happening and these security incidents are happening, there are hundreds more actually i could talk with you about but i don't have time. i hope i have painted the picture because i'm baffled you sent chris stevens to libya and to benghazi. granted he never raised the flag and said i want out. and granted he never said shut down benghazi. and i understand and appreciate that you deferred to him but you also -- we have no record of you ever talking to him. that you never talked to him personally after may of 2012 when you swore him in as our ambassador. am i wrong? did you ever talk to ambassador stevens when all of this was going on in the hot bed of libya? that is a yes or no question, madame secretary? did you ever personally speak to

ambassador stevens? we don't know the answer. did you ever personally speak to him after you swore him in in may? yes or no. >> yes, i believe i did. >> when was that? >> i don't recall and i want to clarify for the record that this document is about all of libya and not just benghazi. >> 77 are about benghazi. >> congress woman, i appreciate and i really do, the passion and the intensity of your feelings about this. we have diplomatic facilities in war zones. we have ambassadors that we send to places that have been bombed and attacked all the time. >> and you're their boss. is that right? >> you're right i am. >> you're their leader. is that correct? and are there ever situations where you call them, where you bring them in, where you are personally caring and concerned and are letting them know that?

are there situations where you recall and i would like to know what the conversation was with ambassador stevens and what month it was with ambassador stevens because there are no call logs with him, nothing from theops center with him that we have found? we have no record that you had conversations with the ambassador after you swore him in and before he died. you were his boss. >> i was the boss of ambassadors in 270 countries. i was the boss of ambassadors in places like afghanistan where shortly before i visited one time the embassy had been under brutal assault by the taliban for hours. i am very well aware of the dangers that are faced by our diplomats and our development professionals. there was never a recommendation from chris stevens or anyone

else to close benghazi. sitting here in the comfort of this room it is easy to say somebody should have stood up and said do that. that was not the case. it is a very difficult choice with respect to any of these facilities given the level of threat and instability that we confront around the world today. and it's deeply distressing when any of our facilities or our personnel are in danger. and we do and have done the best we can and i think we can do better which is why i implemented all of the recommendations which we have barely talked about. those were essential in trying to improve and better position and prepare and respond.

that's what we tried to do. i find it deeply saddening because obviously everyone who knew him and everyone who worked with him including libyans as i said at the very beginning, would have given anything to prevent this from happening. our security professionals usually, in fact, more than 99% plus of the time get it right. >> madame secretary, if we would have given anything had you talked to him in july he would have told you that he had asked to keep the security in libya that he had. he was told no by your state department. we didn't give him everything. thank you. i yield back. >> gentle lady is out of time. the witness may answer the question if she would like to. >> it is the same answer i have been given all day. chris stevens had the opportunity to reach me directly

anytime he thought there was something of importance. the people with whom he worked and the people around him and with him, they very well understood the dangers that they were confronting. and they did the best they could under the circumstances and many of the security requests as i just detailed were agreed to. others weren't. >> gentle lady from california is recognized. >> madame secretary, i want to thank you for your patience and your endurance during today's hearing. it's been quite a long day. i want to begin by apologizing for my republican colleagues who apparently either want to write your answers for you or testify for you because i think it fits in better with their outlandish narratives of what happened. since they insist on criticizing you for not doing anything right i want to talk about a line of questioning we pursued in the first round of questions.

i asked you about what you were doing the night of the attacks on benghazi. i want to continue that a bit more. you said previously you had spoken with the white house, with the cia, defense department and the state department. you also spoke directly with people on the ground at the embassy in tripoli that night at around 7 p.m. i can tell from the documents that we have seen that you asked to speak with deputy chief of mission in tripoli. can you explain why you felt that was important? >> well, for a number of reasons. they were a source of information. they had their own sources on the ground that they were reaching out to trying to gather additional insight into what happened, what provoked it, who was behind it. much more importantly than that they were in a great state of

dismay and grief. i thought it was important to speak with our team in tripoli directly so that they knew that we were trying as best we could from so far away to help them and to help their colleagues. we also pushed to have an additional team of security officers. they probably came up with the idea and put it together and got the plane and sent more help on the way to benghazi. but it was a very personal conversation between me and those who were in our embassy. this is a place that i had spent a lot of time and paid a lot of attention to as i said earlier we had to evacuate the embassy

