Clinton: There Was No Monitor, There Was No Real Time Video of Benghazi Attacks

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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told lawmakers Wednesday that “there was no monitor, there was no real time” of the attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) said Deputy Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security Charlene Lamb “testified she had actually witnessed this, the attack, in real-time on a monitor.”

“At any time did you see the initial attack on a monitor with the president?” Rohrbacher asked.

“Congressman, there was no monitor, there was no real time. We got the surveillance videos some weeks later, that was the first time we saw any video of the attack,” Clinton said in testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. “There was a misunderstanding I think perhaps…she was talking to [diplomatic security] people trying to understand what was going on.”

Lamb was placed on administrative leave late last year, along with two other State Department officials. She told the House Oversight Committee in October that “When the attack began, a diplomatic security agent working in the Tactical Operations Center…alerted the annex U.S. quick reaction security team stationed nearby…from that point on, I could follow what was happening in almost real-time.”

CBS News reported in October that there was an unmanned drone dispatched over the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi that apparently viewed the final hours of the attack. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta subsequently told reporters there was no “real-time information” about what was happening on the ground for the U.S. military to intervene.

​Editor’s note: This post incorrectly referred to Rohrbacher as a Democrat. He is a Republican.

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