghazi was so important. What is clear, however, is keeping a 
facility open there was important to Secretary Clinton. In 
addition, on this matter, many questions remain and much 
classified information was withheld from the Committee.
    In his interview with Secretary Clinton prior to 
confirmation as ambassador to Libya, Secretary Clinton told 
Ambassador Stevens that she hoped that Benghazi would become a 
permanent post. In late July 2012, Ambassador Stevens discussed 
the issue with his Deputy Chief of Mission Gregory Hicks. 
According to Mr. Hicks, during their discussion Ambassador 
Stevens said that Secretary Clinton might travel to Libya 
again, possibly in October,\94\ and that Stevens wanted to have 
a ``deliverable'' for her trip. That ``deliverable'' was to 
make the mission in Benghazi permanent.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \94\Transcript of Testimony of Gregory Hicks, Deputy in Charge of 
Mission Embassy Libya, before H. Comm. on Government Reform and 
Oversight at 15 (April 11, 2013).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    No matter how important a presence in Benghazi was--to 
Secretary Clinton, to the State Department, to the United 
States--it should have become very clear that the risks of 
staying without more security outweighed any possible benefit.
    On August 17, 2012, Secretary Clinton received a document 
titled ``Information Memo for the Secretary.'' The memo did not 
pull punches. Under the somewhat benign heading ``Uptick in 
Violence, Primarily in Eastern Libya'' it said, ``Since May, 
there has been a spike in violent incidents, including 
bombings, abductions, assassinations, and car-jackings.''\95\ 
The memo, from Acting Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern 
Affairs Beth Jones, is quoted at length here:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \95\Information Memo for the Secretary from Acting Assistant 
Secretary Beth Jones, NEA (Aug. 17, 2012) (on file with the Committee, 
C05390124).

     L``While unpredictable security conditions 
restrict the movement of U.S. government personnel, they have 
not limited our assistance work.''\96\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \96\Id.

     L``The attachment lists the major events, which 
include a June 6 bombing at the U.S. Mission in Benghazi and an 
August 6 attempted car-jacking of embassy personnel in 
Tripoli.''\97\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \97\Id.

     L``Recently, foreign residents of Benghazi have 
expressed concern about the risks of living and working 
there.''\98\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \98\Id.

     L``In response to five attacks since May, the 
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) withdrew its 
personnel from Benghazi and Misrata in early August[.] The ICRC 
country director believes international organizations in Libya 
have underestimated the recent rise in violence out of a shared 
sense of optimism.''\99\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \99\Id.

     L``The variety of the violence points to the 
overall lack of effective security institutions, particularly 
in the east.''\100\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \100\Id.

     L``The distance from the already weak central 
security services, feelings of marginalization from the central 
government, and a history of lslamist extremism in some eastern 
towns all seem to contribute to a permissive environment where 
disparate motivations for violence have found fertile ground in 
which to germinate. The national Supreme Security Council--a 
post-revolutionary coalition of militia elements cobbled into a 
single force and designed to provide interim security in 
Benghazi--has had limited success as a stabilizing 
force.''\101\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \101\Id.

     L``The government seems largely unable to gather 
intelligence in advance of attacks and central security 
services appear intimidated by the local militias, in some 
cases tacitly ceding their authority. Some actors see the weak 
response from the government and feel they can act with 
increasing impunity. The sense of lawlessness encourages 
spoilers, predators, and other disruptive players to escalate 
their actions.''\102\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \102\Id.

     L``Benghazi was once palpably safer than Tripoli 
[but] . . . lawlessness is increasing. . . . Despite the 
urgency, however, the government's response is likely to 
continue to be hesitant and tentative[.]''\103\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \103\Id.

     L``Despite the worrisome aspects of this increase 
in violence, there is no coordinated organization behind the 
incidents. . . . Nonetheless, the likelihood of more widespread 
violence is strong if Libya's political leaders are unable to 
demobalize [sic] militias and strengthen the government's 
security institutions.''\104\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \104\Id.

    Despite the colorless bureaucratic language, the Beth Jones 
memo nevertheless painted a harrowing picture of conditions in 
the eastern part of Libya where Benghazi is located. Many of 
the words truly jump at the reader-- ``urgency,'' 
``lawlessness,'' ``unpredictable,'' ``lack of effective 
security,'' ``limited success,'' ``widespread violence,'' ``act 
with increasing impunity.'' The list of specific incidents 
attached to the memo brought that picture into even starker 
relief.
    When Secretary Clinton was asked about the Beth Jones memo 
during her Committee interview she deflected, ``Well, I think 
that, again, there was no recommendation based on any of the 
assessments, not from our State Department experts, not from 
the intelligence community, that we should abandon either 
Benghazi or Tripoli.''\105\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \105\Transcript of Hearing 4 before the Select Committee on the 
Events Surrounding the 2012 Terrorist Attack in Benghazi (hereafter 
referred to as ``the Committee''), 114th Cong. (2015) (testimony of 
Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sec'y of State).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In the beginning and possibly into the summer of 2012, the 
situation in Benghazi may have represented one that called out 
for State Department security experts or the Intelligence 
Community to speak up. But by August 17, 2012, it had become a 
situation that now demanded leadership by the Secretary of 
State herself--leadership that did not sit back and wait for a 
recommendation.
    Just as she had shown--in the words of Jacob Sullivan--
``leadership/ownership/stewardship'' on the decision to go into 
Libya, it was now time for her to show that same leadership and 
upgrade the facility or get our people out--even if it meant 
criticism from those who opposed the intervention in the first 
place. She had the last, clear chance to order an immediate 
closure of the Benghazi facility yet did nothing, and four 
Americans died.
    During her testimony before the Committee, Secretary 
Clinton almost scolded the Republican members:

        You know, I would imagine I've thought more about what 
        happened than all of you put together. I've lost more 
        sleep than all of you put together. I have been racking 
        my brain about what more could have been done or should 
        have been done.\106\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \106\Transcript of Hearing 4 before the Select Committee on the 
Events Surrounding the 2012 Terrorist Attack in Benghazi (hereafter 
referred to as ``the Committee''), 114th Cong. (2015) (testimony of 
Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sec'y of State).

    For one that had spent so much time thinking about what 
happened, it seems that the answer should have been obvious.

            III. Military Response: Could we have done more?

         I just say, do it. Take the hill. They take the hill.

                                                     Leon Panetta  
                                        Secretary of Defense\107\  
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \107\Transcript of Interview of Leon Panetta, Sec'y of Defense at 
57 (Jan. 8, 2016).

    The U.S. military never reached Benghazi. Not only did it 
not get to Benghazi, it did not get to Libya during the 7-plus 
hours of the ongoing attack. The only support unit that did 
arrive in Tripoli--the Marine ``Fleet Anti-Terrorism Support 
Team'' or ``FAST'' team--was anything but fast, and arrived in 
Libya nearly 24 hours after the attack had begun and 16-plus 
hours after the attack ended. In fact, it did not take off 
until almost 12 hours after the attack ended. Why? Although a 
Department of Defense drone circled overhead in Benghazi during 
much of the attack, the military never sent an armed drone that 
could possibly have changed the course of events during the 
hours-long siege, especially as terrorists pounded the Annex 
with mortar fire. An armed drone never came. Why?
    Like many Americans, the picture we saw of what happened in 
Benghazi clashed with our experience and expectations. The 
brave men and women who serve this country are the greatest 
fighting force on earth with a capability second to none. We as 
Americans have grown to expect these men and women to do the 
near impossible. And time and again they not only meet our 
expectations, they surpass them. In fact, we saw examples of 
exactly that heroism on the ground in Benghazi that night.
    Our brave soldiers were ready, willing, and able to fight 
for their fellow countrymen but leaders in Washington held them 
back. If they had been given the chance they would have, we 
have no doubt, as Secretary Panetta said, ``taken that hill.''
    In his testimony before the Committee, Secretary of Defense 
Panetta said that at about 6:00 p.m. on September 11th after 
meeting with the President, he ordered three assets to deploy: 
one Marine Fleet Anti-Terrorism Support Team or ``FAST'' team, 
one Commanders In Extremis Force or ``CIF,'' and one hostage 
rescue team based in the United States. He was clear: ``My 
orders were to deploy those forces, period.''\108\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \108\Transcript of Interview of Leon Panetta, Sec'y of Defense at 
24 (Jan. 8, 2016).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    After his meeting with the President, which lasted less 
than 30 minutes, Secretary Panetta had no further contact with 
the President that night.\109\ None. It is hard to accept that 
the Commander in Chief and the Secretary of Defense had no 
further contact during the entire unfolding crisis. Possibly 
just as startling is that Secretary Panetta and Secretary 
Clinton did not speak at all\110\ and Secretary Clinton did not 
speak to the President until approximately 10:30 p.m., over six 
hours after the terrorist attack began and approximately five 
hours after a U.S. ambassador went missing.\111\ Secretary 
Clinton spoke to CIA Director David Petraeus at approximately 
5:38 p.m. but not again that night.\112\ The meeting (denoted 
``M'') and calls (denoted ``C''), or lack thereof, between the 
four principals--President Obama, Secretary Clinton, Secretary 
Panetta, and Director Petraeus--looked like this:\113\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \109\Transcript of Interview of Leon Panetta, Sec'y of Defense at 
42 (Jan. 8, 2016).
    \110\Id. at 48.
    \111\See Dep't of State, Watch Log, Operations Center (Sept. 11, 
2012) (on file with the Committee, C05872462).
    \112\Id.
    \113\All times Eastern.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    We cannot help but contrast the picture painted by the 
above with the all hands on deck depicted in the now-famous 
photo of the President, Secretary Clinton, Defense Secretary 
Gates, Director of National Intelligence Clapper, and other 
officials huddled in the Situation Room during the Osama bin 
Laden raid. Benghazi should have merited the same level of 
attention and urgency.
    Until now, the public has been told that the military could 
not have reached Benghazi in time to help--either with jet 
planes, armed drones, or personnel. Had we seen aircraft in the 
air flying toward Benghazi--flying toward the sound of gunfire 
as the military often says--only to be recalled mid-flight 
after hearing that the Americans had left Benghazi safely, we 
may have been willing to accept that explanation. But the 
fighter planes and armed drones never left the ground. And, as 
the chart below shows, the transport planes carrying the FAST, 
CIF, and hostage rescue team did not leave until hours after 
the attack was over.
    The attack began at 9:42 p.m. in Benghazi, 3:42 p.m. in 
Washington. It does not appear that Secretary Panetta heard 
about the attack until sometime after 4:32 p.m. when the 
National Military Command Center was notified and he did not 
discuss the matter with the President until approximately 5:00 
p.m. From 3:42 p.m. until approximately 10:00 a.m. the next 
day--nearly 18 hours--no manned U.S. military plane flew on a 
mission toward Libya. When the first plane did take off with a 
Marine FAST platoon it did not take off until hours after the 
attack ended and flew to an intermediate country. The timeline 
of significant events compared to when the military assets took 
off and arrived included the following:\114\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \114\All times shown are Eastern time, which is 6 hours behind 
local time in Benghazi.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

    We are now convinced, contrary to the administration's 
public claim that the military did not have time to get to 
Benghazi, that the administration never launched men or 
machines to help directly in the fight. That is very different 
from what we have been told to date. And the evidence is 
compelling.
    For example, FAST platoons, as of September 2012, were 
typically used to reinforce embassy security and operated from 
a fixed location within an embassy. FAST platoons did not 
deploy with their own vehicles, so they were dependent on other 
means for ground mobility. In other words, the FAST team was 
not sent to help in the fight at the CIA Annex. The question 
then became what was sent. And the answer appears to be 
nothing. None of the three assets that Secretary Panetta 
ordered to deploy were intended to join the fight against 
terrorists at the Annex.
    An asset that could have made a difference would have been 
armed drones. And as the Committee learned, it would have been 
relatively fast and easy to arm a drone. To date, however, the 
Committee has not received a detailed inventory of all armed 
drone assets available that night from the Department of 
Defense. While we understand that because of time and distance 
armed drones may not have arrived in time that does not alter 
the fact that we did not try.
    The military has failed to provide a clear, specific 
inventory of every armed aircraft--whether manned or unmanned--
that could have flown to Benghazi during the 7-plus hours from 
the beginning of the attack to the mortar rounds hitting the 
CIA Annex. Instead, the military has insisted that the 
Committee simply accept the word of senior military officers, 
some without firsthand knowledge of the events, as an adequate 
substitute for actual eye witnesses.
    One of the clearest examples of the Department of Defense's 
attempt to impede the investigation involved one of its 
legislative affairs officers, Stephen C. Hedger. Mr. Hedger, 
appearing to work hand-in-hand with the minority members, wrote 
a stinging letter to the Committee attacking it on multiple 
fronts--attacks that quickly found their way into a Democrat 
press release. The letter even went so far as to imply that the 
Committee's investigative requests had somehow impaired our 
national defense.
    The most troubling aspect of the letter was the criticism 
that the Committee had asked for witnesses that ``seem 
unnecessary even for a comprehensive investigation[.]'' While 
it is rare for the subject of an investigation to decide which 
witnesses are relevant, the Department of Defense felt 
otherwise. One of the supposedly ``unnecessary'' witnesses was 
known to the Committee only as ``John from Iowa''--the 
pseudonym he used when he called into a talk show to discuss 
the attack. He had operated the video and other sensors on a 
Predator drone that circled over Benghazi the night of the 
attack. Given his bird's eye view, the Committee believed he 
could provide valuable insight into what the Department of 
Defense knew and therefore could have, and possibly should 
have, done to help that night.
    Mr. Hedger responded to the request with what bordered on 
sarcasm--describing the Committee's request as one ``to 
interview an individual identified as `John from Iowa' who 
described himself as a Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) camera 
operator on a talk radio show, where he described what he 
allegedly saw in the video feed from the night of the attack.'' 
In short, Mr. Hedger made the request sound like the Committee 
was chasing crackpots. To drive the point home he then added, 
``The Department has expended significant resources to locate 
anyone who might match the description of this person, to no 
avail.''\115\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \115\Letter from Stephen C. Hedger, Dep't of Defense, Office of 
Legislative Affairs to the Hon. Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Sel. Comm. on 
the Events Surrounding the 2012 Terrorist Attack in Benghazi (Apr. 28, 
2016) (emphasis added) (on file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    As it turns out, Mr. Hedger's claim was completely false 
according to information provided by the witness himself, who 
the Department of Defense eventually produced. Mr. Hedger's 
false and misleading claim, was one of the more troubling 
examples of the Department of Defense's failure to cooperate 
fully, although not the only one.
    What has also emerged is a picture of the State Department 
eating up valuable time by insisting that certain elements of 
the U.S. military respond to Libya in civilian clothes and that 
it not use vehicles with United States markings. Both 
restrictions appear to have been concessions to the Libyan 
government that did not want an identifiable U.S. military 
presence on the streets of Libya. We will never know exactly 
how long these conditions delayed the military response but 
that they were even a part of the discussion is troubling.
    And at the same time the State Department appeared to waste 
time on what our soldiers would wear, it also appeared to waste 
time and focus on the YouTube video that the administration 
would later blame, falsely, for the attack. It has emerged that 
during an emergency call at 7:30 p.m. on the night of the 
attack involving Secretary Clinton and other high-level 
officials from the Department of Defense, State Department, and 
CIA that a full five of the eleven action items from the 
meeting related to the video.\116\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \116\See E-mail from State Dep't Operations to various (Sept. 11, 
2012) (on file with the Committee, C05562037).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    One such item had Secretary Panetta calling Pastor Terry 
Jones to ask him to take down the video. At this critical 
moment, with lives at risk in Benghazi and military assets 
sitting idle, it is difficult to imagine a worse use of the 
Defense Secretary's time than to call Pastor Jones about a 
video having nothing to do with the attack. Rather than 
diverting the Secretary of Defense's attention, every effort 
should have been made to marshal assets that could have gone to 
Benghazi.
    We cannot say whether the military could have saved lives 
in Benghazi. We can say with certainty that our nation's 
leaders did not move heaven and earth to send military help 
with the urgency that those Americans deserved. We will never 
know if a more vigorous, comprehensive, and urgent response 
could have saved lives.

                           IV. Justice Denied

        We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice 
        is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, 
        justice will be done.

                                                     Barack Obama  
                              President of the United States\117\  
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \117\President Barack Obama, Remarks by the President on the Deaths 
of U.S. Embassy Staff in Libya (Sept. 12, 2012), https://
www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/09/12/remarks-president-
deaths-us-embassy-staff-libya.

    The President made this promise the day after the attack. 
Secretary Clinton did much the same. In January 2015, White 
House Counsel W. Neil Eggleston said something very similar in 
a letter to the Committee where he claimed ``[t]he 
Administration's focus since the attacks has been . . . an 
unwavering commitment to bring to justice those responsible for 
harming Americans[.]''\118\ The words of the President and his 
lawyer were resolute and they were strong. But in the end they 
were just that, words.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \118\Letter from W. Neil Eggleston to Hon. Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. 
Sel. Comm. on the Events Surrounding the 2012 Terrorist Attack in 
Benghazi (Jan. 23, 2015) (on file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Almost four years have passed since four Americans were 
killed by radical Islamic terrorists in Benghazi. As of the 
writing of this report, only one man--Ahmed Abu Khatallah--has 
been indicted and brought to the United States to face 
charges.\119\ To the Committee's knowledge, no others have been 
taken into U.S. custody, let alone arrested and prosecuted. 
Secretary Clinton said, almost two years after the murders, 
``there's a lot we don't know about what happened in 
Benghazi.'' That may be true, but the United States does know 
the identity of many of the attackers. Yet, the resources 
devoted to bring them to justice have proven inadequate.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \119\It is worth noting that Abu Khatallah's capture demonstrated 
the capacity of the United States to execute a complex mission in a 
hostile place to bring a terrorist to justice. It is equally certain 
that the Obama administration's decision to treat Abu Khatallah and 
other terrorists as ordinary criminals--affording them the full panoply 
of legal protections available under U.S. law--has made it harder to 
capture Abu Khatallah's co-conspirators. That is because the decision 
denies our Intelligence Community the time and tools necessary to 
develop facts that might help to apprehend the others responsible. That 
may, in turn, explain, why dozens and dozens of Abu Khatallah's co-
conspirators remain at large.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    President Obama also claimed that Khattallah ``will now 
face the full weight of the American justice system.'' To us, 
that means facing the full measure of punishment for killing 
four Americans. Yet, the administration has chosen--for reasons 
it refused to provide Congress--not to seek the death penalty 
in this case.
    And so as we near the fourth anniversary of the attack, the 
American people, at a minimum, are owed an explanation for the 
administration's failure to bring more of those responsible to 
justice.

                     V. Notes on the Investigation

    For the past two years the Committee pressed for full and 
complete answers to the important questions left in Benghazi's 
wake. The American people--and especially the families of the 
victims and those injured--deserved nothing less.
    We approached the investigation believing facts were 
nonpartisan. We knew some hoped the investigation would expose 
Secretary Clinton and President Obama for serious wrongdoing. 
Still others hoped, and in fact decided, that the investigation 
would find nothing--and they did their best to tarnish the 
Committee's reputation in case something damaging did emerge. 
But we suspected the vast majority of Americans simply wanted 
the truth, whatever it may look like, to come out in full.
    We had hoped that Democrats on the Committee would join 
this effort as full partners and that the administration would 
cooperate with our work. That Republicans and Democrats would 
feel the weight of history, and the loss of four fellow 
Americans, and set aside partisan differences in favor of a 
joint search for the truth. If that had happened, it would not 
have been without precedent as we saw during the 9/11 
Commission investigation. Yet, Minority Leader Pelosi set the 
tone early, even before the first witness was sworn in, and 
made clear that a truly bipartisan effort would never happen:

        Our nation deserves better than yet another deeply 
        partisan and political review. It is disappointing that 
        Republicans blocked a proposal offered by Democrats on 
        the House floor today to ensure that this committee is 
        truly bipartisan and fair--a proposal that would have 
        allowed Democrats a real and equal voice on the 
        committee, including on the issuance of subpoenas, the 
        manner in which witnesses would be questioned and 
        deposed, and the specific protocols governing how 
        documents and other information would be obtained, 
        used, and potentially released by the committee.

        It is clear that House Republicans will do anything to 
        divert attention away from their failed leadership and 
        do-nothing record. As they work to feed the most 
        conspiracy-obsessed elements of their base, millions of 
        Americans are languishing thanks to Republicans' 
        refusal to act on the urgent business before our 
        nation: renewing emergency unemployment insurance, 
        raising the minimum wage, and creating jobs.\120\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \120\Nancy Pelosi, House Democratic Leader, Pelosi Statement on 
House Vote on Select Committee on Benghazi (May 8, 2014), http://
www.democraticleader.gov/newsroom/pelosi-statement-house-vote-select-
committee-benghazi/.

    It bears mentioning that the Democrats on the Committee 
could have asked for witnesses or documents but in the end 
asked for one witness and a handful of documents. In other 
words, we offered them the ``real and equal voice on the 
committee'' that Minority Leader Pelosi demanded, but they fell 
silent when it came time to do the work.
    The Democrats on the Committee did not, however, fall 
completely silent. When they were not attacking the 
Republicans, they paid lip service to the notion of a 
bipartisan investigation. Ranking Member Cummings called for 
just that type of investigation during the first hearing, 
invoking the same slogan that Minority Leader Pelosi used and, 
of course, that President Obama had used before her: ``Too 
often over the past two years, the congressional investigation 
into what happened in Benghazi has devolved into unseemly 
partisanship. We are better than that.'' In fact, we are 
better. But in the end they were just words.
    The Democrats on the committee, showed little interest in 
seeking the truth and routinely turned the investigation into 
political theater. We had hoped for more from members that 
included two former criminal prosecutors. Instead, the 
Democrats and their staff spent the bulk of their time trying 
to discredit the Republican-led committee and leveling baseless 
personal attacks. The attacks were often ugly, always without 
merit, and unfailingly partisan and did nothing to advance the 
cause of finding the full and complete truth about Benghazi.

                             VI. Conclusion

    In the end, the administration's efforts to impede the 
investigation succeeded, but only in part. The minority 
members' and their staff's efforts to impede the investigation 
succeeded also, but again only in part. And although we 
answered many questions, we could not do so completely. What we 
did find was a tragic failure of leadership--in the run up to 
the attack and the night of--and an administration that, so 
blinded by politics and its desire to win an election, 
disregarded a basic duty of government: Tell the people the 
truth. And for those reasons Benghazi is, and always will be, 
an American tragedy.

                                   Mr. Jordan.
                                   Mr. Pompeo.

                              APPENDIX A:

                      Resolution Establishing the

                     Select Committee on the Events

                          Surrounding the 2012

                      Terrorist Attack in Benghazi
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]


                              APPENDIX B:

                 Significant Persons and Organizations

                                Persons

Abedin, Huma--Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations for the 
    Secretary of State, Department of State

Bargathi, Abdul Salam--Leader of the Preventative Security 
    Brigade, childhood friend of Abu Khattala

Bash, Jeremy--Chief of Staff to the Secretary of Defense, 
    Department of Defense

Blumenthal, Sidney--Friend and Confidant of Secretary Hillary 
    R. Clinton

Boswell, Eric--Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic 
    Security/Director of the Office of Foreign Missions, 
    Department of State

Breedlove, Philip M.--General, United States Air Force; 
    Commander of the U.S. Air Forces Europe/U.S. Air Forces 
    Africa, Department of Defense

Brennan, John Owen--Deputy National Security Advisor for 
    Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, and Assistant to 
    the President, White House

Bukatef, Fawzi--Leader of the February 17 Martyrs Brigade, the 
    group that housed a Quick Reaction Force (QRF) at the 
    Benghazi Mission compound

Bultrowicz, Scott--Director, Diplomatic Security Service and 
    Principal Deputy Secretary of State, Bureau of Diplomatic 
    Security, Department of State

Burns, William--Deputy Secretary of State, Department of State

Carney, Jay--Press Secretary, White House

Chorin, Ethan--Author and Chief Executive Officer, Perim 
    Associates

Clapper, James R.--Lieutenant General, Director, Office of 
    National Intelligence

Clinton, Hillary R.--Secretary of State (January 2009 until 
    February 2013), Department of State

Cretz, Gene Allan--Ambassador to Libya (December 2008 until May 
    2012), Department of State

Dempsey, Martin E.--General, United States Army; Chairman of 
    the Joint Chiefs of Staff (October 2011 until September 
    2015), Department of Defense

Dibble, Elizabeth--Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau 
    of Near Eastern Affairs, Department of State

DiCarlo, Rosemary--Deputy Permanent Representative (to Susan 
    Rice), then the Permanent Representative to the U.S. 
    Mission to the United Nations, Department of State

Doherty, Glen Anthony--Contractor, Global Response Staff (GRS), 
    Central Intelligence Agency

Donilon, Thomas E.--National Security Advisor to the President, 
    White House

Duval, Catherine--Senior Advisor, Bureau of Legislative 
    Affairs, Department of State

Evers, Austin--Advisor, Bureau of Legislative Affairs, 
    Department of State

Feltman, Jeffrey--Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern 
    Affairs (until May 2012), Department of State

Fishman, Benjamin--Member of the National Security Council, 
    White House

Flynn, Michael--Lieutenant General, United States Army; 
    Director, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Department of 
    Defense

Frifield, Julia--Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative 
    Affairs, Department of State

Gharabi, Mohammad--Leader of the Rafallah al-Sahati Brigade

Gibbons, Thomas B.--Acting Assistant Secretary of Legislative 
    Affairs, Department of State

Gordon, Philip--Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian 
    Affairs Department of State

Ham, Carter--General, United States Army; Commander of U.S. 
    Africa Command, Department of Defense

Hamid, Wissam bin--Commander, Libya Shield Brigade

Hicks, Gregory--Deputy Chief of Mission, Libya, Department of 
    State

Jones, Elizabeth--Acting Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau 
    of Near Eastern Affairs, Department of State

Kelly, John--General, United States Army; Senior Military 
    Assistant to the Secretary of Defense, Department of 
    Defense

Kelly, Thomas--Assistant Secretary for Political-Military 
    Affairs, Department of State

Kennedy, Patrick F.--Under Secretary for Management, Department 
    of State

Kerry, John--Secretary of State (February 2013 to present), 
    Department of State

Khattala, Ahmed Abu--Founded Obeida Ibn al-Jarra Militia, in 
    U.S. custody for his suspected involvement in the Benghazi 
    attacks

Koh, Harold--Legal Advisor, Department of State

Lamb, Charlene--Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for 
    International Programs, Bureau of Diplomatic Security, 
    Department of State

Landolt, Richard B.--Rear Admiral, United States Navy; Director 
    of Operations and Cyber, U.S. Africa Command, Department of 
    Defense

Leidig, Jr., Charles J.--Vice Admiral, United States Navy; 
    Deputy to the Commander for Military Operations, U.S. 
    Africa Command, Department of Defense

Litt, Robert S.--General Counsel, Office of the Director of 
    National Intelligence

Lohman, Lee--Executive Director, Bureau of Near Eastern 
    Affairs/Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, 
    Department of State

Losey, Brian--Rear Admiral, United States Navy; Commander of 
    Special Operations Command (SOC) Africa, Department of 
    Defense

Macmanus, Joseph--Executive Assistant to the Secretary of 
    State, Office of the Secretary, Department of State (from 
    May 2012 until November 2012)

Magariaf, Mohamad Yousef--President, General National Congress 
    of Libya

Maxwell, Raymond--Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for 
    Maghreb Affairs, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, Department 
    of State

McDonough, Denis--Deputy National Security Advisor, White House

Meehan, Bernadette--Assistant Press Secretary for the National 
    Security Council, White House

Mills, Cheryl D.--Chief of Staff and Counselor to the Secretary 
    of State, Department of State

Mordente, Patrick--General, United States Air Force; Director 
    of Operations (J3) for the U.S. Transportation Command 
    (TRANSCOM), Department of Defense

Morell, Michael--Deputy Director, Central Intelligence Agency

Mull, Stephen--Executive Secretariat, Office of the Secretary 
    of State, Department of State

Mullen, Michael--Admiral, United States Navy; Chairman of the 
    Joint Chiefs of Staff/Vice Chairman, Benghazi 
    Accountability Review Board

Nides, Thomas--Deputy Secretary of State for Management and 
    Resources, Department of State

Nuland, Victoria J.--Spokesperson, Department of State

Obeidi, Fathi--Lieutenant commander in a branch of Libyan 
    Shield/Commander of Special Operations for Libya Shield

Olsen, Matthew--Director of the National Counterterrorism 
    Center, Office of the Director of National Intelligence

Pagliano, Bryan--Special Advisor, Bureau of Information 
    Resource Management, Department of State

Panetta, Leon--Secretary of Defense (July 2011 until February 
    2013), Department of Defense

Pelton, Erin--Communications Director and Spokesperson for 
    Ambassador Susan Rice, Department of State

Petraeus, David--Director, Central Intelligence Agency

Pickering, Thomas R.--Chairman, Benghazi Accountability Review 
    Board

Polaschik, Joan--Deputy Chief of Mission for Tripoli, Libya 
    (2009 until June 2012), Department of State

Reines, Philippe--Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public 
    Affairs, Department of State

Repass, Michael S.--Major General, United States Army; 
    Commander, Special Operations Command (SOC) Europe, 
    Department of Defense

Rhodes, Benjamin--Assistant to the President and Deputy 
    National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and 
    Speechwriting, White House

Rice, Susan E.--U.S. Permanent Representative to the United 
    Nations, Department of State

Roebuck, William--Director, Office of Maghreb Affairs, Bureau 
    of Near Eastern Affairs, Department of State

Ryu, Rexon--Deputy to the U.S. Ambassador to the United 
    Nations, Department of State

Sanderson, Janet--Deputy Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern 
    Affairs, Department of State

Shapiro, Andrew--Assistant Secretary of State for Political-
    Military Affairs, Department of State

Sherman, Wendy--Under Secretary for Political Affairs, 
    Department of State

Smith, Gentry--Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for 
    Countermeasures, Bureau of Diplomatic Security, Department 
    of State

Smith, Sean--Information Management Officer, Department of 
    State

Starr, Gregory--Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic 
    Security (November 2013 to present), Department of State

Steinberg, James--Deputy Secretary of State, Department of 
    State

Stevens, John Christopher--U.S. Representative to the Libyan 
    Transitional National Council/Ambassador to Libya (May 2012 
    until September 2012), Department of State

Sullivan, Jacob J.--Deputy Chief of Staff and Director of 
    Policy Planning, Department of State

Taylor, William--Special Coordinator for Middle Eastern 
    Transitions, Department of State

Thompson, Mark--Deputy Coordinator, Operations Directorate, 
    Bureau of Counterterrorism, Department of State

Tidd, Kurt--Vice Admiral, United States Navy; Director of 
    Operations (J3) for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Department 
    of Defense

Ventrell, Patrick--Acting Deputy Spokesperson, Department of 
    State

Winnefeld, Jr., James--Admiral, United States Navy; Vice 
    Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Department of 
    Defense

Woods, Tyrone Snowden--Contractor, Global Response Staff (GRS), 
    Central Intelligence Agency

Zeya, Uzra--Chief of Staff to Deputy Secretary Burns, 
    Department of State/ Executive Secretary, Benghazi 
    Accountability Review Board

                                Entities

al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)-al-Qa'ida affiliate

al-Qa'ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)-al-Qa'ida affiliate

Ansar al-Sharia-Benghazi (AAS-B)--Previously led by the now-
    deceased Mohammed Ali al-Zahawi, now officially designated 
    as a foreign terror organization

Ansar al-Sharia-Darnah (AAS-D)--Darnah branch of AAS headed by 
    former Guantanamo detainee Abu Sufyan bin Qumo

Blue Mountain Group (BMG)--British company providing unarmed 
    guards used for static security at the Mission

Blue Mountain Libya--Libyan Partner of BMG, signed joint 
    venture with BMG

February 17 Martyrs Brigade--The purported largest militia 
    group in Benghazi, headed by Fawzi Bukatef. The group 
    supplied a four man team of local militiamen to serve as 
    the Quick Reaction Force (QRF) at the Benghazi Mission

Libyan Air Force--The entity that provided the C-130 that 
    evacuated the second set of Americans from Benghazi (this 
    included the uninjured CIA Protective officer, one DS 
    agent, and the remains of the four deceased)

Libya Shield--An umbrella organization of militias to support 
    Libyan Army initiatives throughout the country, the 
    separate Libya Shields were not always cohesive and not all 
    worked in the best interests of the Libyan Army and Libyan 
    government writ-large

Libyan Military Intelligence--The group that helped Americans 
    evacuate from the Annex to the Benghazi airport after the 
    mortar attacks early on September 12th

Mohammad Jamal Network--Group leadership historically 
    affiliated with al-Qa'ida Senior Leader Dr. Ayman al-
    Zawahiri; other affiliations to AQIM and AQAP

Obeida Ibn al-Jarra Militia--Islamist militia led by Ahmed Abu 
    Khattala, a breakaway faction from Ansar al-Sharia-Benghazi 
    (AAS-B)

Rafallah al-Sahati Brigade--A small militia that also operated 
    under the Libya Shield umbrella; at the time of the 
    attacks, the militia was in possession of kidnapped Iranian 
    hostages

Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman Brigades--Islamist militia based in 
    Benghazi, Libya

Supreme Security Council--A quasi-government organization 
    involved in security and policing matters in Benghazi, now 
    defunct

                              APPENDIX C:

                      Questions for the President

June 7, 2016
W. Neil Eggleston
Counsel to the President
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Neil:

Shortly after the formation of the Select Committee on the 
Events Surrounding the 2012 Terrorist Attack in Benghazi, 
Libya, you and I spoke on the phone. During that conversation I 
informed you the Committee would not compel an interview with 
the President and the Committee was familiar with and would 
respect the Executive Privilege attached to certain 
communications with the President. I also told you the 
Committee would send written questions to the President at the 
culmination of our investigation. I assured you these questions 
would not be publicized at the time they were sent and 
furthermore the questions would be limited to information that 
could not be obtained from other sources.

At our meeting in Charlotte, N.C. in January of 2016, I further 
offered to show you the questions in advance and provide the 
underlying testimony that gave rise to the question. In other 
words, each of these questions has an evidentiary basis rooted 
in either documents or other testimony, and I was willing to 
show you the questions and the foundation for the questions.

While I would have been pleased to meet with you again, the 
reality is we would have gone over the same ground previously 
visited. The Executive Branch would, perhaps, argue sending 
questions to the President is ``unprecedented'' and would 
create a ``constitutional crisis.'' The Legislative Branch 
would argue several prior Committee Chairmen sent an extensive 
set of questions to the President regarding Benghazi, the 
President has answered media inquiries about Benghazi without a 
``constitutional crisis,'' and the President is uniquely 
situated to answer these questions. In fact, he is the only 
person who can answer some of these questions.

As such, below are fifteen questions for the President 
regarding the Benghazi attacks. Thank you in advance for a 
reply to these questions no later than June 17, 2016.

Sincerely,
/s/

Trey Gowdy
Chairman

Begin attachment

Questions for the President

 1. LThe White House issued a readout of your meeting with 
senior administration officials on September 10, 2012, 
indicating ``specific measures'' had been taken to ``prevent 9/
11 related attacks.'' What were these specific measures, and 
how did these specific measures differ from specific measures 
taken on prior anniversaries of September 11?