before while gadhafi was in power. i talked to those people in our embassy family as they were on the ferry going from tripoli back. we tried to engage with, listen to and support our teams when they were facing these very difficult circumstances. >> this committee has interviewed your staff that was with you that evening of the attacks, your chief of staff and your deputy chief of staff jake sullivan. they explained that you participated in a secure video teleconference with senior officials from the intelligence community, white house and department of defense. your chief of staff told committee that attendance broke with protocol and surprised other attendees but you simply said, quote, these are our people on the undgro. where else would i be? why did you think it was important for you to participate personally in the deputy's committee meeting?

>> the people who were on that were part of the operational decision making and i wanted to know first-hand from them what they were trying to do to help us particularly d.o.d., also the intelligence community because at that time as i recall the cia annex had not yet come under attack and we were trying to get all americans out of benghazi. we were trying to provide planes for evacuation. there was a lot of detail that was being worked out. and i wanted to be as hands on as i could be to know what all the other agencies were doing to help us and what we could do to try to assist them in their efforts to get to benghazi and do whatever was possible. >> were the participants

surprised by your visit? >> apparently they were because they weren't expecting me to walk into the room and sit down at the table. >> do you think your appearance on that teleconference conveyed to them how seriously you were taking the attacks and response to the attacks? >> i'm sure it did, congress woman, but we had been sounding the alarm and reaching out for several hours by then. and we were getting a very positive response from everyone. >> from the defense department white house was deeply involved in reaching out and coordinating with us. so we knew people were trying to help. there was never, ever any doubt about that. i just wanted to hear first-hand about their assessments of what they could do. could anybody get there in time? how were we going to evacuate the americans?

and we were also still unsure of where our ambassador was which made all of this incredibly difficult for everybody in the state department. we didn't know where he was. he didn't know whether he was alive. and it was shortly after that in the evening when we found out that he was not. >> your chief of staff also explained to this committee that you were concerned the night of the attacks not only for the safety of your team in benghazi but teams in tripoli and elsewhere. she said this about you, she was very concerned. she was also very determined that whatever needed to be done was done and she was worried. she was worried not only about the team on the ground in benghazi but about teams on the ground in libya and in a number of places given what we had seen unfold in egypt. can you explain some of the context of the evening and why you were concerned not just

about benghazi but risk that americans were at elsewhere? >> that is exactly right. i was quite concerned about tripoli because we didn't know if there would be coordinated attacks. we were still trying to gather information about who was behind what happened in benghazi. we in the course of the conversations with our team on the ground in tripoli began to explore whether they should move from where they were in the place that was operating as our embassy at that time to a more secure location. there were lots of considerations about what to do to keep our team in tripoli safe. and then as i testified earlier we were very concerned about the impact of the video sparking unrest attacks, violence in a wide swath of countries. it turned out that was well founded concern as we saw the attacks and protests across the

region all the way to india and indones indonesia. so there was a lot of effort being put into not only doing the immediate tasks before us in benghazi and doing whatever we needed to do to keep our people in tripoli safe but beginning to talk through and prepare for what might happen elsewhere. >> i want to switch line of questioning for a second. i have a couple of minutes left. following the attacks on benghazi but before the accountability review board completed its work, you did a number of things to evaluate and improve security at overseas posts. this is even before the a.r.b. had finished its investigation and issued its finding and recommendations. i know you have mentioned them multiple times today but some colleagues appear to have amnesia about what you really accomplished. so can you tell me about some of the steps that you took to implement in the state

department even before the a.r.b. completed its work? >> well, although the a.r.b. had not completed its own investigation clearly in the after math of benghazi we were doing our own evaluation of what had happened, what we knew about the circumstances and what we needed to do to try to get ahead of any other potential problems. one of the decisions that i made and discussed with general dempsey and secretary pi netta was how we could get more assistance from the department of defense. in particular, we sent out teams to the high threat posts that we had to get evaluations from those on the undgroso that we would have a better idea of where there might be necessary upgrades to security that we could immediately try to act

