Thread: Another US Embassy Under Siege

Originally Posted by Boon Mee

Originally Posted by sabang

In some parallel universe, the loyal denizens appear to be motivated by failure...

Yeah, right...did you ever watch that cop show with Jack Webb (Dragnet) where he says in just about every episode: "Just the facts Ma'am"

Well, that's just about what this Benghazie-Gate investigation is all about but Oh no, to you 'usual suspects' it's just another attack on poor, mistreated Barak Obama.

Heh, he'll look good in that orange jumpsuit!

Just the facts? You don't seem very interested in those. This trumped up witch-hunt is all about ideology, nothing else. There's actually very little interest in the actual facts.

Bush & Co. lie leading to a war costing thousands of lives and billions of dollars, not so much as a peep. An embassy is attacked, cue logic-gymnastics, distortions and outright lies. Some people simply have zero credibility.

Originally Posted by AntRobertson

Bush & Co. lie leading to a war costing thousands of lives and billions of dollars, not so much as a peep. An embassy is attacked, cue logic-gymnastics, distortions and outright lies. Some people simply have zero credibility.

There were like 12 attacks on embassies during the Bush years and many under Reagan with hundreds of casualites. Where was the fuss? Pure dirty politics.

^Exactly. Actually I posted something in the 'Stupid Pics' thread on just this subject.

I believe just in recent times:

2002: U.S. Consulate In Karachi, Pakistan, Attacked 10 Killed, 51 Injured
2004: U.S. Embassy Bombed In Uzbekistan 2 Killed, 9 Injured
2004: Gunmen Stormed U.S. Consulate In Saudi Arabia 8 Killed
2006: Armed Men Attacked U.S. Embassy In Syria 1 Killed, Several Injured
2007: Grenade Launched Into U.S. Embassy In Athens
2008: Rioters Set Fire To U.S. Embassy In Serbia
2008: Ten People Killed In Bombings At U.S. Embassy In Yemen
2012 US Embassy in Benghazi, Libya attacked 4 Killed

and as you state very little if anything said.

The bombings of the African embassies were broadly reported. The media took great interest in them.

So the 12 attacks are equivalent to the death of a US ambassador on the date of 9-11?

Even Bob Woodward says the administration needs to answer questions. The American people need to know if a misguided policy is getting people killed so they can decide in an informed manner if it's necessary to demand a change in policy. Americans had an opportune time to make change just recently but the media and the administration refused to put it on their platter.

The whole point here is, the ambassador requested backup and it was apparently DENIED. The issue is about that denial.
As an aside, why have the lefties here excluded the attacks under Clinton, including the USS Cole? How convenient.

Originally Posted by Minnie Maugham

As an aside, why have the lefties here excluded the attacks under Clinton, including the USS Cole?

Yes, because an Arleigh Burke-class Aegis-equipped guided missile destroyer is exactly the same as an Embassy or Consulate.

^It has been widely reported that Paula Broadwell blurted this out during a speaking event. The CIA called the comment a fiction.

Originally Posted by Koojo

Haven't seen anything in print yet, but last night the TV news reported that it was rumoured they were holding militia prisoners there.

Paula Broadwell claims about Benghazi attack dismissed as 'baseless' by CIA
Woman who had affair with David Petraeus gave speech about the CIA chief's handling of the Libya assault last month
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Matt Williams in New York
guardian.co.uk, Monday 12 November 2012 20.05 GMT
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Paula Broadwell, author of the David Petraeus biography All In. Photograph: T Ortega Gaines/AP
The CIA has dismissed as "baseless" and "uninformed" claims made by the former lover of ex-agency chief David Petraeus that Libyan militants were held in secret US prisons prior to the deadly Benghazi consulate attack.

Paula Broadwell, the biographer whose affair with Petraeus led to his abrupt resignation Friday, alleged that the assault, in which US ambassador Christopher Stevens was killed, was an attempt to free men being detained in a covert CIA annex.

Speaking last month at the University of Denver, Broadwell further alleged that Petreaus knew about the secret holding cells.

President Barack Obama stripped the CIA of its power to take prisoners through an executive order signed soon after his inauguration in January 2009.

It put an end to the controversial network of secret jails that operated under the administration of President George W Bush.