 2. LWhen did you first learn a U.S. facility in Benghazi, 
Libya, had been attacked? What were you told, and by whom? Were 
you informed Sean Smith had been killed during the initial 
attack?

 3. LWhat orders or direction, if any, did you give to 
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta upon learning of the initial 
attack? Did you or anyone at your direction ever modify, 
withdraw, alter, or amplify the initial orders or direction you 
gave to Secretary Panetta?

 4. LWhat were you told about Department of Defense assets in 
the region that could respond specifically to Benghazi? Did you 
ask for or receive a list of military or paramilitary assets in 
the region that could respond to Benghazi during the pendency 
of the attacks?

 5. LWere you subsequently kept informed about the initial 
attack, subsequent attacks, and/or efforts to either send 
military assistance or evacuate U.S. personnel? By whom?

 6. LWhen did you learn Ambassador Christopher Stevens was 
missing, and who informed you? Were you kept informed on 
efforts to locate Ambassador Stevens, and if so, by whom? When 
did you learn Ambassador Stevens was dead, and who informed 
you?

 7. L[Classified]

 8. LWere you aware that prior to any military asset moving to 
respond to the attacks the State Department expressed concerns 
to the White House about the number of military assets going 
into Libya?

 9. LWhen did you learn of a mortar attack that killed Tyrone 
Woods and Glen Doherty? Who informed you?

10. LWere you aware of any efforts by White House and 
Department of Defense officials during the evening of September 
11, 2012, and into the early morning hours of September 12, 
2012, to reach out to YouTube and Terry Jones regarding an 
anti-Muslim video? What specifically connected the attacks in 
Benghazi to this anti-Muslim [sic] video, and why weren't these 
efforts made after the protests in Cairo, Egypt?

11. LWhen did you learn individuals associated with terrorist 
organizations participated in the attack on the U.S. facilities 
in Benghazi, Libya?

12. LDid you receive the President's Daily Brief (PDB) on 
September 12, 2012 and September 13, 2012? If so, who provided 
you with the PDB?

13. LHave you ever viewed surveillance footage from the cameras 
(or other sources) located at the U.S. facilities in Benghazi 
depicting the attacks? Will you declassify this footage so the 
American people can see for themselves what transpired?

14. LDid you authorize a covert action or covert operation to 
provide lethal assistance to Libyan rebels?

15. L[Classified]

                              APPENDIX D:

                      Significant Events in Libya 
                          Prior to the Attacks

February 22, 2011--Embassy Tripoli is evacuated because of 
    emerging civil war.

On or around March 11, 2011--Decision made to send a 
    representative to Benghazi to liaise with the emerging 
    transitional national council [TNC]. Hillary R. Clinton, 
    Secretary of State, asks J. Christopher Stevens to serve as 
    Representative to the TNC.

April 5, 2011--Stevens enters Benghazi and stays at the Tibesti 
    Hotel.

April 10, 2011--Stevens and team contemplate leaving Benghazi 
    because of security concerns.

June 10, 2011--Stevens and team leave Tibesti Hotel and stay 
    temporarily with other U.S. government personnel in 
    Benghazi.

June 21, 2011--Stevens and team relocate to an interim facility 
    later known as Villa A.

July 15, 2011--U.S. recognizes the TNC as the ``Legitimate 
    Representative of the Libyan People.''

August 3, 2011--Stevens and team sign leases for Villas A, B, 
    and C.

August 21, 2011--Tripoli falls.

August 22, 2011--The Secretary takes credit for events in 
    Tripoli.

August 30, 2011--The Secretary's staff want team in Tripoli as 
    soon as possible.

September 22, 2011--The U.S. Embassy in Tripoli reopens and 
    Gene A.Cretz resumes position as U.S. Ambassador to Libya.

October 18, 2011--The Secretary travels to Tripoli but not 
    Benghazi.

October 20, 2011--Muammar Qadhafi executed.

October 23, 2011--Libya officially liberated.

On or around November 20, 2011--Stevens leaves Benghazi.

November 21, 2011--First principal officer arrives in Benghazi 
    to replace Stevens.

December 27, 2011--Extension Memorandum drafted by the Bureau 
    of Near East Affairs sent to Patrick F. Kennedy, Under 
    Secretary for Management, State Department, outlining 
    continued operations in Benghazi. The memorandum was 
    approved on January 5, 2012.

December 2011--Diplomatic Security agent staffing concerns in 
    Benghazi.

February 2012--Life Services contract cancelled in Benghazi.

February 2012--Local Guard Force service contract awarded to 
    Blue Mountain Group.

March 28, 2012--U.S. Embassy in Tripoli requests additional 
    staff including five Diplomatic Security agents for 
    Benghazi Mission compound.

April 2, 2012--Attack on United Kingdom [UK] armored vehicle.

April 6, 2012--First improvised explosive device [IED] attack 
    on the Benghazi Mission compound.

April 10, 2012--IED attack on the motorcade of the United 
    Nations Special Envoy.

April 19, 2012--Washington, D.C., denies request for five 
    Diplomatic Security agents to be assigned to Benghazi 
    Mission compound.

May 14, 2012--Stevens sworn in as Ambassador to Libya.

May 22, 2012--Rocket propelled grenade [RPG] attack on 
    International Committee of the Red Cross

May 26, 2012--Stevens returns to Libya.

May 28, 2012--Threat to Benghazi Mission compound posted on 
    Facebook.

June 2012--Blue Mountain Group issues with Libyan partner.

June 5, 2012--Stevens requests State Department mobile security 
    deployment [MSD] team remain in Tripoli.

June 6, 2012--Stevens requests MSD team.

June 6, 2012--Second IED attack on the Benghazi Mission 
    compound.

June 11, 2012--RPG attack on UK Ambassador motorcade

June 14, 2012--Emergency Action Committee [EAC] held in 
    Benghazi.

June 15, 2012--U.S. Embassy in Tripoli again requests five 
    Diplomatic Security agents for Benghazi Mission compound. 
    Washington, D.C., never responds.

July 7, 2012--First national democratic elections held in 
    Libya.

July 9, 2012--U.S. Embassy in Tripoli requests to either 
    maintain or replace departing U.S. security personnel with 
    high threat trained Diplomatic Security agents. The Embassy 
    tells Washington, D.C., if you send three agents to the 
    Benghazi Mission compound the Embassy will also send a 
    regional security office. Washington, D.C., never responds 
    to the request.

August 5, 2012--International Committee of the Red Cross 
    attacked for fifth time shutting down Red Cross operations 
    in both Benghazi and Misrata, Libya.

August 15, 2012--Benghazi holds EAC on deteriorating security 
    situation and requests ability to collocate with other U.S. 
    government personnel.

August 27, 2012--U.S. issues travel alert for Libya.

August 29, 2012--State of Maximum Alert issued for Benghazi. 
    Alert suspended on September 2.

August 30, 2012--Both the Principal Officer and Diplomatic 
    Security agent in charge depart Benghazi. There is a gap in 
    coverage by the Principal Officer until September 15, 2012. 
    Also, no Diplomatic Security agents volunteered to secure 
    the compound during fall 2012. The Benghazi Mission 
    compound was down to two Diplomatic Security agents. An 
    agent is rerouted from the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli to the 
    Benghazi Mission compound bringing the number to 3.

August 30, 2012--U.S. Embassy in Tripoli sends one Diplomatic 
    Security agent to ensure three agents are assigned to the 
    Benghazi Mission compound.

On or around August 30, 2012--Stevens sends Political/Economic 
    Officer, U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, State Department, to 
    Benghazi Mission compound to cover reporting the first week 
    in September. Stevens himself will cover duties beginning 
    on September 10, 2012.

September 6, 2012--Benghazi Mission compound requests presence 
    of Supreme Security Council police from September 10-15.

September 8, 2012--February 17 Martyrs Brigade tells Diplomatic 
    Security agents it will no longer support off-compound 
    moves.

September 8, 2012--Principal Officer holds meeting with local 
    militia and is told they cannot guarantee the safety of the 
    Benghazi Mission compound.

September 10, 2011--Stevens arrives with two Diplomatic 
    Security agents.

September 11, 2012--The attacks begin.

                              APPENDIX E:

                      Security Incidents In Libya

    From the outset, the security environment in Benghazi was 
precarious. Stevens' mission to Benghazi began in the midst of 
a civil war--with Benghazi serving as the home to the 
opposition and rebel forces. Notwithstanding the civil war's 
end in August 2011 with the fall of Tripoli and later Libya's 
liberation on October 23, 2011, the security environment in 
Libya, including Benghazi, remained tenuous. At the time the 
Benghazi mission was extended in December 2011, the State 
Department's own threat rating system considered Libya to be a 
grave risk to American diplomats. The security environment only 
deteriorated from there. The Diplomatic Security agents on the 
ground tracked the security incidents in Libya between 2011 and 
2012. Documents prepared by the agents tracking security 
incidents are included below.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]


                              APPENDIX F:

                       Deterioration of Mission 
                           Compound Security

                                Overview

    The decision by State Department senior officials to leave 
the Benghazi Mission in an undefined status left it without 
typical security measures and a dedicated funding stream that 
would otherwise apply to official overseas posts. Benghazi's 
security posture was further eroded by other factors such as 
constant equipment failures and insufficient quantities of 
personal protection equipment. Furthermore, notwithstanding the 
insufficient number of Diplomatic Security Agents sent to 
Benghazi, intervening factors such as problems with the Libyan 
visa system further limited the number of Diplomatic Security 
Agents deployed to Benghazi.

                             Funding Issues

    The Benghazi Mission's requests for even the most basic 
security measures were impacted by the lack of dedicated 
funding made available by the State Department. Senior 
officials within the State Department were well aware of the 
funding implications associated with continuing the Benghazi 
Mission into 2012. Jeffrey D. Feltman, Assistant Secretary of 
State, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, testified:

        What we were trying to . . . figure out was, how could 
        we make a compelling enough argument that in the zero 
        sum game that we have in terms of our budget and our 
        resources, that we could find enough resources to keep 
        Benghazi operating through the critical transition 
        period? [sic]\1\
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    \1\Testimony of Jeffrey D. Feltman, Ass't Sec'y of State, Bureau of 
Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 47 (Aug. 8, 2015) 
[hereinafter Feltman Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

    Patrick F. Kennedy, the Under Secretary of State for 
Management, testified: ``OBO has the funding authority . . . 
for our permanent facilities. . . . It [funding authority for 
temporary facilities] ranges between the regional bureau in 
which the facility is located or the Bureau of Diplomatic 
Security.''\2\ To that end, there was awareness at the senior 
level that the Benghazi Mission's limited duration prevented it 
from receiving any type of dedicated funding for its physical 
security needs from the State Department's Overseas Building 
Office [OBO], the office responsible for funding security 
measures.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\Testimony of Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Sec'y for Management, 
U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 18 (Feb. 3, 2016) [hereinafter Kennedy 
Testimony] (on file with the Committee).
    \3\Summary of group interview with Physical Security Specialist and 
others (on file with the Committee, SCB0046921) (``OBO is precluded 
from funding upgrades to short term leases, so it did not fund upgrades 
in Benghazi.'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The December 27, 2011 Action Memorandum, approved by 
Kennedy, outlining the future operations of the Benghazi 
Mission for another year would have been an appropriate place 
to address the funding limitations within the OBO; and to 
designate a funding source to ensure the Benghazi Mission's 
security needs were met in 2012.\4\ The Action Memorandum's 
failure to address the issue forced nontraditional funding 
sources to be identified, with quick turnaround, in order to 
respond to Benghazi Mission's basic security needs.\5\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \4\Memorandum from Jeffrey D. Feltman, Ass't Sec'y of State, Bureau 
of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to Patrick F. Kennedy, 
Under Sec'y for Management, U.S. Dep't of State (Dec. 27, 2011) (on 
file with the Committee, C05261557).
    \5\Summary of group interview with Physical Security Specialist and 
others (on file with the Committee, SCB0046922) (``nontraditional DS 
funding was identified for Benghazi.''). See also Testimony of 
Diplomatic Security Agent, Diplomatic Security Service, U.S. Dep't of 
State, Tr. at 80 (April 2, 2015) [hereinafter Diplomatic Security Agent 
10 Testimony] (on file with the Committee) (``In terms of funding 
issues for programmatic stuff and security upgrades, . . . you're not 
going to get the money because Pat Kennedy hasn't given you guys any 
money. So there's no money at all that exists for the security budget 
for Benghazi. Every single penny you get we have to take from some 
other operational budget from some other office somewhere.'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Gentry O. Smith, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State 
for Countermeasures, Bureau of Diplomatic Security, testified 
funding was never an issue for physical security.\6\ 
Nevertheless, on January 12, 2012, the physical security desk 
officer was informed ``OBO/SM . . . advised . . . they cannot 
provide the funding'' for the security requests.\7\ As a 
result, the State Department's physical security specialist was 
forced to locate other offices within the Department to find 
the funds the Benghazi Mission needed.\8\ On February 15, 2012, 
the physical security desk officer explained to the Benghazi 
Mission ``how the funding process normally works . . . with 
short term leases in place at Benghazi, OBO/SM cannot get 
involved due to OBO policy . . . funding security upgrades 
would have to be identified from other sources (DS).''\9\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \6\Testimony of Gentry O. Smith, Deputy Ass't Sec'y of State, 
Bureau of Diplomatic Security, Countermeasures, U.S. Dep't of State, 
Tr. at 76 (Feb. 25, 2016) [hereinafter Smith Testimony] (on file with 
the Committee);

      Q: Let me ask you this. As the DAS for Countermeasures, 
      were you concerned about the ability to fund sufficiently 
      the physical security measures needed to secure the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
      facility?

      A: It had not become an issue for me yet at that time, 
      based on, as we spoke of in the first hour, the sources 
      that were providing funds for the operation, particularly 
      from the physical security side. You had Physical Security 
      Programs, you had International Programs, you had OBO, and 
      then you had the regional bureau as well.

      Q: You said it had not been a concern at that time. Did it 
      ever, did funding for physical security upgrades ever 
      become an issue for you or a concern of yours?

      A: No.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \7\Email from Physical Security Specialist, Physical Security 
Programs, Bureau of Diplomatic Security, U.S. Dep't of State (Jan. 12, 
2012 6:29 AM) (on file with the Committee, C05397166).
    \8\Id.
    \9\Email from Physical Security Specialist, Physical Security 
Programs, Bureau of Diplomatic Security, U.S. Dep't of State, to 
Diplomatic Security Agent 24, U.S. Dep't of State, et al. (Feb. 15, 
2012 2:39 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0048394).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Diplomatic Security Agents on the ground described the 
impact the lack of funding had on the Mission.

        I was told that the only way that we can get you 
        security upgrades is if they basically don't cost 
        anything and we can, sort of, you know, steal a couple 
        bucks here and there from other pots of money, that 
        there is no budget for Benghazi.\10\
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    \10\Diplomatic Security Agent 10 Testimony at 27.

        If we had the money at post and if I had the money at 
        post, you know, if I was able to spend the money you 
        know, I'm an official for the U.S. Government. I'm 
        entrusted with a lot as a DS agent. You know, I wanted 
        the ability to go ahead and perform work, pay for that 
        work, and then on the back end be able to tell people, 
        `This is what I spent it for,' and be able to you know, 
        justify it that way, because it just made sense in my 
        mind. Not necessarily I don't know if that's the 
        appropriate way to do it, but for me, that was some of 
        my frustration.\11\
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    \11\Testimony of Diplomatic Security Agent, Diplomatic Security 
Service, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 24 (Apr. 9, 2015) [hereinafter 
Diplomatic Security Agent 12 Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

    Further complicating the funding issue was the fact that 
Benghazi was a cash economy. Diplomatic Security Agents on the 
ground told the Committee ``it was a cash economy at the time, 
so that money had to get to us before we could identify 
contractors and work to be under way.''\12\ Yet, even getting 
the money to Libya was a problem. State Department officials 
indicated: ``[s]ince it [Benghazi] was not a post, it had no 
formal designation in Department systems, and no electronic way 
to get the fund transfers.''\13\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \12\Id. at 21.
    \13\Summary of group interview with Physical Security Specialist 
and others (on file with the Committee, SCB0046921).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                          Technical Equipment

    The security challenges at the Mission compound were not 
limited to the rudimentary security measures that were being 
requested by the Diplomatic Security Agents or the challenges 
with funding the requests. The Benghazi Mission was constantly 
requesting assistance with routine items such as door locks, 
monitors, batteries, radios, and cameras.\14\ More often than 
not the Benghazi Mission sought help fixing constant equipment 
malfunctions.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \14\Email from Principal Officer 3, U.S. Dep't of State, to 
Principal Officer 4, U.S. Dep't of State (Aug. 29, 2012, 6:01 AM) (on 
file with the Committee, C05390852).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The challenges with finding, installing, and fixing the 
equipment were exacerbated by the fact it could not be done 
locally.\15\ The Benghazi Mission was dependent on ``the Cairo 
engineering center . . . [which had] responsibility for US 
Missions in Libya.''\16\ When the U.S. Embassy in Cairo was not 
available, other embassies, such as Frankfurt, ``augment[ed] 
the Cairo team.''\17\ Thus, notwithstanding the logistics of 
getting into Benghazi, the Benghazi Mission was subject to the 
U.S. Embassy in Cairo's schedule as well as that of other 
embassies. For example, in early January 2012, Benghazi Mission 
personnel requested the assistance of the Electrical Security 
Officer [ESO] in Cairo to, among other things, help 
decommission Villa A and install equipment in Villas B and 
C.\18\ The ESO could not travel to Benghazi until February 26, 
2012 to assist with the requests.\19\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \15\Testimony of Diplomatic Security Agent, Diplomatic Security 
Service, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 46 (Mar. 12, 2015) [Hereinafter 
Diplomatic Security Agent 15 Testimony] (on file with the Committee) 
(``I was asking for things that were not just readily available in 
Benghazi. And it wasn't I could go to the drop arm store. There wasn't 
one. So they would have to be locally procured and then put 
together.'').
    \16\Email from Regional Dir. for Security Engineering, Cairo, 
Egypt, U.S. Dep't of State, to Travel Specialist, Cairo, Egypt, U.S. 
Dep't of State, and Security Engineering Officer, U.S. Dep't of State 
(Jun. 11, 2012 12:00 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05392482).
    \17\Id.
    \18\Email from Information Management Officer, U.S. Dep't of State, 
to Diplomatic Security Agent 15 (Jan. 11, 2012, 10:28 AM) (on file with 
the Committee, C05392732).
    \19\Email from Diplomatic Security Agent 15 to Diplomatic Security 
Agent 24 (Jan. 31, 2012 7:32AM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05410045).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Compounding the equipment challenges was the Benghazi 
Mission's constant need for technical assistance throughout 
2012. For example, in early February 2012, the Benghazi Mission 
sought help from the Radio Program Branch in Cairo for new 
radio equipment because ``DS [Diplomatic Security] Washington 
has requested that the majority of radio equipment initially 
brought into Benghazi now must be returned.''\20\ This was 
preceded by a request for, among other things, replacing the 
radio antenna and repeater.\21\ This was followed by a request 
in late February 2012 to help again with radio repeaters. The 
Benghazi Mission wrote:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \20\Email from Information Management Officer, U.S. Dep't of State 
(Feb. 1, 2012 4:08 AM) (on file with the Committee, C05395451).
    \21\See id.

        [T]he government authority in Libya responsible for 
        allocating/assigning radio frequencies has declined our 
        current frequencies in use and has provided us with an 
        ``acceptable'' frequency range for use. As a result, we 
        need to replace the current radio repeaters at site 
        (Benghazi and Tripoli) with repeaters that will 
        accommodate the frequencies that the Libyan government 
        has agreed to let us use.\22\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \22\Email to Deputy Ex. Dir., Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. 
Dep't of State (Feb. 21, 2012 2:09 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05393043).

    In late April 2012, after the first improvised explosive 
device [IED] attack on the perimeter wall at the Mission 
compound, Benghazi had problems with much of its security 
equipment, including: the loud speaker, the itemizer, walk-
through metal detector, and camera 1.\23\ In addition to fixing 
the malfunctioning equipment, the Mission sought help procuring 
additional equipment to strengthen the security on the compound 
such as a camera to screen the C-gate; monitors in [quick 
reaction force] QRF bungalow, and locks for doors. Finally, the 
Benghazi Mission needed help relocating its lighting around the 
perimeter.\24\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \23\Email from Diplomatic Security Agent 17 to Diplomatic Security 
Agent 24 (Apr. 21, 2012 10:20 AM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05409948).
    \24\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In June 2012, the second IED attack on the Mission compound 
damaged not only the perimeter wall but also cameras and the 
secondary metal detector. The Benghazi Mission sought help from 
the U.S. Embassy in Cairo to fix the damage but also sought 
help with the installation of additional cameras to strengthen 
security.\25\ Three weeks later, power surges in Benghazi 
damaged the ``voltage regulator and 220-110V transformer,'' 
shutting all of the Benghazi Mission's technical equipment down 
and necessitating the need for technical help from Cairo 
again.\26\ Because the U.S Embassy in Cairo couldn't make the 
trip, the post in Frankfurt Germany sent personnel and 
equipment to make the necessary repairs.\27\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \25\Email from Diplomatic Security Agent 19 to Security Engineering 
Officer, U.S. Dep't of State (Jun. 6, 2012, 5:07 PM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05392482).
    \26\Id.
    \27\Email from Information Management Officer, U.S. Dep't of State, 
to Security Engineering Officer, U.S. Dep't of State (Jun. 25, 2012, 
9:23 AM) (on file with the Committee, C05392482).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Later, in August 2012, the Benghazi Mission sought the 
assistance of Cairo to fix additional malfunctioning equipment, 
including: seeking a new Immediate Distress Notification System 
[IDNS], old pendants for the current IDNS system, camera and 
monitors for its technical operations center and Villa Safe 
Haven, additional cameras with visibility outside the compound 
walls, upgraded critical cameras for night vision, louder IDNS 
system and a hardened [technical operations center] TOC 
door.\28\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \28\Email from Diplomatic Security Agent 26 to Security Engineering 
Officer, U.S. Dep't of State (Aug. 6, 2012 2:58 PM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05390265).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The constant malfunctions frustrated personnel on the 
ground.\29\ In his turnover notes, the departing principal 
officer in Benghazi told his replacement: ``[t]he tendency has 
been to conduct triage in the interim. We are, for example, on 
the fourth visit from an Embassy electrician of my brief tenure 
because we continue to repair rather than replace 
equipment.''\30\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \29\See email from Principal Officer 3, U.S. Dep't of State, to 
Principal Officer 4, U.S. Dep't of State (Aug. 29, 2012 6:01 AM) (on 
file with the Committee, C05390852).
    \30\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On August 23, 2012, the Benghazi Mission requested 
additional technical equipment to help secure the compound. The 
request included an expert to analyze the loss of exterior 
lighting, new IDNS panel and pendants, weapons cabinet, better 
personal tracking device software, disintegrator if post 
increases its footprint, belt-fed crew-served weapon with bi-
pod, CS gas canisters, badging machine, computer program to 
make access requests and computer at the guard house to view 
the approved access requests, an additional itemizer and an 
alarm system for the office villa.\31\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \31\Email from Diplomatic Security Agent 8 to Diplomatic Security 
Agent 23 (Aug. 23, 2012 2:44 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05390126-C05390127).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                          Protective Equipment

    The Benghazi Mission was constantly securing adequate 
supplies of protective equipment for personnel in 2012. For 
example, on January 24, 2012, the lead Diplomatic Security 
Agent on the ground requested additional helmets, vests and 
[e]scape hoods after an insufficient number were sent to the 
Benghazi Mission.\32\ The U.S. Embassy in Tripoli acknowledged 
it mixed up the Benghazi Mission's request for the 
equipment.\33\ In sending the protective equipment to Benghazi, 
the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli stated: ``It's not exactly what you 
asked for but is what we could get together to get up to 
you.''\34\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \32\Email from Diplomatic Security Agent 15 to Diplomatic Security 
Agent 25 (Jan. 24, 2012 9:38PM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05393735).
    \33\Email to Diplomatic Security Agent 15 (Jan. 29, 2012 1:56 PM) 
(on file with the Committee, C05412863).
    \34\Id. (``It is not exactly what you asked for but is what we 
could get together to get up to you. We believe the original order that 
was made is mixed in with the commo [sic] equipment that needs to get 
up to you. We'll have to open the crates to see if your original order 
is included.'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In early February 2012, the Benghazi Mission requested 
ballistic vests, ballistic plates, complete personal medical 
kit, radio wires with pig tail, low profile holster, magazine 
pouches, low profile chest vest, individual GPS, flashlight, 
strobe, multi-tool, camel pak hydration system, and go 
bags.\35\ With one Diplomatic Security Agent arriving without 
luggage and protective equipment in Benghazi, the Mission was 
concerned future Diplomatic Security Agents would also arrive 
without their personal protective gear. Further prompting the 
request was an incident that occurred on the compound while the 
Diplomatic Security Agent was without [his] equipment.\36\ To 
ensure this didn't happen again, the Benghazi Mission sought to 
have additional equipment at the ready.\37\ The equipment was 
not sent until March 2012.\38\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \35\Email from Diplomatic Security Agent 12 to Diplomatic Security 
Agent 25 (Feb. 5, 2012 6:42 AM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05394222).
    \36\Email from Diplomatic Security Agent 25 (Feb. 14, 2012, 8:54 
AM) (on file with the Committee, C05393444).
    \37\See Id.
    \38\Email to Diplomatic Security Agent 25 (Mar. 5, 2012 11:27 AM) 
(on file with the Committee, C05393444).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Additional requests for personal protection equipment were 
made on June 24, 2012, three weeks after the second attack on 
the facility. The request first went to Washington D.C. and 
then to the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli for a response.\39\ The 
Embassy in Tripoli responded it had some items but that the 
others ``will have to be post procured.''\40\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \39\Email from Diplomatic Security Agent 19 to Diplomatic Security 
Agent 24 (Jun. 24, 2012 11:28 AM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05411697).
    \40\Email from Diplomatic Security Agent 24 to Diplomatic Security 
Agent 19, (Jun. 24, 2012) (on file with the Committee, C05411697).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                   Security Staffing and the Mission

    In addition to physical security, the Benghazi Mission's 
security deficiencies extended to State Department's 
unwillingness to commit the number of personnel needed to 
adequately secure the compound and personnel. The December 27, 
2011 Action Memorandum authorized five Diplomatic Security 
Agents to serve at the Benghazi Mission compound.\41\ It was 
the expectation of those personnel on the ground that five 
Diplomatic Security Agents would be deployed to secure the 
compound.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \41\Testimony of Diplomatic Security Agent, Libya Desk Officer, 
U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 17 (Aug. 8, 2013) [hereinafter Diplomatic 
Security Agent 25 Testimony] (on file with the Committee) (``[A]t the 
time it was Acting Regional Director . . . to come to that number. I 
don't know specifically what was his thinking on the matter, but I know 
in the summer of 2011 they were down to five agents for several months, 
so that was the in Benghazi that was the lowest number that was on the 
ground in Benghazi that I'm aware of at that time timeframe prior to 
December of 2012.'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Yet Benghazi ``achieved a level of five DS Agents (not 
counting Defense Department provided temporary duty [TDY] Site 
Security Team personnel sent by the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli) 
for only 23 days between January 1 and September 9, 2012.''\42\ 
Efforts to secure five Diplomatic Security Agents were either 
ignored or dismissed. As a result, the Benghazi Mission did not 
have five Diplomatic Security Agents on the Mission compound 
during the first IED attack on April 6, 2012. The Benghazi 
Mission did not have five Diplomatic Security Agents on the 
compound during the second IED attack. The Benghazi Mission did 
not have five Diplomatic Security Agents at the time Ambassador 
Stevens arrived at the Mission compound on September 10, 2012.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \42\See Department of State, Accountability Review Board for 
Benghazi Attack of September 2012, December 19, 2012, at 31.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
           PROTECTIVE DETAIL--OFFICE OF DIGNITARY PROTECTION

    Because of the Defense Department's ``no boots on the 
ground'' policy, military security assets were only available 
in emergency circumstances.\43\ Hence, only State Department 
Diplomatic Security Agents traveled with J. Christopher 
Stevens, U.S. Representative to the Transitional National 
Council [TNC] and his team into Benghazi. The Diplomatic 
Security Agents accompanying Stevens and his team needed 
certain skills for the Benghazi Mission in order to conduct 
``protective security functions.''\44\ The Diplomatic Security 
Agent in charge of Stevens' protective detail described the 
qualifications of his team.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \43\Benghazi Party Ops Plan (March 30, 2011)(on file with the 
Committee, SCB0095930)(``DOD provide QRF for security and medical 
extraction'').
    \44\See Action Memorandum For DSS Director Jeffrey W. Culver (June 
30, 2011)(on file with the Committee, C05579256).

        A: I think it was pretty much people were selected 
        because of their skill sets. You know, they spent, they 
        spent time to make sure they had the right team makeup. 
        And, for example, my shift leader . . . , he had, I 
        would estimate he had been on Diplomatic Security for 
        eight years. He had some advanced training on a mobile 
        training team where they it's a tactical team that the 
        State Department has. He was on that team, and they 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        trained for like nine months.

        Q: Is that known as the MSD [mobile security 
        deployment]?

        A: MSD.

        Q: Okay.

        A: And anybody else on the team either had prior 
        military experience, which I think all but two had 
        prior military experience, and they had all gone 
        through the State Department's high threat training.

        Q: Okay.

        A: As I recall.

        Q: Okay. And you had too?

        A: Yes.

        Q: To your knowledge, was that a requirement that 
        everyone have this high threat tactical course prior to 
        going?

        A: I think that was a requirement as far as the boss' 
        thought when they were trying to put the team together, 
        you know, that they wanted people to have that 
        experience.\45\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \45\Testimony of Diplomatic Security Agent, Diplomatic Security 
Service, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 20 (Feb. 10, 2015) [hereinafter 
Diplomatic Security Agent 6 Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

    Two additional Diplomatic Security Agents traveled to 
Benghazi in late April 2011 to augment the Stevens' protective 
detail. The two additional Diplomatic Security Agents brought 
the total number of Agents to ten.\46\ The Diplomatic Security 
Agents assigned to the Stevens' protective detail served in 
temporary capacities contingent on the Mission's duration.\47\ 
When senior State Department officials made the decision to 
extend Stevens' Mission in Benghazi beyond the initial 30-day 
mark, the next Diplomatic Security Agent team rotated in for 
another 30-45 days.\48\ The incoming Diplomatic Security Agent 
in charge described the process: ``The first team that went in, 
the Dignitary Protection team that went in, it was a 30-day 
Mission, and they were in need of an agent in charge to go in 
and take over from that agent in charge and to continue on the 
Mission.''\49\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \46\See Memorandum from Exec. Dir., NEA-SCA/EX, to Patrick F. 
Kennedy, Under Sec'y of State for Mgmt., U.S. Dep't of State (Apr. 15, 
2011) (on file with the Committee, C05390734); see also email from 
SMART Core (Apr. 19, 2011, 12:17 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05390733).
    \47\See Diplomatic Security Agent 6 Testimony at 14 (``I was on a 
60 day TDY, but I think I spent less than 45 days in Benghazi because I 
know I did. I spent 30 some days in Benghazi because it took time for 
us to get there.''). See also, Testimony of Diplomatic Security Agent, 
Diplomatic Security Service, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 25 (Feb. 26, 
2015) [hereinafter Diplomatic Security Agent 7 Testimony] (on file with 
the Committee) (``[T]he first team that went in, the Dignitary 
Protection team that went in, it was a thirty day Mission.'').
    \48\Diplomatic Security Agent 7 Testimony at 26 (``I would say that 
when they recognized that the Mission was viable and that they were 
going to continue it, they started to look for a replacement knowing 
that the agreement was that the agent in charge was going to do 30 
days. So then they thought, okay, now we need to find somebody to 
continue on.'').
    \49\Id. at 25.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The number of Diplomatic Security Agents dropped from ten 
to five when Stevens and his team were forced to leave the 
Tibesti Hotel and find other accommodations. When Stevens and 
his team relocated to Villas A, B, and C in early August 2011, 
additional Diplomatic Security Agents were needed again to 
secure the 13 acre compound. The Diplomatic Security Agent in 
charge informed Washington D.C.:

        [m]ore agents required: Between the three compounds, 
        we're looking at roughly 15 acres of property to 
        secure. This will require additional SAs (up to five 
        more) by early to mid-August. For REACT purposes, teams 
        of agents will reside on all three compounds. Once 
        resources permit, RSO TOC will be staffed 24/7.\50\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \50\Email Diplomatic Security Agent to DS-IP-NEA (Jul. 21, 2011, 
3:22 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05396529).

    By mid-September, the Mission had increased back to ``10 
bodies [DS agents] on compound.''\51\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \51\Testimony of Diplomatic Security Agent, Diplomatic Security 
Service, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 24 (May 21, 2015) [hereinafter 
Diplomatic Security Agent 13 Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

         SHIFT IN SECURITY POSTURE FROM A PROTECTIVE DETAIL TO 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                          A QUASI-RSO PROGRAM

    By mid-September 2011, efforts were also under way to 
restart operations at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli. Predictably, 
resources and personnel shifted away from the Mission in 
Benghazi back to the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli.\52\ This 
precipitated a number of conversations about the Benghazi 
Mission's future. At the time the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli 
restarted operations, the Benghazi Mission's security posture 
changed from that of a protective detail to a regional security 
officer [RSO] program, a program similar to those implemented 
in embassies and official posts located abroad.\53\ Unlike the 
protective detail that focused primarily on the security of 
Stevens and his team using U.S. security assets, the new 
security posture would be overseen by a rotation of volunteer 
Diplomatic Security Agents. In addition, the Benghazi Mission 
focused more on employing host nation support for security, 
including using the February 17 Martyrs Brigade as a QRF team 
and employing an unarmed local guard force [LGF]. The 
Diplomatic Security Agent in charge in September described his 
response when learning about the change in security:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \52\See email from Joan A. Polaschik, Deputy Chief of Mission in 
Libya, U.S. Dep't of State, to John C. Stevens, U.S. Representative to 
Transitional National Council, William V. Roebuck, Dir. Office of 
Maghreb Affairs, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, 
Post Management Officer for Libya, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs 
(Sept. 18, 2011, 11:54 AM)(on file with the Committee, 
C05395962)(stating ``and when can we get . . . here'').
    \53\Diplomatic Security Agent 25 Testimony at 18.

        When I got solicited to go out, I was supposed to be 
        the agent in charge of this detail. So I assumed as you 
        know, you don't want to do that too often that the 10 
        would be part of my bodyguard staff and that's all I 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        would have to deal with.

        So when I got close to the drop date or the day I 
        arrived, they basically said, ``We don't know how long 
        we're going to be here. So we're going to make you the 
        RSO, and we're going to make your number two the AIC,'' 
        at which time I tried to get back on the airplane.

        But, nonetheless, it was myself and my number two. Rank 
        wise, he was senior. He did more of the movement 
        portion with Ambassador Stevens, but I did the overall 
        security aspects of the job, access control and all the 
        policy crap.\54\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \54\Diplomatic Security Agent 13 Testimony at 28-29.

    When asked to describe the caliber of host nation support 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
available, he told the Committee:

        [W]e were a quasi RSO office at best, so meaning 
        Benghazi was unique in the fact that Benghazi really 
        didn't know who they were either. . . . They were still 
        jockeying to figure out who was going to be in power 
        and who wasn't.