upon. so we did begin a conversation with the department of defense which i think it's fair to say and as admiral mullen testified sees the scope of the american diplomatic presence as beyond the capacity of the defense department to be responsive to. so we had to begin to look at the high threat posts and had to take the second layer about those that we think could become more dangerous going forward and really begin this process which, as i told congress woman, i'm confident is still continuing because we can't get behind the curve in being able to predict where there might be problems in the future. we had a perfect example of that in yemen. we kept the embassy open under some very difficult and dangerous circumstances for a

very long time. we even moved it physically to a more well defensed position. thankfully we have not had incidents resulting in american diplomats being killed, but it was a constant challenge to us. and there are many other examples like the one that congressman smith has raised twice, an incredibly dangerous high threat post. we try to close as best we could the relationship between state and d.o.d. so wherever d.o.d. could help us they would be prepared to factor that into their planning. and i was very grateful for their responsiveness. >> we are grateful for yours. i yield back. >> chair now recognizes general lady from alabama. >> secretary clinton i want to follow up on questions about the night of the attack and

decisions made then. you wrote in your book "hard choices" that you were directing the state department response the night of september 11, 2012 but you also stated that you left your office on the night of the attacks and went to your home in northwest washington because you knew the next few days were going to be taxing and the department was going to be looking to you. i want to talk about a few things. do you have a skiff in your home? >> i did. >> and who else was at your home? were you alone? >> i was alone, yes. >> the whole night? >> yes, the whole night. [ laughter ] >> i don't know why that is funny. did you have any in person briefings? i don't find it funny at all. >> a little note of levity at 7:15. >> it's not funny because it went well into the night when

our folks on the ground were still in danger so i don't think it is funny to ask you if you were alone the whole night. >> you asked if i had a skiff. i had secure phones. i had other equipment that kept me in touch with the state department at all times. i did not sleep all night. i was very much focused on what we were doing. >> who was at your office when you left? was cheryl mills still there when you left? >> i don't remember sdplmpt i will name. jake sullivan? >> yes. they were all there when i left. >> when i left everyone was there. i can give you a blanket answer. when i left. >> i want to ask specifics. was patrick kennedy there? >> i'm sure he was. >> was philip there? >> i don't know. >> what about steven mall?

>> i'm sure that the core team at the state department was still there. >> beth jones? >> i'm sure she was. >> bill burns and thomas nods? >> i have no specific recollection of any of the names you have given me because when i left i knew i would stay in touch and i do fought know how long anybody else stayed at the state department. >> what time did you learn that sean smith had died? >> earlier in the evening. >> before you left. >> yes. >> and what about ambassador stevens? >> before i left. >> and what about his confirmation of his death? before or after you left? >> we knew that, yes. >> what about the recovery of his body? before or after you left? >> we got word that we had a sighting -- >> confirmation?

>> well, i'm trying to tell you what we knew and how we found out because it was something that we were trying to determine and we had mixed signals about what we learned. and it was our understanding and certainly by the time i left that he was most likely not alive but i'm not sure exactly when we were able to confirm that because it depended upon getting first-hand information from a libyan contact. >> where were you when you learned of the second attack? >> i was at home. >> did you go back to the state department when you learned about the second attack or did you stay home? >> i stayed home. i went to the state department early in the morning. the cia annex attack as i recall

was late in the evening, early the next morning. by our time around 5:00 a.m. or so. >> i talked with the president. >> how many times did you talk to the president? >> i talked to the president that evening that was the only time i talked with him on the 11th and then i went over to the white house the next morning. >> do you recall what time you spoke to the president? do you recall more specifically? >> i think it was late in the evening. >> what did you discuss? what did you discuss with the president? >> well, i don't usually talk about my discussions with the president but i can tell you we talked about what had happened during the day. i thanked him for his strong support because he made it absolutely clear that everyone was supposed to be doing all they could particularly d.o.d. to assist us wherever possible.

and i'm sure i thanked him for that. >> what did he say to you? >> again, i don't talk about the conversations i have with the president. we talked about the events of the day. his determination to do everything he could to try to help our people in benghazi. >> did you meet with secretary pan eta? >> i did not? >> did you speak to him? >> the next day. >> not on the 11th? >> no. >> did you talk with general dempsey? >> the next morning. >> you did not meet with him or talk with him on the 11th? >> it wasn't necessary. everybody was doing everything they could think of to do. >> i'm trying to figure out if you did or didn't. >> i'm telling you i sat in because i wanted to talk to the operational people and they were represented on that. they were the ones who were carrying out the orders that they received from the president on down.

