Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has accepted 29 suggestions to improve embassy security issued as part of a review board's report that faults Clinton's department for security failures and confirms no protest preceded the deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
The release of the report, posted Tuesday night on the State Department's website, comes after more than three months of intense debate in Washington over who was behind the attack, what motivated the attacks and why U.S. authorities weren't able to stop the violence, which took the lives of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.
Republicans have accused Obama administration officials of giving the American people a series of misleading explanations for the attack from the start. Much of the criticism focused on U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice's comments five days after the Sept. 11 attack that the violence was a "spontaneous" result of protests against an anti-Islam film.
Although the motive for the attack remains unclear, the report confirms what quickly became evident -- that the attack was the coordinated work of terrorists.
But in many ways, the security failures were of even greater concern, and Clinton vowed Tuesday to address them.
"The Accountability Review Board report provides a clear-eyed look at serious, systemic challenges that we have already begun to fix. I am grateful for its recommendations for how we can reduce the chances of this kind of tragedy happening again," Clinton said in letters to the Senate and House panels reviewing the attack.
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