Ambassador Chris Stevens’ family: Don’t blame Hillary Clinton for Benghazi
Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday that the long-awaited report from the House Select Committee on Benghazi “found nothing” new on the Sept. 11, 2012, attack that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, during her tenure as secretary of state.
And Stevens’ family agrees.
“I do not blame Hillary Clinton or [former Defense Secretary] Leon Panetta,” Anne Stevens, MD, Chris’ sister who has served as the family spokesperson since his death, told the New Yorker’s Robin Wright. “They were balancing security efforts at embassies and missions around the world. And their staffs were doing their best to provide what they could with the resources they had.
“The Benghazi mission was understaffed,” she continued. “But, again, Chris knew that. It wasn’t a secret to him. He decided to take the risk to go there. It is not something they did to him. It is something he took on himself.”
In its 800-page report, the Republican-led Benghazi committee blamed the Obama administration for what it concluded was a slow response to help the Americans under attack.
Clinton, who was grilled for 11 hours before the committee last year, suggested that House Republicans had accomplished little with their extensive look into the attack.
“I understand that after more than two years and $7 million spent by the Benghazi committee out of taxpayer funds, it had to today report it found nothing,” she said. “Nothing to contradict the conclusions of the independent accountability board or the conclusions of the earlier prior investigations carried out on a bipartisan basis in the Congress.
Stevens echoed that sentiment.
“It doesn’t look like anything new,” Stevens told Wright. “They concluded that the U.S. compound in Benghazi was not secure. We knew that.”
Clinton said on Tuesday that she responded to the attack by thoroughly investigating the incident, adding, “It’s pretty clear it’s time to move on.”
“She has taken full responsibility, being head of the State Department, for what occurred,” Stevens said. “She took measures to respond to the review board’s recommendations. She established programs for a better security system. But it is never going to be perfect. Part of being a diplomat is being out in the community. We all recognize that there’s a risk in serving in a dangerous environment. Chris thought that was very important, and he probably would have done it again. I don’t see any usefulness in continuing to criticize her. It is very unjust.”
She believes her brother’s death has been inappropriately politicized, particularly in this election season. Many conservatives focus on the State Department’s reaction to the Benghazi attack while attacking Clinton’s record. But Stevens said some of those attacks had gone too far.
“Every report I read that mentions him specifically has a political bent, an accusatory bent,” she said. “With the many issues in the current election, to use that incident — and to use Chris’s death as a political point — is not appropriate.”
Stevens was also asked what Chris would have felt about the 2016 presidential campaign.
“I know he had a lot of respect for Secretary Clinton,” she said. “He admired her ability to intensely read the issues and understand the whole picture.”
For the New Yorker’s full interview with Anne Stevens, click here.