>> what about petraeus? when did you speak to him? >> i spoke to petraeus that afternoon because i knew that we had an agreement with the cia annex and i spoke with him about an hour after finding out about the attack and after gathering information about what we thought was happening in benghazi. >> did you -- your surviving agents were evacuated to tripoli the morning of the 12th. did you talk to survivors that night or once they arrived in tripoli? >> we did not speak to them directly. we obviously made arrangements for them to be safely evacuated and then to be transported to a hospital facility that we thought was safe from any potential attacks. >> did you talk to them the next day? >> no. >> did you talk to them later that week? >> i did not. >> did you talk to them when they got back to the united

states? >> i did not talk to them until they had had an opportunity to be debriefed and to provide information that would help us understand what happened, help the intelligence community and help the fbi as they were trying to build their case. >> how would it have harmed the case that they were trying to build for you, secretary of state, just to check in on their well being? >> i did check on their well being. i did personally talk with the people who were taking care of them, transporting them. >> them, the survivors. when did you talk to the survivor snz. >> i talked to the survivors when they came back to the united states. one who was from many months in walter reed on the telephone. >> going back to dempsey, you stated they were the decision makers. but you never spoke with them while your people were on the

ground? >> i want to make sure this is clear. they were the decision makers when it came to response. i'm not going to get back into that. i'm trying to clarify they were the decision makers. your people were on the ground in harm's way and you never had a conversation with them? >> i did not need to. during the turmoil of that afternoon and into the evening we knew the president told them both he expected them to do everything they possibly could do. i knew that they would then turn to those officers responsible for carrying out that order. they were represented on that. that's why i sat in. remember, too, we had a lot of other threats. we were worried about cairo. >> you had your people on the ground that were being attacked.

i want to get back to the survivors in the little time i have left. did you talk to the survivors directly at all? cephaly >> yes, i did. >> can you tell us when? >> it was kind of a rolling series of conversations when they came back to the state department i met with and talked with them. as you know their names have never been made public. i don't intend to today. >> can you give me a month? >> for some of them it was less time than that. for one of them i did not -- i talked with them on the phone. i did not get to physically see him until he had been released from the hospital. that was early in 2013. >> i think, mr. chairman, there are two messages here. the first message is that you sent to your personnel the night

of the attack when they went home. the second message is that you used the fbi's inquiry as an excuse not to check in with your agents who were on the ground who survived that horrible night just to ask them how they were. i yield back. >> if i could respond, congress woman, i think that is part of a theory that you and your colleagues are attempt toing to weave. it was made clear that the fbi wanted a fresh and clean opportunity to speak with the survivors which i totally understand. and their investigation has led to the charging of at least one person and i hope we find all of them and bring them to justice. >> gentleman from washington is recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to point out that at

thisithis point secretary clinton testified here longer than previous two testimonies on the subject combined. we have been here now for nine and a half hours. the questions are increasingly badgering. i would go on to say increasingly vicious. we are hoping to illicit information that will help us learn what happened and learn how to prevent future attacks. it seems to me that the majority wish to wear you down. and hopefully get you to say something that they can later use. i don't see the utility of that when the chairman returns i would be curious as to if we just plan ongoing all night continuing to badger the witness or if there is an end point to this. i don't think it is fair to the witness to have to sit there for that long and go over intimate details.

