Dr. Anne Stevens, sister to U.S. ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, says that she doesn’t blame Hillary Clinton for his death. Instead, she blames Congress for underfunding the State Department so badly that there was inadequate money for proper security.
In a Tuesday interview with The New Yorker, Dr. Stevens said that:
“I do not blame Hillary Clinton or Leon Panetta. They were balancing security efforts at embassies and missions around the world. And their staffs were doing their best to provide what they could with the resources they had. The Benghazi Mission was understaffed. We know that now. But, again, Chris knew that. It wasn’t a secret to him. He decided to take the risk to go there. It is not something they did to him. It is something he took on himself.”
Stevens spoke out in the wake of the House Select Committee on Benghazi’s report, released on Tuesday, June 28. The 800 page report criticized both the State Department and the CIA, but did not detail any information that would personally indict former Secretary of State Clinton.
Both parties released addenda to supplement the report. As expected, the Republicans continued to blame Hillary Clinton despite no strong evidence to back it up. The Democrats called the entire investigation a political witch hunt. Dr. Stevens agrees:
“Definitely politicized. Every report I read that mentions him {Chris Stevens} specifically has a political bent, an accusatory bent.”
The two-year investigation into the Benghazi attack, led by Trey Gowdy (R-SC), cost American taxpayers nearly seven million dollars. Also, it uncovered little new information to help the family members of the four people killed understand what happened. Most of the information they knew already.
Hardly seems like money well spent. Especially when a major contributing cause to the disaster was State Department underfunding.
And who determines the budget for the State Department?
Congress.
It might be safe to assume that Dr. Stevens might be wondering why so much money was spent on her brother’s death when it might have helped keep him alive. For her part, she did not seem to find the report helpful.
It would be much more useful for Congress to focus on providing resources for security for all State Department facilities around the world—for increasing personnel, language capabilities, for increasing staff to build relationships, particularly in North Africa and the Middle East. I would love to hear they are drastically increasing the budget.
Perhaps Congress should focus on what they can do, for once.
Watch CNN’s video remembrance of Ambassador Stevens here:
Feature image via Youtube screengrab
