WASHINGTON — State Department officials promised on Thursday to carry out quickly the recommendations of a review board to beef up security for the foreign service and urged Congress to provide more money to protect American diplomats.
The promises came during a Senate hearing into the handling of diplomatic security in Benghazi, Libya, before a deadly attack on a diplomatic outpost there that led to the deaths of four Americans, including the American ambassador.
“We have to do better,” Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns said in prepared testimony to the Foreign Relations Committee. On Tuesday, one department official resigned and three others were relieved of their duties after a scathing report was released by an inquiry panel led by Thomas R. Pickering, a retired diplomat.
In an opening statement, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the committee’s chairman, said that Congress “also bears some responsibility” to provide adequate financing for diplomatic security. He noted that the board’s report called for spending $2.3 billion a year in the coming decade to protect American Embassies and offices abroad.
Mr. Kerry and Mr. Burns said it was important to find ways for diplomats to get out among the people, even in dangerous countries.
“We do not want to concertina-wire America off from the world,” Mr. Kerry said.
Mr. Burns said that “diplomacy, by its very nature, must sometimes be practiced in dangerous places.”
“Chris Stevens understood that as well as anyone,” he said, referring to the ambassador to Libya who was killed along with the three others in the Sept. 11 attack. “Chris also knew that every chief of mission has the responsibility to ensure the best possible security and support for our people.”
Mr. Burns and Thomas R. Nides, another deputy secretary of state, told the committee in prepared testimony that the department had “already begun to fix” the “serious, systemic problems” identified in the Pickering report. The two men testified in place of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is recovering from a concussion.
Mr. Nides said the department accepted “every one” of the report’s 29 specific recommendations. He mentioned, for example, the addition of hundreds of Marines to protect foreign missions. His office is leading an effort to put them into effect “quickly and completely — and to pursue steps above and beyond the board’s report,” he said.
Dozens of specific actions are already under way, several will be completed within weeks, and all will be in motion “by the time the next secretary of state takes office,” he said.
Mr. Kerry is the leading candidate to be replace Mrs. Clinton as secretary of state, after the withdrawal from consideration of Susan E. Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, after criticisms of statements she made following the attack on the Benghazi outpost.
Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, was skeptical about claims of progress, saying that rarely are the recommendations of review boards like the Pickering panel fully implemented.
“The culture of the State Department is one that needs to be reformed,” he said.
But Senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat of New Jersey, said one reason for weak security was that Congress had not provided as much money as the administration has sought and the Pickering panel recommended.
Pleas for more money come as Congress and the administration face broad spending cuts next year, whether or not a resolution is reached soon in the continuing fiscal impasse.
At a second hearing on Thursday afternoon, Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, the chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, scoffed at the calls for additional spending, saying that poor decisions rather than a lack of money were the problem in Benghazi.
“If the State Department intends to blame its long string of failures on inadequate funding, then perhaps it should take a closer look at the money that is being lavished on global climate change, culinary diplomacy programs and other favored projects,” she said. “This money could have been used for providing diplomatic security, including hiring additional personnel and providing them with adequate equipment and training.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 20, 2012
An earlier version of this article misstated the number of State Department officials who resigned after the release of a report investigating the attacks in Benghazi, Libya. One official resigned, not three.
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At Benghazi Hearing, State Dept. Concedes Errors