i guess we learned whether or not you had a fax machine. did you talk to this person? did you talk to this person? was this person there or the other person there? let me just say i am very impressed by the number of answers you have and the memory you have. but i hope we consider how much longer we continue to do this. as to the last line of questioning to imply that you didn't care about your personnel, how many countries, how many different embassies, different consulates did you visit during your time as secretary of state roughly? >> at least 112. i think more than that because sometimes i visit the embassy plus a consulate in a country that i was in. >> can you give us a flavor for

some of the places where you z visited your personnel? >> congressman, i did go to the democratic republic of congo and eastern congo because of the horrific violence there and the particularly unstable situation in that region. i obviously went to yemen and i have made many trips to afghanistan and pakistan and had the opportunity to visit our diplomats and our development experts in dangerous places. one of the places that is particularly hard now is iraq and it was hard then. egypt during the revolution was

very challenging and there i came under giant protests against the united states, against me personally. a visit to the consulate in alexandria my team was pelted with tomatoes and shoes and other insults hurled at us which put a lot of pressure on the diplomatic security. i obviously went to tune s and worked hard to help support tunisia and they as of now seem as though they are working towards some kind of resolution. i visited beirutbeirut. i was in jordan and turkey numerous times during the uprising against syria. so i think it is a long list and it's by no means a complete one. >> and let me just say that the

line of questioning recently has been basically implying that you don't care. there is no other way to interpret what we just heard is to say you didn't make this phone call, what month? what day? did you really care? did you visit them three times or two? the line of questioning is implying that you don't care. there are two things that are troubling about that, first of all you do or you wouldn't be doing this or representing the people and doing the jobs that you did. second of all, whether or not you care has nothing to do with learning what happened in benghazi and how to solve the problem. so all the while and i was chastised for claiming the majority was trying to be partisan and then we got a rusitation of how to talk about who should get credit for libya, being chastised for that.

it is clear that they are trying to attack you personally. i really wish that we could focus on the issues instead of that. to get into that level of questioning i think is not helpful to this committee and not helpful to the republicans for that matter. it is clear that you care. i will simply go back to where we have been a couple of times. tell us again how many embassies do we have in the world? >> more than 270 countries represented in. >> on some level the secretary of state, secretary kerry now, you before, is responsible for are of them. >> that's right. >> how many personnel? >> 70,000 between the state department. >> you are responsible for all of them, as well. >> that's true. >> can any human being on the face of the planet protect every single one of them every second of every day? that is a rhetorical question.

>> we can try. congressman, we have 270 consulates and embassies. we are represented in 194 countries. some are very friendly to us and some are our adversaries. i do want to pick up on the point you are making because i appreciate it very much, congressman. i care very deeply about the people who serve our country. i worked with them. i knew them. i saw them in action. on my last full day as secretary of state we were able to hold a ceremony awarding the five diplomatic security agents, the highest award for heroism that the state department has to offer. we held it then because we wanted to be sure that the fifth man could be there because he had been in the hospital for so

long. he was able to be there. i got a chance to meet their families. i got a chance all at once, not just individually but all together to thank them and commend them for their heroism. and i'll tell you, the agent who had been in the hospital all those months, as i was reavi le he called me over and said secretary, please do everything you can to make sure i get to go back in the field. and i told him i would. and it was one of the requests i made on the way out the door. he was determined to go back to do what he could to protect our diplomats, to protect you when

you travel. and i was so struck then as i had been so many times before about the quality and the integrity and the courage of those americans who serve us whether in uniform or out. i care very deeply about each and everyone of them. >> thank you. and one other point to make. do you happen to know where the cia director general petraeus was when the second attack happened on the cia and where he went? >> i do not. i don't know where he was when i reached him and spoke with him. >> he was home operating out of a skiff and after the attack he continued to operate out of that skiff which again is why this would be a far more productive investigation if we actually had the cia director and d.o.d. instead of trying to pick apart

every single solitary thing you said or did during the course of this and sometimes before and after that. if we actually were trying to get to the truth of this we would have a broader array of people to talk to to get there instead of picking you apart at every conceivable turn. you know, we have gone back and forth. i want to make one other point. congressman jordan, i like you, i have a great deal of respect for you but this going back twice now to the some have implied that this was because of a video somehow you just substitute the word some for i and think there is no difference whatsoever in that sentence. that's mind boggling. and then to badger over and over and over and over again why did you say because of the video? i didn't. why did you say it was because of the video? i guess this could go on for another six or seven hours. i think we all understand the

english language. when you say some have implied that means that some have implied. some others have implied. so it's just very frustrating. i serve on the armed services committee with matt thornberry and we disagree about a heck of a lot. it never comes close to descending to this level. congress can, in fact, function. the house arms services committee and all of the members of that committee, they aggressively question administrative witnesses and we have done it. there is always an element of respect for the fact that we are all doing a very difficult job. and anyone who has been in a tough campaign knows what it is