The 11 September attack on the US consulate in Benghazi resulted in the deaths of four Americans. The assault – and what the White House was told about the need for additional security prior to the attack – has since been the subject of political debate in Washington.

Congressional bodies are due to hold hearings about the incident on Thursday. Petraeus had been expected to give evidence but his resignation has seemingly robbed lawmakers of the chance to grill him over what he knew, and what he passed on to senior administration figures prior to the attack

Broadwell's allegations over the motive of militants in attacking the consulate are likely to fuel speculation over the timing of Petraeus's resignation.

In an answer to a question reading the CIA chief's handling of the incident, the biographer said: "Now, I don't know if a lot of you heard this, but the CIA annex had actually, um, had taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner and they think that the attack on the consulate was an effort to try to get these prisoners back. So that's still being vetted."

She added: "The challenging thing for General Petraeus is that in his new position, he's not allowed to communicate with the press. So he's known all of this – they had correspondence with the CIA station chief in, in Libya. Within 24 hours they kind of knew what was happening."

The comments were recorded and posted in a YouTube clip which has since been taken down.

On Monday, the CIA was quick to shoot down Broadwell's claims.

"Any suggestion that the agency is still in the detention business is uninformed and baseless," agency spokesman Preston Golson said.

Paula Broadwell claims about Benghazi attack dismissed as 'baseless' by CIA | World news | guardian.co.uk

But who knows what the real truth is.

Now we have John McCain threatening a filibuster to block the appointment of Susan Rice to Secretary of State. This is the same John McCain who graduated 894th out of 899 at Annapolis and chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. I guess we know that this guy is not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

^That's a shame. Choosing Palin as a running mate aside I actually thought McCain came out of his campaign with some well-earned respect.

He was very good at piloting planes that crashed, and getting taken prisoner though.

I think we may finally have a credible 'conspiracy theory' actually- Benghazi was a CIA detention centre, amongst other things (but smuggling guns to militia's, even now- I doubt that). Did the Presidential office know?

http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2012/11/14/john_mccain_s_long_war_against_susan_rice.html

You probably don't need the lesson, but here's how the filibuster works. A nomination or bill is produced. If 60 senators don't agree to proceed to a vote, there's no vote.

You might forget this when you read headlines like "GOP senators say they would try to block Rice nomination" and "GOP opposition to Rice nomination mounts." U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice is tipped as a possible candidate for secretary of state, and some Republicans refuse to consider her because, frankly, they want a scalp in the Benghazi debacle, and David Petraeus's scalp doesn't count.

But it's "some" Republicans. The key to this story is how Sen. John McCain, whose presidential candidate lost an election eight days ago, is using his media clout to create problems for Rice and the president.

Reporters cover whatever McCain does. This morning, in a Fox News interview, he pledged to filibuster Rice. Hours later he called a news conference with Sen. Lindsey Graham (who has also promised to filibuster) and Sen. Kelly Ayotte (who has become the new Joe Lieberman of the McCain-led three amigos.) McCain pledged to "do whatever to block the nomination that is within our power." On the way out, I heard reporters confidentially talking about how the president had to "pull" Rice—who has not been nominated—because of the opposition.

But to filibuster Rice, Republicans would need 40 votes. Neither McCain or Graham said they had those votes; Graham just speculated that "a few" Democrats might buck the president on his own secretary of state nomination and join a filibuster. Few other members of the GOP conference have promised this level of opposition.

"We have a process for nominations, and we want to give her a full hearing," said Sen. Marco Rubio yesterday when asked about Rice. "I'm concerned with the fact she went on Sunday shows and said this was the product of a spontaneous uprising and not a terrorist attack. Obviously she based those comments on directives or information that she had, and it's important to know where those directives came from and what that information was."


Rubio's comments were interesting because this popular version of the "Rice comments" isn't true. On those Sunday shows, she said that extremists used a protest as a cover for their planned attack, not that the attack happened off the cuff. The key figure in spreading this lie about Rice was ... John McCain, who said that same Sunday that "most people don't bring rocket-propelled grenades and heavy weapons to demonstrations."