        So, normally speaking, you would have already known 
        that when you go into an environment. If you were going 
        to establish yourself or an embassy, you'd already know 
        who your minister of security is or who your DOD 
        counterparts would be.

        There it was a little different because you had 
        different I'll say tribal, for lack of a better term. 
        But you had different groups there and sects that you 
        were trying to figure out who were friendly and who 
        weren't.

        And, I mean, for all intents and purposes, we thought 
        everybody was friendly at that time. But, from my 
        perspective, we didn't want to befriend one group 
        versus somebody else without you know, we didn't want 
        to cause an international incident.

        At the time, 17 Feb. had already stepped up and said 
        that they were going to be the point people for 
        diplomatic interests or security purposes under this 
        function.

        So my interest while I was there was trying to plus 
        that contingent up because knowing they only had a 
        local guard force contingent of 10 people or 12 or 
        whatever it was, unarmed and poorly equipped and poorly 
        trained, I wanted at least some firepower. At least I 
        could put them to at least have a presence.

        But we only had three at the time. So I was trying to 
        befriend them, trying to get more activity, more 
        interest, additional bodies, because three bodies on 
        24/7 is long days, long weeks.\55\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \55\Id. at 43-44.

    The change in security posture together with the reopening 
of the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli left the Diplomatic Security 
Agents on the ground uncertain about their future in Benghazi 
and their ability to do their jobs. The Diplomatic Security 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Agent in charge in September testified:

        As we downsized to a lesser number, it's more difficult 
        to run, keep up with the off tempo. That's where the 10 
        bodies kind of helped because, with additional bodies 
        there, I could farm them out to support USAID interests 
        or the MANPAD guy or . . . and what have you. But as 
        you start reducing those resources, then you have to 
        prioritize your Missions.\56\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \56\Id. at 32.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                              *    *    *

        [W]e were still in this situation where we didn't know 
        how long Benghazi was going to be. Tripoli was kicking 
        off. And so there was a lot of interest in supporting 
        that. So we were trying to figure out or headquarters 
        was trying to figure out where to prioritize our 
        deficiencies, if you want to call it that. So no one 
        knows.

        I mean, we were planning for the worst, phasing people 
        out and trying to figure out how best to support the 
        Mission there. If I remember correctly, with the 
        Embassy being opened it opened towards the latter part 
        of my tenure there. So the Envoy lost his, quote 
        unquote, status because there was now an Ambassador in 
        country. . . . I think they were going to bring in a 
        political officer, probably my rank. I'm pretty sure he 
        was my rank. He was going to be the foothold there in 
        Benghazi for the short term, but no one knew how 
        long.\57\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \57\Id. at 33-34.

    As Stevens closed out his time in Benghazi, the number of 
Diplomatic Security Agents assigned to secure the Benghazi 
Mission continued to decrease. By the end of October 2011 the 
number of Diplomatic Security Agents assigned to secure the 
Benghazi Mission decreased to six.\58\ By the end of November 
2011, as Stevens' was departing, the number of Diplomatic 
Security Agents assigned to the Benghazi Mission was expected 
to drop to three.\59\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \58\See id. at 72. See also Memorandum from Regional Director, 
Bureau of Diplomatic Security, U.S. Dep't of State, to Charlene Lamb, 
Deputy Ass't Sec'y of State, Bureau of Diplomatic Security, Int'l 
Programs, U.S. Dep't of State (Oct. 24, 2011) (on file with the 
Committee, C05391928).
    \59\Memorandum from Regional Director, Bureau of Diplomatic 
Security, U.S. Dep't of State to Charlene Lamb, Deputy Ass't Sec'y of 
State, Bureau of Diplomatic Security, Int'l Programs, U.S. Dep't of 
State (Oct. 24, 2011) (on file with the Committee, C05391928).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Diplomatic Security personnel responsible for staffing 
overseas posts including Benghazi recognized early on the 
problems associated with finding Diplomatic Security Agents 
available to serve in Benghazi. With a protective detail, the 
Diplomatic Security Command Center could direct Diplomatic 
Security Agents to serve on a temporary basis. Under a RSO 
program, temporary duty positions were filled by 
volunteers.\60\ The desk officer in charge of staffing in 
Benghazi testified:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \60\Id.

        The Mission in . . . September, October, the Mission in 
        Benghazi changed essentially from a protection Mission, 
        which was run by our dignitary protection unit here in 
        Washington, to a more traditional RSO program 
        management position, which pushed it back into DS/IP's, 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        my office's realm.

        So at that time the mechanism to get agents changed, 
        they have a task oriented system, we have a it's hard 
        to describe, but it's a system where basically we get 
        volunteers to go. It's usually the high threat posts. 
        And our system is, generally we cover traditionally we 
        cover one RSO position like over a summer transition or 
        during a break. It was very difficult for us to get the 
        type of numbers on kind of a continuous basis through 
        the volunteer system.\61\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \61\Diplomatic Security Agent 25 Testimony at 18-19.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                              *    *    *

        Typically we just cover the gaps, but we did do 
        occasionally we would do particularly in the beginning 
        of Arab spring, it was very busy, and we had to find 
        TDY support. But generally it wasn't near that number. 
        It was never near that number. And it was for a much 
        shorter timeframe, usually only one or two 60 to 30 day 
        deployments for agents.\62\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \62\Id.

    To address the emerging issue, the desk officer drafted an 
Action Memorandum for the approval of Charlene Lamb, the Deputy 
Assistant Secretary of State for International Programs in the 
Bureau of Diplomatic Security.\63\ The October 24, 2011 Action 
Memorandum described the emerging problems associated with 
identifying enough volunteer Diplomatic Security Agents to 
serve 30-45 day rotations in Benghazi on a consistent basis and 
identified solutions including deploying Diplomatic Security 
Agents through the Diplomatic Security Command Center as had 
been done previously.\64\ When asked by the Committee whether 
the October 24, 2011 Action Memorandum was approved, Lamb 
testified:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \63\Memorandum from Regional Dir., Bureau of Diplomatic Security, 
U.S. Dep't of State, to Charlene Lamb, Deputy Ass't Sec'y of State, 
Bureau of Diplomatic Security, Int'l Programs, U.S. Dep't of State 
(Oct. 24, 2011) (on file with the Committee, C05391928).
    \64\Id.

        I had actually requested that they draft this memo 
        because it's very easy for people to take for granted 
        when there's a need for TDY people, they don't take the 
        budget into consideration. And when we don't have full 
        time positions authorized, this TDY money is coming out 
        of the international program's budget. And at $9,000 
        per agent for 45 days on a continual basis for a year, 
        this money adds up very, very quickly and depletes the 
        budget that I have for worldwide TDY assignments. So I 
        wanted this to be documented and I wanted to be able to 
        forward this forward and to go to the DS budget people 
        to make sure that we had appropriate funding, and that 
        they knew we were going to need additional funding, 
        should this TDY status continue for a long period of 
        time.\65\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \65\Testimony of Charlene Lamb, Deputy Ass't Sec'y, Bureau of 
Diplomatic Security, Int'l Programs, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 77-78 
(Jan. 7, 2016) [hereinafter Lamb Testimony] (on file with the 
Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                              *    *    *

        I'll be honest, there were so many operational things 
        going on, my intent with this memo was to get this into 
        the hands of the budget people and to have the budget 
        people work together to come up with a solution to get 
        the money that was needed.\66\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \66\Id. at 92.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                              *    *    *

        We never ran we never ran out of money to the point 
        where we said, okay, we can't send anybody else, 
        there's no more money. We never went anti deficient 
        with funding. So the Department, collectively, between 
        DS, financial personnel, and the Department, we were 
        always funded for these types of posts.\67\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \67\Id. at 92-93.

    When asked by the Committee directly whether funding was 
approved for five, 45-day assistant regional security officer 
[ARSO] TDYs in Benghazi, Lamb testified: ``yes.''\68\ However, 
the October 24, 2011 Action Memorandum, which outlined proposed 
solutions including funding for five Diplomatic Security 
Agents, was never signed.\69\ The desk officer testified:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \68\Id at 93.

      Q: But, specifically, this request for $47,000, do you 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
      recall whether that was approved?

      A: Yes.

      Q: That was approved?

      A: It would yes.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \69\Memorandum from Regional Dir., Bureau of Diplomatic Security, 
U. S. Dep't of State, to Charlene Lamb, Deputy Ass't Sec'y, Bureau of 
Diplomatic Security, Int'l Programs, U.S. Dep't of State (Oct. 24, 
2011) (on file with the Committee, C05391928).

        A: I identified the problem immediately because you can 
        see the staffing chart as was coming down. So when I 
        took over the program in October, I immediately had 
        conversations with my direct supervisors, and we 
        generated an action memorandum with numerous 
        recommendations on how we thought or I thought we could 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        alleviate this problem.

        Q: And was this just specifically focused on Benghazi 
        or

        A: I believe it was Libya centric----

        Q: Libya.

        A: But I can't remember if it was Benghazi specific.

        Q: And do you recall the timeframe that that actual 
        memorandum circulated?

        A: The date was mid to late October of 2011.

        Q: And was that ever signed?

        A: It was approved by my immediate supervisors.

        Q: Did that help alleviate the concerns?

        A:LIt was not approved through their superiors, so it 
        never

        Q: So where did it stop?

        A: It stopped, as far as I know, at the I don't know 
        where it went. I know it went up to the Deputy 
        Director/DAS level. Which one of them looked at it or 
        which one didn't, I don't know.

        Q: Did you ever understand why it didn't get approved 
        at that level?

        A: No, I did not.\70\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \70\Diplomatic Security Agent 25 Testimony at 20.

    Lamb informed the Committee that Kennedy was aware of the 
funding issues associated with staffing the Mission in 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benghazi.

        Q: So is it fair to say that Pat Kennedy was aware of 
        the funding issues that were associated with the TDYs 
        in Benghazi?

        A: It would he, during his regular staff meetings when 
        we discussed all of the Tripoli and Benghazi issues, he 
        was aware, and he had financial people there from his 
        staff that reported to him directly.

        Q: So he was shifting resources as it relates to . . .

        A: If it was necessary, he would not hesitate to do 
        that.\71\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \71\Lamb Testimony at 89.

          STAFFING SHORTAGES--DECEMBER 27 ACTION MEMORANDUM: 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                     FUTURE OF BENGHAZI OPERATIONS

    By December 2011, Diplomatic Security Agent staffing in 
Benghazi was a problem. Two Diplomatic Security Agents secured 
the 13 acre compound in mid-December. Without reinforcements 
from Washington D.C. there was every expectation it would drop 
to one and then to zero in January.\72\ One of the Diplomatic 
Security Agents on the ground expressed his concerns:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \72\Diplomatic Security Agent 10 Testimony at 41-42.

        It was down to two agents, myself and one other agent. 
        And as I was getting ready to depart, we were going to 
        go to one agent. And if the staffing pattern remained 
        the way it was, with our expected incoming agents, we 
        were going to go down to zero agents. And that would 
        have been around January 4th or 5th or so, we would go 
        down to zero agents.\73\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \73\Id.

    The principal officer who replaced Stevens also alerted 
Washington D.C. about the impact of the shortages in Diplomatic 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Security Agents in December 2011. He wrote:

        [o]n a much more serious matter, something I flagged 
        for Bill [Roebuck] yesterday on the phone, but pledged 
        to send the details. We're going to be short on the RSO 
        end of things from December 19 through the end of the 
        year. During that period, we will be down to just 2 A/
        RSOs or the practical equivalent thereof. . . .

        What this all means is that all non-DS TDYs to Benghazi 
        should be discouraged through the end of the year for 
        sure (and we're still pretty limited the first week of 
        January as the new folks get spun up), as even the 
        basic movements are going to overextend us. . . .

        We are a little too close to being down to a single 
        agent here if arrival dates (or visa issuance?) slips 
        to the right . . . and if we're going to need to extend 
        anyone here (one of whom has already done so), we need 
        to get that sorted out sooner rather than later. Also, 
        it's a little curious to hear about DS intensions to 
        staff Benghazi with a RSO and 4 A/RSOs, while at this 
        rate, we won't hit that target during my first two 
        months here.\74\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \74\Email from Principal Officer 1, U.S. Dep't of State, to Post 
Management Officer for Libya, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. 
Dep't of State (Dec. 15, 2011, 1:11 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05391603).

    At the time Benghazi Mission was experiencing shortages in 
Diplomatic Security Agents, the December 27, 2011 Action 
Memorandum was being circulated for approval. The Action 
Memorandum acknowledged ``Diplomatic Security's current 
presence consists of two Special Agents, with an additional 
three slots currently unfilled'' and attributed the unfilled 
slots ``to budget constraints and the reduced footprint.''\75\ 
The Action Memorandum authorized a ``full complement of five 
Special Agents.''\76\ Kennedy provided a different 
interpretation to the Committee:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \75\Action Memorandum from Jeffrey Feltman, Ass't Sec'y of State, 
Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to Patrick F. 
Kennedy, Under Sec'y for Mgmt., U.S. Dep't of State (Dec. 27, 2011) (on 
file with the Committee, C05261557).
    \76\See id. See also Diplomatic Security Agent 25 Testimony at 17 
(``at the time it was Action Regional Director to come to that number. 
I don't know specifically what his thinking on the matter, but I know 
in the summer of 2011 they were down to five agents for several months, 
so that was the--in Benghazi--that was the lowest number that was on 
the ground that I'm aware of at that time timeframe prior to December 
of 2012 [sic].'').

        It says eight U.S. direct hire employees and two slots 
        for political military and USAID. So that's 8, plus 2 
        is 10, of which 5 are substantive or management and 5 
        are Diplomatic Security. So you have five to protect 
        five.\77\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \77\Kennedy Testimony at 301.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                              *    *    *

        How many people the Near East Bureau, looking at what 
        was going on, how many people the Near East Bureau 
        ultimately decided to deploy, kind of a cost benefit 
        analysis. How much activity are they going to do? How 
        much reporting do they want to do? That's a call made 
        by the Near East Bureau. My point is that you judge the 
        number of Diplomatic Security on two factors. It's the 
        facility and the number of sorties that you need to 
        make out into the city.\78\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \78\Id. at 302.

    Lamb described Diplomatic Security's responsibilities to 
provide five Diplomatic Security Agents in Benghazi as ``kind 
of the cap of what the bureau was asking . . . Kennedy to 
approve. What they're saying is, at the most, we're not going 
to exceed this staffing level in Benghazi.''\79\ Others such as 
the Diplomatic Security Agents on the ground and the principal 
officers they were protecting saw Diplomatic Security's 
staffing obligations as five Diplomatic Security Agents for 
Benghazi.\80\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \79\Lamb Testimony at 224.
    \80\Email from Diplomatic Security Agent 15 to Diplomatic Security 
Agent 12 (Jan. 27, 2012, 11:10 AM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05411094). (``U/S Kennedy stated there should be 5 agents here and I 
agree.'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Though the effect of budget constraints on Diplomatic 
Security Agents assigned to the Benghazi Mission was known well 
before the decision to extend the Benghazi Mission, the 
December 27, 2011 Action Memorandum was silent on a funding 
solution.\81\ The Bureau of Diplomatic Security cleared the 
December 27, 2011 Action Memorandum with the ``comment that 
this operation continues to be an unfunded mandate and a drain 
on personnel resources.''\82\ Neither Gentry O. Smith, Deputy 
Ass't Sec'y, Bureau of Diplomatic Sec., Countermeasures, U.S. 
Dep't of State, whose office was responsible for ensuring 
security standards and adequate physical security measures were 
in place at the Benghazi Mission and who cleared the Action 
Memorandum for Diplomatic Security, nor Lamb whose office was 
responsible for staffing, had any recollection of why the 
comment was made.\83\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \81\Action Memorandum from Jeffrey Feltman, Ass't Sec'y of State, 
Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to Patrick F. 
Kennedy, Under Sec'y for Mgmt., U.S. Dep't of State (Dec. 27, 2011) (on 
file with the Committee, C05261557).
    \82\Email from Special Ass't to the Ass't Sec'y for Diplomatic 
Security, Bureau of Diplomatic Security, U.S. Dep't of State, to Post 
Management Officer, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State 
(Dec. 23, 2011, 3:27 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05578953).
    \83\Lamb Transcript at 221 (``I did not see [the Action Memorandum] 
until after the event in Benghazi.''). See also Gentry O. Smith at 75 
(Feb. 25, 2016) [hereinafter Smith Testimony] (on file with the 
Committee) (``[I]t didn't come from Countermeasures, it would not have 
been solely for physical security.'').

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
           REQUESTS FOR ADDITIONAL DIPLOMATIC SECURITY AGENTS

    Concerns about Diplomatic Security Agent staffing shortages 
going into 2012 precipitated another Action Memorandum for 
Lamb's approval.\84\ The January 10, 2012 Action Memorandum 
highlighted Diplomatic Security's responsibilities under the 
December 27, 2011 Action Memorandum to provide five Diplomatic 
Security Agents for Benghazi and recognized the Offices' 
inability to ``identify, seek necessary approvals and obtain 
the required visa approvals for this many agents on a 
continuing basis.''\85\ The January 10, 2012 Action Memorandum 
requested Lamb approve efforts to:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \84\Email from Diplomatic Security Agent 25 to Principal Officer 1, 
U.S. Dep't of State (Jan. 13, 2012, 10:05 PM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05411094) (``We have submitted an Action Memorandum that if 
approved should significantly improve our ability to identify and 
obtain approvals for staffing Benghazi.''); Action Memorandum for DAS 
Charlene Lamb (January 10, 2012) (on file with the Committee, 
C05578986).
    \85\Id.

        request assistance from Domestic Operations, so that 
        personnel can be selected and directed from the Field 
        Offices by the DS Command Center as well as authorize 
        funding for five, 45 day ARSO [assistant regional 
        security officer] TDYs [temporary duty] in Benghazi 
        from Feb.1 through September 30 at a total estimated 
        cost of $283,050.\86\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \86\Id.

    The January 10, 2012 Action Memorandum was never 
approved.\87\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \87\See Testimony of James Bacigalupo, Regional Dir., Bureau of 
Diplomatic Security, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 17-18 (Sept. 4, 2013) 
(on file with the Committee).

      A: I believe it was January, maybe December/January 
      timeframe we had talked about it in the office, and I think 
      I was out on leave because my deputy I had seen a document 
      that my deputy had sent up to Director Lamb, to DAS Lamb 
      requesting we use the system that they use domestically to 
      direct a certain number of agents from the field offices 
      for assignments. We use that on protection. And we sent the 
      memo up suggesting maybe we could use this mechanism for 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
      overseas.

      Q: Specifically for Libya or----

      A: It was specifically for Libya.

      Q: And do you know what happened to that memo?

      A: It was never signed off on.
    Without a mechanism to identify a constant pool of 
Diplomatic Security Agents to serve in Benghazi, the Mission 
continued to experience shortages. The principal officers on 
the ground expressed concern back to Washington D.C. about the 
impact the Diplomatic Security Agent staffing shortages was 
having on the security of the compound, in addition to their 
reporting obligations.\88\ Moreover, the principal officers 
were concerned about the vulnerabilities created by the 
shortages in relation to the overall security environment in 
Benghazi. For example, the principal officer was concerned only 
two Diplomatic Security Agents were scheduled to be at the 
compound during the upcoming February 17th anniversary.\89\ 
With no option available within Diplomatic Security, members of 
the Defense Department's SST who were currently deployed to the 
U.S. Embassy in Tripoli offered to travel to Benghazi to 
address the Diplomatic Security Agent shortage.\90\ SST agents 
deployed to the Benghazi Mission compound on three more 
occasions: March 27-30, 2012, April 12-27, 2012, after the 
first attack, and June 9-23, 2012, after the second attack.\91\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \88\See email from Principal Officer 5, U.S. Dep't of State, to 
U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, et al. (Feb. 11, 2012, 5:29 PM) (on file with 
the Committee, C05409829). See also email from Principal Officer 1 to 
Diplomatic Security Agent 25 (Jan. 17, 2012, 8:38 AM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05411094).
    \89\See id.
    \90\Email from Diplomatic Security Agent 24 to Joan Polaschik, 
Deputy Chief of Mission in Libya, U.S. Dep't of State (Feb. 6, 2012, 
11:05 AM) (on file with the Committee, C05411434) (``From DS HQ (DAS 
Lamb and MSD Director) has indicated, they are not in favor of pulling 
MSD out of Tripoli to support from Benghazi and from what I understand 
they are keeping the staffing in Benghazi at 3-4 agents. DS HQ 
continues to complain about Benghazi being an unfunded mandate and 
there are no agents or funds to support it, so I doubt anything is 
going to change unless the status of Benghazi is formalized. SST has 
indicated that they would be willing to support.'').
    \91\See Benghazi DS and SST TDY staffing for Jan. 2012-September 11 
(on file with the Committee, C0539433).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On February 16, 2012, Joan Polaschik, the Deputy Chief of 
Mission in Libya, met with Lamb to discuss among other things 
the staffing issues in Benghazi. According to personnel in the 
meeting:

        Joan essentially briefed Charlene on the situation in 
        Tripoli, primarily because that's where Joan was 
        currently serving. They then discuss Benghazi some. And 
        Joan was primarily seeking to get clarity from Charlene 
        on DS' plan moving forward for security in both Tripoli 
        and Benghazi.

        During the meeting, there was what appeared to be a 
        different policy set forward by Charlene about our 
        security posture in Benghazi that advocated for local 
        hire drivers and only one armed DS officer per vehicle 
        with some reference to maybe in the future, once people 
        had the foreign affairs counter threat training, some 
        individuals could potentially self-drive. That seemed 
        very different from what the previous stated policy of 
        having two DS in any vehicle leaving the compound in 
        Benghazi. It seemed a significant difference in policy, 
        which raised alarm bells.\92\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \92\Testimony of Post Management Officer for Libya, Bureau of Near 
Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 165-166 (Jul. 23, 2015) 
[hereinafter Post Management Officer Testimony] (on file with the 
Committee).

    The policy change made by Lamb to cap the number of 
Diplomatic Security Agents assigned to the Benghazi Mission at 
three was confirmed by the desk officer responsible for 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
staffing in Benghazi.

        A: In mid-February, in conversations with DAS Lamb, it 
        became quite she made it quite apparent that she wanted 
        three agents on the ground in Benghazi. From that time 
        on, I was attempting to get three agents into Benghazi 
        at all times.

        Q: How did you I mean, you said she made it clear. How 
        did that become clear to you that was her position?

        A: I don't specifically remember. I believe the on or 
        about February 16th we were preparing for DCM from 
        Tripoli to come in for a meeting on security related 
        issues, and at that time I specifically recall the 
        conversation about the number of agents in Benghazi. So 
        that's the last thing I can recall specifically?

        Q: Can you elaborate on that conversation?

        A: Certainly. While discussing RSO staffing in Libya, 
        the topic came up in Benghazi, and DAS Lamb became 
        aware of the fact that two of the agents were 
        essentially excuse me their primary duty was driving 
        the movement team vehicle. And traditionally overseas 
        posts, the vast majority of them, their drivers are 
        provided by the post. They're locally engaged staff 
        drivers. So she wanted to alleviate that program or 
        that duty, so to speak, in her mind. That was one of 
        the factors. There could have been more. That was the 
        factors that she made known to me and my superiors.\93\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \93\Diplomatic Security Agent 25 Testimony at 23-24.

    The policy change was not communicated to the Diplomatic 
Security Agents on the ground or other State Department 
personnel who nonetheless believed five Diplomatic Security 
Agents were needed to adequately secure the Benghazi Mission. 
For example, the lead Diplomatic Security Agent in Benghazi at 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
the time wrote:

        I've enjoyed four agents for six days now and it's been 
        a treat to allow agents to properly turnover programs 
        with one another. We'll be back down to three tomorrow 
        and then 2 on March 21 . . . Having been here for six 
        weeks now, I've had to deal with two Principal Officers 
        who expect five DS agents to accommodate their travel, 
        maintain the security integrity (and programs) on the 
        compound.\94\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \94\Email from Diplomatic Security Agent 12 to Diplomatic Security 
Agent 25 (March 14, 2012, 11:02 PM)(on file with the Committee, 
C05411904).

    Further to same, on March 28, 2012, Embassy Tripoli made a 
request on behalf of Benghazi for ``five TDY Diplomatic 
Security agents for 45-60 day rotations in Benghazi.'' 
Advocating for the Benghazi Mission, Gene A. Cretz, U.S. 
Ambassador to Libya, wrote in his cable to Washington D.C:\95\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \95\U.S. Dep't of State, Cable, Request for DS TDY and FTE Support 
(March 28, 2012) (on file with the Committee, SCB004625-27).

        This number is required to ensure that we have an 
        appropriate USDH [direct hire] presence to protect our 
        COMSEC; support the two long term USDH TDYers, and 
        support an increasing number of program/assistance 
        TDY's from both Tripoli and Washington. The number of 
        TDY'ers in Benghazi is expected to increase in the run 
        up to the elections. Embassy Tripoli is in the process 
        of recruiting four LES drivers and an RSO LES SPSS, 
        which will support operations in Benghazi. Post also 
        plans to deploy a TDY RSO from Tripoli once expanded 
        permanent staffing is established and stabilized. Once 
        these positions are filled; Post anticipates requiring 
        fewer TDY DS agents to support Benghazi. Although an 
        LGF contractor has begun operations in Benghazi, 
        initial discussions regarding contractor-provided armed 
        close protection/movement support does not appear 
        viable based on complications regarding GOL firearms 
        permits. Currently, the LGF contractor is able to 
        obtain only short term (48-72 hr) firearms permits for 
        specific VIP visits.\96\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \96\Id.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                 VISAS

    At the time the March 28, 2012 staffing request was sent to 
Washington D.C., the number of Diplomatic Security Agents at 
the compound dropped to two.\97\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \97\See Email from Diplomatic Security Agent 12 to Diplomatic 
Security Agent 25 (Mar. 21, 2012, 8:03 AM) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0049976) (``[W]e are down to 2 agents in Benghazi which stifles 
movements and puts [us] in bad shape on compound.'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Notwithstanding Lamb's decision to limit the number of 
Diplomatic Security Agents serving at the Benghazi Mission to 
three, those Diplomatic Security Agents who were available to 
deploy were prevented from traveling because they could not get 
visas from the Libyan Government.\98\ Thus, the pool of 
Diplomatic Security Agents available to serve was further 
limited. The desk officer in charge of staffing in Benghazi 
described the problem with the Libyan visa system:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \98\See Email from Diplomatic Security Agent 25 to Post Management 
Officer for Libya, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, 
et al. (Mar. 20, 2012, 9:09 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0049977) (``I just went to the Libyan Embassy and was told that 
their `system' was down. They could not check the status of currently 
approved visas nor do anything having to do with visas. When asked when 
the system may be back up, the clerk told me that there was no way of 
telling when (or if) it will be up at any point in the future. `It is 
being worked on' is what I was told.'').

        When they first initiated it, it was a surprise to us, 
        we weren't aware it was going to happen. So basically 
        you went from airport visas where you just kind of show 
        up and was having to see if you had the right passport 
        and you get stamped. And then you go to a visa process 
        where they weren't quite ready yet, this end in at the 
        Embassy to issue visas. So it was very confusing. They 
        didn't have their process down. The bureaucracy wasn't 
        working too well in their Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 
        we call it the MFA, and back here in Washington. And 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        that was in the December 2011 timeframe.

        That kind of got sorted out in the early January 2012 
        timeframe and it did that way the process at least, it 
        would take 2 or 3 weeks, but as long as we know the 
        process, we can usually work around it.

        And then it collapsed again in that end of March/April 
        timeframe, and that one was pretty significant. That 
        one was much longer, and it was difficult, and they 
        were essentially, to my knowledge, they were changing 
        from a they were using stamps before. This is probably 
        too much detail for you guys, but and then they went to 
        foils, and they didn't have the foils, so they had to 
        get the foils, no one had the foils. I mean, it was 
        convoluted. . . .

        It actually got longer after the foil issue was 
        resolved. So it was probably it usually took me about 6 
        weeks to get from identified to out there, and 4 weeks 
        of that would be about for the visa process. I tried to 
        get the visas in 1 month before the departure date, and 
        that was standard until basically 9/11.\99\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \99\Diplomatic Security Agent 25 Testimony at 34-35.

    The visa delays prevented two Diplomatic Security Agents 
from traveling to the Benghazi Mission in late March and early 
April.\100\ As a result, only one Diplomatic Security Agent was 
on the compound at the time of the first IED attack.\101\ On 
April 6, 2012, an ``IED was thrown over the perimeter wall at 
1650 EDT/2250 Benghazi.''\102\ The single Diplomatic Security 
Agent described the sequence of events to the Committee:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \100\See Email from Diplomatic Security Agent 25 (Apr. 7, 2012, 
2:56 PM) (on file with the Committee, C05392858).
    \101\See Email from Diplomatic Security Agent 24 to Principal 
Officer 2, U.S. Dep't of State, and Deputy Dir. Office of Maghreb 
Affairs, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State (Apr. 7, 
2012, 9:10 AM) (on file with the Committee, C05409502).
    \102\Email (Apr. 6, 2012, 8:28 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05409502).

        Shortly after I went inside, I know the principal 
        officer and the IMO had already retired. I was sitting 
        there, and I just turned on the TV, and I heard a very 
        loud explosion. And, as I told you before, you heard 
        explosions throughout, but you would know by the force 
        of this explosion, not only the noise but also the way 
        it rocked the building, I knew that it was inside the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        compound.

        At that point, I was sitting in the living room. I had 
        my weapons with me. I did not have my vest. I ran into 
        my bedroom, grabbed my vest. I spoke to the IMO and to 
        the principal officer. I instructed them to allow me 
        out, lock themselves lock the door and lock themselves 
        in the safe haven. I had an extra pistol and an extra 
        shotgun. I left it there for them. I left two radios. 
        One that is communication for them and me and 
        communications for them and the Annex building. I told 
        them that I would be [in] constant contact with them on 
        the radio or on the phone; if they did not hear from 
        me, then to contact the Annex building for assistance.

        I also called our QRF [quick reaction force], basically 
        reacted them. We had a plan: On a situation like that, 
        they would take up positions throughout the compound. 
        One of the positions would be outside of our building. 
        As I stepped outside, one of the QRF members was 
        already out there waiting for me. This is possibly, I 
        don't know, 3 minutes after the bombing.

        At some point, the guard finally activated the alarm. 
        Our guard force had a push button alarm; in case of any 
        attack, they would activate it. As I step outside, the 
        QRF member is there. We cleared our way to the TOC. 
        Went inside the TOC [technical operations center]. I 
        turn off the alarm, and I use our camera system to view 
        or to try to determine if there was any other people, 
        any other attackers in the compound. That took 
        approximately 3, 4 minutes.

        I did not see anybody in our camera system. There are 
        some blind spots, but we did have a pretty good system 
        throughout the compound. I thought that with that, I 
        would be able to determine something, something 
        blatant, something that would really stand out.

        Afterwards, I stepped outside of the TOC. I had two QRF 
        members with me, and we commenced on clearing the 
        compound.

        While we were doing that, I heard two shots. It sounded 
        to me like rifle fire, something bigger than an M4, 
        which is what I had. So I thought initially that it was 
        shooting in the compound. One of the QRF members 
        received, if I am not mistaken, a call that told him 
        that a third QRF member was outside and had detained 
        someone.

                              *    *    *

        There was a third QRF member, [redacted text], who was 
        outside of the compound and had detained two Libyan 
        nationals. Eventually I found out that he's the one who 
        fired the two shots. It is common; it is standard 
        operating procedure for Libyans to shoot warning shots, 
        and that is what he did.

        So we were clearing the compound when I learned that he 
        was outside and he was possibly engaged with the 
        attackers. I kept one of the QRF members guarding the 
        entry to our house. I communicated with the principal 
        officer that everything was still okay; we are still 
        clearing. I went outside, and [redacted text] had two 
        people on the ground.

        Shortly afterwards, reinforcements from the 17th 
        February Militia arrived. They took them away. I 
        requested from the militia to provide a security ring 
        outside of the compound. I made contact with the Annex 
        building. And I asked them to hold off on sending 
        reinforcements to prevent a blue on blue situation the 
        Militia did not know who they were; they did not know 
        who the Militia were but to be on standby in case we 
        needed additional assistance.

        At that time, all QRF members and myself cleared the 
        whole compound. It took us several hours to do so. We 
        did not find evidence of any other intruders, 
        attackers, enemy on the grounds. I went back inside, 
        and I briefed the principal officer as to what had 
        taken place. She and I then commenced our notifications 
        to D.C. and our report writing.\103\

    \103\Testimony of Diplomatic Security Agent, Diplomatic Security 
Service, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr.at 30-32 (April 13, 2015) [hereinafter 
Diplomatic Security Agent 16 Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

    The principal officer in Benghazi expressed concern to the 
lead Diplomatic Security Agent in Tripoli ``had the attack been 
even slightly less amateur, I don't know what we would have 
done.''\104\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \104\See Email from Principal Officer 2, U.S. Dep't of State, to 
Diplomatic Security Agent 24 and Deputy Dir. Office of Maghreb Affairs, 
Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State (April 7, 2012, 
3:25 AM) (on file with the Committee, C05409502).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Less than two weeks after the first IED attack on the 
Benghazi Mission compound occurred, Washington D.C. rejected 
the March 28, 2012 request to deploy five Diplomatic Security 
Agents to Benghazi.\105\ In denying the request, Washington 
D.C. stated:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \105\U.S. Dep't of State, Cable--Tripoli, Request for DS TDY and 
FTE Support (April 19, 2012)(on file with the Committee, SCB0046263).

        DS will continue to provide DS agent support in 
        Benghazi. DS/IP recommends that post continues its 
        efforts to hire LES drivers for Benghazi to enable the 
        DS TDYers to solely perform their protective security 
        function. DS/IP also recommends a joint assessment of 
        the number of DS agents requested for Benghazi to 
        include input from RSO Tripoli, TDY RSO Benghazi, and 
        DS/IP in an effort to develop a way forward.\106\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \106\See id.

    Throughout the remainder of spring 2012, the number of 
Diplomatic Security Agents deployed to the compound never 
exceeded three.\107\ Half the time, there were only two 
Diplomatic Security Agents.\108\ During this time, the security 
environment in Benghazi started to deteriorate. Less than one 
week before Stevens returned to Tripoli as the Ambassador in 
May 2012, a rocket propelled grenade [RPG] attack occurred on 
the International Committee of the Red Cross.\109\ The 
International Committee of the Red Cross was located 
approximately one kilometer from the Benghazi Mission. A 
``vague Facebook post claiming responsibility for the RPG 
attack'' also indicated it was ``preparing to send a message to 
the Americans.''\110\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \107\See Benghazi DS and SST TDY staffing for Jan. 2012-September 
11 (on file with the Committee, C0539433).
    \108\See id.
    \109\Email from Diplomatic Security Agent 24 to Diplomatic Security 
Agent 25 (June 14, 2012, 1:56 PM)(on file with the Committee, 
C05391830).
    \110\Email from Diplomatic Security Agent 18 to Diplomatic Security 
Agent 17 (May 28, 2012, 5:36 AM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05392202).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On June 6, 2012, a week after the threat to the Mission 
compound, the Benghazi Mission was attacked for a second time. 
An IED along the Benghazi Mission's perimeter wall--blowing a 
hole ``6 feet by 4 feet,'' large enough for an individual to 
walk through.\111\ At the time of the second IED attack, three 
Diplomatic Security Agents were on the ground. A Diplomatic 
Security Agent on the ground at the time described the attack 
to the Committee:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \111\Testimony of Principal Officer 2, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 
109 (Mar. 13, 2015) [hereinafter Principal Officer 2 Testimony] (on 
file with the Committee).