like to have everything you say, everything you do, every look on your face, everything that you wear picked apart. it's not helpful. it's not helpful to the american public and not helpful to the political process and damn sure not helpful to the people who died in benghazi or to their families. i hope we can do better. i hope that we can be done with the repetitive badgering after nine and a half hours. i thank you for putting up with it for that long and for your service. >> thank you. >> gentleman yields back. chairman recognizes gentleman from ohio. >> secretary clinton to get to the truth about benghazi we need the complete record. your e-mails are part of the record. we believe the record might be incomplete in part because your version of events surrounding your e-mail situation keeps changing. last month on september 20 you said, quote, i am being as transparent as possible, more

transparent than anybody else ever has been. you didn't say more transparent than anybody. you said more transparent than anybody else ever. now, my definition of transparency includes being honest and straightforward from the start. let's look at a few things you said. on march 10 you said this. you provided all work-related e-mails ering on the side of anything that might be a federal record. in september you revise td that statement and said mr. blumenthal had e-mails you didn't. the revised statement was after we interviewed him about benghazi and found out we didn't receive from you and the state department the same information we received from him. in march you said it was your practice to e-mail government

officials on their dot-gov accounts. you said there was a fraction sent to officials on their personal accounts. >> what does this have to do with what happened in benghazi? when are we going to get there? >> the gentleman is not recognized. the gentleman from ohio controls the time. >> it has everything to do because we want the record to get to the truth. maybe if the gentleman from washington would have shown up for more than one hour of one interview he might know about the record. the revised statement was after this committee had contacted jake sullivan, asking for the personal accounts which you knew would mean we would get their e-mails and that first statement in march was not accurate. in march you said no classified information was sent or received on your personal accounts.

you later revised your statement and said no information marked classified was sent or received on your personal account. and once again your revised statement was after the inspector general for the intelligence community had examined your e-mails and determined that some were classified. secretary clinton, seems like there is a pattern, a pattern to changing your story. in march you say one thing. the truth comes out. weeks and months later you say something else. that's not being the most transparent person ever. that's not even being transparent. if your story about your e-mails keeps changing how can we accept your statement that you have turned over all work-related e-mails and all e-mails about

libya? >> well, congressman, i have said repeatedly that i take responsibility for my use of personal e-mail. i have said it was a mistake. i have said that it was allowed but it was not a good choice. when i got to the department we were faced global financial crisis, major troop decisions on afghanistan, imperative to rebuild alliances and so much else. e-mail was not my primary means of communication. i did not have a computer on my desk. i described how i did work in meetings secure and unsecure phone calls, reviewing many, many pages of materials every day, attending a great deal of meetings and i provided the department which has been providing you with all of my

work-related e-mails, all that i had, approximately 55,000 pages and they are being publically released. >> let's get into that. those 55,000 pages, 62,000 e-mails total on your system. you have stated that you used a multi step process to determine which belong to you and your family and which belonged to the taxpayer. who oversaw this process in making that determination? which ones we might get and which ones were personal? >> that was overseen by my attorneys and they conducted a rigorous review of my e-mails. >> these are the folks sitting behind you there? >> that's right. >> and you said rigorous. what does that mean? >> it means that they were asked to provide anything that could be possibly construed as work-related. in fact, in my opinion and

that's been confirmed by state department and -- >> how was it done? did someone physically look at the 62,000 e-mails or did you use search terms? i want to know the specifics. >> they did all of that and i did not look over their shoulders because i thought it would be appropriate for them to conduct that search and they did. >> will you provide this committee or answer what were the search terms? >> the search terms were everything you could imagine that might be related to anything but also went through every single e-mail. >> what were the search terms? search terms means terms? what date did you start and e-mails in between to look at? >> congressman, i asked my attorneys to oversee the process. i did not look over their shoulder. i did not dictate how they would do it. i did not ask what they were doing and how they -- >> you don't know what terms they used to determine which

