what did hillary clinton say about benghazi

Hillary Clinton has made several notable statements about the 2012 Benghazi attack over the years, in different settings and with different emphases.

Key things she said about Benghazi

• Right after the attacks in September 2012, as Secretary of State, she publicly honored the four Americans killed and condemned the assault, calling it a “heavy assault” on the U.S. post in Benghazi that took the lives of “brave men.”

• In those early remarks, she also mentioned broader unrest tied to an “awful Internet video” that had sparked anger at U.S. embassies, while not explicitly saying that video caused the Benghazi attack itself.

• She later accepted responsibility for the security of U.S. personnel abroad, saying the security of Americans serving overseas falls on the leadership of the State Department, and that she took responsibility for any failures on that front.

Her congressional testimony and famous lines

• During her January 2013 Senate testimony, she strongly defended the State Department’s handling of the situation and became visibly angry when accused of misleading the public about the attack.

• In that testimony and later hearings, she framed Benghazi as part of a broader challenge to U.S. strategy and diplomatic security in unstable regions, and backed recommendations to improve security so “another Benghazi” would be less likely.

• In her long 2015 House Benghazi committee appearance, she opened by naming and honoring Ambassador Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty, and Tyrone Woods, and presented the attack as a terrorist assault on U.S. facilities in Libya.

What she said about the video and the families

• Clinton’s public remarks soon after the attack referenced the anti-Islam video in the context of wider protests and violence targeting U.S. embassies, but she did not explicitly say in that statement that the video caused Benghazi.

• Some relatives of those killed have said she mentioned the video to them privately and blamed it for the attack; others have focused more broadly on the lack of security rather than her specific words.

• Fact-checkers have noted that in her public statement at Joint Base Andrews she carefully paired the Benghazi assault with the separate wave of protests over the video, without directly saying Benghazi was caused by it.

Later campaign-era comments

• As multiple investigations went on and a major Republican-led House report came out in 2016, she said it was “time to move on,” arguing that the investigations had not produced new evidence of wrongdoing by her personally.

• She continued to describe Benghazi as a tragedy and a security failure in a dangerous environment, but rejected claims that she had deliberately misled the public or ignored pleas for help.

• Critics, including Donald Trump and several Republican members of Congress, kept citing Benghazi as a symbol of what they called her failed leadership, while she and her supporters pointed to the investigations’ lack of new proof against her.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.