        Around 3:00 in the morning, give or take 20, 30 
        minutes, the imminent danger and notification system 
        alarm went off, affectionately called the duck and 
        cover alarm. That woke all of us up. I got up. I put on 
        my armor, grabbed my weapon, got dressed of course, and 
        then went outside to find out what was going on. I go 
        outside, and I see a bunch of our I see our local Guard 
        Force members around the front of the gate making, 
        gesturing with their hands, you know, towards their 
        nose. I did not speak Arabic. At the time they did not 
        speak English, so, that's how we communicated. I 
        believe at the time during that shift there was one 
        person that didn't speak English. So, you know, I 
        started smelling; then I had this distinct smell, not 
        like something burning, but some kind of chemical burn, 
        whatever. Come to find out, you know, 5 minutes later 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        that it's a fuse.

        But at that point so I asked everyone to start backing 
        away from the wall. Then as I back away, that's when 
        the bomb detonates.

        From there it knocked me down. Ears were ringing. I get 
        up with the local guards. We run back. There are some 
        sandbags right there at the corner. Get behind those 
        sandbags, point my M4 at the hole in the wall and wait 
        for any follow up attack that may occur. And that was 
        the

        And no follow up attack did occur, so after that the 
        February 17th Martyrs Brigade showed up in a matter of 
        minutes. Then from there we set up a perimeter outside 
        on the street. As we had this large hole in our wall, 
        we wanted to push our security perimeter back even 
        further. We set up the large hole I mean set up the 
        perimeter, sorry; and then from there, once that 
        perimeter was set up, I went with one of our QRF guys 
        [redacted text] And we went there and secured the rest 
        of the compound.

        As there was a security incident at the front of our 
        compound, we had lost attention and lost visibility on 
        other aspects of our compound. So, before we decided to 
        let the principal officer out of the safe haven and 
        call the all clear, we went through, me with my M4, him 
        with his AK-47, and we just moved through the compound 
        making sure nobody else had entered and there were no 
        other devices. After that was done, we called the all 
        clear.\112\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \112\Diplomatic Security Agent, Diplomatic Security Service, U.S. 
Dep't of State, at 59-61 (Mar. 24, 2015) [hereinafter Diplomatic 
Security Agent 22 Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

    Two days after the second attack on the compound the number 
of Diplomatic Security Agents dropped to two.\113\ Five days 
later, on June 11, 2012, an RPG attack was launched on the UK 
Ambassador's motorcade. Some speculated the RPG was directed 
toward the Mission given the proximity of the attack to the 
Mission Compound. Polaschik testified:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \113\Email from Diplomatic Security Agent 25 to Diplomatic Security 
Agent 21 (Jun. 7, 2012, 3:03 PM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05391125).

        A: There were two main reasons. One was the physical 
        location of the attack. It occurred, I believe, on 
        Venezia Street, which is right by our compound. And it 
        was actually, as I understood it, not having been there 
        at the time of the attack, close by our rear exit from 
        our compound. And, also, given the fact that we had 
        been storing British armored vehicles on our compound, 
        again, if someone had been watching, you know, did they 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        know for sure whether that was British or American.

        Also, around the same time, a figure named Abu Yahya is 
        it Abu Yahya al Libi? a senior Al Qaeda operative, had 
        been killed, I believe, in either Pakistan or 
        Afghanistan. So I was----

        Q: By the U.S. Government?

        A: Correct.

        Q: In a drone strike or something like that?

        A: Correct. In some U.S. operations. So, given that he 
        was a Libyan, I was concerned whether or not there 
        could have been some retaliatory action taken by Al 
        Qaeda, you know, for that act. So it was murky. There 
        were a lot of things that were unclear, but I was 
        concerned that there could have been links to the U.S. 
        Government.

        Q: At that time, in June of 2012, the Brits were 
        storing their vehicles and their weapons on the U.S. 
        compound, the Benghazi compound; is that correct?

        A: Correct.\114\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \114\Testimony of Joan Polaschik, Deputy Chief of Mission in Libya, 
U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 95-96 (Aug. 12, 2015) [hereinafter 
Polaschik Transcript] (on file with the Committee).

    In fact, between the first attack on the Benghazi Mission 
on April 6 and June 2012, there were more than 21 separate 
incidents in Benghazi.\115\ While a member of the Defense 
Department's SST was temporarily diverted to bolster security 
after the series of attacks against the Mission compound and 
U.K. Ambassador's motorcade, Diplomatic Security Agent staffing 
never increased to five.\116\ The sequence of attacks raised 
enough concern in Washington D.C., for Lamb to acknowledge to 
her supervisors there were not enough resources diverted to 
Benghazi.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \115\Security Incidents in Benghazi, Libya, from June 1, 2011- Aug. 
20, 2012 (on file with the Committee); see also Benghazi Spot Report, 
EAC and Significant Event Timeline (DS/IP/RD) (on file with the 
Committee, C05394332).
    \116\See Benghazi DS and SST TDY staffing for Jan. 2012-September 
11 (on file with the Committee, C0539433).

        We are not staffed or resourced adequately to protect 
        our people in that type of environment. We are a soft 
        target against resources available to the bad guys 
        there. Not to mention there is no continuity because we 
        do everything there with TDY personnel. The cost to 
        continue to do business there may become more 
        challenging.\117\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \117\Email from Charlene Lamb, Deputy Ass't Sec'y, Bureau of 
Diplomatic Security, Int'l Programs, U.S. Dep't of State, to Scott 
Bultrowicz, Principal Deputy Sec'y of State, Bureau of Diplomatic 
Security, U.S. Dep't of State (Jun. 11, 2012, 4:16 PM) (on file with 
the Committee, C05388866).

    Washington D.C. did nothing to provide additional resources 
or personnel. For example, a day before the second IED attack 
on the Mission compound, Stevens requested the support of the 
State Department's highly trained mobile security deployment 
team to remain in Tripoli through the end of the summer.\118\ 
More resources in Tripoli meant possibly more available 
resources at the Benghazi Mission. However, on the day of the 
second IED attack against the Benghazi Mission on June 6, 2012 
the request was denied.\119\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \118\Email from John C. Stevens, U.S. Ambassador to Libya, to 
Diplomatic Security Agent 7 (Jun. 5, 2012, 10:55 AM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05409979).
    \119\Email from Diplomatic Security Agent 7 to John C. Stevens, 
U.S. Ambassador to Libya (Jun. 6, 2012, 3:00PM) (on file with the 
Committee, C05409979).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On June 14, 2012, eight days after the second IED attack on 
the compound, the Diplomatic Security Agent in charge sent a 
staffing request to Diplomatic Security requesting ``five DS 
agents be deployed to secure the facility, with a MSD team on 
standby.''\120\ One day later, on June 15, 2012, an Action 
Memorandum requesting five additional staff for Benghazi was 
directed to Lamb for approval.\121\ The Action Memorandum 
described ``the uncertainty of the security situation in 
Benghazi and the fact that their appears to be an active 
terrorist cell in Benghazi, Libya planning and implementing 
attack operations against western interests including the U.S. 
Mission in Benghazi.''\122\ No response was ever received.\123\ 
The desk officer responsible for staffing in Benghazi described 
his role in developing the Action Memorandum.\124\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \120\Email from Diplomatic Security Agent 19 to Diplomatic Security 
Agent 25, James Bacigalupo, Regional Dir., Bureau of Diplomatic 
Security, U.S. Dep't of State (Jun. 14, 2012, 11:40 AM) (on file with 
the Committee, C05393692).
    \121\Memorandum from James Bacigalupo, Regional Dir., Bureau of 
Diplomatic Security, U.S. Dep't of State, to Charlene Lamb, Deputy 
Ass't Sec'y, Bureau of Diplomatic Security, Int'l Programs, U.S. Dep't 
of State, (Jun. 15, 2012) (on file with the Committee, C05578316).
    \122\Id.
    \123\Diplomatic Security Agent 25 Testimony at 42-43.
    \124\Id.

        A: The RSO in Benghazi also requested and received 
        additional local guard support, which was the Blue 
        Mountain Group. So they had additional guards on at 
        night. And then the RSO in Benghazi, they requested me 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        for additional staffing, RSO staffing, agents staffing.

        Q: How did that request come in?

        A: I believe we definitely talked on the phone and then 
        he sent an email to follow up with that. But first we 
        spoke on the phone and then we sent an email.

        Q: And what was the number requested or----

        A: Sure.

        Q: How did that proceed when that after that request 
        came in?

        A: Certainly. The number he requested at the time was I 
        think he said five agents, and he specified a timeframe 
        through the election period, which was going to be 
        probably in a month, so on or about I think it was 
        earlier scheduled it was early July, so roughly about a 
        month, and then he recommended having four agents 
        remain at the compound.

        Q: Based on your experience, just from a personal 
        perspective, did you support that number or support 
        that assessment?

        A: Yes. Not only did I support it, I sent it to the RSO 
        for clearance as well, which he supported fully, and I 
        drafted an action memorandum stating the RSO's request.

        Q: And what happened to that action memorandum?

        A: It was approved by my direct supervisors, and then 
        it was upstairs for a while. And we didn't hear 
        anything. We felt it urgent enough, my supervisor 
        scheduled a meeting with DAS Lamb, and in the meeting 
        with DAS Lamb, essentially the long and short of it, 
        the memo was denied for additional resources, personnel 
        wise.

        Q: Can you walk us through that in a little more 
        detail? How long was it upstairs? So your immediate 
        supervisor, that would be Mr. Bacigalupo?

        A: At that time it was James Bacigalupo, correct.

        Q: So he approved this action memorandum, and then it 
        would go to Charlene Lamb. Is that correct?

        A: It went to I know it was in I don't know where it 
        went in between. Probably to her staff assistants or 
        the deputy prior to her. But it definitely made it to 
        her because that's who we had the meeting with.

        Q: And how long was it up there before the meeting?

        A: I think the memo actually didn't get sent up until 
        after the incident with the UK protective detail, so it 
        was probably mid-June, June 15th, I believe, the date 
        on the memo. So I think it was late that week. Maybe 
        June 18th. I can't recall it specifically.\125\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \125\Id.

    Concerned about the impending loss of security personnel 
and the deteriorating security environment in Tripoli and in 
Benghazi, the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli sent a staffing request 
to Washington D.C.\126\ The July 9, 2012 staffing request 
included a request for a minimum of four additional Diplomatic 
Security Agents for the Benghazi Mission--which would be 
comprised of at least one permanently assigned Diplomatic 
Security Agent from the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, as well as a 
minimum of three temporary duty Diplomatic Security Agents 
identified by Washington D.C. The Diplomatic Security Agent in 
charge in Benghazi in July explained his reasoning for the 
request.\127\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \126\U.S. Dep't of State, Cable, Request for Extension of TDY 
Security Personnel (July 9, 2012) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB0049439).
    \127\Testimony Diplomatic Security Agent, Diplomatic Security 
Service, U.S. Dep't of State, at 78-79 (May 19, 2015) (on file with the 
Committee).

        With all the security situation on the ground going on 
        and putting everything in place, and all the transition 
        taking place in regards to American personnel leaving 
        and coming in, and after discussion with the RSO and 
        chief of Mission, this was a cable suggesting at that 
        time this is what we need to maintain operations in the 
        best safe manner as soon as possible. We wrote this 
        cable on July 9, prior to the Ambassador leaving for 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Benghazi.

        At that time, MSD personnel were, when we started off 
        with two teams; now there was less teams on the ground. 
        Actually, I don't believe there was any MSD team on the 
        ground. There was just TDYers and two permanent ARSOs 
        on the ground. This is in July. I'm sorry. I'm confused 
        on the dates. Not September. This is July 9. So, at 
        this time, we had another ARSO on the ground that was 
        permanent and myself and the RSO.

                              *    *    *

        So we wrote this in July because all these elements 
        were leaving. MSD was leaving. The SST team was 
        leaving, or they were going to change their Mission 
        from being in the Embassy to being outside of the 
        Embassy so they could train the Libyan government 
        military. So we came up with this as a suggestion, for 
        example, in line 4, or paragraph 4, under the current 
        arrangement, and this was the main one, 34 U.S. 
        security personnel, the 16 SSTs, the 11 MSD, the 2 RSOs 
        and 3 TDY RSOs, that was the number that we had there, 
        and it was going to drawn down to 27. And we said: 
        Wait, we're basically losing people. We need people, 
        specifically because security is not in the best 
        position now.

        We requested weapons permits and weapons for the local 
        ambassador bodyguard detail, and funding for security. 
        Yes, and this was the cable that we sent out in 
        concurrence with the Ambassador?\128\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \128\Id. at 79.

        Again, going based on the numbers of agents that were 
        going to Benghazi while we were averaging one, two, or 
        three, and we never actually had five, we're 
        suggesting: Hey, international programs, how about you 
        making sure that we always have three, and we're going 
        to put a permanent RSO on the ground, and that would 
        give us at least four if you cannot provide us with 
        enough TDYers to do the job. That's basically why we 
        went with that number. It was an average of the amount 
        of agents that we had at any time at that post.\129\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \129\Id. at 80.

    No response was received. Lamb explained the lack of 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
response to the Committee:

        So when I read this cable in this format, [redacted 
        text] wrote it as a reporting cable in paragraph 
        format, and it's very hard to line everything up by the 
        needs. So I asked the desk officer to have his . . . at 
        the time was the person working with [redacted text] 
        for them to get on a conference call and to go through 
        this cable, paragraph by paragraph, line by line, and 
        to switch this into the format that shows how many 
        people do you need for which activities, to support VIP 
        visits, movement security, static security, a quick 
        reaction force. Just tell me exactly what you need and 
        then the numbers will pop out the other side showing 
        what you need.

        And they sat down and they did this. And all of that 
        was compiled into the response that unfortunately never 
        went out. But my guidance to them was before that cable 
        went up to Scott Bultrowicz and Eric Boswell, I wanted 
        it to be pre approved at post, because I didn't want to 
        dictate to post their staffing needs, I wanted to 
        support them. But in this format, it was not clear 
        exact because they were coming up on the 1 year 
        transition when everybody was going to leave post and 
        the new team was going to come in, so I wanted it to be 
        laid out, very clear, the current operating support 
        that was being provided for security.\130\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \130\Lamb Testimony at 245-246.

    She further explained: ``And just because it didn't get 
sent out with a cable number on it, I am testifying to you that 
everything in that cable was followed through and carried 
out.''\131\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \131\Id. at 248.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Kennedy explained his involvement in the July 9, 2012 
staffing cable and the decision to terminate the Defense 
Department's SST protective responsibilities at the U.S. 
Embassy in Tripoli. He testified to the Committee: ``I 
consulted, as I said earlier, with the subject matter experts 
in this field, and after consulting with them, I responded no, 
we would not be asking for another extension.''\132\ This is a 
much different description of Kennedy's involvement than what 
Cheryl D. Mills, Chief of Staff and Counselor to the Secretary 
of State, described to the Committee. She described the Under 
Secretary as the person ``who managed security related 
issues.''\133\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \132\Kennedy Testimony at 46.
    \133\Testimony of Cheryl Mills, Chief of Staff and Counselor to the 
U.S. Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 72 (Sept. 2, 2015) (on 
file with the Committee).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Additional resources were never sent to Tripoli or 
Benghazi, despite the requests of the security professionals on 
the ground. Beginning in August, the number of security 
personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli was 34. By the end of 
August, the number of security personnel at Embassy Tripoli 
dropped to six Diplomatic Security Agents.\134\ In Benghazi, 
the number of Diplomatic Security Agents continued to 
fluctuate. By August, the desk officer responsible for staffing 
in Benghazi conveyed to the Regional Bureau ``DS has had no 
volunteers for Benghazi for the upcoming few months . . . DS's 
plan is to maintain 3 DS staff in Benghazi at all times by 
drawing on Tripoli's resources.''\135\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \134\Testimony of Gregory Hicks, Deputy Chief of Mission at U.S. 
Embassy Tripoli, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 13-14 (Apr. 11, 2013, U.S. 
House Committee on Oversight and Gov't Reform) (on file with the 
Committee); see also Cable from Embassy Tripoli to U.S. Dep't of State 
(Jul. 9, 2012) (on file with the Committee, SCB0049439).
    \135\Email from Deputy Dir. Office of Maghreb Affairs, U.S. Dep't 
of State (Aug. 27, 2012, 4:47PM) (on file with the Committee, 
C05394203).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    On September 1, 2012, a Diplomatic Security Agent, who was 
originally scheduled to serve at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, 
arrived at the Benghazi Mission to serve as the Diplomatic 
Security Agent in charge. With the addition from Tripoli in 
early September 2012, three Diplomatic Security Agents secured 
the Benghazi compound, including on the morning of September 
10, 2012 prior to Stevens' arrival.

                              APPENDIX G:

                    Timeline of Significant Events 
                           During the Attacks

Tuesday, September 11, 2012\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\Eastern Daylight Time (Washington, DC) and Eastern European Time 
(Benghazi) are used.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
EDT/EET

3:42 pm/9:42 pm--First attack on the Benghazi Mission compound 
    begins.

4:21 pm/10:21 pm--The White House Situation Room convenes a 
    meeting.

4:32 pm/10:32 pm--The National Military Command Center [NMCC] 
    at the Pentagon is notified of the attacks.

5:00 pm/11:00 pm--Secretary of Defense, Leon E. Panetta, and 
    Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin E. Dempsey, 
    meet with the President at the White House.

5:10 pm/11:10 pm--The first Drone arrives in Benghazi.

5:23 pm/11:23 pm--All State Department personnel evacuate to 
    the Benghazi CIA Annex. Ambassador Christopher Stevens is 
    unaccounted for.

5:38 pm/11:38 pm--The Secretary of State calls David H. 
    Petraeus, Director, Central Intelligence Agency.

6:00 pm/12:00 am--The Secretary of Defense convenes a meeting 
    at the Pentagon.

6:49 pm/12:49 am--The Secretary of State calls the Libyan 
    President.

6:58 pm/12:58 am--Gregory Hicks, Deputy Chief of Mission, 
    Tripoli, reports another mob gathering at Annex.

7:05 pm/1:05 am--The Secretary of State holds a conference call 
    with Cheryl Mills, Chief of Staff, State Department, 
    Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Secretary for Management, State 
    Department, Gregory Hicks, Deputy Chief of Mission, Libya, 
    Stephen Mull, Executive Secretariat, State Department, 
    Thomas Nides, Deputy Secretary for Management and 
    Resources, Jacob Sullivan, Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy 
    and Director, Office of Policy Planning.

7:19 pm/1:19 am--Jeremy Bash, Chief of Staff, Department of 
    Defense emails potential response forces to Jacob Sullivan, 
    Cheryl Mills, and others.

7:30 pm/1:30 am--Team Tripoli arrives at the airport in 
    Benghazi.

7:30 pm/1:30 am--The White House convenes a meeting via secured 
    teleconference video with representatives from the State 
    Department, the Defense Department, and the intelligence 
    community on the U.S. response to the attacks in Benghazi.

7:40 pm/1:40 am--The Embassy in Tripoli receives a call from a 
    missing Diplomatic Security Agent phone about an American 
    at the hospital.

8:30 pm/2:30 am--NMCC holds a conference call with AFRICOM, 
    EUCOM, CENTCOM, TRANSCOM and the four services about the 
    military response to Benghazi.

8:39 pm/2:39 am--The NMCC conveys authorization to the FAST to 
    prepare to deploy and the CIF to move to an intermediate 
    staging base.

8:53pm/2:53 am--The NMCC conveys formal authorization to deploy 
    the U.S. Based Special Operations Force to an intermediate 
    staging base.

9:57 pm/3:57 am--Bash emails Sullivan and asks, ``Any word from 
    the hospital?''

10:27 pm/4:27 am--The President calls the Secretary of State.

10:34 pm/4:34 am--The Diplomatic Security Command Center at the 
    State Department issues an update that Libyans have 
    confirmed Stevens is in a hospital and has been killed.

10:39 pm/4:39 am--Kennedy sends a photo of Stevens from Twitter 
    to Mills.

11:00 pm/5:00 am--The established N-hour.

11:05 pm/5:05 am--Team Tripoli arrives at the Annex in 
    Benghazi.

11:17 pm/5:17 am--The first mortar hits the Annex in Benghazi.

11:38 pm/5:38 am--The Secretary of State emails: ``Cheryl told 
    me the Libyans confirmed his death.''

11:41 pm/5:41 am--Diplomatic Security Command Center reports 
    mortar fire at the annex and new injuries to the American 
    personnel.

11:45 pm/5:45 am--A McDonough email notes the Secretary of 
    Defense called Pastor Jones.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

12:05 am/6:05 am--AFRICOM orders a C-17 aircraft to prepare to 
    deploy to Libya.

12:12 am/6:12 am--Mills informs McDonough ``we're pulling 
    everyone out of Benghazi.''

1:00 am/7:00 am--The CIF is ready to deploy

1:19 am/7:19 am--Admiral James Winnefeld, Vice Chairman of the 
    Joint Chiefs of Staff, emails we ``now have dip clearance 
    for FAST platoon to Tripoli . . .''

1:31 am/7:31 am--The first plane leaves from the Benghazi 
    airport with the survivors en route to Tripoli.

1:40 am/7:40 am--Winnefeld sends another email: ``first 
    airplane departs Ramstein at 0600z [2:00 am/8:00 am]''

2:25 am/8:25 am--Steven's death is confirmed when the security 
    officers from CIA and the State Department receives his 
    body.

 4:00 am/10:00 am--The second plane provided by the Libyan Air 
    Force departs with all remaining U.S. personnel in Benghazi 
    for Tripoli.

 6:00 am/12:00 pm--A C-130 aircraft arrives at Rota Spain to 
    transport the FAST to Tripoli.

 7:00 am/1:00 pm--The FAST completes loading the C-130 
    aircraft and is ready to depart.

8:15 am/2:15 pm--The C-17 aircraft departs Germany to Tripoli 
    to evacuate Americans.

 10:00 am/4:00 pm--The FAST departs Rota Spain en route to 
    Tripoli.

 10:00 am/4:00 pm--The CIF's C-130 aircrafts arrive at the 
    airport.

 11:00 am/5:00 pm--The CIF departs en route to the 
    intermediate staging base.

 2:00 pm/8:00 pm--CIF arrives at an intermediate staging base.

2:56 pm/8:56 pm--FAST platoon arrives in Tripoli.

3:28 pm/9:28 pm--The Special Operations Force deployed from the 
    U.S. arrives at the intermediate staging base.

4:19 pm/10:19 pm--The C-17 aircraft with Americans evacuated 
    from Tripoli arrives in Germany.
    The following timeline, the ``Comprehensive Timeline of 
Events--Benghazi,'' provides further detail about the events 
that occurred during the attack. This is a timeline of events 
compiled by the State Department using information obtained 
from the DVR footage of the Benghazi Mission compound and the 
Annex, as well as interviews, and logs maintained at the 
Tactical Operations Center at the Embassy in Tripoli and at the 
Diplomatic Security Command Center.
    The Committee makes this timeline available to the public 
with the following corrections:

     LTime stamp 0503.00: The ``unidentified LN 
Motorcade'' was not February 17 Martyrs Brigade. It was the 
Libya Shield.

     LTime stamp 0614.00: The motorcade that arrived 
was the Libyan Military Intelligence.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

    The following timeline, the ``Timeline of Department of 
Defense Actions September 11-12, 2012,'' provides further 
detail about the Defense Department actions that occurred 
during the attack. This is a timeline of events compiled by the 
Defense Department. The timeline does not disclose when the 
forces were ready to deploy or when those forces actually 
moved.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]


                              APPENDIX H:

                   The September 12 Situation Report 
                    and the President's Daily Brief

    The very first written piece produced by CIA analysts 
regarding the Benghazi attacks was an overnight Situation 
Report written very early in the morning on September 12, 2012. 
This piece included the line ``the presence of armed assailants 
from the outset suggests this was an intentional assault and 
not the escalation of a peaceful protest.'' While that line was 
correct--the attacks were an intentional assault and not the 
escalation of a peaceful protest--Michael Morell, Deputy 
Director, Central Intelligence Agency, noted it was a ``crucial 
error that [came] back to haunt [the CIA].''\1\ This was an 
error, according to Morell, because that line was not written 
by analysts but rather a ``senior editor'' who ``believed there 
needed to be some sort of bottom line'' in the piece.\2\ Morell 
labeled it a ``bureaucratic screw-up'' and claims that since 
similar language did not appear in the CIA assessment the 
following day, September 13, it was evidence to critics that 
``the intelligence community was politicizing the 
analysis.''\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\Michael Morell, The Great War Of Our Time: The CIA's Fight 
Against Terrorism--From Al-Qa'ida to ISIS 217 (2015) [hereinafter 
Morell].
    \2\Testimony of Michael Morell, Deputy Dir., Central Intelligence 
Agency, Tr. at 25 (Sept. 28, 2015) [hereinafter Morell Testimony] (on 
file with the Committee).
    \3\Morell, supra note 1, at 218.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Though Morell learned this information second-hand\4\ and 
put it in his book, the Select Committee spoke directly to 
individuals with first-hand accounting of the events. In 
reality, the ``senior editor'' was the Executive Coordinator of 
the Presidential Daily Brief; she included the language about 
the intentional assault and not the escalation of a peaceful 
protest; and this ``bureaucratic screw-up'' resulted in this 
individual taking the piece to the White House, presenting it 
to Jacob Lew, Chief of Staff to the President, and delivering 
it to an usher to give to the President.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \4\Morell Testimony at 28.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                       Insertion of the Language

    The Executive Coordinator described to the Committee when 
she first saw the September 12 update:

        A: So the analysts came in to brief me--I don't 
        remember what time that was, but my guess is probably 
        somewhere between 3 and 4. And the piece that he gave 
        to me was much longer than this.

        And we had a difference of opinion on one piece of the 
        intelligence. He believed that this was a spontaneous 
        event and was not open to the idea that it wasn't a 
        spontaneous event. And I disagreed because, you know, I 
        had 20 years of Army experience. You know, this is the 
        military person in me. And I said, I just can't buy 
        that something that's, you know, this coordinated, this 
        organized, and this sophisticated was something that 
        they just, you know, did on, you know, the spur of the 
        moment. I said, we have to consider the fact that that 
        might not be the case.

        He had a lot of good arguments. You know, it was the 
        anniversary of 9/11, there was the video in Cairo, 
        there were a number of other things happening that, you 
        know, would seem to suggest that it was spontaneous. 
        But just being military and seeing, you know, what we 
        were seeing in the traffic, I was like, I don't think 
        that this is--I don't think we can discount the 
        possibility that this was a, you know, coordinated, 
        organized, preplanned attack.

        Q: When you say when you were seeing what you were 
        seeing in the traffic, what does that mean?

        A: So the things they were talking about, how organized 
        that it was, in the press reporting. There was a lot of 
        press that was coming back and talking about, you know, 
        like, how they were breaching and, you know, like, how 
        it was sort of phased, right? It was coming across to 
        me, reading, you know, the open press at the time, that 
        this was a phased attack. And I would be very surprised 
        if a phased attack was something that was just, all of 
        a sudden, you know, ``Hey, guess what? Let's go have an 
        attack today because these other things are 
        happening.'' I don't think that--that just didn't make 
        sense to me.\5\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \5\Testimony of the President's Daily Briefer, Office of Dir. of 
Nat'l Intelligence, Tr. at 24-26 (Apr. 29, 2016) [hereinafter PDB 
Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

    While the analyst believed it was a spontaneous event, 
given her experience the Executive Coordinator believed the 
piece needed to leave open the possibility that something else 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
occurred other than a spontaneous event. She testified:

        Q: You said there was a disagreement between you and 
        the analyst. A piece came in; it was lengthy. You 
        wanted to cut it down because that's what you normally 
        do. Can you describe a little bit more about the 
        disagreement that you had?

        A: Well, that was really it. Like, he was pretty 
        convinced that this was a spontaneous attack, that it 
        was, you know, as a result of this confluence of 
        events--the 9/11 anniversary, the video being released, 
        the protest in Cairo. [redacted text].

        And, to me, that wasn't enough. I was like--like I 
        said, just my gut feeling. I said, we need to leave the 
        door open for the possibility that it might not have 
        been spontaneous.\6\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \6\Id. at 28.

    The manager of the analysts testified that her analysts did 
not agree with this approach and that the disagreement with the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Executive Coordinator became hostile:

        The POTUS coordinator, according to my two analysts, 
        who I trust and continue to trust, was that they got 
        into an argument, which is highly unusual, with the 
        POTUS coordinator, that was actually quite hostile. And 
        she insisted that based on her personal experience of 
        15 or however many years as a captain in the Air 
        National Guard, that there was no way that was true.\7\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \7\Testimony of [redacted text] Team Chief, Office of Terrorism 
Analysis, Central Intelligence Agency, Tr. at 32 (Feb. 10, 2016) 
[hereinafter [redacted text] Team Chief Testimony].

    According to the manager of the analysts, none of her 
analysts believed the sentence regarding an intentional assault 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
should have been included. The manager testified:

        A: And so the POTUS coordinator inserted this sentence 
        because she felt strongly that it was an intentional 
        assault against our consulate.

        Q: And----

        A: But there was no--nothing to base that on, no 
        reporting.

        Q: And that view is the view of that single editor. Is 
        that right?

        A: Yes.

        Q: Was there anyone--any of the analysts on your team 
        that thought that sentence should have been included?

        A: No.

        Q: And the reason your team and your analysts felt so 
        strongly was because there was no reporting to support 
        that. Is that correct?

        A: Correct. We just--you can't make a call without an 
        evidentiary base to support it.\8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \8\Id. at 100-101.

    However, without solid evidence pointing in either 
direction--spontaneous or not--the Executive Coordinator was 
sure to be careful with her language. She merely wanted to 
leave open the possibility that it was an intentional assault 
and the language she chose reflected that possibility--not a 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
conclusion. She told the Committee:

        Q: --your choice of the word ``suggests,'' is that to 
        couch it----

        A: Yes.

        Q: --to say that this may have happened, as opposed to 
        it definitively happened?

        A: Correct.

        Q: Okay. And was that a deliberate ----

        A: It was leaving the door open that this is what it 
        suggests, but that doesn't mean this is what it is.\9\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \9\PDB Testimony at 37.

    The analysts and the Executive Coordinator were not able to 
reach a consensus on the language in the piece. The analysts, 
who went up to the 7th Floor of the CIA headquarters to brief 
the Executive Coordinator on the piece, returned to their 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
desks. The Executive Coordinator testified:

        Q: Okay. And was there a resolution between you and 
        him----

        A: Not really.

        Q: --on how to proceed?

        A: No.

        Q: No. Okay. So how did your conversation or 
        interactions with him end?

        A: I told him I would think about, you know, what he 
        had said. And I said, you know, I will to talk to 
        somebody.\10\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \10\Id. at 29.

    The Executive Coordinator, however, did not make the 
decision to include the language of an intentional assault on 
her own, and she did not do it in a vacuum based solely on her 
experience. Members of her staff, which numbered roughly 15, 
talked with individuals outside CIA headquarters about what was 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
going on. She told the Committee:

        Q: In terms of picking up the phone and calling anybody 
        outside of the building, is that something you did to 
        acquire information?

        A: We did. Yes.\11\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \11\Id. at 26.

    She also discussed the matter with another analyst who had 
expertise in regional issues. The Executive Coordinator 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
testified:

        We had--I was very lucky because we had another--we had 
        a MENA analyst that was a PDB briefer. She was the, I 
        want to say, the SecDef briefer. And so I went over and 
        I talked to her and I said, ``Hey, this is what the 
        analyst says. Here's my opinion. You know, what are 
        your thoughts, having covered this area, you know, 
        pretty extensively in your career?'' And she agreed 
        with me.

        We discussed it, we had a conversation about it and--
        you know. And so I made the decision to change the 
        wording to make sure that we at least addressed the 
        possibility that this was a planned attack.\12\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \12\Id. at 29.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    She also testified:

        A: There was a lot of discourse about this at the PDB. 
        I mean, the other PDB briefers and I, that's the only 
        resource I have at the time. And I never would make an 
        assessment all on my own and just be like, this is it. 
        I mean, we would do----

        Q: I understand.

        A: We talk about it, we're sounding boards for each 
        other. So there was a lot of discussion. And, yes, I'm 
        sure that the supervisor of the young man who wrote 
        this, we had that conversation. Like, are you sure that 
        this is what you want to say. And yes, when I wrote 
        this, I didn't feel like I was saying you're wrong and 
        I'm right. All I was trying to do was say, look, we 
        need to leave the door open in case this is not a 
        spontaneous attack. We want to be able to wait until 
        there's more information, and so that's why I use the 
        word ``suggests.'' I didn't say this is an intentional 
        assault. It suggests that it is.

    The manager of the analysts who disagreed with the 
Executive Coordinator, however, concedes that the Executive 
Coordinator was right with her analysis. She testified:

        Q: And she was right?

        A: In the event, yes, she was right.\13\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \13\Testimony of Dir. of the Office of Terrorism Analysis, Central 
Intelligence Agency, Tr. at 23 (Nov. 13, 2015) [hereinafter OTA 
Director Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

    Similarly, Michael Morell concedes the sentence was 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
accurate. He testified:

        Q: So the sentence ended up being accurate?

        A: Yeah. Absolutely.\14\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \14\Morell Testimony at 25.

                      The President's Daily Brief

    When the Executive Coordinator finished inserting the 
accurate sentence regarding the ``intentional assault and not 
the escalation of a peaceful protest'' into the September 12 
piece, she put it into the ``book'' she prepared each day for 
the President and his Chief of Staff.\15\ This ``book'' is 
otherwise known as the President's Daily Brief, or the PDB.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \15\PDB Testimony at 41.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Normally, upon completion of the PDB, the Executive 
Coordinator would travel to the White House, brief the Chief of 
Staff, and if the President required a briefing, she would 
brief the President. She testified:

        So during the weeks that I produced the PDB, I would 
        produce it, and then they would drive me to the White 
        House, and I would produce--or I would brief Jack Lew 
        first, who was the Chief of Staff. And if the President 
        required a brief during that day or chose to take a 
        brief, then I would give him a brief, and if not, then 
        his briefer--then the DNI would brief him.

        When we were on travel, I always briefed the President. 
        That was my responsibility whenever we would fly.\16\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \16\Id. at 6.

    On September 12, 2012, the morning after the Benghazi 
attacks, the Executive Coordinator--the individual presenting 
the President with his Presidential Daily Brief--traveled to 
the White House. That day, however, she did not present the PDB 
to the President.\17\ Instead, she gave it to an usher. She 
testified she presented the PDB--with the accurate sentence 
regarding the ``intentional assault and not the escalation of a 
peaceful protest''--to Lew:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \17\Id. at 41.

        A: So it depends. If we're traveling, then I present it 
        to the President personally. And if he has questions--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        usually the only questions he usually asks----

        Lawyer. We're not going to talk about what the 
        President said or your conversations with him.

