Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday deflected harsh Republican criticism of her handling of the deadly 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, and urged her questioners in Congress to put US national security ahead of politics. At a sometimes heated hearing, Republicans accused the front-runner in the 2016 Democratic presidential race of misinforming the public about the cause of the attack by suspected Islamic militants that killed the US ambassador and three other Americans in Benghazi.
Republican Representative Jim Jordan said Clinton had misleadingly implied the attack was a reaction to an anti-Muslim video. On Thursday, Clinton, who denies suggesting the video was the cause, called Jordan's accusation "personally painful." "I've thought more about what happened than all of you put together," she told the Republican-led panel. "I've lost more sleep than all of you put together. I've been racking my brain about what could have been done, should have been done." The appearance before the Benghazi panel was a major political test for Clinton, who has been on a hot streak with a strong performance in last week's first Democratic debate and the news that her strongest potential challenger, Vice President Joe Biden, will not seek the Democratic nomination for the November 2016 election.
The hearing also follows weeks of political brawling over whether the Republican-led House committee's real goal was to puncture her front-running presidential prospects. The committee is made up of seven Republicans and five Democrats. Clinton told the panel the attacks must not discourage US action globally and said the incident already had been thoroughly investigated. "We need leadership at home to match our leadership abroad, leadership that puts national security ahead of politics and ideology," Clinton said in her only early reference to the political controversy that has dogged the panel. The panel has spent 17 months looking into the attacks that killed J. Christopher Stevens, the US ambassador to Libya, and three other Americans at the US mission compound.