McCain's obvious contempt has been noticed by the press and dismissed by Democrats. After McCain's presser, where he called for a select committee to investigate Benghazi, a reporter asked Sen. Harry Reid whether he could support such an investigation. "No," snapped Reid. Ironically, McCain's zealousness and insistence that Democrats have lied and covered up facts about the death of Americans might be an impediment to an anti-Rice campaign. What, exactly, do Democrats gain if they punt Rice? If she's passed over, it looks like Republicans scared the re-elected president out of a choice he wanted to make. And Republicans will grill her over Benghazi anyway.

Eight years ago, Democrats tried a version of this play with Condoleezza Rice. She'd been the president's national security adviser during a period of stunning intelligence failures. Liberals blanched at the idea of promoting her and wanted to make George W. Bush suffer for it. But in the end, 30 Democrats voted to confirm the Original Rice. Among them: Joe Biden and Barack Obama. They were spared the scorn of a Republican senator who endorsed Rice and accused her opponents of being sore losers.

"I wonder why we are starting this new Congress with a protracted debate about a foregone conclusion," McCain said. "I can only conclude that we are doing this for no other reason than because of lingering bitterness over the outcome of the election."

McCain has a tendency to box himself into a corner with his positions. He did it on Libya and he is doing it on Syria and he is doing it again on Benghazi. He has earned a lot of good will and patience with the American people because he was a prisoner of war but anyone with an ounce of objectivity can see this guy for what he is - a partisan political hack.

Originally Posted by Humbert

a partisan political hack.

Remember 2008 campaign McCain that wanted to bomb, bomb, bomb Iran because they would have nukes ready any day and recoiled in disgust at the wild notion of going into Pakistan after Bin Laden?

Are gems like those what competent handling of foreign affairs look like?

McCain needs to take his meds and go off to have nap time or enjoy his retirement or something, he's getting dangerously cranky at the moment.

Originally Posted by The_Ghost_Of_The_Moog

Assad, Mubarak, Gadaffi and Saddam Hussein are all secular Islamic names that Al Qaeda wanted out, so regimes more sympathetic to theocracy could then emerge.

Incredible how the USA is acting as facilitator.

It's a real head-scratcher. Kind of like handing Iraq to Iran on a silver platter.

Originally Posted by quimbian corholla

McCain needs to take his meds and go off to have nap time or enjoy his retirement or something, he's getting dangerously cranky at the moment.

How John McCain Humiliated himself On Susan Rice
By Michael Tomasky

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/25/michael-tomasky-on-how-john-mccain-humiliated-himself-on-susan-rice.html

We don’t yet really know as a society what a person has to do to completely and utterly cancel out a record of war heroism, but we may be about to find out. If this CBS News report is even close to accurate, John McCain’s arguments of the last few weeks about Susan Rice are thrashingly demolished. He has, or should have, zero credibility now on this issue. It will be fascinating to see if he emerges from the holiday weekend subtly chastened, attempting to shift gears a bit, or whether he keeps the pedal to the paranoid metal. He’s getting toward the sunset of what was once a reasonably distinguished career, a career (if we count his time in Vietnam) that began in the highest honor and has now descended into the darkest farce.
The CBS report found the following. It was the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that took the words “al Qaeda” and “terrorism” out of Rice’s talking points for those Sept. 16 talk shows. It found also that both the CIA and the FBI approved of these edits, following standard operating procedure. The report states emphatically: “The White House or State Department did not make those changes.” One source told the network’s Margaret Brennan that the controversy over the word choice employed by Rice has come to the intel world as “a bit of a surprise.” Another source said that there were “legitimate intelligence and legal issues to consider, as is almost always the case when explaining classified assessments publicly.”
There’s one bit of irony introduced to the saga by all these details, which is that this report crystallizes the fact that Rice did indeed hide some information from the public on Sept. 16—but it’s the kind of information that has always been concealed from public consumption, for the kinds of national-security-related reasons that the Washington establishment has always agreed upon. Historically, of course, if any person or persons have objected to this kind of filtering, they’ve typically been on the left. Think Daniel Ellsberg first and foremost. The right always defended this practice, on the grounds that making possibly sensitive information public too soon without the proper running of all the intelligence traps could only provide aid and comfort to the commies or the terrorists, as the case may be.

