Hillary Clinton on Capitol Hill
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Wolf Blitzer. You're in THE SITUATION ROOM. Hillary Clinton faced her Republican critics today and made it clear she takes the death of U.S. diplomats on her watch very personally. The secretary of state spent hours and hours answering tough questions about the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya. The second round of testimony ended just a little while ago. Now some lawmakers who have been demanding the hearings say they still are not satisfied. Our new chief Washington correspondent, Jake Tapper, has done some important groundbreaking reporting on what's going on. It was tough at times. It was brutal at times. She answered the questions.</s>JAKE TAPPER, CNN CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: That's right. Secretary Clinton said the State Department had significantly improved security for diplomats after the Benghazi attack, but the many questions that remain unanswered are likely to haunt the families of the victims and keep this issue for alive for Republicans.</s>TAPPER (voice-over): More than four months after the deadly attack in Libya, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today finally faced Congress.</s>HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: I take responsibility.</s>TAPPER: In her first hearing since being sidelined by sickness, a concussion, and a blood clot, Clinton pushed back on the assertion that initially the Obama administration deliberately misled the public.</s>SEN. RON JOHNSON (R), WISCONSIN: And we were misled, that there was supposedly protests, and then something sprang out of that, an assault sprang out of that.</s>CLINTON: With all due respect, we had four dead Americans. 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? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator.</s>TAPPER: It makes quite a bit of difference, of course, in the context of the global terrorist threat throughout Northern Africa, including, now, Mali and Algeria.</s>CLINTON: There's no doubt that the Algerian terrorists had weapons from Libya.</s>TAPPER: It also makes a difference to those Republicans convinced that the administration was misleading.</s>SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: I categorically reject your answer to Senator Johnson. To say that it's because an investigation was going on? The American people deserve to know answers, and they certainly don't deserve false answers.</s>CLINTON: We just have a disagreement.</s>TAPPER: Clinton may run for president in 2016. And today she faced two members of the committee with similar ambitions, Republican Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and a very aggressive Rand Paul of Kentucky.</s>SEN. RAND PAUL (R), KENTUCKY: Had I been president at the time, and I found that you did not read the cables from Benghazi, you did not read the cables from Ambassador Stevens, I would have relieved you of your post. I think it's inexcusable.</s>TAPPER: But today also brought moments of sorrow. Just days from her retirement, Secretary Clinton twice choked up, discussing the four Americans killed that night, Ambassador Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods, and Glen Doherty.</s>CLINTON: I stood next to President Obama as the Marines carried those flag-draped caskets off the plane at Andrews. I put my arms around the mothers and fathers, the sisters and brothers, the sons and daughters, and the wives left alone to raise their children.</s>TAPPER: Later this afternoon, in testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Clinton was more subdued and mostly welcomed by Republicans.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I wish you the best in your future endeavors, mostly.</s>TAPPER: Though there were moments of sparring.</s>REP. JEFF DUNCAN (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: Madam Secretary, you let the consulate become a death trap. And that's national security malpractice.</s>CLINTON: I could have joined 18 of the other ARBs, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, kept it classified, and then, you know, just said goodbye. That's not who I am. That's not what I do.</s>TAPPER: Clinton's larger point, that Benghazi did not occur in a vacuum, and is emblematic of the larger challenge for the United States in Northern Africa.</s>CLINTON: We are in for a struggle, but it is a necessary struggle. We cannot permit Northern Mali to become a safe haven.</s>TAPPER: Clinton made clear her view that despite the high risks, the U.S. cannot retreat in the Muslim world, which the late Chris Stevens knew better than anyone, Wolf.</s>BLITZER: But it's over for the secretary of state now. She did her five-and-a-half-hours of Q&A; with members of the Senate, members of the House. Now she moves on. John Kerry's getting ready to start his own confirmation hearings.</s>TAPPER: Though, Wolf, there was a big 2016 subtext to all of this. If Secretary Clinton ultimately runs for president, this is not the last we have heard of this, not the last we have heard of that bite that we ran at the beginning of the piece. And of course, two members of the Senate who might run for president as well were asking her questions, Rand Paul, very aggressive, and Marco Rubio, who was a little bit more subdued.