        A: Okay. So if we're in town and we're not traveling 
        then I bring it to the White House, and I personally 
        brief Jack Lew. And I hand the President's book to the 
        usher, and the usher presents it to the President.

        Q: So normally in Washington, when you're here in town, 
        you're not sitting across from the President, him 
        looking at the book, and he may be asking you 
        questions?

        A: No.

        Q: How did it happen on the 12th that day?

        A: I was here. So we were not traveling yet. We were in 
        D.C. So I would have--I had a driver, and the driver 
        drives me to the White House. I drop off the book first 
        with the usher and then I go down and I brief Jack Lew.

        Q: Okay. And what time was that on the 12th?

        A: So we always arrive by 7:00, and so it would've been 
        around 7:00. I mean, I'm assuming around 7:00.

        Q: So that day at 7:00, the booklet that has been put 
        together, you take it to the White House, you visit 
        with Jack Lew and then someone walked it into----

        A: No. First we give the brief to the usher. So my 
        driver drops me off at the front gate. I go through----

        Q: You actually physically hand the document--or the 
        material.

        A: Yeah, I physically hand the material to the usher 
        and then I walk back down with my briefcase and go see 
        Jack Lew and wait for him and then I brief him.

        Q: Okay. And with Mr. Lew, did you talk about this 
        SITREP?

        Lawyer: We're not going to discuss what specific 
        information was provided to any White House staff in 
        any PDB.

        Q: But you did talk with Mr. Lew that day?

        A: I did.\18\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \18\Id. at 66-67.

                                Fallout

    Morell labeled the insertion of the language by the 
Executive Coordinator a ``bureaucratic screw-up.'' This 
language made it into a piece that was put in the President's 
Daily Brief, which was briefed to Lew, and possibly shared with 
the President. Such a ``bureaucratic screw-up,'' therefore, has 
far reaching implications if it occurs with any regularity.
    Michael Morell told the Committee that what occurred was a 
``big no-no.'' He testified:

        She was, I'm told, a long-time military analyst with 
        some expertise in military matters, no expertise in 
        North Africa and no expertise in this particular 
        incident. She added that, right? That's a no-no, that's 
        a no-no in the review process business.\19\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \19\Morell Testimony at 25.

    The manager of the analysts who disagreed with the 
Executive Coordinator called what occurred an analytic 
``cardinal sin.'' She testified:
    What she did was, frankly, in the analytic world, kind of a 
cardinal sin. I mean, the job of the POTUS coordinator--so we 
had the two analysts stay overnight. Their job is to copy edit 
these things and make sure that if there is some analysis in 
there, that the evidentiary techs sort of hang together; that 
it actually makes sense because it does go to the--it's a big 
deal. I mean, it goes to very senior policymakers. So----\20\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \20\[Redacted text] Team Chief Testimony at 30-31.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The OTA Director also said that what occurred was a 
problem:

        Q: Okay. Is that a problem that the senior DNI editor 
        had the final sign-off on this as opposed to the 
        analysts, and that person is inserting something in 
        there that the analysts adamantly disagree with?

        A: In my personal view, yes.\21\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \21\OTA Director Testimony at 43.

    Despite this ``bureaucratic screw-up''--which occurred in 
relation to the Benghazi attacks, one of the few, if only, 
times in history outside scrutiny has ever been applied to the 
PDB process--Morell and others at the CIA told the Committee 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
this occurs infrequently. Morell testified:

        Q: So from my perspective, I'm very new to this arena, 
        it seems like it's a problem that you have these 
        rigorous processes in place, and on this particular 
        occasion a piece is going before the President and 
        somebody inserts a sentence that substantively changes 
        the meaning of a bullet point without any additional 
        review by the analysts who wrote the piece.

        A: Yes. You're absolutely right.

        Q: That's a problem in your eyes as well?

        A: Yes.

        Q: And how often does something like that occur?

        A: Not very. You know, in my experience, once or twice 
        a year.\22\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \22\Morell Testimony at 25-26.

    The manager of the analysts who disagreed with the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Executive Coordinator testified:

        Q: Is that something that in your 8 years prior you had 
        ever seen or heard of happening?

        A: No.\23\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \23\[Redacted text] Team Chief Testimony at 30-31.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    She also testified:

        A: Oh, I'm sure I did, yeah. I mean, it was unheard of 
        and it hasn't happened since.

        Q: Okay.

        A: It's a big deal.\24\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \24\[Redacted text] Team Chief Testimony at 35-36.

    Morell, himself once the head of the PDB staff, told the 
Committee how he would have responded if a senior editor had 
made such a substantive edit over the objections of the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
analysts:

        A: And this--you know, I ran--I've ran the PDB staff, 
        right, as part of the jobs I had. I would have 
        reprimanded, orally reprimanded, not in a formal sense, 
        right----

        Q: Sure.

        A: --called this person in my office and said, you 
        know, what happened? And if it turned out to be exactly 
        what I just explained to you, I would have said, don't 
        ever do that again.\25\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \25\Morell Testimony at 26.

    Morell also suggested how to ensure such a ``bureaucratic 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
screw-up'' doesn't happen in the future. He told the Committee:

        Q: Is there any way to prevent these types of 
        insertions by senior reviewers in the future?

        A: Well, I said, it doesn't happen very often, right.

        Q: But it happened in this case, though.

        A: So it's not a huge problem, right, it doesn't happen 
        very often. The way you prevent it is twofold, right? 
        You make it very clear when somebody shows up to the 
        PDB staff what their responsibilities are and what 
        their responsibilities are not, you're not the analyst. 
        And, two, when something--when something does happen, 
        even something very minor, right, you make it very 
        clear then that they overstepped their bounds. That's 
        how you prevent it.\26\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \26\Id. at 27.

    The Executive Coordinator, however, has a different point 
of view than Morell, the OTA Director, and the manager of the 
analysts. She did not view this as a ``bureaucratic screw-up'' 
at all, but rather exactly the job she was supposed to be 
doing. She acknowledged the disagreement with the analysts the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
night of the Benghazi attacks, testifying:

        Q: Okay. And I know we talked about it, but how 
        unusual, I guess, was this disagreement, this type of 
        disagreement?

        A: It was pretty unusual. Most of the time, we were 
        able to, you know, just sort of agree on language, and 
        they'll gave you a face like, ``Okay,'' they'll roll 
        their eyes, they'll be like, ``All right, you know, 
        that's not as strong of language as I would like.'' 
        But, you know, a lot of times, you know, we soften the 
        language because we just don't know for sure. So, you 
        know, we'll change from, you know, ``believe with high 
        confidence'' to--I'm like, do you really believe with 
        high confidence, or do you really think that's maybe 
        medium confidence?

        And I sort of saw my role as, you know, like, a mentor 
        because I'd been in intelligence for 20 years. So a lot 
        of times, you know, I would tell the analysts, you 
        know, this is good tradecraft, but it will be better 
        analysis if you take into consideration these things 
        which you may or may not have considered.\27\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \27\PDB Testimony at 38.

    However, the fact that she inserted language into the piece 
was not a ``no-no'' or a ``cardinal sin,'' but rather something 
that was ultimately her decision, not the analysts'. This 
directly contradicts what Morell said about the Executive 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Coordinator overstepping her bounds. She testified:

        But I do know that, you know, when I talked to [senior 
        CIA official], you know, in the interview process and 
        also, you know, subsequent to that, he basically said 
        that you're the PDB briefer, you are the last, you 
        know, line of defense and, you know, it's your call. So 
        if there's something in there that, you know, bothers 
        you, you know, coordinate it out, and then if you can't 
        come to an agreement, it's your, you know, 
        responsibility. So I did not take that lightly.\28\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \28\Id. at 31.

    Since it was a responsibility she did not take lightly, she 
only modified such language when there was ample evidence to 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
support it. She told the Committee:

        But yes. I mean, we don't--I rarely ever--in fact, I 
        can't remember any time that I've ever made, you know, 
        a call just based on press reporting, so I'm sure there 
        was other intelligence.\29\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \29\Id. at 26.

    Perhaps as a result of the direction she was given during 
her interview, the Executive Coordinator experienced no fallout 
or reprimand as a result of her actions the night of the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benghazi attacks. She testified:

        Q: Okay. Were you told by anybody never to do that 
        again?

        A: No.

        Q: Okay. Were you told by anybody that what you did was 
        a big no-no?

        A: No.\30\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \30\Id. at 44.

    As a matter of fact, she and her PDB colleagues agreed that 
her actions--inserting the language about the intentional 
assault and not the escalation of a peaceful protest--were the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
right call. She testified:

        Q: Okay. So you said you have a roundtable. I mean, who 
        is comprised, just roughly, of that roundtable?

        A: So it's all the PDB briefers. Some weren't there 
        because a lot of times their principals, like, keep 
        them there or, you know, they don't get back in time. 
        But also it's whoever--it'll be either [CIA individual] 
        or [State Department individual] or [DIA individual] 
        that's leading it.

        Q: So I just want to make sure I understand your 
        testimony correctly. You were told by someone at the 
        roundtable that the analysts were upset, but you say 
        that's too harsh a word----

        A: Yeah.

        Q: --for lack of a better word.

        A: I can't think of a better--it was somewhere in 
        between, like, upset and----

        Q: Sure. Sure.

        A: Yeah.

        Q: There was discussion. It seemed to be--the consensus 
        was that it was the right call.

        A: Yes.

        Q: Okay. The consensus by those at the roundtable.

        A: At the roundtable, yes.\31\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \31\Id. at 43-44.

    One of the briefers at the roundtable was an analyst who 
came from the Middle East and North African desk at the CIA, 
and was a colleague of the analysts who disagreed with the 
Executive Coordinator the night of the attack.\32\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \32\Id. at 42.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The testimony received by the Committee on this topic 
presents a dichotomy between two parties. On the one hand, CIA 
personnel present a picture that what occurred was a major 
error and breach of protocol. On the other hand, the Executive 
Coordinator, who works for ODNI, testified she was told when 
she took the job that she had the final call on language in 
analytic pieces, though changing substantive language was 
something exercised judiciously. Since the Benghazi attacks, 
the analysts have been instructed to stay with the PDB editors 
until the final piece is with the ODNI official.\33\ Given how 
the situation unfolded early in the morning of September 12, 
2012, it is unclear how this new guidance would have altered 
that particular outcome.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \33\OTA Director Testimony at 43.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Two of the first pieces produced by the CIA analysts in the 
wake of the Benghazi attacks contained errors either in process 
or substance. Both of these pieces became part of the 
President's Daily Brief. While the Committee only examined 
intelligence pieces regarding the Benghazi attacks, discovering 
errors in two pieces--on successive days, on one single topic--
that became part of the President's Daily Brief is extremely 
problematic for what should be an airtight process. Whether 
these errors are simply a coincidence or part of a larger 
systemic issue is unknown. The September 12 piece, along with 
the egregious editing and sourcing errors surrounding the 
September 13 WIRe, discussed in detail above, raise major 
analytic tradecraft issues that require serious examination but 
are beyond the purview of this Committee.

                              APPENDIX I:

                 Witnesses Interviewed by the Committee

                       State Department Officials

                       DIPLOMATIC SECURITY AGENTS

    Of the more than 50 agents who served temporary assignments 
of approximately 30-45 days in Benghazi, 19 were 
interviewed.\1\ Of this 19, four were agents who survived the 
attacks on September 11, 2012, and who had not been previously 
interviewed by any committee of Congress. The fifth survivor 
had been interviewed previously by the House Committee on 
Oversight and Government Reform.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\Out of security and privacy concerns, the Committee has not used 
the names of certain executive employees, and has, instead, used the 
person's title or some other descriptor to identify the person. For 
example, given security concerns facing Diplomatic Security agents who 
serve around the world--often in dangerous places--the Committee 
assigned numbers to these agents. Throughout the report, and in this 
appendix, the Committee listed the person's title or position held 
during the relevant time period.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The five agents from Diplomatic Security who were in 
Benghazi on the night of the attacks deserve the enduring 
gratitude of all Americans for their heroic efforts on the 
night of the attacks. The Committee commends their dedication 
to their country, the selflessness shown to their colleagues, 
and the bravery and astuteness they demonstrated during the 
attacks.
    Fifteen other agents interviewed by the Select Committee 
served in Benghazi between April 2011 and September 2012. Each 
agent served at different times and therefore was able to 
provide the Committee with insight on the continuing spectrum 
of security challenges faced in Benghazi during the 18 months 
the United States maintained a presence. The Committee notes 
that these agents, as well as those not interviewed, served in 
Benghazi under difficult circumstances. Their ability to 
protect U.S. government personnel under such circumstances is a 
testament to the commitment each has to this country and to 
their colleagues. They all deserve our thanks.
    Apart from those who served in Benghazi, the Committee 
interviewed other agents and employees of the Diplomatic 
Security Service. One agent was in the Diplomatic Security 
Command Center on the day of the attacks. Another agent 
coordinated staffing assignments for Benghazi, among other 
things. The Committee interviewed the former Deputy Assistant 
Secretary for International Programs who was involved in 
staffing the Benghazi Mission. The Committee also interviewed 
two persons who dealt with the physical security of the 
facilities, one was a physical security specialist and the 
other was the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Countermeasures in 
2011-2012.

Attack Survivors

Diplomatic Security Agent #3--Interviewed by the House 
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on October 8, 
2013: The fifth agent present in Benghazi on September 11, 
2012. This Special Agent joined Diplomatic Security in 2009 and 
his first permanent or long-term overseas assignment was as an 
Assistant Regional Security Officer to Embassy Tripoli. He 
arrived in Tripoli in June 2012 and on August 30, 2012, was 
sent to Benghazi to be the head agent, or Acting Regional 
Security Officer.

Diplomatic Security Agent #1--March 6, 2015: Joined Diplomatic 
Security as a Special Agent in 2011 after eight years in the 
U.S. military, where he specialized in explosives disposal. 
Arrived in Tripoli in mid-August 2012 for a 60 day assignment. 
Traveled with Stevens and another agent to Benghazi on 
September 10, 2012.

Diplomatic Security Agent #4--March 16, 2015: Joined Diplomatic 
Security as a Special Agent in 2010 after serving approximately 
five years in the Army. He arrived in Benghazi in early to mid-
August for a temporary assignment. He was on the roof at the 
Annex as the attacks continued and was severely injured by 
mortar fire.

Diplomatic Security Agent #2--March 19, 2015: Joined Diplomatic 
Security as a Special Agent in 2011 following seven-and-a-half 
years in the Army. Arrived in Tripoli in early August for a 
temporary assignment. Traveled with the Ambassador and another 
agent to Benghazi on September 10, 2012.

Diplomatic Security Agent #5--April 1, 2015: Joined Diplomatic 
Security as a Special Agent in 2011 following five years with 
the Navy, where he specialized in search and rescue operations. 
Arrived in Benghazi in early August for a temporary assignment. 
Secured the Ambassador and Sean Smith in the makeshift safe 
haven when the attacks began.

Other Agents Assigned in Benghazi

Diplomatic Security Agent #6--February 10, 2015: Headed the 
protective detail for Stevens when Stevens first went into 
Benghazi in April 2011. The agent met up with Stevens in Europe 
in mid-March and then traveled to Benghazi in early April and 
remained there until early May 2011.

Diplomatic Security Agent #9--February 12, 2015: Along with 
another agent, was sent to join the initial protective detail 
approximately two weeks after Stevens and his team arrived in 
Benghazi, bringing the number of agents in Stevens's protective 
detail up to 10.

Diplomatic Security Agent #27--February 19, 2015: Was the 
second agent sent to join the initial protective detail 
approximately two weeks after Stevens team arrived in Benghazi, 
bringing the number of agents in Steven's protective detail up 
to 10.

Diplomatic Security Agent #18--February 24, 2015: Joined 
Diplomatic Security in 1999 following ten years of prior 
military service. This agent was sent to Benghazi in late 
October 2011 for approximately 55 days to be the lead security 
agent.

Diplomatic Security Agent #7--February 26, 2015: A Special 
Agent since 1986, and in 2011 was the Director of the State 
Department's specialized tactical unit in Diplomatic Security, 
known as Mobile Security Deployment. This agent went to 
Benghazi in early May 2011 to take over as head of Stevens' 
protective detail, replacing the initial agent-in-charge. He 
was in Benghazi when the initial search for a State Department 
diplomatic and housing compound began.

Diplomatic Security Agent #15--March 12, 2015: Joined 
Diplomatic Security in 2001 and went to Benghazi in early 
January 2012 until mid-February. This agent was in Benghazi for 
the first anniversary of the revolution.

Diplomatic Security Agent #22--March 24, 2015: A Special Agent 
since 2012, he was in Benghazi from late May through the end of 
July 2012. He was present for the second attack against the 
compound wall, the attack against the British Ambassador, and 
the Libyan elections.

Diplomatic Security Agent #10--April 2, 2015: A Special Agent 
since 2009, this agent went to Benghazi for six weeks from late 
November 2011 through the end of the year. Before he left, 
there was a real concern that no agents would be in Benghazi in 
early January.

Diplomatic Security Agent #12--April 9, 2015: A Special Agent 
since 2006 following service in the Marine Corps. This agent 
was temporarily assigned in Benghazi from early February 
through March 2012.

Diplomatic Security Agent #16--April 13, 2015: Joined the 
Diplomatic Security Service in 2011 following both service in 
the Marine Corp and as a Special Agent with other federal law 
enforcement agencies. This agent was temporarily assigned to 
Benghazi from early March through mid-April 2012.

Diplomatic Security Agent #8--April 15, 2015: Special Agent 
with the Diplomatic Security who was in Benghazi from the end 
of July 2012 to the end of August 2012 as the Acting Regional 
Security Officer or lead agent.

Diplomatic Security Agent #21--May 19, 2015: A Special Agent 
with Diplomatic Security since 2003, was permanently assigned 
to Tripoli in summer 2012. In August 2012, he covered Benghazi 
for a short period of time and was back in Tripoli on the night 
of the attack.

Diplomatic Security Agent #13--May 21, 2015: A Special Agent 
since 1999 with former Marine Security Guard experience, was 
temporarily assigned to Benghazi from mid-September 2011 to 
late October. Initially he had 10 agents in his detail to 
protect Stevens and his staff.

Diplomatic Security Agent #17--August 21, 2015: A Special Agent 
since 1997, she was assigned to Benghazi as the lead agent from 
early April to the end of May 2012.

Diplomatic Security Agent #29--April 28, 2016: This agent was 
part of the initial eight-member protective detail for Stevens, 
arriving in Benghazi on April 5, 2011.

Headquarter Special Agents

Lamb, Charlene--January 7, 2016: Deputy Assistant Secretary for 
International Programs, Diplomatic Security. The International 
Programs section manages programs and policies that protect the 
Department of State's missions and personnel overseas.

Smith, Gentry--February 25, 2016: Deputy Assistant Secretary 
for Countermeasures, Diplomatic Security. The Countermeasures 
section is responsible for all the physical and technical 
security requirements for all U.S. diplomatic missions, both 
domestic and overseas, as well as manages the diplomatic 
courier operations for the State Department.

Physical Security Specialist--April 6, 2016: A Special Agent 
with Diplomatic Security until retirement in 2001, he returned 
to Diplomatic Security as a contractor working as a physical 
security specialist with agents assigned overseas, including 
Libya, on implementing physical security projects.

Diplomatic Security Agent #30--August 19, 2015: A Special Agent 
with Diplomatic Security since 2001, was assigned to the 
Diplomatic Security Command Center [DSCC] from 2011 through 
2013 as the senior watch officer. The DSCC operates around the 
clock to monitor and report threat information concerning all 
U.S. diplomatic facilities worldwide.

               PRINCIPAL OFFICERS WHO SERVED IN BENGHAZI

    Following the departure of Stevens from Benghazi in late 
November 2011, the State Department sent a series of Foreign 
Service officers to Benghazi to conduct outreach with the rebel 
leaders and report on the political, economic and security 
situation in the eastern portion of Libya. The Committee 
interviewed four of the six individuals who served as the 
``Principal Officer'' in Benghazi. Three who served the longest 
periods of time, ranging from 60-100 days, were interviewed. 
The fourth interviewed was in Benghazi for 13 days in early 
September 2012, and returned to Tripoli before the attacks.

Principal Officer #1--March 3, 2015: A Foreign Service officer 
since 1998, who was temporarily assigned to Benghazi from 
November 2011 to February 2012. Principal Officer #1 was the 
first principal officer assigned following the departure of 
Stevens from Benghazi.

Principal Officer #2--March 13, 2015: A Foreign Service officer 
since 2003 who was temporarily assigned to Benghazi from early 
March to mid-June 2012. This officer was present when an 
explosive was detonated at the compound wall and when there was 
an assassination attempt made against the British Ambassador. 
At times, the officer was protected by a single Diplomatic 
Security agent.

Principal Officer #3--March 26, 2015: A Foreign Service officer 
since 1991, he temporarily served as the Principal Officer in 
Benghazi from July through August 2012. He was present for the 
Libyan elections and then witnessed and reported on the 
declining security environment in Benghazi that followed.

Principal Officer #4--May 8, 2015: A Foreign Service officer 
since 2002, he went to Tripoli in June 2012 on a permanent 
assignment to be the political reporting officer. He served as 
the Principal Officer in Benghazi from September 1 through 
September 10, 2012, departing Benghazi on the morning of 
September 11. He returned to Tripoli and was present in the 
operations center during the attacks and following the attacks, 
met with the surviving agents.

                            EMBASSY TRIPOLI

Cretz, Gene--July 31, 2015: Ambassador to Libya from December 
2008 through May 2012. Returned to Washington, D.C., in 
December 2010 due to personal security concerns and returned to 
Libya in September 2011.

Polaschik, Joan--August 12, 2015: Deputy Chief of Mission for 
Libya from 2009 through mid-June 2012. With the departure of 
Ambassador Cretz in December 2010, she was the highest ranking 
Foreign Service officer in Libya, known as the Charge 
d'Affaires or Charge.

Hicks, Gregory--April 14, 2016: Deputy Chief of Mission for 
Libya, arriving in Libya on July 31, 2012.

                        ``MAIN STATE'' OFFICIALS

Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs

Feltman, Jeffrey--December 8, 2015: Assistant Secretary of 
State for Near Eastern Affairs from August 2009 until his 
retirement in May 2012. In February 2008, he was appointed the 
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Near 
Eastern Affairs and as of December 2008, served concurrently as 
Acting Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau.

Maxwell, Raymond--March 8, 2016: Deputy Assistant Secretary of 
State for Near Eastern Affairs, Office of the Maghreb Affairs. 
The Maghreb Affairs Office, known as NEA/MAG, covers foreign 
policy issues for the North Africa countries of Morocco, 
Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya.

Deputy Director, Office of Maghreb Affairs, Near Eastern 
Affairs Bureau--December 17, 2015: A Foreign Service officer 
since 1999, served as the Deputy Director for the Office of 
Maghreb Affairs within the Near Eastern Affairs Bureau, known 
as NEA/MAG, from 2011 to 2013. NEA/MAG was responsible for 
oversight and coordination of diplomatic activities of the U.S. 
Government within the countries in the region.

Senior Libyan Desk Officer, Office of Maghreb Affairs, Near 
Eastern Affairs Bureau--November 18, 2015: A career Foreign 
Service officer, served as the Senior Libya Desk officer in the 
Office of the Maghreb Affairs within the Near Eastern Affairs 
Bureau, known as NEA/MAG, from 2011 to 2014. NEA/MAG was 
responsible for diplomatic policy issues arising in the North 
Africa countries of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya.

Spokesperson, Near Eastern Affairs Bureau--October 9, 2015: A 
career Foreign Service officer who served as the spokesperson 
for the Near Eastern Affairs Bureau from 2011 to 2013.

Senior Advisor for Strategic Communications, Near Eastern 
Affairs Bureau--July 29, 2015: A career Foreign Service officer 
who, in 2012, served as deputy spokesperson for the Near 
Eastern Affairs Bureau and then transitioned in the Bureau to 
be the Senior Advisor for Strategic Communications.

Post Management Officer for Libya--July 23, 2015: From 2010 
through June 2012, was the Post Management Officer or 
logistical officer for Libya within the Executive Office in the 
Near Eastern Affairs Bureau, known as NEA/SCA/EX. From 2011 
through June 2012, this officer focused nearly exclusively on 
Libya matters. The Post Management Officer reports to the 
Executive Director or ``EX'' who is charged with overseeing all 
administrative and management activities for the bureau and for 
Foreign Service posts in the region and develops and executes 
programs for the bureau in support of substantive policy 
decisions.

U.S. Mission to the United Nations

DiCarlo, Rosemary--August 11, 2015: From 2008 until retirement 
in September 2014, held various positions for the State 
Department at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. The U.S. 
Mission to the United Nations [USUN] serves as the United 
States' delegation to the United Nations. At the time of the 
Benghazi attack, was the Deputy Permanent Representative (to 
Susan Rice), then the Permanent Representative to the USUN.

Ryu, Rexon--August 25, 2015: Deputy to the U.S. Ambassador to 
the United Nations, Susan Rice, and directed the Ambassador's 
Washington office at the State Department.

Pelton, Erin--February 11, 2016: At the time of the Benghazi 
attacks, was the communications director and spokesperson for 
the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, where 
she had been in that position less than two months. Immediately 
prior to this position, was director of communications and 
assistant press secretary for the National Security Council at 
the White House.

Speechwriters

Dan Schwerin--October 9, 2015: Speechwriter for the Secretary 
of State between 2009 and early 2013.

Megan Rooney--October 9, 2015: Speechwriter for the Secretary 
of State between 2009 and early 2013.
Records Management

Agency Records Officer--June 30, 2015: At the time of the 
interview was the Division Chief of the Records and Archives 
Management Division and was the designated agency records 
officer for the Department of State.

Director, Information Resource Management, Executive 
Secretariat, Office of the Secretary--June 30, 2015: Until his 
retirement in November 2012, was the Director of the Office of 
Information Resource Management within the Office of the 
Secretary's Executive Secretariat, where he oversaw the 
information technology division exclusively used by the Office 
of the Secretary and senior leaders within the State 
Department.

Pagliano, Bryan--September 5, 2015: From May 2009 to February 
2013, was a special advisor within the information technology 
section known as the Information Resource Management Bureau for 
bureaus and offices other than the Office of the Secretary. He 
continued to work as a contractor for the State Department 
until March 2016.

                              CONTRACTORS

Sterling Contractor #1--February 26, 2016: Worked for Sterling 
International (now Sterling Global Operations) in Libya on a 
weapons removal and abatement program for the State Department. 
Was in Benghazi on the night of the attacks.

Sterling Contractor #2--March 31, 2016: Worked for Sterling 
International (now Sterling Global Operations) in Libya on a 
weapons removal and abatement program for the State Department. 
Was in Benghazi on the night of the attacks.

Locally Employed Staff--March 22, 2016: Was a contract employee 
in Benghazi, Libya for the State Department.

                                 OTHER

Contracting Official--August 27, 2015: A procurement and 
contracting specialist at the State Department, who in May 2012 
began supporting Diplomatic Services and local guard programs. 
This official was involved in management of the contract with 
Blue Mountain Group for local guard service in Benghazi.

Managing Director, Office of Management Policy, Rightsizing and 
Innovation--March 4, 2016: Since 1997, has been with the Office 
of Management, Policy, Rightsizing and Innovation, an office 
that works directly for the Under Secretary for Management. 
Since 1999, has been assigned the duty of managing the 
Accountability Review Board [ARB] process. This official has 
worked on 11 ARBs, including the Benghazi ARB.

                             SENIOR LEADERS

Mills, Cheryl--September 3, 2015: Chief of Staff and Counselor 
to the Secretary of State from May 2009 until February 2013.

Sullivan, Jacob--September 4, 2015: Served as Deputy Chief of 
Staff for Policy for the Secretary of State beginning in 
January 2009 and also served as the Director of Policy Planning 
beginning in February 2011. He left the State Department and 
both positions in February 2013.

Abedin, Huma--October 16, 2015: Served as Deputy Chief of Staff 
for Operations for the Secretary of State from January 2009 
through February 2013.

Nides, Thomas--December 16, 2015: Joined the State Department 
in January 2011 to serve as the Deputy Secretary for Management 
and Resources, a position he held until February 2013. Similar 
to a chief operating officer, the Deputy Secretary for 
Management and Resources has overall responsibility for 
resource allocation and management activities at the State 
Department.

Rice, Susan--February 2, 2016: From January 2009 until July 
2013, served as the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United 
Nations and a member of the President's Cabinet. The U.S. 
Mission to the United Nations serves as the United States' 
delegation to the United Nations.

Kennedy, Patrick--February 3, 2016: Has been the Under 
Secretary for Management since 2007 and has been a career 
Foreign Service officer since 1973. The Under Secretary for 
Management is responsible for finances, budgets and 
contracting, resources (both personnel and facilities), 
logistics, and security for Department of State overseas and 
domestic operations.

                      OTHER COMMITTEES' ACTIVITIES

    The Select Committee also had available transcripts of 
hearings, briefings, and interviews from other committees, 
including interview transcripts from:

Bacigalupo, James--Regional Director, Bureau of Near Eastern 
Affairs, Bureau of Diplomatic Security

Boswell, Eric--Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic 
Security

Bultrowicz, Scott--Director, Diplomatic Security Service and 
Principal Deputy Secretary of State for the Bureau of 
Diplomatic Security

Dibble, Elizabeth--Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau 
of Near Eastern Affairs

Diplomatic Security Agent #3--Special Agent, Bureau of 
Diplomatic Security and Regional Security Officer in Benghazi, 
Libya

Diplomatic Security Agent #19--Special Agent, Bureau of 
Diplomatic Security who served temporarily in Benghazi

Diplomatic Security Agent #23--Special Agent, Bureau of 
Diplomatic Security and Regional Security Officer in Tripoli, 
Libya on the night of the attacks

Diplomatic Security Agent #24--Special Agent, Bureau of 
Diplomatic Security and former Regional Security Officer in 
Tripoli, Libya

Diplomatic Security Agent #25--Special Agent, Bureau of 
Diplomatic Security and Libya Desk Officer, International 
Programs, Bureau of Diplomatic Security

Hicks, Gregory--former Deputy Chief of Mission, Libya

Jones, Elizabeth--Acting Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Near 
Eastern Affairs

Lamb, Charlene--Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for 
International Programs, Bureau of Diplomatic Security

Lohman, Lee--Executive Director, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs

Maxwell, Raymond--Deputy Assistant Secretary for Maghreb 
Affairs, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs

Mullen, Michael (Adm.)--Vice Chairman, Benghazi Accountability 
Review Board

Nuland, Victoria--Spokesperson, Department of State

Pickering, Thomas--Chairman, Benghazi Accountability Review 
Board

Roebuck, William--Director, Office of Maghreb Affairs, Bureau 
of Near Eastern Affairs

Special Assistant to Under Secretary Patrick Kennedy

Sullivan, Jacob--Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Director, 
Office of Policy Planning

                    Intelligence Community Officials

CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY--to be inserted following 
classification review

Headquarters

Petraeus, David--January 6, 2016, and March 19, 2016: Director 
of the Central Intelligence Agency from September 2011 to 
November 2012. At the time of the attacks, the CIA had 
personnel in Benghazi and Tripoli. The CIA's Annex facility in 
Benghazi was attacked on September 11-12, 2012, following the 
attack on the State Department facility.

Morell, Michael--September 28, 2015: Joined the Central 
Intelligence Agency in 1980 and was its Deputy Director from 
May 2010 to August 2013. At the time of the attacks, the CIA 
had personnel in Benghazi and Tripoli. The CIA's Annex facility 
in Benghazi was attacked on September 11-12, 2012, following 
the attack on the State Department facility. Deputy Director 
Morell edited the highly criticized talking points that were 
developed after the attacks.

Director, Office of Terrorism Analysis--November 13, 2015: The 
Office of Terrorism Analysis, part of the CIA's 
Counterterrorism Center, develops and disseminates analytical 
pieces regarding known and suspected terrorist acts and actors. 
OTA developed and disseminated analytical reports immediately 
after the Benghazi attacks.

Chief of Operations, Near East Division--December 10, 2015: 
Head of the CIA's headquarter coordination and support office 
for operations in the Middle East and Africa, which included 
Libya.

Team Chief, Office of Terrorism Analysis--February 10, 2016: 
Leader of the team that produced analytical pieces. Was 
involved in the Benghazi post-attack analytical reporting.

Benghazi

GRS #1--May 22, 2015: A member of the Global Response Staff 
[GRS] who responded to the State Department facility when it 
was attacked and was present when the Annex facility was 
attacked.

GRS #2--May 27, 2015: A member of the GRS who was present when 
the Annex facility was attacked.

GRS #3--May 29, 2015: A member of the GRS who responded to the 
State Department facility when it was attacked and was present 
when the Annex facility was attacked.

GRS #4--March 1, 2016: A member of the GRS who responded to the 
State Department facility when it was attacked and was present 
when the Annex facility was attacked.

GRS #5--May 24, 2016: A member of the GRS who responded to the 
State Department facility when it was attacked and was present 
when the Annex facility was attacked.

GRS-Team Lead--April 19, 2016: The leader of the Benghazi 
Global Response Staff [GRS] who responded to the State 
Department facility when it was attacked and was present when 
the Annex facility was attacked.

Chief of Base--November 19, 2015: The head of the U.S.-based 
intelligence group at Benghazi Base who was present for the 
attacks on September 11-12, 2012.

Deputy Chief of Base--June 4, 2015: The second-in-command of 
the U.S.-based intelligence group at Benghazi Base and was 
present for the attacks on September 11-12, 2012.

Officer A--March 2, 2016: Part of the U.S.-based intelligence 
group at Benghazi Base and was present for the attacks on 
September 11-12, 2012.

Officer B--April 23, 2015: Part of the U.S.-based intelligence 
group at Benghazi Base but who had traveled from Benghazi on 
the morning of September 11, 2012.

Officer C--June 19, 2015: Part of the U.S.-based intelligence 
group at Benghazi Base and was present for the attacks on 
September 11-12, 2012.

Tripoli

GRS Tripoli--June 23, 2015: A member of the Tripoli-based 
Global Response Staff (GRS) who became part of Team Tripoli and 
responded to Benghazi when the State Department facility 
attacked and was present when the Annex Base in Benghazi was 
attacked.

Chief of Station--July 16, 2015: A Chief of Station is the lead 
CIA official stationed in a foreign country and is responsible 
for the U.S.-based intelligence group.

Other

CIA Official--June 2, 2015: In September 2012, this official 
was serving in Europe on the night of the attacks and played a 
role in responding to the attacks.

    The Select Committee also had available to review 
information from the House Permanent Select Committee on 
Intelligence including transcripts of hearings, briefings, and 
interviews of agency heads, senior officials and other 
individuals from the Office of the Director of National 
Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, National 
Counterterrorism Center, Department of State, Department of 
Defense, National Security Agency, and Federal Bureau of 
Investigation.

            OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

Olsen, Matthew--February 16, 2016: Director of the National 
Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) from August 2011 through July 
2014. A part of the Office of the Director of National 
Intelligence, NCTC oversees analysts from other federal 
agencies, including the CIA, the FBI, and the Department of 
Defense to collect, analyze and disseminate counterterrorism 
threat information and intelligence.

ODNI Analyst--April 29, 2016: Was involved in the production of 
the first analytical piece generated in the wake of the 
Benghazi attacks.

                      DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

Flynn, Michael (Lt. Gen)--September 29, 2015: Served as the 
Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency at the time of the 
attack. Provided information on the intelligence picture before 
and after the attack.