McCain certainly comes from this school. But this, you see, was different. Different from what, and different how, are both good questions. Different from those dozen or so attacks on American embassies while George W. Bush was president? It’s true that no Americans died in those raids, let alone an ambassador, and that obviously does raise the stakes. But it hardly means that our intelligence agencies should alter their procedures to meet the political demands of one party, or one senator, or one cable “news” channel. If anything, it means dramatically the opposite, and one has no trouble at all picturing, if Benghazi had happened in the heat of a presidential campaign in which a Republican president was seeking reelection, an unctuous McCain standing before the cameras and lambasting Democrats in highly moralistic language for politicizing such a sensitive tragedy.
Well, live by the moral sword, die by it. In the same way conservatives couldn’t see that Mitt Romney was going to lose because they believed only themselves and their own self-reinforcing propaganda, I think McCain probably isn’t aware right now of what a joke he’s becoming. He probably only goes to constituent meetings where they cheer on his desperate antics. I notice from cruising the Arizona papers that they’re not really laying into him yet—just a few guarded criticisms and expressions of disappointment in the letter columns and such. Most importantly of all, establishment Washington has adored him. As long as those shields are there, he can ignore people like me and the MSNBC crowd.

But how long will they be there? McCain, because of what he endured 45 years ago, is permitted more than three strikes. But how many more? In 2008, he foisted Sarah Palin upon an unsuspecting nation. After losing that race, he then turned his back on legislating as he faced a primary challenge from his right in 2010, switching from being one of the few senators who actually took his work seriously enough to try to be a leader on compromise to becoming one of the body’s chief obstructionists and windbags across a range of issues. And now, 2012, has found him slandering his country’s ambassador to the United Nations on the basis of no evidence, creating circumstances that have forced U.S. intelligence agencies to defend their usually private methods in public, and of course laid the groundwork for future and wholly spurious impeachment proceedings. So this last one alone is three strikes, plus probably a couple others I’m not remembering.

There has been no shortage of windbags willing to shoot off their mouths before all the facts were in on this topic. Will they ever be forced to eat crow or just move on to the next big lie without looking back?

Benghazi report forces resignation of four US state department officials
Account of events leading up to death of the US ambassador and three other Americans finds 'grossly inadequate' security
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 20 December 2012 03.06 GMT

Senate Foreign Relations chairman John Kerry leaves a closed-door briefing the Benghazi attack on Wednesday. Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP
Four US State Department officials have resigned after a damning investigation into the killing of the American ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, in Benghazi in on 11 September found "systematic failures" of leadership and "grossly inadequate" security.

The report said that US personnel on the ground acted with "courage and readiness to risk their lives to protect their colleagues, in a near impossible situation" during two sustained attacks on the US consulate in Benghazi and a nearby annex that killed Stevens and three other American officials.

But it also described confusion, lack of transparency and inadequate leadership at senior levels, and strongly criticised the use of a Libyan armed militia as security for the Benghazi consulate.

Three of those who resigned were the assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, Eric Boswell; the deputy assistant secretary responsible for embassy security, Charlene Lamb; and an official who was at first unidentified but later named by the Associated Press as Raymond Maxwell, the deputy assistant secretary of state overseeing the Maghreb nations of Libya, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco.

The independent review board – chaired by a former US ambassador, Thomas Pickering, with Admiral Michael Mullen, former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, as his deputy – strongly condemned the handling of security by Lamb and Boswell, and their lack of co-operation.

"Systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department resulted in a Special Mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place," the report said.

Lamb appeared at a congressional hearing into the attack in October where she defended the security measures taken in Benghazi. "I made the best decisions I could with the information I had," she said.

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said she would implement all of the report's recommendations for improving the protection of US missions, some of which were classified. That includes asking Congress to permit a shift in spending to ramp up diplomatic security.

Congress was briefed in secret on classified aspects of the report on Wednesday. It is expected to hold a public hearing on Thursday following months of mostly partisan attacks against the White House and the US ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, who were accused of attempting to cover up al-Qaida involvement in what was described as a terrorist attack.

