Susan Rice fails to win over 3 GOP senators
WASHINGTON — UN Ambassador Susan Rice told lawmakers Tuesday that her initial explanation of the deadly Sept. 11 raid
in Libya was wrong, but her concession failed to mollify three Republican senators who signaled they would oppose her possible nomination to be secretary of state.
In a closed-door meeting that Rice requested, the ambassador answered questions from Senators John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire about her much-maligned explanations over the cause of the attack on the US diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. She was joined by acting CIA director Michael Morell.
‘‘The talking points provided by the intelligence community, and the initial assessment upon which they were based, were incorrect in a key respect: There was no protest or demonstration in Benghazi,’’ Rice said after the meeting. ‘‘While we certainly wish that we had had perfect information just days after the terrorist attack, as is often the case the intelligence assessment has evolved.’’
Rice’s unusual visit to Capitol Hill — typically only nominees meet privately with lawmakers — reflects the Obama administration’s campaign for the current front-runner to replace Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton against some strenuous GOP opposition.
‘‘We are significantly troubled by many of the answers that we got and some that we didn’t get concerning evidence that was leading up to the attack on the consulate,’’ McCain told reporters after emerging from the hour-plus session that he described as candid.
Said Graham: ‘‘Bottom line, I’m more disturbed now than I was before that 16 September explanation.’’ He said in a later interview that Rice went ‘‘far beyond the flawed talking points’’ and should be held accountable.
‘‘I’m more troubled today,’’ said Ayotte, who argued that it was clear in the days after the attack that it was terrorism and not a spontaneous demonstration prompted by an anti-Muslim video.
The White House remained defiant in its support for Rice, arguing that she was relying on an assessment from the intelligence community and had no responsibility in compiling the information on the cause of the attack. It dismissed what it characterized as a fixation on her national television appearances five days after the raid.
House Democrats, including female members of the Congressional Black Caucus, have suggested that the GOP opposition to Rice is sexist and racist. Senate Democrats, who will increase their advantage to 55-45 in the next Congress, said Rice could win confirmation if Republicans recognize the unfairness of penalizing her for the intelligence community’s talking points.
‘‘It is so unfair to hold her responsible for something that she didn’t produce and which the intelligence community has specifically stood by,’’ said Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who chairs the Armed Services Committee.
Despite lingering questions over her public comments after the Benghazi attack, Rice has emerged as the top candidate on a short list of possible successors to Clinton, with Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, seen as her closest alternative.
The strong statements from the three senators clouded Rice’s prospects only two days after Republican opposition seemed to be softening.
Rice planned meetings on Wednesday with Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, who is in line to become the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, and Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican.
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Susan Rice fails in attempt to win over Republican senators on Benghazi response
WASHINGTON – Susan Rice’s closed-door meeting on Tuesday with three Republican lawmakers did nothing to ease their criticisms of the UN ambassador’s public proclamations over the September attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya that killed four Americans, including envoy Chris Stevens.
“I’m more disturbed now than I was before,” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham told reporters after Rice explained why she initially characterized the Benghazi attack as a spontaneous eruption of violence over an anti-Islam video.
“I think it does not do justice to the reality at the time and in hindsight clearly was completely wrong…. In real time, it was a statement disconnected from reality.”
Rice’s 90-minute meeting with Graham and fellow senators John McCain and Kelly Ayotte came amid the roar of speculation in the U.S. capital that she’s about to be tapped by the Obama administration, possibly as early as this week, to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.
Clinton wants out of the job so Rice, who’s been serving as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations since 2009, is making the rounds on Capitol Hill this week on an apparent “charm offensive” aimed at getting lawmakers behind her potential nomination.
Her first foray onto the Hill on Tuesday with acting CIA director Michael Morell, however, backfired badly, thanks to the trio of senators who have been bitterly maligning her Benghazi response for weeks.
All three of them emerged from the meeting to say they’re more bothered now about her public remarks on Sunday morning talk shows a few days after the Sept. 11 attack than they were before she attempted to explain herself.
“I’m significantly troubled by the answers we got and didn’t get,” McCain said.
“It was clear that the information she gave the American people was incorrect when she said that it was a spontaneous demonstration triggered by a hateful group.”
Ayotte, meantime, said she had “many more questions that need to be answered” and suggested she’d vote against Rice’s nomination as secretary of state.
Rice, 48, has said her public remarks about the Benghazi attack were based on talking points provided by U.S. intelligence agencies.
Those in intelligence circles suggest the talking points were deliberately vague in order to protect covert operations in Libya in the aftermath of the attack, adding that an investigation was still underway when Rice made the rounds of talk shows on Sept. 16.
Republicans, meantime, suspect Rice was covering up for U.S. President Barack Obama, charging the administration didn’t want an al-Qaida terrorist attack to taint his re-election chances.
Obama has defended Rice, most fiercely in a White House news conference held soon after his re-election.
White House spokesman Jay Carney came to Rice’s defence again on Tuesday, shortly after her ill-fated visit to Capitol Hill.
“Ambassador Rice has no responsibility for collecting, analyzing and providing intelligence, nor does she have responsibility … for diplomatic security around the globe,” he said.
“The focus on — some might say obsession (with) — comments made on Sunday shows seems to me, and to many, to be misplaced. What is the point of the focus on this?”
Rice, a Rhodes scholar who’s married to Canadian television producer Ian Cameron, has risen through Democratic ranks over the years to counsel presidential candidates that include Michael Dukakis and John Kerry, himself a potential Hillary Clinton replacement.
She has an impressive pedigree — her father was the first black governor of the Federal Reserve Board, her mother a renowned education scholar — but Rice’s legendary abrasiveness has prompted misgivings about her suitability for the job from both the left and right.
“She is ill-equipped to be the nation’s top diplomat for reasons that have little to do with Libya,” Dana Milbank, a left-leaning Washington Post columnist, wrote recently in a piece that recounted how she once gave respected diplomat Richard Holbrooke the middle finger when she worked in the Bill Clinton White House.
He called her an “undiplomatic diplomat.”
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