</s>BLITZER: Less aggressive Marco Rubio than Rand Paul. So what you're saying is, potentially, if she decides to run for president in 2016, and a lot of us think there's a good chance she will, what she said today on Benghazi, the whole record since September 11 of last year, that could come back to, what, play a role in a campaign?</s>TAPPER: I would be surprised, if she runs, for that quote, where she says, what difference does it make, I would be surprised if that did not end up in a campaign commercial, a lot of Republicans already making hay out of it online and in press releases.</s>BLITZER: So it's not going away, by any means.</s>TAPPER: Absolutely not.</s>BLITZER: Jake, thanks very much. There may be a chilling connection between the Benghazi attack and the hostage siege in Algeria that recently ended. There are now new unconfirmed reports that several Egyptian militants, Egyptian militants, were involved in both attacks. Tom Foreman is taking a closer look at the security threat in North Africa. Lay it out for us, Tom.</s>TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, what security analysts are doing right now is essentially conducting a giant game of connect the dots, particularly looking at the area from Egypt to Libya to Algeria and down to Mali, down here, and looking at some events that have happened to say, is there something that ties them all together? It starts back here on June 27 of last year, when Islamists seized control of Northern Mali. The Islamists who took control here in this country, which is 95 percent Muslim, are people who very much opposed the Arab spring. They did not like what they saw in many places, in large part because many of them believe that democracy is fundamentally anti-Islamic, because they want Sharia law. Democracy doesn't necessarily support that. Let's go to September 11. That's when the attack came on Benghazi. And when the attack on Benghazi came, there was a different response from the folks in this area down here. What they saw at that time was that there was an attack waged in Libya, and at first, we thought it had to do with people based in Libya, but where did that attack come from? This latest news, as you mentioned, Wolf, relates now to the attack on the 13th, when the militants took hostages in Algeria. There seems to be, based on these unconfirmed reports, a link between the fighters here and the fighters here and the weapons used here and the weapons used here. So what does that mean? Well, it's not entirely clear. What's unsure is whether or not that means that there is a firm connection or a loose connection, and security analysts are focusing on just a few groups here, Wolf, to see if they're the ones who are making all this work -- Wolf.</s>BLITZER: What do we know, Tom, about the people behind these attacks?</s>FOREMAN: Well, we don't know a whole lot. Security analysts, of course, do know more. But let's take a look at some of the possibilities here, as we take a look at the organizations. The security challenges, there's no known command structure between these groups. We don't know the extent of cooperation. And we don't know the reach. How much further could they go, beyond that part of Northern Africa? But if we look at the groups involved, we have to look at Ansar al-Sharia. They are based in Benghazi, Libya. This is the group that is believed to have the made the attack in Benghazi or to be somehow connected to it. They believe democracy is un-Islamic and they're believed to be connected to AQIM. AQIM is al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. This is not necessarily connected to al Qaeda, even though it's in the name. This is a different group. They have a very strong presence in Mali. They finance their rise largely by kidnapping Westerners and then demanding ransoms. So, again, when you look at all of these groups and you look at the terrain there, Wolf, what's happening right now is intelligence analysts are looking at these events and the groups and saying, is this happenstance that they all happened? Is it happenstance even that the same people might have been involved, or does this represent more cohesion, more organization, and a bigger terror threat -- Wolf.</s>BLITZER: Lots of important questions there. Tom, thanks very, very much. Kate Bolduan is here, as she is every day, to dig a little bit deeper into the secretary's testimony today. And it went on and on.</s>KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: It went on and on, as you said, some five-and-a-half-hours of testimony. I want to listen here first to a little bit more of what Secretary Clinton said about the terror threat in Northern Africa.</s>CLINTON: Benghazi did not happen in a vacuum. The Arab revolutions scrambled power dynamics and shattered security forces across the region. Instability in Mali has created an expanding safe haven for terrorists who look to extend their influence and plot further attacks of the kind we saw just last week in Algeria.</s>BOLDUAN: Let's bring in our national security contributor, Fran Townsend. She's a member of the CIA External Advisory Board, and in August, Fran visited Libya with her employer MacAndrews & Forbes and met with Ambassador Chris Stevens shortly before the attacks in Benghazi. Hi, there, Fran.</s>FRANCES TOWNSEND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CONTRIBUTOR: Hi, Kate.</s>BOLDUAN: Fran, how big of a problem is this? Are these kinds of incidents really now what we're seeing as the downside of the Arab spring?