Terry Jeffrey at CNSNews.com plucked this nugget out of the Benghazi hearing this week. Ambassador Chris Stevens had traveled to Benghazi despite the hazards "at least in part because Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wanted to convert the department compound there into a permanent outpost and department officials wanted her to be able to announce this was the case when she made a planned visit to Libya in December 2012."
Stevens’ top deputy in Libya, Greg Hicks, made this point on Wednesday, but it was omitted from the State Department's Accountability Review Board report published in December -- despite the fact that Hicks specifically told the ARB that Clinton wanted the Benghazi mission converted into a permanent post.
Given that she was planning to leave the State Department after 2012, a trip to Libya in December of last year to announce that the U.S. had established a permanent diplomatic presence in Benghazi--the city in which the Obama administration had anchored its support for anti-Qaddafi Libyan revolutionaries--could have been a triumphant capstone to Clinton's own diplomatic career....
"The Board found that Ambassador Stevens made the decision to travel to Benghazi independently of Washington, per standard practice," said the [ARB] report. "Timing for his trip was driven in part by commitments in Tripoli, as well as a staffing gap between principal officers in Benghazi."
Read more and see the video at CNSNews.com.