Tripoli Analyst--November 10, 2015: An analyst with the Defense 
Intelligence Agency who was assigned in Tripoli and present in 
Tripoli during the attacks and was involved in intelligence 
collection and reporting in Libya.

                         Department of Defense

Panetta, Leon--January 8, 2016: Served as the Secretary of 
Defense at the time of the attacks. He provided information on 
the President's direction to him, which forces he ordered to 
deploy, and when he gave the order to deploy those forces.

Bash, Jeremy--January 13, 2016: Served as Chief of Staff to the 
Secretary of Defense and was a liaison between the Defense 
Department and the State Department. He provided information 
about which forces were identified to be deployed on the night 
of the attack. He also participated in a meeting with the White 
House and the State Department on the evening of September 11.

Breedlove, Philip M. (Gen.)--April 7, 2016: Served as the 
Commander of the United States Air Forces in Europe at the time 
of the attacks. He provided information regarding the available 
transport aircraft on the night of the attack, when those 
aircraft were ordered to deploy, and when those aircraft 
deployed.

Ham, Carter (Gen.)--June 8, 2016: Served as Commander for 
Military Operations United States Africa Command [AFRICOM] at 
the time of the attacks. He provided insight into the decisions 
made at the Pentagon and AFRICOM regarding the attacks.

Kelly, John (Gen.)--March 23, 2016: At the time of the attacks, 
served as the Senior Military Assistant to the Secretary of 
Defense. Provided information regarding meetings and decisions 
made at the Pentagon in response to the attack.

Landolt, Richard B. (Rear Adm.)--May 5, 2016: Served as 
Director of Operations and Cyber, United States Africa Command 
(AFRICOM) at the time of the attacks. He provided information 
regarding meetings and decisions made at AFRICOM.

Leidig, Jr., Charles J. (Vice Adm.)--April 22, 2016: At the 
time of the attacks, served as Deputy Commander for Military 
Operations United States Africa Command [AFRICOM]. He provided 
information regarding meetings and decisions made at AFRICOM.

Losey, Brian (Rear Adm.)--June 16, 2016: Served as Commander, 
Special Operations Command-Africa in September 2012. He 
provided information regarding meetings and decisions made at 
SOC-AF.

Miller, James (Ph.D.)--May 10, 2016: At the time of the 
attacks, served as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, a 
principal advisor to the Secretary of Defense on matters of 
national security and defense policy.

Mordente, Patrick (Gen.)--April 28, 2016: Served as Deputy 
Director of Operations and Plans at TRANSCOM in September 2012. 
He provided information regarding the C-17 aircraft that 
evacuated the wounded and deceased from Tripoli.

Repass, Michael S. (Maj. Gen.)--April 15, 2016: Served as the 
Commander of Special Operations Command Europe at the time of 
the attack. He provided information regarding when the 
Commander's in-Extremis Force [CIF] was ordered to deploy, when 
it deployed, and any delays in deploying the CIF.

Tidd, Kurt (Adm.)--April 4, 2016: Served as the Director of 
Operations (J3) for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Provided 
information regarding when the forces were ordered to deploy, 
who set the N-hour for those forces, and any issues he was made 
aware of regarding those forces deploying. N-hour specifies a 
time that commences formal notification to a rapid response 
unit and requires deployment within a specified time.

Winnefeld, Jr., James (Adm.)--March 3, 2016: Served as the Vice 
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time of the 
attack. He provided information regarding the Pentagon's 
response to the attack.

CIF Commander--August 26, 2015: The Commander's in-Extremis 
Force [CIF] is at a Combatant Commander's disposal for rapid 
deployment. The CIF Commander provided information about when 
his team received their orders, when they were ready to deploy, 
and when they left Croatia for Libya.

C-17 Pilot--March 16, 2016: Piloted the C-17 aircraft that was 
deployed from Ramstein Airbase to Tripoli, Libya to evacuate US 
personnel. He provided information regarding when he received 
his orders, and when he deployed.

Defense Attache--June 17, 2016: Served as Defense Attache, U.S. 
Embassy Tripoli, Libya, in September 2012.

Drone Pilot #1--May 25, 2016: This remotely piloted aircraft 
pilot operated a remotely piloted aircraft, commonly known as a 
drone, over Benghazi during the attacks.

Drone Pilot #2--May 25, 2016: This remotely piloted aircraft 
pilot operated a remotely piloted aircraft, commonly known as a 
drone, over Benghazi during the attacks.

FAST Commander--September 2, 2015: The Marine Corps' Fleet 
Antiterrorism Security Team [FAST] is a special operations team 
on standby to respond to US government interests and to 
temporarily augment existing security. The FAST Commander was 
in charge of the FAST Team ordered to deploy to Tripoli. He 
provided information about when his team received their orders, 
when they were ready to deploy, and when they actually 
deployed.

Sensor Operator #1--June 9, 2016: Operated the sensor controls 
on a remotely piloted aircraft, commonly known as a drone, 
flown over Benghazi during the attacks.

Sensor Operator #2--June 9, 2016: Operated the sensor controls 
on a remotely piloted aircraft, commonly known as a drone, 
flown over Benghazi during the attacks.

DOD Special Operator--September 22, 2015: One of two Special 
Forces operators who responded as part of Team Tripoli to 
Benghazi as the attacks occurred and were present at the 
Benghazi Base when the mortar attacks occurred.

    The Select Committee also had available to it transcripts 
of hearings, briefings, and interviews from other committees, 
including interview transcripts from:

Ham, Carter (Gen.)--Commander for Military Operations, United 
States Africa Command [AFRICOM]

Landolt, Richard B. (Rear Adm.)--Director of Operations and 
Cyber, AFRICOM

Leidig, Jr, Charles J. (Vice Adm.)--former Deputy to the 
Commander for Military Operations, AFRICOM

Losey, Brian (Rear Adm.)--former Commander, Special Operations 
Command--Africa [SOCAFRICA]

Tidd, Kurt (Vice Adm.)--Assistant to the Chairman, Joint Chiefs 
of Staff

Zobrist, Scott (Brig. Gen.)--Wing Commander, 31st Fighter Wing, 
Aviano Air Base, Italy

                              White House

Fishman, Benjamin--January 12, 2016: A staff member of the 
National Security Council who, beginning in April 2011, handled 
Libya matters and who continuously coordinated with the State 
Department, including Envoy/Ambassador Stevens, and other 
executive branch agencies regarding Libya.

Meehan, Bernadette--December 18, 2015: Deputy Spokesperson for 
the National Security Council (NSC) at the White House at the 
time of the attack. A Foreign Service Officer with the State 
Department since 2004, was detailed, meaning on loan to, the 
National Security Council (NSC) as of July 2012.

Rhodes, Benjamin--February 2, 2016: Assistant to the President 
and Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic 
Communications and Speechwriting.

                                 Other

Blumenthal, Sidney--June 16, 2015: Longtime friend and 
confidant of Hillary R. Clinton. Blumenthal sent her numerous 
``intelligence reports'' and other advice on Libya.

Chorin, Ethan--March 10, 2016: Co-director of a non-profit 
organization that envisioned building relationships between 
U.S. medical centers and Benghazi medical centers who was in 
Benghazi at the time of the attack. He was to meet with 
Ambassador Stevens on September 12, 2012. He is also a former 
State Department Foreign Service Officer who had been assigned 
to Libya in 2004-2006 and is an author on books and articles on 
Libya.

                              APPENDIX J:

                  Requests and Subpoenas for Documents

                            State Department

September 20, 2012--Letter from the House Committee on 
Oversight and Government Reform [OGR] to Hillary R. Clinton, 
Secretary of State, requesting seven categories of documents 
pertaining to the Benghazi attacks: 1) Benghazi security 
situation; 2) threat assessment for US personnel; 3) 
preliminary attack site exploitation; 4) pre-attack warnings; 
5) evidence supporting or contradicting Rice statement blaming 
video; 6) evidence supporting or contradicting Magariaf's 
statement that attacks were premeditated; 7) attack 
information.

The State Department provided OGR eight batches of documents 
totaling 25,000 pages on a ``read and return'' basis. OGR was 
allowed to review the documents, but custody and control of the 
documents, which were returned to the Department at the end of 
each day, was retained by the Department.
                              ----------                              

December 13, 2012--Letter from OGR to the Secretary requesting 
information on, among other things, whether the Secretary used 
personal email for official business.

The State Department's written response on March 27, 2013, did 
respond to the question regarding the Secretary's use of 
personal email for official business.
                              ----------                              

August 1, 2013--Subpoena from OGR to State Department for 
records previously produced on a `read and return'' basis. The 
subpoena required copies of these documents previously provided 
on a ``read and return'' basis.
                              ----------                              

The State Department produced 25,000 pages of heavily redacted 
documents to OGR, with the last installment being produced on 
April 17, 2014.
                              ----------                              

August 11, 2014--Letter from the State Department to the 
Committee accompanying the production of approximately 15,000 
pages of documents never before produced to Congress. This 
production included eight emails sent to or from ``H'' or 
HDR22@
clintonemail.com. This production also excluded documents 
involving purported ``institutional interests.''

According to the State Department, this production fulfilled 
compliance with OGR's September 20, 2012, request and OGR's 
August 1, 2013, subpoena for ``reading room'' records. However, 
as the Committee later determined, responsive records of senior 
leaders were not included in any production, revealing notable 
gaps in the records of the Secretary of State and other senior 
leaders.
                              ----------                              

September 30, 2014--Letter to the State Department formalizing 
prior informal requests for lesser redacted versions of 
documents provided to OGR only on a ``read and return'' basis. 
The letter also requests production of any Administrative 
Review Board [ARB] documents requested by Congress.
                              ----------                              

November 18, 2014--Letter to the State Department requiring 
production of the records of the Secretary and ten senior 
leaders. The specific request was for ``any and all documents 
and communications referring or relating to policies, 
decisions, or activities regarding: (1) security of the United 
States facility in Benghazi that was attacked on 9.11.2012 (the 
``Special Mission''); (2) the State Department's decision to 
open or maintain the Special Mission; (3) the attacks on the 
Special Mission on 9.11.2012; or (4) weapons located or found 
in, imported or brought into, and/or exported or removed from 
Libya, authored by, sent to, or received by [one of the named 
individuals].''

The State Department produced only 847 pages of the former 
Secretary of State's emails and other documents before 
subpoenas were issued on March 4, 2015, commanding production 
of these records. Following the issuance of the subpoena, 
additional records were produced. In all, the Committee 
received just over 42,000 pages of documents to and from the 
Secretary of State and senior leaders. However, not all records 
were produced.
                              ----------                              

November 24, 2014--Letter from the State Department 
accompanying the production of the first set of less-redacted 
``reading room'' documents.
                              ----------                              

December 2, 2014--Letter to David Kendall, attorney for the 
Secretary, requesting production of official documents in her 
custody.

In response, on December 29, 2014, Kendall informed the 
Committee that the Secretary returned records to the State 
Department and the State Department would be providing any 
relevant records to the Committee. The Secretary produced no 
records to the Committee.
                              ----------                              

December 4, 2014--Letter to the State Department requesting 
interviews of four agents who survived the attacks in Benghazi 
and who have not been previously interviewed by a congressional 
committee.

It took the State Department until March-April 2015 to schedule 
interviews for these agents.
                              ----------                              

December 4, 2014--Letter to the State Department requesting 
interviews of 18 agents and four principal officers who served 
in Benghazi before the attacks.

The State Department did not begin to schedule interviews until 
February 2015.
                              ----------                              

December 9, 2014--Letter from the State Department accompanying 
production of the second and final set of less-redacted 
``reading room'' documents previously reviewed by the OGR.

The total of the two productions was approximately 25,000 pages 
of documents.
                              ----------                              

December 17, 2014--Letter from the State Department 
acknowledging receipt of document and interview requests and 
requesting that the Committee prioritize its requests.
                              ----------                              

December 29, 2014--Letter from the Secretary (via attorney) 
stating the State Department, not the Secretary, will comply 
with Committee's December 2, 2014, request for any official 
records personally retained by the Secretary.
                              ----------                              

January 28, 2015--Subpoena for ARB documents with cover letter. 
Note: The Committee subpoena was identical to an OGR subpoena 
previously issued on August 1, 2013.

The request was fulfilled according to the State Department by 
production of documents on April 15 and 24, 2015, of 
approximately 4,300 pages. However, the Committee sent a letter 
to the State Department on June 12, 2015, regarding various 
missing documents. A missing four-page interview report was 
subsequently delivered on February 25, 2016. The State 
Department previously claimed the ARB had reviewed over 7000 
documents totaling thousands of pages.
                              ----------                              

February 13, 2015--Letter from the State Department 
accompanying the production of 895 pages of emails and 
documents, including approximately 847 pages of emails to and 
from the former Secretary of State; approximately four pages 
relating to the January 28, 2015, subpoena, and approximately 
43 pages of documents omitted from previous productions.
                              ----------                              

March 3, 2015--Letters sent from the Committee to registrar of 
domain name and internet service provider used by the Secretary 
ordering the preservation of relevant records.
                              ----------                              

March 4, 2015--Subpoena from the Committee to the State 
Department for records of ten senior officials for documents 
referring or relating to: (1) Libya; (2) Libyan weapons 
programs; (3) Benghazi attacks; (4) post-attack statements for 
years 2011-2012.

The State Department produced records of senior leaders, 
however, the production did not include records for all ten 
senior leaders named in the subpoena and the prior request. 
Moreover, the productions covered only discrete time frames, 
not the two-year time period called for by the requests. 
Additionally, the State Department affirmatively stated it was 
withholding relevant documents that pertained to ``executive 
interests.''

Approximately 39,875 documents were produced on these dates:

                May 22, 2015
                June 30, 2015
                July 28, 2015
                Aug. 21, 2015
                Aug. 28, 2015
                Sept. 3, 2015
                Sept. 18 2015
                Oct. 5, 2015
                Oct. 9, 2015
                Oct. 15 2015
                Nov. 6, 2015
                Nov. 24, 2015
                Dec. 31, 2015
                Jan. 21, 2016
                Feb. 26, 2016
                April 8, 2016
                                  1,199 pages
                                  3,636 pages
                                  8,254 pages
                                  7,452 pages
                                  4,703 pages
                                  110 pages
                                  1,090 pages
                                  193 pages
                                  3,456 pages
                                  122 pages
                                  812 pages
                                  2,789 pages
                                  2,448 pages
                                  886 pages
                                  1,650 pages
                                  1,075 pages
                              ----------                              

March 4, 2015--Subpoena from the Committee to the Secretary 
(via her personal attorney) for documents referring or relating 
to: (1) Libya; (2) Libyan weapons programs; (3) Benghazi 
attacks; (4) post-attack statements for years 2011-2012.

Notwithstanding the State Department's claim that it had 
produced all relevant records and ``erred on side of 
inclusion'' when it produced 847 pages of records on February 
13, 2015, additional productions of official records of the 
former Secretary of State were produced by the State 
Department:

                June 10, 2015
                June 25, 2015
                Sept. 25, 2015
                                  1 page
                                  105 pages
                                  1,899 pages
                              ----------                              

March 26, 2015--Letter to the State Department reiterating 
demand for ARB documents; reiterating demand for records of 
senior leaders; and outlining State Department's hindrance of 
Committee's efforts to obtain additional information and 
answers to basic questions on records management. A briefing on 
records management is requested within two weeks.
                              ----------                              

March 27, 2015--Letter from the Secretary's attorney regarding 
purported inability to comply with subpoena. Enclosed was a 
letter from Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy sent 
on March 23, 2015, to the Secretary affirming any official 
records belong to the State Department. Letter also contains a 
disclosure that all information during the requested time 
period on the Secretary's server had been deleted.
                              ----------                              

April 15, 2015--Letter from the State Department accompanying 
the first production of ARB records consisting of approximately 
1758 pages of documents.

This production was in response to January 28, 2015, subpoena 
from the Committee and its predecessor subpoena issued by the 
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on August 1, 
2013.
                              ----------                              

April 24, 2015--Letter from the State Department accompanying 
production of a second set of ARB records consisting of 
approximately 2,523 pages. The letter explains that, in the 
view of the State Department, this completes compliance with 
ARB subpoena(s).

The two productions of documents totaling just over 4,300 pages 
conflicts with a letter from the State Department to the House 
Oversight and Government Reform Committee stating that the ARB 
reviewed over 7000 documents totaling thousands of pages. Upon 
review of the documents provided to the Committee, a letter was 
sent June 12, 2015, outlining missing documents and requesting 
additional productions. However, only one missing interview 
summary consisting of four pages was produced ten months later 
on February 25, 2016.
                              ----------                              

May 11, 2015--Letter from the Committee to the State Department 
requesting interviews with head of information technology for 
the Executive Secretariat during 2011-2012 and with the Agency 
Records Officer within next ten days.

These two interviews were ultimately conducted on June 30, 
2015, more than a month later.
                              ----------                              

May 14, 2015--Letter to the State Department that the 
Department's lack of production of relevant documents is the 
reason the Committee will be unable to interview the Secretary 
in a timely manner.
                              ----------                              

May 15, 2015--Letter from the State Department in response to 
the Committee's May 14, 2015, letter, detailing compliance to 
date and incorrectly asserts that the Committee narrowed the 
subpoena's demand.
                              ----------                              

May 19, 2015--Letter to Sidney Blumenthal requesting records 
regarding Libya and the State Department from September 11-30, 
2012.

Superseded by the Committee request on May 29, 2015, for a 
larger time frame.
                              ----------                              

May 19, 2015--Letters to Cheryl Mills, Jacob Sullivan, Philippe 
Reines, Susan Rice, Huma Abedin (via her attorney) & Caitlin 
Klevorick for records related to Libya and the State Department 
from September 11-30, 2012.

Superseded by the Committee request on May 29, 2015, for larger 
time frame.

For the initial limited time frame, on July 2, 2015, Cheryl 
Mills produced 30 pages and Jacob Sullivan produced 38 pages to 
the State Department for review by the State Department before 
production to the Committee.
                              ----------                              

May 22, 2015--Letter from the State Department accompanying 
production of approximately 1,199 pages of Cheryl Mills emails 
and documents.
                              ----------                              

May 29, 2015--Supplemental letter to Sidney Blumenthal via his 
attorney for records sent to the executive branch from 2011 to 
2012.

On June 12, 2015, 179 pages of documents were produced to the 
Committee.
                              ----------                              

June 1, 2015--Supplemental letter to Huma Abedin via attorney 
for records from 2011 to 2012.

On July 9, 2015, Huma Abedin via her attorney notifies the 
Committee that 338 pages were sent by Abedin to the State 
Department for further review and for compliance with the 
requests of the Committee.
                              ----------                              

June 2, 2015--Committee Member meeting with Jon Finer, Chief of 
Staff, State Department to discuss lack of document production 
by the State Department. Additional request made of the State 
Department for all emails/records of Ambassador Stevens for 
2011-2012 as well as for emails of Sean Smith.

Ambassador Stevens records were produced on the dates listed 
below in the approximate number of pages listed below:

                Oct. 5, 2015
                Oct. 9, 2015
                Oct. 16, 2015
                Oct. 20, 2015
                Oct. 21, 2015
                Nov. 6, 2015
                Nov. 24, 2015
                                  1,370 pages
                                  1,828 pages
                                  2,587 pages
                                  1,296 pages
                                  866 pages
                                  344 pages
                                  647 pages
                ------------------------------
                Total pages:
                                  8,939

By agreement, a select portion of Sean Smith records were 
reviewed and approximately 175 pages were produced on April 8, 
2016.
                              ----------                              

June 4, 2015--Letter to the State Department confirming an 
agreement reached that the State Department would substantially 
comply with outstanding requests. Substantial compliance 
defined as completion of the first phase of production of 
senior leader records within 30 days.
                              ----------                              

June 9, 2015--Supplemental letters sent to Cheryl Mills, Jacob 
Sullivan, Philippe Reines via attorneys to produce records 
related to Libya from 2011 and 2012.
                              ----------                              

June 10, 2015--Letter from the State Department accompanying 
production of one email, initially discovered in the production 
of Cheryl Mills records but was not in the production of 
Secretary Clinton's records. The State Department acknowledged 
the email was previously produced by the Secretary to the State 
Department but omitted from prior production to the Committee.
                              ----------                              

June 12, 2015--Sidney Blumenthal via his attorney produces 
approximately 179 pages of email exchanges with the Secretary 
regarding Libya.

Of the 81 email exchanges produced, 59 were email exchanges not 
contained in prior production of Secretary Clinton's emails by 
the State Department in February 2015.
                              ----------                              

June 12, 2015--Letter from the Committee to the State 
Department detailing documents missing from the ARB 
productions. The letter provides list of additional discrete 
documents needed. The letter further requests a privilege or 
Vaughn index detailing documents withheld and precise reasons 
for not producing relevant records.

The only additional record produced was a four (4) page 
interview summary. The privilege log was never produced.
                              ----------                              

June 19, 2015--Email from the Committee to the State Department 
requesting explanation and production of documents provided by 
Sidney Blumenthal that were not among documents in the State 
Department's production on February 13, 2015, of Secretary 
Clinton's records.

State Department produced an additional 105 pages of records in 
response to this inquiry but acknowledged it was unable to 
locate 15 email exchanges between the former Secretary and Mr. 
Blumenthal that Mr. Blumenthal produced to the Committee.
                              ----------                              

June 25, 2015--Letter from the State Department accompanying 
production of approximately 105 additional Secretary Clinton 
email exchanges with Sidney Blumenthal regarding Libya. The 
letter further discloses, however, the State Department was 
unable to locate nine entire exchanges between Secretary 
Clinton and Sidney Blumenthal and was unable to locate an 
additional six email exchanges where significant portions were 
omitted.
                              ----------                              

June 30, 2015--Letter from the State Department accompanying 
the production of approximately 3,636 pages of emails to and 
from Jacob Sullivan, Cheryl Mills, and Susan Rice.

More than half of production consisted of press clippings. The 
remaining substantive emails were primarily for one month time 
frame, September 11, 2012, to October 12, 2012.
                              ----------                              

July 2, 2015--Letters from the personal attorney for Mills and 
Jacob regarding production of documents to the State Department 
for limited time period of September 11-30, 2012, recounting 
that 30 pages for Mills and 38 pages for Sullivan were returned 
to the State Department. Acknowledges that a further production 
to be done by July 27, 2015, for larger time frame in the 
second request from the Committee.
                              ----------                              

July 6, 2015--Email exchange between the Committee and the 
State Department outlining several issues: 1) request for 
production of letters sent by Kennedy to senior officials 
seeking return of official records retained in personal email 
accounts; and 2) inquiry as to an expected production of the 
first phase of documents of senior leaders.

Response from the State Department received the next day, July 
7, 2015, summarily stating the State Department is working on 
all requests.

No response to the request for the letters from Kennedy to 
senior leaders until a subpoena was issued on August 5, 2015, 
for these records. The records were produced on August 6, 2015.
                              ----------                              

July 8, 2015--Letter from the Committee to the State Department 
regarding documents intentionally withheld from the Committee. 
The letter requests a privilege log or ``Vaughn Index'' 
outlining details of ``Executive Branch confidentiality 
interest'' for withheld documents from productions made on 
April 24, 2015, May 22, 2015, and June 30, 2015.

Despite repeated assurances that summary was being prepared 
detailing the documents withheld and the precise reason for 
withholding, no summary was ever received.
                              ----------                              

July 9, 2015--Letter from attorney for Huma Abedin regarding 
338 pages of documents pertaining to Libya produced by her to 
the State Department for further review by the State Department 
for production to the Committee.
                              ----------                              

July 10, 2015--Letter from the Committee to the State 
Department seeking information regarding allegations of 
retaliation against a whistleblower.
Letter received on October 9, 2015, in response.
                              ----------                              

July 27, 2015--Letter from the State Department regarding a 
scheduled July 29, 2015, hearing on State Department document 
production and promising ``meaningful production of several 
thousand pages to the Committee.
                              ----------                              

July 28, 2015--Letter from the State Department accompanying 
production of approximately 8,254 pages of documents of senior 
leaders.
                              ----------                              

August 5, 2015--Subpoena issued to the State Department seeking 
the March 11, 2015, letter from Kennedy to the ten senior 
officials identified in the Committee's March 4, 2015, subpoena 
and the emails submitted to the State Department as a result of 
the March 11, 2015, letter from the State Department to the 
senior officials.

These items were previously requested by letter on July 6, 
2015, but request was ignored. Production of the letter from 
Kennedy subsequently occurred on August 7, 2015, following 
issuance of the subpoena. Official records found in the 
personal email accounts of Sullivan and Mills subsequently 
produced to the Committee.
                              ----------                              

August 7, 2015--Production of correspondence between Kennedy 
and former senior leaders requesting return of official records 
maintained on personal email accounts.
                              ----------                              

August 21, 2015--Letter from the State Department accompanying 
production of approximately 7,452 pages of documents of senior 
leaders.
                              ----------                              

August 28, 2015--Letter from the State Department accompanying 
production of approximately 4,703 pages of senior leaders 
records including a classified portion.
                              ----------                              

September 3, 2015--Letter from the State Department 
accompanying production of approximately 110 pages of emails 
from Sullivan from his personal email account.
                              ----------                              

September 18, 2015--Letter from the State Department 
accompanying production of approximately 1,090 pages of emails 
from senior leaders.
                              ----------                              

September 22, 2015--Email to the State Department outlining 
documents needed prior to October 22, 2015, hearing.
                              ----------                              

September 25, 2015--Letter from the State Department 
accompanying production of approximately 1,899 pages of emails 
from the Secretary.
                              ----------                              

October 5, 2015--Letter from the State Department accompanying 
production of approximately 1,563 pages of documents, including 
approximately 1,370 pages of Stevens emails and approximately 
193 pages of documents from senior leaders.
                              ----------                              

October 9, 2015--Letter from the State Department accompanying 
production of approximately 3,456 pages, including emails from 
the personal email accounts of Mills, Sullivan, and Abedin 
regarding Libya and additionally approximately 1,828 pages of 
Stevens emails.
                              ----------                              

October 15, 2015--Letter from the State Department accompanying 
production of approximately 122 pages of Abedin emails.
                              ----------                              

October 16, 2015--Letter from the State Department accompanying 
production of approximately 2,587 pages of Stevens emails.
                              ----------                              

October 20, 2015--Letter from the State Department accompanying 
production of approximately 1296 pages of Stevens emails.
                              ----------                              

October 21, 2015--Letter from the State Department accompanying 
production of approximately 866 pages of Stevens emails.
                              ----------                              

November 6, 2015--Letter from the State Department accompanying 
production of approximately 344 pages of Stevens emails and 
approximately 812 pages of Kennedy emails.
                              ----------                              

November 24, 2015--Letter from the State Department 
accompanying production of approximately 647 pages of 
Ambassador Stevens emails and approximately 2789 pages of Under 
Secretary Kennedy emails.
                              ----------                              

December 31, 2015--Letter from the State Department 
accompanying production of approximately 2448 pages of Under 
Secretary Kennedy emails/documents.
                              ----------                              

January 21, 2016--Letter from the State Department accompanying 
production of approximately 866 pages of Under Secretary 
Kennedy emails.
                              ----------                              

February 25, 2016--Letter from the State Department 
accompanying production of approximately 4 pages consisting of 
one missing ARB interview summary.
                              ----------                              

February 26, 2016--Letter from the State Department 
accompanying production of approximately 1,640 pages of 
documents of former Secretary Clinton and emails from senior 
leaders, recently discovered from the Office of the Secretary.
                              ----------                              

February 26, 2016--Letter from the State Department 
accompanying production of approximately ten pages of emails of 
Cheryl Mills previously withheld from the Committee.
                              ----------                              

April 8, 2016--Letter from the State Department accompanying 
production of approximately 1,146 pages of documents of former 
Secretary Clinton and emails from senior leaders, recently 
discovered from the Office of the Secretary.
                              ----------                              

May 5, 2016--Letter from the State Department accompanying 
production of approximately 405 pages of documents recently 
discovered from the Office of the Secretary.

                         Department of Defense

April 8, 2015--Letter to the Defense Department requesting 
briefings on Operation Jukebox Lotus, Operation Oaken Lotus, 
Defense Department personnel's 1208 mission in Libya, EUCOM/
AFRICOM's Commander's in-Extremis Force [CIF], and others.
                              ----------                              

April 8, 2015--Letter requesting answers to 20 questions (57 
subparts) pertaining to 1) heightened alert/deployment status 
for various U.S. military forces or assets; 2) commands or 
orders, given, rescinded, or status and manner of compliance.
                              ----------                              

April 8, 2015--Letter to the Defense Department requesting 
production of: 1) Defense Department documents/communications 
relating to the Benghazi attack; 2) After-action reports on the 
attack; 3) documents sent to Defense Department (excluding DIA) 
relating to the attack; 4) documents relating to orders or 
commands given to defend against the attacks or rescue 
Americans in Benghazi; 5) documents relating to the preparation 
to respond to such orders or commands; 6) documents relating to 
the recission or cancellation of such orders or commands; 7) 
copy of the Predator video on the night of the attack; 8) 
documents relating to the Annex attack; 9) unredacted versions 
of the 486 pages of AFRICOM-related documents produced to 
Judicial Watch; 10) AFRICOM AOR Force Laydown slides; 11) EUCOM 
AOR Force Laydown slides; 12) CENTCOM AOR Force Laydown slides.
                              ----------                              

April 27, 2015--Letter from the Defense Department in response 
to the three April 8, 2015, letters stating the Defense 
Department will schedule briefings requested; will answer 
questions posed; and will provide documents requested. Defense 
Department included one slide in response to items 10, 11, 12 
of document request.
                              ----------                              

May 21, 2015--Letter from the Defense Department on status of 
document request and production of 726 pages of documents, 
including: 1) Defense Department documents/communications 
relating to the Benghazi attack are pending production; 2) 175 
pages produced on the after-action reports on the attack; 3) 
documents sent to the Defense Department (excluding DIA) 
relating to the attack has been referred to DIA for production; 
4) documents relating to orders or commands given to defend 
against the attacks or rescue Americans in Benghazi is pending 
production; 5) documents relating to the preparation to respond 
to such orders or commands is pending production; 6) documents 
relating to the rescission or cancellation of such orders or 
commands is pending production; 7) a copy of the Predator video 
on the night of the attack was made available for staff review; 
8) documents relating to the Annex attack is pending 
production; 9) 551 pages (which includes some withheld pages) 
but includes unredacted versions of the 486 pages of AFRICOM-
related documents produced to Judicial Watch; 10) AFRICOM AOR 
Force Laydown slides have been previously provided; 11) EUCOM 
AOR Force Laydown slides have been previously provided; 12) 
CENTCOM AOR Force Laydown slides have been previously provided.
                              ----------                              

July 28, 2015--Written answers received to questions in letter 
sent January 7, 2016, pertaining to 1) heightened alert/
deployment status for various U.S. military forces or assets; 
and 2) commands or orders, given, rescinded, or status and 
manner of compliance.
                              ----------                              

January 7, 2016--Letter from Defense Department accompanying 
the production of 61 pages in response to the Committee's April 
24, 2015, request. Letter notes that another 54 pages of 
relevant documents have been withheld based on an assertion of 
``longstanding Executive Branch interests.''

                        NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY

November 19, 2014--Letter to NSA Director requesting production 
of all finished intelligence analysis products regarding Libya.
                              ----------                              

April 28, 2015--Letter to NSA Director requesting specific 
documents, including: certain NSA reports, Critical 
Intelligence Communications (CRITIC) messages, attack-related 
documents, NSA collection requirements for Libya, NSA 
activities related to the NIPF.
                              ----------                              

May 11, 2015--Letter from NSA acknowledging receipt of April 
28, 2015, letter.

                      DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

November 19, 2014--Letter to DIA Director requesting production 
of all finished intelligence analysis products regarding Libya.
                              ----------                              

April 23, 2015--Letter to DIA Director requesting production 
of: 1) ``DCTC's Benghazi Binder'' containing timeline of 
terrorist events and acts against western interests; 2) DCTC's 
DIA intelligence reports on the attacks; 3) photos/videos of 
Benghazi mission/annex and related document; 4) analysis of 
social media covering Benghazi; 5) documents relating to video-
conferences in September 2012 pertaining to Libya; 6) 
documents/communications regarding responsibility for the 
Benghazi attack; 7) documents and communications regarding the 
Benghazi attacks sent to or from the White House Situation 
Room, the National Military Command Center, or the Defense 
Intelligence Operations Coordination Center.
                              ----------                              

May 8, 2015--Letter from DIA accompanying production of a 
binder of materials in response to the April 23, 2015, request. 
The letter notes that some documents still in clearance 
process.

                      Central Intelligence Agency

November 19, 2014--Letter from the Committee requesting ``all 
finished intelligence analysis products regarding Libya'' 
issued between 9/11/2012 and 12/31/2012.
                              ----------                              

April 28, 2015--Letter from the Committee requesting production 
of the following documents or communications, including 
reports, cables, emails, and instant messages, relating to the 
Benghazi attacks: 1) to or from Tripoli Station; 2) between 
Tripoli Station and the State Department; 3) to or from 
Benghazi Base; 4) to or from Director Petraeus or his immediate 
staff; 5) to or from Deputy Director Morell or his immediate 
staff; 6) to or from CIA Operations Center.

The letter also requested production of documents or 
communications relating to: 7) development of a 9/13/2012 WIRe 
article; 8) development of a 9/15/2012 WIRe article; 9) CIA's 
strategic priorities in Libya; 10) security situation in 
Benghazi; 11) vulnerability assessments of Benghazi Base; 12) 
CIA personnel and AFRICOM; 13) eyewitness accounts of the 
attack; 14) final report produced and referenced in 1-001405; 
15) Team A/Team B analysis of the attacks; 16-19) specific 
document requests; 20) February 17 Martyrs Brigade; 21) 
unclassified HPSCI talking points; 22) cables regarding the 
Benghazi attacks; 23) Tripoli Station SIGINT strategy; 24) 
Ambassador Stevens Benghazi trip; 25) FBI trips to Benghazi 
following the attacks; and 26) cables requested by Secretary 
Clinton or Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills.
                              ----------                              

August 7, 2015--Subpoena to CIA for document production of: 1) 
Same Time (instant) messages relating to the Benghazi attacks 
sent to or from a) Director, b) Deputy Director, c) OTA, d) 
Ops/NE division, d) MENA, e) Tripoli Station; 2) unclassified 
HPSCI talking points; 3) development of a 9/13/2012 WIRe 
article; 4) development of a 9/15/2012 WIRe article; 5) 
development of a 9/12/2012 MENA Situation Report; 6) 
development of a 9/12/2012 Libya Spot Commentary.
                              ----------                              

November 4, 2015--Letter from the Committee requesting 
production of a ``list of all intelligence products from the 
BIR [Benghazi Intelligence Review] that were included in the 
PDB [President's Daily Brief] between February 2012 and 
November 2012.''
                              ----------                              

January 13, 2016--Letter from the Committee outlining areas of 
noncompliance: 1) Same Time Chats (instant messaging) requested 
in the August 7, 2015, subpoena; 2) outstanding document 
requests from the August 7, 2015, subpoena, including, a) 
initial analysis of the attacks, b) critical cable written in 
the aftermath of the attacks, c) intelligence regarding the 
deteriorating security situation in Benghazi, d) specific cable 
reflecting calls made on the night of the attack and related 
records; 3) refusal to certify compliance with talking points 
request; 4) outstanding witness interview requests (4 
referenced); 5) access to information about certain CIA 
activities; and 6) classification review of interview 
transcripts.