were your e-mails and which ones the state department got? >> the state department had between 90% and 95% of all the ones that were work-related. >> i'm not asking about those. i'm asking about the 62,000 on your system. >> 90% to 95% of all work-related e-mails were already in state department -- >> we know the national archive has said 1,250 were clearly personal. no way you should have sent them to state department. 15 you missed because we got those from mr. blumenthal. you missed 15 you should have given us but 1,250 you erred on both sides. if you made a mistake both ways you might have made more mistakes and we don't know. >> first of all, you had nine

hours with one of my attorneys. and since i think the democrats finally released the transcript i -- >> i asked ms. mills. i asked her about this and she gave me the same answer you are giving me. >> she would be happy to supplement the record. >> she is not on the witness stand. >> i asked my attorneys to do it. i thought that was the appropriate way to proceed. >> let me do one other statement. i hope we will know the terms. what terms do you use to determine what we might get to get sth information on libya. in march you said this. your server was physically located on your property protected by the secret service. this story has been all over the place. one server on your property in new york and a second server hosted by a colorado company and housed in new jersey. two servers? >> no. there was a server that was

already being used by my husband's team, an existing system in our home that i used. and then later, again, my husband's office decided that they wanted to change their arrangements and that's when they contracted with the company in colorado. >> so there is only one server. is that what you are telling me? the one server that the fbi has? >> the fbi has the server used during the tenure of my state department service. >> in your statement you said which is protected by the secret service cht why did you mention the secret service? because secret service agent standing at the back door of your house protect someone from russia or china hacking into your system? >> out of an abundance of being transparent.

>> transparent? what's the relevance to protecting from classified information? >> there was nothing marked classified on my e-mails either send or received. >> marked is -- >> congressman, there was a lot of confusion because many americans have no idea how the classification process works and therefore i wanted to make it clear that there is a system within our government, certainly within the state department where materials that is thought to be classified is marked such so that people have the opportunity to know how they are supposed to be handling those materials and that's why it became clearer, i believe, to say that nothing was marked classified at the time i sent or received it. >> all i know that is different than what you said in march. the fbi has your server and doing a forensic review of your

server. they may recover e-mails that you deleted from your system. so i didn't say this you said it transparency. you said you were more were mor transparent than anybody else ever. i want to ask you one simple question. if the fbi finds some of these e-mails that might be deleted as they're reviewing your server, will you agree to allow a neutral third party like a retired federal judge to review any e-mails deleted to determine if any of them are relative -- are relevant to our investigation? >> congressman, as you point out, there's a security inquiry being conducted by the department of justice, and i trust that they will do whatever is appropriate to reach their conclusions. >> but would you as the most transparent person ever, would you commit to saying whatever they find i'm going to -- i want a retired federal judge to evaluate that and look and see whether we need some of that information to get to the truth? >> i have been releasing my e-mails to the public.

that is transparency. and as i stand by my statement, so far as i know, in the modern era i am the only government official who's ever done that. >> thank you, madam secretary. >> the gentleman's time is expired. the chair will now recognize the gentleman from georgia, mr. westmoreland. >> thank you. madam secretary, so far today i've said good morning, good afternoon -- let me say good night. i may be the only ferenperson os side that doesn't care about your personal e-mails because i know you said i think colin powell had one. the thing that bothers me is that it was a personal server. i think that's the difference. because mr. powell's e-mails all went through the state department server. so just to clarify, i think the problem is that you had the full

control of your e-mails because they were on a private server and not the government's server. the other thing i'd like to say is miss duckworth, if you would read the testimony of the number of diplomatic security agents that served in benghazi, most of them were temporary duty, 45, 60-day people that served. if you will read that, i think you'll find a lot of these things that the secretary said as far as enhancements was paid for by petty cash out of their own money and not really fulfilled or completed. the other thing i want to ask you, madam secretary -- >> will the gentleman yield for just 20 seconds? >> yeah. >> i think that's why it behooves us as members of

congress to increase the security budget for the state department. they routinely get less than they need. and i think that americans in general would not begrudge more money for security to safeguard our diplomats. but i agree with you that the report does say that. >> well, reclaiming my time, there was $20 million that she was going to send to libya for their security upgrades. you mentioned the sixth man, that you had to wait on the sixth man -- >> the fifth man. i'm sorry. >> all right. i was going to say it must have been somebody hiding in the closet or something that we didn't know about. you also said in one of the last things that the state department sent more security from tripoli to benghazi during the attack. >> mm-hmm. >> there was not a state department person on that plane. there were four grs agents and two tdy d.o.d. people. >> and -- >> and an interpreter. >> well, that is exactly right.

