Libya attack remains under review, says Clinton

WASHINGTON — As Republicans heap criticism on Vice- President Joe Biden for claiming “we weren’t told” about requests for extra security at the U. S. consulate in Benghazi, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday the precise details of the deadly Sept. 11 attack on the compound in Libya still remain unclear.

One month after the attack that killed the U. S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans, Clinton said the administration is committed to uncovering the truth about what happened.

“There is much we still don’t know and I am the first to say that,” Clinton told reporters at the State Department after meeting with Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi.

“But as someone who has been at the centre of this tragedy from the beginning, I do know this: there is nobody in this administration motivated by anything other than trying to understand what happened,” she said. “We are doing all we can to prevent it from ever happening again anywhere and, of course, we are, as a government, doing what it takes to track down those who are responsible.”

Clinton was to deliver a speech later Friday to a Washington think- tank in which she was expected to defend posting U. S. diplomats in dangerous corners of the world. Republicans have seized on the incident as a sign of weakness in President Barack Obama’s foreign policy and criticized the administration for at first suggesting that the attack was motivated by anger at an anti- Islam film produced in the United States.