Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

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Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I rise at this moment, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, outraged at the implication that we in the Senate have not done enough to investigate what has happened in Benghazi; that we have not investigated it thoroughly; that we have not looked at the details, have not analyzed the information--classified and unclassified--that has come before us.

The committee has held four hearings--four--on the attack on Special Mission Benghazi. The very first hearing I chaired in January was on this topic with Secretary Clinton. In fact, we postponed the nomination hearing of Senator Kerry so that Secretary Clinton could come before us and explain what happened and why, despite her medical condition at the time.

Let's make that very clear. One of the very first things we did, despite a pending nomination of a new Secretary, and the sitting Secretary's medical concerns, was to hold a hearing on this topic and air the facts. Prior to that, Chairman Kerry held a hearing of the committee on December 20 on the events that transpired in Benghazi with Deputy Secretaries Burns and Nides. There were also two classified briefings in December specifically on the circumstances surrounding the attack. The December 13 briefing included a video of the attack with high level officials from State, the Joint Staff, Defense Department, the FBI, and the intelligence community. They included Patrick Kennedy, Under Secretary of State for Management at State; Matthew Olsen, Director of the National Counterterrorism Center; Maj. Gen. Darryl Roberson, Vice Director of Operations at the Joint Staff; Gary Reid, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict; Jenny Ley, Deputy Assistant Director at the FBI.

On December 19, there was a high-level classified briefing with the Accountability Review Board with Ambassador Pickering and Admiral Mullen.

At his nomination hearing in January, Secretary Kerry also fully addressed this issue and then again at the committee's annual budget hearing this past April. Last week, the nominee to be our new Ambassador to Libya, Deborah Kay Jones, testified before the full committee--another opportunity for my friends on the other side to ask questions, to get the truth, not create their own truth for political purposes. That hearing was yet another opportunity to ask questions about the security situation on the ground. Yet Republican participation was limited to just a handful of Members.

We have fully vetted this issue. We have held hearing after hearing. We have, on both sides, had the opportunity to have our questions answered. In fact, in total, between the House and the Senate, there have been 11 hearings on Benghazi, 25,000 pages of documents released, and now a full e-mail history of the interagency process.

Our focus now should not be on the work product of the CIA or State on draft talking points we have seen in hundreds of e-mails released by the White House yesterday; it should not be to score political points at the expense of the families of the four victims. It should be on doing all we can to protect our personnel serving overseas and providing the necessary oversight and legislative authority to carry out the Administrative Review Board's recommendations.

I would remind my friends and the American people that nothing has changed. The facts remain the facts. They are the same today as they were in September, in October, in November, in December, and in January. It is the rhetoric and the political calculus that has changed. In fact, the e-mails released by the White House further demonstrate that point.

The original CIA-produced talking points, notably produced as the result of a request by the House Intelligence Committee for media interviews, clearly show that in the days immediately after the attack, the intelligence community was not sure what exactly happened or who was responsible. The points produced by the CIA said the agency's belief the events 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 in Benghazi and subsequently its annex. That point stays in the talking points from beginning to end of the interagency process, with no debate, and is conveyed to the House Intelligence Committee.

Throughout the e-mail discussions, the agency makes clear their information is limited and that there is a lot they simply don't know. In fact, the National Counterterrorism Center says in one e-mail:

At this point we are not aware of any actionable intelligence that this attack was planned or imminent. The intelligence community is combing through reporting from before and after the attack to determine the full extent of who was involved.

It became clear over time that this was, in fact, a calculated terrorist attack, but there was no political calculation involved in the initial assessment.

So let's be honest about what is happening here. It is not about doing all we can to find the truth and making sure it never happens again; it is about political gamesmanship and finding someone to blame.

I remind my friends, and the American people, again, nothing has changed. Some wish to make this a political issue to drive a purely political agenda. I believe our real focus, our honest focus, and what the American people truly care about is the security of our missions and the safety of our personnel. That has been, and will remain, the clear focus of the Foreign Relations Committee going forward, and I hope we will have the support of our Republican colleagues.

In my view the Monday morning quarterbacking on this issue is politically driven--a perspective shared by former Republican Defense Secretary Gates, who said on Sunday: ``Frankly, I think my decisions would have been just as theirs were'' with regard to sending in Special Forces teams or overflights by fighter aircraft based in Italy.

Former Secretary Gates said:

Without knowing what the environment is, without knowing what the threat is, without having any intelligence in terms of what is actually going on, on the ground, would have been very dangerous.

So I think we have common interests. I have been working hard to ensure full implementation of all 29 recommendations made by the Administrative Review Board--recommendations to ensure that going forward we are providing adequate personnel and resources to meet local conditions at more than 280 facilities in over 180 countries around the world, specifically where host nations are unable to provide adequate protection to our diplomats. I call on our Republican colleagues to join us in that effort.

Today, I am introducing legislation. I hope we will be able to count on the support of all of our colleagues to enact this crucial, time-sensitive legislation without delay, without obstruction, and without political grandstanding.

The bill will provide authority to fund the Capital Security Cost Sharing Program to permit us to move forward with construction at high-risk, high-threat posts. This account was created following the U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and in Tanzania, and at that time it would have allowed us to construct 8 to 10 facilities per year. However, the way the Congress is funding it, it presently is funding for construction of just two to three facilities per year, despite the fact that there are at least two dozen posts that fall into that high-risk, high-threat category. At that rate it will take us over 8 years to get around to construction at just the posts with the highest risk of attack.

The bill authorizes funding for Arabic language training and for a Foreign Affairs Security Training Center to train diplomatic security personnel. It provides contract authority to the State Department to allow it to award contracts on a best value basis rather than to the lowest bidder where conditions require enhanced levels of security. At the administration's request, the bill will authorize disciplinary action in cases of unsatisfactory leadership by senior officials related to a security incident, which does not presently exist. This will allow appropriate disciplinary action to be taken against any future officials in a circumstance such as Benghazi.

The bill requires planning to incorporate additional marine security guards at overseas facilities, and it requires extensive reporting on State's implementation of the Accountability Review Board's recommendations on the designation of high-risk, high-threat posts.

I hope we can work together to do what has to be done to protect those who serve this Nation abroad. If we want to address the problem, we have an opportunity to do it. If we want to score political points, fine, but do not do it at the risk of American lives. Let's work together to fix the problem, not use it for political advantage.

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