The issue helped force Rice to withdraw her bid to become US secretary of state in the face of Republican hostility. But the report does not come to a conclusion as to who was responsible for the Benghazi killings, or what their links were.

The report did not add a great deal to what is already known about the attack but it did discount the contentious claim which caused problems for Rice, and which she later rowed back on, that that the assault was prompted by protests in Cairo over an anti-Muslim video placed on the web by a man in California.

It also provided insight into the ferocity of the assault on the US consulate in Benghazi saying it involved "arson, small arms and machine gun fire, and the use of RPGs, grenades, and mortars" against the main consulate compound, a security annex and on officials travelling between them.

According to the timeline in the report, the attack began at about 9.40pm with "dozens of individuals, many armed" entering the consulate compound through the main gate. A US guard hit the alarm. He told the inquiry that there had been no warning from the militia assigned to defend the consulate or the unarmed security guards, and that some of them swiftly fled.

The intruders grabbed cans of fuel used for the generator to set fire to one of the buildings in the compound and to burn cars. They then broke into a building which also housed the "safe area" where Stevens was being protected by US security officials.

"Men armed with AK rifles started to destroy the living room contents and then approached the safe area gate and started banging on it," the report said.

Then the attackers left, perhaps driven away by the smoke from the fire which engulfed the safe area and "made breathing difficult and reduced visibility to zero". Stevens and the two security men with him tried to escape the "thick, black smoke".

The ambassador became separated. He was later found by Libyans who broke into the consulate and taken to hospital, but he was already dead from smoke inhalation. Another American official also died from the smoke.

The US embassy in Tripoli scrambled to react, chartering a plane to carry seven security personnel to Benghazi. The US Africa Command also sent a surveillance drone over Benghazi.

The report said that shortly after the security team from Tripoli arrived at the annex it came "under mortar and RPG attack, with five mortar rounds impacting close together in under 90 seconds".

Two security personnel died in the fighting at the annex.

The report blames a number of contributing factors for the security failures from budget cuts to the fact that security personnel relied too heavily on intelligence to warn of impending attacks and didn't pay enough attention to what was going on around them, including a series of assaults over previous months in the International Red Cross and British diplomats.

At a press conference on Wednesday, Mullen criticised officials in Washington for rejecting requests from personnel in Benghazi for better security. "We did conclude that certain State Department bureau-level senior officials in critical positions of authority and responsibility in Washington demonstrated a lack of leadership and management ability," he said.

"State Department bureaus that were supporting Benghazi had not taken on security as a shared responsibility, so the support the post needed was often lacking and left to the working level to resolve."

Instead, security was assigned to a Libyan armed militia group, the February 17 Martyrs' Brigade (February 17), to protect the Benghazi consulate. Lamb defended that decision during her congressional testimony in October. But the report said this was clearly inadequate and that when the attacks came the militia neither raised the alarm nor stayed around to fight.

"At the time of Ambassador Stevens' visit, February 17 militia members had stopped accompanying Special Mission vehicle movements in protest over salary and working hours," the report said.

It also said the Libyan government's response during the attack was "profoundly lacking".

The report prompted strong criticism of the State Department by some politicians. "My impression is the State Department clearly failed the Boy Scout motto of be prepared," said Senator John Barrasso, Republican of Wyoming. "They failed to anticipate what was coming because of how bad the security risk already was there. … They failed to connect the dots. They didn't have adequate security leading up to the attack and once the attack occurred, the security was woefully inadequate."

Another congressman, Adam Schiff, Democrat of California and a member of the House intelligence committee, said the report showed security was "plainly inadequate, intelligence collection needs to be improved, and our reliance on local militias was sorely misplaced".

Benghazi report forces resignation of four US state department officials | World news | guardian.co.uk

The final report on the attack on the U.S. consulate makes one thing clear: Republican charges of a cover-up are pure fiction.
Benghazi report: not a cover-up. - Slate Magazine

During the drive to one of Barack Obama’s final campaign stops, navigating the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio, I found a dozen or so protesters standing where the media might see them. They held up handmade posters, demanding more questions and answers about the Sept. 11 attack on America’s consulate in Benghazi. One sign simply named the four Americans killed that day, in letters too big to miss. The others assigned blame:

Obama Said “Stand Down”

Ask About Benghazi

Tell the Truth Obama

Media at the time—conservative media, especially—were reporting every possible turn, twist, and revelation about the attacks. The “stand down” theory originated in an October 26 Fox News EXCLUSIVE (capital letters in the original), which reported that the CIA “chain of command” had “told the CIA operators twice to ‘stand down’ rather than help” besieged Americans. A complementary theory, advanced by the father of the murdered Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods, suggested that the White House had a “live feed” of the attack and sat shiva, doing nothing. Another theory, universally shared: The White House, led by people like UN Ambassador Susan Rice, was engaged in a massive cover-up.

