Lax security at Libya and other US diplomatic missions in the past? (+video)

Past investigations into attacks on US diplomatic missions have blamed both the administration and Congress for failing to spend enough money to ensure that the overseas facilities were safe despite a clear rise in terror threats to American interests abroad.

An Associated Press examination of two reports that are easily accessible to the public — those created after the devastating Aug. 7, 1998, bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania — may offer clues to the possible outcome of the current investigation begun by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton into last month's attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

That attack by what is now believed to be al-Qaida-linked militants has become fraught with election-year politics as Republicans accuse administration officials of dissembling in the early aftermath on what they knew about the perpetrators and for lax security at the diplomatic mission in a lawless part of post-revolution Libya.

Two House Republican leaders this week accused the administration of denying repeated requests for extra security at the Benghazi consulate, where Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed on the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US

A five-member accountability review board appointed by Clinton will begin this week looking at whether security at the consulate was adequate and whether proper procedures were followed before, during and immediately after the attack.

"The men and women who serve this country as diplomats deserve no less than a full and accurate accounting wherever that leads, and I am committed to seeking that for them," Clinton told reporters at the State Department on Wednesday.

Previous inquiries into attacks on diplomatic missions have taken months to complete, and two of them found fault with both the executive and legislative branches going back years and spanning both political parties.

"Over the course of this review, there will naturally be a number of statements made, some of which will be borne out and some of which will not," Clinton warned. "I caution everyone against seizing on any single statement or piece of information to draw a final conclusion."

The State Department has convened at least a dozen accountability review boards to look into the deaths of American personnel in attacks on official buildings or vehicles overseas since the mid-1990s. Those attacks were committed in countries that included Jordan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Sudan.

However, only the findings of the Kenya and Tanzania bombing investigations are easily accessible to public.

The two boards — both chaired by a Republican-appointed former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Adm. William J. Crowe — were not set up by then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright until November 1998 — three months after the attacks. And they did not issue their final reports until January 1999.

Clinton stressed Wednesday that such an investigation "will take time" as Republicans have expressed impatience for full details of any possible negligence before the Nov. 6 presidential election.

The chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who plans to hold a hearing next week to question State Department officials about alleged security lapses, said he understood that the accountability review board's work was "critically important."

"It should not, however, be used by the State Department as an excuse for delaying efforts to address problems or answer specific questions," Issa said.

Clinton cautioned that the Benghazi Accountability Review Board, which will be led by another former Republican-appointed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, should not be rushed to judgment.

"I am asking the board to move as quickly as possible without sacrificing accuracy," she told reporters. "In the interim, we will provide as much accurate information to the Congress and the public."

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