</s>TOWNSEND: You know, Kate, what interested me most about what Secretary Clinton was saying in that spot is that this is not a new problem in North Africa. Let's start with Mali. You know, there was a safe haven along the Mali/Mauritania border that was controlled by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who we have heard a lot about in recent weeks, going back when I was in the White House, you know, going back almost eight to 10 years ago, and we were engaged in a diplomatic effort, talking about with President Bouteflika of Algeria back then about the Algerians helping us to deal with that safe haven, which we were concerned about. So there has been this period of time throughout the North African Maghreb in Algeria, Libya and Mali of this growing Islamist presence. Then the Arab spring comes along. Secretary Clinton is quite right. Security services melt away, borders become open, weapons become much more easily available. And the Arab spring acts as an accelerant to what is already a decade-long simmering problem of extremism throughout the Islamic Maghreb. So this is not a new problem, is my point. And I think we shouldn't pretend that this is just a byproduct, an awful byproduct, of the Arab spring. This was a problem that was there long before that, but was accelerated, certainly, as a result of these sort of fledgling new governments.</s>BLITZER: Why isn't the Libyan government, Fran, doing more to detain, to arrest these -- especially the suspects involved in the Benghazi killing, but these al Qaeda operatives loosely affiliated with the core al Qaeda throughout Libya?</s>TOWNSEND: You know, Wolf, it's not just the Libyan government. Remember, the Tunisians had an individual in custody. Secretary Clinton was asked about that today, said, we're working with the Tunisian government. You know, we didn't have enough evidence yet to charge him. FBI Director Mueller was in Libya last week, talking to the Libyans about the ongoing investigation. It's very frustrating to the families and to many who watch this. These investigations, these international ones, are complicated and they do take time. But believe me, Wolf, the bad guys in the region watch this. And the longer it goes without anybody being brought to justice, it's an indication to them that they have freedom of action, if you will, to target Western facilities and Westerners, and you see things like the attack on the Algerian oil facility.</s>BOLDUAN: So, Fran, I want to ask you, when you were watching this testimony from Secretary Clinton, this very lengthy testimony, hitting on so many topics, what was your big impression? What was your big takeaway from what you heard from her today?</s>TOWNSEND: You know, I put myself, Kate, in the position of the families who lost, you know -- Ambassador Stevens' family and the other families. And I think, more than anything, I was frustrated. You know, they were asking -- the members of Congress were asking Secretary Clinton about talking points used by Susan Rice, which was an incredible waste of time. They often didn't seem terribly well prepared, and then when they did ask really good questions, she referred them back to this classified accountability review board report, which, of course, can't be spoken about in public. So we didn't get a whole lot of answers. And I think -- I found it frustrating and I imagine, frankly, more importantly, the families found it frustrating, that this was a big show today, but I don't think we learned a whole lot new.</s>BLITZER: Senator Rand Paul, we spoke with him in the last hour, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, he said that he would have fired her, had he been president, because she had not read the cables warning of security problems in Benghazi, including an appeal for more security from the late U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens. When you heard that, what did you think?</s>TOWNSEND: You know, it was -- look, Wolf, she's the secretary of state. She's logged probably more miles than any prior secretary of state. She has a big staff. What I didn't understand, though, was, we didn't hear anything about, where was the intelligence and research bureau of the State Department, who looks at these sorts of issues? Where was the diplomatic security and where was the undersecretary for management and the deputy secretary? Where were all those people who are in between the secretary of state and the sort of line people who have now been moved out of their positions, and why haven't they been held accountable? Did they know about this? We really don't understand where inside the bureaucracy of the State Department that the buck stopped. And if -- Secretary Clinton rightly says she wants to take responsibility, but with responsibility ought to come accountability. And we didn't see much of that today.</s>BLITZER: Fran Townsend, thanks very much.</s>TOWNSEND: Thanks, Wolf.</s>BLITZER: Coming up, we're going to speak live with Greg Doherty, the brother of Glen Doherty. He died, he was killed in that Benghazi attack. We will get the brother's reaction to what Hillary Clinton said today in about 15 minutes.</s>BOLDUAN: Also ahead, many Americans are chilled to the bone right now. Stand by to find out how long the bitter cold temperatures will be lasting. Also, the Beyonce lip-synching debate. Oh, what a debate. An inaugural official tells CNN about what he knows and he's very definite about what happened.