                              White House

December 29, 2014--Letter from the Committee to White House 
Chief of Staff requesting 12 categories of documents pertaining 
to Libya and the Benghazi attacks, specifically documents 
pertaining to: 1) Libya policy; 2) attack response; 3) the 
President's actions and communications; 4) identities and 
content of communications of others with President about 
attacks; 5) identities and content of communications of White 
House staff about attacks; 6) persons present in White House 
Situation Room on September 11-12, 2012; 7) movement logs, 
photographs, etc. of President on evening of September 11, 
2012; 8) drafts, notes, revisions to President's Rose Garden 
remarks made on 9/12/2012; 9) documents pertaining to public 
response/messaging about the attacks; 10) documents pertaining 
to protests at U.S. overseas facilities; 11) documents 
pertaining to the video, Innocence of Muslims; 12) documents 
related to the President's meeting on September 10, 2012, with 
Senior Administration Officials in preparation for the 9/11 
anniversary.
                              ----------                              

January 23, 2015--Letter from White House stating that other 
Executive Branch agencies are in best position to respond to 
document requests. The letter further complains that request is 
broader than the Committee's mandate. The letter outlines how 
the requests intrude ``on longstanding Executive Branch 
confidentiality and other institutional interests.'' The letter 
asserts the White House will begin producing documents by 
February and welcomes further discussion on how to narrow the 
requests made.
                              ----------                              

February 27, 2015--Letter from the White House accompanying the 
production of approximately 266 pages of documents responsive 
to the December 29, 2014, request.
                              ----------                              

March 17, 2015--Letter from the White House accompanying the 
re-production of approximately 266 pages of documents with 
lesser redactions.
                              ----------                              

April 23, 2015--Letter in response to White House position on 
scope of mandate of the Committee and the Committee requests, 
including that the White House cannot rely on productions by 
other agencies to fulfill its obligation to respond to a 
congressional request; disagrees with the narrow interpretation 
of scope of the Committee's mandate; and requests that future 
productions give priority to certain areas (Items 1, 2, 8, 9, 
10, 11 from December 29, 2014, letter) and further give 
priority to certain specific time frames.
                              ----------                              

May 11, 2015--Letter from the White House accompanying the re-
production of approximately 203 pages of documents.
                              ----------                              

May 19, 2015--Letter from the Committee requesting production 
of any email communications to or from a personal address 
regarding Libya from National Security Advisor Susan Rice.
                              ----------                              

June 19, 2015--Letter from the White House accompanying the re-
production of approximately 266 pages of documents responsive 
to requests.
                              ----------                              

July 17, 2015--Letter from the White House accompanying the re-
production of approximately 340 pages of documents responsive 
to requests.
                              ----------                              

August 7, 2015--Letter to White House resetting priorities: 
compliance has not been achieved notwithstanding lapse of 7 
months; many documents produced have been publically available 
press clippings; and the White House needs to identify what 
documents will be produced and what documents it will refuse to 
produce and the precise legal basis for non-production.
                              ----------                              

August 28, 2015--Letter from the White House accompanying the 
re-production of approximately 247 pages of documents 
responsive to requests.
                              ----------                              

October 5, 2015--Letter from the White House accompanying the 
re-production of approximately 34 pages of documents responsive 
to requests.
Meeting/briefing between the Committee staff and White House 
counsel staff regarding production of documents.
                              ----------                              

October 27, 2015--Letter from the White House accompanying the 
re-production of approximately 47 pages of documents responsive 
to requests.
                              ----------                              

November 12, 2015--Letter from the White House accompanying the 
re-production of approximately 48 pages of documents responsive 
to requests.
                              ----------                              

March 16, 2016--Letter formally requesting ``access to all 
special access programs regarding U.S. activities in Libya'' 
specifically in reference to ``weapons trafficking, weapons 
diversion, and the monitoring of weapons transfers.''

White House forwarded the letter to the Central Intelligence 
Agency for response. Response received on April 28, 2016.

                              APPENDIX K:

                Analysis of Accountability Review Board,

                   House Armed Services Committee and

         House Permanent Select Intelligence Committee Reports

            Was the Accountability Review Board Independent 
                           and Comprehensive?

                              INTRODUCTION

    On October 3, 2012, the Secretary of State announced the 
formation of a panel known as the Benghazi Accountability 
Review Board [ARB].\1\ The five member ARB was charged with 
examining ``the circumstances surrounding the deaths of 
personnel assigned in support of the U.S. Government Mission to 
Libya in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012.''\2\ Federal 
law and State Department procedures outline the process for 
convening and conducting an ARB investigation--a process 
typically overseen by career personnel.\3\ Notwithstanding the 
processes already in place, the Secretary's senior staff 
oversaw the Benghazi ARB process from start to finish. The 
senior staff's participation ranged from selecting the ARB 
members to shaping the ARB's outcome by editing the draft final 
report. The decisions to deviate from longstanding processes 
raise questions about the ARB's independence, thoroughness, and 
therefore the fullness of their findings of accountability.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\Convening of an Accountability Review Board, 77 Fed. Reg. 60741 
(Oct. 4, 2012), Pub. Notice 8052.
    \2\Id.
    \3\22 U.S.C. Sec. 4831 et seq. and 12 FAM 030.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                               BACKGROUND

    Accountability Review Boards are designed to play a 
critical role in ensuring the State Department learns from past 
incidents so as to ensure future security and safety related 
incidents can be prevented. According to the State Department, 
the ``ARB process is a mechanism to foster more effective 
security of U.S. missions and personnel abroad by ensuring a 
thorough and independent review of security-related 
incidents.''\4\ Through its investigations and recommendations, 
the Board seeks to determine accountability and promote and 
encourage improved security.''\5\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \4\Id.
    \5\12 FAM 013. Objective.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    By law, Accountability Review Boards are charged with 
examining five aspects of an incident, including:

        1. LThe extent to which the incident or incidents with 
        respect to which the Board was convened was security 
        related;

        2. LWhether the security systems and security 
        procedures at that mission were adequate;

        3. LWhether the security systems and security 
        procedures were properly implemented;

        4. LThe impact of intelligence and information 
        availability; and

        5. LSuch other facts and circumstances, which may be 
        relevant to the appropriate security management of 
        United States missions abroad.\6\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \6\22 U.S.C. Sec. 4834(a).

    Prior to 1986, no formal mechanisms were in place to 
examine, review, and make recommendations after significant 
incidents involving State Department facilities of personnel. 
Following several attacks against U.S. missions in the 1980s, 
the State Department created an independent review panel to 
examine the incidents. The Advisory Panel on Overseas Security, 
chaired by Admiral Bobby Inman, issued its report in 1985. 
Concerned that the State Department did not consistently 
examine serious and significant incidents as did other federal 
agencies, the Panel recommended the ``Secretary of State [be 
required] to convene a Board of Inquiry with powers of 
establishing accountability in all cases involving terrorism or 
security related attacks that result in significant damage and/
or casualties to United States personnel or property.''\7\ The 
Advisory Panel's recommendation to establish the Accountability 
Review Board was adopted by the State Department and later 
incorporated in the Omnibus Diplomatic Security and 
Antiterrorism Act of 1986.\8\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \7\Report of the Secretary of State's Advisory Panel on Overseas 
Security, Accountability and Acceptance of Risk, 1 (1985) http://
www.fas.org/irp/threat/inman [hereinafter Inman Report].
    \8\22 U.S.C. Sec. 4831 through 4835.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Since 1986, nineteen (19) ARBs have been convened to review 
the most significant attacks against U.S. diplomatic personnel 
or facilities.\9\ The findings and recommendations of each ARB 
investigation are in effect cumulative. Cheryl Mills, Chief of 
Staff and Counselor to the Secretary of State, explained to the 
Committee, ``ARBs . . . have an enduring life, meaning that the 
learnings that came from those ARBs should be acted on and 
implemented.''\10\ Two significant ARBs convened subsequent to 
1986 were those formed in the aftermath of the August 7, 1998, 
dual terrorist attacks in the east African cities of Dar es 
Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \9\OIG Special Review of the Accountability Review Process, ISP-I-
13-44A, 10 (September 2013) (``Within the 14-year period covered by 
this review [1998-2012], a significant number of security-related 
incidents, more than 222 in all, were not subject to [ARB] 
consideration.''), found at https://oig.state.gov/system/files/
214907.pdf.
    \10\Testimony of Cheryl D. Mills, Chief of Staff, U.S. Dep't of 
State, Tr. at 269 (Sep. 3, 2015) [hereinafter Mills Testimony] (on file 
with the Committee) (``It was my impression that ARBs are supposed to 
have an enduring life, meaning that the learnings that came from those 
ARBs should be acted on and implemented'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Speaking on behalf of both East African ARB panels, ARB 
Chairman William Crowe wrote former Secretary of State Madeline 
Albright expressing concern about the Department's commitment 
to security:\11\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \11\Letter from Admiral William J. Crowe, to Madeline Albright, 
Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of State (Jan. 8, 1999) (on file with the 
Committee).

        [H]ow similar the lessons were to those drawn by the 
        Inman Commission over 14 years ago. What is most 
        troubling is the failure of the U.S. government to take 
        the necessary steps to prevent such tragedies through 
        an unwillingness to give sustained priority and funding 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        to security improvements.

        We are advancing a number of recommendations that deal 
        with the handling of terrorist threats and attacks, the 
        review and revision of standards and procedures to 
        improve security readiness and crisis management, the 
        size and composition of our missions, and the need to 
        have adequate and sustained funding for safe buildings 
        and security programs in the future. We recognize that 
        the Department of State and other U.S. government 
        agencies are already making adjustments and taking 
        measures to enhance the protection of our personnel and 
        facilities abroad. It is clear, however, that much more 
        needs to be done.\12\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \12\Id.

    Two recommendations identified by the East African ARBs 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
were directed specifically to the Secretary of State:

        Recommendation #4: The Secretary of State should 
        personally review the security situation of embassy 
        chanceries and other official premises, closing those 
        which are highly vulnerable and threatened but for 
        which adequate security enhancements cannot be 
        provided, and seek new secure premises for permanent 
        use, or temporary occupancy, pending construction of 
        new buildings.\13\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \13\Report to the Congress on Actions Taken by the Department of 
State In Response to the Program Recommendations of the Accountability 
Review Boards on the Embassy Bombings 
in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, 14 (April 1999), http://fas.org/irp/
threat/arb/
accountability_report.html.

        Recommendation #13: First and foremost, the Secretary 
        of State should take a personal and active role in 
        carrying out the responsibility of ensuring the 
        security of U.S. diplomatic personnel abroad. It is 
        essential to convey to the entire Department that 
        security is one of the highest priorities. In the 
        process, the Secretary should reexamine the present 
        organizational structure with the objective of 
        clarifying responsibilities, encouraging better 
        coordination, and assuring that a single high-ranking 
        officer is accountable for all security matters and has 
        the authority necessary to coordinate on the 
        Secretary's behalf such activities within the 
        Department of State and with all foreign affairs USG 
        agencies.\14\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \14\Id. at 29-30.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                              BENGHAZI ARB

Decision to Convene an Accountability Review Board Panel

    The Secretary convened the Benghazi ARB on the 
recommendation of the State Department's permanent coordinating 
committee [PCC], a seven member committee with convening 
authority.\15\ State Department procedures provide ``the ARB/
PCC will, as quickly as possible after an incident occurs, 
review the available facts and recommend to the Secretary to 
convene or not convene a board.''\16\ The Managing Director for 
the State Department's Office of Management Policy, Rightsizing 
and Innovation [M/PRI] and the Chair of the ARB/PCC, explained:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \15\12 FAM 032.
    \16\12 FAM 032.1.

        [W]e put together . . . some facts as we know it, about 
        the incident. We tell our director. He contacts the 
        legal adviser, who is not a voting member but is there 
        to provide advice to the PCC, and Diplomatic Security 
        and the regional bureau. And we say hey, this looks to 
        us like it meets the criteria, I'm going to call the 
        PCC together. And it's the chairman's right to assemble 
        this group.\17\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \17\Testimony of the Managing Director, Office of Management 
Policy, Rightsizing and Innovation, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 20 
(Mar. 4, 2016) [hereinafter M/PRI Managing Director Testimony] (on file 
with the Committee).

    After the attacks on the U.S. diplomatic facility on 
September 11, 2012, the ARB/PCC did not meet in person but 
discussed the situation by email.\18\ The Managing Director of 
M/PRI explained:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \18\Email from the M/PRI Managing Director, U.S. Dep't of State to 
Eric Boswell, Ass't Sec'y of State, Bureau of Diplomatic Security, U.S. 
Dep't of State, Beth Jones, Acting Ass't Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of 
State, et. al (Sept. 19, 2012) (on file with the Committee, SCB0049611) 
(``The Under Secretary from Management asked M/PRI to get the ARB/PCC 
together today to provide a recommendation to the Secretary as to 
whether to convene an ARB in response to the September 11, 2012 attack 
in Benghazi, Libya. Due to conflicting schedules we are conducting the 
vote via email.'').

        A virtual meeting, we do that on incidents that we 
        think do not need the PCC to meet. That is our standard 
        operating procedure. But since this was well known by 
        everyone in the Department, we felt comfortable in 
        doing it electronically.\19\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \19\M/PRI Managing Director Testimony at 24.

    The PCC agreed an ARB should be convened and made the 
recommendation to the Secretary on September 19, 2012.\20\ In 
making the recommendation, the PCC noted:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \20\Memorandum from M/PRI Managing Director, U.S. Dep't of State, 
to the Sec'y of State, (Sept.19, 2012) (on file with the Committee, 
C05456350) (``The Permanent Coordinating Committee (PCC) on 
Accountability Review Boards (ARB) was asked on September 19, 2012 to 
examine the recent incident, and has recommended that you convene an 
ARB to examine this incident.'').

        Should you agree to this recommendation, we will 
        prepare the appropriate appointment letters for the 
        Chair and proposed members of the ARB, the letters to 
        the Congress and notifications to the public via the 
        Federal Register announcing your decision.\21\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \21\Id.

    The Secretary approved the PCC's recommendation to convene 
the ARB the same day.\22\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \22\Id.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Selection of the ARB Panel

    ``The law requires four nominees [to be selected] by the 
Secretary of State and one nominee by now the Director of 
National Intelligence.''\23\ State Department procedures 
outline the process for selecting State Department 
representatives to the Board once a decision to convene an ARB 
has been made. The procedures specify ``[i]f the ARB PCC 
recommends that the Secretary convene a board, it will forward 
a list of potential board members to the Secretary for 
approval.'' However, the Benghazi ARB/PCC did not prepare a 
list of prospective board members, nor did it share a list of 
candidates with the Secretary as required by State Department 
procedures.\24\ The Managing Director who also served as the 
ARB/PCC Chair, explained to the Committee:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \23\Testimony of Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Sec'y for Management, 
U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 278 (Feb. 3, 2016) [hereinafter Kennedy 
Testimony] (on file with the Committee).
    \24\M/PRI Managing Director Testimony at 29 (A list of potential 
board members was not forwarded to the Secretary for approval).

        Q: Did you put together a list of names to recommend to 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        be members of the ARB?

        A: I don't believe I did.

        Q: Okay. Why not?

        A: Well, because they went for option two and did more 
        of the celebrity approach as I would say. As I 
        mentioned earlier, they got Ambassador Pickering, who I 
        consider to be in that category as Ambassador Crowe, 
        for when he was chosen for Nairobi Dar.\25\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \25\Id. at 27.

    The PCC did not prepare or send a list of prospective 
members to the Secretary because the senior staff were already 
in the process of identifying panelists to serve.
    As Mills told the Committee, ``I worked with Under 
Secretary Kennedy and Deputy Secretary William Burns in 
identifying who might be talent that could actually serve in 
this role.''\26\ Talent would later be defined as individuals 
who would understand the Secretary's narrative of expiditionary 
diplomacy. On September 15, 2012, William Burns, Deputy 
Secretary of State, recommended Ambassador Pickering to the 
ARB.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \26\Mills Testimony at 137.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In an email to Mills, Burns wrote:

        On arb, I'd suggest Pickering in addition to Armitage. 
        They're both very experienced and fair minded and 
        understand entirely demands of expeditionary 
        diplomacy.\27\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \27\Email from William Burns, Deputy Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of 
State, to Cheryl D. Mills, Chief of Staff, U.S. Dep't of State (Sep. 
15, 2012, 1:09 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0057846).

    On September 18, 2012, Burns informed Mills and Patrick 
Kennedy, Under Secretary of State for Management, that ``Tom 
Pickering is willing to chair. . . . He liked very much the 
idea of including Mike Mullen.''\28\ Admiral Michael Mullen 
retired as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on November 1, 
2011.\29\ At the time they served on the Benghazi ARB, both 
Mullen and Pickering were also members of the Secretary's 
Foreign Affairs Policy Advisory Board.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \28\Email from Jacob J. Sullivan, Deputy Chief of Staff and Dir. of 
Policy Planning, U.S. Dep't of State, to William Burns, Deputy Sec'y of 
State, U.S. Dep't of State (Sept. 18, 2012, 9:35 AM) (on file with the 
Committee, SCB0057775).
    \29\Biography of Admiral Mike Mullen, U.S. Navy (Jul. 12, 2013), 
http://www.navy.mil/navydata/bios/navybio.asp?bioID=11.

        The Foreign Affairs Policy Board was launched in 
        December 2011 to provide the Secretary of State, the 
        Deputy Secretaries of State, and the Director of Policy 
        Planning with independent, informed advice and opinion 
        concerning matters of U.S. foreign policy. The Board 
        serves in a solely advisory capacity, with an agenda 
        shaped by the questions and concerns of the Secretary. 
        Its discussions focus on assessing global threats and 
        opportunities; identifying trends that implicate core 
        national security interests; providing recommendations 
        with respect to tools and capacities of the civilian 
        foreign affairs agencies; defining priorities and 
        strategic frameworks for U.S. foreign policy; and 
        performing any other research and analysis of topics 
        raised by the Secretary of State, the Deputy 
        Secretaries, and the Director of Policy Planning.\30\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \30\Foreign Affairs Policy Board, U.S. Dep't of State, http://
www.state.gov/s/p/fapb/.

    The Foreign Affairs Policy Advisory Board's formation 
occurred contemporaneously with the decision to extend the 
operations in Benghazi as well as the restart of operations in 
Tripoli.
    Mills explained her communications with ARB panelists 
Mullen and Catherine Bertini:

        I reached out to, I believe Admiral Mullen myself. . . 
        . And, I reached out to, I believe, Cathy Bertini, who 
        had been recommended to us by the Under Secretary of 
        Management.\31\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \31\Mills Testimony at 138.

    Kennedy described his role in the selection of the ARB 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
panel members to the Committee:

        I had met Catherine Bertini when I was one of the 
        alternate representatives to the United Nations and she 
        was at the United Nations as the she was I think at 
        that point the senior American serving in the United 
        Nations Headquarters Secretariat. So I worked with her 
        on a professional basis because I was representing the 
        United States and she was a senior official within the 
        United Nations. I did not recommend her for the 
        position.

        I provided one name, Richard Shinnick. That was the 
        only name that I was solicited and asked to provide a 
        suggestion for, in effect, a type of expertise.\32\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \32\Kennedy Testimony at 265.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Kennedy explained further:

        A: As I said earlier, I was asked only to make one 
        recommendation name somebody who was not in the State 
        Department but knew a lot about Secretary of excuse me 
        Department of State construction activities. So I made 
        one recommendation and I made no recommendations for 
        any of the other four.

    I was advised, because I also head the unit that publishes 
the names in the Federal Register, I was advised that the 
selections were Pickering, Mullen, Turner, I think it was, 
Bertini and Shinnick.

        Q: And so did Cheryl Mills ask you for that, or did 
        Jake Sullivan? Or who asked you for----

        A: Cheryl Mills asked me for the name of someone who 
        knew about State Department facilities management and 
        construction.

        Q: And did she share with you who the other members who 
        she was thinking about

        A: No.

        Q: appointing?

        A: No. I was informed who the selections were.\33\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \33\Id. at 278.

    On September 28, 2012, Mills shared with Kennedy, Stephen 
Mull, the Executive Secretariat, Uzra Zeya, the ARB executive 
secretary, and Burns about Catherine Bertini agreement to 
participate as an ARB member.\34\ Within hours of Bertini's 
acceptance, Kennedy shared with Mills and Mull the additional 
news: ``Dick Shinnick has accepted as the fifth member of the 
panel.''\35\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \34\Email from Cheryl Mills, Chief of Staff and Counselor, U.S. 
Dep't of State, to Stephen Mull, Executive Secretary, Office of the 
Secretariat, U.S. Dep't of State (Sept. 28, 2012, 2:37 PM) (on file 
with the Committee, SCB0057607) (``Catherine Bertini agreed to serve on 
the ARB panel today''). See also Email from Cheryl Mills, Chief of 
Staff and Counselor, U.S. Dep't of State, to Catherine Bertini, 
Accountability Review Board Member (Sept. 28, 2012, 2:28AM) (on file 
with the Committee, SCB0054582) (``[I]f you could tomorrow, I would 
welcome connecting with you.'' From Bertini ``Thank you for reaching 
out to me. I am pleased to say Yes to your request and I very much look 
forward to contributing to the work of the panel on this critically 
important issue'').
    \35\Id. (``Dick Shinnick has accepted as the fifth member of the 
Panel'').
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Intelligence Community recommended Hugh Turner, a 
former CIA deputy director, to serve as the intelligence 
Community's representative.\36\ Burns spoke early on with 
Michel Morrell, Deputy Director of the CIA, and Robert 
Cardillo, Deputy Director of ODNI about their choice of 
representatives on the ARB panel--reporting back to the Mills 
and Kennedy ``they will coordinate on a nominee.''\37\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \36\Mills Testimony at 138.
    \37\Email from Jacob J. Sullivan, Deputy Chief of Staff and Dir. of 
Policy Planning, U.S. Dep't of State, to William Burns, Deputy Sec'y of 
State, U.S. Dep't of State (Sept. 18, 2012, 9:35 AM) (on file with the 
Committee, SCB0057775) (containing exchange from William Burns to 
Cheryl Mills and Patrick Kennedy).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    As panelists confirmed their participation on the ARB, 
Mills shared the information with the Secretary. For example, 
within minutes after sharing the news about Catherine Bertini 
with the senior staff, Mills also relayed the news to the 
Secretary.\38\ Mills explained to the Committee:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \38\Email from Cheryl Mills, Chief of Staff and Counselor, U.S. 
Dep't of State, to H (Sept. 28, 2012, 2:46 PM) (Subject: FYI) (on filed 
with the Committee, SCB0045509).

    We certainly apprised her that it looked like we had a team 
of five that represented a balance of those who understood 
diplomacy, who understand national security, who understood 
what it meant to operate in environments that were insecure, 
and that we thought the balance of who we had identified met 
that criteria.\39\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \39\Mills Testimony at 141.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ARB Executive Secretary

    The senior staff's involvement in the ARB process also 
extended to selecting the Executive Secretary to the ARB. 
According to the State Department's regulations, the Executive 
Secretary to the ARB is considered to be part of the ARB staff 
and ``serves to coordinate and facilitate the work of that 
Board.''\40\ On September 25, 2012, the Managing Director wrote 
Mull and his Deputy:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \40\12 FAM 032.3b.

        I would appreciate knowing how this ARB is going to 
        work since it is not going in the normal way. Can we 
        talk this morning or tomorrow morning about the roles 
        and responsibilities?\41\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \41\Email from Managing Director, Office of Management Policy, 
Rightsizing and Innovation to Stephen Mull, Exec. Sec'y, Office of the 
Secretariat, U.S. Dep't of State (Sept. 25, 2012, 7:58 AM) (on file 
with the Committee, SCB0093148).

    The Managing Director explained to the Committee: ``I was a 
little bit concerned about being behind the tide.''\42\ ``I was 
hungry for information myself.''\43\ She described her normal 
responsibilities with regard to selecting the Executive 
Secretary to the ARB:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \42\M/PRI Managing Director Testimony at 32.
    \43\Id. at 33.

        A: [W]hat I normally do is go to our H.R. Bureau and 
        see who is available at the senior ranks to take on a 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        function such as this.

        Q: And what does the Executive Secretary to the ARB do?

        A: They arrange the meetings. They make sure that the 
        board has access to the Department for interviews and, 
        you know, because usually these people are removed from 
        the Department, you know, they're retirees, they're 
        unfamiliar with the Department's ways. So in sitting in 
        on the interviews, the exec sec would know who they 
        should contact next, who this leads them to in a 
        bureau. So they act, as I call it, the bridge from the 
        ARB to the building.

        Q: And in the 10 prior ARBs that you had been involved 
        in, as the ARB officer, had you made the selection of 
        the executive secretary?

        A: I wouldn't say made the selection. I nominated 
        people in the past, sure.

        Q: And had they been selected then?

        A: Yes, normally.\44\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \44\Id.

    On September 21, 2012, Mull informed Burns about Mills' 
decision to select Burns' Chief of Staff for the position of 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Executive Secretary to the ARB. He wrote to Burns:

        Hi Bill, Cheryl [Mills] asked me to talk to Uzra about 
        the possibility of her serving as Exec Sec for the ARB 
        through the end of November. She seemed very reluctant, 
        but Cheryl agreed that Uzra had all the right 
        qualities. Uzra asked to hold off giving a decision 
        until she talked to you, so she'll be seeking you out 
        on this today.

    Steve Mills recounted a different version of events to the 
Committee:\45\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \45\Email from Stephen Mull, Exec. Sec'y, Office of the 
Secretariat, U.S. Dep't of State, to William Burns, Deputy Sec'y, U.S. 
Dep't of State (Sept. 21, 2012, 8:45 AM) (Subject: re: Uzra/ARB) (on 
file with the Committee, SCB0057773).

        She [Uzra] was recommended by Deputy Secretary Burns. 
        She had been his chief of staff. She also, I thought 
        was a good recommendation in the sense that Deputy 
        Secretary Burns is well-respected and well-regarded in 
        the building. He's the most senior foreign service 
        officer. And she, in being his chief of staff, when she 
        reached out to people, when she did that, people 
        responded.\46\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \46\Mills Testimony at 194.

    On September 22, 2012, Burns conveyed Uzra Zeya's decision 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
to serve as Executive Secretary to Mills stating:

        Hi,

        Uzra has agreed to serve as Exec Secretary of ARB. 
        She'll call Steve to let him know.

        We talked at length about this, and she is comfortable 
        with decision, for all the right reasons. She'll do a 
        great job.\47\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \47\Email from William Burns, Deputy Sec'y, U.S. Dep't of State, to 
Cheryl D. Mills, Chief of Staff and Counselor, U.S. Dep't of State 
(Sept. 22, 2012, 1:37 PM) (on file with the Committee, SCB0057772).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Documents Reviewed By the ARB

    The ARB panel's primary sources of information were 
documents and witness interviews.\48\ Documents were collected 
from State Department personnel with ``information relevant to 
the Board's examination of these incidents.''\49\ Even before 
the ARB was convened, the Bureau of Legislative Affairs, with 
oversight from Mills, put in place a system to transmit, store, 
and review documents relevant to the myriad requests for 
information, including Congress, Freedom of Information [FOIA], 
and the ARB.\50\ The Deputy Director, Office of Maghreb 
Affairs, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, described the process 
for submitting documents:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \48\Testimony of Ambassador Thomas Pickering, Chairman, Benghazi 
Accountability Review Board, before the H. Comm. on Oversight and Gov't 
Reform, Tr. at 52 (Sept. 19, 2013) [hereinafter Pickering Testimony] 
(on file with the Committee).
    \49\Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Sec'y of State for Mgmt., Department 
Notice, Convening of Accountability Review Board to Examine the 
Circumstances Surrounding the Deaths in Benghazi, Libya on September 
11, 2012. U.S. Dep't of State (on file with the Committee, SCB0050689).
    \50\Testimony of the Deputy Director, Office of Maghreb Affairs, 
Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, Tr. at 112 (Dec. 
17, 2015) [hereinafter NEA Deputy Director Testimony] (on file with the 
Committee). See also Mills Testimony at 150 (``I had been managing, as 
you know, our response effort and collaborating with our leadership 
team on Benghazi in particular.'').

        A: There was a request to produce documents . . . I 
        think that we were given, you know, kind of the general 
        search terms to look for and scan in our computer and 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        files.

        Q: So you eventually, did you produce a PST file, or 
        did you produce hard copies in response to that 
        request?

        A: We produced hardcopies in response to that request.

        Q: So you physically would have identified the 
        documents that were responsive, printed them out from 
        your computer, and then handed that stack over to 
        somebody?

        A: That's what I recall.\51\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \51\NEA Deputy Director Testimony at 105.

    The Deputy Director further elaborated on her role and the 
role of other individuals within the State Department in 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
reviewing and identifying relevant documents:

        A: I received a call from our Principal Deputy 
        Assistant Secretary [Elizabeth Dibble] in NEA. It was 
        Columbus Day weekend. I recall it because I changed my 
        plans for the weekend very quickly as a result of her 
        request. And she noted that I believe it was a group in 
        H, was the Legislative Affairs Bureau, was reviewing 
        all of the--was preparing documents to be provided for, 
        I thought it was the ARB, and then whatever subsequent 
        use, presumably congressional review or whatever the 
        case may be. But I wasn't sure. They were going through 
        the documents for release, and she said could I join 
        the group the following day and look at, you know, kind 
        of looking whether we needed to redact any sensitive 
        information. That was my role to help in the release of 
        those documents, and she indicated that night, you 
        know, depending on how big of a task it is, could you 
        help me setting up a work flow like other officers from 
        NEA who could be involved in, you know, going through 
        and looking for sensitive information that we might 
        recommend for redaction.

        Q: And you said, you recall that it was Columbus Day 
        weekend?

        A: Or close to Columbus Day weekend, because I had 
        plans to see my brother that I cancelled.

                              *    *    *

        It had started before that weekend, but DAS Dibble 
        learned of it, or she realized there wasn't an NEA 
        participant on that Saturday, so she called me and I 
        went in the following morning, yeah.

        Q: And did you go any other days other than that 
        Saturday morning? Were you also there on Sunday? Did 
        you continue on Monday?

        A: I went in on Sunday and Monday and then through that 
        first week, and then I helped develop a rotation 
        schedule for other colleagues from NEA to kind of make 
        sure we had an NEA colleague. There were colleagues 
        from DS and IRM. You know, other subject matter experts 
        were in the room as well, kind of looking and looking 
        at documents for I can't recall how long that lasted, 
        but I helped develop the work schedule.

                              *    *    *

        I was primarily focused myself on redacting names and 
        titles of individuals who were private citizens, either 
        Libyan, American, U.N. staff, other internationals who 
        were in Libya doing work, because they were talking to 
        American diplomats. That's a sensitive thing that could 
        endanger people if that's generally known in some 
        circumstances. So that's primarily what I was 
        recommending redacting. And then I also recommended 
        redacting the names of junior people who were drafting 
        emails or cables as well.\52\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \52\Id. at 101.

    Mills' involvement in the process was described by Charlene 
Lamb, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Diplomatic 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Security. Lamb testified:

        She [Mills]--it was my understanding, she was 
        responsible for getting all of the documents that were 
        being requested in--and compiled in, you know, 
        organizing the documents so they made sense, and making 
        sure nothing got left out.

    Because Mills is not a security expert, she had a lot of 
questions about security policies, procedures, you know, what 
was routine, what was done under exigent circumstances. So 
there were several DS [Diplomatic Security] people there, not 
just myself, that were working to help bring all these 
documents together and to answer questions that she had.\53\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \53\Testimony of Charlene Lamb, Deputy Ass't Sec'y of State for 
Diplomatic Security, Int'l Programs, Tr. at 108 (Jan. 7, 2016) 
[hereinafter Lamb Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

    Mills told the Committee certain documents were set aside 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
for her specific review. As she told the Committee:

        The documents I would see were documents where the team 
        had looked through them and thought that there was a 
        subset that I should see. Those typically meant that 
        they were sharing new information, new facts, or other 
        information that they thought was important for the 
        senior leadership to know.\54\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \54\Mills Testimony at 182.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

                              *    *    *

        I acknowledge I was pushing pretty hard for them to get 
        them out the door because our goal was to try to do 
        that.

    Mills explained the ARB's access to these documents:

        They [ARB] were looking at records already being 
        assembled in response to a request that had already 
        been posed to our department by Members of Congress, as 
        well as they had their own individual interviews that 
        they were conducting where they might ask for records 
        or materials that they felt would be relevant that they 
        came to have knowledge of.

                              *    *    *

        Separate and apart from that, the ARB could both reach 
        to the Administration Bureau to be able to access any 
        of those records that were being collected, which would 
        have been records regarding anything related to the 
        night of September 11 and 12. And, they could also 
        initiate their own requests for documents.
        They [the Administration or ``A'' Bureau] were the 
        actual repository and kept copies of everything and 
        they would only make copies to allow other individuals 
        to review them as opposed to disturb their copy set.

                              *    *    *

        Their [ARB] mechanisms were threefold, if I really 
        think about it. One, obviously, they could reach out to 
        the A Bureau and say, we want to look at all of them or 
        we want to look at documents of this nature. Two, they 
        could make requests. Three, they would ask, as our 
        reviews were going on of records, were there any 
        records that were relevant that they should be either 
        looking at or that they would be at least apprised of. 
        And so that was another mechanism that they had. And so 
        those could be collected to them if that's what they 
        reached to ask for. They might have asked for that on a 
        particular subject matter; has anybody seen anything on 
        this topic or that topic?
        But those were the three ways that they could get it, 
        with each of those being avenues for them to be able to 
        ascertain whatever information they believed they 
        needed, because people didn't have visibility into how 
        they were making those judgments.\55\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \55\Mills Testimony at 142-147.

    According to the State Department, the ARB reviewed more 
than 7,000 documents numbering thousands of pages as part of 
its investigation.\56\ Excluded from the ARB panel's review 
were documents and emails sent to or by the Secretary or her 
senior staff. As the Secretary told the Committee:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \56\Letter from Thomas B. Gibbons, Acting Ass't Sec'y, Bureau of 
Leg. Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to Hon. Darrell E. Issa, Chairman, 
H. Comm. on Oversight & Gov't Reform (Aug. 23, 2013) (on file with the 
Committee).

        I don't know what they [the ARB] had access to. I know 
        that, during the time I was at the State Department, 
        there was certainly a great effort to respond to your 
        predecessor, Congressman Issa's inquiries. And many 
        thousands of pages of information was conveyed to the 
        Congress.\57\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \57\Testimony of Hillary R. Clinton, Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of 
State, Tr. at 321-322 (Oct. 22, 2015) [hereinafter Clinton Testimony] 
(on file with the Committee).

    The ARBs access to information from the Secretary and her 
senior staff was extremely limited. The nearly 3,000 pages of 
emails from the Secretary were made available only to the 
Committee with productions occurring on February 13, 2015, June 
25, 2015, and September 25, 2015--well after the conclusion of 
the Benghazi ARB. Furthermore, it is unclear whether the ARB 
had access to the more than 60,000 pages of senior leader 
records produced separately to the Committee during its 
investigation.\58\ This was further corroborated by Jacob 
Sullivan, Deputy Chief of Staff and Director of Policy 
Planning, who told the Committee:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \58\This number excludes the approximately 4,300 pages of documents 
produced to the Committee.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Q: Did you provide any documents to the ARB?

        A: I don't think they asked me for any documents, so I 
        don't think I provided any.\59\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \59\Sullivan Testimony at 82.

    The State Department informed the Committee, Department 
records for senior officials are stored separately.\60\ This 
includes a separate email system, which until February 2015 did 
not have archiving capability.\61\ Unless separate searches 
were conducted by State Department personnel on these systems 
and personnel saved their emails, senior leader emails and 
records would not have been accessible by the ARB panel.\62\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \60\April 10, 2015 meeting with the Director of the Office of 
Executive Secretariat.
    \61\Id.
    \62\Id.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subpoena for ARB documents

    Like previous Congresses, the Committee sought access to 
the underlying documents reviewed by the ARB to better 
understand the ARB panel's review and findings. The documents 
sought are required by law to be physically separated and 
stored by the State Department and should be easily accessible 
by the State Department.\63\ Congress issued its first subpoena 
for documents reviewed by the ARB on August 1, 2013.\64\ No 
documents were produced. On January 28, 2015, the Committee 
reissued the subpoena for ARB documents.\65\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \63\22 U.S.C. 4833(c) (the statute contemplates that ARB records 
will become publically available following the conclusion of its work).
    \64\August 1, 2013 subpoena to John F. Kerry, Secretary of State 
seeking all documents provided by the Department of State to the 
Accountability Review Board convened to examine the facts and 
circumstances surrounding the September 11-12, 2012 attacks on U.S. 
facilities in Benghazi, Libya and all documents and communications 
referring or relating to ARB interviews or meetings, including but not 
limited to notes or summaries prepared during and after any ARB 
interview or meeting.
    \65\See January 28, 2015 subpoena issued to John F. Kerry seeking:

  1. G``all documents and communications produced by the Department of 
State to the Accountability Review Board (``ARB'' or the ARB) convened 
to examine the facts and circumstances surrounding the September 11-12, 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
2012 attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi Libya.

  2. GAll documents and communications referring or relating to the ARB 
interviews or meetings, including but not limited to, notes or 
summaries prepared during and after any ARB interview or meeting.''

    Almost two and a half years after Congress issued its first 
subpoena in 2013, the State Department for the first time 
produced an ARB record--a four page interview summary for a 
witness who was scheduled to appear before the Committee the 
following day.\66\ The State Department maintained this posture 
over the next several weeks with the production of one or two 
ARB interview summaries, totaling 38 pages, each provided less 
than a week before the Committee's interviews.\67\ It was not 
until April 15, 2015, the State Department produced a larger 
trove of ARB documents consisting of 1,758 pages. On April 24, 
2015, the State Department produced another 2,523 pages of 
documents. Accompanying the April 24, 2015, production was a 
letter stating:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \66\Letter to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, 
from Julia E. Frifield, Ass't Sec'y of State for Leg. Affairs, U.S. 
Dep't of State (Feb.13, 2015) (on file with the Committee).
    \67\H. Select Comm. on Benghazi Internal Working Document (on file 
with the Committee).

        [t]his production, together with our production on 
        April 15, 2015, constitutes our delivery of ARB 
        documents that were physically set aside following the 
        ARB's completion and archived. In addition to these 
        materials, the Department searched for and included in 
        this production, as responsive to your subpoena's 
        second a request, a small number of interview summaries 
        that had not been stored within these physically set 
        aside files.\68\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \68\Letter to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, 
from Julia E. Frifield, Ass't Sec'y of State for Leg. Affairs, U.S. 
Dep't of State, (Apr. 24, 2015) (on file with the Committee).

    Although the State Department produced 4,319 pages to the 
Committee, previous statements by the State Department that the 
ARB reviewed ``7,000 State Department documents numbering 
thousands of pages'' suggest the Committee does not have all 
the documents reviewed by the ARB.\69\ Moreover, the State 
Department by its own admission withheld a number of documents 
from the Committee. On April 24, 2015, the State Department 
informed the Committee ``a small number of documents'' were 
being withheld because of ``executive branch confidentiality 
interests.''\70\ The State Department's basis for withholding 
the documents was a concocted administrative privilege--one 
made up entirely by the Administration and not recognized by 
the Constitution.\71\ The State Department has yet to explain 
the discrepancy.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \69\Letter from Thomas B. Gibbons, Acting Ass't Sec'y, Leg. 
Affairs, U.S. Dep't of State, to Darrell E. Issa, Chairman, H. Comm. on 
Oversight & Gov't Reform (Aug. 23, 2013).
    \70\Id.
    \71\Letter to Trey Gowdy, Chairman, H. Select Comm. on Benghazi, 
from Julia E. Frifield, Ass't Sec'y of State for Leg. Affairs, U.S. 
Dep't of State, Apr. 24, 2015 (on file with the Committee).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Witness Interviews

    The ARB interviewed more than 100 people.\72\ However, 
neither the Secretary, nor her inner circle, were interviewed 
by the ARB. Mullen offered this explanation:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \72\Press Release, U.S. Dep't of State, Briefing on the 
Accountability Review Board Report (Dec. 19, 2012), http://
www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2012/12/202282.htm (``We interviewed more 
than a hundred people, reviewed thousands of documents, and watched 
hours of video. We spoke with people who were on the scene in Benghazi 
that night, who were in Tripoli, who were in Washington. We talked to 
military and intelligence officials, including to many State Department 
personnel, and to experts who do not work for the United States 
Government.'').

        Q: And, there was no interview of Deputy Secretary 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Nides or Secretary Clinton?

        A: There was not.

        Q: And was there any discussion as to at what level the 
        interviews would not take place at? For example, was 
        there a common--excuse me, I'll start over. Was there a 
        decision by the board not to interview Mr. Nides?

        A: There was early on a discussion, and certainly I had 
        a discussion, private discussion with Ambassador 
        Pickering about at least my expectation, and I would 
        say this was in the first couple weeks, that this 
        certainly could present the requirement that we would 
        have to interview everybody up the chain of command, 
        including the Secretary, and he agreed with that. So 
        the two of us had sort of set that premise in terms of 
        obviously depending on what we learned over time, and 
        our requirement to both affix both responsibility and 
        accountability per se were, again, based on the facts 
        as we understood them. So there was a consensus, and it 
        was a universal consensus over time that we did the 
        interviews we needed to do and that we didn't do the 
        interviews we didn't do, which would have included the 
        ones obviously that we didn't do, which were Nides and 
        Burns and Secretary.

                              *    *    *

        Q: So it's fair to say the board decided it didn't need 
        to interview Cheryl Mills or the Secretary about events 
        that night?

        A: No. And I think to your point about Ms. Mills and 
        the Secretary, it was really through the, both the 
        discussions with so many people that we interviewed and 
        the affirmation and the validation of what happened 
        that evening, including the conversation the Secretary 
        had with Mr. Hicks, that we just didn't, we didn't see 
        any need to clarify that, we knew that had happened. We 
        were comfortable in the case of Mr. Hicks that he was 
        walking us through what had happened. So there just 
        wasn't any further need to go anywhere else.\73\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \73\Testimony of Admiral Michael Mullen, Vice Chairman, 
Accountability Review Board, before the House Oversight and Government 
Reform Committee, Tr. at 26-28 (Jun. 19, 2013) [hereinafter Mullen 
Testimony] (on file with the Committee).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Senior Staff Communications with the ARB Members

    In addition to selecting members of the ARB and its staff, 
identifying and reviewing documents, Mills played a peculiar 
role during the ARB's investigation. Within days of the ARB's 
start, Mullen reached out to Mills to express concerns about 
Lamb's testimony before Congress.\74\ Mullen explained his 
reasons for contacting Mills:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \74\Mills Testimony at 184.

        Shortly after we interviewed Ms. Lamb, I initiated a 
        call to Ms. Mills to give her--what I wanted to give 
        her was a head's up because at this point she was on 
        the list to come over here to testify, and I was--so 
        from a department representation standpoint and as 
        someone that led a department, I always focused on 
        certainly trying to make sure the best witnesses were 
        going to appear before the department, and my reaction 
        at that point in time with Ms. Lamb at the interview 
        was--and it was a pretty unstable time. It was the 
        beginning, there was a lot of unknowns. To the best of 
        my knowledge, she hadn't appeared either ever or many 
        times certainly. So essentially I gave Ms. Mills a 
        head's up that I thought that her appearance could be a 
        very difficult appearance for the State Department, and 
        that was--about that was the extent of the 
        conversation.\75\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \75\Id. at 23-24.

    Mills did not recall the conversation about Lamb, telling 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
the Committee:

        A: I don't recall it [the conversation with Admiral 
        Mullen], but I would have no reason to believe that he 
        wouldn't be accurate about that.

        Q: Okay. He related that he told you that Charlene Lamb 
        was not going to be a good witness for the State 
        Department. Does that ring a bell with you?

        A: No, because if I was aware of that, I might have 
        been thoughtful about that in all the ways of which--
        how we could best communicate information. But I don't 
        dispute that. I'm sure that if that's his memory that 
        he would be accurately reflecting what he recalls.\76\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \76\Id. at 173.

    Weeks later, Mullen reached out again to Mills and the 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Secretary to discuss the ARB's work to date. Mullen explained:

        So shortly after we met, first couple weeks there were 
        some there were some things that we could see early 
        that we thought it was important that the Secretary of 
        State know about, not so much in terms of what had 
        happened, but steps that we thought she might want to 
        take initially as opposed to wait weeks or months to 
        see the results of the board. So we put together a list 
        of--and I honestly can't remember the number, but 
        somewhere between 10 and 20 recommendations for her to 
        take a look at immediately. So, for example, one of 
        them clearly, because there was a fire issue, was 
        consider getting breathing apparatuses out to high 
        threat posts immediately. So there were things like 
        that, and we sent that list up, and to the best of my 
        knowledge, that's something that Ambassador Pickering 
        either handed, transmitted to Ms. Mills and the 
        Secretary.

        At the end of the ARB we met with Secretary Clinton for 
        about 2 hours to give her a briefing on what we had 
        come across, and at least at that point, and we hadn't 
        finished or signed it out, but at least the major 
        recommendations that we had concluded up to that point. 
        The only other State Department employee that was in 
        the room with Secretary Clinton then was Ms. Mills.\77\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \77\Mullen Testimony at 25.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Mills confirmed the meeting with Pickering and Mullen:

        In the course of their investigation, we had one 
        briefing where they stepped through where they were in 
        their process--and, by that, the other person who was 
        briefed was the Secretary--that they stepped through 
        where they were in their process and that they 
        anticipated being on time and what their own 
        assessments were, but that they had not come to 
        conclusions yet about accountability. So this was 
        basically a briefing before they had stepped through 
        their accountability elements.\78\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \78\Mills Testimony at 187-188.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Editing the Report

    Mills also described Pickering and Mullen's outreach as 
they were drafting their final report:

        A: And then, as they were preparing their report, they 
        reached out to say, ``We have a draft of the report.'' 
        They shared that draft with me. I shared back my 
        observations of instances where there were issues or 
        facts that I thought were relevant for their 
        consideration. They took them, or they didn't. 
        Ultimately, they had to make that judgement.

        Q: So you reviewed the draft before it went public, 
        before it was released?

        A: Well, the draft before it went to--ultimately, it 
        goes to the Secretary----

        Q: Right.

        A: --and then it actually gets--we made a determination 
        to release it. ARBs are not always released publicly, 
        but the Secretary had said she wanted to release this 
        one publicly.

        Q: And can you tell me the extent of edits that you 
        and/or the Secretary made to the report?

        A: The Secretary didn't. And the Secretary did not, at 
        least to my knowledge, review a draft.

        Q: So Secretary Clinton didn't review it; you just 
        reviewed it.

        A: I reviewed the draft. That's correct.

        Q: All right. And were there--you said there was some 
        suggestions. So what were the edits, what were the 
        changes that you asked the ARB to make?

        A: I can't tell you that were the different issues now, 
        because that's obviously too long away. But basically 
        what I stepped through was, if there was information 
        that we had that didn't seem to be reflected there, I 
        would flag that. If there were other reactions or 
        observations I had, I would share that. And that's what 
        I would have done.

        Q: So I just want to be clear. First, you reviewed it. 
        Second, you said there are changes that need to be 
        made, and you gave those changes to the ARB. Is that 
        right?

        A: No.

        Q: Okay. Well, then tell me what's right.

        A: Okay. I reviewed it, and I identified areas where I 
        either saw that there was, from my perspective, based 
        on where I was sitting, information that wasn't 
        present, information that might be different, or other 
        factors that I thought were relevant for their 
        consideration in deciding what went in the document. 
        And they then made their own judgement.

        Q: Well, that sounds like changes.

        A: I certainly----

        Q: So you suggested changes?

        A: I certainly made recommendations for places where I 
        thought there were inaccuracies or misstatements or 
        other information that might not be fully reflective of 
        what the information was that was there. I certainly 
        made those, yes.

        A: You reviewed it, and you recommended changes. It was 
        up to them whether they implemented the changes or 
        included them in the----

        A: Yes. Recommend changes or flagged areas where I 
        thought there might be inaccuracies.

        Q: Change this, delete that, that kind of--that kind 
        of----

        A: No.

        Q: I just want to be clear.

        A: Oh. Thank you.

        Q: All right?

        A: I appreciate that.

        Q: You recommended changes. Then what happened? Did 
        they do it or not?

        A: So some they took probably, and some they didn't. My 
        impression is that----

        Q: Why is there a ``probably'' there? I mean, the final 
        report--you didn't look at the final report? The 
        Secretary looked at it.

        A: I did look at the final report, but what I didn't 
        have is an errata sheet and say, ``Oh, that's not 
        there. Oh, this is there.'' I didn't do that, so that's 
        why I don't have a frame of reference.\79\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \79\Id. at 187-191.

    Mills' peculiar role in the ARB investigation extended 
beyond the selection of members to approving senior State 
Department officials meeting with the ARB. On November 3, 2012, 
Thomas Nides, Deputy Secretary of State, sought approval from 
Mills for the ARB's request to meet with him. On November 3, 
2012, Nides wrote Mills ``I assume this is a y.''\80\ Mills 
responded ``Y''.\81\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \80\Email from Thomas Nides, Deputy Sec'y of State for Management 
and Resources, U.S. Dep't of State, to Cheryl D. Mills, Chief of Staff, 
U.S. Dep't of State (Nov. 3, 2012 12:26 PM) (on file with the 
Committee, SCB0058538).
    \81\Email from Cheryl D. Mills, Chief of Staff, U.S. Dep't of 
State, to Thomas Nides, Deputy Sec'y of State for Management and 
Resources, U.S. Dep't of State (Nov. 3, 2012 1:10 PM) (on file with the 
Committee, SCB0058537).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Accountability of State Department Personnel

    Among the 29 recommendations made to the State Department, 
the ARB found:

        Systematic failures and leadership and management 
        deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the 
        State Department (``the Department'') resulted in a 
        Special Mission security posture that was inadequate 
        for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the 
        attack that took place.\82\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \82\Unclassified Benghazi Accountability Review Board, U.S. Dep't 
of State [hereinafter Unclassified ARB].

    The ARB identified one official from the Bureau of Near 
Eastern Affairs and three officials from the Bureau of 
Diplomatic Security at fault for Benghazi security failures. 
Notwithstanding their finding of inferior performance in these 
two bureaus, the ARB ``did not find reasonable cause to 
determine that any individual U.S. government employee breached 
his or her duty,''\83\ the performance standard set out in law. 
A breach of duty must rise to ``willful misconduct or knowingly 
ignor[ing] his or her responsibilities.''\84\ The Board noted 
that poor performance does not ordinarily constitute a breach 
of duty that would serve as a basis for disciplinary action but 
is instead addressed through the performance management 
system.\85\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \83\See Finding # 5, id., at 7; see also Classified Accountability 
Review Board, U.S. Dep't of State, at 10 [hereinafter Classified ARB].
    \84\See Statement of Admiral Mullen, U.S. Dep't of State, Briefing 
on the Accountability Review Board Report (Dec. 19, 2012), http://
www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2012/12/202282.htm; see also Statement of 
Ambassador Thomas Pickering, U.S. Dep't of State, Briefing on the 
Accountability Review Board Report (Dec. 19, 2012), http://
www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2012/12/202282.htm.
    \85\Id.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Mills shared with the Committee her reaction upon learning 
of the ARB's findings on personnel:

        What I do recall is that they had made determinations 
        around personnel, and I recall one of them being 
        surprising to me, and I told her [the Secretary] that I 
        was surprised that they had made a conclusion about one 
        particular individual.\86\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \86\Mills Testimony at 192.

    Emails between Burns and Mills suggest others were 
surprised by the ARB's finding with regard to personnel. On 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 18, 2012, Burns wrote to Mills:

        Hi,

        Went down to talk to Eric this evening but missed him. 
        Sent him note, and will follow up tomorrow. Also had 
        long talk with Pat. He's coping, but as you well know 
        its not easy.\87\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \87\Email from William Burns, Deputy Sec'y of State, U.S. Dep't of 
State, to Cheryl D. Mills, Chief of Staff and Counselor, U.S. Dep't of 
State (Dec. 18, 2012, 7:26 PM) (Subject: Fw: DS) (on file with the 
Committee, SCB0045827).

    Emails between Kennedy and Mills indicate discussions were 
underway to reassign staff as an eventual, or perhaps even 
preventative, response to the ARB's finding. On December 13, 
2012, five days before the ARB report was released, Kennedy 
proposed to Mills a staffing change dealing with three of the 
four individuals ultimately named in the ARB, all of whom were 
under Kennedy's supervision. His plan called for placing two 
individuals identified by the ARB with the Office of Foreign 
Missions. The third individual under Kennedy's supervision 
would have been responsible for security at non-high threat 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
posts. Unsure of the plan, Kennedy wrote:

        Cheryl

        As we discussed, I'm sending along my first-cut on 
        staffing

        Still playing with it

        But think its worth a gut check

        Regards

        Pat\88\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \88\Email from Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Sec'y for Management, U.S. 
Dep't of State, to Cheryl D. Mills, Chief of Staff and Counselor, U.S. 
Dep't of State (Dec. 13, 2012,10:12 AM) (on file with the Committee, 
SCB100920).

    Notwithstanding Kennedy's proposal, all four individuals 
were placed on administrative leave and eventually reinstated 
within the State Department. Lamb described her experience to 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
the Committee:

        A: We were put on four State Department employees were 
        put on administrative leave for a short period of time.

        Q: Right. With pay or without pay?

        A: With pay.

        Q: And was there any due process for you to go through 
        to what was the due process measures? They come to you 
        State Department comes to you and says, you're going to 
        be suspended on administrative leave not suspended on 
        administrative leave for 4 weeks. Was there some kind 
        of due process rights that you had when that was first 
        given to you?

        A: I was not given any guidance.

        Q: They didn't tell you had any way to appeal that or 
        anything?

        A: No.

        Q: Okay. And who told you that? Who told you that you 
        were going to be suspended? Or you were going you were 
        going to be on a 4 week administrative leave?

        A: Eric Boswell.

        Q: All right. And when he told you that, he didn't say 
        there's tell me how he gave it to you, he told you that 
        information.

        A: He called me and Scott Bultrowicz in, and he said 
        that we were to be out of the building by the end of 
        the business day, and that we were on administrative 
        leave.

        Q: And did you ask him what was your response? I think 
        I would say, really? Can I talk to anyone? Can I give 
        my side of the story or

        A: No, I Scott and I have been around DS a long time. 
        And, I mean, we've seen this process, and we knew that 
        there were administrative things that people were 
        looking into, and we just said, yes, and did as we were 
        told.

        Q: And then how were you notified that you were you 
        were when you could come back? Did you know right ahead 
        that today you are going to leave and you can come back 
        to a date in the future? What did they tell you?

        A: We were sent a letter telling us when to report back 
        to duty.

        Q: Okay.\89\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \89\Lamb Testimony at 106-107.

    While the ARB's findings of accountability extended to 
three individuals within the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, the 
findings were limited. The ARB correctly assessed the State 
Department's inadequate security posture at the Benghazi 
Mission both in terms of its physical security as well as the 
lack of security staffing. However, the ARB failed to 
distinguish between responsibility for security staffing and 
responsibility for physical security. This confusion is 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
reflected in the Chairman of the ARB's testimony:

        Q: So the decisions about additional physical security, 
        who were those made by?

        A: The Bureau of Diplomatic Security.

                              *    *    *

        Q: How high up did they go?

        A: To Assistant Secretary Boswell principally, but to 
        [Deputy Assistant Secretary] Charlene Lamb in fact.\90\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \90\Ambassador Thomas Pickering Testimony at 153.

    Contrary to the Chairman of the ARB's understanding, 
responsibility for the physical security of the Benghazi 
Mission did not fall within the Office of International 
Programs but within the Office of Countermeasures and the 
relevant offices under its purview.
    Moreover, the decisions to exclude the Benghazi Mission 
from the physical security rules were generally made at the 
Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs and Under 
Secretary for Management levels. The Benghazi ARB described 
``the flawed process by which Special Mission Benghazi's 
extension until the end of December 2012 was approved,'' 
determining it was ``a decision that did not take security 
considerations adequately into account.''\91\ Yet, the ARB 
failed to ascribe responsibility to those who drafted and 
approved the Benghazi Mission's 12 month extension.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \91\Unclassified ARB, supra note 81, at 30.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The Benghazi ARB's failure to recognize deficiencies at the 
highest levels of the State Department's leadership is curious. 
As stated above, the State Department has been told repeatedly 
by past ARBs that change is needed both in its culture and with 
respect to security. Following two of the most significant 
terrorist attacks in State Department history, the Nairobi and 
Dar es Salaam embassy bombings in 1998, the ARB described steps 
the State Department should take to bolster the security of 
facilities abroad; chief among them, the application of the 
security rules at U.S. diplomatic facilities abroad. The State 
Department rejected these past ARB recommendations and excluded 
the Benghazi Mission from the security rules.
    Furthermore, it is ironic that in the summer of 2009 the 
State Department conducted a Quadrennial Diplomacy and 
Development Review, which was intended to be a ``sweeping 
review of diplomacy and development, the core missions of the 
State Department and USAID.''\92\ The report came out in 
December 2010 and was lauded as a ``sweeping assessment of how 
the Department of State'' could ``become more efficient, 
accountable, and effective in a world in which rising powers, 
growing instability, and technological transformation create 
new threats, but also new opportunities.''\93\ The report 
cautioned that the State Department must change in order to:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \92\See U.S. Dep't of State, Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development 
Review Fact Sheet, http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/
153109.pdf.
    \93\Leading Through Civilian Power, Quadrennial Diplomacy and 
Development Review, U.S. Dep't of State, at 72 (2010).

        [I]nstitute procedures to integrate security and risk 
        management into every stage of policy and operational 
        planning in Washington and the field. Including 
        security considerations in the design and development 
        of policy and programs from the outset will make it 
        easier to find effective ways to mitigate risk. We will 
        also ensure Diplomatic Security Regional Directors are 
        more actively and regularly involved in regional 
        bureaus' policy development so there is a shared 
        understanding between those responsible for ensuring 
        security and those responsible for developing and 
        implementing policy.\94\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \94\Id.

    Yet the State Department maintained the status quo and 
rejected the findings of this report. In fact, every ARB review 
has concluded that the State Department needs a significant 
change in its culture and organizational structure to improve 
security. Lasting and significant change must be directed from 
the top.

        House Armed Services Committee Majority Interim Report: 
                     Benghazi Investigation Update

    Between September 2012 and April 2014, the House Armed 
Services Committee conducted its own review of the events 
surrounding the September 11-12, 2012, terrorist attacks, 
including the days leading up to and following the attacks. 
Specifically, the Armed Services Committee looked at the 
military's role: ``the response of the Department of Defense'', 
``what preparations the U.S. military had made for the 
possibility of an attack'', and ``what arrangements have 
subsequently been put in place to minimize the possibility of a 
similar occurrence.''\95\ In February 2014, the Armed Services 
Committee issued a ``Majority Interim Report: Benghazi 
Investigation Update'' outlining its findings to date. At the 
time of its interim report, the Armed Services Committee had 
conducted seven classified briefings, two public hearings and 
one transcribed witness interview. Based on the information 
obtained, it issued six findings in its February 2014 report:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \95\House Armed Services Committee, Majority Interim Report: 
Benghazi Investigation Update, at 3 (Feb. 2014) (on file with the 
Committee).

    1. LIn assessing military posture in anticipation of the 
September 11, 2012 anniversary, White House officials failed to 
comprehend or ignored the dramatically deteriorating security 
situation in Libya and the growing threat to U.S. interests in 
the region. Official public statements seem to have exaggerated 
the extent and rigor of the security assessment conducted at 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
the time.

    2. LU.S. personnel in Benghazi were woefully vulnerable in 
September 2012 because a.) the administration did not direct a 
change in military force posture, b.) there was no intelligence 
of a specific ``imminent'' threat in Libya, and c.) the 
Department of State, which has primary responsibility for 
diplomatic security, favored a reduction of Department of 
Defense security personnel in Libya before the attack.

    3. LDefense Department officials believed nearly from the 
outset of violence in Benghazi that it was a terrorist attack 
rather than a protest gone awry, and the President subsequently 
permitted the military to respond with minimal direction.

    4. LThe U.S. military's response to the Benghazi attack was 
severely degraded because of the location and readiness posture 
of U.S. forces, and because of lack of clarity about how the 
terrorist action was unfolding. However, given the uncertainty 
about the prospective length and scope of the attack, military 
commanders did not take all possible steps to prepare for a 
more extended operation.

    5. LThere was no ``stand down'' order issued to U.S. 
military personnel in Tripoli who sought to join the fight in 
Benghazi. However, because official reviews after the attack 
were not sufficiently comprehensive, there was confusion about 
the roles and responsibilities of these individuals.

    6. LThe Department of Defense is working to correct many 
weaknesses revealed by the Benghazi attack, but the global 
security situation is still deteriorating and military 
resources continue to decline.\96\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \96\Id. at 2.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
               SCOPE LIMITATIONS: MAJORITY INTERIM REPORT

    Notwithstanding its findings, the Armed Services Committee 
acknowledged at the outset the limitations of its report 
stating ``This report should be considered one component of 
continuing comprehensive Benghazi related oversight underway in 
the House of Representatives.''\97\ Moreover, the Armed 
Services Committee recognized the scope of its review of the 
terrorist attacks was limited, stating, ``[i]n keeping with the 
committee's jurisdiction, however, this document addresses only 
the activities and actions of personnel in DOD.''\98\ Finally, 
the report acknowledged ``the committee's inquiry continues'', 
``staff . . . [will] interview additional witnesses in coming 
weeks, including individuals who were involved in responding to 
the Benghazi events and other officials. Some individuals who 
have already provided information will appear for further 
questioning and clarification.''\99\ The Armed Services 
Committee conducted eight transcribed interviews after 
releasing the interim report.\100\ The last transcribed 
interview occurred in April 2014, one month prior to the Select 
Committee's formation.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \97\Id. at 1.
    \98\Id.
    \99\Id. at 4.
    \100\Committee on Armed Services: Benghazi Materials, p. 5.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
              CONTENT LIMITATIONS: MAJORITY INTERIM REPORT

    The value of information obtained was necessarily limited. 
Public hearings and briefings typically do not lend themselves 
to uncovering new facts or witnesses. The Defense Department 
was positioned to influence the content of information 
presented in these settings. As a result, the Armed Services 
Committee was limited in its understanding of the policies and 
procedures that contributed to the military's posture prior to 
and its response during the September 11-12, 2012, attacks.
    For example, the Armed Services Committee had not conducted 
transcribed interviews of the top military officials prior to 
its 2014 report to understand the discrepancies in the 
discussions that took place during the September 10, 2012, 
meeting with the White House regarding the nation's 
preparedness and security posture on September 11, 2012.\101\ 
It did not interview Secretary Panetta to discuss his December 
2011 trip to Libya, his understanding of the Benghazi Mission 
compound, and his role in the military's response--specially 
why only one asset made it to Libya more than 24 hours after 
his verbal order to deploy the Commander's in Extremis Force, 
special operations forces located in the United States, and two 
Fleet Antiterrorism Security Teams including one to Benghazi 
and one to Tripoli.\102\ Further, it did not interview many 
military personnel on the ground at the installations and 
intermediate staging bases in Europe to understand the orders 
given and status of assets on September 11-12, 2012. Finally, 
the Armed Services Committee did not have access to other 
agency documents referencing military discussions that could 
shed light on issues relating to military planning and 
operations prior to and during the attacks.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \101\Id. at 7.
    \102\Id. at 16.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Broadly speaking, the Armed Services Committee 
predominantly confined its inquiry to whether the military had 
assets close enough to have ``made a difference'' in Benghazi. 
Further, it did not have access to new information with respect 
to assets potentially available outside of then-established 
military planning for such contingencies. Nowhere does the 
Armed Service Committee's report consider: Was Benghazi ever 
part of the military's response? Why did it take the military 
so long to get to Tripoli? What assets received orders to 
deploy? Why did it take so long to put U.S. forces into motion? 
And, most basically, whether it is accurate to state no assets 
could have arrived in time for the second fatal attack on the 
annex?

                    SELECT COMMITTEE'S INVESTIGATION

    The Select Committee sought to answer these and other 
important questions based on all the evidence presented not 
just the facts as presented by Defense Department. At the 
Select Committee's insistence, it conducted 24 interviews, 16 
of whom had never been interviewed. The Select Committee also 
received approximately 900 pages of documents never before 
produced to Congress. The Select Committee's insistence on 
additional information was met with opposition from the Defense 
Department, a department seemingly more used to dictating the 
terms of congressional oversight. From the perspective of the 
Defense Department, the Select Committee should have been 
satisfied with the witnesses and documents it provided. For 
example, the Defense Department chided the Committee for 
wanting to speak to a low-level service member that may have 
evidence contradicting the Department's version of events. In 
the Department's view, however, ``locating these types of 
individuals are [sic] not necessary since such claims are 
easily dismissed by any one of the multiple high-level military 
officers already interviewed.'' The Select Committee, however, 
was not in the business of accepting the word of anyone single 
person, ``high-level military officers'' or otherwise. The 
Select Committee was interested in finding and confirming facts 
wherever those facts emerged to understanding the truth about 
the military's role on the night of September 11-12, 2012.

            The Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence 
                           Chairman's Report

    The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence 
released its report to the public on November 21, 2014. The 
report was limited in scope, its focus narrowly aimed at 
reviewing the performance of the Intelligence Community related 
to the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi on September 11, 
2012. The Select Committee, having the benefit of time, breadth 
of inquiry and resources has identified facts that contradict a 
key, overly broad conclusion contained in the Chairman's 
report. Namely, the Chairman's report asserted that there was 
``no evidence of an intelligence failure.''
    The Select Committee received testimony from two senior 
Obama Administration officials who stated that in their view an 
``intelligence failure'' had taken place with respect to 
Benghazi.
    Further, the Select Committee received testimony with 
respect to not one, but two, important analytical tradecraft 
irregularities that career line analysts uniformly described as 
significant and gave rise to important concerns. Both directly 
impacted significant analysis with respect to Benghazi, 
including an assessment given to the President of the United 
States. This too was a significant intelligence failure.
    The Intelligence Committee interviewed less than one-third 
of the CIA personnel on the ground that night in Benghazi--two-
thirds of whom held the exact same position. It did not 
interview key witnesses who would have helped it better 
understand the overall CIA mission in Benghazi and its response 
to the attacks, including analytical issues in the wake of the 
attacks. The Intelligence Committee did not interview any of 
the CIA analysts at headquarters. The Select Committee's 
interviews with these analysts allowed it to draw conclusions 
about the errors of the products produced by the analysts 
involved in drafting.
    Finally, the Chairman's report draws several conclusions 
about the analytical assessments done by the CIA. As described 
previously in this report, the Select Committee received 
testimony with respect to two separate serious analytical 
tradecraft incidents with respect to Benghazi: sloppy 
analytical work gave rise to key fallacies of the 
Administration's talking points with respect to the attack, and 
another incident where the President's briefer substituted her 
own personal assessment for the properly coordinated and vetted 
work of line analysts in the President's Daily Brief.
    In short, the Select Committee has had access to and 
received evidence from numerous witnesses and documents that 
the Intelligence Committee never obtained. It has had the time 
and resources to inquire into the intelligence efforts before, 
during and after the attacks in Benghazi. This Committee 
believes this report provides a truly thorough review of the 
intelligence community's performance related to the attacks.

                              APPENDIX L:

                    Biographies of Glen A. Doherty,

                 Sean P. Smith, J. Christopher Stevens,

                          and Tyrone S. Woods

                            Glen A. Doherty

    Glen Doherty (born 1970) was a personal security specialist 
serving in Libya. He was raised in Massachusetts and joined the 
Navy SEALS in 1995 and became a paramedic and sniper 
specializing in the Middle East. He responded to the attack on 
the USS Cole in 2000 and served two tours in Iraq. After a 
decorated Navy career, Mr. Doherty worked as a private security 
contractor in a number of countries, including Afghanistan, 
Pakistan, and Yemen.

                             Sean P. Smith

    Sean Patrick Smith (born 1978) was an Information 
Management Officer with the United States Foreign Service. He 
lived in The Hague, Netherlands and was on temporary duty to 
Benghazi in September 2012.
    Smith previously served in the Air Force, where he spent 
six years as a ground radio maintenance specialist, including a 
deployment to Oman. Smith was awarded the Air Force 
Commendation Medal.
    Smith was an only child and grew up in San Diego. As a 
Foreign Service employee, he lived in The Hague, Netherlands, 
with his wife and two children.
    He was posthumously awarded the Thomas Jefferson Star for 
Foreign Service on May 3, 2013.

                         J. Christopher Stevens

    Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens (born 1960) served as 
U.S. Ambassador to Libya from May 2012 to September 2012. He 
had previously served in Libya as the Deputy Chief of Mission 
from 2007 to 2009 and as the Special Representative to the 
Libyan Transitional National Council from March 2011 to 
November 2011. Stevens also served overseas in Jerusalem, 
Cairo, and Riyadh.
    While in Washington, Stevens served as Director of the 
Office of Multilateral Nuclear and Security Affairs; Pearson 
Fellow with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; special 
assistant to the Under Secretary for Political Affairs; Iran 
desk officer; and staff assistant in the Bureau of Near Eastern 
Affairs.
    Prior to joining the Foreign Service in 1991, Ambassador 
Stevens was an international trade lawyer in Washington, DC. 
From 1983 to 1985 he taught English as a Peace Corps volunteer 
in Morocco.
    He was born and raised in northern California. He earned 
his undergraduate degree at the University of California at 
Berkeley in 1982, a J.D. from the University of California's 
Hastings College of Law in 1989, and an M.S. from the National 
War College in 2010. He spoke Arabic and French.

                            Tyrone S. Woods

    Tyrone Woods (born 1971) was a personal security specialist 
in Libya. He was a highly decorated Navy SEAL for almost twenty 
years, serving in various locations, including Iraq. After his 
retirement in 2010, he protected U.S. facilities around the 
world.
    Woods was raised in Portland, Oregon, and was an avid 
runner, surfer, and car enthusiast in addition to being a 
registered nurse and certified paramedic. He is survived by his 
wife and three sons.

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