and that's why the cooperation and coordination that i'd been -- >> ma'am, of all the information we've got, mr. glenn daugherty is the one that said we are going down to help our brothers. and he got permission from the chief of the station to go down there and he took three other grs agents and then he got the two d.o.d. guys that wanted to go, volunteered to go, and they took an interpreter. they chartered the plane. and they went down there. it was not a state department deal. and in fact, if you want to know the truth, the only option that the state department had was the fess team as you and i talked about before. now, you mentioned that it was

for rebuilding. and i've got the state department thing here about the fess. i would read it but it's going to take up too much of my time. but there's not anything -- 2 doesn't say anything about rebuilding anything. it says that it's for crisis management expertise, time-sensitive information, planning for contingency operations, hostage negotiating expertise, which we thought at one time that the ambassador may have been kidnapped, reach back to washington, d.c. agencies and specialized communications capabilities. now, that's what it says on the state department website. you know, that would have been the one thing you could have done to get people on the way over there to help those folks that were still in an ongoing battle that was ready to go,

setting there. but you know what? that plane never got out of the hangar. those people never got assembled. and we've got a chain of e-mails that the first recommendation came back from your own people. and then the fbi told your employees that the best way to handle the situation was to send the fess team, and that was the way it had always been done. so did you make the decision not to send the fess team? >> well, congressman, first let me say that it's important to recognize that our deputy chief of mission greg hicks was fully engaged in helping put together the team that flew from tripoli to benghazi and we were very grateful that the cia station chief and his colleagues were

behind that and we were very appreciative. as you know, they didn't get there in time because the attack on the compound was very swift. it was over in less than an hour. but they did help eventually to evacuate, and it was just an additional tragedy that mr. doherty lost his life in attempting to stave off the attack on the cia annex. with regard to the fest recommendation, everything you read was no longer applicable to our compound in benghazi. unlike the fest team responding in nairobi, where we were going to have an ongoing embassy presence, that was our embassy, the fest team was very much involved in helping to stand up the communications and literally

begin to get the embassy function again despite the fact that the americans and many of the locally employed staff had been murdered in the terrorist attack. it was our judgment that the fest team was not needed, was not appropriate for benghazi. >> but you really didn't know what was going on at that point. when you could have pulled -- >> well, we did know. we knew from the reports we were getting back from our diplomatic security officers that they had had to abandon the facility, that it had been set on fire. and it was -- they were forced to take refuge with our cia colleagues at the cia annex. and remember, the fest team is not an armed reaction force. that is not what a fest team does. >> ma'am, i know that. >> so we had an armed reinforcements coming from tripoli -- >> but that was the only tool that you had to get people over

there yourself. not the d.o.d. this was -- >> i'm sorry, congressman. i mean, look -- >> evidently, it has been -- it has served its purpose from being put in in the different places it has responded to. but i want to talk to you just a little bit about your e-mails. and that is a think you said it was october that you received a letter that asked you and former secretary of states to present all the e-mails. is that correct? >> that's my memory, yes. >> okay. now, in august the state department met with your attorneys to talk about the lack of the e-mails that they had. did you know that? >> i didn't at the time, no. >> you didn't know that they were meeting -- that the state department was meeting with your attorneys?

>> not at that time. and as you also recall, the state department was beginning to turn over to this committee my e-mails because they had between 90% and 95% of all my work-related e-mails in the state department system. >> but ma'am, they met with your attorney and your attorney that they met with -- >> 95% of all my work-related e-mails in the state department system. >> but ma'am, they met with your attorney and your attorney that they met with happened to be cheryl mills, which was your chief of staff. >> that's correct. that's correct. >> now, is that weird, that your attorney was your chief of staff, so that attorney-client privilege may have kicked in there -- >> she was my counsel before she was my chief of staff. she became my counsel again after she was my chief of staff. >> mm. well, i know that when the e-mail went out that night it called everybody, undersecretary, director, spokesman, and it said miss mills was counselor. it didn't say