Libyan Crisis Sparked Rising Extremism In North Africa

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

On a morning like this, in a newsroom like ours, many TV monitors are showing the same image. It is the face of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who's taking sharp questions before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Secretary Clinton said: I take responsibility for the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya last September. She remembered meeting the families of four Americans killed that day.

(SOUNDBITE OF SENATE HEARING)

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INSKEEP: The U.S. Agency for International Development. Clinton went on to argue that diplomats and development workers cannot do their jobs from bunkers.

NPR's Michele Kelemen has been covering Secretary of State Clinton for years. She's been listening to the testimony. Michele, good morning.

MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: Good morning, Steve.

INSKEEP: OK. Some of this story is well-known. There was an attack on the U.S. consulate. The U.S. ambassador to Libya was killed, along with three other Americans. There's been an investigation of security lapses leading up to that. Have you learned anything new about this story from listening to Secretary Clinton?

KELEMEN: She's basically repeated where we are today, that there was this review panel. It made some recommendations, all of which she accepted. The panel found that the security in Benghazi was grossly inadequate. But the night of the attack, Clinton says, there were no delays in decision-makings, no denials of support from Washington, or from the military. Those were comments that she made in her testimony today.

The problem was, of course, in the months leading up to that attack. The situation in Benghazi was deteriorating. This special mission didn't have the kind of security it needed. It fell through the bureaucratic cracks, in a way. And Clinton says none of the requests that the ambassador, Chris Stevens, had made about security prior to this attack came to her desk, that these were...

INSKEEP: Nothing came to her desk.

KELEMEN: She said these cables did not come to her desk, and these were decisions that were made by lower-level officials.

INSKEEP: One of the questions she was asked by the senators was, in response, was: Well, OK, how can you prevent that from happening again?

KELEMEN: Yeah. And she said that she's been working with DOD and working on high-threat security, high-threat posts around the world to figure out ways to beef up security. But it's obviously - you know, these kind of things don't usually come to the secretary of state's desk, is what she said.

INSKEEP: Now, all of this is happening at a moment when there have been many new developments in North Africa and in West Africa. There's been an Islamist takeover of about half of Mali. There's been this hostage situation related to that at an oil and gas facility in Algeria. How is she responding to that?

KELEMEN: Well, she talked about the connections. You know, I mean, when Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi was toppled by rebels - and this was with support of NATO air cover. Secretary Clinton played a key role in all of that. His mercenaries left with lots of guns. Many of them were Tuaregs. They went to northern Mali, where there was a Tuareg rebellion, and joined that. Since then, you have al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb finding base in northern Mali. And they're believed to have been - played a role in hostage-taking in Algeria.

INSKEEP: One of the challenges that she may well leave for her expected successor, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. Michele, thanks very much.

KELEMEN: Thank you, Steve.

INSKEEP: NPR's Michele Kelemen, on NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.