This anger and panic added impetus to a study of the Benghazi killings, conducted by the State Department’s Accountability Review Board. The grimmest tales, the fodder for outrage and fulmination, were debunked. In fact, the problems at Benghazi started months before the attack, not in a fit of on-the-spot cowardice.

According to the report, the incident began around 9:42 p.m., after the day’s work was over. (To simplify matters, I’ve converted the military time in the report to standard time.) There were seven Americans at the consulate, which consisted of several buildings, and they were guarded by four members of the February 17 Martyr’s Brigade. “Guarded” is a lose term. A regional security officer saw, via a security camera, that “dozens of individuals” were marching through the compound’s main gate. The guards had fled; a police car, which was supposed to be outside, was gone.

The official account continues:

Just prior to receiving the TDY RSO’s distress call shortly after [9:42] local, the head of Annex security heard multiple explosions coming from the north in the direction of the SMC. The Annex security head immediately began to organize his team’s departure and notified his superiors, who began to contact local security elements to request support. The Annex response team departed its compound in two vehicles at approximately [10:05] local.

The Oct. 26 Fox News report doesn’t read this way. “Former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods was part of a small team who was at the CIA annex about a mile from the U.S. consulate where Ambassador Chris Stevens and his team came under attack,” reported Fox’s Jennifer Griffin. “When he and others heard the shots fired, they informed their higher-ups at the annex to tell them what they were hearing and requested permission to go to the consulate and help out. They were told to ‘stand down,’ according to sources familiar with the exchange. Soon after, they were again told to ‘stand down.’ ”

No surprise to anyone except the morons on BS Mountain.

Originally Posted by quimbian corholla

The real scandal would be if there was proof that one of the political parties had cut funding to embassy security while defending tax cuts for the richest americans.

One would think, but it isn't. Not for those with a wealth of things to be embarrassed about.

^The lie that started with John Bolton. The Israeli citizen who was rejected by congress as UN ambassador for the US. I wonder where his loyalty really is?

The four officials supposedly out of jobs because of their blunders in the run-up to the deadly Benghazi terror attack remain on the State Department payroll — and will all be back to work soon, The Post has learned.

The highest-ranking official caught up in the scandal, Assistant Secretary of State Eric Boswell, has not “resigned” from government service, as officials said last week. He is just switching desks. And the other three are simply on administrative leave and are expected back.

The four were made out to be sacrificial lambs in the wake of a scathing report issued last week that found that the US compound in Benghazi, Libya, was left vulnerable to attack because of “grossly inadequate” security.

State Department leaders “didn’t come clean about Benghazi and now they’re not coming clean about these staff changes,” a source close to the situation told The Post., adding, the “public would be outraged over this.”


Imagine That!



The lies and the coverup continues...

Still ducking that 'ol responsibility thing we see:

Hillary’s Benghazi Role.

According to a State Department spokesperson, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was unable to respond due to “female problems you really don’t want to hear about.”

Imagine that?

Concussiongate Boon Mee?
You remember that you did say Obama would be impeached over Benghazi?

Hillary Clinton To Return To Work Next Week After Concussion

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to return to work next week, almost three weeks after being sidelined by a concussion.

Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines says Clinton continues to recuperate at home and will resume her office schedule next week. He says Clinton had no schedule this week because of a long-planned holiday.

Aides and doctors say Clinton contracted a stomach virus in early December and became dehydrated, then fainted, fell and hit her head. She was diagnosed with a concussion on Dec. 13 and hasn't been seen in public since.

Clinton's illness led her to cancel an overseas trip and scheduled testimony before Congress about the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya.