AUSBROOK: When politics override accountability

When the U.S. government fails to protect its citizens, we must determine why. Such failures can erode public faith in the government’s abilities and diminish public trust in its leaders. President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Supreme CourtJustice Owen Roberts to examine the attacks on Pearl Harbor. The 9/11 Commission reviewed the attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. Congress produced two reports on Hurricane Katrina, and the White House produced a lessons-learned report. These reports reflect a healthy self-examination, and their public nature is intended to restore trust and promote improvement.

With respect to the Benghazi attacks, the State Department's Accountability Review Board report to then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and ongoing congressional investigations looking into the Benghazi attack provide important insights into the government’s failures. The staggering number and scope of the findings and recommendations suggests more than an isolated security breakdown. They suggest a collapse of policy, operations and decision-making. Such a collapse, in stark contradiction to election-year claims, could explain why State Department and White House officials felt the need to falsify talking points and deceive the American people about events in Benghazi.

Now that it is beyond doubt that Susan Rice’s talking points were not only inaccurate but falsified, the most important remaining question is why? What were the talking points trying to cover up? Could it really be that senior leadership in the State Department was worried about being criticized by Congress? State Department emails suggest as much, but only insofar as the agency ignored warnings about these attacks. Still, Congress criticizes agencies all the time. Indeed, congressional oversight, by its nature, casts a critical eye on agency activity.

The failure to heed threat warnings — warnings that emails acknowledge were known to “senior officials” at least in the days immediately after the attack — could have been an embarrassing management mistake, or worse, much worse. It could have been the direct result of a failure to appreciate the strategic threat from al Qaeda and its affiliates — in this case, al Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb — and to align and coordinate our intelligence, military and diplomatic resources to meet this strategic threat. During the election season, that could have been perceived as a serious political problem, not just routine criticism.

Even more troubling, testimony at Wednesday’s hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee suggests that this was not a failure of policy, but this was policy.

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